With two down in the ninth inning Monday night, Alex Rodriguez came up for the New York Yankees with a chance to be the hero. It didn’t work out that way, and the Yankees lost, but there was reason for hope. More reason, perhaps, than there would’ve been with nearly any other Yankee hitter. That’s saying something, considering where Rodriguez has been, considering where his relationship with the team has been and considering the team is pretty good.

Technically, a great story shouldn’t require anything more than interesting characters and a captivating plot. That’s not the way it’s used in conversation, though. The connotation is that a great story revolves around a character you want to root for, and the character earns a deserved payoff. For the average person, a great story should be uplifting. I’m not sure Alex Rodriguez is capable of broadly stirring such sentiment. His personal tale will forever be tainted, and that’s an obstacle for many even if you’re not among them. But the story Rodriguez is presently authoring is almost great. With just about everyone prepared to give up on him, a seemingly cleaned-up Rodriguez is soaring, allowing observers to ever so fleetingly forget about that other stuff.

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Episode 573
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition, not unlike a small child taking a particularly soapy bath, he attempts to burst every bubble.

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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The designated hitter rule has been in place in the American League since 1973. Some like it. Others would prefer that pitchers swing the bat. They do in the National League, and that’s part of the debate. Does it make sense for the league to play with different rules, or should there be uniformity?

I asked five pitchers, five position players, and five coaches/managers – many of whom have experience in both leagues – for their opinion of the DH rule. Here is what they had to say.

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Steve Buechele, Rangers bench coach: “I think the DH is good for baseball. The pitcher hitting is the purest form of the game, but having a DH adds to the excitement. Some of the DHs out there are players people pay a lot to watch.

“We’ve done it for so long now, and I’m OK with that, but I wouldn’t mind seeing both leagues go with it at some point. It’s not a priority for me, but I’d like to see it be consistent.”

Clay Buchholz, Red Sox pitcher: “I think it will eventually happen in both leagues. A lot of money is paid for starting pitchers, and many of us aren’t comfortable hitting. Everybody is a competitor, so when you hit a ground ball, you want to run it out. Guys get injuries running the bases.

“I’d be in favor of having the DH in both leagues. It would make baseball better. I think there should be uniformity, but only if the DH was in both leagues.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres fired their manager Monday, saying goodbye to Bud Black, who’d been around since 2007. It’s not that the Padres blamed Black for what they’ve considered to be a disappointing start. That’s always the idea whenever any coach gets the axe, but that’s a gross oversimplification. It’s not that Black was the whole problem. It’s that the Padres thought Black was *a* problem, the kind of problem they might be able to fix midseason. Easier to do that than to find a whole new front office, or a whole new group of players.

As we all observed, the Padres put together a roster they thought could win in 2015. It hasn’t happened yet, not consistently, and with the trade deadline a month and a half away, A.J. Preller might be thinking about the pieces he has to sell off. There’s still plenty of time for the group to turn it around and mount a charge toward the playoffs, but if the Padres do end up a midseason seller, this would be the first step toward admitting the plan didn’t work out. The first step, that is, if you don’t count losing as often as you win.

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I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: while most of us understand that the gambler’s fallacy is a fallacy, sometimes it’s easy to see why so many people believe in it. In the case of this post, take the Blue Jays. Through the season’s first two months, they had the third-worst record in the American League, and a contender-worthy run differential. It seemed, at that point, like better times were ahead. But instead of things playing evenly from there, the Jays have simply ripped off 11 straight wins, rocketing back into the playoff picture. Barely any time ago, the Jays and Red Sox were battling for possession of not-last place in the AL East. This quickly, the Jays are back on their feet, and the Red Sox are a disaster.

I don’t have a hot take. My hottest take might be this: the Jays aren’t a true-talent 162-0 team. Winning streaks are easy for analysts because we always get to know for a fact the given team is overachieving. But there’s no better time than now to review what the Jays have done, and to evaluate where they now stand. The situation has changed in a jiffy. Even their own front office is probably trying to catch up.

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Ben and Sam banter about clothing choices, Albert Pujols, and a defensive play, then discuss the threat of a Royals-heavy American League All-Star team.

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The thing about Max Scherzer is he’s really good. We knew that. You knew that. This Sunday the Milwaukee Brewers learned about it firsthand when Scherzer threw a complete game one-hit shutout against them. Well, okay, they probably knew it already thanks to scouting reports and whatnot. On the off chance the Brewers don’t use scouting reports or whatnot — and considering their record this is possible — they know it now. Scherzer is really good.

