Corey Hart, seemingly on the trading block until a last-minute wrist injury, has reportedly been resigned by the Brewers for $26.5 million dollars for 2011-2013. Assuming $4.5 million dollars for a marginal win next season, a moderate seven percent inflation on that amount per season, a typical half-win a season decline, and also taking into account that Hart had one year of team-controlled arbitration left (and thus would generally be expected to get about 80% of his open market value), the Brewers are paying Hart as if his true talent will be about 2.5 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in 2011.

An evaluation of this deal obviously hinges a great deal on what one makes of the 28-year-old Hart’s career year at the plate in 2010 (.387 wOBA, .288/.346/.565) after being around league average at the plate in 2008 and 2009. Hart’s improvement in 2010 primarily rests on his home run explosion. His performance on balls in play hasn’t improved dramatically, and his walk rate is actually down from 2009 while his strikeouts are up. Neither is surprising given that his pre-2009 performance nor that fact that Hart is swinging at more pitches outside the zone than in 2009.

Are the home runs “for real?” Hart is hitting more fly balls than ever before, and more of them are going out of the park that ever before, too: Hart is sporting a 17.8% HR/FB rate after being under 10% in both 2008 and 2009. That in itself seems to indicate that he’s over his head in relation to his true talent, and more concrete evidence given by Greg Rybarczyk of HitTracker fame agrees. Of Hart’s 23 home runs so far this season, 10 are classified by Hit Tracker as “Just Enough.” The league-wide rate is usually a bit over 30 percent, and Hart is at about 43 percent, which Rybarczyk’s research shows generally means that the player is getting lucky and is due for regression. The projection systems agree that Hart will come back to earth, with ZiPS RoS projecting a .359 wOBA (.273/.332/.494) line, which would be about 20 runs above average over 700 PA in the current run environment. CHONE’s August update is roughly the same: .274/.332/.481.

UZR has not been impressed with Hart’s fielding lately, finding him 4.2 runs below average in 2008 and 5.7 below in 2009. Despite his career year at the plate in 2010, Hart’s 2010 is his worst season yet in the field according to UZR at -8.1 runs so far. However, Hart has had generally good speed scores and the Fans Scouting Report was impressed with him in the last couple of seasons, so we shouldn’t downgrade his defense too far — I have him at two or three runs below average over a full season. Combined with his position (-7.5 runs a season for corner outfielder), his overall defensive adjustment is about minus 10 runs a season.

Now to Hart’s likely value. We have him at +20 offense, -10 defense, with +20 NL replacement level. All that times 85% playing time equals about 2.5 Wins Above Replacement, which is about what I estimated the Brewers were paying for — a market value deal. Of course, the contract doesn’t start until 2011, so one could assume the typical decline and say the Brewers are overpaying him. Then again, it’s just half a win, and given the overall uncertainty in projections (particularly when using defensive metrics) that isn’t a big deal.

As has been said many times before, in isolation a market value deal isn’t good or bad, it’s average. When the Brewers’ organizational context is taken into account, however, this decision is a bit perplexing. A 2-2.5 WAR player like Hart may be around league average, which is useful, but he’s hardly a building block. It might indicate that the Brewers must think they are close to contending in the next couple of seasons, although given that they are more than 10 games out of first in the NL Central without much additional help coming soon that seems to be questionable. Moreover, any try for contention will require keeping both Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks around. Fielder is due a massive arbitration award this winter (think $15 million at least), and Weeks will also be eligible for his last arbitration season (and hopefully for the Brewers they still have enough money left to give Weeks a reasonable extension if he is willing). The Brewers likely still can keep both for next season, but that will hinder other additions. Corey Hart, on the other hand, was a potential non-tender this past winter, was a trade candidate until the last minute last week, and is probably around a league average player. The Brewers will have to make some hard choices this winter when deciding how to spend their money either to rebuild (which would require them to trade Fielder sooner rather than later) or take a shot at contention in 2011. It is difficult to see how Hart’s extension, while reasonable in the abstract, fits in to either of those paths.

