Last night, we saw one of the strangest rallies of the year. The suddenly surging Houston Astros… well, just look at it for yourself.

Top 6, SF @ Houston, Giants lead 1-0, Barry Zito pitching.

Ty Wigginton reaches on an infield single
Mark Loretta walked
Miguel Tejada singled to center
Lance Berkman walked
Geoff Blum hit a sacrifice fly
Hunter Pence intentionally walked
Reggie Abercrombie hit a sacrifice fly
Humberto Quintero hit by pitch
Randy Wolf walked
Ty Wigginton hit by pitch
Mark Loretta hit by pitch
Miguel Tejada flew out.

That’s a six run inning based on an infield single, an actual single, four walks, and three hit by pitches. 12 men came to the plate, and thanks to the classification between PA and AB, the Astros went 2 for 3 on the inning. You might not ever see a worse pitching sequence than hitting Quintero, walking Wolf, hitting Wigginton, and hitting Loretta in succession.

For the Astros, it’s another odd win in a winning streak that only the Astros front office saw coming. They were openly mocked for making trades to add veterans when they have next to no chance of making the playoffs, but the Astros have responded and are playing their best baseball of the season. It won’t matter, though, because their seven game winning streak has simply served to keep them even with the Brewers, who have won eight in a row.

Of course, if they can score six runs in an inning where they get just two singles, maybe anything is possible.

This afternoon, Eric presented the case for Cliff Lee, asking the somewhat rhetorical question of whether he’s already wrapped up the Cy Young award. Well, Roy Halladay called, and he told me to tell Eric “not so fast, buddy”.

First, the comparison of traditional stats.

Wins: Lee (16) over Halladay (13)
ERA: Lee (2.45) over Halladay (2.72)
Innings: Halladay (182) over Lee (161 2/3)
Strkeouts: Halladay (155) over Lee (128)
Complete Games: Halladay (7) over Lee (2)

If you don’t like to go beyond the 1950s numbers to evaluate pitchers, then you have to decide whether you like quality (Lee) or quantity (Halladay). Lee’s surface numbers are a bit better, but Halladay’s pitched more. I’d imagine most voters who base their decisions on Wins and ERA will go with Lee, but for those of us who think pitchers should be evaluated by metrics a little more current, let’s take a look at how they’ve performed in things they can control.

BB/9: Lee (1.22) over Halladay (1.53)
K/9: Halladay (7.66) over Lee (7.13)
HR/9: Lee (0.39) over Hallday (0.64)
WPA/LI: Halladay (3.97) over Lee (3.90)

Lee has a lead in the two command factors of FIP, walks and home runs, by slight but significant margins. Halladay has a similar lead in dominance, getting more strikeouts and ground balls. Hallday’s FIP of 2.99 is half a run higher than Lee’s 2.48, almost all of which is tied to Lee’s home run prevention. On a per inning basis, Lee’s got the advantage, no doubt.

However, as WPA/LI shows, the extra 20 innings that Halladay has thrown matter. If Lee had thrown the same 182 innings that Halladay has completed, his advantage based on FIP would be FIP (or ERA, as both have ERAs close to their actual performance) would be about 8 or 9 runs. Halladay, however, needs to get credit for pitching more often, so we need to adjust the difference in innings to account for the other pitchers Cleveland has had to use in lieu of Lee going deeper into the game.

Lee has allowed 46 runs in his 162 2/3 IP, but the Indians bullpen has been terrible this year, allowing 5.38 runs per nine innings as a group. If we multiply that RA times the 20 inning difference between Lee and Halladay, we get an additional 12 runs given up. That would push Lee + bullpen’s total to 58 runs allowed in 182 innings, which is just six runs better than Halladay’s runs allowed total.

The extra innings Halladay has pitched close the gap, but not entirely – Lee still has the lead right now, even after accounting for quantity. However, with a month and a half to go in the season, there’s still certainly time for Halladay to make up the difference and then some.

Lee’s season has been great, but Doc Halladay isn’t that far behind. Let’s not give him the Cy Young just yet.

The Red Sox had a 98.7% Win Expectancy at the end of the first inning.

