The Nationals made a pair of moves Saturday, sending utility-man Jerry Hairston Jr to the Brewers and starting pitcher Jason Marquis to the Diamondbacks. Both were marginal moves that weren’t all that exciting, but the Nats turned two players who didn’t factor into their plans into prospects who might. In exchange for Hairston, the Brewers sent back outfielder Erik Komatsu. For Marquis, the Diamondbacks traded away shortstop Zach Walters. Neither prospect is what we might label “can’t-miss” but both have the upside to help the Nationals as their rebuilding blossoms into contention.

Hairston signed a one year, $2 million deal in the offseason with the Nats, leading some to question why a team in their position even needed someone like him. Well, this is why. As the trade deadline approaches, some fringe contender is going to need middle infield help, either to replace a failed starter or to bide time due to an injury, and will make a trade for a player of that ilk. Hairston accomplishes both of those goals for the Brewers, who are not only dealing with the offensive impotence of Casey McGehee and Yuniesky Betancourt, but also injuries to Rickie Weeks and Carlos Gomez.

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Today, the Rangers traded Chris Davis and Tommy Hunter to the Orioles for setup man Koji Uehara. Some might balk at the asking price, but it’s become obvious that neither Hunter nor Davis were going to figure in to the Rangers’ future plans. And Uehara might end up at the cheapest way for the Rangers to upgrade their late-inning relief.

It’s true that there are a lot of years of control left on the young players that the Orioles acquired. Both can be free agents in 2016 at the earliest. But it’s also true that both players had muted upside.

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With the flurry of rumors around the trade deadline, it can be easy for a move to sneak up seemingly out of nowhere. Theo Epstein and Dayton Moore pulled the trigger on one of those deals this afternoon, with the Red Sox acquiring second baseman Mike Aviles from the Royals for minor leaguers Yamaico Navarro, a 23-year-old versatile infielder, and Kendal Volz, a 23-year-old righty reliever.

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The Detroit Tigers made a move that will help them today and in the future, acquiring starting pitcher Doug Fister from the Seattle Mariners. The Tigers will also receive reliever David Pauley, and will send Casper Wells, Charlie Furbush, Francisco Martinez and a PTBNL to Seattle.

With Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer and Rick Porcello already in place, the Tigers headed into the trade deadline looking for a back-end starter. Fister, owner of a 3.33 ERA, will slide in nicely behind Detroit’s other arms. While Fister’s ERA is certainly a result of Safeco Field and the Mariners’ defense, he is by no means a product of a great situation. Fister’s xFIP currently sits below 4.00, as does his SIERA. While his league-average numbers are all well and good, Fister’s value comes from his contract situation. The 27-year old won’t be arbitration eligible until 2013, giving the Tigers another year or two of very cheap production.

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You’re the shepherd of a contending team. Your veteran left fielder is 10% worse than the average major leaguer and your young right fielder is part of a tandem that’s third-worst in the National League at he position. An exciting young corner outfielder is available on the market. Acquiring the upgrade is a no-brainer, right?

A lot of ink will be spilled about how Hunter Pence is over-rated. You can point out that he’s got a below-average walk rate. You can say his strikeout rate is only average. It’s true that his power looks above average when compared to the league but is only about the same as the average right fielder (.163 ISO for Pence, .168 for the average right-fielder). It’s even true that he steals bases at a less-than-efficient rate (63%).

And yet, acquiring Pence makes sense for the Phillies.

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A recent photo of Cleveland manager Manny Acta.

Featured Game
Kansas City (7) at Cleveland (8) | 19:05 ET
This game has all the things to put a smile on your face — and also on other parts of your body, if that’s something you’re into.

To wit:
• Felipe Paulino, pitching for the Royals, has been excellent since joining said team’s rotation at the beginning of June, producing this exact line: 60.2 IP, 8.75 K/9, 2.23 K/9, 48.8% GB, 2.99 SIERA, 3.23 xFIP, 82 xFIP-.
• Justin Masterson, pitching for the Indians, can throw all fastballs if he wants — and he doesn’t care what you or anyone thinks.
• The Royals (average batter age of 26.5) and Indians (28.0) are the youngest and fifth-youngest teams, respectively, in the league.
• The Indians, despite their youth — and the fifth-lowest opening-day payroll, as well — are only 2.5 games out of first place.
• People will/have come! Average attendance at Cleveland’s Progressive Field this season (per Baseball Reference): 21,158. Attendance last night (per MLB.com): 35,390.

Watch: Fox Sports Kansas City. (I say this with little authority, however. I know I’ve watched before and haven’t been gravely offended. And, as an aside, Royal broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre cites both lectio divina and Thomas Merton in this article from the National Catholic Register — which, regardless of your thoughts on religion, organized or otherwise, this suggests Lefebvre is probably the thoughtful, curious sort.)

