Sadly, for those of us currently residing in the Badger State, Dark Overlord David Appelman has as yet to announce a Wisconsin-centric event like the one that just occurred this past weekend in New York City. (Although, to be clear, I didn’t actually ask him — i.e. the Dark Overlord — to his face or anything. Guy is scary.)

However, still flush with the joys of the New York event, I was excited yesterday to come across what appears to be a totally acceptable alternative.

Sponsored by Miller Park Drunk (@millerparkdrunk), the event — known, for too many obvious reasons, as the Pants Party — takes place at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on August 29th, starting at 11:00 am and going until Carlos Gomez adopts a skill-appropriate approach at the plate. Or till the game is over. Either one.

So far as I can tell, the Pants Party is an event fully dedicated to the exploration of The Good Times. Brats will be served, adult sodas will be (responsibly!) imbibed, and baseball will be watched.

Details about, and tickets for, the event are available here, the meat-tastic menu is available here, and a rousing post about the merits of the Pants Party — written special for MPD by Wezen Ball’s Larry Granville Granillo — is available here.

Note: on account of I, Carson Cistulli, have had no in arranging this event — have actually only known of its existence for 24 hours or so — neither I nor FanGraphs assume any responsibility for your decision to attend. So if it’s just a weird cult gathering or something — well, don’t blame me.

This time of the season is great for two groups of players within organizations of dying (or dead) playoff aspirations. One group is those of young players, some even legitimate prospects. The other is the group of veterans that will fill the gaps as the team’s way of saying thanks for a year of duty. These veterans may be on their last legs, but if their major league careers are soon to die, at least they will always live through box scores.

Jay Gibbons – Los Angeles (N)

The Dodgers are still without Manny Ramirez and recently dumped Garret Anderson. Thus opening a spot for Jay Gibbons, even with Scott Podsednik already around. It’s hard to believe that Gibbons last played in the majors back in 2007 because it seems like his name pops up at least twice a season, but that’s the case. It’s a little too early to declare Gibbons back from a period in which major league teams were inhospitable towards him, but he did have an OPS over .960 for the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in nearly 400 plate appearances and he’s certainly a better player than the aforementioned Anderson.

Phil Humber & Bryan Bullington – Kansas City

These two soak together. In fact, Bullington started for the Royals last night while Humber finished the last two innings.

When the Pirates drafted Bullington as the first overall choice in the 2003 draft, they boasted about his middle of the rotation potential. Naturally, Bullington never fulfilled even that promise, and only pitched in 18 innings for the Pirates before moving on. He tallied more innings with the Indians and Jays over a combined seven games than he did for the big league squad in Pittsburgh. Last night represents his first start with Kansas City, although he’s worked out of the pen for them, and his numbers weren’t too bad (he walked one, struck four out, and allowed no dingers).

A year after the Bullington selection, the Mets tabbed Philip Humber with the third overall pick in the draft. There are about three things Humber is known for:

1) His performance at Rice University
2) His constant battles with injuries
3) Being involved in the Johan Santana trade

Last night marked the first time he appeared for the Royals and that he lasted two innings without suffering another injury is sadly a positive development. For his sake, maybe he can add a fourth item to his trivia card that involves rekindling his career as a middle reliever.

Expanded Four Factors links:
Ryan Howard
Average Player
Math/Reference

Aaron Hill has a .199 BABIP in 406 plate appearances in 2010. That is, unsurprisingly, the worst among qualified players, coming in 11 points below Carlos Quentin‘s mark and a staggering 34 points below Carlos Pena’s .233, second worst among players with at least 400 plate appearances. Naturally, this is a huge reason why Hill’s wOBA this season is all the way down to .300, 57 points down from his breakout 2009 season and 31 points below his career average.

This drop in BABIP isn’t completely unexplainable. Hill’s LD% is all the way down to 10.2% from 18.8%, and those missing line drives have all turned into fly balls. Some around the Jays have noted that Hill has had more loft to his swing, which would explain this change. Given that LDs are the most likely to fall in for hits (.722 BABIP) and FBs are the least likely (.140 BABIP), that explains a lot. That’s roughly 27 line drives turned into fly balls, or 15 fewer hits. In 296 balls in play, those 15 hits account for 50 points of BABIP. Still, that would leave Hill’s BABIP at .249, in the bottom ten of the league.

