In one of the lesser heralded July deals this season, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim acquired Alberto Callaspo of the Kansas City Royals in exchange for pitchers Sean O’Sullivan and Will Smith. This trade, predictably, hasn’t had much of an effect on the 2010 playoff race, but for the Angels, Callaspo must be viewed as a long term investment. He won’t receive his first arbitration award until next season, meaning that Callaspo could potentially man third base for the Angels for the next three years or more.

This season, however, hasn’t been kind to Tony Reagins’s new investment. Callaspo has a .256/.298/.323 slash line with the Angels in his 209 plate appearances with the team, a mark reminiscent of his terrible first seasons with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2006 and 2007. Callaspo’s power has all but disappeared, as he has only mustered two home runs and seven doubles with the Angels after putting up eight and 19 respectively with the Royals. Combine that with a drop in BABIP to .262, and the recipe is a disastrous line for Callaspo.

Callaspo isn’t a great hitter because he doesn’t provide much pop, (.115 career ISO), doesn’t walk much 6.9% career walk rate, and has relative struggles with balls in play (.291 BABIP). However, Callaspo is among the best in the league at avoiding the strikeout, as he has only suffered the strikeout only 7.6% of the time in his career, less than half of the league average. It’s this skill that has allowed Callaspo to produce in the majors in the past, as he has managed to accrue 4.1 WAR in 1600 PAs despite the deficiencies in his offensive game. He’s sustained this ability in his time with Los Angeles, striking out only 11 times so far, just over 5% of his plate appearances.

There’s definitely reason to believe that Callaspo can return to respectability. He hit well enough in Kansas City to post 1.2 WAR before the trade. CHONE projected Callaspo for a .335 OBP and .417 SLG as of August 28th. However, Callaspo’s time with the Angels has shown that simply making contact isn’t enough to create a good major league hitter. And still, despite the struggles, at least Callaspo has far outperformed Brandon Wood and his 10 wRC+. The Angels should still feel good about this trade despite the lack of early returns, as Callaspo should be a useful player for the Angels, whether it’s in a starting role or as a solid utility player.

Barring one of the most unlikely 60 plate-appearance-runs in baseball history, Matt Kemp’s 2010 season is bound to go down as his worst full season as a Major Leaguer. After putting up wRC+’s above 115 and wOBAs above .349 from 2007-2009, Kemp has a .314 wOBA and a 97 wRC+ in 618 plate appearances this season, which is about 25 runs worse on offense than last year. As Kemp has served as one of the Dodgers’ franchise players, the drop in performance has to be particularly worrisome for those in the LA front office.

Diving slightly beneath the surface, we can see that the culprits aren’t exactly his power stroke nor his ability to reach via the walk. Kemp’s 7.9% walk rate is nearly a percentage point better than his career average and his .181 ISO is exactly in line with his career mark. That leaves the other two factors of hitting – strikeout rate and BABIP – as culprits for this decline. Indeed, Kemp has seen has BABIP fall down to earth, a league average .299 mark after posting .340 BABIPs or better from 2007-2009, and his strikeout rate has skyrocketed from 22% to 28%.

Just over half of this decline can be attributed to Kemp’s relative BABIP issues. The nearly 40 point drop in BABIP has cost Kemp nearly 30 points in wOBA according to the Four Factors method. That leaves the other twenty points remaining between his .314 wOBA and his typical .360-.370 wOBA to his strikeout rate, which is confirmed by the method.

The difference doesn’t really get us much closer to understanding why Kemp’s numbers are down, we just know with which components of the game he’s struggling. Part of it is probably luck and random variation, but I believe a more significant cause can be seen in Kemp’s plate discipline numbers. Kemp thrives on making excellent contact, as that spurs not only his power production but also his excellent prior numbers on balls in play.

