During last night’s 2-1, extra innings classic between Detroit and Kansas City, something surprising jumped out at me. Well, it jumped out at me after I recovered from Doug Fister somehow putting up four wins above replacement this season, being perfect through six, and having a thrilling duel with the Royals’ Jeff Francis. (By the way, a belated HAPPY FRANCIS DAY to my fellow Royals fans. Or is it MERRY JEFFMAS?). Delmon Young was hitting third. And it wasn’t just a one game thing, or even a platoon strategy with the Tigers facing a lefty. Nope, it’s been happening every game since the Tigers acquired Young from the Twins earlier this month. Seriously, has Jim Leyland become the real Motor City Madman?

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I can’t decide whether the Dodger’s situation this season is depressing, funny, or so depressing that it is funny. James Loney’s continued presence and playing time is sad/ridiculous in itself — maybe manager Don Mattingly thinks his own 1995 season with the Yankees wasn’t so bad (he was Donnie Freaking Baseball, after all!), and Loney has been almost that “good.” But today’s Donnie Baseball-related news (and we know that’s what brings you here to FanGraphs) isn’t about Loney, but about right fielder Andre Ethier.

Ethier has been playing on a bad knee that will require surgery in the off-season, and reportedly feels like the Dodgers don’t care. Unsurprisingly, neither Mattingly nor Ned ‘Snakeskin Boots‘ Colletti weren’t all that pleased about Ethier’s public comments. You can follow the links for the he said-he said. It does seem, given the situation between Ethier and management, the organization’s financial and (non-)competitive situation, and Ethier’s coming jump in salary, that he is probably on his way out as a Dodger. Unfortunately, assuming they plan on trading Ethier in the off-season, he doesn’t have all that much value.

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St. Louis Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak recently told a reporter that the team has “unofficially” decided to pick up Adam Wainwright’s team option. That might have seemed like a foregone conclusion before the season, but Wainwright has missed the entire 2011 season with Tommy John surgery. The option isn’t just a one-year option, either. It is an option for both 2012 and 2013 worth a total of $21 million. Wainwright has been an outstanding pitcher in the past, and we’ve seen pitchers come back from Tommy John successfully before. Assuming the Cardinals make the decision “official,” it is interesting to speculate not only on what Wainwright has to do to make the contract “worth it,” but also on what it means for how the Cardinals perceive their near future.

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Brent Lillibridge hit his 11th home run of the season during the White Sox 10-0 old-fashioned whoopin’ of the Rangers yesterday. It was just another highlight in a shocking power outburst for the utility infielder, who looked like a marginal major leaguer coming into the season. Lillibridge started off the season hot, cooled down in June and July, and is having his best month yet so far in August. Lillibridge is only 27 — not terribly young, but not old, either. Could this be another lasting power surge (.245 ISO with a .370 wOBA) out of nowhere in the vein of Ben Zobrist or Jose Bautista?

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….or, the Return of the Contract Retrospective.

Jim Hendry is reportedly out as the general manager of the Cubs. I’ll leave a general summary of Hendry’s tenure to someone else. In the meantime, I thought that an appropriate tribute to Hendry’s time at the Cubs’ helm might be a retrospective look back at one of his signature moves: the eight-year, $136 million contract with Alfonso Soriano that began in 2007. The idea behind a contract retrospective is simple: it is easy enough to look at a contract and call it good or bad after the fact, but if we reconstruct what was known about the player at the time, did it make sense from that perspective? This one’s for you, Mr. Hendry.

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The American League Central is pretty weak. Of all the teams in the division, only Cleveland has a positive run differential as of today, and that’s by only one run. A number of factors probably contribute to the divisional weakness: lower average budgets than some of the coastal divisions, poor decision making, and perhaps some bad luck. The division, however, is surprisingly strong this season in one area: shortstops. Can any other division compare?

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Earlier this summer, I took an easy (but deserved) shot at the Florida Marlins’ ownership for never really putting out the effort to win despite having a solid core of young talent for years and a large profit margin thanks to revenue sharing. I’m not taking it back now, but while it is admittedly fun to be negative (kudos on the handling of the Logan Morrison situation, boys!), I come today not to bury two more teams, but to praise them. The Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers are both currently winning their respective divisions. Whether or not it lasts, they deserve credit for going for it when they easily could have justified playing it safe. They are the anti-Marlins of 2011.

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Rates are obviously important to sabermetrics, particularly when discussing player skill. That’s why we don’t just look at a player’s raw numbers like total hits, walks, or home runs. That’s why batting average, and later, on-base percentage and slugging became popular. If we want to break things down more precisely to examine specific skills, we can look at things like walks, strikeouts and home runs per plate appearance. That works pretty well, and depending on how careful you want to be, at a certain point practicality outweighs precision. But what if you are really trying to look at a player’s skills carefully, is the good ol’ plate appearance really always the right denominator?

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