That provides us with a fantastic opportunity to use our new favorite tool, Four Factors Equivalent wOBA (ffwOBA). Check the links at the top if you’re interested in the methodology. The following graph shows how Hill’s wOBA should change as his BABIP increases.

The fact that Hill’s wOBA is still at .300 (estimated at .292 by the method) is encouraging. The 50 point difference in BABIP mentioned above would bring Hill’s ffwOBA up 55 points to .347 from .292. If he were to get back to .288, his mark from last year, his current peripherals would have him as a .389 wOBA player due to his high power and contact rate. Hill, especially now, certainly doesn’t profile as the kind of hitter who could post above average BABIPs. For something really extreme, if Hill’s BABIP were to reach .360, with the amount of power and contact Hill makes, the Four Factors method would estimate a .464 wOBA. That’s not likely to happen, but it’s interesting to see.

ZiPS projects Hill’s BABIP at .258, and I’d expect it to come up to the .270-.280 range, as he has shown the ability to do so in the past. Either way, Aaron Hill should, as long as he can turn a few of FBs into LDs, become an above average hitter once again, and soon.

After making his start today against the Rays, Justin Verlander has now taken the hill 24 times this year, throwing 2,674 pitches on the season. Roy Halladay has also taken the hill 24 times, and has thrown 2,623 pitches, 51 fewer than the Tigers ace, and yet he’s thrown 28 more innings than Verlander – 185 to 157.

Now, this isn’t meant to be a knock on Verlander – few pitchers can rack up the innings like Halladay. It does, however, illustrate one of the big advantages that that groundball strike-throwers have over dominating power pitchers who get a lot of outs in the air. Because Halladay keeps the ball on the ground, he’s gotten opposing hitters to ground into 19 double plays, while Verlander has induced just seven twin killings.

In addition, since Halladay throws so many strikes, each batter is dispatched more quickly. He has more three pitch strikeouts than Verlander, even though his overall strikeout rate is lower, and he rarely works into hitters counts. And, of course, since he walks fewer batters, he faces a lower number of batters per inning, allowing him to work deeper into games.

I bring this up because, when talking about the quality of a young pitcher (especially one in the minors), the first thing that is usually referenced is strikeout rate. As Bill James noted back in the 80s, a young pitcher’s K/9 tells us more of what we want to know about how well he’ll do in the majors than any other single statistic, mainly because it is the best proxy for quality of stuff.

However, while strikeouts are certainly a positive event for a pitcher, the Verlander approach to pitching is not the ideal, because it leads to extremely high pitch counts and shorter outings overall. Halladay’s economic approach to getting outs has given him the equivalent of four extra starts compared to Verlander, a huge difference in value for their respective teams.

The strike-everyone-out approach comes with an inability to work deep into ballgames. Even though Verlander is once again among the league leaders in pitches thrown, he’s only tossed one complete game and gotten through eight innings on three other occasions. For comparison, Halladay has eight complete games and has gotten through eight innings in five other starts.

It might not be as sexy, but getting groundball outs and limiting walks is a far more efficient way of pitching than trying to blow every hitter away. Strikeout rate is nice, but don’t let it be the only tool you use to evaluate a young pitcher – not only are Ks not the only way to succeed, they aren’t even the best way.

The Orioles have had a nightmare season (to put it mildly). Their off-season moves were not particularly brilliant, but given the young talent on the team — as well as on the farm — there were reasons for optimism. Prior to the season, I wrote about the enviable collection of outfielders the Orioles had assembled: Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Nolan Reimold, Felix Pie, and Luke Scott. It seemed that Scott was likely to go. Little did anyone suspect that midway through August, Scott would not only still be on the Orioles, but be perhaps the team’s most valuable position player.

