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Longtime Cleveland Indians executive Mark Shapiro announced Monday he will be leaving the franchise after more than two decades to become the president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays and Rogers Centre.

Shapiro said in a statement on the Indians’ TribeVibe blog:

While weighing those bonds carefully and seriously, I feel the unique and compelling nature of the Blue Jays President/CEO position warranted my consideration. This position represents a unique opportunity for me and one that I felt was the right new challenge to undertake. With mixed emotions, I will assume the Toronto Blue Jays CEO position upon the conclusion of the 2015 season.

Shapiro, 48, has been part of the Indians organization since 1991. He has slowly worked his way up through the ranks, beginning as an assistant in the baseball operations department before eventually becoming the team’s president. He has also served as Cleveland’s general manager and as a player development director.

Since Shapiro joined the organization, the Indians have made the playoffs eight times and won two American League pennants.

“Given the person that Mark is, the significant leadership and values that he has brought to the organization and with everything he has helped us accomplish, it will be extremely difficult to see him leave,” owner Paul Dolan said in a statement on the blog. “However, I hope that this new challenge brings happiness and fulfillment for Mark and his family.”

ESPN’s Pat McManamon was quick to weigh in on the impact:

Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal reported the Indians will not receive compensation from Toronto for hiring Shapiro:

Shapiro will be replacing Blue Jays CEO Paul Beeston, who recently announced his retirement.

”Mark is a seasoned baseball veteran, whose leadership, drive for excellence, and commitment to all aspects of the game is impressive. We have confidence that he is the right person to lead the Toronto Blue Jays into the future and build upon the franchise’s legacy,” Blue Jays chairman Edward Rogers said in a statement, per the Toronto Star.

The Blue Jays have emerged in 2015 as perhaps the fastest-rising organization in baseball. They have an MLB-best run differential of plus-193 and made major moves at the trade deadline for a World Series push, most notably acquiring shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and pitcher David Price.

With a larger budget to match his higher profile, Shapiro should have little excuse but to keep Toronto in the title picture going forward.

Follow Tyler Conway (@tylerconway22) on Twitter.

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There haven’t been any blockbuster deals via waiver trade over the last month, but there have still been a handful of notable deals worth analyzing. Over the next few slides, that’s exactly what we’ll do with our 2015 MLB waiver trade deadline grades. 

Teams can only do so much after the July 31 trade deadline. It’s much more difficult to get a deal done in August, which is a big reason why most of the trades made are smaller, need-based moves. 

For contenders, August is a final opportunity to plug glaring holes before the season’s final month. The Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Texas Rangers and New York Mets have attempted to do that in the last few weeks with the likes of Chase Utley, Marlon Byrd, Will Venable, Mike Napoli and Addison Reed. 

Of those moves, which ones were really worth making? Did the Dodgers really need Utley? How much of an impact can Napoli realistically have with his old team? 

We’ll take a look at each of those situations and assign an appropriate grade to each deal. Make sure to let us know how you feel about these trades in the comments section below. 

Let’s jump right into it! 

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With the calendar set to turn over to September, the stretch run of the 2015 MLB season has arrived, and it promises to be an exciting final month.

The Kansas City Royals are currently the only team with a division lead larger than 5.5 games, and 19 of the 30 teams around the league are currently within eight games of a playoff spot.

That being said, let’s take an updated look at how all 30 clubs currently stack up.

When putting together this list, we considered the following factors:

• Last week’s record
• Quality of opponent
• Key injuries/trades
• Recent performance beyond the last week

The goal, as always, is to be as objective as possible. But a certain amount of subjectivity will always come into play with something like this.

Just remember: This is a fluid process. Teams will rise and fall on a weekly basis relative to where they ranked previously. If you keep winning, you keep climbing—it’s as simple as that.

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If things continue as they are, and the rookie outfielder keeps hitting the bejeezus out of the baseball, NBA champion Klay and sibling Mychel soon will be known as Trayce Thompson’s brothers.

“That’s what my dad says all the time,” Trayce Thompson, Chicago White Sox rookie outfielder, says with a chuckle. “He’s already known as Klay’s dad now.

