Among the unheralded, and somewhat rightfully so, are the middle relief men. The pitchers that don’t get flashy save totals and thus are ignored when it comes to highlights and fantasy talk, but nonetheless provide the backbone for the relief corps. The reason they might rightfully be ignored is due their fungible nature, but that’s a whole ‘nother series of posts.

For now, in my continued fascination with bizarre in-season splits, I want to point out Sean Green of the Seattle Mariners. A somewhat sidearmer, Sean Green started building a reputation as a ROOGY with Seattle in 2006 and cemented it in 2007 with his development of a truly wicked slider. Along side groundball rates that hover around the 60% mark, Green notched enough strikeouts to minimize the damage of his high walk rate.

On the surface that’s not very interesting unless you have a fetish for undervalued relief pitchers, which I do but I’m not going to rely on everyone else sharing in order to sustain an entire post. No, what is slightly more interesting is Sean Green’s dramatic fall off come August for the second consecutive season when it comes to BABIP.

In 2007, Green began the year in Triple-A (where he’s allowed but a single home run over his 91 innings pitched at that level) and appeared in ten games through about the first month before making the move up to Seattle in early May. Over the first 81 games the Mariners played with Green on the roster, he would appear in 37 of them and tossed 44.1 innings with 35 strikeouts, 19 walks and just one home run allowed. For the last third of the season (54 games), Green appeared 27 times but managed just 23.2 innings with just an 18-15 strikeout to walk rate. His home runs allowed stayed at the meager one, but 36 other hits were attained, suggesting some rampant bad luck combined with perhaps a bit of fatigue contributing to the worsening walk rate.

Come 2008 and Green was firmly entrenched in the Mariners bullpen. Once again, his use was heavy as he appeared in half of the Mariners first 106 games and again performed admirably with a 50 to 23 strikeout to walk rate over 57.1 innings. Though his home run rate a skosh higher (he allowed three), it was still a solid overall line for Green. Yet again, the calendar turned to August and since then Green’s appeared in 16 games, had 15.1 innings pitched and once again saw his control abandon him falling to 11 walks against just 10 strikeouts in that period. But again the main culprit was Green’s BABIP as though he’s managed to avoid any home runs during this period, the defense behind him have yielded 24 hits, an eerily similar rate to that of last season.

Hopefully, the Mariners realize this for what it is, minor runs of poor control heightened by bad luck on balls in play as fluky as it is frightening.

Jamie Moyer is 45 years old. Jamie Moyer has thrown 190 innings, has won 15 games, and has a 3.78 ERA. Jamie Moyer is 45 years old.

This is, in two words, historically remarkable. Very few pitchers last long enough to throw until they’re 45, and even fewer do it at a level that adds value to their team. Finding pitchers who are significantly better than the league average starting pitcher at age 45 is almost impossible.

In the history of baseball, the list of guys who have been this good while being this old essentially reads like this:

Satchel Paige, 1952 and 1953
Phil Niekro, 1984
Jamie Moyer, 2008

At age 45 and 46, Paige put up two terrific seasons with the St. Louis Browns, but he did it primarily in relief, only making ten starts combined in 1952 and 1953. While Paige is certainly one of the great pitchers of all time, there’s still a pretty significant difference to pitching out of the bullpen, and Paige’s ’52 and ’53 seasons weren’t that much better than Moyer’s even on the surface. The fact that he was mostly a reliever makes them slightly less impressive.

Niekro’s 1984 season is the real contender to the throne for best pitching season at 45+ years of age. He tossed his knuckler up there for 216 innings, and won 16 games with a 3.09 ERA in his last truly good season. He floated his way to a 3.50 FIP, and despite being a knuckler, he didn’t get any real boost from limiting hits on balls in play. His real success was in keeping the ball in the park, as he allowed just 15 home runs that year.

Moyer’s 2008 doesn’t quite compare – his 4.33 FIP is higher than 1984 Niekro even after adjusting for the relative run scoring eras, and the difference is essentially in that home run rate. Moyer’s alllowed five more home runs than Niekro did and has pitched 25 less innings to boot. The rest of their performances are pretty similar, but those longballs give Niekro a slight edge.

So, instead of saying that Moyer is having the best age 45 season of all time, he has to settle for second best. Ever. In all the great performances we’ve seen this year, let’s not overlook what Moyer’s doing in defying aging.

