This post is not timely whatsoever, so apologies for that; also, props to Tommy Rancel for suggesting it and helping with the research.

On July 27, 1996, Alex Rodriguez turned 21 years old. He also signed an extension valued at four-years and $10.6 million. Despite Rodriguez’s age, he was in the midst of his first major league season and third overall. Through the season’s first 86 games, Rodriguez had started 85 of them while hitting .351/.410/.632 with 21 home runs in just 353 at-bats. For comparison, Jason Heyward was 20 when he had a scorching hot May. He hit .337/.453/.628 over those 25 games. Rodriguez was not too far off and he did it over a full season while being only a little older.

Rodriguez was about as close to a sure thing as possible from a stats or scouting perspective; after all, that’s why he was the top pick in the draft and that’s why he ascended the ladder so quickly. That extension by today’s standards looks woeful for Camp Rodriguez and amazing for Woody Woodward and the Mariners but the economic environment in baseball was wholly different 14 years ago. The highest payroll in baseball still belonged to the Yankees, but at $52 million instead of $206 million. The highest paid player in baseball that season was Cecil Fielder, just over $9 million. Ken Griffey Jr. ranked third with a $7.5 million salary. In 2010, a $7.5 million salary doesn’t crack the top 25, in fact, a $15 million dollar salary doesn’t either, as Hiroki Kuroda’s $15.4 ranks 25th overall.

Still, for the production the Mariners received, the market rate for wins had to be extremely, extremely low for them not to rake on this deal. From 1997 until he left following the 2000 season, Rodriguez racked up 27.4 WAR. He was paid $10.6 million. That is roughly $390 thousand per victory. One would have to set the market rate for wins very, very low to say the Mariners made anything but a profit off Rodriguez’s extension.

His current and previous contracts are well publicized and overwatered from snark and critique alike. At one point, though, Alex Rodriguez was a hell of a bargain.

Most of the salary data courtesy of USA Today

With first baseman Kevin Youkilis out for the the season, the Boston Red Sox have been giving Mike Lowell starts at first base. Lowell hasn’t hit well this season (.300 wOBA so far). However, it has only been a bit over 100 plate appearances, and ZiPS RoS projects him for a .335 over the rest of the season. That is a far cry from what Youkilis had been producing (.419 wOBA) or was projected by ZiPS to produce over the rest of the season (.399 wOBA). Assuming 200 PA over the rest of the season (leaving aside the relatively minor difference in PA given their likely batting order placement), the difference between Youkilis and Lowell over these last 50 games or so would be about 10-11 runs, or about one win. (Youkilis is also defensively superior at first base, although over 50 games it’s probably only a couple of runs.) With the Red Sox still not out of the hunt for the playoffs with less than a third of the season to go, the difference is significant.

Boston has been giving catcher Victor Martinez occasional starts at first, but recently signed former Blue Jay, Marlin, and Met first baseman Carlos Delgado to a minor league deal with hopes he can help the team soon. The underrated-in-his-prime Delgado was unsigned in the off-season and spent the first part of the season rehabbing from off-season hip surgery. He doesn’t have a ZiPS RoS projection given that he hasn’t played in the majors yet this season. Given his layoff and rehab issues, I think it’s fair to use his CHONE pre-season projection of .337 wOBA true talent (ZiPS projected .364 prior to the season), which, his poor defense at first base aside, would make him about as valuable offensively as Lowell over the rest of the season assuming he could start right away — about a win or more worse than Youkilis.

A wOBA in the mid-.330s for a first baseman is not very good. However, with two players like Lowell and Delgado, a platoon is a good idea (at the moment, I’m not sure what the Red Sox plan on doing). As I discussed earlier this year in a Book-inspired post, one can’t just apply observed splits to players, one has to regress them against league average, etc., to get a useful platoon skill estimate. In a different post, I actually used Delgado as an example. Delgado’s larger-than-average splits actually make him more useful in a platoon role than players with smaller splits. Based on his .337 CHONE projection, I estimated Delgado’s true talent versus right-handed pitchers to be .352 wOBA. There is less variation (and a smaller split) among right-handed hitters with regard to platoon skill, but Lowell’s estimated skill vs. LHP is about the same as Delgado’s versus RHP: .351 wOBA.