“When we were growing up, we were known as Mychal Thompson’s sons. Now, my mom and dad are known as Klay’s parents.”

Trying to keep up with this family? Good luck with that.

As things have turned out, they’ve been trying to keep up with each other for years.

The White Sox summoned Trayce, 24, from Triple-A Charlotte on Aug. 4, and in 12 games since then through the weekend, he was hitting .519/.552/.963 with two homers and six RBI.

Brother Klay, 25, teamed with Stephen Curry in June to lead the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA championship since 1975.

Brother Mychel, 27, is playing pro basketball in Italy after helping the Santa Cruz Warriors win the NBA Development League title in April. Before that, he spent time with the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2011-12 season.

And father Mychal, 60, is a two-time NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers who also starred for the Portland Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs.

“Within our family, it was like any other family,” Trayce says. “I never viewed my father as just an athlete. My brothers were my brothers.”

Yep, just like any other family in which all four males are talented enough to play sports professionally and win titles at various levels.

Like the time Trayce beat brother Mychel playing basketball in the driveway when he was 10 and Mychel was 12 or 13.

“He said he was going to run away,” Trayce says. “It was funny.

“Me and Klay were so close in age, we’d play one-on-one in Wiffle ball, basketball, some football. Klay and I were so competitive.”

Still are.

“I’ve seen him break at least three clubs when we’re golfing,” Trayce says. “I’m better than him. I golf a lot.”

So on the course, Klay’s best defense is trash-talking, trying to distract Trayce and break his focus.

“Klay’s the type of golfer, he doesn’t care about his shot,” Trayce says. “He just wants you to shank your shot. He’s funny.”

When Trayce entered the Sox lineup on Aug. 4 for his major league debut, Klay, Mychel and mom and dad were in U.S. Cellular Field for the game against Tampa Bay. They wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

“It was awesome seeing him in that huge stadium playing the outfield in front of all of those people,” Klay told the Chicago Tribune‘s K.C. Johnson. “It was almost surreal. I know how hard he works. The minor leagues are no joke. I respect baseball players and what they do to get there.”

The kids spent their early years in Oregon before moving to Mission Viejo, California, for their teenage years. So when the White Sox played in Anaheim two weeks after his Sox debut, Trayce’s brothers and parents all gathered again, in Angel Stadium, for the series opener.

“I imagine a kid like that has a little pressure on him,” White Sox bench coach Mark Parent says. “Your dad is a superstar. Your brother is a superstar.

“There’s enough pressure from us. We just need him to contribute.”

Parent remembers playing as a minor leaguer at Triple-A Portland in the early 1980s before his own debut with the San Diego Padres in 1986, when Mychal was starring for the Trail Blazers, who had drafted him No. 1 overall in the 1978 draft.

“He was a god up there,” Parent says. “He was like Michael Jordan. I remember after one of our games one night, some of us went to the sports bar at the Marriott, and he was in there. He bought us all a beer.”

Some 30 years later, when he saw Mychal at U.S. Cellular Field on the night of Trayce’s debut, he told the old man that story. Told Trayce, too.

Adam LaRoche was there. And the White Sox first baseman took one look at the Thompsons and figured it was readily apparent why Trayce is the only one in the family who did not follow the bouncing ball.

“He’s the runt,” LaRoche marvels. “I mean, it’s not like he’s small. But compared to his brothers…”

Trayce is 6’3″, and Klay and Mychel go 6’7″. Dad Mychal? 6’10”.

But he hasn’t always been on the short end.

“I was always bigger than Klay growing up,” Trayce says. “He was only a year older than me. So they never picked on me too much.”

In fact, the only times the brothers fought, Trayce says, is when a situation developed in which it was two against one and the one felt he was being ganged up on.

Well, maybe it’s not that they never fought…

“Me and Mykey played video games,” Trayce says. “Gosh, when we were kids, it was bad. When we’d play and he would lose, he would get really grumpy.”

Klay, in addition to basketball, was a very good quarterback when he was young but stopped playing football after his freshman year of high school to concentrate on basketball.

Mychel was a threat as a running back on his youth league football teams but stopped playing after the seventh grade. Both brothers played baseball in high school, too.

