On Saturday night, Rich Hill was perfect. The Marlins sent 21 batters to the plate against him, and all 21 walked back to the dugout. But when the 22nd batter came up to hit, he did not see Rich Hill; he saw Joe Blanton instead. Faced with a choice of letting Hill chase history or preserve his team’s #2 starter for the postseason, manager Dave Roberts chose the latter, removing Hill from after seven perfect innings and 89 pitches thrown. After the game, he explained his decision.

“I’m going to lose sleep tonight,” Roberts said. “And I probably should.”

His voice was gravelly and low, unable to find joy even as hip-hop blared in the clubhouse. He suspected he will never “have to make a tougher decision” than the choice he made in Saturday’s seventh inning.

…

“I’m very, very sensitive to his personal achievements,” Roberts said. “I really am. But nothing should get in the way, or compromise, our team goal.”

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Last night, the Nationals and Braves played an 11-inning game, and because it happened in September, 17 different pitchers were used between the two clubs. Ninety-nine batters, 17 pitchers: that’s a new pitcher every six batters, essentially. Yes, it went extra innings, and Stephen Strasburg had to leave the start with an injury, forcing the Nationals into an unplanned bullpen game, but 15 pitching changes is still just far too many for a Major League game. It’s a problem the league faces every September, when teams are able to carry everyone on their 40-man roster as active players if they so choose; the Nationals currently have 37 active players.

Of course, neither the individual teams nor the players are all that incentivized to change the system. Since the minor-league season ends around Labor Day, the roster expansion gives teams a chance to give their best prospects something to do in September, and gets them some valuable experience in the big leagues. Players like it, of course, because the promotion to the active roster comes with a big improvement in salary, and so guys who have been making minor-league wages are essentially rewarded with a significant end-of-season bonus. It’s hard to imagine either side is going to push hard to limit September roster sizes in the current CBA negotiations, as they both benefit from the current system, and the burden of longer, less enjoyable games are mostly carried by the fans, who don’t have a seat at the bargaining table.

But as the Braves and Nationals showed last night, there has to be a better way than this. Let’s run through a few options.

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While the 2016 season has a month left to go, over the weekend, Corey Seager completed his first full year in the big leagues. He was called up to the majors on September 3rd of 2015, so he’s now spent a little more than 365 days as a Major League player, and has played almost exactly one full big league season. And it is hard to imagine how it could have gone much better.

Since the day he got to the big leagues, Seager has performed like an upper-tier superstar. Over the last calendar year, his +8.4 WAR ranks third-best in baseball, behind only Mike Trout (+10.1) and Kris Bryant (+9.0), and as he’s played at an MVP-level since arriving in Los Angeles. He might not be as elite an athlete as Trout or even more-heralded young shortstops like Carlos Correa, but he’s shown the kinds of bat-to-ball skills that make for pretty special hitters.

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For the second straight year, I have been given the right to cast a vote for the National League Cy Young Award. Last year, the task of picking between three deserving winners was practically impossible, and I ended up going with Jake Arrieta over Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke by the thinnest of margins. After last year’s embarrassment of riches, however, it looks like this year, the choice will come down to picking between some candidates with some more obvious flaws.

Just going by runs allowed, there’s a big pile of guys who have all been roughly similar in value.

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Heading into the season, the Dodgers’ outfield looked remarkably deep, and the big question was how Dave Roberts was going to find enough playing time to keep everyone happy. The starting trio of Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, and Andre Ethier all looked like solid regulars, but because of the depth, the team was likely to run a bunch of platoons: Scott Van Slyke would share time with Ethier in left, Enrique Hernandez would give Pederson a break against lefties in center, and Carl Crawford would play some days as well, probably at the expense of Puig on days right-handers were on the mound, with Ethier shifting back to right field on those days.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Ethier broke his leg in spring training and has missed the whole season. Crawford played poorly enough to get released. Hernandez and Van Slyke have struggled with injuries and poor performance, and have seen their playing time reallocated to Howie Kendrick and Trayce Thompson, respectively. The team tired of having Puig around, so they traded for Josh Reddick in July.

But despite cycling through a half-dozen internal options and making a deadline acquisition for a former All-Star, the Dodgers are currently being carried by an outfielder that they could not have imagined would be playing a significant role for them this year. Last night, after getting down early in the second game of a double-header, they came from behind to beat the Rockies 10-8 on the strength of a grand slam from rookie Andrew Toles. It would have been more shocking if Toles hadn’t been torching big-league pitching since making his debut in July.

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I’m writing this post as a favor to former colleague and friend-of-the-site Mike Petriello, who is now working as an analyst for MLB.com. Over the last few weeks, on Twitter, Mike has been doing his best to dispel the notion that teams have to set their playoff rosters today.

I think I annoy people by talking about postseason eligibility so much but this is why https://t.co/ackJTa7hbV

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) August 30, 2016

The myth of the August 31st playoff roster deadline is seemingly born out of the notion that, to be eligible to play in the postseason, teams have to acquire players from other organizations by the end of the day today. That part is absolutely true; any player acquired tomorrow will not be eligible to participate in the postseason. But beyond that restriction, anyone in a team’s organization today is effectively eligible for the playoff roster, no matter what part of the organization they are assigned to today.

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This is a guest post from our friends at NEIFI.co, who have built a projection system and systematic evaluation methodology about which you can read more at their site. They also tweet @NEIFIco and have started their own blog as well.

Back in November, we contributed a post about Japanese superstar Shohei Otani, noting that the 22-year-old hurler already projected as one of the best pitchers on the planet, and would be one of the most coveted international imports in baseball history if his NPB team, Nippon Ham, decided to make him available to MLB clubs. Since that time, Otani’s 2016 season has only expanded his legend.

On the mound, Otani has had another great year, allowing a 2.25 ERA in 16 starts and racking up 140 strikeouts in 116 innings. But his real coming out party has been at the plate, as he’s forced his way into the lineup on a regular basis, becoming a legitimate two-way player. In 301 plate appearances, he’s hitting .333/.435/.631, which means he leads the league in OPS. With all due respect to Madison Bumgarner and the #PitchersWhoRake hashtag, Otani looks like something the likes of which we don’t currently have in MLB.

That brings up the obvious question: do we have any relevant comparisons for Shohei Otani?

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A few weeks ago, Jeff Sullivan wrote about the Padres spectacular baserunning this year. I didn’t see that post, because I was in Oregon shopping for a house when he published it. So this morning, I started writing about the Padres spectacular baserunning, and then Jeff tapped me on the shoulder and informed me that my post was redundant. 2016 has gone so badly for the Padres that even when we try to write about them, even that gets messed up.

But thankfully, I’ve noticed something that wasn’t true when Jeff wrote his post on August 11th that is still interesting enough to justify this post. His post focused on the Padres overall baserunning success, looking at every factor involved in a team’s aggressiveness and success on the bases. I want to point out the Padres insane success at taking bases after contact. To illustrate their success, here’s a graph of the top 10 team UBRs for 2016, which measures the runs added or lost by a team through non-stolen base baserunning, so things like going first-to-third or second-to-home.

The Padres are #1, at almost +16 runs; the Indians are second, at +10 runs. The Padres are six runs better than the next best team at this on the year; only four other teams are even six runs better than average by UBR this year. This is an area where the Padres are an island to themselves; no one is even close to being as good as they are this.

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