Over a full season (700 PA), a Lowell/Delgado platoon is worth between nine and ten runs more than either one of individually — one win. Over the remainder of the season, of course, it’s only worth about 3 runs more than either one of them individually. It isn’t much of a difference over the last 50 games relative to the loss of an underrated superstar like Youkilis, but with the Red Sox not completely out of it yet, platooning Delgado (if he is ready to play) with Lowell at first would be a smart move.

The Cincinnati Reds attempted to strengthen their postseason chances by acquiring OF Jim Edmonds from the Brewers today for OF Chris Dickerson. Edmonds was apparently a decently hot commodity on the waiver wire with the lack of big bats available at the trade deadline, but the first place Reds were able to snag away a potential future Hall of Famer (*fingers crossed*) in hopes to bolster their outfield.

Cincinnati has an eclectic mix of outfielders that makes the addition of Edmonds all the more interesting. Jonny Gomes actually has a wOBA of .335, but his below average defense (-10.0 UZR, -10 DRS, generally poor scouting reports) and inability to play centerfield hurts his value tremendously. Second in wOBA is Laynce Nix, who, at .328 (100 wRC+), will probably see time reduced due to this trade. Last is Jay Bruce, whom R.J. Anderson wrote about at length a few weeks ago. Bruce is just at a .322 wOBA, and has never cracked the .330 wOBA mark throughout his three-year major league career. The best Reds outfielder this season has been rookie Chris Heisey, who has put up a .397 wIBA (147 wRC+) while playing solid defense. His bat is real, and hopefully Edmonds doesn’t cut into his playing time significantly. Drew Stubbs has played a bunch of centerfield this season, but his modest .316 wOBA doesn’t impress ZiPS; it projects him for .302 from here on out.

Meanwhile, Jim Edmonds is having a fantastic year all around. He’s played great defense in both center and right field, as well as shown his ability to play first base (although I doubt Joey Votto has anything to worry about). His .369 wOBA is generated by a .286/.350/.493 slash line, his highest slugging since 2005. However, he is walking at just 8.5%, but this may be due to pitchers being reluctant to pitch around him early on given that he missed the entire 2009 season. His walk rate has steadied around ~9.7% over the past two months, which is closer (but still significantly far away) from his career average of 12.5%. Edmonds is hitting right-handed pitchers this year to the tune of a .373 wOBA, but his peripherals all show an ability to hit lefties extremely well; most of the difference in production between facing righties and lefties has been due to an inflated BABIP versus righties. His .344 overall BABIP is well above his career average, especially his last few seasons. However, his LD rate is at an absurdly high 28.5%, a number that may be due slightly to scoring bias, but either way will probably regress. Still, even a regressed/adjusted LD rate will be generally favorable. Either way, the ZiPS projection likes Edmonds for a .340 wOBA going forward.

Going to Milwaukee in the deal is outfielder Chris Dickerson, who is a real nice grab for the Brewers for a few months of Jim Edmonds. Dickerson put up 3.2 WAR in 128 games from 2008-09, playing good defense in centerfield with an ability to play the corners well also. However, after a .339 wOBA last year, Dickerson struggled mightily in 2010 with a .205/.222/.273 line. Since being sent to Triple-A Louisville, Dickerson has raked; he’s hitting .442/.528/.767 in fifty-five plate appearances. Dickerson has MLB-ready talent both at the plate and in the field. He’ll have opportunities to teach his old team a lesson in the NL Central. ZiPS thinks he’s good for a .322 wOBA for the rest of the season, and at twenty-eight years old could be close to his offensive peak.