NB: Surely someone has made a joke about “Corey Hart” sounding like the name of a fictional 1980s teen icon, right? Yet I’ve never read a joke about it before. Did I miss it? In any case, I couldn’t figure out how to work it in here in a clever fashion. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments or Tweet them to me.

Sometimes we see clear-cut winners at the deadline. This year we saw many contenders add pieces for a relatively cheap cost, making most of them winners. Yet we also saw some winners from the non-contention pool. Jack covered one this morning, when he praised the Pirates for their roster upgrades. They sent out four players and received some decent returns. The Indians, too, traded four of their players — Austin Kearns, Kerry Wood, Jhonny Peralta, and Jake Westbrook — five if you count Russell Branyan. Yet it doesn’t appear they got much in return. Would this count as a negative for the Indians?

From the returns on their players it doesn’t seem like much of a win. While they picked up some recognizable names when trading Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez last year, the players they acquired this year hit only the most dedicated prospect maven’s radar.

Giovanni Soto, acquired for Peralta, is a 2008 46th round pick who has put up very good numbers in his first two professional seasons. Ezequiel Carrera, acquired for Branyan, ranked 12th on John Sickels’s Mariners prospects list, but got off to a disappointing start in 2010. The other player in that deal, Juan Diaz, didn’t make anyone’s list, though he did get off to a good start in 2010. Corey Kluber, received in the Westbrook deal, also didn’t make any big prospect lists, but is having a high-strikeout, low-walk season in AA. Forget about the returns for Wood and Kearns; they were both exchanged for players to be named later.

With so little in return, it might seem like the Indians lost at the deadline. Then again, the five players they traded combined for 3.8 WAR this season and all would have walked without providing any compensation at season’s end. With the Indians going nowhere in 2010, they did well to acquire any talent in exchange for them. Even in the Wood deal recouped some of the money remaining on his contract, another plus for a small market team.

As for the players, the outlook appears the one Jack described for Pittsburgh. Maybe one or two of these guys turns into a solid regular, and if that happens the Indians should throw a party. If none of them works out it’s not a big deal. These were five players who would have played elsewhere in 2010 and wouldn’t have brought the Indians any return in the form of free agent compensation according to the latest Elias rankings update. Yet the players themselves aren’t the biggest return here.

Today on Rob Neyer’s SweetSpot blog, Steve Buffum of B-List Indians Blog reflects on the activity of the past weekend. He hits on the major point of moving these five players: it allows the Indians to slot in players who might help them in 2011 and beyond. It stated in late June when Matt LaPorta replaced Branyan. After a shaky start to the season which resulted in a demotion, LaPorta has demonstrated improvement since his full-time assumption of first base, producing a .340 wOBA in July. With Wood gone Chris Perez can remove the “of the future” addendum to his role as closer. Moving Kearns means a longer look for Michael Brantley, though because he was demoted on Tuesday he can’t come up again until Thursday.

These are not insignificant gains. By moving established players to other teams, the Indians not only got returns for players whom they otherwise would have lost for nothing in the off-season, but they essentially turned the season’s final two months into an audition for 2011. For at least one month they’ll play against full-strength, 25-man squads, allowing the Indians to get a better gauge of the players they control. It might not make them contenders in 2011, but it’s a good first step towards 2012.

I found Tangotiger’s most recent post on what if every player in the majors leagues was exactly the same as something anyone who has the slightest interest in baseball analysis should read.

Suppose that God herself came to you and told you that she was going to do something devious: for the 2011 baseball season, every team would have 25 players of identical talent, with all 30 teams being equals.

Making predictions in baseball isn’t actually about predicting the future. We know from decades of experience and more than a century of history that you cannot predict baseball. Instead, predictions act as a jumping-off point for interesting discussions. Dave Cameron knows this. Before the season began he made a series of predictions that included James Shields as the AL Cy Young winner. We used this to create an interesting conversation on FanGraphs Audio, during which I expressed some confusion over the pick. Shields has always been a solid pitcher, but he never struck me as a Cy Young candidate. So what did Dave see in him?