The best way to make solid contact is by swinging at pitches that are the easiest to hit – ostensibly, those that fall inside the strike zone. Kemp has had issues with that this season, as his Z-Swing% has fallen from 72.5% in 2008 and 68% in 2009 to 64.5% in 2010. Meanwhile, he’s still swinging at over 30% of pitches outside of the zone – it’s not simply a matter of Kemp swinging less. Combine this lack of swings at pitches in the zone with a lack of contact on pitches in the zone – a Z-Contact rate down by five percentage points this season – and Kemp is putting roughly the same amount of pitches in play, but fewer of them are of the easier kind to hit- the inside the strike zone variety.

It’s possible I’m missing something here – say, a hitch in Kemp’s swing – that I would have had to see more than a select few of Kemp’s plate appearances this season to adequately judge. But the numbers definitely suggest that Kemp’s struggles are due to striking out more and reaching on fewer balls in play – that’s hard to argue. Kemp’s plate discipline numbers suggest that he’s not hitting the more hittable pitches he’s seeing this year, which is making it difficult for him to maintain the brilliant BABIPs that have sustained his hitting lines to date. Regardless whether this is the case, Kemp and the Dodgers need to figure the reason why quickly, because Kemp is simply not a productive player if his bat continues to play at this level.

Of the 133 qualified relievers this season, only two have managed to compile walk rates better than one per nine innings pitched. Those two are Edward Mujica of the Padres and tonight’s featured pitcher: Wilton Lopez of the Astros. Lopez’s 0.73 BB/9 rate in 62 IP leads all relievers, and it makes him a rarity: a productive reliever who doesn’t rely on the strikeout. Lopez is the only reliever in the top 25 in reliever FIP to with a strikeout rate below 7.0 K.9.

Rate starts are nice, but when it comes to players like Lopez, it can be easier to understand just how well they are pitching with raw numbers. Lopez has walked only five batters all season of the 244 that have faced him, and that includes one intentional walk.

Lopez “pounds the zone” to a degree, to use a favorite cliche of announcers. According to Pitch F/X data, Lopez hits the strike zone with 51.6% of his pitches, a mark exactly five percentage points above the league average. That puts him in the upper echelon of qualified relievers, ranking 11th. However, simply hitting the zone often is no guarantor of limiting walks. The walk rates of those in the top 10 in zone% range from 1.25 (Rafael Betancourt of Colorado) to 4.09 (Robinson Tejada of Kansas City), and although we see more in the 1-2 range than 3-4, there’s more to avoiding walks than simply hitting the zone.

The key, at least for Lopez, appears to be the ability with which he can draw strikes with both his two-seam and four-seam fastballs. Lopez has thrown 448 four-seamers and 244 two-seamers this season, and both pitches have fallen for strikes over 68% of the time, whether it’s of the contact, called, or swing-and-miss variety. It should come as little surprise, then that when we take a look at his pitch selection by count, his go-to pitch has been one of his fastballs.

In the six (!) 3-0 counts that Lopez has seen this seasons, he’s thrown the four-seamer four times (three strikes), and the two-seamer twice (both strikes). In the eight 3-1 counts, we see seven fastballs (five strikes) and one changeup (for a strike). Lopez has thrown a more substantial 20 pitches in a full count this season. Again, the fastball has been prominent, featured 18 out of 20 times and thrown for a strike a remarkable 17 times. He’s also gone to his other two pitches, the slider and the changeup, one time each, with the result each time being a foul ball.

Most remarkably, of the 20 pitches Lopez has thrown in these full counts, 18 of them have drawn swings. Only two of them have been whiffs, but it’s still remarkable that only twice have hitters even left it up to the umpire to call the pitch a ball. When we take a look at the location chart from Texas Leaguers.com, we see that Lopez has been near the zone with a majority of his full count pitches.

These graphs aren’t perfect at predicting an umpire’s call based on location, but I wouldn’t bet that 90% of these pitches would be called strikes, and swinging 90% of the time or higher is likely far from the optimal strategy. That said, most of these pitchers are close enough that it wouldn’t be worth leaving the decision up to the human umpire. Lopez’s excellent control with the fastball – roughly 10 percentage points more strikes with his fastball than the league average – keeps hitters on their toes and expecting strikes.

