On Friday, we recorded our latest version of the podcast, which focused on the postseason awards. During the discussion, I suggested that I’d lean toward voting for Troy Tulowitzki, and that was before he launched two more home runs on Saturday. His numbers in September are just crazy good(.357/.407/1.000, .577 wOBA), and he’s a big reason why the Rockies are right back in the NL West race. But I’m not throwing my support behind him just because he’s bashing the baseball of late; I think there’s a pretty decent argument to be made that he’s been the league’s best player, even after accounting for the time he spent on the disabled list.

I think we can probably all agree that he’s been the best player in the NL on a rate basis. His .420 wOBA ranks second to Votto in the NL, and he’s a shortstop. Yes, his numbers get a boost from Coors Field, but his park adjusted wRC+ is still a fantastic 158, and translates out to 42 runs above average per 600 plate appearances. Votto’s 174 wRC+ translates out to 53 runs above average per 600 PA, leaving a gap that is easily overcome by the difference in scarcity between SS and 1B.

Of course, Votto actually has 600 PA (611, actually), while Tulowitzki has racked up just 476 trips to the plate this year. While Colorado’s shortstop has been the league’s best player when he’s been on the field, Votto has a significant edge in playing time, which is why he’s right there with Ryan Zimmerman at the top of the WAR leaderboards, and why he’s likely to win the award.

Even with Votto holding a +1 win advantage by WAR, I still think a vote for Tulowitzki is justifiable. WAR is more blunt hammer than precise chisel, so while it does a great job at telling you whether a player is good or bad, it is not designed to be used to separate out small differences among players having similar seasons. Votto’s +7.0 WAR isn’t so much better than Tulowitzki’s +6.1 WAR that we should definitely say that Votto has been more valuable. The best interpretation of those two numbers is that both have been fantastic, and that there’s room for discussion about which one has been better.

While we’re obviously big proponents of the usefulness of Wins Above Replacement, we do not encourage the use of it as a definitive ender of discussion when the subjects are within the margin of error. It’s one thing to use WAR to declare that Votto has clearly been better than, say, Aubrey Huff, but its another to state that it is perfectly accurate down to the decimal point. Votto and Tulowitzki are both good candidates, as is the always overlooked Ryan Zimmerman. To me, it is not nearly as clear cut which one should take home the trophy as it is over in the American League. I think reasonable cases can be made for all of them, and given the level to which Tulowitzki has been performing, it’s likely that the gap between he and Votto will decrease even more before the season is over.

Quantity or quality? Tulowitzki has the latter, having shown himself to be the NL’s best player when healthy. Does the time spent on the DL hurt his value? Certainly. But I think he might be the NL MVP anyway.

In his post about Jason Heyward yesterday, Matthew Carruth referred to Adam Dunn as a “maybe” Hall-of-Famer. When I read that, I assumed Matthew had taken leave of his senses, or was making some kind of joke that I didn’t quite get. After all, Dunn has a career +27.7 WAR through age 30, and the established bubble for HOF players is currently about +60 WAR. It is highly unlikely that Dunn will be able to double his value in the second half of his career, especially given his skillset.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized Matthew was right – Adam Dunn very well may end up in Cooperstown if he can stay healthy.

Career HR totals are definitely one of the magic numbers that get voters attention. The guaranteed entry barrier used to be 500 before the offensive explosion of the 1990s. Only 25 guys in history have ever hit 500+ home runs, and almost all of them are or will be in the Hall of Fame. Now that non-superstars like Gary Sheffield and Rafael Palmeiro have joined the list, its exclusivity has been diminished, but it’s still the kind of number that will draw notice, especially for a guy who has never been linked to PEDs.

Well, Adam Dunn is only 149 home runs away from 500, and he’s averaged 35 HR per 600 PA in his career so far. Barring injury or a very early collapse of his skills, 500 homers seems like a very easy target for Dunn. That’s averaging just under 30 homers a year for the next five seasons, and the last time he hit fewer than 30 long balls in a year was 2003. His bat may begin to slow down, but he’s got enough power that he can lose some and still crank out that piece with relative ease.