Given that Scott is 32 years old, heading into his third year of arbitration in 2010, and that the Orioles are a mess, one has to wonder why he’s still around. Sure, his trade value was probably hurt by his dreadful April but it was to be expected that he’d pull out of it, as he did with a May that was as monstrous as his April was terrible. While Scott’s current .396 wOBA is almost certainly far above his true talent, ZiPS RoS projects a .369 wOBA (.267/.345/.504) for Scott for the rest of the season. Even has a full-time DH, over a full season that would make him about a 2.5 WAR player in the current run environment. Moreover, Scott was a actually a pretty decent outfielder who was pushed to DH and 1B more because of the Orioles’ crowded outfield situation. One could make an argument for Scott currently being a 3.0 WAR player.

I suppose that some will say that I’ve answered my own question: Scott is still in Baltimore because he’s good. Funny thing about that, though… when it comes time to acknowledge that a fire sale is in order, we fans often start by saying that the team needs to get rid of its bad players who clearly aren’t helping the team, like, say, Miguel Tejada. However, if a team in a bad state actually wants to get a decent return, it is going to have to give up something of value. And in the case of Scott, they have something of value… at least to other teams. Scott is in his second arbitration year, and making about four million dollars. He is team controlled for both 2011 and 2012; my guess is that he will get somewhere between six and eight million dollars for 2011 if he goes to arbitration in the upcoming offseason. That’s still a very good deal for the team if we think he’ll be at least a 2 WAR (probably more like a 2.5 WAR) player in 2011. Adding in the surplus value he has for the remainder of the season, the Orioles could have expected at least a B prospect back, or a combination of lesser prospects. While Scott is currently good, by the time the Orioles might be good again, he probably won’t be — and the prospects might.

Different teams were, of course, rumored to be interested in Scott at the deadline (I’m not sure if he’s cleared waivers or not for a potential August trade). Perhaps the Orioles simply didn’t receive an offer to make it worth their time — Scott is worth more than a couple of fringe prospects, a la Scott Podsednik (and the Dodgers could certainly use Scott — Luke, that is). One has to wonder if Scott wasn’t a bit overlooked. For example, he would be a good alternative for a team that can’t pry Adam Dunn loose from the Nationals. Scott isn’t the hitter Dunn is, but with 50 or so games left, it isn’t that big a difference, Scott can play the outfield, and he’s under team control for 2011.

It is very possible that a good match for either side could not be found. Maybe the teams with the right prospects for Scott don’t need an LF/DH, maybe the contenders that could use him don’t have the the prospects. However, given Scott’s abilities and likely surplus value in 2011 as well as 2010, it’s hard to think that there isn’t some fitting trade partner out there, and thus wonder what Scott is still doing in Charm City.

Yesterday I read that Roy Halladay had changed the grip on his changeup and was throwing it more often (hat tip to Calcaterra on this one). Before this year Halladay held the ball in his palm when throwing a changeup, but during the offseason he worked with pitching coach Rich Dubee and changed to using a split-finger grip. Let’s see whether we can pick up the difference in the pitchf/x data. I think it is clearest in velocity-vertical spin deflection (vertical movement) space.

Definitely a difference: the changeup has about the same velocity but instead of rising about five inches it now drops a couple of inches. The horizontal movement on the pitch is also different.

So the different grip imparts different movement on the pitch, so I think it is fair to say it is a qualitatively different pitch. And Halladay is throwing the pitch more often. As is noted in the article, before 2010 Halladay was pretty much a three-pitch pitcher (cutter, sinker and curve — three great pitches), rarely throwing his change more than 5% of the time. But now he is throwing the change almost 12% of the time. It seems he is much more comfortable with it.

The results show that Halladay has good reason to be more comfortable with the pitch. By our linear weights it is worth 1.5 runs per 100, much better than his changeups in any full year before. Looking at components, the pitch is wildly more successful, getting 19% swinging strikes per pitch in 2010 compared to 6% in 2009-2007 (pitchf/x years). It also gets more ground balls (57% GB/BIP versus 55%) and a lower slugging on contact ( 0.452 bases/contact versus 0.505).

Looking at Halladay’s pitch-count splits, he uses the pitch often when he is ahead in the count. So it looks like he has developed a second out pitch — along with his curve — to put batters away when he is ahead in the count. As Calcaterra noted, it is not like Halladay needed another weapon, but he has one.

