While the AL MVP discussion has probably reached the point where there’s not much left to say, there are a few other postseason awards that are up for grabs. This year, a good chunk of them are pretty clear cut, with our staff mostly selecting the same guys at each spot, with there only really being one or two races where there was much division among the ranks. We simply asked for winners, rather than a full ballot, so don’t take a player’s absence from the list as a lack of recognition, as there are a few guys who I’m sure were second on a lot of people’s ballots. Without further ado, let’s get to the picks, with the number of first place votes in parentheses.

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It’s more fun to nerd it up in groups, I promise. You can only shake your fist at the computer so long before you look (and feel) like a crazy person. So, if you are in the bay area, come watch some wild card game wildness with FanGraphs friends and family at the 21st Amendment in Downtown San Francisco any time after four on October 5th. We’ll be upstairs, most likely, but you can always check my twitter feed closer to the event for updates.

Come heckle us, Friday October 5th at the 21st Amendment brewpub:

Eno Sarris, FanGraphs Writer, RotoGraphs Editor
Wendy Thurm, FanGraphs Writer *
Howard Bender, RotoGraphs Writer
Noah Jackson, Former MLB Scout and Founder, First Base Foundation
Patrick Newman, NPB Tracker
Erik Malinowski, Freelance and Deadspin
Steve Berman, Bay Area Sports Guy
Scott Willis, Bay Area Sports Guy and Crazy Crabbers
Hannah Ehrlich, River Avenue Blues *

We’ll see about Wendy and Hannah, as they will be at the A’s wild card game if it’s home. But the rest of us will definitely be hanging out, and there will be some free food and happy hour pricing. If you are under 21, it’s fine, 21A is a brew pub, you can come upstairs and talk with us over cheesy fried things like the rest of us aged baseball nerds, just with a soda in hand.

Ben and Sam are joined by Marc Normandin, formerly of Baseball Prospectus and currently of SB Nation, to discuss which teams will win a World Series in the next five years, the changing role of beat writers, and Joe Saunders, the Orioles’ starter in tonight’s play-in game.

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We’re to the point now of there being less baseball, which means we’re to the point now of there being more important baseball. The stakes are the highest they’ve been, and all those little managerial decisions people love to complain about during the regular season might at last be worth actually complaining about, because the leverage of everything is suddenly through the roof. Every little decision now could conceivably contribute to a team winning or not winning the World Series. Thursday, we all got news of one decision in particular — for Friday’s Wild Card playoff against the Cardinals, the Braves will start David Ross at catcher instead of Brian McCann.

It feels weird to imagine the Braves deliberately benching McCann at a time like this, where one game will decide whether there are subsequent games. McCann’s long been the regular in Atlanta, up to and including this season, and by and large he’s been a terrific one. You’d think that a team would go with its trusted regulars in a one-game playoff, no matter how much it also trusts its backups. But it’ll be David Ross catching Kris Medlen and the relievers, and more, the decision seems sound.

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As Bradley Woodrum wrote a week ago, Adam Greenberg finally got a second chance in the majors, thanks to a petition on Change.org. He struck out in three pitches against R.A. Dickey, but there’s little shame in that. He approached it like a big leaguer: “He beat me last night, but I’m really hopeful that last night isn’t the last night we’re going to face each other.”

Not a lot of people get a second chance at the big leagues. Few enough get a first chance. However, as it happens, Greenberg’s position is even rarer than that. In the history of baseball, since 1871, 17,941 players have made the major leagues for at least one game. But just 200 of them — 1.1 percent — only played one game. Just 74 players, 0.4 percent, received only one plate appearance. In other words, most players who are good enough to make the majors are good enough to get more than one bite at the apple.
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Let’s all go ahead and agree right now that the worst day of Josh Hamilton’s life probably had nothing to do with baseball. I’m not going to go into any detail, and you shouldn’t need for me to go into any detail. Who knows where Hamilton would even be were it not for having baseball in his life? Baseball, for Josh Hamilton, is a blessing, that which helps to save him from what he could otherwise become.

But in terms of just on-field baseball performance, Josh Hamilton on Wednesday might have had the worst day of his career. Hamilton, of course, has been through more devastating games, such as the last two in last year’s World Series, but those were devastating on a team level. On Wednesday, individually, Hamilton sucked, and as such he’s one of the players responsible for the Rangers still having to win another game before they can think about the ALDS.

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As I mentioned yesterday, I had an opportunity to watch a few games of the double-A Eastern League playoff series between the Akron Aeros (Indians) and Trenton Thunder (Yankees). The series featured some interesting Grade B and C prospects who could possibly see time in the major leagues in the not-too-distant future.

The notes below come from a small-sample size observation so they should be taken with a grain of salt but it’s a great starting point to analyze these prospects, and this is part of my regular off-season practice with prospect ranking season just around the corner.

You can read my previous thoughts on the Indians prospects here, and the Yankees players are detailed below. There are a few more interesting prospects on the Trenton squad than there were on the Akron team.

The HittersZoilo Almonte, OF: Almonte, 23, looked a little rough on defense. He overran a ball in right field, although it may have been more over-aggressiveness rather than lack of concentration or ability. I also wasn’t enthralled with his base running and his speed looked averge at best. He’s quite aggressive at the plate and took some huge cuts on balls out of the strike zone, often low. He did not appear to identify breaking balls very effectively. When he does make contact, though, he has pop. Almonte showed opposite-field power with a home run and it was clear that he doesn’t have to pull the ball to hit it out. Even after going deep, the young oufielder had an impressive at-bat with the bases loaded by keeping it simple and not trying to do too much. He took a pitch back up the middle for a two-run single against a left-handed pitcher; if he can take this approach on a more consistent basis he could have a lot more success at the plate and trim his poor walk and K rates. A switch-hitter, he looked much better as a left-handed batter because his swing was not as smooth and natural looking from the right side.

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

1. A Brief Note Regarding the Regular Season
2. Summary: Shelby Miller’s First MLB Start
3. Forthcoming Games

A Brief Note
It might have occurred to the reader — as it did to the author, last night, as he started writing these very same Notes — that the 2012 regular season is now over. There is really nothing to recommend this state of affairs.

Brief Summary: Shelby Miller’s First MLB Start
What Happened Last Night
Last night, top Cardinals prospect Shelby Miller (after five September relief appearances) made his first major-league start — and did so in front of the straight-on Cardinals center-field camera.

Miller’s Line
Miller was entirely proficient in his starting debut. To wit: 6.0 IP, 21 TBF, 7 K, 2 BB, 3 GB on 11 batted-balls (27.3% GB), 3.97 xFIP. Also, he and the Cardinal defense allowed just a single hit — albeit, not against what the most imposing version of the Cincinnanti offense. Miller threw 52 of 72 pitches (72.2%) for strikes. (League average for starters is ca. 63%, with a standard deviation of ca. 2.5%.)

A Note on Miller’s Fastball
As he did in his real-live major-league debut — and has done in his appearances since — Miller generated a number of swing-and-misses on his fastball. Per Texas Leaguers, Miller got whiffs on eight of his 51 total four-seam fastballs, or about 16%. The league-average whiff rate on fastballs is about 6%. Miller’s swinging-strike on fastballs is currently at 13.0%.

Most Overpowering Fastball
Here’s footage of Miller’s hardest fastball (93.7 mph) that was also a swinging-strike — to Drew Stubbs in the fifth inning:

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