Tentative rosters for the Arizona Fall League were released on Aug. 29. The fall developmental league is designed to help prospects received extra seasoning and coaching at the conclusion of the minor league season. Each organization contributes players to the six-team league. The league typically shifts in favor of the hitters because teams are generally reluctant to assign top arms to the league – unless they’re attempting to make up for lost innings due to injuries.

We’ve already broken down three AFL clubs:
Mesa Solar Sox
Peoria Javelinas
Phoenix Desert Dogs

The Scottsdale Scorpions club consists of players from five organizations – Los Angeles (AL), Cleveland, Pittsburgh, New York (AL), and San Francisco. Below are some interesting names set to appear on the roster. Full rosters can be found here.

Ryan Chaffee, RHP, Los Angeles: A third round draft pick from 2008 (the club’s second choice after losing its first rounder), Chaffee struggled through his first three pro seasons thanks to poor command and control. A move to the ‘pen in 2012 may have saved his career. His control is still below average but the shorter appearances help him compensate for his shortcomings. Chaffee, 24, comes at hitters with solid stuff and different looks. He’s eligible for the Rule 5 draft this winter so a strong AFL could force the organization to protect him.

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Life has not been good for Red Sox fans the past couple of months. Misery seems to follow manager Bobby Valentine. No matter what descriptor you choose to use, it hasn’t been pretty. And while the year is approaching historically awful territory for the franchise, it isn’t quite there yet, as there have been five other modern Red Sox seasons that were worse. What’s more, “historically awful” has a different meaning for the Red Sox than it does for other franchises.

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We’ve reached Threat Level Midnight. With last night’s victory over the Yankees, the Orioles are now tied with New York American League East lead. Whatever one makes of the Orioles’ chances, this is surprising for pretty much anyone who made a serious attempt at being objective prior to the season. When is the last time a team coming off of a sub-70-win season that got their old GM fired could turn around and parley (among other things) a couple of good pitchers, a breakout performance from an young outfielder, some “luck” with respect to their run differential, and Joe Saunders into a (potential) divisional championship?

Actually, as you may have guessed already, something very similar happened last year in Arizona.

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The Nationals’ plan to compete this year was a simple one: Trot out a rotation ballasted by Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Gio Gonzalez, and hope somebody besides Ryan Zimmerman hits the ball.

There was little reason to believe that somebody would be Adam LaRoche. At 32, LaRoche was coming off a season of 45 awful games: 151 plate appearances of .172/.288/.258 hitting. A torn labrum sidelined him for the final four months of the season, and some sort of back injury was a yearly occurrence. His best season came six years ago when he was still with the Braves, a 32-homer affair with a 127 wRC+, his only campaign over 120.

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It was a really big deal when, on Tuesday, the Orioles beat the Blue Jays and the Yankees lost to the Rays, causing a tie atop the AL East standings. Just weeks earlier, the Yankees had had a ten-game advantage, and losing that kind of edge — to the Orioles! — was unimaginable. Then, Wednesday, the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays and the Yankees beat the Rays, restoring for New York a slim lead. So it was a really big deal when, on Thursday, the Orioles beat the Yankees in Baltimore in a series opener, tying the division once more. The Orioles clearly aren’t going to go away, and while we can’t actually know that, it sounds good, and it gets people amped for the stretch run.

Those who didn’t follow along will see that the Orioles beat the Yankees 10-6. In so doing, the Orioles slugged a half-dozen home runs, and remember that the game was not played in Yankee Stadium. Those who have taken a closer look, or those who watched, will see that the Orioles pulled ahead in the bottom of the eighth after the Yankees staged a massive rally in the upper half. A 6-1 game turned into a 6-6 game, which turned into a 10-6 game. After the Yankees tied it up, they probably felt good about handing the ball to David Robertson. Minutes later, they felt a lot worse.

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The Oakland A’s want to move to San Jose, approximately 45 miles south of Oakland and 50 miles southeast of San Francisco. The Giants oppose the move on the ground that the A’s granted the Giants the “territorial rights” to San Jose and the rest of Santa Clara County back in the 1990s when the Giants were trying to build a ballpark in Santa Clara.

Earlier this year, I explained the history of the Giants/A’s territorial-rights dispute over at Baseball Nation.

Territorial rights describes the way Major League Baseball divides the major metropolitan areas of the United States for its 30 franchises. (Well, 29 franchises in the U.S., plus one in Toronto, Canada). According to research done by baseball researcher and writer Doug Pappas in 2002, Major League Baseball amended its rules between 1990 and 1994 to expand the definition of territorial rights to include not just each team’s home city, but also the surrounding counties.