There were 15 extra base hits in the game. Six other games last night had 15 hits of any kind by both teams combined.

11 pitchers were used. Only two did not allow at least one run.

Let’s play one of baseball writer’s favorite games – anonymous player comparison!

Player A, 2007: .386 OBP, .562 SLG, 3.42 WPA/LI
Player B, 2007: .386 OBP, .554 SLG, 3.51 WPA/LI

Player A, 2008: .384 OBP, .526 SLG, 2.32 WPA/LI
Player B, 2008: .373 OBP, .528 SLG, 2.31 WPA/LI

That’s two years where both players have been almost identical in terms of offensive value. They couldn’t be viewed any more differently by most of baseball, however.

Player A is Hanley Ramirez, the Marlins all-star shortstop, sometimes mentioned MVP candidate, and widely considered one of the most valuable players in the game. Player B is Adam Dunn, the guy who was traded for a marginal minor league starter and two PTBNL’s on a waiver-wire deal yesterday.

Now, there’s obviously a big difference between them – Ramirez plays shortstop, and Dunn plays outfield. But neither of them are particularly adept defenders relative to their peers, so most of the actual difference between their value comes from the position adjustment required to make up for the difference in expected offensive from an SS and an LF.

The average NL SS is hitting .271/.328/.396, while the average LF is hitting .273/.351/.460. That’s a significant difference, and when plugged into a win value calculator, the difference comes out to about one win over the course of the season. Even if we wanted to give Ramirez a bit of extra value for being a better shortstop than Dunn is an outfielder (which is arguable, but possible), the most we’ll be able to get the difference up to is 1.5 wins over a full season.

There’s a difference, no doubt, but can you imagine the media reaction if the Diamondbacks had traded for Hanley Ramirez yesterday? It’s not exactly a proportional response to the actual difference between the two. More than anything else, the way Dunn and Ramirez are perceived tells us just how strongly batting average still has a hold on the game as a whole.

It seems like every year, a young flamethrowing rookie comes up from the minors and makes a big impact on a playoff team’s bullpen. Joba Chamberlain, Pat Neshek, Francisco Rodriguez… it’s becoming an annual tradition. This year, Jeff Samardzija is being anointed as that guy after coming up and blowing hitters away with his 95 MPH fastball.

There’s one huge difference between Samardzija and the guys who were fall sensations in years past – the ability to throw strikes. His walk rate is okay (3.09 BB/9) for a power reliever, but it’s masking the fact that he’s only thrown 58% of his pitches for strikes. That matches Daniel Cabrera’s career total, for comparison’s sake. After a sparkling debut in his first two appearances, he’s consistently been unable to put the ball over the plate since, putting up a 53% strike percentage in his last six appearances.

That’s just not going to work. You can’t miss the plate half the time and be successful in the major leagues. Hitters will just lay off the pitches that aren’t over the plate until you come over with something they can crush, or wait for you to give them first base. The old cliche about the best pitch in baseball being strike one is true – stuff is important, but command is vital. Right now, Samardzija’s command is walking the line of not being good enough for the major leagues. His stuff gives him a margin of error, but he’s pretty close to the end of that margin.

His big leap forward has been a great story for the Cubs organization, but as they head towards October, they have to be realistic about what he’s going to give them down the stretch. The power arm is always enticing, but radar velocities don’t matter when the ump yells “ball four”. The Cubs need to be helping him get the ball over the plate more often, and until he does, he shouldn’t be counted on as the savior of that bullpen.

The Marlins have made a lot of surprise playoff runs over the years, and it seems like all of them involve a rookie pitcher coming up from the minors and providing a great performance. Josh Beckett started the trend, Anibal Sanchez continued it, and now Christopher Volstad is trying to be the new wunderkind.

Since being recalled on July 6th from Double-A Carolina, Volstad has made five starts and showed why his sinker was considered one of the best in the game. His GB-FB rates during those five starts are 15-6, 13-2, 9-5, 10-5, and 9-5. His GB% stands at 56.3%, an outstanding total, and a big part of why he’s been successful so far.