Whatever he saw became evident to everyone earlier in the season. Shields mowed down opponents like he never had before. Through his first 10 starts he not only held a 2.99 ERA, but had struck out 71 in 69.1 innings, far exceeding his career average. It might have been a fluke, since we know that anything can happen in 10 starts. Watching Shields, though, something felt different. It was as if he had figured something out during the off-season and was putting it to use on American League hitters.

The difference was most noticeable with his changeup. He threw the pitch at nearly the same frequency as 2009, but the results were much better. While in 2009 he got batters to whiff on 17.4 percent of his changeups, during his first 10 starts in 2010 he got an astonishing 26.1 percent swings and misses. He had generated a few more swings in general, but the increase was not at all in line with the swings and misses. Combine that with a lower foul-ball rate, and it seems like the change really turned a corner.

After that 10th start, an eight-inning, two-run effort against Boston, Shields hit something of a rough patch. In his next eight starts he pitched just 47 innings, striking out 38. Worse, he had allowed a ton of runs in that period, a 7.66 ERA, bringing his season total to 4.87 after the Indians scored four runs in 6.1 innings against him on July 9. That stretch certainly changed the view of Shields’s season. For starters, Cameron stopped bragging about his awesome pick. But it also signaled that maybe the early season run was just that, a run of excellent starts. Pitchers have them all the time, so why should Shields be any different?

When I went to check Shields’s pitch selection for this period I expected to see that he reduced his changeup usage, instead dipping into the other pitches in his deep arsenal. Surprisingly, I saw an insignificant drop, down to 22.5 percent. He was still generating plenty of swings and misses, 20 percent, but not as many as earlier in the season. On the surface it might look as though he was just getting lucky with the changeup early in the season, and that hitters had finally figured out how to handle it — relatively, at least. Yet looking a bit deeper, this might not have been the case at all.

A fledgling yet intensely interesting aspect of baseball analysis is pitch sequencing. It’s interesting because so much of the batter-pitcher matchup relies on how the pitcher sequences his pitches. It’s intense because even though two pitchers may throw the same pitches in name, their pitches still have different effects. In other words, pitch sequence efficiency and effectiveness is going to vary pitcher-to-pitcher. I don’t have any analysis on Shields’s actual pitch selection, but rather an observation from his first 10 starts compared to his next eight.

In the first 10 it seemed as though he leaned on his fastballs and changeup more than the rest of his repertoire. To wit, he threw his four-seamer 20.1 percent of the time, his two-seamer 26.4 percent, and his changeup 23.5 percent, totaling 70 percent of his overall pitches. Yet during his rough patch he turned to the other pitches in his arsenal more frequently, going to those three pitches 61 percent of the time. He actually did increase his usage of another fastball, his cutter, though that is more complementary to his slider.

Could it be that moving away from the two-seamer changed his sequencing and therefore made his changeup more hittable? Without a strict sequencing mechanism in place it’s tough to say. Shields did improve in his first three starts after the All-Star break, though in this case we saw him use his changeup even less, 16.8 percent, and his four-seamer more, 32 percent. Yet in these starts he turned to his curveball more often and generated a 14.8 percent swinging strike rate, over 10.2 percent on his changeup. So was the pitch less effective in general, or just less effective because he’d been using it less frequently?

If yesterday’s start was any indication, it’s the latter. Sheilds attacked the Yankees with almost 70 percent four-seamers and changeups, using the changeup for 31 of of his 116 pitches. With it, he generated 35.5 swinging strikes, leading to 11 strikeouts. When he wasn’t getting hitters to swing and miss he was getting them to hit the ball on the ground, as only six out of 16 balls in play got some air under them. It was an all-around dominant start, made possible almost exclusively with the changeup.

Shields’s odd season makes it difficult to pinpoint what he’s doing well and what is luck. As we saw, he used his changeup about the same in his first 10 starts as he did his next eight, yet he saw drastically different results in those starts. Then he turned away from the change and saw positive results, and then had what might have been his best start of the season yesterday by leaning heavily on the change. So what works best for him overall?