Overall, this wasn’t that poor of a trade for either team, although Cincinnati may have slightly overpaid for an outfielder who could see serious regression while giving up a much younger outfielder who could be useful in the future, maybe even now. They’re clearly going all out in the NL Central race, which they should, but I wonder if this move was necessary for them, or if the asking price for Edmonds was really as high as Dickerson. Milwaukee comes away with a big plus, acquiring a solid outfielder just because they offered a Spring Training invite to an older outfielder who hadn’t played pro ball in over a year.

Note: If you’re curious about the significance of this post’s title, fast forward to the fourth-to-last bullet.

As you might’ve heard, FanGraphs brought its act to New York this past Saturday with a view towards letting smart baseball people say smart baseball things.

“How’d it go?” maybe you’re asking.

Well, actually, kinda even better than this author could’ve imagined.

With the exception of some French Canadians who kept loudly chanting Jonah Keri’s name — that, and the seven or ten bareknuckled fights in which I personally engaged with Patrick Sullivan of Baseball Analysts — the Event (and the congregation afterwards at Amity Hall) were about as frigging convivial as one could imagine.

In what follows, I reduce all of the nuance and personality of the Event to a few shallow observations and badly strained insights.

In other words: Enjoy!

• Discovery: Mitchel Lichtman (creator of UZR, contributor to The Book blog) is not a prick. How do I know? Well, for one, those were the first words out of his mouth on the Stats panel. “Just to clarify,” he said, grabbing the microphone by its stand, “I am not a prick.”

Duly noted, Mr. Lichtman.

Here’s another way you could find out that Mr. Lichtman isn’t a prick: by talking to him and, while talking to him, to avoid statements that demonstrate a lack of clear thinking. So far as I can tell — and he said as much on the Stats panel — baseball very much represents for Lichtman an opportunity to practice thinking, to practice asking questions, to practice being curious.

• This last point was echoed by other panelists, both explicity and implicity: baseball, they might agree, is an excellent medium for practicing critical thinking.

Let’s also be clear, however: that’s not the only thing for which baseball’s good.

• Question: Is sabermetrics — and the wider net that it’s continually casting — producing a generation of young men (and — gasp! — even some women) with more highly developed faculties of reason? with a stronger understanding of randomness? with a better idea of how to separate signal from noise?

• ESPN radio announcer Jon “Boog” Sciambi is our greatest ally*. Before I say why exactly, I’d like just to talk about his voice for a second. Here’s what it (i.e. his voice) sounds like: like it’s covered in an entire barrel of delicious forest honey. Here’s what I wish it (i.e. still his voice) would do: read me stories at night so I could fall asleep more easily.

*By “our,” I mean either (a) those who care about discussing baseball in thoughtful, even tones, or (b) people of Italian descent. You decide which!

With that out of the way, let me tell you another thing: Sciambi is committed to searching for the capital-T truth, and is dedicated to filling his broadcast full of that search. This doesn’t necessarily mean rattling off xFIPs and BABIP, mind you — it has to play to a general audience — but Sciambi made it clear that he makes it a priority to work at his smartest.

• At a post-Event lunch, the question was posed: “What’s harder to predict, the stock market or baseball players’ futures?” The answer? The stock market, hands down.

“The stock market” someone added — maybe it was Tommy Bennett, maybe our Dark Overlord himself — “is more like projecting the future performance of all high school baseball players.” Which, that would be harder.

• During the Media panel, moderator Jonah Keri began one of his questions for the group by positing the existence of purely hypothetical Boston-area sports columnist with the totally made-up name of Shman Shmaughnessy.

It’s still a mystery upon whom exactly this character could be based.

• Also on the Media panel, both New York Magazine’s Will Leitch and the Wall Street Journal’s David Biderman mentioned — offhandedly, if nothing else — mentioned the importance of the headline to generating page views.

“Unfortunately, it’s important,” Biderman said.

