On September 7th, the Pirates lost 11-6 to the San Francisco Giants. This loss dropped the Pirates record to 60-82 and officially marked the 16th consecutive season that the Pirates were to finish below .500. Appropriate then that the loss was at the hands of the Giants who signed away Barry Bonds from the Pirates in the winter between the 1992 and 1993 seasons coming off Bonds’ second MVP season and his first with an OPS over 1.000 and an OPS+ over 200.

It takes a lot of things to finish below .500 consecutively for over a decade and a half. It takes some combination of hilarious incompetent management, low payroll and bad luck. Most teams manage to escape having all three of those factors against them but a few always fall prey to it each year. It’s the Pirates who have been remarkable in falling prey to it every year. Even the Expos managed years over .500 near the end of their run in Montreal.

While not much can be done about bad luck, the Pirates have taken steps to correct the poor management and with Neal Huntington in place at GM and an expanding intelligence base in the front office, they seem to be on the right path. One aspect that they will have to evaluate is the amateur drafting strategy employed by their predecessors.

In 2004, with the 11th overall pick, the Pirates selected catcher Neil Walker passing on possibilities Jered Weaver, Stephen Drew and Phil Hughes among others. Walker has progressed steadily but slowly through the Pirates farm system, reaching Triple-A this season at age 22, but proving that he still has a ways to go offensively.

In 2005, again with the 11th overall pick, the Pirates stayed in the high school ranks tabbing outfielder Andrew McCutchen. McCutchen has followed much the same path as Neil Walker, moving steadily up through the ranks and spending the entire 2007 season in Triple-A where he posted a respectable line for a center fielder. 2006 saw the Pirates move up to the fourth overall pick, which they used to jump back in to the college ranks for righthander Brad Lincoln who tossed 24 innings for them that year and then promptly missed the entire 2007 season with Tommy John surgery.

While each of those picks were defensible in their own rights, what notable about those three drafts was the overall failure of them combined so far to produce any major league talent. The 2004-6 drafts have to date only produced a handful of unproductive at bats for Brian Bixler, Brent Lillibridge and Stephen Pearce. Three years worth of draft picks have yet to see a return. Already, Huntington has made news with his draft picks as the Pedro Alvarez mess seems to have finally come to a conclusion, but it will be interesting to see if any trends emerge from the new regime as it pertains to stocking the minors.

Among the unheralded, and somewhat rightfully so, are the middle relief men. The pitchers that don’t get flashy save totals and thus are ignored when it comes to highlights and fantasy talk, but nonetheless provide the backbone for the relief corps. The reason they might rightfully be ignored is due their fungible nature, but that’s a whole ‘nother series of posts.

For now, in my continued fascination with bizarre in-season splits, I want to point out Sean Green of the Seattle Mariners. A somewhat sidearmer, Sean Green started building a reputation as a ROOGY with Seattle in 2006 and cemented it in 2007 with his development of a truly wicked slider. Along side groundball rates that hover around the 60% mark, Green notched enough strikeouts to minimize the damage of his high walk rate.

On the surface that’s not very interesting unless you have a fetish for undervalued relief pitchers, which I do but I’m not going to rely on everyone else sharing in order to sustain an entire post. No, what is slightly more interesting is Sean Green’s dramatic fall off come August for the second consecutive season when it comes to BABIP.

In 2007, Green began the year in Triple-A (where he’s allowed but a single home run over his 91 innings pitched at that level) and appeared in ten games through about the first month before making the move up to Seattle in early May. Over the first 81 games the Mariners played with Green on the roster, he would appear in 37 of them and tossed 44.1 innings with 35 strikeouts, 19 walks and just one home run allowed. For the last third of the season (54 games), Green appeared 27 times but managed just 23.2 innings with just an 18-15 strikeout to walk rate. His home runs allowed stayed at the meager one, but 36 other hits were attained, suggesting some rampant bad luck combined with perhaps a bit of fatigue contributing to the worsening walk rate.

Come 2008 and Green was firmly entrenched in the Mariners bullpen. Once again, his use was heavy as he appeared in half of the Mariners first 106 games and again performed admirably with a 50 to 23 strikeout to walk rate over 57.1 innings. Though his home run rate a skosh higher (he allowed three), it was still a solid overall line for Green. Yet again, the calendar turned to August and since then Green’s appeared in 16 games, had 15.1 innings pitched and once again saw his control abandon him falling to 11 walks against just 10 strikeouts in that period. But again the main culprit was Green’s BABIP as though he’s managed to avoid any home runs during this period, the defense behind him have yielded 24 hits, an eerily similar rate to that of last season.

Hopefully, the Mariners realize this for what it is, minor runs of poor control heightened by bad luck on balls in play as fluky as it is frightening.

