Nobody expected Everth Cabrera to go from A-ball to the majors and have a lick of success, but after 255 plate appearances in the majors, Cabrera has done nothing but impress. When the Padres took the Rockies farmhand third in the Rule 5 draft, they stated their intent to keep him on the roster – a necessity if the Pads hoped to steal a potentially useful part from their division rivals.

The 5’9” shortstop has shown the ability to swipe bags (18/20 on the year), walk (10.9%), and play a decent major league shortstop while posting an above average wOBA. The little guy is hitting nearly 60% grounders and has parlayed his speed into 13 infield hits and a modest success rate (4/13, ~31%) on bunting for a hit. Those type of hits are fueling his .335 BABIP

The sample size is far too small to make any type of definitive statements on Cabrera’s defense, but for someone making such a leap in levels, it’s pretty impressive that Cabrera is capable of putting up a slightly below average season. Worth noting is that Baseball America labeled him as a fine defender in their Rule 5 wrap.

Obviously we have little data available for Cabrera at comparable levels, which makes projecting him moving forward a bit more difficult, but ZiPS has his wOBA at .287 moving forward and .338 on the season. Even if Cabrera does struggle down the stretch he’s a 22-year-old without much experience in Double or Triple-A, and he still might post a two-win season. Oh, and he was acquired for the price of a roster slot.

The Padres have to be thrilled with the results thus far.

In the most minor of trade deadline deals, the Los Angeles Dodgers traded pitcher Claudio Vargas to the Milwaukee Brewers for back-up catcher Vinny Rottino. Less than three weeks later, the Dodgers saw a rotation slot open up, with no obvious options at hand to fill it.

So, did they hurt themselves by helping Vargas?

Vargas is no great shakes, mind you, he’s thrown 20 innings in relief this season with a 3.84 FIP, but the Dodgers need for a starter includes reaching out to free agent Vicente Padilla and inking him to a minor league deal. Outside of name value, the two are pretty similar.

Over the last three years Vargas has appeared in 57 games, starting 27, with a 6.7 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9. Padilla meanwhile has started all 70 of his games with a 5.8 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9. Since 2007, Padilla’s FIP is 5.04 and tRA is 5.96 while Vargas’ is 4.86 and 5.40. Since Vargas basically split his time between relief and starting you can add about a half run to both his run average metrics to project the numbers as a full time starter and you wind up with 5.36 and 5.90.

Padilla pitched in the American League and in a park that has a 1.04 PF per our five-year factors. Vargas pitched in Milwaukee (1.00), the part of New York that reps the National League (0.97), and of course with the Dodgers (0.98). Meaning Padilla has had the tougher slate of batters faced in tougher pitching environments yet performed near equally.

Padilla will make about 100k from this point on which is right on with what Vargas would make. Neither cost anything but money, making them essentially equal in value. I suppose this is a case of nothing gained, nothing lost, although it could make the Dodgers think twice before making another ‘favor trade’ in the future.

With a promotion to the major leagues today, Drew Stubbs is in an enviable win/win position.

If he performs well, he almost certainly sees his gig evolve into a full time one. On the other hand, if he bombs, he still possess more upside than the terrible Willy Taveras of which he replaces.

The 24-year-old from the University of Texas was ranked as the Reds third best prospect by Baseball America prior to the season. In Triple-A this year he hit .268/.353/.360, the lowest slugging percentage of his minors career. The scouting reports on Stubbs are pretty upfront. He needs to cut down on his strikeouts, even if it means taking away some power which should reemerge later, and use his speed to his advantage more often.

Stubbs has seemingly improved on the strikeouts facet. This is the same player who struck our nearly a third of the time in rookie ball fresh out of college, now he’s striking out a quarter of the time in Triple-A. Obviously that’s still quite a bit, but assuming his power comes back more so than it has during this season, he should be fine. The good news is that Stubbs is more than willing to draw a walk as well. In fact, Stubbs has 51 walks this season; Taveras has 54 over the past two seasons.

