The big secret isn’t much of a secret. As a base-stealer, Billy Hamilton has seemed automatic — but he did get thrown out in the minors. In fact, he got thrown out a whole mess of times.

Since debuting in 2009, Hamilton was thrown out stealing in the minors on 84 occasions, and his overall success rate was right around 82%. Granted, that’s excellent. Granted, maybe Hamilton has improved his ability to pick spots and read pitchers. Granted, who knows the contributions made by minor-league umpires or minor-league field conditions? But Hamilton had been thrown out stealing before. Plenty. It was going to happen to him eventually in the majors. That was inevitable. Major-league players are better than minor-league players.

But most people didn’t expect Hamilton’s first caught-stealing to come on Sept. 25. No one would’ve expected the opposing battery to consist of Daisuke Matsuzaka and Juan Centeno. Hamilton’s first steal came against Yadier Molina. People don’t even know who Juan Centeno is. More people know about him now. Centeno is the first big-leaguer to throw out maybe the next generation’s best base-runner, and Centeno himself might not be long for the big-league spotlight.

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Earlier this month, former St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Tewksbury discussed how he approached pitching to 10 of the best hitters of the 1990s. He did so with the help of his old notebook, which includes scouting reports, results of individual at bats, and more.

In the fourth installment of Tewksbury’s Notebook, the veteran of 13 big-league seasons talks about how he pitched to Barry Bonds. From 1987-1994, Bonds went 15 for 46 versus Tewksbury, with three home runs, three walks, and four strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam discuss whether contenders use their starters optimally in September, then talk about the Astros’ approach to team-building.

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There is always a bit of a lull between the end of the minor league playoffs in September and the start of the annual top prospects lists in early November. Because of that gap, I’m breathing new life into an old feature that I wrote for the site in FanGraphs’ infancy back in 2008 and 2009.

The series ‘A Minor Review of 2013’ will look back on some of the major happenings in each MLB organization since the beginning of April as a primer for the upcoming FanGraphs Top 10+5 prospects lists. This series will run throughout September and October. I hope you enjoy the series and are eagerly anticipating the start of ‘Prospect List Season.’

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Analytically-focused baseball hobbyists are not supposed to fall for the temptation of round-numbered accomplishments. Sure, round numbers are easy to remember (40-40 is easier to remember than, say, 34-41 or something), but over time they can appear to have a meaning or value beyond simply being an arbitrary, if memorable, landmark.

That is all a qualification to this post. When looking into top recent single-season bunts for hits numbers, I ran across many of the usual suspects — Juan Pierre, Willy Taveras, and the like. Actually, it started when I was checking out Starling Marte’s season. It has been a weird one for the Pirates’ left fielder. He has been a key element in the Pirates’ run to the playoffs this year despite not having the typical left field offensive profile. He relies heavily on getting drilled to get on base. But even if one has serious doubts about his defensive numbers, he has had a nice year at the plate (.282/.343/.447, 122 wRC+).

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Monday night, Rays manager Joe Maddon pinch hit James Loney for right-handed Sean Rodriguez. After a foul knubber to the right, Loney went all walk-off on Tommy Hunter.

But as much as pinch-hit walk-off home runs are the soup of Hollywood executives, they are the rarest of meats in the MLB reality. In fact, pinch hitting is most often a choice between lesser evils — a choice between a bad wOBA or a terrible wOBA.

A closer look at the last five seasons of pinch hitting reveals success has not between distributed evenly, and the effectiveness of of some pinch-hitting efforts may be a product of systematic choices rather just tough breaks.
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Most baseball fans know who A.J. Pierzynski is. Maybe that’s wrong, so let’s try it again. Many baseball fans know who A.J. Pierzynski is. 36 years old, catcher, veteran. Debuted in 1998. Made a couple All-Star Games. But Pierzynski’s a rare sort who might be better known for his personality than for his talents. People have a stronger impression of how Pierzynski acts than how Pierzynski plays, and it’s not just fans who find him to be rather off-putting, as MLB polls have pointed to Pierzynski as the game’s most hated player. He can be obnoxious, and he’s got a mouth on him, and one would never elect to describe A.J. Pierzynski as “quiet”.

But I think Pierzynski’s quiet about his actual game. Or, when people choose to give him attention, they don’t give attention to his performance. Statistically, he just quietly goes about his business, being adequate without ever really being good or bad. There’s not a lot there worth talking about, so many people might not realize just how aggressive Pierzynski is at the plate. He very seldom walks. He somewhat less seldom strikes out. He makes a lot of contact, and he’s been programmed to swing. Pierzynski is a freer swinger than you might think, because odds are you haven’t given much thought to Pierzynski’s plate discipline. What would be the point? There’s more interesting stuff about him, and there’s more interesting stuff about other players.

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

1. A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
Introduction
On August 2nd of this year, the author published in these same Notes a leaderboard featuring all — or, at least, the most notable — players to have changed teams ahead of the July 31st deadline for non-waiver deals.

Nearly two months later, what the author has done is to aggregate and publish below a pair of similar leaderboards — in this case, featuring the statistical records for August and September of all those same players who appeared on the leaderboards from two months ago.

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When I was in middle school, my favorite joke was: “Three guys walk into a bar. The fourth one ducks.” It scored well with my friends. I enjoyed the twist, the simplicity and the imagery. Unlike most of the other things I liked when I was in middle school, I’m not ashamed of this one today. My tastes, though, have changed. If I had to pick my favorite joke now, for example, I’d say it is one of two things. It’s either any joke told by John Mulaney, or it’s the fact that my Firefox spellcheck suggests replacing “Altuve” with “altitude.” It’s funny because it’s true.

Jose Altuve is remarkable simply because he’s a major leaguer. There aren’t a whole lot of those, and there are fewer still with Altuve’s promise. But among major leaguers, Altuve isn’t outstanding. He’s fine — and he’s very young — but people figure he’s better than he is because of the team he plays for. He looks better in context. If Altuve is widely known, it’s only in part because of his talent; more, it’s because he’s so little. The most notable thing about Altuve is the whole major-league thing. The second-most notable part about Altuve is that, for a major leaguer, he’s short. For a non-major-leaguer adult, he’s short.

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