Choosing a game this week proved to be a very difficult task as certain games stood out for the wrong reasons and other solid ones were not really indistinguishable from games glossed over earlier in the season. The Phillies fan in me would love to choose the pop-up heard ’round the world but was that game really anything remarkable save for a routine play gone wrong at the end? Color me unimpressed otherwise. I mean, it might have been fun to watch but I’d much rather highlight some games we may have missed. With that in mind, let’s instead shake things up a bit and look at each day, Monday-Sunday, and highlight a game that stood out.

Monday: Pirates 6 @ Braves 7
Not three days after settling in his new digs in Atlanta, Nate McLouth had to host his former employer. He didn’t shy away, either, going 3-7 with a homer and a steal. Those seven plate appearances were amassed over the course of 15 innings, as both teams decided to play bonus baseball. In the bottom of the fifteenth, David Ross hit a walkoff single with the bases loaded and one out to end the game.

Tuesday: Cardinals 3 @ Marlins 4
The double quality start was in full effect as Chris Carpenter took on Josh Johnson. Johnson lasted one inning longer, but both of their efforts were largely for naught, as the game was decided on a Jeremy Hermida walkoff home run in the bottom of the ninth.

Wednesday: Reds 4 @ Nationals 2
Even when they manage to come back, the Nationals struggle to hold on. Shairon Martis allows just two runs over seven solid frames and back to back RBI singles from Josh Bard and Alberto Gonzalez tie the game in the bottom of the ninth off of Francisco Cordero. The Nats bullpen coughs up two more in the top of the 12th and David Weather prevents a second comeback.

Thursday: Blue Jays 0 @ Rangers 1
Marlon Byrd knocks in a run on a sac fly in the bottom of the second and nothing happens for the next seven frames. Ricky Romero leaves after 6.1 truly effective innings and Kevin Millwood keeps the Blue Jays off the scoreboard for 7.2 innings. The Rangers are known predominantly for their offense but their pitching really came through here.

Friday: Mariners 4 @ Rockies 6
After finding himself down 3-0 early in the game, Ubaldo Jimenez bounces back, logging a complete game with rather odd numbers (4 BB/3 K and 4 ER) and knocking in the tying run with a single in the sixth. Rockies are rolling.

Saturday: White Sox 7 @ Brewers 1
The recently called up Jose Contreras continues his resurgence, scattering two hits and two walks over eight shutout innings while fanning eight. Since returning on June 8, Contreras has pitched 16 shutout innings while allowing just three hits and three walks, earning Player of the Week honors in the process.

Sunday: Cardinals 0 @ Indians 3
Cliff Lee continues to show that last season was no fluke by tossing a complete game shutout against the Cardinals. After 9 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, Lee now has a 2.88 ERA and 3.01 FIP in 97 innings of work. With his groundball and flyball rates virtually identical to those posted last season (becoming a groundball pitcher was a big key to his success), and minimal regression in his walk and strikeout rates, this incarnation of Lee really looks like the real deal.

Welcome to the only recap of last week that won’t punish you with endless Luis Castillo references. Mets fans have endured enough. Besides the fact that ESPN will beat a single highlight into the ground, what else did we learn last week?

The Rockies have to be a wee bit frustrated

After an undefeated week where they ran their winning streak to 11 games, Colorado has closed the gap in the N.L. West to… 10 1/2 games. They haven’t lost in nearly two weeks and they’re still not even with shouting distance of the Dodgers. Part of that is how bad they were to start the season, but the other part is that the Dodgers just won’t stop playing like the best team in baseball. The Rockies have managed to insert themselves into the Wild Card race with their surge, and they now have the third best run differential in the National League, but they’re still fighting an uphill climb to get into the playoffs.

The Texas Rangers don’t win when they don’t score.

Despite all the talk about the improved run prevention down in Arlington, they still rely on their offense to win them baseball games, and last week, the hitters went into a collective slump. Nelson Cruz, Michael Young, and Ian Kinsler all had wOBAs below .200, and Elvis Andrus and Marlon Byrd weren’t much better. With half their line-up hitting like pitchers and Josh Hamilton on the DL, Texas scored just 14 runs last week. They’re going to have to hit early and often if they want to hold off the Angels for the A.L. West. Too many more weeks like this and they’ll be looking up at Anaheim in the standings.

