Nineteen ninety-six was a special year. Baseball was back for 162 games for the first time since 1993 and baseball had a new star on its hands. After a cup of coffee in ’94 and a brief hello in ’95, Alex Rodriguez secured himself a starting role with the Mariners in ’96 and has not looked back since. Rodriguez would league the American League in runs (141), doubles (54), total bases (379) and batting average (.358) that year while putting up a triple slash line of .358/.414/.631, good for a .444 wOBA. Rodriguez was just 20 years old at the time.

It is 14 years later and baseball has another 20-year-old on its stardom radar screen. Jason Heyward isn’t having near the sort of season that Rodriguez had back then, his power numbers falling way short, but that is no knock against Jason. He’s still having a borderline MVP caliber season and in fact is sharing one distinction with Rodriguez’s ’96 season: an OBP over .400.

Looking at every player season since integration in 1947, only two other players had a better OBP at Heyward’s age. One of them was Rodriguez’s .414 mark in 1996, but Heyward’s is arguably more impressive given that the league average OBP in A-Rod’s year was .350 compared to .324 for the NL this year. On an OBP+ scale, only Al Kaline’s 1955 .421 OBP surpasses Heyward’s current achievement.

Heyward certainly has the raw power to be a slugger, but he lacks the proper approach to be a 40-homerun hitter. He’s always been more of a ground ball hitter but thanks to his already good discipline skills, Heyward does not have to rely on getting those home runs to succeed.

Of the 11 people to OBP > .400 before 23 since integration:
6 are in the Hall of Fame
2 will be (Albert Pujols, A-Rod)
1 might be (Adam Dunn)
1 is Heyward

And the other was Billy Goodman who did it when the league OBP was .349
Back in early July, Dave Cameron wrote in his trade value series that “Almost everyone who is this good at this age becomes a superstar, and few doubt that Heyward is headed that way.” It’s easy to get too ahead of ourselves in projecting current performance to sustain itself into the future, but it might be worth considering if Heyward isn’t headed to super stardom but instead might already be there.

Paul Konerko opened with one of the finest months of the season by popping 11 home runs in his first 74 at-bats and hitting .297/.413/.784. Although that line suggests otherwise, Konerko’s BABIP in April sat a bare .193. The change to May brought a few extra hits of non-homer variety, but Konerko’s BABIP still sat around .250 for the season. Star slugger suffering from BABIP issues is one of the most basic of plots filmed on diamond sets, but that story is not the one played out here. Instead, opposing defenses have gone from Shamwow levels of absorption to that of a Casper. Just check out Konerko’s BABIP by month since:

June: .403
July: .333
August: .449
September: .355

Unsurprisingly, Konerko’s wOBA remains high, at .423 through 579 plate appearances. Anytime a 34-year-old offensive-minded first baseman posts a career best season its worth taking note, but it feels like maybe Konerko has been looked over. For instance, did you know that Konerko’s wOBA – albeit unadjusted for park – is the third highest amongst first basemen this season? Of course not. Aubrey Huff is the positional winner of the “Huh, he’s having a good year?” award, yet Konerko is doing a fine job himself.

Not only that, but Konerko is doing it with mostly the same underlying statistics with the exception of a career best BABIP. The twist in Konerko’s story is that he is a free agent at season’s end. I’ll leave the Crowdsourcing on Konerko’s next deal to Senior Cameron, but I would expect some level of disagreement on just how many years Konerko will received based on what looks like an aberration of a season. Maybe Konerko will leave the Sox, but much like this season, I don’t think most foresee that occurring.

The results are in, and there’s more agreement about Manny’s potential payout this winter than I expected. For this one, since we gave people the option of putting in 0 years/0 dollars to project that he won’t sign this winter, I’ll break those out separately, and then the projected contract figures will only include those that think he will sign for some figure this winter.

Percentage of voters who think Manny will not sign this winter: 6.7%

Average length: 1.27 years
Average salary: $8.41 million

Median length: 1 year
Median salary: $8 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.48 years
Standard deviation, salary: $3.19 million

I was surprised that over 93% of the voters expected him to play next year. I would certainly put the odds at lower than that. I might even say that Manny following the Gary Sheffield path might be the more likely outcome, in my estimation. But you guys clearly disagree, and believe that teams will value the production more than the personality, even at age 39. Scott Boras certainly hopes you guys are correct.