Michael Aubrey is a name you may have forgotten, unless you’re a Cleveland Indians fan. The first baseman is a former No. 1 draft pick (11th overall in 2003) out of Tulane University. Now 26, Aubrey is finally in the Major Leagues for the first time – a September cup of coffee.

Aubrey was considered the second-best, draft-eligible college hitter prior to the draft (Rickie Weeks was the top choice), according to Baseball America. The is what BA said at the time:

…Aubrey is a better pure hitter than any other college player in the nation. He projects as a .300-plus hitter with lots of doubles and 15-20 homers in the majors. He has a great approach at the plate and rarely gets fooled.

So, what took so long? What caused Aubrey to take six seasons to get to the Majors? And does he still have something in the tank, or is he a shadow of his former self.

The answer to the first question is: Injuries. In his debut season, after signing for more than $2 million, Aubrey played 38 games in A-ball. The next season he played 98 games between High-A ball and Double-A. Then in 2005 he managed just 28 Double-A games. The 2006 season was even worse, injury-wise, as Aubrey appeared in 14 games. The next year, though, he managed a whopping 65 games despite ongoing injuries. This season, Aubrey was able to appear 97 times during the minor league’s 130-game schedule.

The numbers for Aubrey this season do not inspire a lot of confidence, especially given his position at first base… and this leads us to the answer for the second question above. At Double-A, he hit .282/.333/.456 with two homers in 103 at-bats. He walked 7.2 percent of the time, and struck out at a rate of 11.7 percent. After a promotion to Triple-A, Aubrey hit .281/.328/.418 with seven homers in 285 at-bats. He walked just 5.3 percent of the time, with a strikeout rate of 14 percent.

At Double-A, Aubrey’s OPS was .790 and at Triple-A it was .736. His ISO at Double-A was .175 and .137 at Triple-A. An average ISO is considered to be .120, with most “power hitters” exceeding .200. So it’s clear, Aubrey is not a power hitter. And he doesn’t walk much. And he’s never hit above .283 at Double-A or Triple-A.

That said, Aubrey does have value. A .280 average isn’t bad for a bench player. He also swings from the left side, which gives him more value off the pine. Aubrey was also considered an excellent defender coming out of college so he could be a solid late-game option in the field. A part-time role might also help lessen the injuries that have plagued Aubrey’s career to this point.

All this suggests that Aubrey might be better suited for a career in the National League where bench players have more opportunities for regular playing time. In Cleveland, the first base/DH slots are pretty much filled with the likes of Travis Hafner (albeit apparently in a downward spiral) and Ryan Garko on the Major League roster. Cleveland also has first base prospects hot on Aubrey’s heels, such as Beau Mills, Matt LaPorta (currently playing the outfield), Jordan Brown, and Nick Weglarz (also seeing time in the outfield).

There is no question Aubrey still has value to a Major League club, but that team is most likely not Cleveland.

The Chicago Cubs are going to win the NL Central en route to their second straight playoff appearance. They have been firing on all cylinders virtually all year and bolstered an already solid rotation by adding Rich Harden, who has been nothing short of fantastic since joining the team. The Philadelphia Phillies, with just six games to go, a 1.5 game lead on the Mets and a 3.0 game lead on the Brewers, look like they very well may be heading to Dane Cook October baseball for the second straight season. Two key players in this regard are Carlos Zambrano and Brett Myers, big pitchers with plus arms who could largely determine the fates of their respective teams.

Each has had a very interesting week, however. Zambrano tossed a no-hitter against the Astros, at Miller Park (not the home park of either the Cubs or Astros), posting the following line: 9 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 10 K. And no, nobody in the Cubs front office decided to protest the ball four in the hopes that their appeal would result in a perfect game. How did he follow that act? Well, against the Cardinals, Big Z went just 1.2 innings, surrendering 6 hits and 8 earned runs, while walking 3 and striking out just 1 hitter. Talk about opposite extremes. When put together, Zambrano had a two-game stretch of 10.2 IP, 6 H, 8 ER, 4 BB, and 11 K, which results in a 6.75 ERA. No way anyone would, without knowing, guess that the above line divides into a no-hitter and, well, an all-hitter.

