Bad Relievers, Supernova Cubbies, and Thor: This Particular Week in Baseball

I have a new cat. We brought her back from the pound two weeks ago. She's very sweet but has had some adjustment issues with our old cat due to him doing things like eating her food and pooping in her litter box while staring her down. This weekend, my wife had some work friends over. About a minute before everyone was to arrive, our old cat parked his fat butt in new cat's litter box at exactly the time new cat needed it. New cat shifted immediately into 'when you gotta go, you gotta go' mode; thankfully, the middle of the living room floor was available at the time. My seven-year-old son, standing and watching, yelled. I ran, saw, smelled, and yelled. Right behind me, like the Three Stooges entering a room, my wife yelled. The cat finished and ran. Then the doorbell rang. Adjusting to new things can be hard.

Ken Giles knows the feeling. Not because he actually pooped on the mound, but because he figuratively did. Again. Giles came into the 12th inning of a Sunday night game trying to hold down the back of a Red Sox lineup that hadn't scored since the third inning. He proceeded to give up two singles, a walk, and another single before throwing a wild pitch. The resulting two runs lost his team the game and spiked Giles' ERA from 7.04 to 8.31.

This is the guy the Astros were depending on to take their bullpen to the next level. To get him, they gave up former first overall draft pick Mark Appel, minor league prospects Harold Arauz and Thomas Eshelman, and pitchers Brett Oberholtzer and Vincent Velasquez. That's a lot! Appel is pitching well in Triple-A. Velasquez has already thrown a complete game shutout in which he struck out 16 guys without walking anyone. Giles, for his part, has given up runs in over half his appearances.

The Astros have turned that massive haul of players into the reliever of last resort in their bullpen. Giles is the guy a team goes to in the 12th inning not because you want to shut down the other guy but because the rest of your pen already did. The funny thing, depending on your sense of humor, was that the only reason Giles made it into the game was because Red Sox reliever Craig Kimbrel gave up, with two outs in the ninth, a ringing double and a game-tying two-run homer. Speaking of giving things up, the Red Sox gave up a package of prospects for Kimbrel that rivaled the Astros' package for Giles in terms of insanity. The Sox are also in for the $37.5 million owed to Kimbrel over the next three seasons. At least the Astros aren't paying their guy $13 million annually to blow their games up like a third grade science experiment.

Even so, both the Red Sox and the Astros may yet get 'fair use' out of Giles and Kimbrel. The argument can be made that if both figure it out by the time the postseason rolls around, those outs in the Division Series, Championship Series, and World Series are worth the dent in prospects and payroll the teams are taking. The thing is, the teams have to get there first. The Red Sox are 9-9, no thanks to Kimbrel. The Astros are 6-13 and have been losers in five of the nine games in which Giles has pitched. They're both better than they've been, but right now it's hard to imagine how they could be worse.

Sometimes the cat learns and uses the box. Houston and Boston surely hope so. There's only so many times you can pretend a pile of turds on the living room floor is anything but a pile of turds on the living room floor.

The only change in the T5OTH is the White Sox take over for the Orioles as the lone American League entry, although in truth I could've gone with either—I picked Chicago because they're new. Hooray for shiny new things. Also it's still full of National League teams, which feels great.

Beyond that, the Cubs are good. Good gosh are the Cubs good. But they're only the tip of the melting iceberg when it comes to the quality in the National League. The NL has a team 10 games over .500, another nine over, and also a team five over. We are not yet 20 games into the season and the NL almost has two teams 10 games over! And yet, after all that NL love, we start with…

5. White Sox

Quick Comment: Two off-seasons ago, the A's traded Josh Donaldson for Brett Lawrie. Donaldson won the MVP and Lawrie was awful. Then, last off-season, they traded Lawrie for two minor league pitchers. Lawrie has an .806 OPS with a .373 on-base percentage. At press time, the minor league pitchers did not.

Less Quick Comment: Chris Sale, man. Man. Chris Sale! He's 4-0 with a 1.80 ERA and 26 strikeouts to three walks in 30 innings. Man! The thing, though, is Sale kind of did this last year, too. The difference is this year Sale has company. Jose Quintana has a 1.82 ERA (so close!) and five walks to 22 strikeouts in 24.2 innings. Mat Latos is 3-0 with a 0.49 ERA. In an AL that's so close, having three high quality starters—four if you throw the emerging Carlos Rodon on the pile—could set them apart.