The family had moved from Oregon to Southern California by the time Trayce was ready for high school, a move he calls “very helpful” for his baseball career.

“Baseball was my first love, always,” Trayce says. “The Mariners were huge at the time. Ken Griffey Jr. My guy was always Edgar Martinez, but I still have a Ken Griffey Jr. poster up on the wall of my old room in my parents’ home.

“Even in high school, we’d get home from basketball practice, and I’d be at home holding my bat.”

Yeah, Trayce could hoop it up a little too, leading Santa Margarita High School to the California Division III state title in 2008.

Still, whatever magic his family saw on the court, he saw on the diamond.

When Trayce was 14, Rod Carew’s stepson was a classmate—and the seven-time batting champion and Hall of Famer was available for tips. A former Yankees scout named Dave Keith hooked up with him early and was especially helpful to Trayce as he prepared for professional baseball (the Sox picked him in the second round of the 2009 draft). And Chris Gwynn, brother of the late Hall of Famer Tony and currently director of player development for the Seattle Mariners, became a friend as well.

“When he was scouting my games, he’d shoot me a text, ‘Hey, you’re doing this with your swing.’ I don’t forget those things.”

He describes fellow Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado—another Southern California friend—as the closest thing to a brother outside of, well, his real brothers. He’s especially tight with Oakland shortstop Marcus Semien, too, which is convenient in the winter: He can work out with Semien in the Bay Area by day and attend Klay’s Warriors games by night.

The intra-brothers competition mostly is fun now, unlike the time Trayce’s older brothers were home from college and Klay (then playing for Washington State) beat Mychel (Pepperdine) in a game of one-on-one.

“I remember Mykey punted the ball onto the school roof,” Trayce says, smiling wide. “It was hilarious.”

Maybe now would be a good time to point out that, on the day Trayce and I spoke, Mychel had flown out that morning for Italy and his next professional basketball assignment, and Klay boarded a flight to China sponsored by his shoe company. So neither brother was around to defend himself.

As I was saying, good luck keeping up with this family.

So in the interest of fairness, I turned to Parent to tell a story on Trayce.

“Hey, grab a bat,” Parent told Thompson one day during a Cactus League game this spring in the White Sox dugout, a signal for the kid to prepare to pinch hit.

Only as soon as Thompson did grab a bat, Parent asked to see it—then proceeded to use it to knock the dirt out of his cleats before handing it back to Thompson.

“Thanks,” Parent said.

It’s an old baseball prank, one that one of Parent’s old minor league managers, former big leaguer Doug Rader, once pulled on him.

“So I’m going to have a hard time calling him down from the end of the bench now,” Parent says, eyes twinkling.

“He definitely got me,” Trayce says. “He likes to have fun. He does it to all of the guys.”

That Parent now has a chance to do it to Trayce in the majors, and not just in spring training…well, the baby of the Thompson clan will take that every day of the week.

“It’s been a whirlwind, man,” Trayce says of a summer in which Mychel won the D-League title in April, Klay won the NBA title in June and Trayce was called up to the majors in August. “As a family, we’ll look back one day and realize how special this is.

“Watching Klay and seeing my family come on TV at the NBA Finals was surreal. The [Warriors] parade was amazing. And getting the call to come here, it was a shock.

“Then, having a decent [start], it’s been the coolest thing that’s happened in my life. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m very blessed, and I’m going to try to make it last as long as I can.”

All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted. Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

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As calendars shift to September, time is of the essence for fantasy baseball owners.

Managers can’t afford to sit back and remain patient. If something is not working, react and make a change. That can involve adding a hot hand or locating a short-term upgrade based on upcoming matchups. 

Although rosters will expand on Sept. 1, these top 10 adds don’t feature any potential September call-ups. Those guys already received write-ups over the past two weeks. Note that Jose Berrios, fresh off two double-digit strikeout gems in Triple-A, would have made this list as a speculative stash if not already discussed in a past edition.

Several previously discussed gems—Travis d’Arnaud, Marcell Ozuna, Raisel Iglesias, Joe Ross—remain available in over half of Yahoo Sports leagues, but let’s avoid duplicates. Although that doesn’t leave many significant fresh faces, these players can do their part to aid a late run.

