Episode Seventy-Nine
In which the talents of the guest aren’t taken for (ahem) granted.

Headlines
The Making of a Giants Fan — Explored!
McCovey Chronicles — What Up with That?!?
Buster Posey — Objectified!
Peyote — Mentioned More Than Once!

Featuring
Grant Brisbee, Great American Writer, McCovey Chronicles and Baseball Nation

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop. (Approximately 60 min play time.)

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When Frank McCourt filed for bankruptcy, he also acquired a $150 million loan to cover his immediate expenses, but since he’s broke and has bled the Dodgers dry, the only way he could come up with a big loan on short notice was to pay through the nose. Specifically, McCourt went to a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan who offered to give him the money in exchange for an interest rate of at least 10 percent along with a $4.5 million fee to secure the loan in the first place.

Because the loan is structured as being 7% above the current London interbank offered rate (usually referred to as the Libor), with a minimum Libor of 3%, the rate will always be at least 10% and could go higher depending on how the markets move. When you factor in the $4.5 million fee, the APR is closer to 13% — it’s not quite usury, but it’s a pretty terrible loan for a property that is worth “between $500 million to $1 billion” and has relatively minimal outstanding liabilities.

Meanwhile, Major League Baseball offered to loan the Dodgers an equivalent amount of money at a 7% interest rate with no fee attached, so the cost to the team would be just slightly more than half of the loan that McCourt managed to come up with on his own. Just the difference in interest rates on the principal amount borrowed is over $12,000 per day, and again, that’s not accounting for the sizable fee that McCourt agreed to pay to in order to secure a last minute emergency loan.

While having a franchise under control of Major League Baseball is clearly less than optimal, when the alternative is having it under the control of Frank McCourt, it looks like utopia. The sooner MLB can take the team away from Frank McCourt, the better off the Dodgers will be.

We are pleased to welcome Brandon Warne to the FanGraphs team. Brandon has written for every Twins publication in existence and a few that haven’t even been invented yet. We look forward to mocking him for rooting for the 2011 #6org, but more than that, hope you enjoy his pieces here on the site.

Every season when All Star voting begins to wind down, and rosters are finalized for the Midsummer Classic, fans begin murmuring the ‘S’ word. It’s an ugly, dirty four-letter word that gets thrown around with little or no regard to who is within earshot, or how the rosters are constructed.

That four letter word is snub.

With 750 roster spots occupied at any given time in the major leagues, and fewer one-in-ten of those players deemed worthy of an All-Star nod, there’s no shortage of these snubs each season. With this dynamic in mind, let’s take a peek at some players likely to be snubbed from their respective All Star squads, and plead for those with the power to make these predictions wrong to do so.

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The 2010 Seattle Mariners were supposed to be the team to show us what defense can mean to a team. Despite their objectively poor lineup and relatively shallow pitching staff, Seattle’s defense was supposed to give them a chance to win the AL West. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and certain websites may have taken a bit of flak as a result. But don’t think for a second the model can’t work. As Seattle assistant GM Tony Blengino told us at one of our events in Arizona this year, if a team is average in every respect and great in one, they have a chance to win a lot of games.

Meet the 2011 Tampa Bay Rays. They have a 100 wRC+ and a 104 FIP-. Average pitching, and average hitting. And their record? 44-35, only two games out of the wild card race and 2.5 out of the AL East lead. And their defense? Nothing short of great.

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There’s no reason to fear change.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews for six games, all of them (i.e. the previews) aimed equally at the heart and the head.

2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every game between Tuesday and Thursday.

3. This Programming Note:

What you see here, reader, is a three-day, working-week edition of One Night Only. I understand that this (a) represents a change and also that (b) change is frightening; how-ev-er, it’s the opinion of this author that games might (I say might!) be sufficiently previewed in two weekly (i.e. a Tuesday and Friday one) editions, thus freeing same author (in this case, Carson Cistulli) to more ably divert his attentions to other baseball-related splendors*.

*Like, for example, the stupid-excellent interview with Grant Brisbee of McCovey Chronicles that’ll be appearing at this site later today.

Because we’re looking into the future, of course, it’s possible that the slate of games for Thursday will change in the interim. As such, I will likely revisit this post over the course of its relevance — and will invite the readership to utilize the comments section to chastise me duly for failing to do same.

We’re in this together, reader. Not in a sexy way, necessarily. But also: sort of in a sexy way.

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It might come as a shock to FanGraphs readers, but not everyone has a use for the statistics we use on this site. Plenty of fans, and probably even some people more closely connected to the game, are comfortable with their personal observations. That’s fine. Baseball is a game, and the game is meant, first and foremost, to entertain. We all enjoy it in our own ways, and, as long as it doesn’t involve harming others, no one should disparage anyone else’s way of enjoying it. By hearing them out we might even find new ways to enjoy the game ourselves. But enjoyment is not at all the same as evaluation. That’s where we’ve run into some issues.

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A few weeks ago, we looked at a few of the arms who might be available for mid-season trades, and it wasn’t exactly a list of Cy Young candidates. Jason Marquis, Kevin Slowey, Jeremy Guthrie… useful pitchers all, but not exactly the kind of sexy addition that a team looking to make a big time push for the World Series is dreaming of. Looking around the league, there just didn’t seem to be any high quality arms with front-line starter upside who would be on the market this summer.

But then, June happened to the Marlins. After looking like a surprising contender in April and May, they’ve gone 3-22 in June, changed managers, and are now 14 1/2 games behind the first place Phillies. Even their Wild Card hopes seem long gone, as they stand 10 games back of the Braves and would have to leapfrog over 10 teams to claim the consolation playoff berth. The 2011 Marlins are going to be also-rans, and that puts a pitcher on the market who could change a lot of playoff races.

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Some players make their name for prodigious power and hit home runs in five consecutive games like Paul Konerko. Other players are known more for their feet and steal bags in four straight like Juan Pierre did earlier this year.

But, among these great luminaries of our time, there is one White Sox player who threatens to be the best ever at what he does: Carlos Quentin. That’s right, in more than 2,200 plate appearances, Quentin is already threatening the top of a certain leaderboard.

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Indians 5, Diamondbacks 4

Moving the Needle: Kelly Johnson‘s triple ties the game, but Orlando Cabrera’s homer puts the Indians back ahead, +.404 WPA each. If there’s anything better than having a tie atop the WPA leader board, it’s having a big-time tie at the top. In the bottom of the eighth Johnson laced one into the gap in right-center, bringing around Wily Mo Pena all the way from first. That tied the game at four. A half inning later, with closer J.J. Putz on the mound, Cabrera laid into one and put it just over the wall in left, putting the Indians back ahead.

Notables

Lonnie Chisenhall: 2 for 4, 1 2B. He led off the fifth with the double down the right field line, and advanced to third on a single, but the Indians couldn’t bring him around to score. Then in the sixth he came up with runners on first and second in a tie game, and he grounded one past the diving Johnson at second to put his team ahead. That’s about as nice a debut as you can hope for. I think we’re all going to enjoy watching this Lonnie Chisenhall kid — if for no reason other than he has a fun name. Lonnie Chisenahll.

Asdrubal Cabrera: 2 for 4, 1 2B, 1 HR. He now has 80 fewer PA than 2010, but has four more doubles (20) and 10 more homers (13). ::pats self on back, Barry Horowitz style::

Also in this issue: Angels 4, Nationals 3 | Tigers 4, Blue Jays 2 | Cubs 7, Rockies 3 | Dodgers 15, Twins 0 | Padres 4, Rays 3 | Braves 3, Mariners 1 | Reds 5, Rays 0

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