John Gordon will call his final game one week from today — an event that will mark the end of a broadcasting legacy in Minnesota.

The venerable play-by-play man has been the radio voice of the Twins for each of the past 25 years, and few have done the job with as much grace and class. The 70-year-old Gordon has never been flashy — save for an occasionally over-exuberant “Touch-’em-all” home run call — but he has always been entertaining and informative. He also has been extremely popular — both with fans and with the many friends he has made in the game.

Earlier this season, Gordon shared his thoughts on broadcasting, baseball in Minnesota and several other topics — including the steroid era.

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David Laurila: How different is the game that you broadcast from the one that you grew up with?

John Gordon: Well, certainly the talent aspect is a lot different. I think that there is much more athleticism in the game now. Growing up in Detroit, I would watch Major League Baseball. Not that Mickey Mantle and Harvey Kuehn, and some of the other players I followed closely, weren’t great athletes, but I don’t think they had the athleticism that the players have today.

DL: Was the broadcasting different? Read the rest of this entry »

Episode Eighty-Four
In which “the end” is a topic of conversation.

Headlines
Official Positions — Second Guessed!
Wild Card Races — Considered Momentarily!
The Nationals 2012 Rotation — Waxed Poetic On!

Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee

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

Audio on the flip-flop. (Approximately 35 min play time.)

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For the first four-plus months of the season, Chicago White Sock Brent Morel played pretty similarly to how one might have expected Brent Morel to play, striking out rarely and walking even more rarely while displaying what is referred euphemistically to as “gap” power.

Over the past month, however, he’s basically turned into a third base-playing Ian Kinsler, walking and striking out at about the same rate while hitting home runs at a pretty excellent pace, but with the low-ish BABIP that Kinsler routinely posts.

To wit:

Because you’re a nerd, you’re definitely prepared to inform the author about the sample size with which we’re dealing here and its relative small-ness. Please understand that your warnings are being considered, one-by-one, as carefully and lovingly as possible. And, indeed, it’s true: even James Loney can look good for 100 PAs at a time.

It’s worth noting, though, that it’s not just Morel’s slash line we’re looking at. The other numbers here become reliable with smaller samples — samples such that, even if we were to regress to the reliable sample size with Morel’s career numbers, we’d still be seeing what basically amounts to a different guy. Speaking anecdotally, that’s a less common thing.

There are zero hard conclusions to be drawn from this. But I, personally, will be watching Morel with more interest over the remainder of the season and into next.

Thank to you Baseball Reference for their sweet game logs.

The Major League Baseball Comeback Player of the Year award has been interesting to me since it was conceived by MLB — and Viagra — in 2005. Certainly it’s not an award a player aspires to when beginning a career, but it can be quite an honor for someone who’s struggled but then overcome. In the award’s brief history, the winners have run the gamut. Some have been a one-year blip on the radar — like Aaron Hill or Francisco Liriano. Others have been superstars who’ve had a year away from typical production, only to return to that previous level. Guys like Jim Thome, or Ken Griffey Jr., surely fit that bill. Other times, the award can be a harbinger, like when Cliff Lee won in 2008.

This year, there are a several viable candidates in both leagues: Jacoby Ellsbury, James Shields and Alex Gordon seem like excellent options in the American League. In the NL, Ryan Vogelsong, Carlos Beltran and Matt Kemp all are strong contenders. In the process of thinking about who would get my votes this season (Gordon and Vogelsong) I began considering some players who could be candidates for the award next year. Here’s my list:

Pedro Alvarez – 3B, Pittsburgh Pirates

This isn’t the way it’s supposed to go for top prospects, especially not for one who already had nearly 400 major-league plate appearances that implied there was a developing star in the batter’s box. Yet injuries and ineffectiveness marred Alvarez’s sophomore season, holding him to fewer than 250 plate appearances and an OPS in the .550s. There were questions about Alvarez’s long swing in 2011, but his troubles seem mostly due to bad luck. Not only has the health bug bit Alvarez, but he also owns a .275 BABIP – among the 15 lowest of all players with 200-plus plate appearances – despite an incredible surge in GB/FB, LD%, and GB%. Sure, Alvarez is going to strike out a lot, but it’s safe to say that his rates foretell a return to form for the 24-year-old. He might never become the superstar many folks though he would become, but Alvarez should be an asset next season.

