Nerves, jitters, and butterflies, these are a few of the things players making their major league debuts have to deal with. What’s the best way to get rid of those feelings of insecurity? By striking out the side to start your major league career of course.

Wade Davis did just that yesterday against the Detroit Tigers. A (somewhat) local product, Davis’ jitters were likely intensified pitching in front of family and friends – insert your joke here about how those folks made up the majority of the Rays crowd – and fell behind to the first batter with a pitch outside and low. He’d come back and retire Curtis Granderson on a swinging strikeout and then catch paint to retire Ramon Santiago. Carlos Guillen would suffer a similar fate and just like that Davis’ career innings total registered in at one.

He came out for the second and struck out Miguel Cabrera swinging. Aubrey Huff would homer and the realization that Davis wouldn’t pitch a perfect game set in. He then struck out the next two batters. At the end of the day Davis wound up with seven completed innings, nine strikeouts, a single walk, and one earned run.

Davis threw 100 pitches, 12% of which were whiffed at, 10 of those hacks were at fastballs. Davis threw 71 of them and saw the pitch average 92 MPH and touch 94.4. He threw a handful of change-ups that sat about 10 ticks lower, two handfuls of sliders that sat around 85-86, and nearly three handfuls of curves that sat in the high-70s. Davis failed to induce a swing and miss on the pitch, but it showed good vertical drop as portrayed in this gif (courtesy of Baseball-Intellect.com)

For a team that dealt what many considered their ace just a week ago, having Davis come up with a solid showing will (if nothing else) show they possess some idea of what they’re doing. For Davis himself, this undoubtedly will cause some helium in his public perception despite only being one start. Nobody should expect this every time out, but it’s a feel-good story of a local kid pitching in his first game the day before his 24th birthday against a playoff team. Coincidentally, Edwin Jackson was on the mound for the Tigers. He knows better than anyone what a good debut can do for your stock.

There’s an old saying about patience being a virtue. Over the years we’ve established that possessing plate patience is a virtue too, one that some players, like Miguel Olivo undoubtedly lacks. In 345 plate appearances Miguel Olivo has walked ten times. Four pitches have made contact with his wide body and he successfully bunted once. Those 15 occurrences account for the difference between Olivo’s plate appearance and at-bats figures. Olivo has struck out 110 times.

That’s 10 walks, 110 strikeouts. Ouch.

Since 1901, there have been 10 seasons where a batter struck out more than 100 times and walked less than 15 in at least 300 plate appearances. Olivo lays claim to three of those seasons. That’s right, it’s happened ten times, and he’s responsible for three of those. His first time was in 2006 as a Florida Marlin when he walked nine times with 103 strike outs in 452 plate appearances. He followed that up with 123 strikeouts and 14 walks in 469 plate appearances the very next year.

His strikeout rate of 33.3% is a career high, despite that his BB/K ratio is equal to his 2006 ratio and his 2008 ratio. You would expect his plate discipline and patience to improve over the years, right? Yeah, right:

Amusingly the emotion this invokes in most Royals fans is held within the graph, see:

Reports have the Royals pondering a separation from Olivo. That would be smart. With that, I fully expect a four-year extension to be announced any day now.

Other players to pull an Olivo include Orlando Miller in 1996; Juan Encarnacion in 1999; Alex Gonzalez in 1999; Craig Paquette in 1993; Tommie Agee in 168; John Bateman in 1963; and Rolando Roomes in 1989.

The 1975 Reds’ pitching staff gets ions less in way of coverage. It’s for good reason though, they were a middle of the pack staff at best.

Don Gullett, Gary Nolan, Pat Darcy, Fred Norman, and Jack Billingham each threw over 100 innings. None of them were overly impressive by FIP standards, although Gullet boasted an excellent ERA and Nolan walked nobody.

Saying the entire staff was middle at best is not entirely fair. The bullpen was pretty fantastic, the rotation was not. Clay Carroll, Randy Eastwick, Will McEnaney, and Pedro Borbon were the relievers with at least 40 innings pitched. Here is their strikeout per nine ratios:

Carroll 3.81
Eastwick 6.1
McEnaney 4.75
Borbon 2.09

Borbon’s was actually the second lowest rate amongst qualifiers, just behind Ken Sanders of the Mets (1.67/9). Some overpowering relievers existed but not like they do in present times. To gain some perspective: the fifth highest ratio then was in the low-8s. Today the fifth highest ratio is nearing 12.