I second Biderman’s sentiments on this matter. It’s frustrating to imagine that a well-written post or article would go unread (or less read, at least) merely because it lacked a provocative title. I don’t know, and won’t pretend to know, how greatly the numbers fluctuate given the “quality” of a title. My immediate reaction is this, though: there’s no use wringing one’s hands over the matter. If a good title gets eyes on good writing, so be it. My other reaction is this: good writing gets read.

• Observation: saber-oriented Yankee fans, just like all other kinds of Yankee fans, are disgustingly confident.

• The truth comes out: after long being suspected of such bias, Dave Cameron finally admitted — via a tearful, handwritten confession at the end of the Live Event — to hating all teams except the Mariners and to using FanGraphs as his vehicle for promoting Mariner fandom.

Video available soon. Scout’s honor.

• To echo Cameron’s sentiments from earlier today, but to do it with French words, the esprit de corps of the afterparty was terrifically gratifying, humbling. Essentially, all my interactions were with enthusiastic and curious people. That’s really the most I could ever ask of life.

Early in the 2008-2009 off-season it sounded like Raul Ibanez desired a deal that didn’t exist. After five very good years in Seattle Ibanez wanted a multi-year deal, something that teams didn’t seem to be offering non-stars that winter. For a 37-year-old with poor defensive skills, even a two-year offer seemed unlikely. Yet in December newly minted Phillies GM Ruben Amaro signed Ibanez to a three-year, $31.5 million contract that would keep him in Philadelphia through his age-39 season.

That didn’t sound like a great deal at the time, and the move faced predictable criticism. Defense dominated the conversation, but there were plenty of concerns about Ibanez’s bat. There was no denying his production in Seattle, but it’s tough to project how a player will hit as he reaches his upper 30s. Some players retain most of their skills and continue producing. Others either see a gradual decline or fall off a cliff. The Phillies risked the latter, but Amaro bet on the former. Two and a half months into the season he was looking pretty smart.

Ibanez came out swinging for his new team. In 90 April PA he produced a .485 wOBA, and then followed that with a .427 wOBA in 123 May PA. That production continued into June, as he hit in 12 straight games that month before going 0 for 8 on the 16th and 17th. Those would be the last games he’d play for a few weeks, as he hit the DL with a groin strain. It hurt the Phillies, of course, but it didn’t seem too serious. Ibanez would be back within a month.

As happens any time an older player goes on an prolonged run, steroid speculation surfaces. For Ibanez that came in the form of a now-infamous article on Midwest Sports Fans, in which Jerrod Morris ran some numbers and determined that — well, he didn’t determine anything, really, except that we couldn’t rule out PEDs, something that can be said for just about any player in the game today if you want to stretch the point far enough. It caused a stir that ran right up to Ibanez’s injury.

Upon his return Ibanez hit more like he had earlier in his career and less like the flukey run he experienced in April and May. He produced horribly in August, a .244 wOBA, but he surrounded that with a .375 wOBA in July and a .367 wOBA in September. It added up to the best offensive season of his career, a 379 wOBA. He also came closer than ever before to a World Series victory. There might have been downturns, but Ibanez’s first year in Philly can’t be classified as anything but a success.

In 2010, though, things started off on the downslope with a .295 wOBA in April. That got Phillies fans and analysts talking, of course, but Ibanez did his part to quell the criticism with a .340 wOBA in May. It wasn’t like any month, save August, in his 2009 campaign, but it was still above average. But then came June, which Ibanez started off with a 1 for 17 skid. His 0 for 4 day on June 6 represented a low point, after which his OPS dropped to .699.

That very evening, after the 0 for 4, Corey Seidman of Phillies Nation spilled something he must have been thinking for a while: it was time for the Phillies and Ibanez to part ways. This went beyond mere fan emotion. He went on to cite the myriad struggles Ibanez faced during the year, including a slugging percentage lower than David Eckstein and defense that rivaled the worst corner outfielders in the league. I had a few issues with the premise — for example, Seidman claims that Ibanez had “two great months, one horrible month, and three average months,” even though, as we saw above, .375, .362, and .367 wOBAs are considerably above average — but the point was sound. Considering his defense, age, and recent trends, Ibanez might have been done.