Justin Morneau played his last game of 2009 on September 12, his team 5.5 games back of Detroit, and even a half-game back of Chicago, in the AL Central. The Twins were, in fact, two games below .500 at that point, and with just 20 games remaining their chances of making up the deficit seemed bleak. They had just lost three straight and Morneau, their second best hitter, was done for the season with a stress fracture in his lower back. It looked like the MVP-Mauer-led Twins would watch from their homes in October.

What came next surprised everyone. The sans-Morneau Twins rattled off six straight wins, including the first two in a series with Detroit. They dropped that last game, but then came back to win another five straight, including a three-game sweep of the White Sox. After dropping three of four, including two to Detroit, they won their final four games of the season. With a little help from Detroit they were able to catch up and force a one-game playoff, which they also won. Including the sudden death game the Twins went 17-4 in their last 21 games. All without Morneau and his .371 wOBA.

This year the Twins started off hot, but tapered off a bit as the season wore on. Morneau had been doing his part, producing a .447 wOBA and 5.2 WAR through July 7. But on that day, while sliding into second, he took a knee to the head and suffered a concussion. That figured to keep him out for a few days, but his recovery has not gone so well. A little more than a week after the injury the Twins placed him on the DL, and to this day he remains there. There is no real timetable for his return, though it sounds like the weekend is the earliest possibility. That has to be hurting the Twins right now.

Instead of seeing the Twins fall further behind the White Sox, we’ve again seen them gain ground since Morneau’s injury. After the game during which Morneau sustained his injury the Twins fell to 45-39, 1.5 games back of Detroit and a half game back of Chicago. Losing Morneau looked like an even bigger blow this year than it was last year. Joe Mauer led the Twins then, but his production has dropped a bit this year. A .379 wOBA from a catcher is excellent, but it’s still significantly below the .438 wOBA he produced last year. Morneau has led the team this year, and so the Twins have been without their best bat for more than a month now.

The Morneau-less lineup didn’t fare as well as it did in 2009, at least off the bat. In fact, the Twins dropped three straight after the injury, scoring just eight runs in those games. That put them four games behind Detroit and 3.5 games behind Chicago. At just three games over .500 and having no idea when their best hitter would return, there was some doubt about the Twins’ season. They had gone from best team in the Central to also-rans in a short span. How could they survive without Morneau?

After those losses, though, the Twins caught fire. They beat Detroit to avoid a sweep, and after dropping the first of a four game series to Chicago they came back to win the final three. The turnaround didn’t seem evident in the next five games, as they went 2-3 against the Indians and Orioles, but following the loss in Baltimore they rattled off eight straight wins in which they scored 66 runs. Since then they have split a series at Tampa Bay, won two out of three against Cleveland, and, after last night’s 12-6 drubbing, have reclaimed first place by defeating the White Sox.

The Twins 19-10 record in Morneau’s absence might not seem particularly torrid, but it does outpace their season record by a decent margin. After the loss on July 7 they had a .536 win percentage, so they’ve won more since then. Even crazier, after the initial three losses they’ve gone 19-7, a .731 win percentage. It’s not quite the .810 win percentage of their final 21 games in 2009, but it has been enough for them to retake sole possession of first place in the Central for the first time since July 2.

A graph of the Twins performance since Morneau’s injury. Thanks to Tommy Bennett for whipping this up. Click for larger.

While the typical talk radio reaction might involving lamenting Morneau’s return — they’re better without him, just look at the standings! — clearly it will be a nice boost for the team. Michael Cuddyer filled in admirably at first for a while, producing his best month of the year, but his bat has again tapered. But even when Cuddyer was hot he was no match for Morneau’s production. Few players in baseball are.

The Twins have made a nice run, and with one more win in the next two days against Chicago they’ll be set up well as they return home for nine games. Chances are we’ll see him back in the lineup some time during that stretch. That should scare other teams, particularly the White Sox (whom the Twins will face in another three-game series starting next Tuesday). If the Twins are playing this well without Morneau’s bat, imagine how hot they can get once her returns.

