Lee Judge’s blog, Judging the Royals is, well, interestimg. I would have titled it Mock Scout with Lee J., but, surprisingly, I was not asked for my thoughts on the matter. I always imagined my first FanGraphs post on Judge would be for NotGraphs, and I suppose there is still time for that. However, if one can look past the Ron Polk Point System (Hey, Alex Gordon finally passed Eric Hosmer this week!), Judge’s “critical” stance, and other things, there is actually some good stuff in his posts about how players and coaches view the game.

However, today I do not want to focus so much on Judge as something from his comments after last night’s Royals versus Orioles match-up regarding our old friend Jeff Francoeur:

Jeff Francoeur doubled to right in the third, continuing his trend of taking the ball the other way since doing extra work with Kevin Seitzer. Last season Jeff did a better job of getting a pitch out over the plate, and he hit .285, 47 doubles, 4 triples, 20 home runs and had 87 RBIs. Getting back to that approach was part of the message he received during his benching, so seeing Francoeur hit balls hard the other way is a good sign that he’s getting back to last year’s approach.

The first thing I thought of was the Mets’ Tony Bernazard-spearheaded experiment a few seasons go with going to the opposite field more often, which Jack Moore analyzed when it was first reported. Judge does not say whether or not Kevin Seitzer ripped off his shirt and challenged Francoeur to a fight during Francoeur’s (miraculous) benching to work on his approach. Is there any fire to go with Judge’s smoke?

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The Brewers designed backup catcher George Kottaras for assignment last week, and he has now been traded to the As for longtime minor league reliever Fautino De Los Santos. Oakland manager Bob Melvin sounds totally pumped:

I really don’t know much about him… I’ve seen some of the numbers, and know he has a high on-base (percentage) for a guy that’s hitting 200-something.

Once the buzz has worn off, what are the As getting in Kottaras, and what role might he play?

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The trade deadline rush has not disappointed so far, and the latest big news is that Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin delivered on his promise to move Zack Greinke. Greinke is now an Angel. Marc Hulet already covered the prospects that the Angels sent to Milwaukee.

Was it a “good” trade? Well, the Brewers are not going anywhere, and Greinke is going to be a free agent who will be expecting a big payday, especially with Cole Hamels now off of the market. The Angels gave up some decent prospects (even if none of them looks likely to be a future superstar), but they are obviously built to win right now. If the standings remain the same (which is a big “if,” even for a good team like the Angels), Los Angeles will be in the playoffs. Greinke gives them even more gas in the rotation. What all this means for the “fairness” of the trade is something for others to sort out. I want to briefly take a look at how Greinke might fit in in the Anaheim and how imposing the Angels’ rotation looks for the playoffs.

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[With apologies to Mike Keneally]

[Author’s note added later for anyone who cares: the mentions of the differences between subjective and objective senses of time should not be taken as technical or precise in the way one would expect when reading, say, a historical explication of classic philosophies of time. This is just supposed to be an entertaining way of launching a discussion of how a few years can seem so distant with respect to certain things in baseball. For a technical and precise account of the different senses of time in Augustine, Husserl, or whomever, you should look elsewhere. Sorry.]

The existential experience of time passing is different than the intellectual acknowledgement of “how much time has passed.” I do not mean anything “deep” by that — I’m generally opposed to depth, or at least the appearance of depth. What I mean is simply that while, for example, every year is about 365.242199 days, on a subjective, personal level, it feels as if some slices of time go by faster than others. An hour spent staring at a clock feels longer than an hour playing video games. An hour watching Stephen Strasburg pitch flies by faster than an hour watching Jonathan Sanchez pitch. You get the idea.

That is all a prelude to saying that 2009 “feels” pretty recent to me. I am not sure why. Maybe because when I first started blogging (for the dearly-departed SB Nation site Driveline Mechanics) around that time. “Pretty recent” is itself a vague description — it is not “objectively” a correct or incorrect description. But it really has been a while since 2009. It was three birthdays ago. Looking at the changing perceptions of particualr baseball players is one way of measuring how much time has passed. Without giving a full recap of the year, here are a few things from 2009 that drove home the reality that, in fact, 2009 was a “million” years ago.

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[Image by Justin Bopp]

After one of the lamest comeback attempts in recent memory (Manny Ramirez probably takes that trophy home), Jason Kendall has retired. While Kendall’s last few seasons were pretty miserable performances (although that did not stop the Royals and Brewers from marching him out there as much as they possibly could — indeed, Kendall insisted on it), he was quite good for a long time before bottoming out. Kendall is no Hall of Famer, but his career holds up pretty well against some of his more celebrated contemporaries. He had some bad times at the end, a testimony to the elusive-but-ever-present charms of “veteran catcher.” However, without delving into the salacious details of his personal life or discussing his tremendous way of handling tough questions from the press, it is worth recalling how much Kendall managed to accomplish in his distinguished career.

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A big part of the Chicago White Sox’ current perch atop the American League Central standings has been “comeback” performances. Jake Peavy is pitching better than he has since at least 2008 in San Diego. Adam Dunn is back from the dead after a 2011 performance during which he simply looked finished.

And, of course, the enigmatic Alex Rios is hitting again in 2012 after a 2011 in which his wOBA matched that of Dunn (both finished the season at .266). Rios currently sports the highest season wRC+ of his career at 132 (.316/.352/.520). As many have commented, he has been on a rollercoaster. He was very good for the Blue Jays from 2006 to 2008, then in the middle of a somewhat down 2009 season, the Jays let Rios and the last four plus years of his contract go to Chicago simply for salary relief. Rios bottomed out over the last two months in Chicago in 2009. However, he got it together in 2010, particularly in the first part of the season. Then things totally collapsed again in 2011. Rios is back (for now, at least), but how is he doing it?

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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated posted the results (in slide-show form, yay!) of recent survey they took asking 228 MLB players to name the most underrated position player in the game. These sorts of things usually generate “interesting” results, and this case was no exception. This is supposed to be a fun exercise, so it would be unfair to complain about the “unscientific” nature of the poll: why 228 players? How were they distributed across the teams? Were they position players themselves or a mix? How many votes did each player get? The notions of “underrated” and is itself vague (underrated by the media? The fans? Statistics?), so the respondents may have been thinking of different things when answering. Wouldn’t a truly underrated player fail to show up on a list of “top underrated players” at all?

Such complaints sort of miss the point. I assume this was simply meant to be a fun way to generate discussion. I personally would have liked to have seen one or two comments from respondents about each player to get a sense of what the respondents were thinking about when they answered. In any case, the list has some results that are pretty hilarious, as one might expect. One way of responding would be to come up with a different list. Grant Brisbee wrote up an excellent list of his own. Another would be to simply go through SI’s list and comment on it.

This post takes the second path, but the truth is, it is not quite the “fisking” one might expect. Yes, some choices are downright hilarious. However, given the qualifications above, I thought the responding players did okay. It is not the list I would have made, but they made some decent choices. Or maybe the list is like the movie Juno: the beginning is so horribly annoying that the rest seems better than it actually is.

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