What’s happened to Kosuke Fukudome? Generally you would think that an established player coming over from Japan would struggle during the first few months of his MLB career while he adjusted to the different styles and levels of play and then settle into a groove. Fukudome however, started off a star in Chicago’s north side as the Cubs raced out in the NL Central going 35-21 through May while Fukudome posted a .310/.412/.442 batting line while playing more than adequate right field defense.

Fukudome would start to decline in June, but still managed a fabulous OBP thanks to 17 walks against just 22 strikeouts, giving him a fantastic .123 isolated discipline. Kosuke even doubled his home run total to that point with three in June giving him a decent, but not spectacular .138 isolated power mark. So while his average dipped down to the .260s for that month, his more important slash stats remained viable and healthy.

Then something seemingly happened on June 29th as from that point forward Fukudome has regressed in every category. He’s only hit three home runs during that 66 game span and a total of 11 extra base hits giving him a lean .089 isolated power and while he still drew 26 walks during that time, he also struck out at a much higher rate, 49 times in 233 plate appearances, a 21% clip compared to just under 16% prior. And those 26 walks represented about a five point decline in walk rate over that prior period as well.

Overall, it’s been a .207/.293/.296 slash line for Fukudome since June 29th. One might wonder if pitchers have adjusted to his lack of power and are starting to throw him more strikes as they fear him less. Or maybe he was just really comfortable in the five spot of the batting order, where he started the season until the middle of June when he got moved up to leadoff and subsequently bounced around as he’s faltered.

After three consecutive seasons with ERAs under 4.00 in one of baseball’s most unfriendly ballparks to pitchers, perennially underrated pitcher Aaron Harang is currently holding a 5-16 record and a 4.70 ERA leading to many traditionalists passing it off as a terrible season. But what really, if anything, has changed for Harang in 2008 compared to his 2005-7 stretch and is his season really all that bad?

The first such piece of evidence to investigate is the strikeouts since they usually tell us most of the story. From 2005-7, Harang punched out 21.1% of the batters that he faced. That’s down to 19.6% in 2008. Okay, that is a decline, but it’s not much of one, equaling about 15 batters per full season or less than half a batter per start.

Lets move on to free passes. It is usual here to just look at walks, but there are two problems with that. One, it counts intentional walks which any measurement will tell you are just not nowhere near as costly and in terms of evaluating a pitcher’s control should just ignored. Secondly, it ignores hit batters, an egregious omission since hitting a batter is almost always indicative of poor control. Over the prior three year span, Harang let just under 6% of batters reach base freely while this year it has moved to just a shade over 6%, a really minuscule difference.

What is mostly responsible for Harang’s suffering this season are the fly balls and the home runs. Harang’s groundball rate has plunged to its lowest rate since 2002 back when he was with the Athletics. In addition to that, Harangs percentage of home runs allowed per fly ball is also at an all time high, not a good thing to miss with a newfound increase in fly balls. In fact, if you took Harang’s home run per batter faced rate from 2005-7 and applied it to 2008, you should shave 11 home runs off his season which all by itself would be enough to bring his ERA down under the 4.00 mark assuming the standard 1.4 runs per home run.

It seems likely that Harang’s groundballs and home runs per fly would regress a bit toward his career norms next season, making him more than a decent buy low candidate but there is another ominous sign. Paired with the decline strikeout rate is a rather abrupt fall in swinging strikes generated, a key driver of strikeouts going forward for pitchers. I would expect Harang to get his home runs allowed back under a bit more control in 2009, but pay careful attention to those strikeouts to see if they fall off any more.

Well, that’s that. With the news now official that Erik Bedard has a tear in his labrum the book on his 2008 and perhaps even his Mariner career is closed.

The result of a protracted three month negotiation between Bill Bavasi of the Mariners and Andy MacPhail of the Orioles that took more bizarre twists than your typical Lost episode, Erik Bedard landed with the Mariners for a whopping five players including Adam Jones, George Sherrill and highly touted minor league pitcher Chris Tillman.

The traditional media mostly sided on the side of Bavasi as the Mariners were coming off an 88-win season while many in the blogosphere were skeptical of the price paid in order to acquire Bedard. Erik did his best to stifle any possible opposition to the trade in Seattle with his first three pitches, a called strike fastball, a swing and a miss on a curveball low in the zone and a ridiculous breaking curve in a dirt that Ian Kinsler had no prayer of connecting on.

After that though it was all downhill. Bedard hurt his hip and as it turns out, his shoulder, in that game and couldn’t even make his second start on schedule. Off and on the disabled list, Bedard entered the season’s final month seeming unlikely to pitch again in 2008, but Mariner fans were still holding out hope that a winter’s worth of rest would return the 2007 version to them in time for 2009. But now that is not to be.