I’m not sure what happened between the games on June 6 and June 7, but whatever it was changed Ibanez’s season. He went just 1 for 3 in the following game, but on June 8 broke out with a 4 for 5 performance. Since June 7 Ibanez has hit .314/.388/.500 in 219 PA. His early season slump comprised 210 PA. Of the 61 hits he has accumulated in this span, 20 have gone for extra bases, including eight home runs. In July he produced a .406 wOBA, and in his first 28 August PA he’s at it again, going 9 for 23 with a double and a homer.

The months of April and June were marked by terrible BABIP marks, .259 and .247. That might have included some luck, though considering the reactions of Phillies fans it didn’t sound like he was striking the ball well. This seemed particularly true in June, when he had a paltry 10 percent line drive rate. In recent months he’s seen his BABIP climb, to .386 on a 21.6 percent line drive rate in July, and a .500 BABIP so far this month. While he won’t keep up those marks for the rest of the season, it has provided him with something of a statistical correction. His .343 wOBA doesn’t look pretty, but it’s far better than where he sat a few months ago.

Through the slumps, Ibanez continued to walk. This year he has walked in 12.4 percent of his PA, easily a career high rate. In April he walked in 16.5 percent of PA, and in May he walked in 12.4 percent. Despite his turnaround starting in early June, it was still a poor month overall, and he walked in just 8.5 percent of his PA. But that shot back up to 12.4 percent in July and is 14.3 percent in August. Last year, in the three months following his injury, Ibanez walked in 12.7, 10.2, and 12.9 percent of his PA, big improvements over his early-season numbers.

In his reaction to the release Ibanez article, Bill Baer hit on an important point:

The 2010 season has been a real struggle for Raul Ibanez and the Philadelphia Phillies, but it is not unique. The Atlanta Braves are wondering if they are ever going to get anything out of Nate McLouth; the New York Yankees have been waiting for Curtis Granderson to find his power; the Houston Astros are trying to find out who took away Carlos Lee‘s offense. Over the next four months those three hitters will, most likely, improve offensively not because someone found a mechanical flaw or they fixed their timing (although that could certainly happen), but because they are simply regressing to their mean. I can flip a coin ten times and get eight tails. If I continue to flip a coin 100 more times, I should expect that coin to come up tails not 80% of the time, but 50% — its true probability. The same holds true for Raul and many other struggling baseball players.

Patience, of course, can be over-extended, and there was a solid case in early June for not granting Ibanez any more time. The Phillies could have called up Domonic Brown then and moved Ibanez to the bench or to the waiver wire. But they saw something, I guess, that gave them a bit of pause. That little pause was the difference between realizing superior production over the past two or so months and having to find yet another player to fill a spot in the outfield.

It has not been a smooth year and two thirds for Raul Ibanez in Philadelphia. He’s faced criticism from all angles, some of it justified, some of it not. Chances are the final year and a third of his contract will play out in a similarly up-and-down manner. His age, poor defense, and, recently, streaky tendencies will not make life easy. But we now know that Ibanez can be a productive player for the Phillies. That might not add up to the $11.5 million he’ll make next year, but it should be good enough as to avoid the mid-season DFA.