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.7.

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The Astros finalized a deal Friday night sending all-star outfielder Hunter Pence to the Phillies, along with $1 million in cash, for RHP Jarred Cosart, 1B/OF Jonathan Singleton, and two players to be named later. One of the PTBNLs turned out to be Josh Zeid, a reliever from Double-A Reading, while the other isn’t considered to be a major prospect per Ken Rosenthal, who broke the story.

The Astros didn’t have to deal Pence right now since he is under team control for two more years. However, his value has never been greater, since he can impact three playoff races. Most available players are half-year rentals or are under contract or control for one more season. Pence was also about to get fairly expensive for the Astros, who, as a rebuilding team did not need to carry a $12-15 mm player that didn’t help accomplish their goals. Pence might have been the face of the Astros franchise, but that was more indicative of the status of the organization than anything specific to his set of skills.

Though he isn’t truly a differencemaker, or an offensive savior for any interested team, the perception of his abilities around the league likely exceeds his actual production. Combine these ideas and the Astros should have been able to extract a great return for a good, not great, player. In getting Cosart and Singleton, they took on some risk (Cosart’s durability, Singleton’s lack of position), but there is a very good chance that they acquired a package equally as good as the return on Roy Halladay.

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That footage you see there is of Chicago Cub outfielder and No. 8 hitter Tyler Colvin swinging and missing at a pitch from the newest of St. Louis Cardinals, Edwin Jackson, in the second inning of this evening’s Cubs-Cardinals matchup. More accurately, it’s Tyler Colvin swinging at (what appears to be) an 0-0 slider very much in the dirt with the bases loaded and no outs.

While, given all the variables at play, it’s difficult to say exactly how many runs Colvin cost his team with that one ill-advised hack, we do know — thanks to work from a combo package of Toms Tango and Tippett from 2006 — roughly what the difference in wOBA is given different counts.

Specifically (again, as of 2006), batters passing through a count of 1-0 had a collective wOBA of.371. Meanwhile, batters passing through a count of 0-1 had a collective wOBA of .283*. The difference between those two states, in a context-neutral environment, is about 0.1 runs — but that’s just on a single pitch, with literally no regard for the situation. Considering that, in a typical none on, none out scenario, generic run expectancy is 0.46 and that, in this situation, the (again, generic) run expectancy was 2.28, then we see that Colvin’s lack of discipline is magnified even more.

*The exact numbers are probably different this season given the deflated run environment, but the point remains.

It’s Friday, two days before the trade deadline, and I officially have rumor-induced ADHD. I keep catching myself peeking at my Twitter feed ever couple minutes, and I don’t think I’ve closed my MLB Trade Rumors tab in four days. Sunday needs to come and go already so I can go back to having a life.

As I can barely focus on anything for more than 15 minutes, I figured I’d write up some of my assorted musings on the big rumors floating around out there. Original idea, huh?

The Ubaldo Jimenez Rumors

I don’t get it. If I was the Rockies, there’s no way in heck that I’d trade Jimenez. I can understand the logic behind shopping him, considering they have lots of holes on their roster for 2012 and no surefire prospects ready to fill them, but the Rockies had better be sure they’re getting back an absurd haul for him. How often do 5-6 WAR pitchers come along, nonetheless ones that are signed for only $18 million over the next three years? Pitchers like Jimenez are rare commodities, and no matter how good a prospect is, they’re still only a prospect.

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Bill James created a metric called Game Score that looks at a pitcher’s standard pitching line, to come up with an overall score, centered at 50, with most scores in the 0 to 100 range. I am trying to take that concept, deconstruct Game Score, and reconstruct it by forcing it to follow some set rules.

The scale of Game Score will mimic win percentage. So, a Game Score of 50 means you will win 50% of the time. A Game Score of 70 means you will win 70% of the time, and so on.

We’re not going to be total maniacs about it, and force a Game Score to stop at 99 or 1. Think of the relationship between Game Score and win percentage more as useful guidelines, rather than a hard constraint. This is especially because the relationship between wins and runs is not linear, and so, it’s going to be impossible to create a linear metric that will work at the extremes.

We also know that ten marginal runs equals one marginal win. This means that one marginal run equals 0.10 marginal wins. In terms of the Game Score scale, one marginal run is 10 Game Score points. Keep this in mind as you read the various versions of Game Score.

In addition, we’re going to set the starting point of Game Score to 40, rather than following the Bill James lead of starting at 50. The idea here is to think in terms of replacement level, and if you pitch to one batter and are out of the game, we’d hardly call that an “average” game. Indeed, I would even consider starting the Game Score at 35 or even 30. For the moment, we’ll start at 40, and let’s see where this takes us.

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