Over the next few days, you’re going to read an awful lot about how Jered Weaver left money on the table to re-sign with the Angels and pitch close to home. That is almost certainly true, since he probably could have commanded a significantly larger deal had he stayed healthy through 2013 and hit the free agent market, where prices for pitchers of his quality are significantly higher than the $17 million per year he just agreed to. But in addition to his desire to stay close to home, Weaver also knew that re-signing with the Angels was in his best long-term interests, because he’s pitching in one of the best environments possible for his skillset.

More than anything else, the defining characteristic about Jered Weaver is that he’s a fly ball guy. In fact, he’s one of the most extreme fly ball pitchers in all of baseball. Since the start of the 2009 season, the only starter who has generated fewer ground balls than Weaver is Ted Lilly – Weaver is 73rd out of 74 qualified pitchers in ground ball rate.

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Giants 6, Astros 4

Moving the Needle: Pablo Sandoval’s two-run homer puts the Giants ahead in the 11th, +.492 WPA. The Giants tied the game at four in the fourth, and then waited seven more innings to score another run. Both teams threatened in the ninth, loading the bases, but neither came through. In the 11th the Giants got a one-out walk, and then two batters later Sandoval blasted them to victory. Ramon Ramirez, filling in for the injured Brian Wilson, pitched a perfect bottom half.

Notables

J.D. Martinez: 3 for 5, 1 2B. He drove in two runs. J.D. Martin, on the other hand, is … I have no idea.

Brandon Belt: 4 for 5, 1 HR. He drove in three. Aubrey Huff should be getting the Aaron Rowand treatment soon enough.

Also in this issue: Angels 7, Orioles 1 | Braves 1, Diamondbacks 0 | White Sox 10, Rangers 0 | Cardinals 6, Cubs 2 | Tigers 8, Indians 7 | Rockies 5, Dodgers 3 | Red Sox 6, Royals 1 | Yankees 3, Twins 0 | Nationals 5, Phillies 0 | Blue Jays 1, A’s 0 | Brewers 6, Mets 2 | Rays 8, Mariners 7 | Reds 5, Pirates 4 | Padres 4, Marlins 3

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Rich Harden is effective when healthy, but that caveat is more relevant for him than it is for most others. Over nine major-league seasons, he has never thrown 200 innings in a single year. Since logging 189.2 frames in 2004, he hasn’t even thrown for more than 148 innings in a season — and he’s working on his second consecutive year with fewer than 100 innings to his stats line.  He can’t seem to stay healthy long enough to have an impact commensurate with his talent.

Regardless, Harden’s possibilities are tough to ignore. He misses bats at an elite rate for a starter and induces feeble contact when batters connect. He has a career .274 batting average on balls in play, significantly lower than the league average. He also ranks third among starters with at least 200 total innings since 2008 with a 10.1 K/9: only Brandon Morrow and Tim Lincecum have a higher rate. Over the same span, batters have whiffed at 13 percent of Harden’s offerings, by far the highest rate for a starting pitcher. Cole Hamels ranks second at 11.7 percent. He’s a starter with elite reliever numbers.

It’s easy to see why teams are always interested in him despite the checkered injury history, and why that interest persists even with a small sample of starts this year.

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Jered Weaver is one step closer to becoming an Angel For Life. Sunday night, the Los Angels Angels of Anaheim agreed to a five-year, $85 million dollar contract with their 28-year-old ace.

Weaver’s status as one of baseball’s premiere pitchers is certain. Weaver has only once failed to post an ERA below 4.00 (2008) and is now in his second straight season with both ERA- and FIP- marks below 75. He ranks third among qualified starters in ERA- over the past two seasons and fourth in FIP-, among such names as Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Felix Hernandez, to name a few.

Two of Weaver’s contemporaries near the top of the list supply near-perfect context with which to evaluate his new extension. Justin Verlander signed a five-year, $80 million contract extension with the Tigers before the 2010 season, and the Mariners locked up Felix Hernandez with a five-year, $78 million extension.

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Winston Churchill, were he alive, would be confounded by Luis Valbuena.

Featured Game
Cleveland (6) at Detroit (2) | 13:05 ET
• Rookie Jason Kipnis, in case you hadn’t heard, was placed on the 15-DL on Friday.
• With Orlando Cabrera gone, that leaves 25-year-old semi-enigma Luis Valbuena to pick up the majority of second-base starts.
• Luis Valbuena, Triple-A: 883 PA, .302/.388/.470.
• Luis Valbuena, Major Leagues: 791 PA, .223/.283/.340.
• Semi-enigma!