4. Cardinals

Quick Comment: Matt Holliday's contract might be the rare long-term big money deal that never soured on the team. The… devil magic… is… overwhelming…

Less Quick Comment: Quick, name three current Cardinals! Yadier Molina, yes. That's one. Matt Holliday is another. And Adam Wainwright. Wow, you're good. You've also named, I believe, the entire Cardinals roster that can demonstrably be proven to exist. After them, it's ghost runners and pitching machines. The strange part is that Wainwright has been awful, but after him, Michael Wacha, Jaime Garcia, and Carlos Martinez have been fantastic, as in they have ERAs around 50 percent above average. Those three are earning $12.5 million this season combined. Wainwright and Mike Leake, who have been very bad, are making $31 million combined. There's probably a lesson in this, somewhere, maybe. As usual, it's hard not to suspect that the answer is "be the Cardinals, and the rest will take care of itself."

3. Dodgers

Quick Comment: Yasiel Puig can throw out anyone from anywhere after misplaying anything. It's a living. That's cool to be able to do.

I have no words, Yasiel. — Justin Russo (@FlyByKnite)April 23, 2016

Less Quick Comment: Kenta Maeda's contract came as a surprise in the off-season. He signed with the Dodgers for a bit over $3 million a season over the next eight years. It was a deal Dave Kingman might have signed in the '80s. Clearly not much was expected of Maeda if that's how MLB teams valued him. Through four starts, they've all looked pretty wrong. In 25 innings he's given up one run while striking out 23 and walking five. He may not keep this up, because his stuff isn't elite and he may yet grow tired from the more stressful MLB season, but even if he does, the Dodgers seem to have themselves an above-average pitcher in 2016 at 1980s money.

2. Nationals

Quick Comment: Other than trying to get a few of his guys really into doing toothpick tricks, Dusty Baker has been pretty hands-off.

Less Quick Comment: Bryce Harper is officially insane. The cost to keep him in Washington, DC, is going to be at least $50 million a season over 10 years with as many opt-outs as he wants. That sounds nuts, but only if you are not watching him play. His pinch-hit game-tying homer Sunday night was only the latest evidence of that, but if you wanted more, he's slugging .803 and he's walking more than he's striking out. That, in the words of a great American, is unpossible.

1. Cubs

Quick Comment: Dexter Fowler has a .478 BABIP, meaning about half of everything he hits falls in, and the other half feels cheated.

Less Quick Comment: If you doubled the amount of runs the Cubs have given up this season, they'd still be a stronger pitching and defensive team than Colorado, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee, and just a run shy of the Padres. This is for two reasons. The defense is the best in baseball, and not just anecdotally. They turn batted balls into outs 75.6 percent of the time, the best in baseball. For comparison, batted balls fall in for hits 65.7 percent of the time for the Mets. The second reason is the Cubs starting rotation is right behind the Mets in FanGraphs WAR. Their fourth starter has a 0.75 ERA. This team isn't infallible, but they're the closest baseball has at the moment.

We welcome the Reds because they are A) bad and B) more interesting than the Marlins! Also hooray for objectivity and ethics.

3. Cincinnati

Quick Comment: The oldest baseball franchise is playing like it.

Less Quick Comment: The strange part is the Reds are bad. The stranger part is I thought the Reds would be worse. Jay Bruce is hitting, as are Zack Cozart and Brandon Phillips. Billy Hamilton is awful and probably will forever be held in check by the old baseball rule that you can't steal first base. Joey Votto is not this awful and will eventually hit. Even so, this not-entirely-horrific start to the season is going to help the Reds because soon enough they'll be able to pawn off Phillips and Bruce, if not more, for something more valuable than the salary relief they would've gotten this past off-season. Hooray for baby steps!

2. Twins

Quick Comment: Talent, like money, is useless if unused.

Less Quick Comment: Joe Mauer is hitting! After not doing that for a number of years following multiple concussions, Mauer is torching the ball. He attributes this in part to his use of strobe glasses as a training technique. That's great, but the specifics are less important than the fact that one of the greats of baseball might be back to his old self. Whether it took neon underwear or smell-o-socks to get it done hardly matters. There is not really much other good news here.

1. Braves

Quick Comment: Braves players complained that the field at Turner Field was lousy. Maybe, but what's on the field isn't helping.

Less Quick Comment: It's fun to make fun of bad teams and the Braves are a bad team, but last week Braves outfielder Hector Olivera was arrested on assault and battery charges in an alleged domestic-violence incident. It's a lot easier to make fun of shitty baseball when it's not being played by shitty people. This team is a drag.

Monday's matchup of Noah Syndergaard against Literally Who Gives a Shit is going to be terrific. Reading descriptions of Syndergaard's pitches, one frequently comes across the word "unfair." That's the kind of diction 99 mph fastballs followed by 95 mph sliders will elicit; he has thrown 23 pitches above 100 miles per hour this season, which is 23 more than any other starting pitcher. This being a pitcher, we just don't know when his arm will go pop, or whether his shoulder or some other part of his body will someday make a noise that sounds like you're driving a car without any motor oil in it and render him less dominant than he is now. So go watch Noah Syndergaard pitch while you can, and while he's still Noah Syndergaard. He's facing the Reds today, but that hardly matters.