It’s a fallacy to say that because his changeup is so good that he should throw it more often. If hitters know it’s coming it’s easier to lay off and therefore won’t be as effective. Yet with Shields’s case that might not be the case. As our own R.J. Anderson said in the River Ave. Blues Yanks-Rays series preview:

Shields is such a weird case. You’re talking about a guy with maybe the best changeup in the American League who says and does intelligent things all the time; I would not be shocked to see him become a pitching coach down the line because he helps teammates with mechanical issues and philosophical talk. He seems to understand game theory and he’s even said this season that he likes it when team’s ambush him and figure him out. Presumably so he can mix things up. You can see that attitude prevalent in his arsenal too. He could probably just throw the changeup all day and night with good results – ask Nick Swisher – but he goes to a cutter, he goes to a curve, and sometimes maybe he outthinks himself.  Joe Magrane used to say he gave the hitter too much credit by not throwing his change more often and maybe he had a point.

It does seem that leaning heavily on the changeup works, especially when it goes along with a correspondingly heavy usage of his fastball. Shields does have other weapons, and by all means he shouldn’t let them become stale. But with an all-world changeup, he might not need those weapons unless the changeup fails him here and there. It doesn’t seem, though, like that happens too often.

As of this morning, the Boston Red Sox are in third place, 6 1/2 games out of first place, with an estimated 18 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Los Angeles Dodgers are in fourth place, 8 games out of first place, with an estimated 4 percent chance of making the playoffs.

In the lead up to the trade deadline, the Red Sox laid fairly low, acquiring Jarrod Saltalamacchia and shipping out Ramon Ramirez, both minor transactions that will have little effect on how the team plays the rest of the year. The Dodgers did the opposite, engineering a trio of trades that saw them ship out Blake DeWitt and six minor league players in exchange for Ted Lilly, Octavio Dotel, Ryan Theriot, and Scott Podsednik.

The contrast in approaches couldn’t be any more striking. While Boston may not be resigned to finishing as an also-ran, they also refused to throw good money after bad, making a trade that would have, at best, pushed them from longshot to unlikely. The Dodgers, however, pushed their chips in to the middle and bet on the the team justifying the investment over the final two months of the season.

While inaction is usually looked at with scorn during deadline time, I would imagine the Dodgers will look back on their moves and wish they had exercised a little less aggressiveness.

No, they didn’t give up any sure things. Both James McDonald and Andrew Lambo have lost some sheen from their prospect status of a few years ago, and those are the two most talented players they surrendered. But the general rule with prospects is “the more, the merrier”, as a sheer quantity approach will usually result in a positive outcome or two. By giving up this much young talent, it’s likely that the Dodgers will eventually wish they had one or two of these guys back.

For a team with a one in 30 chance of playing in October, that just doesn’t seem like a wise use of resources. You could probably make a case for these deals if LA was a couple of games back and just trying to overcome one team, but they’ve got three clubs in front of them in their own division, two of whom have significant leads.

There is a time for bold action, and there’s a time to accept that it probably isn’t your year. The passive approach that the Red Sox took to the trade deadline was probably the better course. Barring a miracle, neither team will make the playoffs, but at least the Red Sox will still have their farm system mostly intact.

If you tuned out for the weekend and missed any of our coverage of the trade deadline on Friday or Saturday, here’s links to our analysis of what went down:

Marlins Acquire Ohman From O’s For VandenHurk

Royals Trade Away Ankiel, Farnsworth

The Giants Add Pen Arms

New York Yankees Acquire Kerry Wood

Dotel to the Dodgers

Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot to the Dodgers

Cardinals Add Jake Westbrook, Lose Ryan Ludwick

Pirates Lift Chris Snyder

The Ryan Ludwick Trade: San Diego’s Perspective

New York Yankees Acquire Austin Kearns

Rays Acquire Chad Qualls

The Lance Berkman Trade: Yankees Perspective

Cristian Guzman to the Rangers

The Edwin Jackson Trade: Arizona’s Perspective

The Edwin Jackson Trade: Chicago’s Perspective

The Miguel Tejada Trade

New Prospects for Nats, Jays, O’s

Since he was drafted back in 1990 by the then-California Angels, Garret Anderson has enjoyed a fine, respectable career. The three-time All-Star established himself as a steady two-to-three WAR player with the Halos in his mid-to-late twenties. During the Angels’ World Series-winning 2002 season, Anderson contributed 3.6 WAR and he followed up with a five-win campaign in 2003.

