The Orioles finished off the Detroit Tigers yesterday, winning their division series three games to none, though the primary story of the series still seems to resolve around the Tigers and their disastrous bullpen performance. Despite throwing $10 million per year at Joe Nathan over the winter, and then trading for Joakim Soria at the deadline, the Tigers bullpen combined for 19.29 ERA in this series, and that includes two shutout innings from regular season starter Anibal Sanchez. If you look at just the Tigers postseason pitchers who were relievers in the regular season, they combined to allow 11 runs in just three innings against the Orioles, good for an ERA of 33.00.

The Orioles likely would be up 2-1 in this series even if the Tigers relievers had pitched well — Detroit’s starter left with the team down 4-3 in Game 1 and down 2-0 in Game 3, and the Tigers never managed to make up those deficits in either game — so it’s not accurate to say that the Tigers bullpen cost them the division series. However, on the other end of things, we could put together an argument that the Orioles bullpen, and more specifically Buck Showalter’s management of his relievers, won this series for the Orioles.

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So that was exciting, and then the exact opposite of exciting, but after two days of play-in games, we know who the Wild Card entries are to the postseason this year. The Royals and Giants join the six division winners in chasing the World Series title, and so before the games begin tonight, let’s take a look at what each remaining contender did well this year, as well as something they might have had problems with.

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The Kansas City Royals just won the American League Wild Card, and advanced to the postseason for the first time since 1985. Congratulations are in order, and yet, had Billy Butler’s baserunning blunder not indirectly led to Geovany Soto’s thumb injury — and the insertion of throwing-impaired catcher Derek Norris — we would probably be talking about a very different game this morning. That’s what kind of game that was; the Royals may very well have won because their lead-footed designated hitter screwed up an attempted stolen base, allowing their track stars to run wild later on in the game. These are the kinds of events that make prognosticating a baseball game feel like a futile endeavor.

But for about an hour or so, the story of this game felt like it was going to be pretty easy to write. The Royals carried a lead into the sixth inning. The Royals had the best bullpen in baseball this year, led by the dominant trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland. And each of those three sat and watched as James Shields put the tying and go-ahead runs on base, and then continued to watch as Yordano Ventura entered the game and promptly gave up a three-run home run to Brandon Moss. Yordano Ventura, a rookie starter who threw 73 pitches two days ago. A right-handed rookie pitcher, working on very short rest, in a situation in which he was not used to being used. This didn’t even require second guessing, as there was plenty of first guessing going on even before Moss crushed the ball over the center field fence.

I’m not here to say that going to Ventura was definitely the right call, or that it was not a strange decision in light of the other available options. Earlier in the day, I suggested that Yost not rely too heavily on Shields pitching deep into the game, and that he should be willing to ask his trio of elite relievers to get the final 12 outs. Had Yost called me at the start of the sixth inning, I’m pretty sure that I would not have considered Ventura as my first option, especially once Shields put two men on base and their collection of left-handers came around to bat.

But was it really indefensible? Was the move so obviously bad that the ensuing result should have been foreseeable? I’m not so sure. Let’s deal with the primary criticisms.

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Last night, the Kansas City Royals laid down four sacrifice bunts, one fewer than they had in the entire month of September. It was a veritable bunt-a-palooza, with Ned Yost’s squad taking small ball to an entirely different level. Predictably, sabermetrically-inclined fans and analysts hated it, as the community has spent years preaching the value of not giving away outs. The live blog was inundated with angry Royals fans who wanted Yost fired, even as the team staged a miracle comeback, because he handed the A’s more than an innnings worth of free outs in his pursuit of runner advancement.

But let’s talk about all those bunts, and whether they were actually harmful to the Royals chances of winning. Let’s go through them, in chronological order.

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A couple of weeks ago, we announced the creation of the FanGraphs Player of the Year Award, which we created to recognize the single best performance in a given season, regardless of the position the player plays or the league that he plays in. Just one award for one player, with everyone eligible, and all players measured on the strength of their own performance.

In that post, we announced that the voting panel would include 11 members of the FanGraphs staff, myself included. Today, we’re amending that slightly, as I am recusing myself from the voting panel this year, as our plan to reveal the winner — and all of our balllots — on October 20th means that my participation would reveal some of the order of the NL MVP ballot which I cast over the weekend. In order to avoid that issue, I’m surrendering my vote for the Player of the Year Award this season. To replace me on the panel, we have chosen to give you guys a ballot instead.

Before I link to the ballot, though, I need to explain the grading process that we have attached to the system. While the ballot does contain a normal 1-10 ranking system, we have added an additional evaluation layer, with a 0-100 grade also being recorded for every player you list on your ballot. The grade is actually the more important number than the ranking on the ballot, though both will be tabulated, and the player’s average ranking will be used as a tie-breaker, so position on the ballot matters as well. But the grade is the more important evaluation, so let me walk through how the grading scale works.

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The AL Wild Card game rosters and line-ups are out, and there were a few interesting decisions made. Let’s look at those decisions, while remembering that the expected outcome in choosing the alternative is mostly the same, as line-up decisions don’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. They can matter a little bit, though, and in a winner-take-all elimination game, every little bit is worth talking about.

Firs, the A’s line-up against James Shields, with their projected wOBA by Steamer:

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