A labrum tear, no matter how minor, means at minimum a half year of rehab and it means that Bedard will not be opening the 2009 season in anyone’s rotation. As a fifth-year arbitration player and someone who did manage to pitch decently in the scant 81 innings he threw, Bedard would likely be due a raise from his current $7 million salary and thus he becomes a serious non-tender candidate for Seattle.

More than just a symbol of a season that’s seen everything the Mariners built turn to rubble, the loss of Erik Bedard represents a loss to all of baseball as the talent he displayed in 2007 was something special and despite his cold reputation from media members, my own, albeit brief, interactions with Bedard suggest otherwise. The loss of Bedard for most of 2008 and a significant portion of 2009 isn’t just the final nail in one of the worst trades of all time, it’s a loss for fans of baseball period.

Like the AL MVP race, and unlike the AL Cy Young (Cliff Lee) and the NL MVP (Albert Pujols) races, the NL Cy Young has a few worthy candidates, each with their specific claim to the title of best pitcher in the National League for 2008.

Brandon Webb has the pedigree and the twenty wins that voters will gravitate toward and ranking third in WPA means that even by better stats, Webb is among the viable candidates.

If the Brewers hang on to take the Wild Card, will CC Sabathia get some consideration? His totals in the National League are certainly exemplary and best in the league, but he’s dogged but a sample size about half that of the other contenders unless you consider his AL stats as well. Which in and of itself raises an interesting debate, but in Sabathia’s case raises a further point of whether or not those combined stats are good enough to warrant a Cy Young.

Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers and Ryan Dempster of the Cubs have shiny ERAs and playoff teams to back their otherwise excellent seasons but overall weak case at a Cy Young award. Johan Santana hangs around 2nd place in many categories and warrants a mention as well.

In the end though, there’s one man that so far has risen above all these mentioned above and that’s Tim Lincecum. Not only does Lincecum lead the league in ERA (by about a quarter of a run) and strikeouts (by a whopping forty) but he has a gargantuan lead in WPA over Johan Santana in 2nd place 5.22 to 3.51. It’s just his second season but assuming the Giants don’t blow out his arm Tim Lincecum deserves the first of what should be multiple Cy Young Awards.

Of the top eight relievers by innings pitched in the majors this season, six of them are part of a pair of relievers on the same team.

Paving the way so far is Josh Rupe of the Rangers with 84.2 innings in just 43 games while teammate Jamey Wright checks in at seventh with 79.2 innings spread over a more conventional 70 games. Among all the pitchers mentioned herein, Rupe is alone in that his entering leverage index is a meager 0.56 and also showing a mediocre 47-41 strikeout to walk rate

At fourth and eight in the majors lies a pair of Phillies relievers. Chad Durbin‘s 81.2 innings in 64 appearances and Ryan Madson’s 75 innings over 69 games. When your rotation is so bad that it continues to give Kyle Kendrick starts, you are going to have a lot of innings for your bullpen to soak up.

Finally, sitting back to back at fifth and sixth are a pair from the nation’s capital in Joel Hanrahan (81.1 innings in 66 games) and Saul Rivera (80.2 innings over 72 games). Saul Rivera has been quite the horse for the Nationals as he logged 93 innings last season as well and 88.2 innings split between the majors and Triple-A in 2006. Hanrahan was previously in the rotation so his high inning count for a reliever is a moderate one for a pitcher trained as a starter though it’s noteworthy that he hasn’t been used more in long relief stretches.

What these six do have in common beside a laborious workload is that each pitch for teams with sub par (and that’s a British-style understatement there) rotations. But what is interesting is that this trend was not present last season as each of the top five relievers in usage during 2007 were from different teams and the top team relievers in 2006 were all from differing teams. It’s another curious aspect to the 2008 season.

On October 29th of 2007, the Braves swapped Edgar Renteria over to the Tigers in exchange for Jair Jurrjens and Gorkys Hernandez. Some were critical of the trade from the Braves perspective, but they’ve certainly come up with the bigger end of the stick in all aspects for 2008. For now, let us just take a look at Jurrjens.

Jair made a brief appearance in the Tigers 2007 rotation, making seven starts and flashing a dismal 13-11 strikeout to walk ratio while hitting a batter and tossing a pair of wild pitches. Jurrjens earned the call up based on a solid season in Double-A at the age of 21 so the Tigers had him skip Triple-A and make some starts at the tail end of the season.