Philadelphia might want to ramp up their search for a starter.

Ruben Amaro’s not been shy about his desire to add a frontline starter via trade to replace the injured Brett Myers, but the performances of J.A. Happ and Antonio Bastardo had bought him some time and allowed him to be patient while waiting for the right deal. Not this week. Happ walked 10 guys in two starts, while Bastardo gave up three hits and three walks in just one inning in his only start of the week. They gave up 14 runs in 12 innings between them, for a not-so-nifty 10.50 ERA. Time to burn up the phone lines again, Ruben.

Willy Taveras doesn’t want to get on base.

Okay, that’s probably not true. I’m sure he wants to, but he just can’t figure out how. The Reds center fielder went 0 for 22 last week, and has now gone 32 plate appearances without reaching first base safely. His disastrous slump has dropped his season line to .229/.283/.289, and while he’s playing solid defense in center field, the Reds can’t keep sticking a guy with a .267 wOBA in the line-up regularly. Taveras is going to have to get hot in a hurry if he wants to stay on the field, because even Dusty Baker won’t tolerate 0-for-weeks for too long.

The Angels didn’t want to wait for Howie Kendrick to regress to the mean.

Mike Scioscia had apparently seen enough of Kendrick for now, as the Angels shipped their starting second baseman back to Triple-A and have apparently given the starting job to Maicer Izturis, based on this weekend’s line-up. Kendrick was hitting just .231/.281/.355 when he was demoted, but had anything really changed? His walk rate, strikeout rate, and isolated power are all right in line with his career numbers. The drop in numbers is entirely due to a .269 batting average on balls in play, which is about 80 points lower than his career mark. Even if he’s not hitting the ball as hard this year (his line drive percentage is down a bit), there’s still no way you’d project him for a .269 BABIP going forward. He was going to find more holes, and given his defense at second base, the Angels should have been willing to wait for his luck to turn.

Although it wasn’t the entire reason, Manny Acta was fired in part because of the atrocious defense played by the Nationals. The collection of gloves is the worst in the league, with a -27.2 combined UZR. Not only is that nearly three wins thrown away by poor leather, but also nearly 10 runs worst than the Marlins, who rank 29th. Giving Acta a DH to shuffle around multiple outfield positions and one too many talented corner outfielders with one too few talented centerfielders was a recipe for defensive inadequacy.

It seems like a mistake to play an outfield that features Dunn, Elijah Dukes, and Corey Patterson and have Patterson play right, but that’s what Acta did on Sunday. Maybe he didn’t care anymore; after all, rumors of his termination were already well spread by Saturday night. Critics of Acta’s are going to write that he was fired because his rotation has a 5.19 ERA. In reality their 4.82 FIP isn’t fantastic, but is lower than the Rangers rotation. The difference is defense.

Amongst the Nationals problems this year:

First baseman Nick Johnson is usually a solid defender but has taken his lumps in 2009. His Range Runs are in the negative as are his Error Runs. Johnson’s range has been trending down for three consecutive seasons, yet it still seems like a safe bet to expect that to move closer to 0 rather than towards -5 as the season continues. The low point of his season may have been on Friday night, when he dropped a foul ball and Gabe Kapler homered on the next pitch.

Willie Harris is statistically the Nationals worst fielder. Harris is usually a solid defender. As with Johnson, I don’t buy that his skills have decayed in the matter of one off-season. Even the increased time in center shouldn’t have this affect on him.

Adam Dunn is … well …. Adam Dunn.

Obviously Acta isn’t without blame, but he should take this as a learning experience. Much like how Terry Francona did.

Three of the league’s most promising young starters are also three of the league’s least efficient starters. Joba Chamberlain, Clayton Kershaw, and David Price are loaded with good velocity and bright futures with present issues in putting batters away within a timely manner.

During the third inning of last night’s game, Chamberlain threw 48 pitches and allowed two runs without the ball so much as leaving the infield. Three walks and a pair of hit batsmen gave the Mets the lead without much of their own doings – the exception being Carlos Beltran’s 10 pitch at-bat that culminated in a walk; Beltran fell behind 1-2 and with the count worked full, fouled off three consecutive pitches before drawing ball four.

