If Buster Olney’s latest report comes to fruition, then San Diego’s search for a new General Manager is all but over. The man pegged to replace Kevin Towers appears to be Boston’s assistant GM, Jed Hoyer. Besides being 35 years old and working in the Boston front office for the better part of this decade, what else is known about Hoyer?

Through this excellent interview with Baseball Analysts’ Patrick Sullivan, we can take away a number of things:

– He seems to be of the philosophy that scouting and statistical work should be used together in player evaluation. At one point he actually says, “As we see it, we want every piece of information possible before making a decision. We have spent a lot of time and energy in developing our quantitative methods and we certainly use them in making player personnel decisions. But we also have a lot of great scouts and we read their reports and have lengthy conversations with all of them before making decisions.”

– He believes having a well thought-out plan is as important as anything when acquiring players.

– He’s a fan of Jason Varitek.*

Obviously, there’s more to the interview than those three points, but what the Padres seem to be getting – and this is not intended to be a slight or insult in the least — is the new-school GM starter kit. Hoyer seems like a bright enough individual with an open mind and the experience of working alongside some extremely talented folk during his Red Sox tenure. How he’ll fair as a GM is anyone’s guess at this point, but he seems to possess the skills needed in order to succeed and with that one guy, Paul DePodesta, still around, he should have a decent supporting cast.

The next questions if Hoyer is hired will be: 1) who (if anyone) will Hoyer bring with him from Boston and 2) just how much money will they have to work with this off-season.

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*I apologize for this bit of rosterbation, but imagine Chris Young pitching to Varitek next season. Dexter Fowler is.

In his first plate appearance last night versus CC Sabathia, well-known Walkaholic Bobby Abreu did his thing: he walked on four pitches, all fastballs. His second plate appearance began similarly — two fastpieces for balls (although GameDay appears to have the latter in the upper-inner part of the strike zone).

It’s an interesting situation, this: Sabathia, facing the only lefty in the Angels righty- and switchy-stacked lineup, has thrown six straight balls. Granted, we know Abreu is an uber-patient hitter, but this is CC Sabathia he’s facing. The same CC Sabathia, that is, who walked only about seven percent of the batters he faced this season. It’s certainly possible, but indeed unlikely, that Sabathia would throw six straight balls to Abreu, let alone walk him twice.

It was at this point that Mister Avuncular himself, Tim McCarver, said something along the lines of: “Sometimes, when you face a lineup of all righties, it’s harder to face the lefty.” His justification? Because the pitcher wouldn’t be used to it. A possibility, for sure. Certainly something to consider.

But here’s the thing: why state it as fact? This is the sort of thing that a thousand nerds in a thousand mothers’ basements all over this great nation are so ready to check. I don’t know exactly how they’d do it, but it seems like you could just find all the instances in which a lefty faced a lineup of all righties but one. Then, I’m surmising, you’d find out how the lefty batters fared in those games versus what you’d expect given their normal platoon splits and the platoon splits of the pitcher. Or something like that. Point is: there’s data. It’s check-up-on-able.

Of course, one could argue that by “harder,” McCarver intended only to comment on how it might feel to a pitcher — that is, as opposed to what the actual outcomes were of such situations. Players-turned-broadcaster are useful for this exact reason. But I think such an argument would be disingenuous in this case. It’s my contention that, in the context of the situation (Abreu having walked already and now halfway to a second walk), McCarver fully intended to comment on the outcome.

Let me make one point clear here: this is not to pick on Tim McCarver, per se. I’m almost positive that Tim McCarver is an excellent grandfather and probably also does a lot of good work with his local chapter of the Rotary. Tim McCarver isn’t really the bad guy here. He’s participating in a different national pastime besides baseball, one particularly native to television. I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, but it’s a pastime that values volume and the appearance of assuredness over dialogue and curiosity. It’s this same pastime that keeps Angry Shouting People like Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly in business and upon which George Saunders comments in his book The Braindead Megaphone.

How do we rival this influence? By asking questions. Modern Philosopher Bill James has built his entire empire on a single premise: that, instead of making claims, we ask simple, almost childish questions. That’s it. Just ask the question. Instead of saying, “Immigrants are bad for the country!” you ask, “How does immigration affect our country?” Instead of saying, “Facing only one lefty can make it hard for the lefty pitcher,” you say, “I wonder if, just maybe, facing only one lefty in a lineup of all righties could make it hard for a lefty pitcher.”

