LaTroy Hawkins might have pitched in his last big-league game. The right-hander was effective out of the Los Angeles Angels bullpen this season — with a 3.64 ERA in 48 appearances — but he isn‘t getting any younger. A veteran of 871 games in 18 major league seasons, he’ll celebrate his 40th birthday in December.

Drafted out of a Gary, Ind., high school by the Twins, in 1991, Hawkins spent nine years in a Minnesota uniform and has since played for eight other teams. He has never been a star, but he does have 65 wins and 88 saves during his career. Whether he’ll add to those totals will remain to be seen, but it’s been a long  journey.

Hawkins talked about the evolution of his career during an August visit to Fenway Park.

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Hawkins on his early evolution as a pitcher: “When I broke into pro ball, I threw a fastball and a slurve, which was a high school pitch I had learned. My pitching coach got rid of it the first week I was in professional baseball. He turned it into a real slider. I didn’t have much command of it, but he told me that I would over time. He said that if I kept practicing it, it would get better. He always told me that. In high school, I threw a one finger up. I had one finger on the ball — one pitching finger on the ball — but I think the bigger change was maturity.

“Over the next couple of years, I got bigger and stronger and was pitching on a full-time basis. I was pitching from spring training until October. I had only pitched a little bit in high school and a little bit in the summertime. I never had any extensive time on the mound, or instruction. Actually, I didn’t have any instruction. The first time I ever had a pitching coach was in professional baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 255
This edition of a FanGraphs Audio represents an experiment — namely, a simulcast experiment with Baseball Prospectus’s own podcast, Effectively Wild, hosted by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller.

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 55 min. play time.)

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Ben and Sam join/are joined by Carson Cistulli of FanGraphs for a longest-ever episode about the worst predictions teams and players made about themselves, Bryce Harper’s historical significance, and the baseball players who led the league in our hearts in 2012. We talked for almost an hour, so adjust your commutes accordingly.

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Episode 254
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), fertilizes FanGraphs Audio with his words and with his mind.

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 32 min. play time.)

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13 games down on June 30th. Four games out a week ago. And now, today, division champs. With contributions from guys like Josh Donaldson and Brandon Moss, and great pitching by Evan Scribner and Ryan Cook.

Seriously, what else is there to say? Baseball! just about sums it up.

Ever since it opened in 1999, Safeco Field has been a horse, and hitters have been mosquitoes. No matter how much the hitters have tried to inflict damage, Safeco has hardly even noticed. Now, ever since it opened, Petco Park has been a whale to the hitters’ mosquitoes — they haven’t even ever interacted — but just because Safeco wasn’t the most pitcher-friendly ballpark doesn’t mean it hasn’t been an extremely pitcher-friendly ballpark, and now, as announced Tuesday, the dimensions will be changing. The Mariners will bring in the fences in an effort to make the ballpark more neutral.

The planned alterations, of course, have been welcomed by the hitters, and they haven’t been condemned by the pitching staff. Fans, too, are pleased, as baseball fans in the Northwest have grown weary of low-scoring ballgames. People want dingers, basically, and Safeco hasn’t allowed enough dingers. The changes should make for more dingers. Yet just what sort of effect will there be, really? When discussing the changes to Safeco Field, one might keep in mind last offseason’s changes to Citi Field in New York.

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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.

Today, we’ll look at some of the Indians prospects.

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Remember when the Texas Rangers were running away with everything and were on course to be the the Greatest Team in the History of Whatever? Well, this afternoon the As might just take the 2012 American League West title from them. Certainly the biggest factor in the Oakland’s success this year was the incredibly boring Moneyball movie (if only they had used the alternate script), but there are many other storylines to follow, from injured pitchers to rookie pitchers to Yoenis Cespedes‘ video to San Jose. Bu for all the wondering about what New Inefficiency the As may or may not have found, one thing worth investigating is how the As have maximized their runs scoring by turning back the clock to a strategy more common fifty years ago than it is now: platoons. How much of a difference has successful platooning made for Oakland?

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It was almost too easy to call the demise of Ryan Dempster when he was dealt from the Cubs to the Rangers in July. DIPS theory will always have its share of headscratchers, but Dempster’s case was clear cut: with the Cubs, he managed a .242 BABIP and a 9.0% HR/FB compared to career marks of .301 and 10.5% respectively. Upon being moved out of one of the worst divisions and into one of the toughest — and one of the toughest parks to pitch in — Dempster has allowed a .319 BABIP and a 13.5% HR/FB. His ERA skyrocketed from 2.25 with Chicago to 4.64 with Texas. Simple stuff.

Now, thanks to a remarkable charge by Oakland, the Rangers are left with one last game to claim the American League West and avoid the dreaded Wild Card play-in game with Dempster on the hill. Even since being traded out of the cozy confines of the National League, Dempster has had success in the larger American League road parks. He allowed eight runs in six innings against the Yankees, but in his other five road starts, Dempster owns a 2.82 ERA with a 3.48 FIP, including 29 strikeouts against 10 walks in 28.2 innings.

The key difference between Dempster on the road — the Dempster we’ll see this afternoon in Oakland — and Dempster at home? Road Dempster attacks the strike zone.

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