Despite the inning from fielding independent pitching hell, Chamberlain has been the most efficient of the trio; averaging 3.94 pitches per batter faced this season. Kershaw averages nearly a half of a pitch more per batter with 4.35, and Price is nearly an entire pitch more at 4.82. The former two are averaging a little over five innings per start while Price has made four starts this season and only pitched into the sixth inning twice.

Price 19 IP, 12.32 K/9, 8.53 BB/9, 50.2 Zone%, 17.5 O-Swing%
Chamberlain 63.1 IP, 8.24 K/9, 4.69 BB/9, 43.9 Zone%, 23.2 O-Swing%
Kershaw 64 IP, 8.72 K/9, 5.48 BB/9, 50.4 Zone%, 21.7 O-Swing%

Despite the decent Zone% it’s not hard to see why Price is having the most issues. Sure, he’s throwing about the same amount of pitches in the zone as Kershaw, and more than Chamberlain, but less hitters are chasing Price out of the zone, meaning he’s actually throwing less strikes than Kershaw overall. Being a three true outcomes pitcher is hard work when your ratios are that high, although admittedly it is a pretty small sample size.

Here’s a graph comparing the three. It contains each start made thus far, the average amount of pitchers per batter faced, and the total amount of batters faced. Take away the outlier on the left side of the graph and you can see the obvious inverse relationship between the two.

Just in case you were wondering: Roy Halladay averages a little under 3.6 pitches per batter faced.

Jason Marquis moved into the rotation full time after arriving in St. Louis. In his first two season there he posted fabulous ERAs of 3.71 and 4.13 but they were both giant smoke screens. His FIPs those two years were 4.55 and 4.95 and his strikeout rate took a very troubling drop to the mid-4 range. tRA, a method of calculating how many runs a pitcher would be expected to allow in front of a neutral defense and park based on his FIP components and batted ball profile says that Marquis benefited from a total of 38 missing runs in 2004 and 2005.

Then 2006 came around and Marquis’ luck diminished and he got notably worse. His 6.02 ERA was only slightly worse than his 5.90 FIP as his strikeout to walk numbers approached parity. His home runs allowed shot up thanks to a whopping nine point drop in his ground ball rate. In fact, his home run per fly ball actually dropped in 2006.

Despite all of that, Jason Marquis signed perhaps the dumbest three-year, $21-million contract ever with the Cubs after the 2006 season. It was unfathomable how dumb that contract was based on past performance. Curiously though, Marquis somehow pitched up to the contract in Chicago. His ground balls returned somewhat and his swinging strike rate which had fallen from from 7.4% to 6.1% to 5.4% while in St. Louis averaged 6.6% in Chicago. He did not turn into a good pitcher by any means, he was still below average, but he did manage to flirt with average, posting FIPs of 4.99 and 4.61.

In total, Marquis was worth $15.1 million in value in Chicago while being paid $13.2 million on his back loaded contract. This winter he was dumped off to Colorado for Luis Vizcaino in a salary move. All Marquis has done is get even better in Coors, now solidly above average with a FIP of 4.28 and enough innings to be worth $6.1 in value, bringing his three-year total already to $21.2 million, a net positive.

Marquis has thus far maintained his results on getting hitters to swing on pitches outside the zone more often that he flashed last year for the first time and he has paired his slightly improved strikeout to walk rate with a return in force of his ground ball ratio leading to another drop in home runs allowed. Marquis’ results this year have been legitimate, the question will be if he can maintain them and then what if, being just 31 at the end of the year, what kind of contract he might find himself worth this winter.

For a few weeks now, it’s been assumed that Brad Penny would be the odd man out in the overcrowded Boston rotation. Brought in on a one year deal as something of a reclamation project, Penny didn’t get off to a very strong start, and he was standing in thew ay of youngsters Justin Masterson and Clay Buchholz, which didn’t exactly endear him to Red Sox nation. With John Smoltz making his way back, trade rumors have been swirling around Penny for weeks. Over his last four starts, however, Penny has been pitching like a guy who wants to stick around.