In terms of length of contract, pretty much everyone agreed, going with either one or two years. A few brave souls thought he’d get three years, but they were a very small minority at 1.4% of the vote total. However, there was less agreement on the annual average value of the contract, with a standard deviation of over $3 million. 35 percent of the voters thought he would make more than $10 million per year, while 17 percent though he would have to settle for $5 million per year or less. As always, the votes centered around the median; however, that number was not the most popular selection. 129 people went with $10 million, as opposed to the 127 who went with $8 million. It’s essentially a tie, but the average was clearly pulled down more by folks on the low end than it was up by people on the high end.

So, one-year, $8 million for Manny Ramirez. If he didn’t have any off-the-field issues, I’d probably agree with that, based on his age and talent level. Given all of the extra things that come with Manny, though, and the abundance of DH options this winter, I’m not sure what team is going to make that offer. We shall see.

All the way back in April, I wrote about an incident in which A.J. Pierzynski faked being hit by a pitch and went to first base. Rob Neyer called him out for lying his way to first base — cheating — and suggested that baseball ought to have a punishment mechanism to punish players who succeed by lying. It’s worth thinking about, as I wrote: “It’s bush league, it’s unsportsmanlike, it delays the game, and it creates a major moral hazard problem, because it incentivizes every other player to lie.”

So guess who else was incentivized to lie? Derek Jeter. Last night, in the middle of the worst season of his career, Jeter turned away from an inside pitch which glanced off his bat and then brushed his uniform, then hopped away in pain, got checked out by the Yankee trainer, and then went to first base. In the clubhouse afterwards, Jeter admitted the ball hit his bat and he was “acting” for the benefit of the umpire, saying: “I’m not going to tell him, ‘I’m not going to go to first,’ you know? My job is to get on base.” Because he’s Derek Jeter, he has been mostly applauded for his bravado. Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon, whose team was victimized on the play, said, “I wish our guys would do the same thing.” ESPN analyst Tim Kurkjian said it was brilliant, that whether you called it lying or cheating, Derek Jeter was simply doing his job to get to first base by any means necessary.

But wait a minute. By any means necessary? Haven’t we had to endure a decade’s worth of holier-than-thou sanctimony condemning the notion that “any means” are acceptable? Part of the praise is directed at Jeter because, of course, he’s Derek Jeter. Pierzynski is an unpopular player, so when he lied his way on base, he was called out for it by me and others. When Jeter did it, he was praised by the opposing manager. Jeter’s the kind of guy about whom ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski can write:

Jeter’s name is where I draw the line in the PED sand. He is the absolute last guy I’d ever suspect of juicing. It seems so, well, beneath him. He is the one player who I actually think would walk away from the game if he thought he had to cheat to compete.

Now, of course, we know that Jeter does cheat to compete. Look, I’m not trying to write yet another post complaining about how sportswriters turn their brains off when it comes to Derek Jeter. Instead, I think this illustrates, once again, that the way that we approach the notion of cheating is seriously misguided. The steroid era imparted two valuable lessons: everyone has the incentive to cheat, and unless you cheat with steroids, no one cares. Earlier this season, the Philadelphia Phillies were accused of cheating by stealing signs, and officially warned by Major League Baseball, and the furor died down more or less immediately.

As Bill James recently wrote, breaking the rules may not be the worst thing in the world: “We are not a nation of Hall Monitors; we are a nation that tortures Hall Monitors. We are people who push the rules.” Babe Ruth broke the rules. Everyone breaks the rules. But we should acknowledge that there are rules, and we should agree on what it means to break them. Cheating is when you do something against the rules for your personal gain. Steroids have been banned; so have corked bats, spitballs, emery boards, amphetamines, and outfield telescopes. Lying to an umpire is effectively cheating: it’s trying to take credit for something you didn’t do. And when two players cheat in exactly the same way — like Pierzynski and Jeter, or bat-corkers Babe Ruth and Albert Belle — they should be held to the same standard.

It’s perhaps the most interesting free agent question of the winter: does Manny Ramirez land a job this winter? He can still hit, even if he is no longer the dominating force at the plate he was a few years ago. However, injuries and suspensions have kept him off the field for large parts of the past two seasons, and once again, his time with an organization ended poorly. His reputation for being aloof is well known, and to top it off, he’s still a brutal defender who probably needs to be relegated to DH’ing at this point in his career, limiting his potential suitors mostly to AL teams. Oh, also, he’ll be 39 next year.

