The Thursday Takeaway
“I’m not stupid.”

That was Dillon Gee’s response to a reporter who asked, in the wake of his win over the Yankees last night, whether his job had been imperiled by the spate of clunkers that preceded it. Gee carried a 6.34 ERA into the outing, and he had allowed at least eight hits in each of his three previous starts, including two home runs by opposing pitchers.

The Wednesday Takeaway
Until yesterday, only two players had smacked three home runs in a game this year. Will Middlebrooks accomplished the feat for the Red Sox on April 7, and Miguel Cabrera did it for the Tigers on May 19. On Wednesday, two more players, each with three homers to his name this year, broke into the club. They were the Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman and a veteran backup catcher who entered the afternoon with 44 homers in his big-league career.

The list of hitters who have pulled off the trifecta is long, but the most recent names to appear on it are generally those you’d expect. From Cabrera to Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder to Josh Hamilton, Evan Longoria to Edwin Encarnacion, there aren’t many surprises to be found. That changed on Wednesday, though, when Dioner Navarro lit up Wrigley Field and etched his name alongside the most unlikely trifecta producers in recent memory.

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The Tuesday Takeaway
For 10 innings, game two of four between the Pirates and Tigers was scoreless. Rick Porcello, who in 128 major-league starts had never struck out more than eight batters, fanned 11. His counterpart, Jeanmar Gomez, who had not recorded a seventh-inning out in over a year, retired 21 Tigers on just 73 pitches to pare his ERA down to 2.30.

By the ninth inning, the game was in the hands of the bullpens. And even with Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder threatening to walk the home team off with one swing, at that point, the visitors had the advantage.

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The Memorial Day Weekend Takeaway
If I told you, before Opening Day, that the Angels would come out of their Memorial Day game against the Dodgers with a 23-28 record, the news would have ranked as a disappointment. Calls for general manager Jerry DiPoto and manager Mike Scioscia to be fired would have been heard early and often, particularly by those who dared to search their names on Twitter. And you might have expected the crosstown Dodgers, whose summer and winter splurge made the Angels’ investment in Josh Hamilton seem modest, to steal the La La Land show.

Well, the Angels are 23-28, and calls for the heads of DiPoto and Scioscia have been audible and visible throughout the season’s first eight weeks. But while, 10 days ago, the mood in Anaheim was grim, the team’s eight-game winning streak has brightened it. And the Dodgers, who halted the Halos’ surge with a wild, 8-7 victory in Monday’s Freeway Series opener, are in last place.

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The Thursday Takeaway
With only five games on the docket, the day’s most salient news may have come from upstairs at Safeco Field, where the Mariners decided to demote Jesus Montero to Triple-A Tacoma. The former number-one prospect in the Yankees farm system, who came over to Seattle as the centerpiece in the trade that sent Michael Pineda to the Bronx, had fallen into an 8-for-44 slump, and that rut coupled with shaky defense was enough to cost Montero his big-league job.

Remember when, after Pineda exhibited diminished velocity and was diagnosed with a torn labrum in his right shoulder, it seemed as though the Mariners might emerge as the clear victors in the trade? Well, a year-plus of below-replacement-level work from Montero may have tilted the scales back toward the Yankees, who on Thursday also received positive news about the recovery of the 24-year-old pitcher they so highly coveted two offseasons ago.

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Wednesday Takeaway
The Dodgers are underperforming, and Don Mattingly blames a lack of #want. Currently helming the cellar dwellers of the NL West, Mattingly laid into the team’s work ethic yesterday, and the quotes are dripping with vitriol and tobacco.

“We got to find a team with talent that will fight and compete like a club that doesn't have talent,” he said before his suddenly inspired club walloped the Brewers, 9-2, on Wednesday afternoon. “There has to be a mixture of competitiveness,” Mattingly said. “It's not, ‘Let's put an All-Star team together and the All-Star team wins.’”

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The Tuesday Takeaway
Saddled with a six-game losing streak, during which their closer, Jim Johnson, had blown as many saves as he did over all of last season, the Orioles badly needed a jolt last night. Baltimore’s playoff odds had plummeted by 17.3 percentage points over its skid, which dropped the Orioles’ record to 23-21 and left them five games behind the first-place Yankees.

So, on Tuesday night, Buck Showalter’s team did what it did down the stretch in 2012, when a 48-29 surge after the All-Star break brought the American League wild card to Baltimore. It got significant contributions from unexpected players—players that Dan Duquette and his staff unearthed from the scrap heap in the preceding months.

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The Monday Takeaway
When members of the Baseball Prospectus staff submitted our breakout-player predictions back in February, only two pitchers, Matt Moore and Mike Minor, made the list. With Moore off to an 8-0 start and Minor sporting a 51-to-12 K:BB, those were fine choices. But if we were to do it over, a third lefty, the Diamondbacks’ Patrick Corbin, would undoubtedly join them.

Corbin took the Coors Field mound yesterday with a 1.52 ERA through eight assignments, a number that was scrutinized by those skeptical of his emergence as a mid-rotation stud. The southpaw’s strikeout rate had increased modestly, from 18.9 percent last year to 19.5 percent in the early going of 2013, but his walk rate had climbed more significantly, from 5.5 percent to 8.1 percent. His opponents’ BABIP was .259. He had stranded 89.2 percent of the runners who reached base. All of those are often indicators of impending regression.

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The Weekend Takeaway
Indians reliever Vinnie Pestano, who came off the disabled list in time for the ongoing series against the Mariners, issued this warning to other teams after the third game of four:

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The Thursday Takeaway
Performance variations from season to season are common in baseball—given the extent to which batted-ball luck and other uncontrollable factors can impact the game—and they can seem especially glaring during the late-spring months, when sample sizes are still small and a few bad apples can turn a sweet stat line sour.

Matt Cain, who allowed 21 home runs in 219 1/3 innings in 2012, has already watched 13 balls sail over an outfield fence in 56 1/3 frames this year. Jay Bruce, who authored 34 bombs in 155 games last year, has just three to his name through his first 40 games of 2013. The Indians, whose 705 team OPS last year was 22^nd in the majors, now sit atop the leaderboard with a 791 clip to date. But few turnarounds, positive or negative, can rival the complete 180 executed by the Rays bullpen, which last year was one of the most reliable and dominant units in the league.

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The Wednesday Takeaway
The traditional rules of pitching depth aren’t supposed to apply to the Tampa Bay Rays, the story goes. If one of the young homegrown arms goes down to injury or if one ceases to be affordable, you just order another part from the factory in Durham, N.C., and repeat as necessary.

That theory is really being tested this year. In April, they broke a 1,207-game streak of not using a starting pitcher signed as a major-league free agent when they needed to go scraping for Roberto Hernandez to replace James Shields.

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The Tuesday Takeaway
Another day, another clip for the highlight reel from Jean Segura—or, so it seems these days in Milwaukee, where the young shortstop is routinely stealing the show.

The Brewers are 16-21, and their extra-inning loss to the Pirates on Tuesday was their eighth defeat in 10 games. With the Cardinals already 8 ½ games up in the National League Central, the Brew Crew’s long odds are growing longer with every loss, and the team’s front office is eagerly looking ahead to future years.

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