It’s probably safe to say Joe Inglett will never be a starter for any prolonged time. The 32 year old recently filled in for Corey Hart during his absence, topping the 100 plate appearances mark during any given season for only the third time in his career – he fell one plate appearance shy of the mark last season while showing up in 36 games for the Blue Jays. If that factoid has you unconvinced, how about that Inglett was claimed off waivers twice within a six-week span during the winter?

Toronto waived him in early December, ending a relationship that lasted a little over two years. The Rangers claimed him and then weeks later bid him adieu as the Brewers scooped him up. Inglett has performed mostly well throughout his career when given playing time. This season he has a .349 wOBA with a .364 on-base percentage representative of his first foray into National League baseball.

Part of that OBP is an increase in walks that coincides with a decrease in swings. Inglett is swinging at a career low 42% of the pitches he sees. If one were to divide his career swing rates by the league average during any given season, here is what their product would be (Note: Only seasons with 100+ PA and 2009 are included):

2006: 0.93
2008: 0.95
2009: 1.07
2010: 0.92

Labeling Inglett as a part-time player is being kind, so his numbers carry with them a strong sense of mendacity. Inglett’s teammates, Rickie Weeks, may finish with more than 600 plate appearances this season. If he does, he would be a mere 120 away from matching Inglett’s career total. That statement is not meant to downgrade Inglett’s production – his career wOBA is over .330 – it’s just to show that the sample size for him is smaller than most 32 year olds with stints reaching over five seasons in the majors.

Although they have played better since, the Brewers’ nine game losing streak in May all but sunk their season. Doug Melvin may draw some ire and questions concerning his team’s rotation and re-signing of Corey Hart, but one thing he has done particularly well is finding worthwhile contributors at bit prices. Dating back to Gabe Kapler in 2008 and extending to this season with fellows like Jim Edmonds and, yes, Joe Inglett.

Now, if he could just work similar magic on his free agent pitching signings, Milwaukee could be in this thing come next August.

Fourteen months ago, the Florida Marlins’ collection of natives from atop beanstalks inspired Eric Seidman to write about the tallest rotations in the Retrosheet era. The Cincinnati Reds’ rotation might just be the antithesis of the Marlins. Right now, the Reds are running Johnny Cueto, Mike Leake, Bronson Arroyo, Edinson Volquez, and Travis Wood to the mound. Here are the listed heights for each:

Cueto 5’10”
Leake 6’1”
Arroyo 6’4”
Volquez 6’0”
Wood 5’11”

With the exception of Arroyo, you will note that the rest of the pitchers stand well below the league average height of 6’3” – a number provided by Mike Fast last week. In a world where the archetypal pitching body stands at least 6’4” with the ability to add muscle, it is rather unusual to see a collection of guys tall enough to be considered for Nicolas Sarkozy’s bodyguard positions rather than admission into the Imperial Guard.

The most captivating question is whether the Reds actively target shorter pitchers to acquire. Probably not. This is the same team that chose 6’2” Bradley Boxberger in the supplemental phase of the 2009 draft’s first round, as well as Donnie Joseph (6’3”) and Zach Stewart (6’2”) within the first three rounds the last few years. The one shred of proof that maybe Walt Jocketty has an affinity for little pitchers is the fifth round of the Reds’ drafts under his control. They’ve yielded three right-handed pitchers with a max height of 6’1”, although who knows how much say Jocketty even has.

Most of the modern day rotation was assembled by the previous regime anyways. For comedic purposes, though, it’s only fitting that the Reds also have two of the tallest pitchers in baseball, 6’8” Logan Ondrusek and 6’7” Aaron Harang, along with the shortest person to throw a pitch in the bigs this season, 5’6” Danny Herrera.

Of course, one can throw all the trivia and jokes aside if a rotation isn’t worth its weight. It certainly feels like the Reds’ rotation gets its fair share of credit for their impressive season, but if you go by FIP, their rotation is middle of the pack, only a slightly in front of the Milwaukee Brewers. Only one of those squads will be pitching in the playoffs, and for now, it seems like the Reds are just tall enough to board the ride.