That was a long time ago, though. Anderson was a sub-optimal starter for the Angels from 2004-2008, combating numerous nagging injuries and averaging about 0.9 WAR per season. Things got even worse last year after he departed the LAA organization — Anderson was 0.9 wins below replacement with the Atlanta Braves in 2009. This past March, the Dodgers picked him up on a minor league contract. And, as Dave Cameron noted in his commentary on the Scott Podsednik trade, Anderson has been all sorts of awful:

Podsednik is more of a role player than an everyday guy, but he’s good enough to be a useful part timer on a team that needs one. And, more importantly, he gives the Dodgers a reason to stop using Garret Anderson.

It’s hard to overstate how bad Anderson has been this year. He’s been worth -13.8 runs in just 112 plate appearances, a historically awful offensive performance. He’s just completely finished as a major leaguer, but because he has the veteran label, Torre has continued to use him.

G.A. now has 160 plate appearances, and his lumber has been worth -14.1 runs. The 38-year-old’s triple-slash is .184/.208/.276, and his wOBA is .211.

Just how bad has Anderson’s “hitting” been compared to the game’s all-time out-making luminaries? To get an idea of where his slack bat places historically, I turned to Baseball-Reference’s Play Index Tool. I searched for hitters from 1901 to 2010 who posted a 32 OPS+ or worse (Anderson’s currently got a 32 OPS+) during a season in which they had at least 160 plate appearances.

There have been 150 player seasons meeting that criteria since 1901, with Boston Brave Frank O’Rourke’s 1912 taking the title of most punch less performance over that time frame. Let’s focus on the players who have been the pitcher’s best friend since the turn of the millennium. Believe it or not, Anderson’s sordid season isn’t actually the worst we’ve seen in 2010:

2000: Todd Dunwoody (Royals), 29 OPS+ in 195 PA
2001: Donnie Sadler (Red/Royals), 18 OPS+ in 211 PA
2001: Brandon Inge (Tigers), 24 OPS+ in 202 PA
2002: Jorge Fabregas (Angels/Brewers), 27 OPS+ in 169 PA
2003: Ryan Christenson (Rangers), 30 OPS+ in 186 PA
2004: Doug Glanville (Phillies), 30 OPS+ in 175 PA
2006: Paul Bako (Royals), 28 OPS+ in 167 PA
2006: Tomas Perez (Devil Rays), 32 OPS+ 254 PA
2008: Tony Pena Jr. (Royals), 7 OPS+ in 235 PA
2009: Aaron Miles (Cubs), 20 OPS+ in 170 PA
2010: Brandon Wood (Angels), 10 OPS+ in 184 PA
2010: Garret Anderson (Dodgers), 32 OPS+ in 160 PA

Brandon Wood has “bested” Anderson. He’s got the 13th-worst OPS+ among players with 160+ PA since Theodore Roosevelt took over as U.S. president following William McKinley’s assassination. Anderson places in a tie for 141st. So, he’s got that going for him.

With Podsednik and Xavier Paul both better options to fill in for the injured Manny Ramirez (Reed Johnson is due back soon, too), Anderson just doesn’t have a place on the Dodgers’ roster. The club can’t afford to keep on trotting him out there when he’s making outs like few others have in the history of the game.

Given the minimal returns for players like Dan Haren, Roy Oswalt, and Lance Berkman at the deadline, it’s hard to consider this year’s trade market as anything other than a buyer’s market. As such, one would expect that a team like the Pittsburgh Pirates, looking to sell at the deadline, would have to settle for a disappointing return, particularly given the performance of their trade pieces this season. I wrote back in June about their relatively bleak trading prospects:

The obvious answer is to sell; what’s less obvious is who to sell. Octavio Dotel is an interesting flamethrowing reliever, but he’s performed right around replacement level this season. Akinori Iwamura likely doesn’t have a future with this Pirates team, but given his terrible performance this year, the return for him would be minimal, and similarly for Ryan Church and Brendan Donnelly. Right now, this Pirates team really doesn’t have anybody to sell.