All of the two-team territories but one share the same counties: the Yankees and Mets; the White Sox and Cubs; and the Dodgers and Angels. Only the Giants and A’s split the counties surrounding their home cities. The A’s territory includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties; the Giants’ territory includes San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and Marin counties, “plus Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team.” San Jose is in Santa Clara county. To get your bearings, look at this map of California counties.

—snip—

[T]he Giants never built a stadium in Santa Clara county, because several voter initiatives to fund such a stadium failed. Instead, [owner Bob] Lurie sold the Giants to a Peter Magowan-led group, who in turn privately financed what is now called AT&T Park, in downtown San Francisco. Nevertheless, the MLB rule granting the Giants “Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team” was never amended.

Under MLB rules, a team can move into the territory of another team upon the vote of three-fourths of the owners, the two ballparks are at least five miles apart; the move results in no more than two teams in a single territory; and the team moving compensates the team already in the territory.

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Episode 237
David Laurila, curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, talks with Royals excellent outfielder — and maybe most-underrated player — Alex Gordon and also excellent relievers Tim Collins and Greg Holland.

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 17 min. play time.)

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

1. Featured Game: Detroit at Los Angeles AL, 22:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Detroit at Los Angeles AL, 22:05 ET
Regarding the Title of This Post, Its Verity
The reader should be advised that the title of this post, which suggests that what follows contains the exact maximum amount of coverage in re Detroit right-hander Max Scherzer, might not be entirely accurate.

Regarding This Post, Its Actual Amount of Scherzer Coverage
In truth, this post probably has something more like 5% or 3% of the total possible Scherzer coverage available.

Regarding the Author’s Indulgence, What Might Have Caused It
It’s entirely possible that the author composed the title of this post amidst a flight of enthusiasm — the sort of enthusiasm, in fact, with which one is filled at the prospect of Max Scherzer pitching.

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Ubaldo Jimenez was once a terrific young starting pitcher for the Colorado Rockies. He had tremendous raw talent and pitching acumen to boot. If harnessed, he figured to miss bats, keep the ball on the ground and limit walks while remaining on the effectively wild side. He could dial it up to 96 mph — average fastball velocity of 95.8 mph in 2007 — and threw a top-notch, looping curveball that was tough to pick up with his herky-jerky windup. He was, potentially, the prototypical pitcher capable of succeeding at Coors Field.

After posting WAR totals of 4.3, 5.9 and 6.4 from 2008-10, he took a step back last season. His strikeout, walk and groundball numbers were very similar to the prior three years, but he served up more home runs and was less effective at stranding runners. Last season was a case of strong ERA estimators that belied better performance than his actual earned run average. As such, he seemed like a prime regression candidate this season. Through 28 starts and 161.1 innings this year, however, Jimenez has just 0.4 WAR. After averaging 5.5 WAR from 2008-10, Jimenez isn’t currently on pace to finish with even one win above replacement over a full season.

While last season’s relative struggles — he had been so effective that 3.5 WAR represented a down year — at least gave hope to improved performance, everything has gone wrong this season. Jimenez has regressed, but not in the direction his 2011 peripherals portended. Instead, he is set to finish this season with the worst numbers of his career across the board. He quickly went from one of the best to one of the worst, and it doesn’t seem that the major causes are easily fixable.

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Much like the old gray mare, Roy Oswalt isn’t what he used to be. That doesn’t mean the 35-year-old right-hander is ready to be put out to pasture. He can still be an effective pitcher, he simply can’t be ridden as hard as he was from 2001-2010. During that period, Oswalt was a 200-innings-a-year workhorse who twice won 20 games, captured an ERA title, and represented the Astros three times in the All-Star Game.

Now a member of the Texas Rangers, Oswalt finds himself working out of the bullpen as well as the rotation. In 12 games, he has a record of 4-2 and a 5.85 ERA that is well above his career mark of 3.28.

Oswalt talked about his evolution as a pitcher when the Rangers visited Fenway Park in August.

——

Roy Oswalt: “When I first started out, I had four pitches, like I do now. My main two pitches were my fastball and my curveball. I probably threw 75 percent fastballs, 20 percent curveballs, and mixed in a slider and changeup. Later, in 2009 and 2010, I started throwing a changeup a lot more. I finally learned how to actually throw it the right way, I guess you might say.

“When I first started throwing it, I never really had the right feeling of the ball coming off my index finger. No one ever explained it, they just said to throw it like a fastball. Well, the way I throw a fastball versus another way a guy throws a fastball can be totally different. A lot of guys think about being on top of the ball; I think about staying behind it. When they explained to throw a changeup like a fastball, I was staying behind it instead of on top of it. I never really got the concept of it until probably 2010.

“The grip is somewhere between a fosh and a circle change. Read the rest of this entry »