There are a lot of reasons to think that Ramirez won’t be able to find work this winter. There’s one big reason to think he will: he can still hit. Even in a down year, he’s put up a .306/.409/.472 line. That kind of offensive performance is not easy to find, and a potentially healthy Ramirez is likely to still be among the best hitters in the game next year, even at an advanced age. He’s less than what he used to be, but still far more than a lot of major league hitters.

It’s not a great year to be a DH looking for a job, given the other bat-only options that will be available this winter, but Ramirez probably carries the best bat of the bunch. He also carries the most baggage. I could see teams pursuing him in an attempt to bolster their offense, and I could see the entire league saying “no thanks”, essentially doing to Manny what teams did to Gary Sheffield last winter.

So, I’ve added a new option to the contract crowdsourcing form – 0 years and 0 dollars per year. If you think Manny will not be able to find work this winter, select those from the drop-down menu. Otherwise, the form is the same, and you guys can project what Ramirez will get as a bat for hire this winter.

The aura of a top prospect can continue to glow long after the player has proven ineffective. There’s always a glimmer of hope that with a fresh start in a new organization the former prospect can fulfill some of his promise. Rarely does it actually happen. In this way the Royals have gotten lucky. During the off-season they signed Wilson Betemit to a minor league contract. About two months into the season they called him up, and he has been a major contributor ever since. While it’s doubtful that his current performance will carry over to next year, the Royals still might have found a useful player for 2011.

Betemit’s story begins in 1996 when, at age 15, the Braves signed him to an amateur free-agent contract. That turned out to be a big mistake. MLB mandates that international free agent signings must be at least 16 years old. The Braves and Betemit eventually reached a new agreement, but MLB did bar the Braves from signing Dominican prospects for six months. Betemit did play in the GCL in 1997 and returned there in 1998, but in neither year did he stand out. It wasn’t until he reached the Appalachian League in 1999 that he truly broke out, a .320/.383/.463 line in 291 PA. That earned him the No. 99 spot on Baseball America’s Top 100.

In 2000, playing in the New York-Penn League, Betemit’s stock continued rising. He hit .331/.393/.457 in 308 PA and moved up to No. 29 on BA’s prospect list, and reached No. 1 for the Braves. In 2001, he didn’t overly impress in the Carolina League, but he absolutely tore up the AA Southern League. After he hit .355/.394/.514, the Braves called him up for September. Before the 2002, season BA rated him the No. 8 prospect in baseball. That was the height of his fame. He wouldn’t crack a .336 OBP again until 2004. By 2005, he was out of options and had to stay with the major league team, though his .337 wOBA made him a good utility infielder. In 2006, Betemit produced a .355 wOBA in 219 PA before the Braves traded him to the Dodgers.

Betemit was actually traded at the deadline in both 2006 and 2007, and in both instances he went from performing well with the first team to stumbling with the second. After a disappointing 2008 season the Yankees traded him to the White Sox in the Nick Swisher deal. He performed miserably in his 50 PA there and didn’t fare much better in AAA, so the White Sox let him go. That’s where the Royals come into play. They took on no risk by signing Betemit to a minor league deal, but they have realized plenty of reward. Even though nine Royals have more PA than him this season, he is still third on the team in WAR.

It doesn’t take much more than a glance at Betemit’s BABIP to see that his .410 wOBA won’t last much longer. While he has always been a high-BABIP guy — .333 career rate — a hits on balls in play rate of 38 percent is obviously unsustainable. Running his results through the xBABIP calculator we can see that a .314 BABIP is a more reasonable figure. Assuming all non-BIP results remain the same Betemit would have 63 hits instead of 73. That would lower his average from .317 to .274 and his OBP from .399 to .361. If those missing 10 hits were all singles it would reduce his SLG from .552 to .509. Going one step further, if we assume a career average BABIP and all the same non-BIP results, Betemit would be hitting .287/.373/.522. Either way he’d still be having a productive season.

After the season the Royals will have a decision to make. Betemit’s service this year will push him over the five-year mark, meaning he has one year of arbitration remaining. Should the Royals make the offer? His performance this year, even adjusted for a high BABIP, suggests that it would be a wise move. Other factors should also move the Royals to tender him a contract this December. It won’t be a risk-free decision this time around, but it’s one that a team like the Royals should make.

In terms of salary the Royals shouldn’t worry. They have a few arbitration cases to deal with, including Billy Butler, but for the most part the money coming off the books — Jose Guillen, most notably — should more than offset those raises. Betemit also doesn’t figure to earn top dollar in the arbitration process. His peak salary was $1.3 million, so he should be in the $2 million range, $2.5 million tops. Considering the Royals had previously committed $1.7 million to Willie Bloomquist in 2010, they can surely afford a few hundred thousand extra for Betemit.