Dotel has picked up his performance since the writing, but Church has been horrendous and both Iwamura and Donnelly have been designated for assignment. The Pirates also managed to move Bobby Crosby, D.J. Carrasco and Javier Lopez, who compiled a grand total of -0.2 WAR in 2010 and aren’t projected to get much better. These three, along with Dotel and Church, were owed about $4.5 million for the rest of the season. Given the fact that the Astros and Indians had to throw money into trades with the Yankees, it seems hard to believe that the Pirates could acquire value for this ragtag group without at least throwing in a significant sum of cash.

That, however, is exactly what Neal Huntington managed to do, turning this group of players into Chris Snyder, John Bowker, Joe Martinez, Pedro Ciriaco, James McDonald, Andrew Lambo, and, perhaps most shockingly, $2.5 million dollars. Snyder is likely the only player who will make an immediate impact at the Major League level, but he’s a good player, with a bat above the league average at the catcher position. McDonald may also have a quick impact, either in the bullpen or in the starting rotation. The rest have varying statuses, from utilityman ceiling to legitimate but troubled prospect to junkballing righty. Still, this is a group that at worst contains an above-average MLB catcher and at best could produce two or three more starting players for the Pirates. Given the fact that the Pirates traded essentially useless players with limited team control to acquire this group, that’s a big time win, and the kind of moves that teams in the Pirates position need to make.

Now, none of these deals are going to catapult the Pirates into contention next year or anything like that. None of it will matter if players like Jose Tabata, Neil Walker, and Brad Lincoln, among others, can’t turn into contributors for the Major League ball club. But if the Pirates’ core of young players can reach their ceilings, they will need supporting players to bring them to the playoffs. This deadline, the Pirates picked up a group of talented players under team control for a long time. The aforementioned group could form the supporting cast that brings a playoff berth to Pittsburgh in 2014 or 2015. Neal Huntington’s Pirates are certainly headed in the right direction, and although it’s hard to be excited about a team that’s 32 games below .500, there is hope in Pittsburgh.

Last week, the wife and I moved — via Penske-brand truck — from Portland, OR to Madison, WI, leaving little time to watch and/or read about and/or write about baseball. Turns out, the experience provided an opportunity to think about baseball in ways I hadn’t anticipated. I’ll probably bloviate all over this theme in the next week or so.

This past Saturday night — my first as a Citizen of Madison, Wisconsin — I had the pleasure of sharing the Good Times with both my wife and also FanGraphs contributor Jack Moore on the lakeside Terrace of the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union.

Based on this and previous visits to the Terrace, I’ll submit to the readership this assertion: that the aforementioned Terrace is among the most excellent public spaces in the Continential 48. I’ll submit this other one, too: that the excellence of the Union Terrace teaches us something about the aesthetics of our fandom.

As for the first point — i.e. the excellence of the Terrace — don’t take my word for it. The A.V. Club’s Jason Albert wrote the following last spring:

If the terrace hasn’t already been named the No. 1 place in the country to have a beer, then it should. It’s a combination of lake views and breezes, live music, beer, Babcock ice cream, and folks from all walks of life doing everything from dealing cards to playing quarters. That’s all good stuff no matter how you cut it.

While I’m not convinced that “dealing cards” and “playing quarters” represents the full gamut of possible activities in which one can engage at the Terrace — like, I think “reading a book” or “writing a FanGraphs post” are probably outside of that particular spectrum — the point remains: the Terrace is excellent. It’s an excellent space, right on the shores of Madison’s Lake Mendota, offers beer and brats at affordable prices, and is absolutely teeming with happy people. In fact, it’s this last detail — the sheer number of people invested in the experience — that I believe gives the Terrace its charm.

So far as I can tell, the Union Terrace — as a public space — is unrivaled in this country. Mind you, I haven’t been everywhere in the US of Frigging A, but I’ve been to a whole bunch of places*. And, really, the only thing that compares to the Terrace is — conveniently, for the sake of this post, this site — the giddy, expectant feel of the crowd at a ballgame.