Given just how bad defensively he was in the outfield, however, he’ll almost certainly be the worst player ever to reach that milestone. Even with the power, his offensive production has always been just good, not great, and he’s one of the worst defenders and baserunners of his generation. In terms of actual value, there’s almost no way Dunn will deserve to go into the Hall, but I’m not sure that will matter.

If he hits 500 homers, and is presumed to have done so while “clean”, there will be support for his candidacy, especially if he’s going up against other guys who have tested positive or been linked to steroids. If he gets anywhere near 600 and keeps away from scandal, he’s a mortal lock, and it’s not impossible to see Dunn launching 250 homers over the remainder of his career.

So, I have to conclude that Matthew is right – Adam Dunn is a “maybe” Hall of Famer. If he stays healthy for the next 5 to 10 years, he’s got a pretty decent chance at putting up the kinds of numbers that voters will take notice of. He won’t deserve to go in based on total value, but the sexy numbers just may be enough. He does the things that voters like, and the aspects where he fails, there is little emphasis. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there’s a decent chance that my kids might walk past Dunn’s plaque in Cooperstown some day.

Matt Thornton throws a lot of fastballs – more than anyone else in baseball, actually. He’s thrown the pitch 92 percent of the time this year, in fact, relying heavily on his ability to blow hitters away with his velocity. Thornton throws it with such regularity that he might just be the most predictable pitcher in the history of the game.

On the first pitch of an at-bat, Thornton throws a fastball 96 percent of the time. You can be pretty sure that you’re going to get a first pitch fastball from him, pretty much every time. If he falls behind in the count, well, then you can forget the pretty much – you will see nothing but fastballs until he’s evened the count up again. Literally, nothing but fastballs.

On 1-0 counts, he’s thrown the fastball 100 percent of the time this year. Same with 2-0 counts, 3-0 counts, 2-1 counts, 3-1 counts, and 3-2 counts. He has not thrown a single non-fastball in any of those situations all year.

When he gets ahead in the count, he’s more willing to work in the slider. He throws the slider 18 percent of the time on 0-1 counts, 17 percent of the time on 1-2 counts, and 13 percent of the time on 0-2 counts. Every count is dominated by heavy reliance on the fastball, but he’ll at least show you something else in those situations from time to time.

Behind in the count, though, and he becomes the definition of a one pitch guy. And here’s the crazy part – it still works. Despite some struggles since returning from the disabled list, Thornton has still been one of the game’s best relievers this year, and his dominance over the last three years is rivaled only by the likes of Mariano Rivera, who also interestingly throws just one pitch most of the time.

I love the game theory aspect of pitching, where guys like Jamie Moyer can get hitters out through pure deception, keeping hitters off balance and not letting them figure out patterns. The other side of that coin is kind of fun too, though, and that’s Thornton in a nutshell. You often hear announcers say that any big league hitter can drill a fastball if he knows its coming. Well, apparently not. Not this fastball, anyway.

The results are in, and there’s more agreement about Manny’s potential payout this winter than I expected. For this one, since we gave people the option of putting in 0 years/0 dollars to project that he won’t sign this winter, I’ll break those out separately, and then the projected contract figures will only include those that think he will sign for some figure this winter.

Percentage of voters who think Manny will not sign this winter: 6.7%

Average length: 1.27 years
Average salary: $8.41 million

Median length: 1 year
Median salary: $8 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.48 years
Standard deviation, salary: $3.19 million

I was surprised that over 93% of the voters expected him to play next year. I would certainly put the odds at lower than that. I might even say that Manny following the Gary Sheffield path might be the more likely outcome, in my estimation. But you guys clearly disagree, and believe that teams will value the production more than the personality, even at age 39. Scott Boras certainly hopes you guys are correct.