Defensively Stubbs has spent most of his time in center and figures to man the eight-hole for Cincy as well. Stubbs’ arm and range are above average, so he’s more than just a bat.

Taveras is one of the worst players in baseball this year, so Stubbs should be an upgrade even if he chooses to bat left-handed and stand backwards in center, but the real test will be upon Taveras’ return from the disabled list. Hopefully for Reds fans, Stubbs forces his way into sticking.

A week ago, the Brewers seemingly played the service time system to postpone J.J. Hardy’s free agency by a season. Today, the Royals are following suit with Alex Gordon.

Entering this year Gordon had exactly two years of service time. By taking him out of the equation for more than a few weeks, the Royals have pushed back his free agency eligibility by an entire season. Obviously this has been a poor season for Gordon. He’s hitting .198/.300/.313 and even worse since returning from the disabled list.

Certainly Gordon has given the Royals enough of a reason to demote him, but the timing is ultimately peculiar. Active for a month, did anything really chance within four weeks time that made the Royals think some time at Triple-A would help Gordon more than continuing play with the big league team? The only race involving the Royals is the race for Bryce Harper.

The problem with his game so far is his inability to drive the ball or make consistently solid contact. More than 50% of his batted balls are grounders, a figure well above his career average. If going down a level will somehow relax Gordon or alleviate pressure, then I guess it makes sense. Otherwise, it seems like a ploy to get another year of cost control; which is smart player management if not the most morally upstanding act.

Perhaps the more pressing matter is not Gordon’s 2009 status, but what the future holds for him. Playing draft retrospective is a bit silly, but the Royals chose him over Ryan Zimmerman and Ryan Braun, two of the best players in the National League, meanwhile Gordon has yet to record a three-win season. Although he has been above average in both of his seasons to date, that’s probably not what the Royals expected when taking him second overall.

It’ll be interesting to see whether a team tries to take Gordon off KC’s hands this off-season, and if the Royals go through with it.

Full disclosure: this was written well in advance to the midnight deadline, so if camp Boras leads a mass exodus of first round holdouts, I didn’t know at the time.

If a draft pick holds out, it’s always his fault. Either he’s greedy or Scott Boras is an insult to the game, maybe a mixture of both. Let a non-Strasburg draftee, like say, Donovan Tate (Note: he actually signed during the writing process, hypothetical!) go unsigned and see how many columnists, radio hosts, and fans turn him into a villain.

When it comes to money matters, the players are always, always, always wrong in the eyes of the public. I would guess it has to do with the loyalty factor. Most fans are fans of teams, not random high school or college players. Sure, you may like the new draft pick, and have high hopes for him, but you didn’t go to Padres.com on draft day and order a Tate jersey like you do with the NFL and NBA draft picks. Odds are fans have never seen the average draftee play – unlike the other sports – and thus there’s nothing to hang your hat on. He’s a mostly faceless entity trying to “extort” as much money out of the team as possible.

Except the players have every right to be selfish in these cases. The ones who do make it to the pros – and not many of any given draft class will – are essentially entering indentured servitude for the first three years. Only after three years of service do players get a share of the money they’ve earned and potentially get a nice free agent contract. That’s only for a small subset of these players, the rest are looking at their only real payday through baseball and have every right to try and get as much as possible.

The side that always backs the owners has some decent points as well. Why should the owners have to pay extra when the player is likely to flame out before reaching the majors? And why should the owners have to deal with the scorned lectures from Bud Selig when they go over slot?

The only solution is for a hard-slotting system. Either take slot or your rights are retained by the drafting team for the next six or seven years. As a concession for stabilized draft payouts, the owners would have to give back to the players, perhaps lowering the amount of service time required for free agency. Of course, the owners probably spend more money through this system than the other, but only in the long-run.

I’m not saying I have the answers or that either side is without some blame in the equation, but I am saying it’s a bit unfair to peg every teenager or twenty-something looking for a few hundred thousand over slot as a greedy villain.