Since his callup, Brett Myers has been brilliant for the Phillies, one of the major reasons they have stayed alive and taken the division and/or wild card lead, however you choose to look at it. From August 9 to September 14, Myers made 8 starts, compiling this line: 62 IP, 52 H, 11 ER, 11 BB, 62 K, good for a 1.60 ERA. The last start in that span, on September 14, Myers tossed a complete game against the Brewers, going 9 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K. How did he follow that masterpiece up? Well, he took on the fiesty fish from Florida on Friday night and promptly posted this line: 4 IP, 9 H, 10 ER, 2 BB, 3 K. His ERA actually rose from 4.06 to 4.46. His two-game stretch? 13 IP, 11 H, 11 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, a 7.62 ERA. After giving up 11 ER in 8 starts, he managed to give up 10 in one outing.

Interestingly enough for Zambrano, he is a repeat “offender.” On July 29, in Milwaukee, he pitched a five-hit shutout with nine strikeouts. Two starts later against the Cardinals he surrendered 9 ER and 10 hits. On August 21, against the Reds, he gave up one run over seven innings of work. His next start, in Pittsburgh, 8 hits and 6 runs in 4.1 innings. All of this seems very Jeff Weaver. Make no mistake, both Z and Myers are tantamount to their team’s success, but it is rather strange how pitchers so good can look so very bad, and ironic how these awful outings followed tremendous ones.

Yesterday, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched seven scoreless innings to help Boston beat Toronto. He only gave up two hits and two walks while striking out six, pushing his record to a gaudy 18-2 and lowering his ERA to 2.80. 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA in most years gets you right near the top of the Cy Young voting. However, no one’s talking about Dice-K as a potential Cy Young winner, and it’s not just because of Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay’s brilliance – it’s because Matsuzaka is having one of the strangest seasons ever.

His 2.80 ERA is 61 percent better than league average – that’s obviously outstanding. But, this isn’t a normal type of dominance, where he blows hitters away and looks like an ace every time he takes the hill. This is… something else.

Dice-K has a staggering 5.17 BB/9 – among qualified pitchers, it’s the worst of any starter in baseball. If you walk five guys per game, you generally don’t stay in the rotation long enough to rack up big innings totals. If we lower the IP qualification to 50 innings, we get the following pitchers who have displayed worse command than Dice-K this year:

Kason Gabbard: 4.82 ERA
Miguel Batista: 6.70 ERA
Tom Gorzelanny: 6.66 ERA
Radhames Liz: 6.69 ERA
Tom Glavine: 5.54 ERA
Fausto Carmona: 5.19 ERA

Batista, Gorzelanny, and Liz are basically the three worst pitchers in baseball this year, while Gabbard, Glavine, and Carmona all ended up on the DL with arm problems. So, Matsuzaka’s peers in strike throwing include the worst of the worst and some guys who were pitching hurt.

He’s 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA. With the worst walk rate in baseball of any pitcher in baseball who was able to keep his job. His FIP is a pretty ordinary 4.01, which is about the best you could possibly hope for given the worst walk rate in the league. He misses enough bats to offset some of the control problems (8.21 K/9) and has also had great success keeping the ball in the park (0.63 HR/9), though his 5.9% HR/FB rate suggests that’s not all skill. He’s also benefited greatly from a .271 BABIP, which has directly led to him stranding more baserunners than anyone in the AL.

Essentially, Matsuzaka has been the master of getting himself into, and then out of, a lot of jams. This is the kind of season that comes around every 50 years or so – for instance, Herb Score had a somewhat similar performance in 1956 – he went 20-9 with a 2.53 ERA on ratios of 4.66 BB/9, 9.49 K/9, and 0.65 HR/9. Score wasn’t exactly a command artist either, but his strikeout rate was ridiculous for the era – the next best guy in the AL had a 7.73 K/9, and the next best guy after that was 6.47. So, while Score dominated despite having control problems, he also was far better at missing bats relative to his peers than Matsuzaka has been.

Really, for a pitcher to experience this much surface-level success while pitching as badly as Matsuzaka has is nearly unprecedented. There’s little doubt that his 2008 season will go down as one of the most unique in history, and it’s unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

What’s happened to Kosuke Fukudome? Generally you would think that an established player coming over from Japan would struggle during the first few months of his MLB career while he adjusted to the different styles and levels of play and then settle into a groove. Fukudome however, started off a star in Chicago’s north side as the Cubs raced out in the NL Central going 35-21 through May while Fukudome posted a .310/.412/.442 batting line while playing more than adequate right field defense.

Fukudome would start to decline in June, but still managed a fabulous OBP thanks to 17 walks against just 22 strikeouts, giving him a fantastic .123 isolated discipline. Kosuke even doubled his home run total to that point with three in June giving him a decent, but not spectacular .138 isolated power mark. So while his average dipped down to the .260s for that month, his more important slash stats remained viable and healthy.