After Brandon Morrow’s 17 strikeout game, the next step, after acceptance, is to wonder what the performance means for his career. Reservations for complete games with exorbitant strikeout totals and miniscule walk rates are for the finest of fine pitching. I wanted to find out just how fine the pitchers’ careers turned out who managed to spin one of these gems. In doing so, I used Baseball-Reference’s Play Index with the following query:

– Individual games spanning the 1920-2010 seasons as a starting pitcher
– Requiring at least 17 strikeouts, fewer than three walks, and at least one inning pitched

The reason for including fewer than three walks is multilayered. It trims the list of candidates down while increasing the difficulty level of the performance, thus giving us the cream of the crop. The above mandates returned 35 individual games. Quite a few being repeats of the true greats. One thing I did not adjust that I’ll disclaim here is how I did not control for age. Randy Johnson’s 20 strikeout game as a 37 year old is included just as Kerry Wood’s game as a 20 year old. Presumably age plays some role in the expectations for Morrow heading forward, as does his background, but there was just no sensible way to really adjust for either with such a limited sample size.

Here is the list of pitchers with their career innings pitched, earned runs allowed, and ERA+. I’m not saying these are the best instruments for judging pitcher worth or anything of the sort; instead I’m just giving an idea of how this group matches up with those metrics:

From there, I get a collective ERA of 3.30 and using the methodology outline by Tango here, a collective ERA+ of 118. In other words: Morrow has some big shoes to fill if he wants to fit in with the rest of these guys.

This isn’t an official recap of Saturday’s Live Discussion in NYC – that will come later, with photos and audio for those who weren’t able to attend. This is, however, a collection of thoughts on my experiences in the Big Apple this weekend.

1. My Trip To The Bronx

I only went to Old Yankee Stadium once. It wasn’t shiny or new, but I had a good time in bad seats because of the “I’m in Yankee Stadium” feeling, which was impossible to escape. On Friday night, I took in my first game at New Yankee Stadium, and my feelings were completely different. I still had a great time (in large part because of the terrific people around me), and while the park is now both shiny and new, there’s a feeling of history that didn’t move into the new building.

The stadium is remarkably impressive and downright beautiful in places, but I knew that the best player to ever take the field on that ground was probably Joe Mauer. It’s a great place to watch a baseball game, but I’m happy I got a chance to walk around the old park. There is nothing the Yankees could have done to have saved that “Babe Ruth played here” feeling, so this isn’t a criticism of the new park, but I missed that emotion, honestly.

2. The Conversation

As much fun as I had on Friday night, I was in town for Saturday’s event, and it was even better than I had hoped. The discussion panels were so good that it was painful to cut them off. The media panel, especially, was as engrossing a discussion as I’ve heard in a long time. Just a fantastic group, each with their own perspective, and a lot of intelligent disagreement going on. The group could have talked for eight hours and I wouldn’t have moved an inch.

While the discussions were the main event, the after party was also a tremendous time. When a guy who doesn’t drink spends 10 hours in a bar and has a good time, you know there’s some good people around, and that was certainly the case on Saturday afternoon. It was a lot of fun getting to meet many of you and talk baseball with a terrifically diverse group of people.

Perhaps my favorite conversation came with a 20-year-old named Evan (I think – if I’m getting that mixed up, sorry!). We covered nearly every topic you could think of, and his curiosity and intelligence were both impressive, but one comment in particular he made stuck with me – he started getting into our brand of analysis through Fire Joe Morgan, a site that was often tremendously hilarious and brutally vicious at the same time. After a while of reading hostile take-downs of various scribes, he began to realize that the end goal of all of this shouldn’t be angry rants, but humble attempts at education.

This wasn’t a new idea, but for whatever reason, it made more of an impact than before. As I discussed with several friends later, I have written enough things that I regret publishing, even if they were correct, true, or deserved. I don’t regret having an opinion, but I want my opinions to contain a healthy portion of respect. They haven’t always. They hopefully will more often in the future.

3. Appreciating What We Have

We are all incredibly lucky to have such a tremendous community that has formed around our shared love of the same game. I couldn’t imagine a better group of people to hang out with then the crew I spent the last 72 hours with. I have had conversations about so many different aspects of life with people who have seen tremendously different things, and seen them in different ways.