The Tigers added another bat to the equation today, acquiring Aubrey Huff from the Orioles in exchange for pitcher Brett Jacobson.

Huff figures to play some DH for the Tigers, this could be a problem since his bat has been horrid this season. His .253/.321/.405 line is pretty unlike Huff. The main culprit seems to be an increase in strikeouts – nearing a career high point – and a depressed BABIP. Huff is still pounding righties at a decent rate, but lefties are having their way with him. Huff hasn’t played the outfield since 2006, but did play some third base last year, so maybe the Tigers plan to use him in a utility role, but that seems a bit questionable given his defensive limitations.

For the six weeks of Huff, the Orioles receive Jacobson. The former Vanderbilt closer has decent velocity and has spent time developing his breaking and off-speed pitch, but his main problem was with control. Those problems haven’t shown up too up much as a professional, but he’s taken a step back upon reaching High-A.

Even if Jacobson falters to ever make an impact at the major league level, you have to appreciate the Orioles dedication to turning older parts into potentially useful young ones. Just this week they also acquired Rhyne Hughes as a PTBNL in the Gregg Zaun trade. Hughes is left-handed with some pop, but his high strikeout rates corresponding with advanced age are a bit concerning. Still, turning these old, near the end of the road (either with the O’s or in baseball) parts into something with upside is commendable.

Russell Martin was on top of the baseball world not long ago. Thought of as one of the best young catchers in baseball, Martin was the face of the Los Angeles Dodgers youth movement, at least until Manny Ramirez stepped onto the scene. At this point Martin might be asking himself who pulled the extension cord out of the wall on his bat, because the power is gone.

Despite nearly identical BABIP, Martin’s ISO is almost half of 2008’s total. The leading reason seems to be a reduced number of home runs per fly ball hit. Last year about 9% of Martin’s fly balls went for home runs, this year less than 4% are landing in the bleachers. This is peculiar because Martin is A) hitting more line drives than before, B) hitting about the same number of fly balls, C) still making the same amount of contact, and D) not at the age where you would expect the average player to lose his pop.

But Martin isn’t the average player, he’s a catcher, a full time one on top of that. He’s started 135+ games behind the plate the past two years and should break the 100 starts mark on the season this week. Still, if you glance at the ISO leaderboard for catchers with 200+ plate appearances, the bottom five are (in descending order) Koyie Hill, Yadier Molina, Ryan Hanigan, Martin, and Jason Kendall; meaning he appears to carry the light stick even amongst players with the same bumps and bruises.

HitTracker’s numbers don’t speak too well for the homers Martin has hit either. The three have an average distance of 394.3 feet; in 2008 his home runs went about three feet further; in 2007 about 14 feet further. I’m willing to accept that he’s not a 405+ feet home run hitter, but I do think he’s going to start hitting more than three of every 100 fly balls out of the park during any given season.

It must be summertime in Chicago, because the ball is buzzing around Wrigley. Entering the 4th inning the Cubs had a 14-0 lead. As if that wasn’t enough to make the manual scoreboard operator earn his check, all nine of their starters, including starting pitcher Randy Wells, had at least one hit and one run scored. Seriously:

The silliness factor increases when you note that only three of the Cubs runs came via the home run, and that was only on Kosuke Fukudome’s three-run first inning shot. Pirates starter Charlie Morton has experienced better days, but he’ll be long-pressed to have worse moving forward. His second inning of work – and I say this loosely, since he only recorded three outs – went as such:

Hill triple
Wells walk
Theriot single
Fuld single
Lee walk
Fox double

He was then lifted for reliever Chris Bootcheck, who morphed into a river of gasoline:

Fukudome walk
Soriano single
Baker single
Hill strikeout
Wells single
Theriot pop out
Fuld hit by pitch
Lee double
Fox strikeout

After a 1-2-3 third, Bootcheck imploded again in the fourth, giving up three runs on a Derrek Lee bases-clearing double, making it 17-2. How hopeless is this game for the Pirates? Their fourth inning “rally” – which included three hits and a walk – didn’t even register as a blip on the WE graph:

This is already the most runs scored in a game this year for the Cubs. With four more runs, they would set the high-water mark since 2000. With 12 outs remaining – barring an unforeseen meltdown by the pitching staff – I wouldn’t bet against them.