5/25: 5 1/3 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 7 K, 4 GB, 8 FB
5/30: 6 IP, 10 H, 3 R, 0 BB, 5 K, 6 GB, 9 FB
6/5: 5 2/3 IP, 7 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 5 K, 10 GB, 5 FB
6/11: 6 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K, 11 GB, 6 FB

That’s a 3.37 FIP over his last four trips to the mound, the last two of which were against the Rangers and Yankees. It’s not just his performances, either – take a look at his velocity chart.

His fastball is trending upwards as the season has gone along, suggesting that the improved results aren’t just a good stretch but perhaps indicative of Penny returning towards his previously established performances when healthy. He probably never will get all the way back to what he was earlier in his career, but he’s showing that he can still be a quality major league performer, whether its for Boston or someone else. We’re past the point where Boston fans should be happy to see this guy go just so he can make room for the other starters in the organization. Penny’s spent the last few weeks proving that he still has value, and it will be interesting to see how Boston handles the situation.

Who is Barbaro Canizares?

He is a former Cuban baseball player that defected to North America and signed, rather quietly, with the Atlanta Braves organization in 2006. The first baseman is, if you believe the accuracy of the records, 29 years old. In parts of four minor league seasons he has some pretty nice numbers, with a career line of .318/.376/.461, playing mostly in triple-A and double-A.

The big first baseman (6-3, 210) was hitting well in triple-A at the time of his promotion to Atlanta this week. Canizares was batting .344/.412/.533 with eight home runs and 33 RBI in 227 at-bats. He was posting good plate rates, too, with a walk rate of 9.6% and a strikeout rate of just 12.3%.

In dire need of some pop in the lineup, Atlanta manager Bobby Cox made the unusual decision to put the rookie in the clean-up spot, sandwiched between Chipper Jones and Matt Diaz. Canizares went 1-for-4 with a single and two strikeouts in his debut against the Pittsburgh Pirates and southpaw Paul Maholm. The right-handed batter was called out on strikes on a curveball in his first at-bat. In his third at-bats versus Maholm, Canizares singled to left field.

While in Cuba, he played eight years for the Industriales of the Cuban National Series, and was a teammate of Los Angeles Angels’ first baseman Kendry Morales and Atlanta’s Yunel Escobar. It reportedly took him four attempts to successfully defect from Cuba and he spent time in both Mexico and Costa Rica before be could sign his first pro contract in North America. His defense is below average at first base and he was a catcher in Cuba.

Career-wise, you really cannot expect a ton from Canizares. As mentioned, he’s already (at least) 29 and he’s got the kind of body that will probably age quickly. With that said, he can rake and he also shows some power, especially against left-handed pitching (.501 slugging, .907 OPS vs southpaws) so he could perhaps have a five-to-six-year career as a platoon first baseman and pinch hitter. Regardless of what happens going forward, you have to be happy for Barbaro Canizares.

He’s come a long way to realize his dreams.

There are a few aspects of baseball broadcasting that really irk me, including the presentation of data for a player against a specific team in his career, batter-pitcher matchups being treated as gospel (especially with under 10 such occurrences), and definitive claims based on small sample sizes. I mean, does it matter that Jamie Moyer has an XXX ERA vs. the Milwaukee Brewers over his 400-year career, when there were dozens of different iterations of the Brewers lineup? Does Alfonso Soriano going 4-7 off of Doug Davis mean anything at all if the seven plate appearances are spread over five seasons? The one that bothers me the most, though, is the idea that every event in a baseball game is isolated, and therefore guaranteed to occur regardless of the preceding circumstances.

Consider this example: Jimmy Rollins on first, Ryan Howard up to bat. Rollins gets caught stealing, Howard hits a homer. The announcers are bound to say something like – “Well, if Rollins stayed put, the Phillies would have scored two on the Howard homer.” Fans do it all the time as well, buying into this idea that Rollins being caught seemingly had nothing to do with the subsequent pitch selection, location, or anything else along these lines.