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LOS ANGELES — Jake Arrieta’s solidification came loud, clear and dominant.

No-hitters tend to do that. But when they do it for an ace on the rise who’s on a team thinking about the World Series, they do so with more authority.

Already in the midst of greatness this season, the Chicago Cubs’ right-hander fired the game of his life Sunday night at Dodger Stadium, striking out 12 on his way to a no-hitter and a 2-0 Cubs win.

His ball danced. It ducked. It shimmied. It disappeared. And there was almost nothing the Dodgers could do about it except rely on a scorekeeper’s call to keep them from being no-hit for the second time in 10 days.

The no-hitter was Arrieta’s 14th consecutive quality start, the most for a Cubs pitcher since Greg Maddux in 1992. He was already hot coming in, but this latest outing proved him to be one of Major League Baseball’s premier aces.

“He has that kind of stuff nightly,” Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. “It’s really crazy. The ball looks like a whiffle ball from the side. You can see the break on the slider, the cutter and the curveball.

“Right now he’s pitching at a different level. And he deserves it. This is not a surprise at all.”

Nor should it be. Arrieta was already a topic for the national media this season, and talk of the 29-year-old was ramping up as the Cubs visited markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles.

National media exists in the Midwest, and it existed in New York when he and the Cubs visited there a couple months ago. But, as Maddon noted, his star is different right now. The Cubs are legitimate playoff threats, and Arrieta is showing to be their ace.

On the Cubs’ latest road trip through the Bay Area and Southern California, the national media was out to talk to Arrieta, not just about his team’s surprising rise but about his own out-of-nowhere emergence as one of the league’s top starters.

In both cities he was posed questions about what has changed for him—what has taken him from a starter too familiar with disappointment to one capable of dominating an entire league and possibly starting a wild-card game with his team’s life on the line.

“I guess you want to get used to that kind of stuff,” Arrieta said. “It means you’ve been good for a while, right?”

His last 52 starts, not counting for the occasional hiccup, would definitely qualify as being good for more than a while. Going into this no-hitter, Arrieta, 29, had a 2.37 ERA, 0.986 WHIP and 2.42 FIP in two full seasons with the Cubs, covering the previous 51 turns.

In parts of four seasons with the Baltimore Orioles before being traded in 2013, he had a 5.46 ERA in 69 games, 63 of them starts for a right-hander who was rated as a top-100 prospect in consecutive years by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.

That was a time when Arrieta was out of his baseball mind, entrenched in overthinking his delivery and what others—coaches, scouts, other pitchers—thought he should look like.

Then, as he was finding ways to rid himself of that thinking, Baltimore traded him for Steve Clevenger and Scott Feldman. The Orioles had given up on Arrieta because they needed bullpen help in the midst of a playoff run. Arrieta was not finding success in the big leagues fast enough, and Baltimore’s then-current needs trumped its desire to wait him out.

“Sometimes it’s just a change of scenery, and it can be a bit of a wake-up call for guys when they get traded,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “I don’t know his situation specifically, but I think we look at him and we know he’s a handful.”

In a way it did shake up Arrieta. It prompted him to stop thinking so much and to focus more on the art of pitching, not the mechanics of it. His delivery became freer, his fastball ticked up an mph and the rest of his arsenal fell in line.

The results were immediate.

Arrieta pitched 13 innings and allowed one run in his first two starts with the Cubs, and he finished that season with eight more starts, allowing two runs in his final two games. Then, last season, he blossomed. He was dominant in 25 starts, striking out 9.6 hitters per nine innings and giving the Cubs a 2.53 ERA in 156.2 innings, earning a ninth-place finish in the Cy Young Award voting.

The numbers say he’s been just as good this season with his 2.22 ERA and 2.57 FIP entering Sunday. The difference is he is doing it for longer—he’s pitched 183 innings this year—and for a contending team trying to secure a postseason berth.

And that ninth-place finish last season should improve considering he’s been the undisputed ace of the staff even with Jon Lester’s $155 million pact from last offseason.