Then something seemingly happened on June 29th as from that point forward Fukudome has regressed in every category. He’s only hit three home runs during that 66 game span and a total of 11 extra base hits giving him a lean .089 isolated power and while he still drew 26 walks during that time, he also struck out at a much higher rate, 49 times in 233 plate appearances, a 21% clip compared to just under 16% prior. And those 26 walks represented about a five point decline in walk rate over that prior period as well.

Overall, it’s been a .207/.293/.296 slash line for Fukudome since June 29th. One might wonder if pitchers have adjusted to his lack of power and are starting to throw him more strikes as they fear him less. Or maybe he was just really comfortable in the five spot of the batting order, where he started the season until the middle of June when he got moved up to leadoff and subsequently bounced around as he’s faltered.

After three consecutive seasons with ERAs under 4.00 in one of baseball’s most unfriendly ballparks to pitchers, perennially underrated pitcher Aaron Harang is currently holding a 5-16 record and a 4.70 ERA leading to many traditionalists passing it off as a terrible season. But what really, if anything, has changed for Harang in 2008 compared to his 2005-7 stretch and is his season really all that bad?

The first such piece of evidence to investigate is the strikeouts since they usually tell us most of the story. From 2005-7, Harang punched out 21.1% of the batters that he faced. That’s down to 19.6% in 2008. Okay, that is a decline, but it’s not much of one, equaling about 15 batters per full season or less than half a batter per start.

Lets move on to free passes. It is usual here to just look at walks, but there are two problems with that. One, it counts intentional walks which any measurement will tell you are just not nowhere near as costly and in terms of evaluating a pitcher’s control should just ignored. Secondly, it ignores hit batters, an egregious omission since hitting a batter is almost always indicative of poor control. Over the prior three year span, Harang let just under 6% of batters reach base freely while this year it has moved to just a shade over 6%, a really minuscule difference.

What is mostly responsible for Harang’s suffering this season are the fly balls and the home runs. Harang’s groundball rate has plunged to its lowest rate since 2002 back when he was with the Athletics. In addition to that, Harangs percentage of home runs allowed per fly ball is also at an all time high, not a good thing to miss with a newfound increase in fly balls. In fact, if you took Harang’s home run per batter faced rate from 2005-7 and applied it to 2008, you should shave 11 home runs off his season which all by itself would be enough to bring his ERA down under the 4.00 mark assuming the standard 1.4 runs per home run.

It seems likely that Harang’s groundballs and home runs per fly would regress a bit toward his career norms next season, making him more than a decent buy low candidate but there is another ominous sign. Paired with the decline strikeout rate is a rather abrupt fall in swinging strikes generated, a key driver of strikeouts going forward for pitchers. I would expect Harang to get his home runs allowed back under a bit more control in 2009, but pay careful attention to those strikeouts to see if they fall off any more.

The Cy Young Award in the American League is more than likely going to go to Cliff Lee, and deservedly so. After all, he leads all starters in WPA/LI, has the highest K/BB in baseball, the lowest WHIP, the most innings, the most complete games, ranks third in strikeouts… oh wait, that’s Roy Halladay of the Blue Jays. Throughout this entire season we have watched in shock, disbelief, and awe as Cliff Lee put together one tremendous season. His season, however, is not that much better than Roy Halladay’s, and many fans could make very good cases that Halladay has had the better year.

On the season, which happens to be the best full season of Doc’s career, Roy has a 5.06 WPA/LI (5.19 when you count his one relief appearance), a 5.60 K/BB ratio, a 1.06 WHIP, 2.79 ERA, and a 2.98 FIP. By all accounts, his is one of the best season’s over the last eight or nine years, but it is very likely it will not be recognized as such when the baseball writer’s vote. Now, I’m never one to cry over “injustices” especially when these athletes are making more money than my entire street combined, but in a year when K-Rod broke the saves record and Cliff Lee came out of nowhere to post ridiculous numbers, Halladay will be lucky to even receive some first or second place votes.

If you look past the rates, his numbers get even better, as his 228.2 IP lead all AL starters, as do his 8 complete games. His 196 strikeouts ranks third in the junior circuit. W-L record, as we know, is a terrible evaluative barometer, but it is extremely hard for many to look at a record like Lee’s 22-2 and think that someone who went 18-11 was more effective. Run support could help explain this, though; Lee has the fourth highest at 6.16 RS/9 while Halladay’s is twelfth lowest at 4.57 RS/9. If Halladay had anywhere near the run support of Lee, and his record was more like 23-5 or 21-7, don’t you think more people would be discussing him as a legitimate contender?