Lopez has been extremely successful as a reliever this year, posting 1.2 WAR to date, and there’s no reason to think that he can’t continue this success. His arsenal – particularly, the presence of a changeup – suggests to me that he may be worth a shot in the rotation, but none of the current Astros starters are warranting the boot at this point. Regardless of what role the Astros use him in, Wilton Lopez should be able to provide the Astros with quality pitching for the next five seasons, chiefly due to his excellent control of the fastball.

With the Dodgers sitting at 72-75, 11 games out of the NL West leading and facing an elimination number of only 5, it’s safe to say that their season is over. Now along with that, Joe Torre’s managerial tenure in Chavez Ravine has also come to an end. Replacing Torre will be longtime bench companion and former Yankee Don Mattingly, who will get his long-awaited chance to manage.

Torre has seen his fair share of criticism of late, particularly in regard to his bullpen management (Scott Proctor immediately comes to mind) and his lineup construction. However, Torre’s teams have done fantastically well, as the last time a Torre led team failed to reach the postseason was in 1995, when the Cardinals finished 4th in their division and missed the playoffs in a strike-shortened season. Every single one of Torre’s Yankee squads reached the postseason, winning six AL championships and four world series titles, and Torre’s first two Dodger teams won the NL West.

Of course, the immediate counterpoint to the performance of Torre’s teams is the fact that they were, at least in New York, ridiculously talented. His Dodgers teams, too, at least relative to their division, were quite good. It brings up the question of how much we can credit a manager for winning with supreme talent. It’s easy to give credit to Buck Showalter when his relatively talent-less Orioles go on a winning streak; it’s not as simple when Joe Maddon has the deepest stock of position players on the continent or when Tony La Russa has the best player on the planet.

The question of whether or not Torre will take another managing job is purely based on his personal life. The question of whether or not another team should offer him a job is something different entirely. At 70, Torre’s age is a bit of a question mark and he certainly made some questionable decisions with the Dodgers: ruining Scott Proctor’s arm, batting Matt Kemp eight for a majority of 2009, and benching Manny Ramirez during the Dodgers’ last gasp this season are just a few. However, every manager is prone to these types of decisions, and although it’s easy for us on the outside to sit back and cry foul on them. Whether or not Torre is fit to manage is a decision that is much better left to those inside baseball than to us outsiders, even though on the surface it can seem apparent that Torre is hurting the team more than he is helping.

Now, Don Mattingly will take over a Dodgers team that is undoubtedly on the decline and is mired in an extremely ugly divorce case. This isn’t going to be an easy first situation for Mattingly, but at the very least it should serve as a decent test of his ability in the clubhouse.

Edinson Volquez is back in the rotation for the second time in 2010 after missing the entire first half of the season due to Tommy John surgery (with a PED suspension thrown in for good measure). Volquez’s results haven’t been much to write home about, as in nine starts prior to yesterday’s start against Arizona, Volquez held a 5.14 ERA and a 4.98 FIP. The Reds have to hope that Volquez can anchor their rotation in the playoffs, as there are definitely some question marks after Johnny Cueto and Bronson Arroyo.

The Reds really haven’t had any idea what to expect from Volquez this year, and his results so far really aren’t giving any concrete answers. Take a look at his game scores so far this year – his results can be pretty well described as all or nothing.

This includes his latest start – a 55 game score against the Arizona Diamondbacks in a losing effort. Volquez hasn’t recorded a game score between 34 and 55 all season, which only goes to enforce this idea of all or nothing.

The problem for Volquez has been a 6.0 BB/9. He survived with a 5.8 BB/9 in 2009, posting a 4.35 ERA despite a 5.01 FIP, but his BABIP (up to .338 from .231) has risen and is forcing him to pay for the free passes. Not only that, but his HR/FB rate is still at a high level, 16% after 14% last season.

On the encouraging side for the Reds, Volquez’s velocity is right where it’s been his whole career, and he’s striking out 9.9 batters per nine innings, which would be a career high over a full season. His ground ball rate – something that stabilizes relatively quickly in small samples – is also up above 50% for the first time in his career.