The Reds pen just didn’t strike anyone out. As you can see below on the graph, it illustrates that they actually struck the least percentage of total batters faced out. The good news is they refused to issue free passes either:

No other team is below 6.5%, and the Reds are at 5.1%. That’s a pretty impressive commitment to making the batter put the ball into play in order to reach base.

Combine an offense that loves walks with a pitching staff that hates them, and you get a pretty nifty team.

In less than a week, Joe Posnanski’s much awaited new entry into the book world officially arrives. The Machine — which as the insanely long subtitle will inform you – is all about the 1975 Reds is probably the most anticipated baseball literature release of the year. I’m guessing most of the readers of this site are also fans of Posnanski, so to rev the hype engine a little harder, how about some graphical looks at how that team stacked up to the other teams in the league?

First up, team wOBA:

That red dot, that’s the Reds. Creative I know. The Reds were the best offensive team in baseball during this season and it wasn’t all that close. Only Boston surpassed the .340 team threshold. The Reds lead the majors in BB% and were near the tops in ISO (and Speed rating, for whatever it’s worth) which you would expect from any top offense.

How did their player stack up against each other? Glad you asked.

This consists of every player with at least 100 plate appearances. In case you didn’t know – and holy smokes you better have known – Joe Morgan was a heck of a ballplayer. Morgan’s 21 BB% is jaw-dropping and his .327/.466/.508 line is just incredible. Hopefully Morgan’s buffoonery in announcing hasn’t caused some statistically orientated fans to discount his playing career because that would be an absolute crime.

How often is the second baseman the best offensive player on the team while the catcher is the second best? Johnny Bench’s .283/.359/.519 line is almost equal to George Foster’s .300/.356/.518 and Foster played the corner outfield. That guy Pete Rose was pretty good too, as was Ken Griffey and Tony Perez.

Later on a look at their pitching staff.

The wait is finally over.

The Giants promoted Buster Posey to the major leagues today. Day two of September 2009 becomes a day of joyous occasion for Giants fans who grew tired of Bengie Molina’s .261/.281/.437 line through nearly 500 plate appearances. Molina’s allergy of walks is shared by back-up Eli Whiteside.

Obviously differences between the majors and minors exist when it comes to drawing a walk, still, consider that the Giants backstops have a combined 554 plate appearances and 18 walks this season. Meanwhile Posey has just fewer than 550 plate appearances throughout the minor leagues while boasting 70 walks.

Assuming the Giants plop him into the lineup immediately and Posey hits to a league average (meaning an absolutely average MLB hitter, not NL catcher) tune rather than the .321/.391/.511 line in Triple-A Fresno, he’s still a pretty nice upgrade to add this late in the year. With a game separating the Giants and Rockies in the wild card race, any kind of upgrade at this point helps. Do the basic math and assume Posey takes 100 plate appearances away from the bumbling duo and the upgrade is a little less than two runs.

Notice we’re dealing with 100 plate appearances though. That’s a pretty small sample size and anything can happen within a stretch that leaves Posey looking better or worse than league average. It’s not impossible that Posey could actually finish with a worse line than his lacking counterparts. I know, outlandish right? But Matt Wieters is proof that sometimes phenoms don’t light the league on fire immediately:

Wieters: .263/.309/.372
Giants Putrid Crew: .257/.283/.409

Of course that’s not park adjusted or league adjusted, so there’s room for improvement in that comparison. My warning for Giants fans is to not take these 100 (or however many) plate appearances too seriously. Oh, and to not pin the playoff hopes on top of his shoulders.

That being said, I’m cheering for a Giants post-season berth. The folks on the east coast need to experience Tim Lincecum.

On Monday I addressed the Scott Kazmir deal and portrayed the player to be named later someone who probably wouldn’t impact things too much.

I was wrong.

He is Sean Rodriguez, confirmed by a minor league teammate on Twitter yesterday and shortly thereafter an official team press release.

He’s a 24-year-old middle infielder with a ridiculous line of .301/.402/.622 in Triple-A. It comes in a hitters park where the team average line is .273/.342/.434, but Rodriguez still possesses some skills that appear to separate him from a figment of the ballpark. Baseball America had him amongst the top 10 prospects in the Angels system in their 2008 pre-season rankings and didn’t appear on the 2009 list because he received more than 150 plate appearances last season causing him to lose his prospect status.