His 2.67 ERA is supported by a 3.36 FIP, so even though his batting average on balls in play is a bit low (and thus driving down the ERA), he’s still pitching well. But the key for Volstad has been the home run prevention – he’s allowed just one long ball in the majors after not giving up a single round tripper in Double-A. When you keep the ball in the park, teams will have a tough time piling up runs, and Volstad has been as good as anyone at limiting the damage.

His 3.7% HR/FB rate isn’t sustainable, of course. That will go up, and Volstad isn’t as good as his results would indicate so far. But that just means that he’s not the best pitcher in baseball, which we already knew – he’s a very good prospect with a dynamite sinker and a solid curve that gives him two good major league pitches. His command isn’t great, but he misses down in the zone, so the problems will result from walks, not long balls.

The Marlins are going to have to have a great final two months to make another playoff run, and if they pull it off, it’s likely that Volstad will be a big part of that.

The Rays bolstered their bullpen today by acquiring Chad Bradford from Baltimore for a player to be named later. If it seems like Bradford has been around forever, that’s because it’s true. He’s been doing this sidearm shtick in the majors for 10 years now, compiling a 3.31 ERA in 446 career innings. Not bad for a guy whose fastball topped out at 85 in his prime and averages 80.0 MPH now.

Bradford is a lot of fun, simply because he’s so unique. His sidearm motion allows him to keep everything low in the zone, and because of the movement, it’s almost impossible to hit the ball in the air against him. He’s faced 145 batters this year and only 20 of them have managed to hit fly balls. Obviously, if you can’t get the ball in the air, you can’t hit home runs, so Bradford is among the league’s best at limiting the long ball.

He also pounds the strike zone (1.56 BB/9 in ’08, 2.35 BB/9 career), and his combination of no walks and no home runs makes him an effective pitcher despite a hilarious 2.90 K/9 rate. There was a discussion in the Jesse Litsch thread the other day about minimum required K/9 rates for success, and while there were disagreements over what the threshold is, no one was putting it at three strikeouts per game.

Bradford is succeeding in a way that baseball hasn’t seen since Dan Quisenberry in 1981. Oddities like Bradford and The Quiz are part of what makes baseball so much fun, and I’m glad to see the 21st century side-armer get a shot to make an imapct in another playoff race.

There’s one pending free agent who, I will happily admit, I have no idea what kind of contract he is going to get this winter. I feel like no matter what I guess, I have a great chance of being amazingly wrong, because there are so many positives and so many negatives in the equation.

That player, of course, is Milton Bradley.

On the plus side, he’s been the best hitter in the American League this year. Combined with his excellent 2007 performance, he’s now strung together 515 at-bats of MVP caliber offense. He’s a switch-hitter, he gets on base, he hits for power, and he can still run a little bit. He’s just 30 years old and is showing no signs of physical decline. And, while he’s DH’d most of this year, he can still play a decent corner outfield if need be.

However, this is still the same guy who wore out his welcome in Montreal, Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Oakland. This is a guy who has gotten more than 400 at-bats in a season once in his entire career. This is a guy who has fought with coaches, teammates, and fans. He’s a guy with with a 1.282 OPS in Texas and an .852 OPS on the road.

His Marcel true talent level pegs him as a .291/.388/.502 hitter, which makes him the best hitter available this winter. That should earn him a nice paycheck, but if he decides he wants to stay at DH, that rules out half the teams in baseball as suitors. If a team pursues him as an outfielder, can they count on him to play more than half a season?

And, of course, there’s the personality stuff. He’s done well in Texas, but when four franchises have already decided that he’s not worth the headache, there’s a real reason why. Would he fit in with a new club? Or wear out his welcome in Texas?

It seems like the best fit is for him to stay in Texas, where he’s found his greatest success and seems genuinely happy. But how much should the Rangers give him to DH when they already have more bats than spots in the line-up while they’re rebuilding?

I could see Bradley getting a 4 year, $50 million contract from someone. I could see Bradley settling for a one year, $10 million deal. I could see anything in between.

What would you offer Milton Bradley this winter?

One of my favorite additions of the year here at FanGraphs is the ability to split data down by time frames on the leaderboards. It makes finding out who has been hot or cold lately very easy, and it’s just a lot of fun. So, let’s take a stroll through the last 30 days of performance together.