In terms of length of contract, pretty much everyone agreed, going with either one or two years. A few brave souls thought he’d get three years, but they were a very small minority at 1.4% of the vote total. However, there was less agreement on the annual average value of the contract, with a standard deviation of over $3 million. 35 percent of the voters thought he would make more than $10 million per year, while 17 percent though he would have to settle for $5 million per year or less. As always, the votes centered around the median; however, that number was not the most popular selection. 129 people went with $10 million, as opposed to the 127 who went with $8 million. It’s essentially a tie, but the average was clearly pulled down more by folks on the low end than it was up by people on the high end.

So, one-year, $8 million for Manny Ramirez. If he didn’t have any off-the-field issues, I’d probably agree with that, based on his age and talent level. Given all of the extra things that come with Manny, though, and the abundance of DH options this winter, I’m not sure what team is going to make that offer. We shall see.

It’s perhaps the most interesting free agent question of the winter: does Manny Ramirez land a job this winter? He can still hit, even if he is no longer the dominating force at the plate he was a few years ago. However, injuries and suspensions have kept him off the field for large parts of the past two seasons, and once again, his time with an organization ended poorly. His reputation for being aloof is well known, and to top it off, he’s still a brutal defender who probably needs to be relegated to DH’ing at this point in his career, limiting his potential suitors mostly to AL teams. Oh, also, he’ll be 39 next year.

There are a lot of reasons to think that Ramirez won’t be able to find work this winter. There’s one big reason to think he will: he can still hit. Even in a down year, he’s put up a .306/.409/.472 line. That kind of offensive performance is not easy to find, and a potentially healthy Ramirez is likely to still be among the best hitters in the game next year, even at an advanced age. He’s less than what he used to be, but still far more than a lot of major league hitters.

It’s not a great year to be a DH looking for a job, given the other bat-only options that will be available this winter, but Ramirez probably carries the best bat of the bunch. He also carries the most baggage. I could see teams pursuing him in an attempt to bolster their offense, and I could see the entire league saying “no thanks”, essentially doing to Manny what teams did to Gary Sheffield last winter.

So, I’ve added a new option to the contract crowdsourcing form – 0 years and 0 dollars per year. If you think Manny will not be able to find work this winter, select those from the drop-down menu. Otherwise, the form is the same, and you guys can project what Ramirez will get as a bat for hire this winter.

With the Rangers having opened up an insurmountable lead on their AL West competitors, they’ve given Josh Hamilton a lot of rest lately. He has exactly six plate appearances in September, and when he’ll return is anyone’s guess. With a 99.8 percent chance of reaching the playoffs, the Rangers have no incentive to hurry him back for meaningless regular season games.

Due to his absence from the field, people (most notably Fox Sports’ Jon Paul Morosi) are taking the opportunity to re-open the AL MVP discussion that was basically closed at the beginning of the month. Hamilton lapped the field for the first five months of the season, leaving no real argument for anyone else. Now, though, as he stands on the sidelines, people have begun to make a case for Miguel Cabrera. Since most of the people arguing for Cabrera will reject any kind of argument based on WAR out of hand, let’s just stick with good old fashioned traditional counting stats, comparing them heads up.

Hamilton vs Cabrera:

Singles: Hamilton +20
Doubles: Cabrera +4
Triples: Hamilton +2
Home Runs: Cabrera +3
Walks: Cabrera +41
Hit By Pitch: Hamilton +2
Double Plays: Cabrera +8
Steals: Hamilton +5
Caught Stealing: Cabrera +2
Outs: Cabrera +25

Overall, its pretty close, with most of the differences in the single digits. The categories that stand out are singles, walks, and outs. Hamilton has the lead in the former, while Cabrera has more of the latter two (only one of which is a positive). Their OBP and SLG end up being pretty similar, with most of the differences coming out in the wash.