Betemit would also have a chance to amass some playing time early in the year. This year he has spent the majority of his time manning third base, and that position figures to be open this off-season. The Royals have Mike Moustakas on the rise, but chances are he’ll start the 2011 season in the minors to hold back his arbitration clock. That means the Royals could have a few months where they need a third baseman. Josh Fields is one option, though he hasn’t done much in the majors. Signing Betemit, then, could give the Royals a solid option at third base until Moustakas arrives. Even after that Betemit can serve as a backup at most positions.

The Royals have a farm system that could lead to a bright future, but expecting them to contend in 2011 is still a bit optimistic. Prospects like Moustakas, Eric Hosmer, and Mike Montgomery are still a few years away from realizing their potential, if they are going to at all. But that doesn’t mean the Royals should just punt on the season. They have a useful player on their team who will be available at a fairly reasonable salary. Wilson Betemit might not be a long-term solution, but he can certainly help lay the bridge between the present and the future. There seems little reason for the Royals to not tender him a contract this December.

Last night, Jered Weaver continued his breakout season with a seven-inning, seven-strikeout, one-hit, no-walk win against Cleveland. Weaver has career-high strikeout rate (9.6) while maintaing a career low walk rate (2.2). His great season may have flown a bit under the radar because the Angles have been out of playoff contention for so much of the season, so I wanted to make sure to look into it a bit before his season ended.

Looking at pitch-type numbers, his curveball percentage has gone up a bit, and that prompted me to poke around regarding his curves. Just checking one game’s location charts, I noticed that a number of these curves were up in the zone, and that those high curves induced some whiffs. Usually curves are thrown lower in the zone, where they get the most whiffs.

Were these high curves (and whiffs on them) a one-day fluke or a pattern for Weaver? I plotted a histogram of the heights of his curves to see.

Looks like Weaver does consistently throw higher curves than the average pitcher. Does he get a fair number of swinging strikes on them? (Bands around the line are standard errors of the estimate.)

It looks like that is also the case. His curves up in the zone, and above the zone, induce about 10% swinging strikes while the average pitcher’s curves up there induce under 5%. On the other hand, Weaver’s curves below the zone induce less than 15% swinging strikes, while the average pitcher can induce around 20% swinging strikes.

All of Weaver’s pitches tend to be up in the zone — he is routinely among the league leaders in FB% — so maybe he succeeds with a high curveball because of how it looks to the batter relative to his high fastball. Josh Kalk has an interesting post on curveballs following high fastballs. It would be cool to repeat such an analysis based on the height of that curve.

No Major League team is currently in possession of as talented a young, Major League starting staff as the Toronto Blue Jays. This season has seen the coming out party for Ricky Romero, occasional ace-type brilliance from Brandon Morrow, and a quiet sub-4 FIP year for Brett Cecil. Last night, the newest horse joined the big league stables as Kyle Drabek made his Major League debut against the Baltimore Orioles. The young right-hander took the loss despite allowing just three runs in six innings, as Jose Bautista could only get to Brad Bergesen once in nine innings.

Drabek’s line (9H/6IP, 8GO/2AO) implies the sort of bad batted ball luck that we often see from sinkerballers. But this was simply not the case, as Drabek was the beneficiary of at least five good defensive plays: Aaron Hill fired a relay throw from DeWayne Wise into an out at home plate; Lyle Overbay turned a great 4-3-6 double play to end an inning; Travis Snider impressively threw out Ty Wigginton at second base; Vernon Wells “robbed” a home run from Adam Jones in right-center; and John Buck threw out Corey Patterson from his knees. We’re talking about multiple runs prevented by the Blue Jays defense, turning Drabek’s day from a Welcome to the Majors moment into a Quality Start.

There’s no question Drabek keeps a defense active. I have often wondered why Drabek’s strikeout rates in the minors weren’t great, why a guy with his stuff would post a career minor league whiff rate of just 7.5. Granted, he gets the groundouts too, but Keith Law just wrote up a minor leaguer with a 93-97 mph fastball, and Baseball America rated his curveball a “70” on the scouting scale, and he’s not striking out a batter an inning? Tonight, I got some indication on why that has been true. Yes, Drabek’s curvball is nasty – just tune into a mid-inning strikeout of Felix Pie on back-to-back curveballs to see the nastiness – but the pitch is missing something. He has, oddly enough, better command than control of the pitch (this is often said the other way around).