You couch it. You resist the temptation to make a claim. You ask a question. And you allow yourself to be amazed by the answer.

(P.S. Abreu struck out in that plate appearance and ended up 0-for-3 versus Sabathia with 2 K and 1 BB.)

Prospect ranking season is just around the corner. In anticipation of that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The popular series is back for a second year.

The Graduate: Jake Fox, IF/OF
Finally given an opportunity for significant playing time at the MLB level, Fox had a nice year as a bench player. His has almost zero value on defense, although he can fill in at a few different positions. The 27-year-old rookie showed good power with an ISO rate of .208. Overall, he hit .259/.311/.468 in 216 at-bats. He displayed more power against right-handers (.549 slugging) than southpaws (.373). Fox won’t be confused with a vampire after hitting just .189 in night games, compared to .314 in the sunlight.

The Riser: Chris Archer, RHP
I was tempted to include LHP John Gaub here, who was acquired along with Archer in the Mark DeRosa deal. Archer, though, has a higher ceiling even if he’s still a lot further off than Gaub. The right-hander repeated low-A ball in ’09 and was tough to hit (.202 average). Unfortunately, he was hard to touch in some games because his pitches could not find the strike zone (5.45 BB/9). Archer throws a pretty heavy ball and did not allow a home run all season (50.5% ground-ball rate). He has a fastball that can touch 93 mph, a plus curveball, and a changeup.

The Tumbler: Welington Castillo, C
Castillo took the wrong year to take a step back in his development with MLB catcher Geovany Soto being bitten by the sophomore jinx at the Major League level. Castillo’s overly-aggressive approach at the plate (4.5 BB%) caught up with him in ’09 at double-A. He was also hurt by a .266 BABIP; his overall line was .232/.275/.386 in 319 at-bats. Castillo did show some intriguing power with a .154 ISO rate, which was a career high. Defensively, he cut down on his careless errors, but he still allowed a significant number of passed balls. The 22-year-old catcher threw out 44% of base stealers.

The ’10 Sleeper: Chris Huseby, RHP
A former over-slot draft pick out of high school in the 2006 draft, Huseby has been slower to develop than the organization would have liked, mainly due to injuries. The right-hander has been shifted to the bullpen where he can focus on his two best pitches: low 90s fastball and plus breaking ball. In ’09 at low-A ball, Huseby allowed 43 hits in 54 innings of work, while posting a walk rate of 1.67 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 12.17 K/9. He also allowed just three home runs. He dominated right-handed hitters with a .193 batting average, but he showed promise against lefties, as well, thanks to a 60% ground-ball rate.

Bonus: Steve Clevenger, C/IF
Meet Mr. Jake-Fox-Lite, whom I identified as the ’09 sleeper for the organization during the ’08 minor-league review. Clevenger is another minor-league catcher who’s not really good enough defensively to play everyday, but there is potential in his bat (although very little power). Clevenger split the season between double-A and triple-A. At the higher level, he hit a disappointing .265/.310/.327 in 226 at-bats. Prior to reaching triple-A, Clevenger displayed the ability to hit .300+ with gap power. The 23-year-old actually handles southpaw pitchers quite well, with a .298 career average. He threw out just 20% of triple-A base stealers.

The final score of last night’s game necessarily means that, in retrospect, the umpiring wasn’t a big deal. Tim McClelland could have called every play at third base in favor of the Angels and New York was still going to win that game. However, the amount of plays that were just totally missed is still a serious problem, and understandably, the performance of the umps has pushed the issue of replay back into the limelight.

There’s no way the status quo is the best we can do, right? I would imagine most of us can agree on that. There’s some combination of technological improvements with the current human subjective rulings that would give us a higher level of accuracy without sacrificing some ideal of purity – the arguments are more over how much technology we should be using. I can’t see too many people who watched the performance of the men in blue last night and said “I’m okay with this happening in a playoff series.”

The game should be decided by the players. It usually is, but as we saw last night, there’s potential for one team to outplay the other and still lose due to one umpire having a really bad night of judgment. That’s something that should be fixed.

If the umps are okay with two extra bodies being added down the lines for the playoffs, we can infer that they’re willing to trade some of the authority they have during the regular season in an attempt to improve accuracy of calls in the playoffs. They are not so defensive of their positions that they won’t make sacrifices in order to get more calls right.

They’re also willing to defer to each other. The home plate umpire asks the base umps for help on check swings. They gather to talk about home runs down the lines, with the guy who thinks he had the best view usually convincing everyone else to go along with him.