David Eckstein has long been the paradigm of the sort of player many sabermetrically-oriented bloggers love to hate: a little guy who receives attention from the evil ol’ mainstream media out of proportion with his actual on-field contributions (“he does things that don’t show up in the box score!”). One hypothesis I’ve seen informally propounded for why such players get so much attention is that some sportswriters see them as possessing some sort of inner determination (moral virtue?) that transcends their athletic limitations, which allows those writers to vicariously imagine that they, too, could overcome their own physical limitations to become a professional sports star. It’s not about the body, but the soul.

I’m not going to attack or defend this informal “psychoanalysis” of sportwriters. I’m simply intrigued by the notion that some sort of “self-identification” with the subject is the root of the fascination with players like Eckstein. For a while now I have wanted to turn this notion back on myself and others in a bit of self-examination. Let’s briefly look at three cases.

The most obvious one is the Kansas City Royals’ Brian Bannister. Google “Brian Bannister Interview” and look at the results: people love to hear Banny talk about saber-stuff. This is a Good Thing. Bannister makes a good spokesmen for “Our Cause” since no one can accuse Bannister of being some dork with his spreadsheet who has “never played in the big leagues.” I’d love to talk to Banny personally, apparently he’s legitimately smart (not just “celebrity/athlete smart,” which operates on approximately the same scale as “celebrity/athlete funny”) and a great guy. But let’s not fool ourselves: this is a lot of attention for a player who isn’t a particularly good big-league pitcher. His career 4.78 FIP is below average, and as Banny no doubt knows, his 4.85 xFIP shows it hasn’t been bad luck. His 5.01 career tERA is even worse. Yes, Bannister had a legitimately good 2009 when he got more ground balls, but if he’s had some bad luck with home runs during his replacement-level 2010, he also had good luck in 2007 (4.40 FIP vs. 5.04 xFIP). The whole package adds up to a guy who is useful, but gets a tons of interviews for a player who is at best a #4 starter at this point in his career.

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Ross Ohlendorf doesn’t get nearly as much press as Bannister, but unlike Bannister has done some actual sabermetric research of his own for his senior thesis at Princeton on the average value of draft picks relative to free agents. I haven’t read it, but it sounds like it was well-researched and thought-out, and would be interesting to compare to Victor Wang’s findings. Still, Ohlendorf’s career numbers (4.82 FIP, 4.75 xFIP) are similar to Bannister’s, and he’s had the benefit of facing opposing pitchers in the NL.

Perhaps Ohlendorf isn’t quite as charming as Bannister, as he hasn’t received nearly the attention, and might be out of place in this post. But in their ratio of interviews-to-talent, neither Bannister nor Ohlendorf can match a (former) organizational colleague of Bannister’s: Chris ‘Disco’ Hayes. Maybe I’m being unfair, surely every undrafted right-handed reliever gets an mlb.com interview, multiple stories and interviews with Dean of Royals Blogger Rany Jazayerli (here, here, and here), and, of course, the obligatory heartwarming Joe Posnanski column. All this might lead one to conclude that the submarine-throwing, BABIP-talking, 27-year old Northwestern graduate with a fastball that peaks in the 70s (hence the nickname — another key to Hayes’ popularity) was dominating the minor leagues in a relief role before being released by the Royals a couple of weeks back. I don’t have a strong opinion on whether the Royals should have kept Hayes or not, but the reality is that despite good groundball and walk rates in the minors, his K/9 rate in 2009 was just over 4, and was barely over 3 this season. That’s not good enough to make people overlook his “fast” ball, no matter how much he cites BABIP, tells funny road stories, or Royals fans might imagine him to be potentially the reincarnation of Dan Quisenberry. If you think the groundballs would have made up for Disco’s lack of Ks, check out Stat Corner’s minor-league tRAs — barely above average in either 2009 or 2010, and at 27, his stuff isn’t likely to get better (can you imagine if his heater had touched 80?). If Bannister is the sabermetric Eckstein, Disco Hayes (whom I sincerely hope catches on somewhere) is (was?) the sabermetric Willie Bloomquist. Fans may want Hayes (or Bannister or Ohelndorf) in their organization because of what he “represents,” but isn’t that the mascot’s job description?

