In 2009, the Savannah Sand Gnats boasted the best starting staff across the New York Mets organization. With Historic Grayson Stadium within walking distance, I scouted 50 or so of their games that season which included starts by each of their starting pitchers. Among the pitchers i saw was Chris Schwinden, who is scheduled to debut Thursday for the Mets.

On that staff, I nicknamed one pitcher “family night” and took the night off from scouting whenever he pitched. That player was Chris Schwinden, who was considered a non-prospect by not only me, but by contacts I spoke to who watched him in person.

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Adam Dunn, he broken.

After signing a rather princely contract this past offseason, Dunn the Carriage morphed into Pumpkin Dunn. Last month, Dave Cameron looked at history’s greatest baseball disasters. Adam Dunn’s 2011 season was peerless.

Here’s the good news: Dunn should hit better.

And the bad: If and when his luck does start swinging around, he needs to change his approach or else he’s still going to be a black hole at DH.
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After a battery of tests, FanGraphs has verified that Chris Schwinden is not Miguel Batista.

Featured Game
Atlanta (4) at New York Nationals (4) | 16:10 ET
• Julio Teheran, one of baseball’s top pitching prospects, makes his third start of the season for the Braves.
• You can see Teheran’s numbers at Triple-A Gwinnett to the right of this colon: 144.2 IP, 7.59 K/9, 2.99 BB/9, 0.31 HR/9, 3.06 FIP.
• For the Mets, right-hander Chris Schwinden, 24, makes his major-league debut.
• While not necessarily a top prospect, Schwinden has the distinction of being not Miguel Batista.
• Which must be nice for Mets fans, at least.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Mets Television.

San Diego (6) at Arizona (8) | 21:40 ET
• Is anyone curious about how Aaron Hill’s performed since joining Arizona?
• If so, here’s that answer in number form: 56 PA, .392/.429/.627, .413 BABIP, 170 RC+.
• Replace the BABIP with Hill’s .284 career mark, and the result is a 110 wRC+
• Which, that’d still be his best performance since 2009 and second-best overall.
• Or, um, his best performance as a baseballer, that is.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Diamondbacks Television.

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 5.1.

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Livan Hernandez struggled against the Mets on Sunday, giving up six runs on eight hits over 5 1/3 innings. As he exited the field in the top of the sixth, his 2011 season had officially come to an end.

Hernandez isn’t injured. He isn’t on a strict innings limit either. The Nationals simply decided to shut Hernandez down for the season’s final month. Removing him from the rotation enables the team to test out various youngsters in preparation for next season. Livan didn’t put up a fight. He understood the decision and accepted it, and will embrace his new role as mentor and de facto second pitching coach.

This type of decision isn’t made every day, especially with a pitcher still as productive as Hernandez. Then again, Hernandez isn’t your every day type of pitcher, and this story will only add to his legend as one of the best characters and people in the game.

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Every year without fail, the MVP debate stirs up controversy. It’s all too predictable, considering the Baseball Writers Association of American (BBWAA) doesn’t define what they mean by “Most Valuable” and leaves that distinction up to each individual voter’s discretion. Each voter has their own interpretation, leading to different ballots and debates that go around in circles. It’s old and tired, and yet we can’t help but fall for it every time.

I’m assuming the vast majority of you already know this, but there are two schools of thought on what “valuable” means: the old-school belief that a player’s team needs to make the postseason for them to have been “most valuable”, and the new-school thought that value is value regardless of if a player’s team makes the playoffs or not. Why penalize a player having a spectacular year simply because the rest of their team wasn’t any good?

So how should we define valuable? Value is a word intrinsically tied up in sabermetrics — what else is WAR supposed to be measuring? — so you’d think we’d be able to properly define it. Oh, the English language — that so much controversy can be caused over something as mundane as an imprecise definition.

But this weekend, I had an epiphany. As much as it pains me to say it, you know, those old-school baseball writers might actually have a point.

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Four great men from Philadelphia once said, “You don’t know what you’ve got, til’ it’s gone.” In the case of Stephen Strasburg, at least in my case, I think we didn’t know what he had until he returned. Last night, Strasburg turned in a very pedestrian performance by his standards, striking out only four batters while allowing only two hits and zero walks.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I suggest that should Strasburg stay healthy and avoid the problems that ended his first season, he could be the best pitcher I’ve ever seen, and perhaps the best pitcher to ever play the game. He is only 73 innings into his young career, and already we’ve seen more excitement and amazement than many pitchers provide in a career. He already has a 14 strikeout game, a 10 strikeout game, a nine strikeout game, and two eight strikeout games. He’s thrown 100 MPH fastballs and 92 MPH changeups. He’s thrown freezing curveballs and now, Pitch F/X suggests he may have even found a fourth pitch.

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Call-up season is upon us. It’s a lovely time of year. Even guys like Canadian Legend Simon Pond can get a bit of playing time here and there as teams give their regulars a bit more rest. It also means that a greater proportion of league-wide playing time than usual is going to a group of players whose true talent is replacement level or below. This situation inspires an assertion that I occasionally see this time of year: September statistics should be ignored or weighted less heavily because of the influx of less-talented players. It is easy to understand the motivation behind such a claim, but I think it is problematic.

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Featured Game
Boston (10) at Toronto (6) | 19:07 ET
• This game is mostly meaningless, on the one hand, in terms of playoff implications.
• On the other hand, so is every jerky game in the whole jerky league, basically.
• And this is the only one that’ll feature Torontonian Brett Lawrie.
• Which, you probably heard all the news yesterday about how he leads the league in Player NERD.
• That was pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty big news.

MLB.TV Audio Feed: Boston Television.

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 5.5.

Read the rest of this entry »