However, Hamilton’s wOBA (which is just the calculation of the run values of the individual events added together and scaled to look like OBP) is .449, while Cabrera’s is .433, a pretty decent difference in Hamilton’s advantage. Why is Hamilton’s wOBA superior, even though his lead in singles is mostly offset by Cabrera’s lead in walks?

Because there’s a dirty little secret about Cabrera’s walk rate – 30 of the 84 walks he’s been issued this year have been intentional, and intentional walks simply are not as valuable as non-intentional walks.

This is actually an intuitive conclusion, even though it might seem a little bit strange at first. Intentional walks are issued in situations where the opposing team believes it is more valuable to have the batter on first base than at the plate. It is a strategic move, based on the situation at hand, that is aimed at reducing the offense’s chance of scoring a run, or multiple runs, in a given inning.

Thanks to the play log on Cabrera’s page here, we can actually look at the situations where he’s been intentionally walked. Here are the base/out state for each of those situations:

No Outs

No intentional walks issued

One Out

First only, first and second, first and third – no intentional walks
Second only – 6 intentional walks
Third only – 4 intentional walks
Second and Third – 3 intentional walks

Two outs

First only – no intentional walks issued
First and Second – 3 intentional walks
First and Third – 1 intentional walk
Second and Third – 1 intentional walk
Second only – 7 intentional walks
Third only – 5 intentional walks

In all 30 instances where opposing managers chose to put Cabrera on, it was in a situation where he otherwise would have had a chance to drive in a man already in scoring position. In addition, only four of the 30 walks actually advanced runners, as IBBs are generally issued when first base is already open.

The end result? These walks weren’t all that beneficial to the Tigers chances of winning the games in which they occurred. The average win probability added of the 30 intentional walks is just 1.5 percent. The average win probability added of the 54 non-intentional walks Cabrera has drawn this year? 3.3 percent.

Cabrera’s walk rate is heavily influenced by the IBBs that have been issued when he’s up, and those simply aren’t particularly helpful to the Tigers chances of winning, because they come in situations where Detroit would be better off with Cabrera at the plate than on first base. They help his OBP and OPS, but they don’t really contribute to the Tigers scoring more runs, which is why Hamilton’s wOBA is significantly higher, even with similar rate numbers.

In this case, Hamilton’s singles trump Cabrera’s walks. Even though Cabrera has a .003 edge in OPS, Hamilton’s been the more productive hitter this year. That could change if Hamilton sits out the rest of the year and Cabrera has a monster finish to the year, but it’s going to be tough for him to pull away enough offensively to offset the pretty big gap in defensive value. Barring something crazy, odds are pretty good that Josh Hamilton will end the season as the AL MVP, even if he doesn’t play in September. He was that good from April through August.

After another victory (and a Cardinals’ loss) last night, the Reds’ playoff odds are up to 97 percent. They hold a seven game lead in the NL Central with 18 games to play, and can comfortably begin to look forward to the playoffs. Barring an epic collapse, they’re going to be playing baseball in October as division champions. Now, all they have to do is figure out what their playoff rotation might look like.

It’s a little weird for a team with such a strong certainty of making the post-season to have no real idea of who might take the hill for them in a few weeks, but this is the situation that the Reds find themselves in. More than anything else, they need to spend the rest of the regular season figuring out who to hand the ball to.

The top two spots are easy: Johnny Cueto and Bronson Arroyo will start the first two games of any Reds playoff series, in some order. Who will go after that is anyone’s guess, however.

Right now, the guys pitching after those two in the rotation are Travis Wood and Homer Bailey. Both are enjoying some success, but are early in their careers and certainly won’t have the “proven veteran” label that managers love to have when the season is on the line. Wood’s ERA is a lot better, but in actuality, he and Bailey have pitched in nearly identical ways: their walk rates, strikeout rates, and home run rates are all very similar.

