When Jim Leyland was setting his lineup for Game 3 of the ALDS, he looked to data for guidance. What he found was that Ramon Santiago was 7-for-24 in his career against CC Sabathia, giving him a .292 average against the Yankees ace. How much that played into his decision to hit Santiago second, we can’t say for sure, but he did mention this fact to reporters before the game and he did hit Santiago second last night. It’s probably safe to assume that Santiago’s history against Sabathia played some role in his placement in the lineup.

When Ken Rosenthal reported this on Twitter, I threw out a response about batter/pitcher match-up data in general, saying “Specific batter vs pitcher data is probably the worst use of statistics in the entire sport.”

A lot of people took umbrage at this comment, and when Ramon Santiago proceeded to go 2-for-3 off Sabathia — including a double that momentarily gave the Tigers the lead — many were happy to point out that Leyland’s move to insert Santiago worked, and thus, his decision to look to batter/pitcher match-up data was justified. There are quite a few problems with this scenario, however.

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When we put out an open call for applications to join the FanGraphs writing staff, we were hoping to land a couple of good folks to contribute here. Instead, we got so many applications from people who deserve a shot that we ended up hiring nine new writers. You’ve seen a few of them already — Josh Weinstock, Mike Newman, Noah Isaacs, and Jim Breen have already made their debuts — but we’ll be introducing the rest of them to you over the course of the week.

We’re really excited about the people that have joined the site and look forward to their unique and varied contributions, but we also know that many of you who did apply would likely have been great for the site as well. In the end, it simply came down to the fact that we couldn’t hire everyone who deserved a spot.

If you weren’t selected for a position this time around, I’d highly encourage you to keep writing and prove that you deserve a position here. FanGraphs is only going to keep getting better, and we look forward to having more opportunities available in the future.

Ever since the Chicago Cubs decided to replace Jim Hendry as their GM, speculation about Theo Epstein has been rampant. Since Boston finished off their September collapse last week, the talk has gotten even louder. Today, Gordon Edes reports that the odds of him leaving may be as high as 50-50, even though he’s under contract to the Red Sox for another year. Bob Nightengale chipped in with a note that, if John Henry were to allow Epstein to head to Chicago, they would ask for significant compensation in return.

That brings up a pretty interesting question – what is a Major League General Manager worth? As Buster Olney wrote over the weekend, GMs draw salaries in the range of $800,000 to $2.5 million per season, and their supporting staff make significantly less than that. Olney quoted a “high ranking executive” as saying that “you could fund an unbelievable front office for what it takes to pay a couple of utility infielders.” And he’s right – the cost of acquiring talent to fill your baseball operations department is a fraction of the cost of acquiring talent that actually puts on a uniform.

As is theorized in Olney’s piece, maybe the current market inefficiency is the pay scales of those in charge of building the rosters of the Major League teams, and Tom Ricketts could save himself a lot of cash by building a “dream” front office rather than investing in marginal upgrades on the field. If Theo Epstein could initiate an organizational overhaul that would save the Cubs significant amounts of money in free agency and streamline their player development, maybe they should just pay whatever price is necessary to get him out of his contract in Boston?

I’m not completely convinced this is true, however.

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“In the end, the Tigers are just too strong in too many areas, and they have the X factor at the top of their rotation. Verlander is this year’s Orel Hershiser of ’88 vintage, capable of winning two games each series, no questions asked.” – Larry Stone, Seattle Times.

“He was the most pivotal player in the league, dominating on the days he pitched and having a significant impact on the Detroit bullpen the day before he pitched and the two days afterward.” – Buster Olney, ESPN

You don’t have to do much googling to find a column praising the dominance of Justin Verlander. In fact, a search for “Justin Verlander” + dominant will return 561,000 results. There’s no arguing that Verlander is one of the game’s elite pitchers – no matter what perspective you take, he’s great.

But, I’m starting to feel like the idea of Justin Verlander is becoming larger than the reality of Justin Verlander. He’s a great pitcher who had a great year, but it’s not like he did anything this season that was historically unprecedented. In fact, there’s a pitcher that performs at something close to this level nearly every season.

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After Wednesday night’s madness finally set the playoff series, we asked our writers to chime in on what they thought might happen over the next few weeks. Trying to predict the outcomes of short baseball series is a fool’s errand, but I do think there are some interesting things to be learned from the collective opinions of some pretty smart people who follow the game closely. My individual predictions might be worthless, but there’s strength in numbers, and the overall assessment of what our staff is expecting produces some interesting results.

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Last night, we saw a lot of things happen. Amazing things, in fact. We saw four teams fighting to make their last six months of hard work mean something, to keep their season’s alive. We saw two teams complete two of the most epic collapses in Major League history. We saw the Rays win a game in which their WPA once stood at 0.3%, and we saw one of the best closers in baseball give up consecutive hits to Chris Davis, Nolan Reimold, and Robert Andino.

But there was also one thing I didn’t see last night – a single player on any of those teams who gave less than maximum effort. I didn’t see one single player show signs of apathy. I saw players win and I saw players lose, but I didn’t see anyone who won or lost because they lacked the internal moral fiber to make it happen.

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Dan Johnson just saved the Tampa Bay Rays season. This Dan Johnson.

Before tonight, he had a -7 wRC+. As noted in that leaderboard, the only Major Leaguer with a worse offensive season in at least 90 PA was Roy Halladay, who isn’t exactly in the big leagues for his bat. Johnson hit worse than both of the horrible Twins catchers. He hit significantly worse than Jeff Mathis.

And he hit a game-tying home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the 162nd game of the Rays season. They might not make the playoffs, but that was the kind of moment that will go down in baseball history.

This is why we all love this sport. Dan Johnson.

Update: Holy crap.

Tonight, the Braves are essentially playing for their lives. If they lose and the Cardinals beat the worst team in baseball, their season is over. It’s possible that the Astros could help them out and beat Chris Carpenter, but Atlanta shouldn’t count on it, and thus, they should treat their contest with the Phillies this evening as an elimination game.

That kind of situation requires a different kind of managing. While they have their best healthy starter on the mound, Fredi Gonzalez should still be willing to go to his bullpen extremely early tonight.

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