Starting opposite Max Scherzer in Oakland tonight is going to be Bartolo Colon. That sentence doesn’t sound as crazy as it might’ve before — by this point, we’ve grown re-accustomed to Colon being a starter and pitching effectively. One of the best ERAs in baseball, he had. It’s not that the Colon story isn’t amazing anymore. It is amazing, that he’s back and healthy and pitching like he is in the way that he is. But we appreciate change better than we appreciate stability, and Colon isn’t changing. He pitches like he’s 40, going on 29.

Beyond his size and story, there’s something extreme about Colon: he throws almost exclusively fastballs. Susan Slusser just wrote it up well, and though Colon does have other pitches, and though Colon does have different fastballs, it’s still extraordinarily rare to see a starter with so little speed and break variation. Given his repertoire and ability to locate, Colon is our closest approximation to a starter version of Mariano Rivera. There’s something else too, though, if you dig a little deeper. Another statistical extremity, that’s a result of his approach, as I suppose is always the case.

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One of the things about advanced metrics is that they can tell you things you might not have guessed. The other day, for example, I wrote about a showdown between Alex Cobb and Danny Salazar, and by some of the numbers, that looked like one hell of a potential duel. Thursday, A.J. Burnett and Adam Wainwright also looked like one hell of a potential duel. Wainwright, people know about — he’d be another year’s Cy Young winner. Burnett, though, was more quietly outstanding, after being dismissed by New York. Wainwright finished with the National League’s third-best FIP. Burnett finished fifth, just in front of Cliff Lee and two of his teammates. On that basis you could argue Burnett is the Pirates’ best starter.

One of the things about A.J. Burnett is that, who knows? We’ve never really had a great measure of starting pitcher inconsistency, but if we did, Burnett would probably be at or near the top of the list. Inconsistency has long been his reputation, and so long as the potential is there for a meltdown, it can never mentally be counted out. And Thursday, Burnett melted down. In what could’ve been a compelling showdown of aces, Wainwright was ahead seven runs before he threw a pitch in the fourth. When the Pirates pulled within six, the Cardinals extended the deficit right back. Both starting pitchers showed up, but only Wainwright did more than that.

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A little under an hour east of here, rising behind one of the world’s largest free-standing natural monoliths, there lies a peak known as Hamilton Mountain. The trail up passes by a breathtaking waterfall and breathstopping cliffs, and the summit affords magnificent views of the Columbia River Gorge and the Cascade peaks towering beyond. As you head out from the trailhead, there’s only one way to go, passing through shrubs and underneath power lines before entering a forest. Soon, though, one arrives at a junction. There are two paths and a sign with arrows, reading “Difficult” and “More Difficult.” The choice is up to the hiker, but no matter which way you pick, you’re going to get to the top.

Mariano Rivera is retiring, which is going to allow us to re-visit the question of who is the game’s best closer. Not that we couldn’t address the question before, but Rivera was the default response, and sometimes people got emotional if you went another way. Now Rivera has removed himself from the pool, and there’s a small host of current candidates to take his place. Among them are Atlanta’s Craig Kimbrel and Los Angeles’ Kenley Jansen, and statistically it can be hard to tell the two apart. Remarkably, they occupy very similar planes. Remarkably, they get there along two very different paths.

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We don’t know each other, but we’re part of the same circle, in that we spend a lot of our time thinking about baseball analysis. And because we’re in the same circle, we share a bunch of inside jokes. They might not feel like inside jokes, but that’s precisely what they are. Jokes about Jose Molina framing pitches. Jokes about Yuniesky Betancourt playing defense. Jokes about Delmon Young playing defense. Jokes about Delmon Young playing offense. Jokes about Delmon Young acquisitions. We’ve all been programmed to make fun of Delmon Young, and so we’re also programmed to make fun of the teams that like to use him. At least, this was the case, and then Young wound up back on the Rays.