You would think that, if forced to choose between the two, Wood would have the edge based on his much lower ERA, but since returning to the club in mid-August, Bailey has been one of the team’s best pitchers. Meanwhile, Wood has faded a bit after a brilliant beginning to his big league career, and has only gone more than five innings in one of his last four starts. Managers are big on trends, and Bailey is certainly on an upward track at the moment, while Wood appears to be regressing. That could tilt things in favor of the right-hander if Dusty Baker feels like he has to choose between them.

Given that those two have the lowest FIPs of the Reds’ group of starters, you could argue that Wood/Bailey shouldn’t be an either/or situation, but that both have earned rotation spots. However, the Reds almost certainly need to leave a rotation spot open for Edinson Volquez. Even though his season has been up and down as he attempts to return to full strength after arm surgery, he dominated the Pirates (7 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K) in his first start since being recalled from the minors, and when he’s on, he’s the best arm on the staff. Unfortunately, he’s been off more than he’s be on this year, and his recent performance comes with the caveat that it was against Pittsburgh.

That’s five names for four spots, and that doesn’t even touch on Aaron Harang (who could start, but almost certainly won’t). Of the five, only Wood is a left-hander, which may play in his favor depending on the match-ups. Clearly, though, much is still to be settled, and how the team’s starters fare down the stretch could go a long way to influencing who gets the ball in October.

With two marquee match-ups getting underway tonight, we’d like to offer you guys an opportunity to watch them with your fellow FanGraphs readers. Feel free to use this thread as an open discussion about either game.

Most of the attention in baseball tonight will fall squarely on the Tampa Bay-New York match-up, where CC Sabathia will take on David Price, with the winner of the game holding sole possession of first place in the AL East. It is a big match-up with quite a few playoff implications on the line. If either team can pull off a series sweep, they’ll put themselves in a great position to win their division and likely finish with the best record in the league, which means a first round date with the Rangers instead of the Twins. Neither of those teams are pushovers, but given Josh Hamilton’s health, that’s almost certainly a better match-up right now.

The reality is that the series in Tampa won’t decide a playoff spot. Both of those teams are headed for October baseball, as the loser of the AL East will almost certainly win the Wild Card. While they want to win the division, neither team’s season is hanging in the balance. So, while it’s a big series, there’s a bigger one out west.

90 minutes later, the San Diego Padres will kick off their series in Colorado against the surging Rockies, winners of 10 straight. The Padres lead in the NL West is down to percentage points, and Colorado only stands 1 1/2 games out of first place. Both of these teams have a real chance to win their division, but both also trail the Atlanta Braves in the Wild Card race. It is likely that one of these teams will be sitting at home when the playoffs begin, and because of how closely the races over in the Senior Circuit are, the playoff teams will probably squeak in with just a win or two more than the ones whose seasons end after 162 games.

This San Diego-Colorado match-up has enormous ramifications for what we’re going to see in October. A Padres sweep puts the Rockies back on life support. San Diego’s season won’t end in the next few days, but the last thing they need after a prolonged slump is to get whooped by a surging division opponent. If the Rockies take the series, and especially if they sweep, the Padres will need to find some late season magic in order to keep their miracle season alive.

Cory Luebke vs Jeff Francis isn’t quite as sexy as the Price-Sabathia tilt in the AL, but that’s the game with big implications tonight. If you have the ability to watch either game, I highly suggest watching the two Western teams square off. You’ll see Tampa Bay and New York in the playoffs, and you might even see them play each other again. You almost certainly won’t see both Colorado and San Diego in October, and the series that begins tonight will go a pretty good ways to determining which of those two teams gets to keep on going after the regular season ends.

In appreciation of the magnitude of the games tonight, we’ll be hosting a special live blog for anyone who wants to discuss the games as they happen. We’ll kick that off at 7:00 and leave it open through the end of the Rockies-Padres game. This is when baseball really gets fun – come enjoy it with fellow FanGraphs readers.