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Cleveland Radio?

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.6.

The following Game Scores include the new and improved playoff-odds adjustment, which you can learn about in your brain by clicking here.

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Friday night, Angel outfield prospect Mike Trout hit the second home run of his very short career. That Trout has any home runs at all at his age places him into a pretty exclusive club.

Though Trout is technically 20 years old — having celebrated his birthday on August 7th — he’s currently in his age-19 season (the cutoff being July 1st, or roughly halfway through the season).

Over the last 25 years, only 10 major leaguers have hit a home run before their respective age-20 seasons. Below is that list of players, including how many homers each one hit in his age-19 season and also each player’s career WAR per 650 plate appearances:

Obviously, these players didn’t go on to have (almost uniformly) excellent careers because they hit a home run at age 19. Rather, the mere fact that each was given the opportunity to play at that age is indicative of the sort of skills each possessed.

In either case, it’s excellent company that Trout is keeping at the moment.

Search made possible by BR’s Play Index.

This stuff is probably less impressive than Arizona débutante Wade Miley’s.

Featured Game
Arizona (9) at Atlanta (4) | 19:10 ET
• Left-hander Wade Miley, 24, makes his major-league debut tonight in place of the recently acquired — and even more recently injured — Jason Marquis.
• Which, one weird thing about Miley is how he posted considerably better numbers at Triple-A this season (54.1 IP, 9.28 K/9, 2.65 BB/9, 0.66 HR/9, 2.98 FIP) than he did at Double-A (75.1 IP, 5.50 K/9, 3.35 BB/9, 0.72 HR/9, 4.25 FIP).
• This, despite the fact that both the league and the park in which the Double-A Mobile BayBears play is pitcher-friendlier than the equivalents for Triple-A Reno.
• In his scouting report on Miley from back in February, Prospect Maven Marc Hulet suggests that Miley’s strikeout numbers have generally lagged behind his stuff.
• And by “stuff” I’m assuming Hulet means his pitches.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Braves Radio, I guess?

Also Playing
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.4.

The following Game Scores include the new and improved playoff-odds adjustment, which you can learn about in your brain by clicking here.

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Coming into today, I can’t say I had more than a surface-deep opinion on Jim Hendry. I don’t follow the Cubs as closely as I do other teams, and while  I knew that Cubs fans didn’t like him, I’d never done enough research to form an opinion more than, “Eh, he’s not the best.” And now that Hendry has been fired by the Cubs, I’ve done plenty of research and spent the day reading around…yet I still don’t know exactly what to think about him. Hendry is a tough knot to untangle.

I don’t think you’ll find any Cubs fans out there that criticize Hendry’s character. From all reports, he’s a stand-up guy that cared deeply about his players and the Cubs franchise. Heck, he stayed on for multiple weeks after he was fired, for the sole purpose of helping the Cubs sign their draft picks and transition smoothly. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.

But the Cubs are currently adrift without any real focus or direction. They are on pace for their second straight fourth place finish in the NL Central, and they haven’t had a strong, competitive team since 2008. And yet, Hendry built this team as if he intended to compete this season, signing Carlos Pena and trading for Matt Garza. Did Hendry misevaluate the Cubs’ place on the win curve? What was his plan going forward? Did he necessarily have one? With all these questions swirling around him and the Cubs, it’s about time Hendry moved on.

So what exactly was Hendry? A good GM? Bad GM? As you’d expect, the answer is somewhere in between.

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Due to a back injury to veteran Kevin Youkilis, the Boston Red Sox club has promoted catcher/designated hitter Ryan Lavarnway to the Major Leagues. He made his debut Thursday night against the Kansas City Royals and went 0-for-4 with a strikeout. Lavarnway, 24, is not going to step into the Red Sox lineup and immediate produce at the star level that Youkilis has (4.1 WAR in ’11), but he should be slightly-above replacement level in the short term.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating Lavarnway’s arrival in the Majors. Out of the five pre-season Top 10 prospect lists for Boston [Baseball America, Kevin Goldstein, Keith Law, John Sickels], the scribe from minorleagueball.com and I were the only ones to place him on the Boston lists (Law earns mega points, though, for placing both Will Middlebrooks and Xander Bogaerts on his list).

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Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.

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