Back in May, Dave Studemund published an article over at The Hardball Times on the historical relationship between payroll and wins. While there certainly is a link between the two, he actually found that it’s been decreasing as of late, and that the league seemed to be moving away from the late-1990s, where payroll seemed to be the determining factor in whether teams won or lost. As he noted in his conclusion, baseball has “settled into a pattern that is more competitive than any previous time period, other than the years of collusion.”

Given what the A’s, Orioles, and Rays have done this year — and perhaps more strikingly, what the Red Sox, Phillies, and Marlins have not done — I figured the 2012 numbers would follow a similar path. I was wrong; 2012 has pushed the league back to a parity level not seen in 25 years.

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Over this past weekend, the Orioles split a 4 game series with the New York Yankees. Baltimore was able win 2 games and stay only 1 game behind the Yankess in the AL East standings, even though they were outscored 31 to 23. This trend of winning while being outscored is not uncommon for the Orioles this season.

The most remarkable part about the Orioles keeping pace with the elite teams in the AL is that they have done it with a negative run differential, (608 Runs scored vice 637 Runs Allowed). It may seem that it would not be too uncommon for a team to be a few wins over .500 and have a allowed a few more runs then they have scored, but it isn’t. Only the San Francisco Giants achieved the feat in 2011 (86-76, -17 runs) and no teams in 2010. Since 1962, when both leagues went to 162 games, 54 teams have been able to reach this feat, or just about 1 per season. The average run differential for the teams was -18.6 runs and the average number of games over .500 was 6.8 games.

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

1. SCOUT Leaderboards: Triple-A Pacific Coast League
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

SCOUT Leaderboards: Triple-A Pacific Coast League
Regarding What Is SCOUT, First of All
SCOUT is a (likely absurd, admittedly unnecessary) metric designed by the author to assess performance in those instances — like in a minor league, for example — where small samples are ubiquitous.

The Offensive Version of SCOUT, How It’s Calculated
The offensive version of SCOUT — represented as SCOUT+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average — is essentially a version of wRC+, except using the three main defense-independent metrics (home-run, walk, and strikeout rates), all regressed duly*, as the inputs.

*By the method outlined here.

The Pitching Version of SCOUT, How It’s Calculated
The pitching version of SCOUT — represented as SCOUT-, where 100 is league average and below 100 represents above-average run prevention — is calculated using a version of kwERA, with regressed strikeout and walk rates as the relevant inputs.

Regarding SCOUT, One of Its Benefits
A benefit of SCOUT is it allows one to compare the relative performances of players with markedly different sample sizes — to compare, for example, the performance of Colorado prospect Edwar Cabrera (31.2 IP, 29.3% K, 9.0% BB) to St. Louis’s Shelby Miller (136.2 IP, 26.7% K, 8.4% BB).

Regarding the Pacific Coast League, Its Regular Season
The Pacific Coast League’s regular season ended on September 3rd, it appears. As such, all following numbers are final for 2012.

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When Ned Yost fills out his lineup card, he sees a future that is more promising than the present. His Kansas City Royals are near the bottom of the American League in runs scored, but five of the nine starters are 25 or younger, and none is older than 28. Several have all-star potential.

The former Milwaukee Brewers manager — now in his third year at the helm in KC — has more than the future in mind when he puts together his batting order. He’s also looking to optimize his team’s chances to score runs. Yost discussed his approach to lineup construction during a recent series at Fenway Park.

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Ned Yost: “I try to stay consistent in my lineup construction. I try to set a lineup and keep it there as long as I can — as long as we’re getting production out of each individual spot. I don’t believe that it is productive to have a floating lineup. I don’t want guys coming into the locker room thinking that because they went 0-for-4 the day before, they’re going to be hitting eighth. Or that because they went 4-for-4, they’re going to be hitting third. I think it takes pressure off of them to know that they’re going to consistently stay in a spot.

“When I construct my lineup, I want a high-on-base-percentage guy leading off. I’m looking for a guy that gets on base. Alex Gordon fit that bill for us tremendously well over the course of the year. I think that Alex, though, changes his approach in the one-spot and focuses more on on-base percentage. Alex is a run producer. He’s a guy who has the capacity to hit 30 home runs a year. Ideally, I would like him in the middle of our lineup somewhere.

“We don’t have a prototypical leadoff hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam thank their listeners for being more numerous than Astros fans who watch the team on TV, dissect Wilin Rosario’s defense, and pick the most likely candidates for 2013 Comeback Player of the Year.

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Things to know before we proceed with this article about B.J. Upton:

(1) B.J. Upton is set to become a free agent after the end of this season, and he is newly 28 years old.

(2) Yesterday, in the last game of a series between the Rays and the Rangers, B.J. Upton slugged three home runs. They were his 19th, 20th, and 21st home runs of the year.

I was tricking you before — this article about B.J. Upton began with the word “Things”. Now let us move on to the rest of it!

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Episode 239
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• Operation Shutdown Stephen Strasburg, the unknown unknowns concerning it.
• The Yankees — what caused their slide, and whether those causes are still present.
• Padres left-hander Andrew Werner — former independent leaguer, present and capable major leaguer.

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 41 min. play time.)

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There was a handful of crucially important series over this past weekend, and among them was Dodgers vs. Giants in San Francisco. The Dodgers came in four and a half games behind the Giants for first place in the NL West, and they were looking to make up ground in a hurry. They emerged five and a half games behind the Giants for first place, and according to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ playoff odds dropped from about 23 percent to about 22 percent. That isn’t a very powerful sentence, let’s try again. According to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ odds of winning the division dropped from about 12 percent to about four percent. Yes, that’s much better.

Plenty of things happened in the three-game series between rivals, as tends to be the case when you’re talking about three games. Some of them were a lot more significant than others. At one point, on Sunday, Buster Posey hit a home run off of Joe Blanton. The home run meant little at the time, and it meant next to nothing in hindsight. Posey batted with the Giants up 3-0 in the sixth, and he put the Giants up 4-0. The Giants won 4-0, and Posey’s dinger had a win probability added of about three percent. In many of the game recaps, Posey’s homer was given just a passing mention.

Yet what I want to talk about here is Posey’s homer. It wasn’t the homer itself that was the most impressive homer, although it did fly out to straightaway center field. It was more about the process that led up to the homer. I’ll let Joe Blanton explain before I start to explain.

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Most people will remember the bad out call of Mark Teixeira by Jerry Meals from Saturday’s game against the Orioles. While Teixeira was obviously safe on replay, but perhaps the entire thing could have been avoided if Teixeira had simply run through the bag instead.

There have been a multitude of scientific studies on the merits of running through the bag or diving, including this recent one from ESPN’s Sports Science. The video is worth watching, but the conclusion is definite – running through the bag was 10 milliseconds faster on average than diving, and the difference can be significantly larger if the dive results in too much kinetic friction due to landing in the dirt too early. How good was Teixeira’s dive? Let’s take a look.

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