It’s hard to say which Volquez the Reds can expect for the stretch run and the playoffs. The velocity is there, but the ERA is elevated. The strikeouts are up, but so are the walks. There are more ground balls than ever, but the ball is still leaving the yard. We’ve seen on multiple occasions that he can still bring it – his 69 game score against Colorado in July and particularly his 84 against Pittsburgh last week were both solid performances, and outside of a few hits, he looked good against Arizona yesterday as well. Recent results are encouraging, but Volquez’s performance has to be considered anything but a sure thing going forward.

J.A. Happ is an interesting entity in terms of peripheral pitching statistics and traditional pitching stats. In 269.2 Major League innings, entering this afternoon’s start against the Milwaukee Brewers, Happ had posted a 3.10 ERA despite a 4.36 FIP, 4.57 xFIP, and 4.65 tERA. This season, since being traded to the Astros, Happ has been up to the same tricks, posting a 3.08 ERA despite a 3.76 FIP, 4.27 xFIP, and a 3.72 tERA. No doubt, Happ has pitched well this season, but there’s no way that he should be a 3.08 ERA pitcher – ace quality – given his stuff or his peripherals.

Happ strikes out a fair amount of batters – between six and seven per nine innings, typically – but walks far too many to sustain that kind of ERA, as he has conceded 3.6 walks per nine innings for his career and 3.9 this season for Houston. What’s sustaining him right now is a low BABIP – .244, particularly remarkable given the fact that the Astros have been terrible defensively this season, with a .681 defensive efficiency rating that ranks 25th in the league. The other helpful factors have been a 6.2% HR/FB and an 81% LOB rate, both far better than the MLB averages.

What happened to Happ today can’t be called regression to the mean, unless his mean is a pitcher with a 9.00+ ERA and far worse peripheral stats. Happ pitched 4.1 innings against the Brewers, allowing two home runs and two walks while striking out five. The Brewers also tacked on five more hits, including three doubles. Overall, Milwaukee scored five runs off Happ, including three out of the seven baserunners he allowed (the HRs don’t count, as they were never on base to be stranded).

The start pushes Happ’s HR/FB all the way up to 9.2%, his BABIP up to .257, his ERA up to 3.63, and his FIP up to roughly 4.10. He’s still well outperforming his peripheral numbers, but the J.A. Happ you see in statistical reports tomorrow is much closer to the J.A. Happ the Astros can expect to see in the future. He’s still a productive pitcher, somewhere near or slightly below the MLB average starter, but nobody should be under any sort of delusion that he’s “great,” can replace Roy Oswalt, or is a top half of the rotation starter.

The Arizona Diamondbacks’ decision to trade Dan Haren for Joe Saunders and prospects was largely panned around the sabermetric community, and indeed, much of the baseball community at large. Mostly, that is because Dan Haren is just a really fantastic pitcher, but the fact that the return was two unimpressive prospects and a back-end starter like Joe Saunders simply made the trade an unacceptable squandering of resources on the part of the Diamondbacks. Saunders’s performance in Arizona to date has done nothing to dispel this notion.

Prior to the season, now 29 year old Saunders was projected for a FIP in the 4.70s by both CHONE and ZiPS, a mark that would put him well below average, but still provide value. These projections were effectively right on with Saunders up to the trade, as he posted a 4.68 FIP with the Angels. That kind of mark would place Saunders as about a 1.5 WAR pitcher over 180 innings, an total which he is close to reaching this season and reached in both 2008 and 2009.

But much like pitching in Arizona mistreated Dan Haren, it hasn’t been kind to Saunders. Unsurprisingly, with many starts at Chase Field, a homer-friendly park, Saunders’s HR/FB rate has jumped from 9.0% with the Angels to 12.5% since the trade. Despite a drop in walks, the extra home runs allowed have taken Saunders’s performance down to nearly replacement level. His 5.22 FIP has been worth all of 0.2 WAR for the Diamondbacks in his 55 innings with the club.