These pitchers have their uses. Back-of-the-rotation starters like Bannister and Ohlendorf have value, and perhaps Disco will end up being a useful back-of-the-bullpen pitcher somewhere in the major leagues. Bannister was a almost a three-win player last season. But the point isn’t whether these players are major leaguers, it’s about the reason they get so much attention. After all, it’s not as if David Eckstein has never been good: leaving aside his nice little 2010, his 2002 and 2005 seasons were more valuable than anything any of the three pitchers mentioned in this article are likely to achieve. There also are some better pitchers (e.g., Max Scherzer) who are known to dabble with advanced stats, Pitch f/x, and the like. But this post isn’t about the players, but about us, the bloggers. If we’re going to criticize sportswriters for all the attention lavished on particular players with whom those writers dream of sharing a heart, we should be careful about exaggerating the worth of certain other players simply because they seem to be nerds like us.

For a while it seemed like Jose Guillen was at risk of spending three full years with the same team. From the start of his career, in 1997 with the Pirates, through 2007 he had spend no more than two years and change at any one place. Then, when he became a free agent after the 2007 season, he signed a three-year, $36 million contract with the Royals. After two and two-thirds years, the Royals have designated Guillen for assignment.

Guillen’s history in the league is so long that it makes little sense to describe his journey. Instead, his Baseball Reference page puts it best:

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Guillen experienced a breakout season with the Reds in 2003, producing a .423 wOBA through 349 PA to start the season. Cincinnati sat 10 games back in the NL Central at that point, though, and traded Guillen to the A’s in a deal that brought back Aaron Harang. Unsurprisingly he cooled off in the final two months, producing a .330 wOBA in 186 PA. He was set to be be a free agent, and the budget-conscious A’s let him walk.

Guillen surged for his new team, the Angels, in 2004, producing a .361 wOBA, including a high, for him, 6 percent walk rate, in 621 PA. Yet his attitude problems got the best of him by season’s end. Following an incident where he showed up manager Mike Scioscia after getting pulled for a pinch runner, the Angels suspended Guillen without pay for the remainder of the season. He ended up missing the playoffs, in which the Angels lost in the ALDS to the Red Sox.

The Angels got a return on him that off-season, sending him to Washington in exchange for Maicer Izturis and Juan Rivera, both of whom are still with the team. He had a decent season for the first-season Nats in 2005, producing a .347 wOBA in 611 PA. His 2006 season went much worse, a .284 wOBA, and was cut short when he required Tommy John surgery. He then signed with the Mariners and produced a .355 wOBA in 2007 before signing his three-year contract with Kansas City.

On the same day that Guillen’s three-year, $36 million contract with Kansas City was announced, MLB suspended him for 15 games for violation of its drug policy. This was not for a positive test, but instead was in response to evidence that Guillen received shipments of human growth hormone and two types of steroids between 2002 and 2005. Guillen filed a grievance and eventually the suspension was overturned, allowing him to play a full season in 2008. Yet he was back to the production levels of his early career, producing .318 and .304 wOBAs in his first two seasons. He started off the 2010 season hot, a .401 wOBA in April, but as Dave noted, we shouldn’t have expected that to stick. At the time of his DFA he has a .325 wOBA.

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As we can see, a few years gave Guillen the reputation as someone who can produce. Why the Royals signed him to such a large contract I’ll never understand. He was coming off a rebound season of sorts, but even then he was just barely crossing that blue line into the good category.

Focusing just on his offensive also ignores just how bad his defense has been. His career fielding component is -59.4 and he has produced a positive number just five times (strangely, including +2.6 this year). This, combined with his mediocre bat, has led to seven seasons with a negative WAR value and another three, including this year, where it was less than one. In only one year of his career, 2005, was he worth as much as the $12 million he has made in each of the last three years.

The move to designate Guillen for assignment likely won’t result in his free agency. Plenty of contending teams have worse bats than him, so chances are the Royals will work out a deal to send him somewhere within the next 10 days, probably on the sooner side. With somewhere around $4 million remaining on his contract he’ll certainly clear waivers, opening a deal to any team. The Royals will almost undoubtedly pay most of what remains on the contract.

