A.J. Pierzynski is, in his own words, “not what people think.” But that only applies to off the field. The ChiSox catcher readily acknowledges being Public Enemy No. 1 between the white lines, an irascible gamer who cares far less about making friends than he does about winning. The 14-year, big-league veteran doesn’t mind that perception, just so as long as fans realize that he’s not a villain in street clothes. He may share traits with Ozzie Guillen — and get along with Barry Bonds — but he also stops to smell the roses. Behind the mask, big, bad A.J. Pierzynski is just a regular guy who likes to have fun.

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David Laurila: Who is A.J. Pierzynski?

AJ Pierzynski: I’m not what people think I am, for one thing. A lot of people think I’m a rough-and-tough and mean person. I’m just a normal guy who likes to have fun and is lucky enough to play baseball for a living.

DL: Where does that perception come from?

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Even at this point in the season, just past the halfway mark and heading into the All-Star break, few teams want to admit that they’re sellers. But with a league-worst 29-57 record, the Astros are firmly sellers in this market. Of course, a team that has the worst record by 5.5 games probably doesn’t have a deep pool of talent from which to deal. Yet the Astros do have six offensive players with 1 WAR or greater, and a handful of pitchers who are either performing well, or who are talented but faltering. That could create a somewhat favorable situation come deadline time, even if it means assuring the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 draft.

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It’s July 5th and the PIttsburgh Pirates are just 1 1/2 games out of first place in the National League Central. Outside of the career rebirth of Ryan Vogelsong, this has to rank as the most surprising outcome of the first half of the season. While there are some good young players on the roster, this team was not expected to be a contender, especially not in a tough division with three other teams all chasing the brass ring this year.

But we are 85 games into the season and the Pirates are still hanging around. They’re not exactly blowing away the competition, but at 44-41 Pittsburgh has held their own to date and benefited from the fact that no other team in the division have yet to really establish themselves as the team to beat. So, now we’re a little less than four weeks from the trade deadline and the Pirates are the team that is going to have to make the toughest call on what they should do before July 31st. Do the Pirates believe in their team in order to make a move to try and chase down a playoff spot, or should they sell off some of their potentially interesting trade chips in order to keep building for the future?

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You’re gonna have a TV Party tonight.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Expanded previews for seven or eleven games or something.

2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of this mid-week’s games.

3. An accidental half-essay on watching taped games.

Note: the Team NERD scores used in this edition of One Night Only are the playoff-adjusted variety introduced in this week’s Leaderboards of Pleasure.

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Indians 6, Yankees 3

Moving the Needle: Austin Kearns turns the game on its head with a three-run blast, +.527 WPA. The Indians and Yanks had been through a game like this before, where A.J. Burnett pitched well, but the Yankees couldn’t score. This time, however, they broke through first, going up 2-0 in the top of the seventh. Burnett came out for the bottom half and got two outs, but then the wheels fell off. Shelley Duncan singled home a run, and Kearns followed that with a huge homer, putting the Indians up 4-2.

Notables

Curtis Granderson: 1 for 3, 1 HR, 1 BB. His homer made it 4-3 in the eighth, but the Indians squelched that rally in the bottom half with a two-run homer.

Josh Tomlin: 7 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 5 K. The only three hits he allowed came in the seventh, but they were big ones.

Also in this issue: Angels 5, Tigers 1 | Braves 4, Rockies 1 | Blue Jays 9, Red Sox 7 | Phillies 1, Marlins 0 | White Sox 5, Royals 4 | Mets 5, Dodgers 2 | Diamondbacks 8, Brewers 6 | Twins 7, Rays 0 | Nationals 5, Cubs 4 | Mariners 2, A’s 1 | Pirates 5, Astros 3 | Rangers 13, Orioles 4 | Cardinals 1, Reds 0 | Padres 5, Giants 3

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Trying to play the “If you thought…” game with Ryan Vogelsong can get so out of hand, that we’ll just start here — if you thought Ryan Vogelsong was a good pitcher heading into the 2011 season, you were undeniably crazy. Everything that has happened since then has been completely unpredictable. Not only did Vogelsong re-emerge in the majors after nearly five seasons, but he managed to establish himself as an effective pitcher when injuries forced him into the rotation. After 13 starts and a 2.13 ERA, Vogelsong’s miraculous season continued as he was been named to the NL All-Star team last Sunday. While his selection is fairly controversial — Bruce Bochy did make the selection — no one can deny that Vogelsong is having an exceptional season. Even if his performance isn’t All-Star worthy, Vogelsong is proving that he’s a completely different pitcher.
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Business Graph with arrow showing profits and gains.

Last week in these electronic pages, we unveiled an exercise in absurdity known as Leaderboards of Pleasure. Simply put, the LOPs (as they will forever be called by our descendants and their descendants after them) are a complement to Paul Swydan’s excellent Power Rankings, which appear here each Monday. Except instead of trying to say anything substantive about any player or team’s absolute ability, the LOPs consolidate a number of the site’s “watchability”-type stats (including all versions of NERD).

The present document, then, is the most recent installment of these Leaderboards. For those who read last week’s edition, the format of this one should be familiar, except for one edit — namely, the addition of a playoff-adjusted Team NERD. You can read more about it below, but, essentially, this metric is the same as Team NERD but includes an adjustment for the degree to which a team is in the playoff hunt or not.

Also, there’s this change: bolded headings on which you can click to bring yourself right to a specific leaderboard.

Behold:

1. Team NERD Leaderboard
2. Team NERD Leaderboard (Playoff Adjusted)
3. Underrated Player Leaderboard
4. Pitcher NERD Leaderboard
5. Player NERD Leaderboard

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You have to love that we live in a time where thanks to the impossibly convoluted All-Star selection rules, we will see an All-Star Game next week that will be without — by 2011 WAR — the third-best pitcher and position player in the game. In any other country, we’d have starved to death long ago for deploying such Homer-ish logic, but not here. God bless America! Read the rest of this entry »