The trend of giving out long term deals to premium young players continued today, as the Giants locked up Madison Bumgarner through at least 2017, and the deal gives them team options for both 2018 and 2019. In exchange for long term control over Bumgarner’s future, the Giants guaranteed him $35 million over the next five years, with an additional $5 million possible if it turns out he would have qualified as a Super Two after this season.

As the very useful Transaction Tracker at MLBTradeRumors shows, the five year extension for quality young pitchers has been quite popular in recent years, but in general, teams have waited until they’ve had two years of strong performance before giving them this kind of contract. This deal looks very similar to the ones signed by Jon Niese, Derek Holland, Gio Gonzalez, Trevor Cahill, Yovani Gallardo, and Jon Lester, but in each case, those pitchers had already accrued 2+ years of service time.

Bumgarner’s deal tops Ricky Romero’s as the largest contract ever given to a pitcher with just 1+ year of service time under his belt, and reflects the fact that Bumgarner has been excellent at a young age and that prices for talent in Major League Baseball look to be going up. With the recent extensions signed by Joey Votto, Matt Cain, and Ryan Zimmerman – each of whom got over $100 million in guaranteed money despite not being free agents – teams are beginning to take steps to get cost certainty through the best years of their core players.

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Yesterday, the Dodgers and Padres played for the seventh time on the season. Just like they had done in five of the first six match-ups, the Dodgers ended up victorious. However, unlike the previous games, they got some significant assistance in coming out on top. Here’s the Win Expectancy graph of yesterday’s SD/LA match-up:

Source: FanGraphs

You’ll immediately notice a giant spike in the Dodgers’ Win Expectancy in the ninth inning, as they went from having just a 30.1% chance of winning to a 62.2% chance of winning on one play. This is how that play is described in the play log:

Jesus Guzman hit into a triple play to catcher (Grounder). Yonder Alonso out at third. Chase Headley out at second.

And this is what that play actually looked like:

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This morning, my Twitter timeline was filled with about thirty people linking to the same article – a garage sale success story from Erik Malinowski. Malinowski found an issue of Baseball Digest from 1986 that contained baseball’s 30 “unwritten rules”, and so, I thought it might be fun to break each of them down and see whether they still hold true 26 years later.

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Last week, I missed out on Dylan Bundy’s pro debut, as I just couldn’t make the two-hour drive to Asheville work with my schedule. But, tonight, Bundy was even closer, pitching just over an hour away in Kannapolis, and I wasn’t going to miss him twice in a span of six days. So, I jumped on I-85 and took in a game with the other 100 or so people who decided to brave the sudden cold front that rolled into NC today.

It took me about an hour to get there. Due to his three-inning limit, Bundy was only in the game for about 30 minutes, and he was actually on the mound for less than 10. It was still well worth the drive.

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Aroldis Chapman steamrolled the Cardinals this afternoon, striking out five of the seven batters he was asked to face. He’s now struck out 10 of the 17 batters who have come up to hit against him this year, and perhaps more importantly, he hasn’t walked any of them. Chapman’s improved command in spring training doesn’t look like it’s showing any signs of going away, and right now, he’s among the most feared relievers in baseball.

But, he’s not the only setup man off to a fantastic start in 2012. While obviously everything at this point in the year is SMALL SAMPLE SIZE, there are a few eighth inning arms that have opened my eyes over the last few days.

Bryan Shaw, Arizona

I’ll be honest – before seeing him pitch for the Diamondbacks in the postseason last year, I’d never heard of Bryan Shaw. Considering that I write about baseball for a living, I try to keep up on every team’s roster and have a decent understanding of their key guys, but Shaw was new to me in October. His nasty sinker cutter and pretty good breaking ball were eye-opening, and I put him on my “guy to watch in 2012” list. So far, he’s picking up essentially where he left off last year.

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For the last few seasons, Ian Kinsler has been one of the more under-appreciated stars in Major League Baseball. From 2009 to 2011, Kinsler produced +15.8 WAR for the Rangers, putting him in a near dead heat with Robinson Cano (+16.4) and Dustin Pedroia (+16.2) at second base, and ranking him ahead of high profile players such as Prince Fielder (+15.3), Matt Kemp (+14.3), and even his teammate Josh Hamilton (+14.1). Even if you think defensive metrics are completely useless and you want to assume that every player is an average defender at their position, Kinsler would still grade out as top 25 position player, and he’d still grade out ahead of Hamilton. His combination of plate discipline, elite contact skills, rare power for a middle infielder, and his ability to add value on the bases makes him one of the most complete players in the game.

Recognizing his value to the franchise, the Rangers rewarded him with a new five year contract extension today, agreeing to pay him $75 million from 2013 to 2017. This deal will keep Kinsler from becoming a free agent after the 2013 season and allows Texas to retain one of the core players at a price that shouldn’t prove too prohibitive going forward. At $15 million per year, Kinsler won’t have to remain a superstar in his mid-30s to justify the contract – as long as he’s healthy and retains some of the skills he’s shown up to this point in his career, it should prove to be a solid investment by the Rangers.

However, there’s a bit of an asterisk when you deal with second baseman on the wrong side of 30 – they don’t age very well at all. While the reasons behind the phenomenon aren’t perfectly understood (best guesses at the moment include the physical toll taken via turning the double play, and a selection bias effect based on what traits 2Bs get selected for having), the evidence is too strong to ignore.

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On Friday, Jonah Keri penned an impassioned plea to kill the save statistic.

If you’re an Indians fan still rattled by Thursday’s disaster, or just a baseball fan sick of suboptimal decisions resulting in painful losses, the man to blame is a late Chicago sportswriter named Jerome Holtzman. Fifty-three years ago, in an effort to shift more recognition unto underappreciated relief pitchers, Holtzman invented the save statistic. Today, that invention is responsible for far more unintended consequences, and far more heartache, than Holtzman could have ever intended. Bloody battles are fought over the ill-begotten riches that saves bestow on those who can get them. Managers lose games for their teams by getting seduced by saves. Pitchers who fail in save situations get labeled as gutless pariahs.

It needs to end now. It’s time to kill the save, send it to hell, and strand it there for eternity.

In case you missed the subtlety, Jonah’s not a big fan of the save, or more accurately, not a big fan of the repercussions that valuing saves has had on modern day bullpen usage. As the save has grown in popularity, so has the rigidity of bullpen roles, and reliever usage has been modified to specifically fit the definition of the save that was created by Holtzman. It is one of the few instances in sports where obtaining a statistic, rather than maximizing a team’s chances of winning, actually drives how teams utilize their players.

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