I’ve seen comments saying that this move has come a little too late, but that misses the point that it’s a move that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. There were zero indications that Guillen would produce value remotely approaching his contract. It was a foolish contract signing from the beginning, and the Royals realized nothing from it. His time in Kansas City resulted in -1.2 WAR. If players were compensated with WAR Dollars, he’d owe the club $5.9 million.

When it comes to Nationals pitching there’s plenty of excitement. Stephen Strasburg plays the headliner, but there’s also Jordan Zimmerman, in the minors after completing rehab from Tommy John surgery, Drew Storen, and even Ross Detwiler. In the minors they also have Brad Meyers, No. 7 on Hulet’s Nats prospects list and who, in limited time, has thoroughly dominated AA, though his foot injury has kept him out of action since June 3. With that type of high end in the system it’s easy to overlook potentially solid contributors. Though his MLB career hasn’t looked good to this point, Craig Stammen could be just that.

A 12th round pick in 2005, the Nats obviously didn’t have the highest hopes for him. He never ranked among their Top 10 prospects, and for good reason. His fastball sits at just around 90 mph. While he does carry the staples — slider, curveball, changeup — none stands out. Yet through most levels of the minors he was able to keep his walk rate down, and that earned him a promotion in 2009, after he worked 40 excellent innings in AAA. Yet, unsurprisingly for an unheralded pitcher with no discernible out pitch, Stammed stumbled in his debut season, though his 5.11 ERA was quite a bit worse than his 4.68 FIP and 4.48 xFIP. His low strikeout rate was concerning, but he did keep his walks low, always a desirable trait for a back-end starter.

Stammen’s season ended when he underwent surgery in August to remove bone chips from his elbow, which might have helped explain his 4.09 K/9 after experiencing much better marks at nearly every level of the minors. Might a clean bill of health be the difference between Stammen the mop-up man and Stammen the back-of-the-rotation starter? DC Sports Blog thought so. In a September 2009 post, Sean Hogan wrote:

Looking at Stammen’s AAA and ML rate stats, his K rate has dropped at an alarming pace in 2009, from 7-8 K/9 in each level in 2008 down to 3.15 in AAA and 4.08 in the Majors. I’m guessing it has to do with his elbow issues. If that’s the case, Stammen could be another breakout candidate in 2010, as he is the anti-Martin in terms of luck-his FIP, BABIP and LOB% all suggest he was unlucky in 2009.

In 2010 Stammen broke camp in the Nats rotation, first getting the ball on April 8. The start to his season didn’t go nearly according to plan. He faced Philadelphia in both of his first two starts and managed a combined 6.1 innings, allowing 11 runs on 16 hits with just one strikeout to speak of. He kept the ball in the park and didn’t walk anyone, surrendering one of each, but that didn’t make the Nats look any better. He did recover in his next few starts, but a few more poor starts, including a five-inning, five run performance against Houston on June 1, sealed his fate. He’d be demoted after his June 6 start — 6.2 innings, one run — against the Reds to make room for Strasburg.

We so often see so-so major league pitchers go down to AAA after a stint in the bigs and dominate, and that’s exactly what Stammen did. He pitched 20 innings in three starts, allowing just five runs and hardly walking anyone. His strikeouts were still low, but everything else seemed fine. When the Nats needed another starter later in June they recalled him. He has been in the rotation ever since.

This stint has gone markedly better than his previous. He started with a 7.1 inning, two-run performance against the Braves that included four strikeouts. The Mets knocked him around the next time, and the Giants did a good job on July 10. But in his last four starts it looks like he has hit his stride. While he has managed just 22.2 innings in that span, he has struck out 20, walked nine, and allowed only one home run. They have come against Florida, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Arizona, all offenses that rank above the NL average.

Yet Stammen’s place in the rotation is not safe. Jason Marquis is ready to return following an injury that has kept him out most of the season, and MASN’s Ben Goessling thought Stammen “the logical choice.” Yet Goessling adds an interesting note, especially considering Stammen’s quality outing against Arizona: 5.1 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 6 K:

Things will get interesting, though, if Stammen pitches well. He was sharp in his last start and solid in the one before that, and seems to be turning a corner. The Nationals are going to have to make a few of these decisions in the next two months, none of them involving a pitcher in whom the Nationals have invested as much financially as Marquis.