So, why wouldn’t they be okay with a seventh umpire that’s just watching the game on TV like the rest of us? It took us about five seconds to figure out that Swisher was out at second base on the pickoff play, and maybe twice that to figure out that he didn’t leave early from third base. It was plainly obvious that Cano was standing off the bag when Napoli tagged him. These are not decisions that required a five minute conference call under a hood.

Give an earpiece to the crew chief, and let the replay ump just tell him “hey, Tim, you missed that one. Cano was out, no question.” It is fundamentally no different than the home plate ump pointing down to third base on a checked swing. They’re getting help from each other in order to increase accuracy.

This is the kind of thing that could be implemented in a day. Bring in an extra ump and give him a room with a couple of TVs and a two-way communicator, and we won’t have scenes like last night again. We don’t need a complicated system with flags and challenges. Just have an ump watch TV and talk to his peers.

With a win in Game Five of the National League Championship Series (NLCS) on Wednesday, the defending World Champions have an opportunity to return to the Fall Classic. Up three games to one, the Phillies club will hand the ball to young lefty Cole Hamels. The southpaw was hit hard in his first start against LA in the series (8 hits, 5 line drives, 4 run in 5.1 innings), but he kept his team in the game and recorded the victory.

Los Angeles will counter with Vicente Padilla, who pitched 7.1 innings on Oct. 18 and allowed just one run. Padilla threw an economical 95 pitches (73% for strikes) and allowed just one run. As a result of the short rest for the right-hander, the Dodgers club may have to use the bullpen heavily on Wednesday. Manager Joe Torre has used four relievers in each of the past two games (over a three-day span). Regardless, everyone should be fresh and ready to go, with the possible exception of Chad Billingsley.

The key post-season performers (eight games) for Philadelphia have been:
Ryan Howard: 14 RBI, 379 AVG (1.18 WPA)
Jayson Werth: 6 BB, 3 HR, 7 R (0.10 WPA)
Carlos Ruiz: .391 AVG, 6 BB, 7 RBI (0.32 WPA)
Chase Utley: .472 OBA, 7 runs, 2 SB (0.42 WPA)
Shane Victorino: .344 AVG, .625 SLG, 7 R (-0.19 WPA)
Raul Ibanez: 8 RBI (0.20 WPA)

Unfortunately for Los Angeles, the only player who has consistently risen to the occasion in fall ball is outfielder Andre Ethier (0.49 WPA), who is currently hitting .333/.419/.741 in seven games and is leading the club in runs scored, RBI, and is tied for the lead in both doubles and homers. Veteran outfielder Manny Ramirez has been the team’s second best hitter, but his line is just .276/.300/.483. More importantly, he has just four RBI in seven games.

Unless the offense suddenly wakes up, Los Angeles will need another dominating performance out of Padilla, who has not pitched on short rest at all this season – and he’s gone seven innings or more in three straight games just once this season (in May).

At 343-466, the revival of baseball in Washington D.C. has not gone as planned since the relocation of the Montreal Expos in 2005. Two straight 59 win seasons certainly signal a rebuilding era ahead for a team that in 2005 held a playoff spot for 38 games in June and July and was within 4.5 games in August.

Former GM Jim Bowden didn’t put the Nationals in a position to win, as acquisitions such as Lastings Milledge (which was not necessarily a bad deal, but a poor result), Austin Kearns, Emilio Bonifacio, and Wily Mo Pena combined with poor prospect development (outside of Ryan Zimmerman, of course) to result in some very poor teams on the field in the nation’s capital.

The quality of the new leadership in Washington, captained by Mike Rizzo, remains to be seen. One thing is for sure. Come 2011, he will not be able to make the excuse that he was hamstrung by the signings of the previous regime.

The Washington Nationals should be expected to field a payroll of approximately 60 million dollars once again, after actually increasing their payroll 6 million dollars over the 2008 team. This offseason, $14.35 million will come off the books in the form of Dmitri Young, Nick Johnson, Joe Beimel (who was traded to the Rockies at the deadline), Wil Ledezma, Josh Bard, and Julian Tavarez.

Certainly, that is not enough to allow the Nationals to spend their way into contention. In 2010, however, a veritable flurry of contracts will expire. In fact, the only non-arbitration, non-minimum contract dollars the Nationals have committed in 2011 are to Ryan Zimmerman. This time, it’s 22.5 million dollars, via Adam Dunn, Cristian Guzman, Austin Kearns, and Willie Harris.

