The Indians traded for Marc Rzepczynski. They traded Juan Herrera to get him. Tuesday is the day before the MLB non-waiver trade deadline, and so far this is Tuesday’s only trade to take place. Despite all the rumors involving bigger names, only these players have been swapped, and most baseball fans probably literally couldn’t care any less. It’s a trade of one non-prospect for a reliever who’s spent most of the year in Triple-A. But being that it’s a move involving a contending team — the Indians! — we might as well talk about it a little bit.

The Indians have been in the market for a lefty reliever, and Rzepczynski is a lefty reliever. To date the Indians’ lefty relievers have been Rich Hill and, sometimes, Nick Hagadone. They asked about better relievers than Rzepczynski, but they didn’t like the prices, so they picked up Rzepczynski for the cost of a body and a paycheck. He’ll go right into the bullpen, and he’ll be looked to to pitch to good lefty hitters in the later innings. He’s one of them very minor additions that could feel like a very major addition in a close, important game.

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While a couple of trades were executed for seemingly reasonable prices yesterday, the asking price on deals has generally seemed higher than in past years. With that in mind, the Dodgers took a step to try and improve their club without making Casey Blake for Carlos Santana Part Duex by signing free-agent reliever Brian Wilson. It’s a no-risk deal on both sides, and if it works it could pay dividends for the Dodgers down the stretch.

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Last month, I did a two-part analysis that showed what happens — strike out-wise — when, say, a pitcher who strikes out 15% of batters faces a batter who strikes out 20% of the time. As a special bonus for you all, I included a few hundred other K%-matchup types too. I made handedness matchups central to the study, as I think it’s pretty well-established that you can expect a hitter to strike out more often against same-handed pitchers. That is, if I was trying to give an expected result for a righty batter against a lefty pitcher, I looked only at the hitter’s past performance rates against lefties and the pitcher’s history against righties. Before I moved on to performing a similar analysis on batted ball types (grounders, liners, outfield fly balls, and infield popups), I wanted to see whether handedness matchups mattered to these as well.

For this study, my sample was all non-switch-hitting batters from 2002-2012 with at least 300 PA against lefty pitchers plus at least 300 PA against righties. I’d have gone by number of batted balls, except I’m throwing some non-batted ball stats into the analysis.

Let’s get right to it — the following table shows the chances that handedness really makes no difference to each stat, according to paired t-tests:

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I would say we are watching history, but the “we” who is actually watching the Marlins has to be limited to just about the 50 players present at any game, the managers, the broadcasters, and the odd Florida resident who fell asleep during the SunSports “Inside the Rays” special on Sam Fuld and then awoke to find a Marlins game on television.

The Marlins offense is bad. It is very bad. If you want to hear about the redeeming elements of the Marlins offense, this article may not be much help. Yes, Giancarlo Stanton is to home runs what Moses is to water-spewing rocks — he hits them — but the remainder of their eclectic crew of rushed prospects and aged veterans has offered little praiseworthy bat-action.

And if the situation deteriorates even a little, if their narrow balance of awful totters or teeters just a bit worse, this offense has a chance to engrave its poor results in the most inglorious stone of history: Worst offense of modern times.
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With the Phillies finally admitting that they’re not going anywhere fast, Ruben Amaro is talking to teams about Cliff Lee. The Red Sox are reportedly showing the most interest, and despite the fact that Boston is on Lee’s 21 team no-trade list, those are almost always negotiable, and Lee would probably rather play for a winner than an aging team with no clear path to get back on track. So, in a market that has been mostly littered with back-end starters and bullpen pieces, there’s finally a bonafide ace in play.

Make no mistake, Cliff Lee is an ace. Over the last three calendar years, Lee has thrown 660 innings and posted +16.4 WAR, coming in behind only Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Felix Hernandez. He’s not a low FIP/high ERA guy either, as his RA9-WAR is +16.5. No matter how you evaluate pitchers, Cliff Lee is one of the best pitchers in the game. He may not be the hardest thrower in the world, but his command and overall repertoire allow him to dominate opponents just the same as if he throw 100 mph.

But acquiring Cliff Lee, Bonafide Ace, will come at a very high cost, and depending on what Philadelphia is asking for, the Red Sox might very well be better off walking away. Read the rest of this entry »

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

1. A Brief Review of Brandon Beachy’s Season Debut
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Brief Review of Brandon Beachy’s Season Debut
Introduction
Undrafted out of Indiana Wesleyan University in 2008 following his junior year there, but subsequently signed that summer by Atlanta for $20 thousand out of a collegeiate wood-bat league in Virginia, right-hander Brandon Beachy proceeded to move rapidly through the Braves system. After recording strikeout and walk rates of 26.5% and 5.7%, respectively, in 208.0 innings in the minors, Beachy made his major-league debut in 2010. The following season, he was excellent, posting an 82 xFIP- and 2.8 WAR in 141.2 innings. After 13 starts in 2012, he was forced to undergo Tommy John surgery. His start last (Monday) night against Colorado at home was his first in the majors since June of last year.

What follows is a brief review of same.

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People sometimes ask what initially got me interested in economics. The truth is that one of the first things that caught my attention was an application of supply-and-demand graphs that explained the war on drugs. What seemed like a set of policies with unpredictable effects actually had some very predictable — and undesired — consequences. Applying these concepts to Major League Baseball’s war on performance-enhancing drugs is naturally an article I was destined to write. I’ll start off by running through the basics of supply and demand for illegal drugs, show the concepts I found so fascinating years ago, and then show you how well they apply to what MLB is trying to do with PEDs and with Biogenesis in particular. I understand that drugs are a somewhat sensitive topic, and I have no interest in preaching any normative points of view. I will instead trust that readers can think of my commentary as descriptive, and not assume any agenda. I’ll also be peppering in references to The Wire throughout, because I’m definitely never going to get to do it again.

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Ben and Sam revisit the question of whether wealthy teams are winning (and will win) more, then discuss a proposal to push the trade deadline back.

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