Given his recent performances, it would seem like a mistake to demote Stammen again. His skillset is finally coming together to form a back-end major league starter. He has the first requirement of such a pitcher, a high groundball rate, 49.7 percent this year. His strikeout rate was also markedly higher in June, 6.58 per nine, which is more in line with his minor league totals. The most standout number, though, is his swinging strike rate. Hitters have whiffed at 9.2 percent of his pitches this year, a rate equal to David Price and Phil Hughes. This is encouraging, in that it could eventually lead him to a respectable strikeout rate, making him an even better back-end starter candidate.

Overall Stammen’s peripherals have improved this year. His .320 BABIP has led to a high hit rate, but other than that his peripherals are getting better, especially with his strikeout rate on the rise. His ERA sits at an ugly 5.06, but his FIP and xFIP are much better, 4.14 and 4.16. His strand rate is also pretty low, 64.3 percent. If he moves more in line with league average his ERA could fall a bit.

At 26, Stammen is running out of chances to establish himself in the rotation. This goes especially for a team like that Nats that has plenty of young pitchers who will compete for rotation spots in the coming years. Yet it looks like they might have someone to depend on in the back end. That’s never something to overlook for a team that is going about the rebuilding process slowly and steadily.

During the off-season, Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels made an effort to become a new type of pitcher, opening his arsenal to more weapons in hopes of sustaining long-term success. He decided to incorporate a steady serving of curveballs and cutters into his healthy diet of fastballs and changeups, and so far the relatively superficial stats seem to be generally supportive of the process:

2008: 3.72 FIP, 3.63 xFIP, 4.26 tERA, 7.76 K/9, 2.10 BB/9
2009: 3.72 FIP, 3.69 xFIP, 4.15 tERA, 7.81 K/9, 2.00 BB/9
2010: 4.21 FIP, 3.66 xFIP , 4.38 tERA, 8.94 K/9, 2.98 BB/9

After a career-low walk rate last year, Cole has dropped to a walk rate worse than as any season since his rookie year by a significant margin. Still, his strikeouts are way up and it seems that his biggest issue in terms of performance has been the quality of his balls in play. His HR/FB rate is at a career-high 14.6%, as Cole has given up more homers per fly than the average pitcher each year in the big leagues. His groundball rate, however, is a career-high at 44.1%, but that may have more to do with a LD rate of 18.1%, which is as low as it has been since 2006.

But our run value charts show that Hamels’ cutter has been a bad pitch for him, coming in at -4.3 RAA, compared to 5.3 for his fastball and 3.1 for this changeup. His curveball has been basically an average pitch at -0.1. Pitchf/x guru Harry Pavlidis at The Hardball Times discussed Hamels’ new repetoire and did a fantastic job breaking down the lefty’s performance in a two-part series using his rvERAa and rvERAe stats, eventually concluding:

-An increased rate of flies and liners turning into home runs is observed when Hamels adds a fourth pitch heavily to the mix. Coincidence?

-While the fastball and sinker may or may not have been compatible, the cutter and the fastball may be

-The jury is still out on the cutter, but the sinker is welcome to stay away

-His change-up is very good, it’s a shame it’s used less and less

-His curveball I can take or leave. As a commentor noted in part one, it’s more of a show-me pitch than anything

My vote: keep working on the cutter, but have some more faith in the change-up.

Using the Bloomberg Sports Pro Tool, I wanted to take a look specifically at Hamels’ cutter, which Harry suggests he should tune up even though the metrics say it has stunk. Here’s a look at the forty-seven cutters Hamels has thrown to lefties this season along with their corresponding location in play if they were hit for an out/base:

As you can see, Hamels has thrown his cutters mostly away to lefties in the limited time he has tried it, and so far the results are good. Lefties have yet to get a hit against the pitch, either grounding out or flying out each time. But here are the images for right-handed hitters:

Righties are simply crushing Hamels’ cutter this season. He’s thrown it 120 times against them in 2010, and thus far they’re hitting .412/.429/.882, which simply will not get the job done. His cutter has also averaged 88.8 MPH to righties while only 88.1 MPH to lefties, so it may just look and act like a flat fastball to righties, who have taken advantage of it. As you can tell from the last image, his HR/FB rate on the year has clearly taken a hit due to his cutter versus right-handers.