The lone Brewer hit was a broken-bat muscle job over the outstretched glove of second baseman Anthony Rendon. A few innings later Scherzer issued a walk. It was okay. His 16 strikeouts and nine shutout innings overshadowed it. Great as he was, the start was an outlier, of course. Nobody strikes out 16 guys against one walk and one hit every time out. But Max Scherzer is, as we know, quite good, and this start was emblematic of his season.

Against the Brewers, Scherzer threw all four of his pitches for strikes more than 60 percent of the time. He got swings and misses on each of them, including 12 on his fastball, nine on his slider, four on a curveball he threw only 16 times (according to MLB Gameday’s data, at least), and two on his changeup. When a pitcher can throw as hard as Scherzer and throw three other good pitches, well gosh. That’s about the definition of an ace.

Most importantly, that kind of pitch mix allows him to get both right-handers and left-handers out. Against right-handers Scherzer, throws fastballs and sliders with the occasional changeup when he gets ahead in the count. Against left-handers he abandons the slider and becomes a fastball, changeup, curveball pitcher. He also throws a cut fastball (rarely) against lefties but never against righties. Sunday, Scherzer struck out 12 right-handed batters. Those came on six sliders, three curveballs, and three fastballs. He also struck out four left-handed batters on two fastballs and two changeups. It’s a varied enough repertoire of pitches that he effectively becomes two different pitchers against different-sided batters, Pat Venditte style, though with much better pitches than Venditte throws.

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Almost three weeks ago, Pablo Sandoval did something extraordinary at the plate. To be fair, Sandoval often does interesting and unique things — mostly involving swinging at and hitting impossible pitches — so this might not come as a surprise. However, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill sort of Sandoval madness. I’ll allow a short looping film to begin to tell the story:

A few things happened here: he swung at the first pitch, it was high and inside, and he got jammed but still managed to hit a line drive. These are all things Sandoval routinely does, so you can’t be blamed if you think one of them is what we’re highlighting. The true answer? Sandoval faced a left-handed pitcher as a left-handed batter.

If that doesn’t seem like a big deal, consider this: Kung Fu Panda hadn’t batted from the left side against a left-handed pitcher before this at bat since 2011. For what it’s worth, both Sandoval and his manager John Farrell claimed he only batted as a lefty in this pinch-hit appearance because of a knee injury sustained by a hit by pitch a few days before. Still, the fact remains: Sandoval’s struggles as a switch hitter from the right side are well documented, and they’ve gotten remarkably worse this season. It says at least say something that he batted from the left side here, given his struggles.

So just how bad has it gotten when he’s in the right batter’s box? Sandoval has a .160 OPS mark as a right-handed hitter facing a left-handed pitcher this year. He owns a 2.1% walk rate and a 27.1% strikeout rate from that side. In other terms, he’s hit three singles in 46 at-bats with one walk. That’s about the equivalent offensive output of Kyle Kendrick in 2014, except that Kendrick is a pitcher, and he doesn’t bat near the middle of the order for the Red Sox.

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The Boston Red Sox 2015 season is starting to look like an abject failure. A week ago, they were not too far from pulling back up to .500 and were only five and a half games back of first place in a weak division, and they had an upcoming six game stretch against the Orioles and Blue Jays that presented a real opportunity to gain some ground on two of their competitors. Instead, the Red Sox lost all six games, are now 10 games under .500, and are eight games behind both the Yankees and Rays, and seven games behind the Blue Jays. In one week’s time, they’ve moved from being within spitting distance of first place to being equally far back of fourth place.

Nearly every move the organization made last winter is currently looking like a disaster. The big acquisitions of Hanley Ramirez (-0.4 WAR), Pablo Sandoval (+0.1 WAR), and Rick Porcello (+0.5 WAR) have resulted in a trio of highly paid replacement level performers, and the more minor acquisitions like Wade Miley (+0.5 WAR) and Justin Masterson (-0.2 WAR) have been just as ineffective. While the history of these deals won’t be written based on their first few months in Boston, it’s fair to say that things aren’t exactly working out according to the team’s plans.

And now the Red Sox are heading towards a crossroads. This experiment hasn’t worked, and with just six weeks to go before the trade deadline, the Red Sox have to start considering the fact that they may be sellers at the deadline. The upside of being terrible is that it’s a good year to be selling talent, but the Red Sox are struggling in large part because their big expensive acquisitions have been lousy, and it’s not so easy to dump $100 million contracts a few months after they were signed. The path forward for the Red Sox isn’t so obvious, but let’s try to figure out some priorities for this team’s short-term and longer-term future.

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