He has some questions as to his contact rate and where exactly he’ll play. At the same time he’s close to the majors – as in, he’ll make his Rays debut within the next four weeks – and should contribute in a meaningful manner almost immediately.

Who knows where he takes the diamond for the Rays. If I had to guess, I’d peg him for a super utility role to begin 2010. Meaning he’ll play some outfield and a lot of infield in the same manner that Ben Zobrist did this season before becoming Ben Zobrist. This gives the Rays some added roster flexibility with regards to Akinori Iwamura’s pending option and Jason Bartlett who will enter his second year of arbitration off a career year.

Consider this: the Rays turned a few seasons of Victor Zambrano into six years of Scott Kazmir. They’ve now turned two-three seasons of Kazmir into six of Matthew Sweeney, Alexander Torres, and Sean Rodriguez. Obviously there’s a non-zero chance at each of them busting or working out, but that’s quite a haul for a pitcher with a career FIP of 4.95.

Maybe Victor Zambrano could be the gift that keeps on giving for another few years, much like the Mark Langston deal for the Mariners. For those who don’t know, Langston was dealt in May of 1989 for Randy Johnson, Gene Harris, and Brian Holman. Johnson was dealt in 1998 for Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen, and John Halama. Garcia was dealt for Miguel Olivo, Jeremy Reed, and Mike Morse. Morse brought back Ryan Langerhans; meanwhile Reed was in a three-team deal that brought back a boat of players that included Aaron Heilman who was dealt for Ronny Cedeno and Garrett Olson. Cedeno was then dealt in a package for Jack Wilson and Ian Snell. That deal was made about 7,405 days ago and still may add branches.

Maybe someone will write about the Zambrano deal in another 7,405 days – sometime in 2029.

Add the White Sox to the list of teams people will call quitters since they effectively “threw in the towel” by dealing Jim Thome and Jose Contreras last night. The White Sox are six games back of first place Detroit and two and a half back of second place Minnesota. To date they’ve played a little under .500 ball and with 30 games remaining, CoolStandings has their playoff odds at 6%. That is to say, for every 1 million simulations, the White Sox make the playoffs 60,000 times while they miss out the other 940,000 tries

You don’t have to run simulations to understand the chances weren’t good anyways. The Tigers have 32 games remaining, and if they simply played .500 ball Chicago would have to go 22-8 to tie Detroit for first. That’s without taking Minnesota into account. If Detroit plays like they have all season, at a .531 clip, then Chicago has to go 23-7 to tie, 24-6 to win and this is again without taking Minnesota into account.

The bigger offense here might be missing out on a chance to land draft picks or potentially costing them a pick. Per Eddie Bajek’s latest Elias rankings, Jim Thome is a Type-A while Jose Contreras appears to be on the outside looking in on Type-B status. Maybe the Dodgers have agreed against offering Thome arbitration, but otherwise if the White Sox plan to bring the slugger back into the fold next season, it would cost them – or whoever signs him, for that matter – a draft pick.

The draft pick angle should be focused on more while the playoff potential angle is focused on less. Either way, I don’t think Kenny Williams should take much heat for doing what amounts to a favor for Thome.

Delmon Young’s last few weeks has carried quite a bit of hype and it seems to be all for naught. Young’s fantasy stock has shot up I suppose, but over the last four weeks his line was .280/.299/.520. The slugging is certainly impressive – eight of Delmon’s 21 hits were either doubles or home runs during the span – but that’s a .819 OPS. How often do you see players with ISO almost higher than their OBP?

Hit Tracker lists five of his eight home runs as “Just Enoughs”, which is pretty self explanatory in nature. Not all of Young’s home runs are pull jobs that barely clear the fence though. Only two of his home runs have gone to left field with the rest going into center and on – his weakest of the bunch – heading out to right field. During the recent hot streak he slammed a 447 foot bomb off Jarrod Washburn in Comerica, but Hit Tracker has that affected heavily by wind and temperature.

To make matters worse Young is striking out 26% of the time – a clear career high – while walking 3% of the time – a clear career low – oh and he’s still swinging out of the zone around 40% of the time. We know he’s not very good at defense either which means even if this hot streak were representative of the true Delmon Young, and it’s not, he’s basically what you get when you take Miguel Olivo and tell him to play the corner outfield.