To push the point further, all night Drabek showed a really unique ability to bury his curveball in the dirt – it’s a trait that not many curveball pitchers possess at the age of 22. But the skill he doesn’t seem to have is the ability to throw it for strikes. I saw it only twice last night – once to Brian Roberts in the fourth inning, and then again to Matt Wieters in the sixth. The latter was a hanging curveball that Wieters deposited for a left field single. So, my hypothesis is that minor league hitters likely figured this out, and taught themselves (as best they could) to lay off the curveball in the dirt, and let Drabek beat them with the fastball. And that fastball, even at 92-95 mph, is a pitch-to-contact heater for Drabek, as he doesn’t have explosive life up in the zone.

The single he gave up to Corey Patterson in the fourth inning is a perfect example of the way two-seam fastballs lose life when they don’t get down – Drabek left it up, and the pitch went flat, serving a RBI on a platter. When low in the zone, Drabek gets some heavy sink and arm-side run on the pitch. It’s just no surprise that he racks up groundballs at the rate he does. But it’s a pitch that hitters fouled off rather than swung threw often last night, which means his breaking ball will have to really be perfect to raise his strikeout rate to a level that his stuff suggests.

Or, maybe he will start adding strikeouts because of the emergence of his new and mysterious third pitch. No, not the change-up, which was thrown a couple times last night, a waste pitch low and away to lefties. Nowhere in Baseball America’s offseason report, or even Law’s from last week, did we see mention of a pitch that Kyle Drabek threw about 20% of the time last night: a cutter. You can’t blame BA or Law, because a second-inning booth interview of his father Doug Drabek revealed that Dad taught him the pitch in the offseason, and that it’s still coming along.

But wow, does the pitch have potential. A second-inning strikeout of Adam Jones showed off the pitch in all its glory: he commanded a 90 mph pitch with slider movement with two strikes. In fact, at times, he shows great confidence in the pitch: throwing it on three balls at least three times last night. But the confidence is still not in all the right places. His Dad, in the booth interview, said the pitch was implemented as a way to jam left-handed hitters. But like a college pitcher afraid to throw his change-up against aluminum bats, Drabek wouldn’t use it in that fashion last night: back-dooring it to left-handed hitters and using it a chase pitch against right-handers.

With another winter spent between the Blue Jays underrated pitching development team, and working with a former All-Star father, it’s not hard to imagine Drabek arriving to Spring Training next year with some new weapons in tow: better command of the fastball, control of the curveball, faith in the cutter. Not one of those offerings is far away, and if he succeeds in all three areas, he might just be Toronto’s best starter. And, with this group, that’s saying something.

J.A. Happ is an interesting entity in terms of peripheral pitching statistics and traditional pitching stats. In 269.2 Major League innings, entering this afternoon’s start against the Milwaukee Brewers, Happ had posted a 3.10 ERA despite a 4.36 FIP, 4.57 xFIP, and 4.65 tERA. This season, since being traded to the Astros, Happ has been up to the same tricks, posting a 3.08 ERA despite a 3.76 FIP, 4.27 xFIP, and a 3.72 tERA. No doubt, Happ has pitched well this season, but there’s no way that he should be a 3.08 ERA pitcher – ace quality – given his stuff or his peripherals.

Happ strikes out a fair amount of batters – between six and seven per nine innings, typically – but walks far too many to sustain that kind of ERA, as he has conceded 3.6 walks per nine innings for his career and 3.9 this season for Houston. What’s sustaining him right now is a low BABIP – .244, particularly remarkable given the fact that the Astros have been terrible defensively this season, with a .681 defensive efficiency rating that ranks 25th in the league. The other helpful factors have been a 6.2% HR/FB and an 81% LOB rate, both far better than the MLB averages.

What happened to Happ today can’t be called regression to the mean, unless his mean is a pitcher with a 9.00+ ERA and far worse peripheral stats. Happ pitched 4.1 innings against the Brewers, allowing two home runs and two walks while striking out five. The Brewers also tacked on five more hits, including three doubles. Overall, Milwaukee scored five runs off Happ, including three out of the seven baserunners he allowed (the HRs don’t count, as they were never on base to be stranded).