Franklin Gutierrez – CF, Seattle Mariners

To say the least, it’s been an exceptionally rough season for “Death to Flying Things.” If his .224/.261/.273 slash line hadn’t put him in cahoots with Chone Figgins, Gutierrez was hampered by a mysterious stomach illness that required trips to the Mayo Clinic and cost Franklin the first six weeks of the season. An oblique injury later cost him almost all of September. As a result, Gutierrez started slow — with a 467 OPS after a month — and never really recovered. On the plus side, Gutierrez had a .266 BABIP — this, despite no obvious disparity in his batted-ball rates. If he can gravitate back to his .306 career mark — and stay healthy — he should show marked improvement.

Joe Mauer/Justin Morneau – C/1B, Minnesota Twins

If Gutierrez’s season has been bad, the Twins have gotten a double dose. With both Mauer and Morneau shut down for the season, the duo will have missed 173 games for a team that’s probably the worst in the franchise’s 51-year history. With Morneau, there’s plenty of doubt about whether he’ll ever resemble anything close to the All-Star he once was. With Mauer, though, a healthy off-season – which is far from guaranteed – should go a long way to helping him return to his .300/.400/.500-type glory. With $37 million tabbed for this pair in 2012, the Twins simply can’t rebuild.

Adam Dunn – DH, Chicago White Sox

Dunn has had a horrific 2011, but he’s not this bad. His wOBA is nearly 100 points worse than his previous-worse season; his ISO is still only about half what it was in his previous-worst full season; and the same goes for his wRC+. In a nutshell, Dunn’s batted-ball rates are almost identical to his career rates across the board. And while he’s never been a BABIP monger, his .244 mark is still 50 points below his career mark. For one last bit of context: If Dunn magically improved his 2011 OPS by .300 points, it STILL wouldn’t match his career OPS. Even a modest return to form for Dunn should help him lock down this award.

Prospect ranking season is just around the corner here at FanGraphs. Starting at the end of October, the annual Top 10 Prospect lists will be back for a third year. While I work feverishly to whittle down those lists behind the scenes, let’s have a look back at the 2011 Top 10 lists and see which prospects disappointed in each organization, starting with the American League East.

New York Yankees
FanGraphs 2011 Top 10 Prospects
Decreased Value: Slade Heathcott, OF

Had I included RHP Andrew Brackman on my Top 10 list, he most certainly would have been listed here; thankfully I resisted temptation. Despite his horrendous season, the Yankees organization has to be pretty happy with the development of its other key prospects in 2011; few players saw their values decrease. Having to pick one from my list, I settled on Heathcott. The outfielder was drafted out of a Texas high school with a less-than-stellar reputation and a well-documented difficult past. The year started off well for Heathcott but then there was a brawl incited by the Yankees prospect and then a shoulder injury that wiped out the remainder of his season. The 2012 season will be a big one for Heathcott as he definitely has the tools to be a star.

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A couple days ago, Tom Tango, did a study to show how hitters produced at different times of the day. One possible problem with the data is that shadows from the stadium could be skewing the data. We would like to know if at any time of the day there is a shadow between the pitcher and the hitter and from what time to what time does the shadow stay between the two combatants. Finally, if any one knows the information on any closed stadium, that information would be helpful.

With this information, it can be seen if the shadow has an effect on the hitter-pitcher match-up. I would expect the number of strikeouts to increase as the batter would have a harder time picking up the ball, but it would be nice to put a number to the theory. Thanks for your time and I am sure someone will jump right in for the data on Tropicana Field.

Some things work a lot better in your mind than they do in the real world, and after a couple of days, I think we’ve learned that the idea of taking “official positions” was one of these things. Our intention for the series was to try and use the awards voting to help clarify some misconceptions about our metrics and how they should be used to evaluate player seasons, but in practice, the titles of the post – and the fact that we’re really a big conglomerate of individuals with their own take on things – probably created more confusion than anything else.

Life is full of lessons, and hopefully we’ve learned from this one. We’ll be publishing some thoughts on how our metrics pertain to awards voting, but you won’t be seeing any more “official positions”, and we’ll try to do a better job focusing on the validity of multiple viewpoints. In almost every case, there are legitimate disagreements that can be had, and we value the different voices that make valid points from different angles. We’ll try to make that more clear going forward.

Just like our metrics, we’re not perfect. When we do something that doesn’t work, we’ll try to correct it. The “official position” series didn’t work as intended, and so we’ll make some steps to correct that.