When a starting pitcher tops 99 miles per hour on a pitch, people tend to take notice. When that pitcher does it five times to end his outing after more than 115 pitches prior, well, people really take notice. Justin Verlander added another notch to his fantastic season yesterday when he held the Boston Red Sox scoreless in eight innings at Fenway, helping the Tigers avoid a four-game sweep.

Verlander’s velocity deserves some attention. Not often do starters throw for an average fastball velocity of roughly 97 MPH. Even Verlander’s average fastball velocity on the season is 95 MPH. Not that I doubt Verlander’s ability to throw bullets, but I went through and compared yesterday’s average fastball velocities to the seasonal averages. Here’s what I found:

That seems to lend credence to the numbers, but if you assume the pitchfx machine recorded speeds 0.3 MPH faster than reality, then Verlander’s 100.1 reading loses some grander and becomes 99.8 MPH – typical batting practice speed – a less round, but just as impressive figure.

Verlander’s fastball was simply ethereal yesterday no matter how fast it went. 14 of 85 fastballs generated swings and misses. That’s 16.5% and simply ludicrous. When nearly one-fifth of the fastballs you throw result in the batter whiffing, then just might have a pretty special pitch at your disposal. Unsurprisingly, our pitch value numbers back the suggestion. Heading into yesterday’s start Verlander’s fastball was worth nearly two wins at 17.4 runs and that figure should increase after turning Fenway into his personal slaughterhouse.

Tommy Bennett is one of my favorite new writers around. He’s not the most mathematically skilled teacher or the greatest composer of fluid prose, but on a daily basis he’s above average, entertaining, and informative. With that in mind, I’m going to borrow one of his talking points today. The Book taught us that relievers are often underused thanks to the restrictive workloads imposed by today’s managers. Bennett focused on streaks by relievers in which they recorded one or fewer days of rest and found multiple Braves near the top of the list.

Shockingly Pedro Feliciano – whom Amazin’ Avenue has illustrated almost never has a day off – wasn’t in the top 10. In fact, Feliciano’s longest streak is seven, but he also had a chain of six and five games. He’s pitched in 25 games without a day of rest; 19 with one; 10 with two; and 8 with three or more. To put it simply: Jerry Manuel works Feliciano really, really hard.

Feliciano is a lefty and a tad more than 60% of his batters faced have been southpaws too, so it’s fair to assume he’s brought in for match-ups quite a bit, but he still averages nearly three batters faced per appearance and only about 15 pitches per inning. A solid point that Bennett touched on is that nobody criticizes a manager for overtaxing his reliever until the reliever shows sign of distress. It’s true, when was the last time you read about Manager Y overworking Reliever X unless it came after a bombing?

During a five game streak in which he had zero off-days, Feliciano was horrible; 53 pitches, 2.2 innings, a walk, two strikeouts, and a home run. The kicker? Most of that damage came in the first four games: 30 pitches, 1.2 innings, the homer, all of the hits, none of the strikeouts or walks though.

A managerial staff not known for its astute sense in numbers had the foresight to ignore the previous four days, where it looked like Feliciano was tapped out, and called upon him once more as if his last name were Martinez and Jerry Manuel just knew that Pedro Martinez throwing left-handed on no rest was still better than whatever else they had in their pen.

Or maybe Manuel and company are just foolish. I ran Feliciano’s OPS numbers since 2006 based on days of rest. With none, his OPS against is .730; one day is .580; two days is .810. We’re dealing with some small sample sizes here (zero: 333 PA, one: 276 PA, two: 142 PA) but it looks like Feliciano is more than capable of pitching decently on short rest and the Mets are using him appropriately.