His ERA is a slightly more palatable 4.88, and of more encouragement to Arizona, his xFIP is at 4.89, a level that is definitively better than replacement if nothing else. CHONE’s most recent projections have him at a 4.75 “neutral ERA,” which implies he is basically still the same pitcher as he was in Anaheim, although it would not be surprising if his home run issues persist, given his career numbers and the park effects in Arizona.

Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, that pitcher isn’t going to approach what Dan Haren provided them nor what he likely would’ve provided over the next three years. Saunders isn’t cheap, either, as he’s already making $3.75 million in his first arbitration year and can probably expect a raise to the $5 million to $7 million range, despite his poor season, a number that will be awfully close to free agent market value for a player only in his second arbitration year.

Saunders hasn’t even been the “winner” that Jerry DiPoto described as one of the reasons for bringing in Saunders over Haren. Saunders has only won two of his seven decisions and has a -0.50 WPA to go along with that poor record. Joe Saunders simply hasn’t been the guy needed to justify the trade. There was never any reason to believe that he would be, and there’s no reason to believe that he will be in the future either.

The Pirates currently sit at 48-95 and hold the worst record in the National League by 9 games and the worst record in the Major Leagues by 8 games. However, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for Pittsburgh: young players like Jose Tabata, Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, and Pedro Alvarez all have star potential and could be the core that brings Pittsburgh out from their 18 season period of incompetence. All of that talent, however, is in the form of position players, and that, at least partially, explains why the Pirates have allowed 766 runs, the most in the league. Now, in the form of James McDonald, the Pirates finally have a pitcher who at least looks the part of an ace.

Back at the trade deadline, I wrote that the Pirates were big winners. A big reason for that was McDonald, who was acquired for only Octavio Dotel in what I consider to be the biggest steal of trading season. McDonald has rattled off eight fantastic starts for the Pirates since his arrival, striking out 44 batters in 49 innings, walking 18 and allowing only one home run en route to a 3.49 ERA and a fantastic 2.66 FIP.

This comes on the heels of similar numbers in AAA in the hitter friendly Pacific Coast League. It’s very unlikely that McDonald continues to suppress home runs at the crazy rate that he has so far, particularly given a tiny 30% ground ball rate, but his xFIP of 4.09 is still encouraging, and it’s also unlikely that his ground ball rate remains so low. He had a 44% ground ball rate in his first MLB stint (63 innings) and had a 39% ground ball rate in the minors, and so that rate should climb to around 35% as he pitches more major league innings.

McDonald’s peripheral numbers are actually quite similar to those of hard throwing left handed pitcher David Price of the Rays. Both have K/9 rates around 8.0 and walk rates around 3.5. McDonald has allowed fewer HRs this year in his small sample, but that’s unlikely to continue, as Price has a ground ball percentage in the mid-40s. McDonald’s fastball averages 92.5 MPH to Price’s 94.5, and Price’s arsenal contains a slider whereas McDonald relies on the curveball and changeup as his offspeed pitches. Both draw similar amounts of swinging strikes, with Price at 9.0% on his career and McDonald at 8.8%

Eight starts is nowhere near enough to say that McDonald can be an ace or that he’s the next David Price. Still, he’s shown tremendous potential and has a minor league track record to back it up. The Pirates haven’t seen much in the way of starting pitching talent in a long time. It’s looking like James McDonald will be the first step for the Pirates in their quest to put together a playoff-quality starting rotation.

The big contract this offseason was the deal given to Matt Holliday by the St. Louis Cardinals: a seven year deal with 120 million dollars in guaranteed money. The contract will pay $17 million dollars annually to Holliday, paying him as a roughly 4.5-5 WAR player to begin the contract and less as inflation of free agent contract (likely) picks up in subsequent offseasons.