*For example: Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocapillo, Baranquilla, and Perdilla.

Although, as JP Sartre once suggested, hell is other people, the truth of that statement (i.e. “hell is other people”) is largely dependent on context. In traffic, sure, hell is other people. In a line at the DMV or the supermarket, hell is also other people. On this beautiful series of tubes we call the interwebs? Yes, hell is frequently other people here, as well.

But hell isn’t always other people. Having spent a couple of springs in the cavernous and mostly empty confines of Portland’s PGE Park, watching the Padres’ Triple-A Beavers, I’ll attest vigorously to this fact. This season, for example, the Beavers are drawing fewer than 4,000 fans a game — in a stadium with a capacity of almost 20,000. Mind you, it’s not terrible: I, personally, was still able to observe the likes of Buster Posey and Chris Carter this past spring, which is pretty cool. Still, the joy of the game is mitigated, as there are simply too few people witnessing the action.

Put another way: if a tree falls in the woods and no one’s around to hear it, it still very probably makes a sound. A baseball game that’s played with no one around to watch it, though — that’s a different proposition.

It’s unlikely that any of us enters a ballpark and takes a seat with the express purpose of becoming BFFs with every last person at said park. These are the same people who will, after all, slow our exit from the ballpark after the conclusion of the game, who will snag a foul ball down the line even though the home team’s left fielder very well could’ve made a play on it.

It’s a group capable of despicable acts, in other words.

That said, the experience we know as “going to the baseball game” is impossible without other people. In fact, it’s an experience whose joy is largely dependent on the presence of those same other people. When the game is tied in the bottom of the ninth, it’s the expectant gasps and sighs from the crowd that heightens the pleasure of the event. When the home team hits a walk-off home run, it’s the crowd’s hysterical cheering that reminds each of us that we’ve witnessed something great and unique.

Cynics, overzealous undergraduates, Germans: many of them will suggest that crowds and the “group mentality” is/are dangerous — evil, in fact. Nor is this completely a trifling matter. From what I know of Red Star Belgrade’s Ultras, for example, or of the teenage girls at our nation’s malls, groups can be brainless, frightening.

But what we learn from the Union Terrace is the same thing we learn from the very best of our spectator sports — namely, that crowds have benefits, that hell isn’t always other people. Why is this so? Why are crowds so able to heighten our experience of an event or space? What constitutes an ideal-sized crowd? Those are questions probably best left answered by the discipline of urban planning.

In the meantime, it’s very clear to me that the Terrace, like a well-attended ballgame, is pleasant because of the crowds.

Wow, what a trading deadline that was! One for the ages certainly and one that people will remember whenever trade deadlines are mentioned, forgetting that the vast majority are closer to snoozefests than the shop-a-thon of this year’s.

Given how active it was, it is easy to have July 30’s Chicago-Colorado game get a bit lost in the shuffle. To recap, here is what happened with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning:
Carlos Gonzalez single
Troy Tulowitzki double
Brad Hawpe double
Chris Iannetta triple
Ian Stewart home run
Clint Barmes single
Melvin Mora double
Dexter Fowler home run
Ryan Spilborghs single
Carlos Gonzalez single
Troy Tulowitzki double
Brad Hawpe walk
Chris Iannetta walk
Ian Stewart fly out

Thirteen consecutive hitters reached base spanning three pitchers: Sean Marshall, Andrew Cashner and Brian Schlitter. Cashner was the worst of the offenders, coming in after Hawpe’s double and being relieved after Spilborghs’ single. He faced six hitters and recorded no outs on six balls in play. Here Cashner’s pitch location chart, courtesy of BrooksBaseball:

Note the light blue marks representing balls put into play of which there were six and none resulting in an out. Five of the six were centrally located vertically and the one that wasn’t was over the middle of the plate at the knees. Four them could be called center-center. Suffice to say, that’s not the great place to try and live for a pitcher and it’s no wonder that the Rockie hitters were able to tee off so effectively.