Every so often, I get the sense people under-appreciate the importance of pitching ahead in the count. These phases are usually followed by other phases in which I conclude I’m simultaneously over-appreciating it, and then I return to baseball normalcy, but right now I’m in one of them first phases. And whenever I’m here, it’s weird. From a very impressionably young age, we’re told how important it is to throw strike one. We know, when we think about it, that it’s much better to be ahead than behind, as a pitcher. But it doesn’t come up that much in conversation or analysis. People talk about proxies, but then almost everything is a proxy for pitching ahead in the count. When you’re pitching ahead, you’re pitching in control.

Obviously, it makes a difference with regard to walks and strikeouts. More strikes mean more strikeouts, more balls mean more walks. But it also makes a difference with regard to quality of contact. Just looking at this year’s league-wide splits, pitchers have allowed a .303 BABIP when behind in the count, with a .198 isolated slugging. Meanwhile, they’ve allowed a .287 BABIP when ahead in the count, with a .092 isolated slugging. On contact, when behind in the count, pitchers have allowed 4.7% home runs. On contact, when ahead in the count, they’ve allowed 2.5% home runs. Yeah, there’s some selection bias — better pitchers pitch ahead in the count more often — but that doesn’t explain the gaps. Common sense explains the gaps, mostly.

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Last night, Paul Maholm started the 238th game of his career, twirling six one-run innings on the way to a 3-2 Braves victory. You may not realize it — perhaps because you didn’t realize that he’s from Mississippi, or don’t spend a great deal of time thinking about Paul Maholm — but Paul Maholm has the fourth-most starts of anyone ever born in Mississippi. (Roy Oswalt is first, of course.) After nine seasons as a more or less slightly-below-average starting pitcher, it’s safe to say that Paul Maholm is one of the greatest baseball players in the history of his home state.
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With the regular season winding down, half the teams in baseball are already beginning to shift their focus to the off-season. If you root for one of those teams, you may already be looking forward to the winter and the roster changes it may bring. To help kick start your speculation needs, the guys over at MLB Trade Rumors have created four free agent leaderboards using the custom leaderboard tools here at FanGraphs. Here’s what Steve Adams wrote when he introduced them last week:

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The preliminary rosters were recently announced for the impending Arizona Fall League. If you’re not familiar with the AFL, all you really need to know is that it’s an off-season league that offers addition innings/at-bats to prospects from around baseball. Some of the names you’ll know quite well. Others, well, you’ll probably never hear from again. And, frankly, a lot of players fall under that latter grouping.

Because there is such a wide range of talent in the league — as well as for a smattering of other reasons — any numbers produced in the league should be taken with a grain of salt. Oh, and each organization is responsible for providing a specific number of prospects to play in the league.

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We don’t really have full information on the shoulder injury that has been bothering Nick Swisher this season. We do know that it’s bothered him off and on, that he’s missed a handful of games, and that he’s had a cortisone shot recently. And from a results standpoint, we know that his power is down… and yet he’s showing the best line drive rate of his career. I set out to ask the Indians’ slugger about those two things in particular.

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

1. Every Entirely Above-Average Repertoire
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Every Entirely Above-Average Repertoire
Introduction
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, the author published a leaderboard of the top-10 pitches this year so far in terms of runs prevented relative league average, with Clayton Kershaw‘s fastball finishing first by that measure and Kenley Jansen’s cutter making the list despite the reliever’s relative paucity of innings.

In the present edition of the notes, the author has endeavored to consider a different but related idea — in this case, not with a view towards finding the league’s best pitches, but rather of identifying those qualified starters who have the most complete repertoire, where “complete repertoire” is defined as one which includes pitches only of positive (i.e. good) run values.

One finds, by Kerhsaw’s omission alone, that the list here isn’t necessarily a proxy for a list of best starting pitchers. Still, there’s likely some value in identifying those pitchers who’ve had success with three or four pitches reliably.

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As I’m writing this on Wednesday night, the Reds are clobbering the Cardinals, 9-0. All those runs, incidentally, were charged to Adam Wainwright, which means both Wainwright and Felix Hernandez imploded on the same day. Joey Votto, so far tonight, has batted three times against St. Louis. He’s drawn three walks, as Votto is wont to do. He walked with two on in the first inning, and later scored a run. He walked with one on in the second inning, and soon thereafter scored a run. He walked again in the fourth, but the bases were empty — and that’s not what this is going to be about.

If you haven’t read the arguments, you’ve probably at least heard about them. Votto has been a polarizing player for the Reds, because he’s drawn a ton of walks in run-scoring situations. With runners in scoring position, he’s walked more than a quarter of the time. The end result is that Votto has an underwhelming RBI total, and he’s supposed to be in the lineup to produce runs. In theory, run-producers are supposed to swing the bat. Run-producers like Brandon Phillips. One’s instinct is to think this is absurd — and it is pretty silly — but we might as well dig in for a few minutes. Are people warranted to be frustrated by Joey Votto’s patient approach?

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Ben and Sam discuss how Wladimir Balentien’s explosive season in Japan would translate to the majors, then examine the notion that Billy Beane’s teams play better in the second half.

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A few weeks ago, late in July, Bryce Harper beat up on the Pirates. In a game his Nationals won 9-7, Harper finished 3-for-5 with a double and a dinger. For good measure, he reached on a hit by pitch, and his homer was a walk-off bomb. Every hit in the major leagues is difficult, but maybe in his head, Harper felt like he had more of an opportunity; Harper hasn’t been alive to see the Pirates finish with a .500 record. Two days after the Pirates were eliminated from the 1992 playoffs, Harper was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. His entire life, the Pirates have been a joke.

On Tuesday, the Pirates traded for Marlon Byrd to make themselves better, which is a sentence that makes sense in 2013. And it wasn’t an attempt to improve a lackluster on-field product — the Pirates have their eyes on the playoffs, and they’re currently in an excellent position. They’re right behind the Cardinals in the National League Central, and they’re eight up on the Diamondbacks in the wild-card standings. If and when the Pirates qualify for the postseason, it’ll be an historic moment. But there’s another historic moment they’ll probably have to pass through first: the occasion of their 81st win.

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