The start pushes Happ’s HR/FB all the way up to 9.2%, his BABIP up to .257, his ERA up to 3.63, and his FIP up to roughly 4.10. He’s still well outperforming his peripheral numbers, but the J.A. Happ you see in statistical reports tomorrow is much closer to the J.A. Happ the Astros can expect to see in the future. He’s still a productive pitcher, somewhere near or slightly below the MLB average starter, but nobody should be under any sort of delusion that he’s “great,” can replace Roy Oswalt, or is a top half of the rotation starter.

With the Rangers having opened up an insurmountable lead on their AL West competitors, they’ve given Josh Hamilton a lot of rest lately. He has exactly six plate appearances in September, and when he’ll return is anyone’s guess. With a 99.8 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, the Rangers have no incentive to hurry him back for meaningless regular season games.

Due to his absence from the field, people (most notably Fox Sports’ Jon Paul Morosi) are taking the opportunity to re-open the AL MVP discussion that was basically closed at the beginning of the month. Hamilton lapped the field for the first five months of the season, leaving no real argument for anyone else. Now, though, as he stands on the sidelines, people have begun to make a case for Miguel Cabrera. Since most of the people arguing for Cabrera will reject any kind of argument based on WAR out of hand, let’s just stick with good old fashioned traditional counting stats, comparing them heads up.

Hamilton vs Cabrera:

Singles: Hamilton +20
Doubles: Cabrera +4
Triples: Hamilton +2
Home Runs: Cabrera +3
Walks: Cabrera +41
Hit By Pitch: Hamilton +2
Double Plays: Cabrera +8
Steals: Hamilton +5
Caught Stealing: Cabrera +2
Outs: Cabrera +25

Overall, its pretty close, with most of the differences in the single digits. The categories that stand out are singles, walks, and outs. Hamilton has the lead in the former, while Cabrera has more of the latter two (only one of which is a positive). Their OBP and SLG end up being pretty similar, with most of the differences coming out in the wash.

However, Hamilton’s wOBA (which is just the calculation of the run values of the individual events added together and scaled to look like OBP) is .449, while Cabrera’s is .433, a pretty decent difference in Hamilton’s advantage. Why is Hamilton’s wOBA superior, even though his lead in singles is mostly offset by Cabrera’s lead in walks?

Because there’s a dirty little secret about Cabrera’s walk rate – 30 of the 84 walks he’s been issued this year have been intentional, and intentional walks simply are not as valuable as non-intentional walks.

This is actually an intuitive conclusion, even though it might seem a little bit strange at first. Intentional walks are issued in situations where the opposing team believes it is more valuable to have the batter on first base than at the plate. It is a strategic move, based on the situation at hand, that is aimed at reducing the offense’s chance of scoring a run, or multiple runs, in a given inning.

Thanks to the play log on Cabrera’s page here, we can actually look at the situations where he’s been intentionally walked. Here are the base/out state for each of those situations:

No Outs

No intentional walks issued

One Out

First only, first and second, first and third – no intentional walks
Second only – 6 intentional walks
Third only – 4 intentional walks
Second and Third – 3 intentional walks

Two outs

First only – no intentional walks issued
First and Second – 3 intentional walks
First and Third – 1 intentional walk
Second and Third – 1 intentional walk
Second only – 7 intentional walks
Third only – 5 intentional walks

In all 30 instances where opposing managers chose to put Cabrera on, it was in a situation where he otherwise would have had a chance to drive in a man already in scoring position. In addition, only four of the 30 walks actually advanced runners, as IBBs are generally issued when first base is already open.

The end result? These walks weren’t all that beneficial to the Tigers chances of winning the games in which they occurred. The average win probability added of the 30 intentional walks is just 1.5 percent. The average win probability added of the 54 non-intentional walks Cabrera has drawn this year? 3.3 percent.

Cabrera’s walk rate is heavily influenced by the IBBs that have been issued when he’s up, and those simply aren’t particularly helpful to the Tigers chances of winning, because they come in situations where Detroit would be better off with Cabrera at the plate than on first base. They help his OBP and OPS, but they don’t really contribute to the Tigers scoring more runs, which is why Hamilton’s wOBA is significantly higher, even with similar rate numbers.

In this case, Hamilton’s singles trump Cabrera’s walks. Even though Cabrera has a .003 edge in OPS, Hamilton’s been the more productive hitter this year. That could change if Hamilton sits out the rest of the year and Cabrera has a monster finish to the year, but it’s going to be tough for him to pull away enough offensively to offset the pretty big gap in defensive value. Barring something crazy, odds are pretty good that Josh Hamilton will end the season as the AL MVP, even if he doesn’t play in September. He was that good from April through August.