“I don’t know who has better stuff,” Maddon, who saw plenty of the Baltimore Arrieta when he managed the Tampa Bay Rays before this year, said of him. “The slider’s the best. The curveball, I want to know who has a better curveball. But, to me, the biggest difference is he knows where his fastball is going.”

With it and the rest of his weaponry, Arrieta has propelled himself into the upper echelon of National League starting pitchers, along with helping the Cubs and their faithful dream of breaking their World Series curse.

With that would come entirely new forms of questions, ones Arrieta would also be perfectly happy answering.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon scheduled a pajama party for his team’s flight home from L.A. on Sunday.

Little did he know the Cubs would be celebrating a masterful no-hit performance against the Dodgers from starting pitcher Jake Arrieta.

According to Jesse Rogers of ESPN.com, Maddon thought the pajama party would’ve been a good idea whether the team won or lost.

“It works both ways. If you win it’s even better, and if you’ve lost it’s kind of like, ‘Let’s put this behind us and move on.’ I see it as a win-win-win,” he said. “It’s about keeping the group together. It’s about having fun as a group.”

Arrieta—the star of the night—made sure he was prepared for the postgame festivities, via ESPN’s Jen Lada:

[Twitter, h/t ESPN]

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A young San Francisco Giants fan was shocked he didn’t grab a foul ball that came his way during the team’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals on Saturday. 

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Gregor Blanco of the Giants smacked a foul ball into the stands. The young fan failed to make the catch, leaving the group behind him grabbing for the souvenir. The kid couldn’t believe it, putting his hands over his head in disbelief like his mom had told him they ran out of Bagel Bites. 

Worse yet, the Giants went on to lose, 6-0.

[MLB]

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All but one game on a packed Sunday Major League Baseball schedule is a matinee. That means a ton of options for DraftKings players. There’s only so much salary to go around, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed in this situation. 

We can’t go big on every selection. You’re going to need to find some sleepers and bargain options. Here are five for Sunday’s schedule, including a low-cost pitcher to watch on the mound.

Josh Tomlin, SP ($5,600)

In three starts this season, Josh Tomlin is trending upward. He’s gone at least six innings in each start. He and the Cleveland Indians host the struggling Los Angeles Angels on Sunday. The Angels haven’t scored more than three runs in a game in their last four contests.

Tomlin doesn’t walk a ton of hitters. To be specific, he’s issued just two free passes in 19.1 innings. Last but not least, Tomlin strikes out 8.38 batters per nine innings. That’s a big reason he’s averaging 21.7 fantasy points per game this season.

Obviously, that’s not a total you can be completely content with from the pitcher spot, but Tomlin’s low salary gives you some flexibility. Perhaps you want to draft the Chicago Cubs’ Jake Arrieta for $12,400, he and Tomlin’s salaries combined are just $18,000. That’s an average of $9,000 per pitcher spot.

That’s reasonable, as it would allow you to fill a solid lineup of position players as well. 

Lonnie Chisenhall, 3B ($2,900)

When he’s gotten an opportunity to play of late, Lonnie Chisenhall has been on a tear at the plate. In his last 10 games, he is hitting .565, slugging .752 and his OPS is 1.333. Indians in Depth on Twitter offer even more perspective on Chisenhall’s performance in August:

The Indians will face scuffling Angels starter Jered Weaver on Sunday. He’s allowed four or more runs nine times this season. Most recently, Weaver surrendered six earned in his last start against the Detroit Tigers on August 25.

To boot, Chisenhall is hitting .412 in 17 at-bats against him. It seems crazy for the Indians or any DK player not to have him in the lineup on Sunday.

Marcel Ozuna, OF ($3,000)

In his last four games, Marcel Ozuna has been hot.

He’s hitting .375 in that span with three multi-hit games and three extra-base hits. Ozuna’s hot hitting isn’t the only reason to draft him on Sunday. The 24-year-old Miami Marlins outfielder will be facing the Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strasburg, and Ozuna has gotten the better of this matchup in their career meetings.

In 17 at-bats, Ozuna is hitting a paltry .412 with a home run, double, triple and five RBI against Strasburg. With recent success at the plate and positive history against the opposing pitcher, Ozuna could be a steal for $3,000.