Forgive me for going all Butterfly Effect, but Rollins being caught in this example changes everything. For starters, the pitcher is throwing out of the windup rather than the stretch. With nobody on, he might be able to concentrate more on the hitter. He may decide to throw a steady supply of heaters as opposed to breaking pitches. We could go on and on about the different types of strategy inherent when such a situation shifts, but the point is that the situation DOES shift. I don’t care if Howard has a better or worse chance of hitting a homer if Rollins does/does not get caught in this hypothetical because the point remains that the situation has changed. The plate appearance is not the same, and Howard is in no way, shape or form, guaranteed to hit the home run if Rollins was not caught on the bases.

The worst part is that this is not even a tough concept to grasp, yet it gets ignored by almost everyone. It is way too easy to fall into this trap, thinking that events are not tied together, but they are, and need to be treated as such. This isn’t like trying to get announcers to use wOBA instead of BA, but rather trying to get them to understand simple logic. Events in a game are not isolated. They might not be completely, 100 percent, dependent on surrounding circumstances but they are certainly not isolated and guaranteed to occur no matter what.

The average bust rate for first round picks is right around 60%. Cold reality tells us that most of these shiny new first rounders will never touch the major leagues after taking batting practice or throwing a bullpen session for their teams over the next few weeks. Some teams have proven to be more successful avoiding the bust bug than others. In fact, most of the teams have proven to be better than a particular pair of franchises.

The Astros and Cubs haven’t had a first round selection reach the major leagues since 2001. That would be Chris Burke and Mark Prior respectively. The next longest drought is shared by two teams and dates back to 2004. With the Astros, you sort of expect such acts of futility. You know when video games advertise things like, “Scout the latest amateur prospects! Look for talent in international markets! Watch as your young players develop into tomorrow’s superstars!” Yeah, or you could do none of the above and mimic Ed Wade.

The Cubs are the surprise team. Jim Hendry has proven to be a fine general manager and was a pretty good scouting director. Hendry was promoted in October of 2001 and his team’s first round draft quality has slipped considerably. This is not to say they haven’t made good picks of the time at the draft, just none of them have worked out well.

In 2002 the team had four first round picks, three of which were of the supplemental variety. They took college pitchers Luke Hagerty, Chadd Blasko, Matthew Clanton, and Bobby Brownlie. In 2003, the Cubs would take high school phenom Ryan Harvey who drew pre-draft comparisons to Mark McGwire for his outstanding power. Left without a first round pick in 2004, the Cubs would take high school arm Mark Pawelek in 2005 and college bat Tyler Colvin in 2006. Neither has played in a game above AA to this point in their careers.

2007’s draft class might hold the key to ending the streak. One of Josh Donaldson and Josh Vitters should eventually reach the majors. If nothing else, at least Donaldson helped the Cubs acquire Rich Harden, which is more than most of the other failed first round picks can say.

In some ways, 2009 could be considered the year when defense became cool again. After seeing a shift away from glovework during the past 20 years, a handful of teams adopted outfields with multiple center fielders playing along side each other, and plodding sluggers saw their value in free agency crash through the floor. In both the blogopshere and MLB, defense is getting the respect it deserves again.

So, with that in mind, let me present to you the worst outfield defense of all time*, taking the field today for the Minnesota Twins.

LF – Delmon Young, career -17.3 UZR/150 in left field.
CF – Michael Cuddyer, career -6.3 UZR/150 in right field. He’s playing center!
RF – Jason Kubel, career -15.7 UZR/150 in right field.

Reports that the Twins have acquired Adam Dunn and plan on starting him at shortstop have yet to be confirmed. I know Denard Span is hurt and they wanted to give Morneau a half-day off by DH’ing him, but really Ron Gardenhire? Young-Cuddyer-Kubel seems like a good idea to you?

At least he’s not doing with Scott Baker or Kevin Slowey on the mound, but let’s pretend that Blackburn is some kind of extreme groundball guy. His career GB% is 44.8%, just barely above league average. He is, however, an extreme pitch to contact guy, averaging just 4.41 K/9 in his major league career. He’s not going to get outs on his own, but relies on his defense to make plays behind him.

The outfield defense that Gardenhire gave him today consists of two designated hitters and a poor defensive corner outfielder. Good luck, kid. You’re going to need it.

*It’s hyperbole. I’m sure there’s been a worse outfield put on the field at some point in history.