We’re all biased. When Young went to the Phillies, people ripped them to bits, even though Young technically wasn’t even guaranteed a job at first. When Young eventually wound up with the Rays, though, we all paused. We wanted to make fun, but because it was the Rays, we also wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s something the Rays have earned, and now we figure when they do something weird, they must be up to something. Our assumption is generally that the Rays are right, even when we don’t know why, and the Rays made a particularly curious move on Wednesday against the Indians. It wasn’t the in-game equivalent of signing Delmon Young — who, incidentally, homered, off Danny Salazar — but there was something very much anti-traditional.

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Prior to Tuesday’s game, the story was Pittsburgh’s team. Following Tuesday’s game, the story was Pittsburgh’s crowd. The team, too, of course, did well, but the crowd at PNC was something a lot of the players said they had never experienced. The moment we’ll all remember for years was Johnny Cueto dropping the baseball and subsequently allowing a home run while the entire crowd chanted his name, but the crowd wasn’t on for one pitch — it was on for just shy of nine innings, and it was a crowd very much unlike the sort of crowd you expect at a baseball contest.

It’s not a leap to suggest it made for an intimidating environment. Of course, it’s been suggested that the Pirates were given a massive home-field advantage. You wouldn’t even need to look further than the drop and immediate dinger. Those gathered were very loud and very partisan, and the field itself isn’t sound-proofed. What’s happening above, they hear below, and the dozens of thousands had a certain rooting interest. You want to believe that it mattered. The only problem is evidence.

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Yesterday, the nation got to watch Francisco Liriano go up against Johnny Cueto. Come Thursday, Adam Wainwright and Clayton Kershaw are going to pitch, albeit not opposite each other. This is the playoffs, meaning the teams left are good, which means the players left are good, which means the pitchers left are good. There are going to be some incredible potential pitchers’ duels, and some of those are going to work out as actual pitchers’ duels. But Wednesday brings us a special one, even if the majority of baseball fans don’t know a thing about the guys taking the hill. As the Rays and Indians fight in the American League wild-card playoff, they’ll be throwing two of the league’s better and more unknown starters.

The Indians are turning to Danny Salazar, who’s far from a household name. Those who know him, at least, understand his sex appeal. The Rays, meanwhile, are turning to Alex Cobb, and there are people in Cobb’s own home who might not recognize him. Cobb certainly doesn’t have Salazar’s eye-popping stuff, but what the two do have in common are eye-popping numbers — numbers that put them in elite company. Numbers that make this a showdown to anticipate.

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From last year until forever, maybe, one-game playoffs are going to be a part of our postseason viewing reality. Entire seasons are going to come down to nine-inning snapshots, meaning everything’s going to ride on winning those nine innings. One of the best ways to maximize win probability is to be aggressive with the bullpen. To be aggressive with getting it involved, and to be aggressive with changing it up. Starters, as a rule, get worse as a game goes on. Relievers are good, especially fresh. Almost every one-game playoff preview we write here will suggest a starter not last too long, because that tends not to be the sensible course. Monday night, there was a one-game playoff between the Rangers and Rays. The Rays opted not to use their bullpen at all. The Rays will face the Indians in Cleveland on Wednesday, in large part thanks to David Price.

So much of the pregame discussion focused on Price’s poor personal history against the Rangers over his career. Nevermind that Price has gotten a lot better, and that the Rangers have changed, and that they never met before in 2013. The talk was that Price struggled against Texas, especially in Texas. The Rangers, in theory, could go in with confidence, and Price came away with a complete-game seven-hitter, the Rangers scoring just twice and not really threatening after the sixth. Price didn’t pitch like he’d pitched against Texas. He pitched like he’d pitched overall.

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The Rays knocked off the Rangers by three Monday night, and the game, presumably, was not decided by a successful pick-off in the bottom of the first. However, it was a pick-off most interesting, given the actions of James Loney at first base. So while the pick-off is not what people will be talking about Tuesday, it seemed like this should be opened up for a poll, in order to gauge reader opinion.

Following, the play, along with the pertinent rules. Is this obstruction, or is this good defense on Loney’s part? Elvis Andrus was quickly erased, and the Rangers’ odds of winning dropped more than four percentage points. Who’s to say what the inning could’ve become? Do we even need to worry about the context or significance when talking about a rule-book gray area?

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