Danny Espinosa, 2B/3B ($3,200)

The Marlins may need all they can get from Ozuna. Miami is sending Brad Hand to the mound to face the Nationals, and that could be problematic. 

Current Nationals hitters are batting a combined .326 against Hand. Not least of the bunch is Danny Espinosa. In 11 at-bats against the Marlins left-hander, Espinosa is hitting .455.

Espinosa had a single and scored a run on Saturday. The hit was his first in three games, so he may be breaking out of a slump. Facing Hand could help continue to improve.

Victor Martinez, 1B ($3,400)

The 36-year-old Victor Martinez hasn’t had a very good season for the Detroit Tigers this year. Martinez echoed those sentiments in a quote captured by Matthew B. Mowery of the Oakland Press in Pontiac, Michigan:

Despite his 2015 struggles, Martinez has always hit Toronto Blue Jays starter Mark Buerhle. Guess who the Blue Jays are sending to the mound on Sunday?

In 78 at-bats, Martinez is carrying a healthy .359 batting average against the veteran lefty. He’s slugging .538 against Buerhle and he’s taken him deep four times.

Martinez doesn’t have a recent hot streak to reference, but his overwhelming success, in such a large sample size of at-bats against Buerhle, is reason enough to draft the Tigers veteran.

All stats per DraftKings.com, unless otherwise linked. The head-to-head references per ESPN.com.

Follow Brian Mazique on Twitter

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Does anyone else feel like this was the fantasy football draft weekend of the summer? I’m in three leagues, and all three of my drafts were this weekend.

What’s the deal? Football is still 11 days away. I don’t want to have to shift my focus from baseball to football yet. Hopefully you don’t either. Let’s jump right into today’s baseball primer. 

Nathan Eovaldi ($7,400) at Braves

Check out Eovaldi’s 10-game log on DraftKings. The Yankees righty is nothing if not consistent. He’s scored in double digits in each of his past 10 starts. And despite back-to-back outings in which Eovaldi has posted 26 or more fantasy points, he’s not that expensive. 

Oh yeah, today Eovaldi gets the combusting Braves away from the bandbox in the Bronx. Since the All-Star break, Atlanta’s been the worst offensive club in the league. They’re dead last in wRC+, runs and team offensive WAR according to Fangraphs. 

Eovaldi will also benefit from not pitching against a designated hitter. If he can avoid injury in his third, fourth and fifth at-bats of the season, he should have a big fantasy night. 

Stephen Strasburg ($10,000) vs. Marlins

Make no mistake, Strasburg is in the middle of his worst season in the bigs by far. But in the past month-and-a-half, he’s returned to form. On DraftKings, Strasburg has scored 20 or more fantasy points in four straight games and averaged 26 fantasy points over his last seven starts. It’s been more than three months since Strasburg allowed more than two runs in a game. 

Like Eovaldi, Strasburg has a terrific matchup. What is it with humid southern NL East cities? According to Fangraphs, the Marlins are the second-most incompetent team (behind the aforementioned Braves) at the dish since the All-Star break. They’ve hit only 21 home runs since the Midsummer Classic. Twenty-one! That’s roughly one jack every two games. Look for Strasburg to go seven or more innings in the nation’s capital today.

Other good options: Charlie Morton ($7,200) vs. Rockies, Josh Tomlin ($5,600) vs. Angels, John Lamb ($5,300) at Brewers 

Stack the ‘Stros

Sadly, the Blue Jays just passed the Astros in total team home runs. Houston led the league for the first four months of the season, but the sluggers up north finally caught them. In fact, Houston’s offense has been struggling lately. They’ve dropped to ninth in the league in wRC+, according to Fangraphs. 

However, they should tee off today against Ervin Santana in Minneapolis. Per DraftKings, Santana has been horrible recently. He’s posted a negative fantasy total in four of his past six outings. He’s allowed more than five runs per start and walked 15 batters in that same six-game stretch. 

If you stack the top of the Astros lineup and they strike with one big inning, you’re in good shape to cash in for any tournament. The way Santana is chucking, Houston is liable to put up multiple crooked-numbered innings at Target Field. 

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