Anyone who thinks that the sabermetric community engages in groupthink should be required to attend a weekend like this. I don’t know of too many other places where people this different can gather and enjoy each other’s companies, even while we disagreed about things. I had a terrific lunch with MGL, Sky Kalkman, and Mark Simon, and you would be hard pressed to find four different people than our quartet. We argued more than we agreed. It was great. I left with more respect for each of them than I had previously. That we get along doesn’t mean we all think the same, and our ability to see things from a different angle gives the community as a whole a better balance.

It is a fantastic group to which we all belong. Don’t take that for granted.

Houston Astros top pitching prospect Jordan Lyles was promoted to Triple-A following his last start, his 21st appearance above A-ball. While with Corpus Christi in the Texas League, Lyles posted a 3.12 ERA, 3.31 FIP, and succeeded despite a defense that led to a .328 BABIP. He left the Texas League fifth in innings pitched and second in strikeouts, despite being the league’s third youngest player.

Lyles, who jumped straight from the South Atlantic League (Low-A) to the Texas League (Double-A), will now become the youngest player in the Pacific Coast League. He will turn 20 following the season, in October. Recently, Houston manager Brad Mills told the Houston Chronicle that Lyles could have one promotion left this season: a Major League debut.

“That’s not out of the question,” Mills said. “You see guys make those steps all the time, get a couple of starts at Triple-A and then move up to the next level.

“If he is as good as advertised, that wouldn’t be surprising at all.”

If he does follow that path laid out by Mills, Lyles is in line to become the eighth player in the last 20 years to pitch in the Majors at age 19. Here are the previous seven: Madison Bumgarner, Felix Hernandez, Edwin Jackson, Rick Ankiel, Matt Riley, Todd Van Poppel and Rich Garces. It’s not the most inspiring list, but it should be mentioned that the 80’s had some better success stories with Jose Rijo, Dwight Gooden, and Fernando Valenzuela. To be in that territory is certainly the sign of an elite prospect.

But when I mentioned this on Twitter, Jack Moore had a good (albeit snarky!) point: “He should slow down a little bit so he can still be under team control when Houston can put another contender on the field.” Hyperbole, perhaps, but the underlying point is that Houston is risking having Lyles enter free agency a year earlier with this aggressive path, and you have to believe that they will be more successful in 2017 than 2011.

First, I should say one thing: I totally agreed with the Astros decision to have Lyles bypass High-A and the California League. Their affiliate in the league, Lancaster, is no place for baseball to be played: the stadium there is seeing 12.8 runs per game, which you might remember in contrast to the Florida State League, where the highest this season was 9.93. Plus, Lyles posseses an arsenal geared for success in the higher levels, which I praised after the Futures Game a couple weeks ago. Armed with one of the minor league’s best change-ups, and good command of his fastball, Lyles had no problem making the jump, even holding lefties to a .259/.309/.374 line this season.

But jumping from Low-A to Double-A in one season is a precedented move that the California League has forced teams to exercise often. Moving that same player to Triple-A, and possibly to the Major Leagues at age 19, is less precedented, and as a result, open to more questioning. While Lyles is a workhorse, he’s also just 18 innings from bypassing last year’s innings pitched total (144.2). The more appropriate decision might be to give him five starts, where his inning total will be around 160, and then to call it a season.

Before this season, I wrote a piece criticizing the Braves for opening the season with Jason Heyward on the 25-man roster. If other teams are exploiting the service time rules to retain their players for the most time (see: Santana, Carlos; Strasburg, Stephen), I thought the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze for Atlanta. Many of you argued the ethics of such a move. In hindsight, given Atlanta’s spot atop the NL East, aided no doubt by Heyward’s 2.6 WAR, I was probably wrong about my example, if not my point.

Regardless of his performance in Triple-A this month, Lyles should return to Round Rock to start next season. He should make 11 starts there to open the 2011 season, and if he’s then ready, should finally make his big league debut next June. I don’t think anyone would argue they held him back, and the team wouldn’t lose a service year to their own fascinations. It’s the most prudent, responsible move for an organization that owes their fan base a well-managed rebuild.

