While pretty much everyone knows that you “can’t predict baseball,” if there was one feeling shared by the majority of analysts before the season started, it was that the Detroit Tigers were going to easily win the American League Central, perhaps with some token resistance from Cleveland. That is not how things have gone, as presently the Tigers not only find themselves trailing Cleveland, but also surprising division leader Chicago. The Tigers are clearly built to “win now,” and with almost two-thirds of a season to play, being four games out of the division lead (not to mention wildcard possibilities) is hardly insurmountable. This is especially so since neither Chicago nor Cleveland are juggernauts themselves. The Tigers are thus in a position to buy, so what do they need?

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Coming into the season, big things were expected of Matt Moore. He was ridiculous down the stretch and in the playoffs last year — striking out 23 batters in 19 innings pitched between the regular season and the playoffs — and was considered to be on par with prospects like Bryce Harper and Mike Trout heading into the year. However, while Harper and Trout are posting historically great seasons for their ages, Moore is struggling to live up to expectations, and has been a below average big league pitcher in the first third of the season.

The strikeouts are still there, but a cursory glance at his stat line reveals problems with walks (10.9% BB%) and home runs (1.44 HR/9), which are not a great combination. But, in reality, a cursory glance doesn’t really tell the whole story. The root of Matt Moore’s underlying problems are found on his splits pages.

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Cam Bedrosian, RHP, Los Angeles Angels
Current Level: A
2012 Top 15 Prospects Ranking: 14th
Current Value: Underrated

The 29th overall selection in the 2010 draft, Bedrosian was one of my favorite prep arms available that year. He made just five appearances, though, before hurting his elbow and undergoing Tommy John surgery. Just 17 when he was draft, the right-hander is still just 20 years old so time is on his side. Bedrosian currently has a modest 4.50 ERA in nine starts but he’s given up just one home run and 32 hits in 36.0 innings. His control has been off – which is typical with pitchers returning from this particular surgery – and he’s walked 21 batters. We really shouldn’t read too much into the California native’s numbers this year and I remain excited about his potential – either as a high-leverage reliever like his father Steve Bedrosian or as a mid-rotation starter.

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That bracket for the College World Series everyone continues to talk about. (Click to embiggen.)

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. The College World Series: A Nerd’s Guide, Part II
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The College World Series: A Nerd’s Guide, Part II
A Note on What This Is
The College World Series begins tonight, at 5pm ET, with a game between Stony Brook and UCLA.

What follows is part two (of two) of a guide to said event for the sort of person who (a) reads FanGraphs, but (b) pays basically zero attention to college baseball, and yet still (c) has a passing interest in the Series itself.

All manner of disclaimer, qualification, and caveat appears in the first part this impossibly helpful guide.

Click on college names for team stats. Scouting reports for each team — of no little use to the author in the composition of this document — are available at Baseball America. The full schedule of the CWS is available here.

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Tyler Clippard was the winning pitcher in last year’s All-Star game. That might come as a surprise to casual fans, because the Washington Nationals set-up-man-turned-closer isn’t exactly a household name. He is, however, one of the best relievers in the National League.

Originally a starter in the Yankees system, the 27-year-old Clippard has been quietly lethal since moving into the Nationals bullpen. Since the beginning of the 2009 season, he has allowed 168 hits in 268 innings, and his K/9 over that span has been 10.65.

Clippard talked about the secrets to his success — including his mesmerizing changeup — when the Nationals visited Fenway Park last weekend.

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Clippard on closer mentality and high-leverage usage: “I feel like anybody can do it. There is definitely a mentality there, but I think that a lot of it plays into just being a big-league pitcher. If you’re pitching in important roles out of the bullpen, whether it’s the seventh, eighth or ninth, a lot of it is similar.

“I’m a believer in [having your best reliever pitch in high-leverage situations] but it’s also a tough thing to really pinpoint. The game is always changing and you don’t know what’s going to happen in the next inning. It’s a lot of in-the-moment stuff. Your six, seven and eight hitters could put together better at bats than the two, three, four guys. You never know for sure how to go about it, so maybe it’s better to put guys in roles and let them feel comfortable. That might be the best way to approach it.”

On having been a starter: “In 2009, I was still developing physically, mentally, the whole thing. The starter role kind of got taken away from me that year. It was the year I finally started throwing a little bit harder and developed a cutter. I was still learning

“I feel that I could go back to starting. Read the rest of this entry »

Browsing through the Japanese leaderboards at baseball-reference is a strange occupation. The first thing you notice is all of the old friends who are doing well over there: boldfaced names who played in the majors once upon a time and took the transpacific voyage to keep playing baseball.

Of all of the hitters with at least 55 at-bats, 16 of 130 have played in the majors. Of the 200 pitchers listed, 25 have played in the majors. Some of them are foreign-born players who wound up in Japan after they couldn’t hack it in the majors any more. For example: Wily Mo Pena is the fourth-leading home run hitter in Japan.
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Episode 198
David Laurila, curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, talks with Washington Nationals reliever Brad Lidge about playing with a pair of phenoms, great sliders of yore, and the prospect of reading War and Peace.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 15 min. play time.)

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Last night, Matt Cain and R.A. Dickey combined to allow one hit in 18 innings, striking out 26 guys in the process. It was two of the very best performances of the year, and they happened on the same night. So, that got me thinking – how often do we get two stellar performances on the same day?

To answer the question, we’ll turn back to Game Score (again, not perfect, but good enough for this exercise), and look for dates where two pitchers both posted a Game Score of 90 or higher. Because this is kind of labor intensive and the game is a bit different now than it used to be, I’m only going back 20 years, but that should still give us a pretty good idea of how rare it is for two pitchers to be that good on the same day.

Anyway, here is the breakdown.

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Matt Cain threw a perfect game Wednesday night, the first one in the 128-year history of the Giants franchise. Just moments after the game ended, Dave Cameron provided some historical context on Cain’s pitching performance, looking at the highest GameScores in baseball history. I’ve had a bit more time for reflection.

If you read my posts regularly, you know I’m a Giants fan. A passionate, analytical, demanding Giants fan. I watch or listen to nearly every game. I pore over numbers and charts. I conjure trades and free-agent signings, and despair when they don’t come to fruition. I complain about lineups and bullpen usage and Brandon Belt not getting enough playing time. Yes, a lot of complaining about Brandon Belt. You do the same for your favorite team. We love baseball. We love our team. It’s what we do.

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