I agree with Harry’s ultimate conclusion that Hamels should continue to work on his cutter. But until Hamels has a firm grasp of it, he should toy with it versus lefties and only versus righties in games with an extremely low leverage index (i.e. big leads). Until then, it will continue to get hit far.

Earlier in the week, we talked about Torii Hunter moving to right field, and it turns out that he was totally on board with the decision. He made a selfless choice for the betterment of the team, and should be lauded for his self awareness.

Last night, though, awareness is exactly what Hunter did not have. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch the highlight. The shock of the announcers will key you in that this was bad, but it’s even worse than their reaction may suggest.

The situation – top the 9th inning, Angels trail 9-7, nobody out, and Hunter is on second base. Howie Kendrick is at the plate, representing the tying run.

At least, he would have been before Hunter was thrown out trying to steal third.

The Angels, previously down 9-1, had rallied back and given themselves a 17.5 percent chance of winning the game. When Hunter was thrown out, that dropped to 4.1 percent. It was a death blow to the rally, and to their chances of winning.

The play was all downside. There is almost no benefit from advancing to third base in that scenario. If Hunter had been successful, he would have pushed the Angels WPA up by just over half of one percent. Whether he was on second or third was, essentially, immaterial.

When you’re risking a 13.4 percent loss in win probability and the potential reward for success is .6 percent of win probability, the breakeven rate is off the charts. Hunter would have had to successfully steal third 22.5 times to create enough positive change in win expectancy to outweigh the loss of one unsuccessful attempt. Even when you factor in the possibility of an error that would have allowed him to score on the play, you’re looking at a break-even rate of nearly 95 percent.

His odds of success were obviously not that high. For a runner to have that kind of expectation of making it to third safely, the catcher would have to be Venus De Milo. It was an unbelievably bad play, and Hunter knew it:

“That was stupid,” Hunter said softly. “That was so stupid. Can’t take it back, killed the rally, terrible. They teach you that in Little League — don’t make the first out at third. [It] might have been the dumbest thing I’ve done in years.”

Yes, Torii, it was.

Pitchers are not afraid of Jack Wilson. One way that might be illustrated is by the percentage of pitches he sees that are located within the strike zone. With 55.9% of the pitches he faces being located in the strike zone, Wilson would rank first in that category were he qualified. The following does not entirely capture the decision process, but I believe offers a good outline of how a pitcher might approach any given hitter:

If the hitter lacks patience at the plate then the pitcher has less incentive to throw strikes, knowing the hitter is more likely to chase after anything. However, that is counter-acted upon by the hitter’s raw power. If the hitter lacks power then even if you throw him a strike, the pitcher has less worry about how much damage the hitter can do and so it becomes better to throw strikes.

The above should be obvious enough, but I wanted to put some specific numbers behind it. Like most of my statistical investigations, I had a particular player acting as the impetus. In this case, it was Jack Wilson. Wilson is one of the weaker hitters out there with isolated slugging peaking around the .100 mark and projected to be more in the .075 range now.

These thoughts had been on my mind for a few days when it took the next step to noticing just how many 0-2 counts Jack Wilson subsequently found himself facing. Again it should be obvious how difficult it is to hit once in an 0-2 count. Hitters average a .454 OPS if they arrive at 0-2. Therefore, avoiding 0-2 counts by either laying off pitches out of the strike zone or by being enough of a threat that pitchers skirt more of the strike zone should be considered an admirable goal for a hitter.

Which hitters are the best and worst at that? To determine that I took the number of plate appearances for each hitter that went to 0-2 and divided it by the number of plate appearances for that hitter that lasted at least three pitches. I wanted to avoid having the numbers skewed by hitters that are swing-happy and contact-prone. While this method by no means sparks a metaphorical light bulb in ranking hitters, I did find it interesting.