For those of you that visit Fangraphs, wOBA has become a favorite stat of not only this website, but many other sabermetrically-inclined sites as well. The theory behind it is simple: assign value to individual offensive events via linear weights and then apply those numbers to a player’s performance. We go ahead and adjust the formula so that it looks like OBP, meaning that league average usually falls ~.333 and is properly distributed along the curve.

But there has recently been more research done into linear weights so that we can see the value of not only a single or a double, but of certain pitches. While this has been mostly popular in the domain of Pitchf/x, we can also use this information to further our understanding about hitters. For example, let’s say Miguel Cabrera and Magglio Ordonez come up to the plate consecutively. Miguel Cabrera works a 3-1 count and then lines a fastball into the right field gap for a stand up triple. Next, Magglio Ordonez hits a ball in the exact same spot on an 0-2 count and slides in safely at third. Back-to-back triples. For our purposes of wOBA, we would assign both Cabrera and Ordonez equally with ~1.56 runs, the linear weight value of a triple relative to an out.

But was that all we could gauge from those at-bats? With count-based linear weights, we can actually do more. Miguel Cabrera worked a 3-1 count before his triple; there’s value in knowing that information. Since we can say that a 3-1 count is worth somewhere around .14 runs, why not credit Cabrera in some capacity for getting into that count? Likewise, we know (based on the same run value charts linked last sentence) that an 0-2 count is worth roughly -.104 runs. Why not also take that into account? The moral here is that those triples were not made equally.

But we do have to be somewhat careful we don’t double count. A player is more likely to hit a triple (or for our purposes, get a higher run value) if he gets to a 3-1 count, and the oppposite is true for an 0-2 count. Those count-based linear weights are based on how many runs are likely to proceed from that count, so we would probably have to regress the run values somewhat so we don’t double credit a hitter. Maybe the most interesting experiment would be to just take a batter’s count-based linear weights for an entire season and compare players, or even apply their batted ball linear weights for if/when they put the ball in play to their count-based run total.

This is a thought experiment, so I’d like to see what people think. The next step may be crunching the numbers.

Back from New York, I’ll be chatting about the event this past weekend and baseball in general.

Say the words “performance-enhancing drugs” in a baseball discussion, and if there’s more than two people involved in it, chances are, you’re going to get strong opinions on the topic. For Major League Baseball, the issue is most often centered around its records and awards, most notably the Hall of Fame.

But, if you look at every drug suspension in baseball (see the All-Time Drug Suspension list), players in the majors that have been suspended make up a tiny fraction of the total. Whether it has been players being able to afford substances or trainers to administer them that avoid detection, or the way that the program, called the Joint Drug Agreement (JDA), has been collectively bargained, major league players coming up positive in testing, or being caught through non-testing means termed non-analytics, chances are slim that a player under the major league testing program is announced as being under suspension.

Indeed, this year, there has been exactly one drug suspension under the major league policy (Edinson Volquez of the Reds on April 20), and last season there were just two (Kelvin Pichardo of the Giants, and the most high profile player to be suspended for PEDs since 2004, Manny Ramirez of the Dodgers).

The minor league testing policy, however, is a different animal. The number of players suspended each year is much higher, with the reasons being an incredibly complicated mix. There are young players in the Dominican and Venezuelan Summer Leagues that make up a large percentage of players that test positive each year. That ties into everything from players coming from desperate poverty to the buscóns– unlicensed managers/agents that work with some of the youngest prospects baseball has to offer. These young players, often times desperate, will do whatever a buscón will tell them. “Take this. Drink that,” without knowing whether what they are consuming is a vitamin or a possible banned substance. Throw in players from North America that are looking for any advantage that can get them into the majors, players using nutritional supplements that can be tainted with banned substances, plus drugs of abuse such as marijuana, etc. and, as mentioned, it gets complicated. (For more on the buscón culture, I highly recommend reading Sean Gregory’s Baseball Dreams: Striking Out in the Dominican Republic on TIME.com)

For MLB, the minor league testing program allows them to move unfettered by the MLBPA. Without being challenged by the union for the players, everything from the levels of a substance within the body, the ability to increase testing as the league sees fit, to the recent addition of hGH testing, are green lighted depending on the direction that the league wishes to go.

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