At least for one season, the Cardinals are getting more than their money’s worth. Holliday has been absolutely fantastic for the Cardinals this season, slashing .307/.379/.535. He’s been above average in every factor of hitting, walking 9.3% of the time, striking out under 15% of the time, hitting for solid power with a .229 ISO, and posting a .323 BABIP that is actually a step back from his career .347 mark. Put it all together, and Holliday has a .392 wOBA and a 150 wRC+. Combine that with solid defense in left field – +8 UZR this season after three straight positive seasons – and Holliday checks in as a 5.8 WAR player so far in 589 plate appearances. With 21 games left this season, barring a major collapse down the stretch, Holliday should eclipse the six WAR mark for the second time in the last four seasons.

That means that Holliday will be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 million dollars when all is said and done in 2010. This strong age 30 campaign not only provided the Cardinals with excellent value and kept them in the playoff race for most of the season, but it also bodes extremely well for next season and beyond. One of the major concerns with Holliday was that his decline phase could begin soon, but he showed no sign whatsoever of slowing down in 2010. ZiPS projects a .401 wOBA the rest of the way. CHONE’s updated projections have Holliday as a 4.4 WAR player over 150 games, and that’s assuming that he’s an average defender. According to these projections, Holliday should once again provide some value over his contract in 2011 as well.

With all that said, the issues with a seven year contract are rarely in years one and two. The worries around Cardinal Nation and elsewhere mostly had to do with paying Holliday, an elite player, but not an Albert Pujols or Chase Utley type, $17 million dollars as he approaches his late 30s. If Holliday was only performing at that market value 4.5 WAR mark, there would be reason to worry that Holliday could slowly depreciate into a below average player in the 5th, 6th, and 7th year of the contract. Holliday should still end up declining over the next six seasons, but with this season as a starting point, there’s far less reason for Cardinal fans to fret over the end of his contract. Barring catastrophe, his abilities should be able to keep up with inflation, and he just may provide surplus value for the Cardinals for years to come.

Word out of Chicago is that Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramirez might reject a $14.6 million player option for the 2011 season. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario in which nearly any person would turn down $16.6 million in guaranteed money ($2 million from a buyout of a 2012 team option). It’s especially difficult when said person carried a .297 OBP into play yesterday. Ramirez has played as a below average player in 2010 so far, compiling 0.9 WAR in 441 plate appearances. That kind of performance would be good for closer to $4 million on the free agent market than $14 million.

But there are two important things to consider with this situation. First of all, Ramirez is quite likely much better than he’s been this year. ZiPS projects him for a .371 wOBA going forward, well above the league average and fantastic for a third baseman. A .371 wOBA wouldn’t put him on the 4.5-5.5 WAR level that he was at from 2006-2008 and would have been in 2009 if not for injury, but it could be somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 WAR range, which would put his market value right around that $14.6 million dollar range.

Second of all, Ramirez would be making a substantial amount of money next year, but he would also risk complete collapse in 2011, which would make his current contract his last contract. Even if teams don’t buy the rebirth imagined above, it’s hard to imagine that teams wouldn’t still look at him as an average player. Ramirez still has big time power, with 22 HRs and a .211 ISO. His defense is probably below average – all of the systems available here on FanGraphs have him below average in 2008, 2009, and 2010 when available. Still, with that kind of bat, his defense would have to be exceptionally bad for him to produce at a below average level, barring another season with a .246 batting average on balls in play. At that level, it would be quite easy to see Ramirez earning something like a 3-year, $27 million contract, and if his past seasons are given more (and proper) weight, he could see something as high as 3 years, $40 million, both paying much more than his current player option.

The potential for Ramirez to forego $16 million likely has some in Chicago scratching their heads, both around the Cubs organization and in the streets of the North Side. But when you consider the length of his contract, his current skill level, and the possibility of collapse with age, it may make sense for Ramirez to go for another long term contract while he has the chance. There’s a good chance that Ramirez’s best option, in terms of dollar amounts, would be to take his player option and then go for another contract for the 2012 season and beyond. If Ramirez wants to avoid the risk of collapse, however, as odd as it may sound, his best option may be to test the free agent market a year earlier and eschew the guaranteed money.