Lyles is one of the minor leagues best pitching prospects, and has been developed flawlessly by the Astros. Here’s to hoping he’s still around for Astros fans in 2017.

The ninth inning held two outs as Evan Longoria stepped back into the box for the 1-1 pitch. He would swing, connect, and run towards first as the ball rolled just beyond Aaron Hill’s grasp. As his foot planted on first base he ended Brandon Morrow’s bid at a no hitter. The ball only exceeded Hill’s range because he had to play over with a runner on first who reached on a walk.

In reality, calling this a “bid” at a no hitter does Morrow no respect and the performance on justice. For all intent and purposes, Morrow threw as well as any pitcher who did record a no hitter or perfect game this season. He completed the game, struck out 17 Rays, and walked only two. Nine of the 12 balls in play were of the fly ball variety, including a few warning track flyouts, but the Rays never seriously threatened until the ninth inning.

Not only did Longoria’s single end the no hitter, but it too ended the celebration of a no hitter and helped to spark a debate that will ignore Morrow’s performance.

A lot of talk will go towards his pitch count, which ended at 137. Cito Gaston is retiring at season’s end and, yeah, maybe this plays out differently if that were not the case. Or perhaps it doesn’t. There is no way of knowing and attempting to read into motives in scenarios like this is fruitless. Morrow did throw a lot of pitches, but he also breezed through most of the day. 71% of his pitches went for strikes and his slider was a weapon with a fatality rate high enough that it could be classified as a threat to civilization.

Keep in mind that Morrow pitched nine innings with only four baserunners and eight came with two total. The ninth inning will be a point of contention as he allowed a walk and a single. There’s a difference between what Edwin Jackson did earlier this summer – allowing eight walks – and what Morrow did today. The high count is not a manifestation of long counts but rather the ridiculous strikeout total. To rack up 17 means making a minimum – a minimum – of 51 pitches; to throw a complete game shutout while striking out 17 means throwing at least 61 pitches. Factor in two walks and that number bloats to 69. Add in the baserunner who reached via error and that’s 70; about half the total when assuming each of the outs will take only one pitch to secure and that each strikeout and walk will take the minimum.

Nobody knows how this will affect Morrow heading forward. Not even Morrow himself. The Jays and Gaston have been careful with him, all things considered, over the season. He’s topped 100 pitches in only eight of his 21 starts entering today and only topped 110 on two separate occasions, including an eight inning gem against the St. Louis Cardinals and days later a six inning grinder versus the New York Yankees. Yes, he has a history of durability issues that included his diabetes. And yes, in the long run, maybe this will be looked upon as a snowball to a proverbial injury avalanche. But far too often it seems we find ourselves outraged with these outings instead of simply enjoying the dominance while keeping the potential byproducts in mind.

It is possible to tip your cap to Morrow on the outing while still hoping he’ll be able to tip his tomorrow. It’s also possible to react to pitch counts that extend beyond 100, beyond 110, beyond 125 without being appalled. We don’t know the exact degree of damage those extra pitches did. Honestly, are we even sure where the baseline should be placed to account for what is and what isn’t an extra pitch?

The aforementioned Jackson threw 149 pitches in his no hitter. His FIP up to (and including that game) was right around 4.10. Since then his FIP is roughly 4.30. Pointing to him and saying, “See! See! Nothing to it.” would constitute as confirmation bias and selection bias. So too would be pointing to Morrow if he struggles in his next start or two. Our level of knowledge about the subject and our level of outrage are on different levels right now and unfortunately, the outcries have not lead to a seesaw effect where we are more enthused and interested than ever to learn more and more about pitch workloads.

All told. I probably would have removed Morrow following the hit. That Gaston let him make a few more pitches may or may not be as horrific as the instant reaction would lead you to believe. We just don’t know, and that’s half the problem.