Major League Baseball’s six divisions were won by one, two, three, four, eight, and nine games. The Giants finished eight games ahead of the Dodgers, and their lead reached double digits on September 20. The Reds finished nine games ahead of the Cardinals, and their lead reached double digits on September 11. Suffice to say, for both teams, it’s been a while since they played what felt like a legitimately important game. Saturday, the important games resume all of a sudden, as the Giants and Reds are squaring off in a National League Division Series.

Incidentally, one wonders about the effects. Some people argue that it’s better to have to play at full intensity all the way through to the end, while other people argue there are benefits to being able to relax. Both the Giants and the Reds have more or less been able to relax, their playoff spots long secure, and we’ll never know how much this mattered, if it ends up having mattered at all. If it does matter, maybe it’ll matter about the same for both, since they’ve both been in similar situations. Nothing’s getting settled in this paragraph so here comes the next one.

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The presentation of Joe Saunders as a joke has escalated ever since the Orioles had the gall to name him starter for Friday’s American League Wild Card game. Nobody is accusing Joe Saunders of greatness, but he has made a living on competency. He has a 98 career ERA- — just slightly better than average. Aggressively competent, even.

Still, it’s understandable why Saunders is treated as the kind of pitcher who should be hit hard. In both browsing his statistics and watching his pitches, he has no discernible strengths. He lives in the high 80s with his fastball. He doesn’t throw a curveball with exceptional break. He has a changeup, but he isn’t a changeup artist of the Shaun Marcum or Johan Santana variety.

But in one way, Joe Saunders has been one of the major league’s best pitchers since 2008:

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As if the Boston Red Sox really needed to add another shortstop prospect to their impressive collection, Jose Vinicio made a successful, but injury shortened full season debut in Greenville. At 18, the Dominican product posted a .281/.324/.375 triple slash line at a time when Vinicio should have been completely overwhelmed due to an overall lack of strength. With a strong hit tool and the athleticism to become a plus defensive shortstop, Vinicio presents with a strong foundation to develop from.

Video after the jump

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Episode 256
Marc Hulet, author of the site’s organizational top-15 prospect lists and assorted other minor-league coverage, discusses this year’s forthcoming Arizona Fall League, both (a) reviewing the 2012 minor-leagues seasons from three of the AFL’s top performers in 2011 (i.e. Houston’s Robbie Grossman, Oakland’s Michael Choice, and Milwaukee’s Miguel De Los Santos), and also (b) previewing three notable AFL-bound players (Oakland corner infielder Miles Head, Boston outfielder Bryce Brentz, and very athletic Toronto center-field prospect Jake Marisnick).

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 42 min. play time.)

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We now have final attendance figures for the 2012 regular season. Overall, attendance increased by 1,443,909 compared to 2011, or slightly less than 2%. And while MLB touted that increase as “the largest year-to-year growth since the 2007 season total rose 4.6% over 2006,” much of the increase can be attributed to the additional 698,882 fans who bought tickets to see the Miami Marlins in their new ballpark. By contrast, there was no new ballpark opening in 2007.

In fact, attendance changes differed significantly across the league. The teams with surprisingly successful seasons — the Nationals, Orioles and Athletics — saw immediate rewards at the box office, with attendance increases ranging from 14% (202,221 more tickets sold by the A’s) to 22% (430,316 for the Nationals). Baltimore had a 19% gain over 2011, with 345,779 visiting Camden Yards to watch the Extra-Inning Miracle Workers.

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‘Tis the season to fire coaches and managers. Among the coaches fired yesterday was Kansas City hitting coach Kevin Seitzer. The Royals cited underperformance by the hitters. It is hard to argue that the offense did well, relative to expectations. After the team sported a 102 wRC+ last year, it was expected that with young talent like Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas entering their second season, the team’s hitting would be on the way up. It did not work out that way, as the Royals finished the season with a 95 wRC+. Hosmer and (oh boy) Jeff Francoeur, in particular, had horrific seasons in 2012, and after a promising start to the year, Mike Moustakas’ bat fell apart in the second half.

Trying to determine how much of this is and is not attributable to Kevin Seitzer’s work and whether the firing is justified is extremely difficult, and I will not really be doing that in this post. Rather, I simply want to offer some general reflections on the Seitzer’s tenure and dismissal that might be illuminate the difficulty in evaluating these sorts of decisions.

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Every weekday morning, I have the exact same routine. The alarm on my cell phone goes off, I yell at it for a few minutes, it doesn’t stop making noise, then I succumb and get up and turn on the coffee maker. My first walk is always to the kitchen, to start making coffee, and then the rest of the day begins. Yet as certain as I am every morning that I’m going to make myself coffee, I’m still less certain of that each day than I was that the Red Sox would dismiss manager Bobby Valentine. If anything the surprise was that he lasted through the end of the year. Valentine was a dead man sitting, and now a year after finding a new manager, the Red Sox are in the early stages of finding a new manager.

And the guy reportedly at the top of their wish list is one-time Red Sox coach and current Blue Jays manager John Farrell. Last year, the Red Sox tried to get Farrell until the Blue Jays were like, “wait, no.” Now the Red Sox want Farrell again, and the Blue Jays are listening. Farrell’s still got another year on his contract, so while the Jays are open to the idea of him bolting for Boston, a trade would have to be worked out. That’s a trade involving a manager, which, as you can imagine, is historically pretty rare.

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The Orioles and Rangers square off tonight in a winner-take-all/loser-goes-home showdown. The Rangers are throwing Yu Darvish, who has been their best starter for the last month or so, and has the stuff to dominate on any given night. The Orioles are throwing Joe Saunders, who they acquired in an August trade after he cleared waivers. This seems to be the definition of the word mismatch.

There are some match-ups where you’d be okay with Saunders pitching in a critical game because of the composition of the opposing team’s line-up. For instance, Saunders would be a pretty good match-up against a team that has a lot of thump from the left side that he can neutralize. Because, realistically, Saunders is a situational lefty masquerading as a starting pitcher.

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

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Today’s Games
3. Unnecessary Video: Longest Home Run of 2012

Assorted Headlines
Featuring, at the very least, 140%-150% of news that’s fit to print.

Cubs Fans Gross, Cardinals Fans Not
Urine Feces Everywhere (UFE), some manner of independent agency situation, has assessed all 30 major-league stadiums on cleanliness “using over 79 different criteria,” according to their site. What one learns: Wrigley Stadium was the dirtiest park in the majors (mostly owing to a lack of handwashing among men) and Busch was the cleanest. There are probably some interesting questions raised here about design or event management for people who enjoy asking questions along those lines.

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