By 2011, the Nationals will be free of all the moves made in the Jim Bowden era. Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper (we assume) will be in the organization and possibly even in the majors. Jordan Zimmermann showed potential before his injury and Ryan Zimmerman is one of the best players in the majors. Nyjer Morgan is a tremendous fielder, and Ian Desmond is a bright spot as a SS prospect. Now what remains to be seen is if Mike Rizzo can put a competitive team around these core players.

World-renowned pitching coach/guru Rick Peterson, after a hiatus, is back in baseball as the Brewers new pitching coach. He’s got some serious work to do, as the Brewers pitching staff ranked second worst amongst all 30 teams in FIP and actually finished with an identical ERA and FIP of 4.84.

The rotation pitched horrendously with the exception of Yovani Gallardo, who posted the sole starting FIP sub-4. Manny Parra and David Bush were the only other two under 5.00, and free agent additions Braden Looper and Jeff Suppan had FIP of 5.70 and 5.74 respectively with ERAs over 5.00 as well. Looper made more than 30 starts, which means his 2010 option is now worth $6.5M instead of $6M and his buyout increases from $750K to $1M. It’s hard to see Milwaukee picking that option up given the potential grabs on the free agency market.

Trades could also be an avenue of injecting pitching talent. Shortstop J.J. Hardy could probably fetch someone who effectively becomes the Brewers second best starter. If the Brew Crew feel like placing Prince Fielder on the market, one would think they could land a legitimate equal to Gallardo. Maybe the good news is that almost any addition is effectively an upgrade given just how putrid the starters were.

The bad news is that Suppan is still due $12.5M and has a buyout after the season. Is there even another challenger to what Doug Melvin’s worst move is? Suppan’s strong post-season duped the then-uprising Brewers into inking him for veteran presence, playoff experience, and all the other terms that sounds good at a press conference but don’t quite translate to wins and losses – okay, they do translate to losses when you throw over 300 innings of replacement level ball while making over $20M.

Not as much work needs to be done with the bullpen, which had a FIP and ERA on level with the Yankees and Mariners. That’s middle of the road to slightly on the curb, but comparing that to the monstrosity known as the rotation is like comparing a grasshopper to Godzilla.

As for Peterson himself, he wasn’t entirely out of baseball last year, as he tried to fix Scott Kazmir mid-season and seemingly did a decent job at it. He’s one of the forefront supporters of advanced and rigorous physical testing of pitchers, and for that reason alone Milwaukee should welcome him with wide arms. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but go back and read Derek Zumsteg’s excellent series on pitching prospects and attrition for a reminder of just how good the Athletics were at preventing arm injuries during some of Peterson’s time there.

Peterson also seems to know a little bit about how pitching works. As demonstrated in multiple interviews, he doesn’t pound the “first-pitch strike” philosophy; instead he focuses on winning the first three pitches. He knows the value of the swinging strike and groundball, and he doesn’t seem to carry a notebook of clichés and labels for each of his pitchers.

Milwaukee made a sound hire; now it’s time to get the man some talent to work with.

When we launched the iPhone App about a month ago, one of the most requested features was adding blog content to the application.

While we are definitely exploring the possibility of adding blog content to the application, in the meantime, both the FanGraphs Blog and the RotoGraphs Fantasy Baseball Blog can now be easily viewed by anyone in their mobile web browser without doing unnecessary finger gymnastics.

Just go to either of these links on your mobile browser to make reading and commenting on the go a lot easier.

www.fangraphs.com/blogs
www.fangraphs.com/fantasy

Prospect ranking season is just around the corner. In anticipation of that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The popular series is back for a second year.

The Graduate: David Huff, LHP
A 2006 supplemental first round pick, Huff’s first MLB season was a bit of a letdown. The left-hander allowed 159 hits in 128.1 innings of work and gave up his fair share of homers (1.12 HR/9). His walk rate was good at 2.88 BB/9 but his strikeout rate was just 4.56 K/9. Huff has a good slider (1.16 wSL/C) but he had trouble setting up hitters for it due to a poor fastball (-0.97 wFB/C). The 25-year-old will have to show some improvements in 2010 if he’s going to hold off a wave of fresh arms moving quickly through the minors.