MGL wrote on a similar player a week ago when he addressed Jeff Francoeur’s recent banner week, adding that taking a small high point in a disappointing player’s season as proof they’re on the upswing is faulty. It seems like the same phenomenon that occurred in that case is repeating itself here. Young had the tools and minor league numbers, but it seems his work ethic will be the fault of his career unless things change quickly.

Google the phrases “rosterbation” + “Joe Mauer” and you’ll get 106 results ranging from White Sox to Giants to Orioles links. Everyone wants a piece of the Mauer pie and nobody believes the Twins can afford to re-sign him following next season. Well, nobody but the Twins themselves.

Will the Twins be able to afford Mauer?
“Yeah, we can afford him,” team President Dave St. Peter said.

Whether that is lip service or not is irrelevant at this point. Let’s look at just how much the MVP candidate could be worth after next season.

Please note: this is a conservative estimate, so make adjustments as you see fit. First we have to project his WAR for next season. Figuring Mauer will be worth about 7 WAR, you get figures of 7, 6, and 3 WAR over the last three years. If you simply do a straight mean of the sample, you’d project a little over 5 WAR for Mauer, which leaves you with a 6.3 win player hitting free agency.

We know Mauer 27 next April and 28 the year afterwards, meaning teams will be paying for his age 28 season and onwards. The per win cost will be approximately 5.3 million at this point, so if you assume Mauer will be worth about 6 wins in 2011, his starting price is 32 million. Now the wild card involved is whether Mauer will stick at catcher. If not, his value takes a hit by moving elsewhere, whether it be third or first base, a corner outfield spot, designated hitting, whatever it is, Mauer will automatically lose positional value. On the bright side, he won’t have the toll inflected on him anymore which should help his offensive game.

So let’s say Mauer is worth 6 WAR in 2011 and aggressively loses 0.5 WAR in every season thereafter and some team signed him for six seasons, taking him from age 28 through 33. For a long-term deal Mauer takes a 5% discount and his worth would be an annual rate of 30 million per season. If Mauer gives Minnesota a 5% loyalty discount, we’re still talking around 170 million. That’s a lot of money for anyone, even Minnesota with a new ballpark in tow.

The Twins know their finances better than I would, but unless Mauer really loves the area and takes a team friendly deal, I’m not sure they can meet his market value, and maybe you could argue they shouldn’t given the risks associated with being a catcher.

File this one under “unlikely August trades”.

The Angels add the 25-year-old Scott Kazmir to a rotation swamped with doctor visits all season with the knowledge that Kazmir himself is injury prone. His velocity is down from years past, and his stuff isn’t generating the same kind of whiffs as it once did, which is reflective in his contact and strikeout rates. That being said, he’s been quite a bit better since returning from the disabled list in June and working with Rick Peterson.

His deal is only guaranteed for an additional two seasons at 20 million with a club option for 2012 thrown in. As outlandish as this would’ve read when the extension was signed, there’s a real chance that Kazmir will fail to be worth the 20 million over the next two seasons. He’s looking at his second straight ~league average performance and his durability has always been a concern. Pitchers don’t age like hitters, so there’s no guarantee that Kazmir will ever top his 2007 season. That’s not to say he’ll continue to get progressively worse, but Kazmir the strikeout king probably won’t walk through the doors anytime soon.

Still, moving forward ZiPS projects him for a modest 3.82 FIP moving forward. That’s a bit worse than John Lackey, about equal to Jered Weaver, and a bit better than Ervin Santana. Kazmir isn’t an ace anymore, and the Angels aren’t asking him to be one. He has the capability of being a solid starter as long as he remains healthy.

The Rays clear up salary and get three young players in return. Carson mentioned Alexander Torres a few days ago and the book on him is simple: he’s a 21-year-old short lefty with a heavy fastball capable of missing bats and generating grounders while boasting extreme strikeout ratios and just as extreme walk rates.

Matthew Sweeney is a big lefty who is listed at third base but probably moves over to first for the Rays because of that one guy, Evan Langoria, Longoria? Whatever. Injuries have lowered Sweeney’s stock and his numbers are inflated thanks to the California League.

The third player is officially listed as a player to be named later, but it’s believed to be a player currently on the Angels 40-man roster who simply wouldn’t clear waivers.

Both teams seem to fair decently here. The Angels can afford Kazmir and his inherent risks while the Rays simply cannot. People are going to accuse the Rays of quitting on 2009 but the playoffs were a longshot anyways, and the difference between Kazmir and Andy Sonnanstine over a handful of starts isn’t going to make or break their chances.