On Fire

Justin Morneau: .345/.468/.690, 1.23 WPA/LI, 87 at-bats, 21 walks, 9 strikeouts.

Despite by praise for Denard Span this morning, Morneau is carrying the Twins offense right now. Minnesota really needed to get a hitter to stick behind him so that opposing pitchers are a bit more willing to pitch to him, because right now, Jason Kubel isn’t a sufficient threat.

Ryan Braun: .358/.397/.745, 1.46 WPA/LI, 106 at-bats, 7 walks, 24 strikeouts.

Braun’s on one of his patented slugfests, launching nine home runs in the last 30 days. He’s still as uber-aggressive as always, but with his raw power, it doesn’t matter. He can really hit a baseball a long ways.

Manny Ramirez: .453/.543/.787, 1.50 WPA/LI, 75 at-bats, 12 walks, 10 strikeouts.

For all the talk about Manny not playing hard for Boston, he was killing the ball when they traded him and he’s killing the ball in Los Angeles. Even with all his defensive issues and antics, it’s important to remember that Manny Being Manny includes him being one of the best hitters in the league.

Ice Cold

Jason Kendall: .148/.227/.216, -0.92 WPA/LI, 88 at-bats, 7 walks, 10 strikeouts

Braun is offsetting this miserable performance, as no amount of veteran leadership and game calling can make up for the fact that Kendall hits about as well as a pitcher nowadays. You have to wonder if the Brewers knew Pudge Rodriguez was available, because he would have been a monstrous upgrade for them at the deadline.

Mark Ellis: .188/.250/.259, -0.88 WPA/LI, 85 at-bats, 4 walks, 12 strikeouts

So much for all free agents going bananas in their walk years, as Ellis is struggling mightily as he heads towards a big payday this winter. His calling card remains his excellent defense at second base, but it’s his ability to hit a bit that sets him apart from guys like Adam Everett and John McDonald. Teams don’t value defense as highly on the open market as they do offensive performance, so if Ellis is going to land a big multiyear contract, he’d do well to start whacking the baseball again.

Jacoby Ellsbury: .226/.244/.262, -0.64 WPA/LI, 84 at-bats, 1 walk, 15 strikeouts

After a phenemonal debut last year, expectations for Ellsbury were high, but he’s run into the second year wall. His lack of power has pitchers challenging him in the strike zone, and while he’s making contact, he’s not doing anything with the ball when he puts the bat on it. As the slump has intensified, he’s tried to hack his way out of it, and that hasn’t worked much better. He’ll bounce back, but he’s got some adjustments to make, and right now, Boston can’t afford to have him making outs at the top of the line-up while they try to chase down the Rays.

The Twins head into August as surprising contenders in the A.L. Central. Perhaps no player has been a bigger surprise on that squad than Denard Span, who entered the year as a busted prospect but has had a breakthrough season and now finds himself as the Twins everyday right fielder. And with the way he’s playing, he’s not giving it up any time soon.

Since his return to Minnesota at the beginning of July, Span has hit .313/.403/.463 in 134 at-bats, racking up 0.53 WPA/LI in basically one month’s worth of playing time. As an extreme ground ball hitter (58% GB%), the power is a bit unexpected, but he’s doing it by hitting the ball on the screws (25% LD%). Adding the extra base hits to his ability to work the count (13% BB%) and his speed (7 infield hits, 2 bunt hits), and you’ve got a guy with an all around offensive attack.

Span won’t keep posting slugging marks this high, but he can certainly be a quality player with this skill set. Because of how often he slaps the ball into the ground, his upside is something resembling Ichiro-type OBP/SLG numbers (obviously with fewer hits and some more walks) than Kenny Lofton, just without the same propensity for stealing bases of either of those two. And, considering that 2008 is the first year Span has ever showed this level of offensive production, I hesitate to use those names, but we have to acknowledge that the speed/walks/defense package can produce a pretty terrific player.

Denard Span, right now, is what Boston fans thought Jacoby Ellsbury was going to be for them this year. He’s flying a bit under the radar, but keep on eye on the kid up in Minnesota. If they end up winning that division, he’s going to be one of the main reasons why.