The Riser: T.J. McFarland, LHP
The Indians organization has a couple of intriguing left-handed pitchers named T.J. in the system. McFarland is not quite the prospect that T.J. House is… yet. However, the former had an encouraging first full season in the minors in ’09. McFarland allowed 128 hits in 120.2 innings of work, but he did a nice job of keeping the ball in the park (0.45 HR/9) due to a solid ground-ball rate at 53.6%. His walk rate was OK at 3.13 BB/9, but his strikeout rate was a little low at 6.34 K/9. McFarland has a solid repertoire: 87-92 mph fastball, slider, changeup.

The Tumbler: Nick Weglarz, OF
It’s been said that Weglarz’ bat will have to carry him to the Majors because he’s not much of a fielder – or an athlete. The 21-year-old was moving through the system just fine until ’09 when he reached double-A and hit just .227/.377/.431 in 339 at-bats. The left-handed hitter held his own against southpaws in ’09, but he struggled to hit right-handers, with a line of .210/.363/.388. Those numbers definitely won’t cut it for a LF/1B/DH type. On the plus side, Weglarz had a walk rate of 18.1% and an ISO of .204. His BABIP of .249 screams “Fluke season!”

The ’10 Sleeper: Eric Berger, LHP
Berger was an astute pick-up out of the University of Arizona in the eighth round of the ’08 draft. The southpaw has posted solid pro numbers and he reached double-A in just his first full season. Berger isn’t flashy but he has a solid repertoire that includes an 88-93 mph fastball, curveball and changeup. He does a nice job of keeping the ball in the park despite modest ground-ball rates. The southpaw will need to tighten up his control after posting a walk rate of 4.28 BB/9 in double-A and 3.67 BB/9 in high-A.

Bonus: Hector Rondon, RHP
I jumped on the Rondon bandwagon pretty quickly, and the Venezuelan native was listed as the Indians sleeper for 2009 in the ’08 review series. The right-handed pitcher followed up his breakout ’08 campaign by ending ’09 in triple-A. He has excellent control for a 21-year-old, and he’s maintained solid strikeout rates throughout his career. Rondon allowed a few too many hits in triple-A (83 in 74.1 innings). He could be in Cleveland, if needed, by mid-2010.

Writing about yesterday’s Yankees-Angels game is harder than it sounds. There are just way too many angles to cover, and because it’s the Yankees, most of them have already been beaten into the ground. But, let’s try anyway, and let’s focus on the one decision that stood out the most – replacing David Robertson with Alfredo Aceves in the 11th inning.

First off, let’s look at the two relievers. They’re obviously very different types of pitchers, with opposite strengths and weaknesses.

Robertson is a strikeout guy who uses his movement to induce swinging strikes at the expense of giving up some walks. He’s hard to hit, but if you let him, he can get himself in trouble with walks.

Aceves is the classic command guy who pounds the strike zone and pitches to contact. He’s much easier to make contact off of, but he’s not going to beat himself. He’ll let you get yourself out at the risk of putting the ball in play.

There are certainly scenarios where you would prefer one to the other. With a runner at third base and less than two outs, you want Robertson’s ability to get the strikeout and strand the runner. With the bases loaded and two outs, you want Aceves’ ability to throw a strike and not walk in the winning run.

But the bottom of the 11th didn’t present either of those scenarios. Instead, it was bases empty, two outs, with Howie Kendrick coming to the plate. Is there any reason to prefer Aceves to Robertson in that situation?

Not unless you’re relying on a number that doesn’t mean anything. Aceves’ ability to avoid the walk is essentially useless against Kendrick, because he refuses to walk on his own. Given how aggressive he is at the plate and how hard he hits the ball (the career .354 BABIP is no fluke), you’d prefer to have a pitcher who can make him swing and miss. He’s going to chase pitches. You don’t have to force him to swing by pounding the strike zone.

Robertson was the good match-up for a Kendrick type of hitter, not Aceves. Going beyond Kendrick, you’d still prefer Robertson to Aceves even if you assume that he’s not going to get Kendrick out, because now you have the winning run on base, and a ball in play is not what you want in that situation.

Girardi has consistently over-managed the bullpen in this series, using guys for one batter here or one batter there in order to try to get the best possible match-up. In this case, he already had it, and he ended up making a move that was neutral at best and a downgrade at worst.

Sometimes, less is more. The Yankees’ best chance of winning the World Series will come if Girardi is more willing to trust his relievers rather than making a move every time he thinks he can incrementally improve his odds by a couple of percent.