Upon his move to Atlanta, Jurrjens was regarded as a pitcher with middle of the rotation upside and perhaps another year or so before that level was supposed to be reached. What has happened instead is Jurrjens taking a leap forward and coming a co-ace with Tim Hudson of the Baves rotation. Where has the performance come from? Well, Jurrjens’ 2007 strikeout ratio was 20%. In Double-A. One year later and he’s posting an 18% in the big leagues, far surpassing what was expected from him so soon.

Furthermore, Jurrjens had been a pronounced groundballer in the minors and that returned to form in 2008, climbing fourteen points over the 2007 figure that he posted with the Tigers. Seemingly overnight, Jurrjens turned into a a 7K / 3BB / 0.6HR pitcher in the big leagues at the tender age of 22. One season is still too small a sample to be sure, but it looks like the future is bright for Jurrjens and you can chalk up another win on a pitching trade for the Braves.

One of my favorite players in baseball is (used to be?) Chris Snelling because of his reckless style of play, the nifty accent and solid plate discipline skills. That fandom of Snelling came with a price, namely waiting around for the majority of the year while Snelling rehabbed his latest injury. It may be partly because of that experience that I am somewhat partial to talented players that just cannot stay healthy. One such player is Rocco Baldelli.

Baldelli was the 6th overall pick in the 2000 draft in between the Nationals pick of Justin Wayne and the Rockies Matt Harrington. After a poor first full year spend entirely at A ball, Baldelli sped through the minors and broke camp with the Rays for good in 2003 and posted a 99 OPS+. He improved the next year, cutting down on his strikeouts and posting a 100 OPS+.

Baldelli’s injury woes began during the offseason before 2005 when he tore his anterior cruciate ligament playing baseball over the winter. During his rehab, he went on to injure his elbow which eventually was deemed serious enough to warrant Tommy John surgery, making 2005 officially a wiped out season and putting the start of 2006 in jeopardy as well.

Sure enough, Baldelli wouldn’t be able to return until June of 2006 but made good with what time he had, matching his career high in homeruns (16) in 44 fewer games and hope returned that Baldelli could return to building himself a successful career. That hope wouldn’t last long as Baldelli strained his hamstring during the 2007 Spring Training and the injury would linger, sapping his offensive output before finally shutting down his year in May.

During that offseason, Baldelli began feeling extremely fatigued after even minor rehab workouts. After extensive medical tests, Rocco was diagnosed with an unknown metabolic or mitochondrial disorder which put his baseball career in doubt. After more rounds of tests, Baldelli was put on a combination of medications that for the time being allowed him to resume playing. After two months of rehab in the minor leagues, Baldelli made his 2008 debut on August 10th at Seattle.

Amazingly, granted the small sample size (20 games so far), Baldelli has picked up where he left out with a 116 wOBA+ and a 139 OPS+. It’s been a season of feel good stories including that of the entire Tampa Bay team, but among them, there’s hardly a better story than Rocco Baldelli.

Francisco Rodriguez secured his 57th save of the season last night, tying Bobby Thigpen’s record set in 1990. Much has and will be made when Rodriguez breaks the record and that’s unfortunate because it’s one of the worst statistics in baseball and using it cheapens what Francisco has accomplished as a premier relief pitcher for the past half-dozen years.

That’s not to say that Rodriguez doesn’t deserve the record. He has the highest entering leverage index among relievers with a reasonable sample size so he’s certainly been earning at least most of his saves. It’s just that the save statistic is borderline meaningless, a view never better illustrated than the situation in which Rodriguez earned his record tying 57th save. Rodriguez entered the game in the top of 9th with zero outs and two baserunners on. He had a four run cushion however and proceeded to yield two line drives and a pair of groundballs. For that, Rodriguez took one step closer to breaking the single season saves record and further helping himself this winter as he enters the free agent market.

Rodriguez built his reputation based on his phenomenal run through the 2002 postseason as the Angels got past the Giants for the World Series crown. He certainly didn’t let up afterward with a solid enough 2003 season, but he really exploded and reached his peak in the 2004 year as he cut his homerun rate and spiked his strikeout rate to just shy of 37%, a fantastic figure. The 2005 season was a bit of a fall back, but he managed to rebound in 2006. Since then however, it’s been a steady decline. Which is not to say Rodriguez isn’t good, he clearly is, just that he’s been getting gradually worse.

His ability to throw strikes is diminishing, down to near 60% now and he’s missing fewer bats than ever before while posting the highest walk rate, the highest hit by pitch rate and the lowest strike out rates of his career. Francisco Rodriguez has been a fantastic pitcher since he emerged on the scene in late 2002, but he looks clearly to be on a decline and he’ll be coming off a (meaningless) record-setting season. It’s a recipe for an overvalued contract that’s not likely to bear much fruit for whichever team signs on the dotted line.