This just magnifies the problems with W-L record, not just in the mainstream but even in the world of analysis, because whether realized or not, it is very, very difficult to block the W-L out of our minds. Moving forward, Halladay is much more likely to repeat, or come close to repeating, this year’s performance. Even though both have very sustainable BABIP’s hovering around the .300 mark, Lee’s LOB% is close to 80%, which might be sustainable for Randy Johnson 2001-03 or Pedro 1999-00, but probably not the Cliffmeister. Additionally, his HR/FB is an unsustainably low 4.9%. Halladay’s numbers in these areas are very close to the league average.

Aspects like moving forward or which pitcher is “more real” are not taken into account in a Cy Young Award race, and Lee will very likely win the award based on his performance and how good of a story it is, but make no mistake, Roy Halladay is putting the finishing touches on his best year, a masterpiece of a season, one just as good, if not better than Lee’s, and he deserves all the accolades that may or may not come his way.

As most people have noticed over the years, talent ebbs and flows between positions. The AL had four terrific offensive shortstops back at the beginning of the decade, but now, it’s a wasteland of mediocrities. We’ve seen a surge of terrific catching enter the NL in the last few years, filling what was a pretty enormous hole for the league.

Somewhat under the radar, we’ve seen another strong talent push – have you noticed how good the crop of American League right fielders are right now?

Nick Markakis – 2.86 WPA/LI
J.D. Drew – 2.70 WPA/LI
Jermaine Dye – 2.28 WPA/LI
Shin-Soo Choo – 1.83 WPA/LI
Bobby Abreu – 1.73 WPA/LI
Magglio Ordonez – 1.27 WPA/LI
Vladimir Guerrero – 0.94 WPA/LI
Denard Span – 0.84 WPA/LI
Alex Rios – 0.50 WPA/LI
Gabe Gross – 0.46 WPA/LI
Ichiro Suzuki – 0.09 WPA/LI

Ichiro and Rios have supplemented their slightly above average hitting with excellent defense, which isn’t represented in WPA/LI, so they’re both quite a bit more valuable than this list shows. Span, meanwhile, has racked up his value in half a season – when you include defense, he’s been better than everyone but Markakis on a per game basis.

If we were just looking at a per-game basis, we could argue that Vladimir Guerrero has been something like the 8th or 9th best right fielder in the AL this year. Even though it’s a down year for Vlad, that’s remarkable – in most seasons, you can’t find seven or eight guys at any position in either league that are better than him on a per at-bat basis.

It’s really a pretty remarkable crop of talent. Markakis gets lost in the shuffle sometimes, thanks to the presence of bigger names like Guerrero and Ordonez, but he’s been the best of the bunch this year, and at 24 years of age, may have established himself as one of the game’s young stars. With other talented youngsters like Span and Choo also showing some real value, the position looks strong for years to come.

Things may not be rosy in Washington, but the Nationals High-A ball affiliate had an excellent season that culminated with a Carolina League championship title. The Potomac Nationals crushed the Myrtle Beach Pelicans by scoring 35 runs in four games. With any luck, one or two members of the Potomac offence will develop and start driving in runs for Washington in the near future.

Truth be told, though, many of the players that had a big series project as future bench players, including Boomer Whiting (who hit .375 in the playoffs). The speedy outfielder split the season between two A-ball affiliates and hit .270/.370/.342 in 374 at-bats. He stole 47 bases, walked 52 times with 64 strikeouts, and scored 77 runs. Unfortunately, Whiting, 24, hit just 16 extra base hits all season.

Infielder Daniel Lyons (.300) also had a nice series at the top of the order and scored a handful of runs. Like Whiting, Lyons split the 2008 regular season between both A-ball affiliates and hit .272/.392/.405 with 23 stolen bases, 77 walks with 96 strikeouts, and scored 83 runs. He has a little more sock in his bat and banged out 43 extra base hits, including 30 doubles.

Jhonatan Solano, normally a defensive-minded catcher, earned MVP honors in the series for batting .429 with two homers, four RBI and five runs scored. Overall in the playoffs, he hit .346. On the season, the 22-year-old hit .250/.312/.350 with five homers in 280 at-bats. Solano could make the Majors as a back-up catcher based solely on his receiving skills, positive attitude and limitless energy.