Among the hitters most adapt at avoiding 0-2 counts are the high-power and high-walk sluggers you’d expect. David Ortiz leads the list at 14.5%, Jim Thome is 4th, Alex Rodriguez is 5th, Albert Pujols is 8th. There are some surprises though like Casey Kotchman being 2nd. Unsurprisingly, much worse hitters populate the other end of the ranking. Aaron Rowand has the worst mark at a whopping 40% followed by Wes Helms (37%) and Mark Ellis (35%). In fact, there are virtually no successful hitters above the 30% mark aside from maybe Cody Ross.

Getting into 0-2 counts is borderline crippling for a hitter’s chances to succeed. Avoiding them, however, does not guarantee success. A hitter still has to possess the ability to turn those hitter’s counts into something productive and that largely requires slugging power.

For those of you who are still making up your minds about whether or not to come to the very first FanGraphs live event in NYC this Saturday, August 7th at 9am, here are the full details:

Location: Florence Gould Hall (55 East 59th Street)

Tickets: $15 online (+$1.36 surcharge). $20 cash only at the door.

NY Baseball (9:00am – 9:40am)

Joe Pawlikowski, Mike Axisa, Benjamin Kabak (All RiverAveBlues.com), Matthew Cerrone (MetsBlog.com), and Mark Simon (ESPN) will be discussing all things baseball in NY. Moderated by Carson Cistulli.

Baseball Media (9:45am – 10:30am)

Jonah Keri (Bloomberg Sports) will host a panel comprised of Will Leitch (Deadspin, New York Magazine), Michael Silverman (Boston Herald), Matthew Cerrone (MetsBlog.com), Alex Speier (WEEI.com), and David Biderman (WSJ) to discuss how baseball media coverage has changed in recent years and will continue to evolve.

Baseball Stats (10:40am – 11:15am)

Jon Sciambi (ESPN), Mitchel Lichtman, Sky Kalkman (Beyond the Boxscore), Dave Cameron, and David Appelman will discuss where advanced baseball stats are right now and where they’ll be headed. Moderated by Carson Cistulli.

Bloomberg Sports Presentation (11:20 – 11:35)

Bloomberg Sports will make a presentation of a brand new product.

FanGraphs Q&A (11:40 – End)

Dave Cameron, Carson Cistulli, Bryan Smith, Joe Pawlikowski, Mike Axisa, and David Appelman will take questions until we’re officially kicked out (a little after 12:00).

Afterparty (3:30pm – Game Over)

Additionally, we’re going to host a game-watching party for attendees to gather at a local watering hole and view that afternoon’s Boston-New York match-up together. Those who make it to the event will be invited to join us for several more hours of fun later in the afternoon. Details and directions will be given at the event.

The White Sox are always creative when it comes to their bullpen construction. After all, not too many other organizations would have placed Sergio Santos in their opening day bullpen and, by extension, not many would have benefited from his performances to date. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the White Sox have called up their first round pick, Chris Sale, to work out of the pen this year.

Chicago selected Sale 13th overall out of Florida Gulf Coast. He’s a six-foot-six lefty with a strong fastball that can hit the mid-to-upper 90s with arm action that led at least a few pre-draft reports to suggest his role will ultimately be that of a reliever. That sentence might remind some White Sox fans of the other giant fireball tossing lefty that already resides in their pen – that Matt Thornton fellow – but to say Sale might be able to replicate Thornton’s past few seasons is being optimistic at best; after all, Thornton is one of the best left-handed relievers in the game.

Baseball Prospectus’ playoff odds have Chicago with a 54% chance at making the tournament and if Sale can flash heat out of the pen in late game situations, you have to figure it’ll only help. The question is how this will affect his development — if at all. Jim Callis noted that Ryan Wagner is the only draftee since 2003 that got the call before Sale, and… well, we all know how Wagner turned out. You may also remember that Andrew Miller was brought into a similar situation in 2006.

Sale took slot money to ensure his chance at pitching in the bigs this season and it may pay dividends. The White Sox did not sign him to a major league deal, meaning if Sale remains in the big leagues throughout the remainder of the season, or if he goes down for fewer than 20 days before being recalled, he will not burn an option year. Depending on his development, he could be one of those four option year players anyways.

The upside for him is that he’ll get his clock started while receiving a boost to his pay outside of the signing bonus he signed just two months ago. He might also impress enough to earn a spot in the playoffs, but that’s a ways off.