Naturally, the Yankees were in on the Dan Haren discussions until the very end. Supposedly, the package that they were putting together centered around Joba Chamberlain. Given that the Diamondbacks eventually took the Joe Saunders and prospects package put together by the Angels, one has to assume that Arizona simply wasn’t impressed by Joba Chamberlain. Truly, relievers with a 5.86 ERA typically aren’t centerpieces in trades for aces, but Joba isn’t having a typical season this year.

We can quickly point out that Chamberlain has a 3.02 FIP and a 3.48 xFIP, both very solid numbers out of a relief pitcher, especially given that Chamberlain has entered games in high leverage situations this season: his gmLI (average entrance LI) is 1.31, a typical number for a setup man. He’s not showcasing the ridiculous ability to miss bats that he did when he first came up, but his K-rate is still over a batter per inning, and a walk rate below four is plenty to make a good reliever.

It just hasn’t come together this season, as far as results. Chamberlain is getting killed on contact, as hitters have a .393 BABIP against him. It’s not like hitters are just roping line drives, either – the line drive rate is slightly down this season, and just under half of all batted balls against Chamberlain have been ground balls. If anything, a low IFFB rate of 2.3% would explain some of this success, but not nearly all of it. tERA, which is based on batted balls, still rates Chamberlain highly, at 3.28.

The difference between Joba’s 5.86 ERA and his 3.04 FIP is 13.5 earned runs in his 43 innings pitched so far – and that’s ignoring the fact that a big portion of Chamberlain’s inflated ERA is due to the fact that he would have gotten more outs if his BABIP was closer to average. These 13.5 runs can be largely attributed to two splits.

Runners on 2nd/3rd: 6 PA, 2 1B, 1 2B, 2 BB, 6 runs scored
Bases loaded: 5 PA, 1 2B, 1 HR, 6 runs scored

In 43 innings, a few bad pitches with runners on can drastically inflate your ERA. Joba Chamberlain has pitched extremely well this year by almost every metric. He has struck out over 10 batters per 9 innings in high leverage situations. Even if he’s not living up to his original hype, he is still a valuable player. The Diamondbacks shouldn’t have been scared away by his mammoth ERA, nor should the Yankees or their fans worry about Joba’s future, particularly in the bullpen.

Previous Four Factors Entries:
Shin-Soo Choo
Carlos Gonzalez
Joe Morgan
Brennan Boesch
Martin Prado

Earlier today, I stumbled upon this tweet from Dylan Hernandez, Dodgers beat writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Baseball insider recently said James Loney was “hands down” the Dodgers’ MVP in the first half of the season.

I don’t know who this baseball insider is, but he is flat out wrong – Loney is nothing more than a slightly above average hitter, and at first base, that makes his ceiling a roughly average player. Let’s dive into Loney’s hitting skills with the help of the Four Factors – walk rate, strikeout rate, power on contact, and performance on balls in play.

Let’s start with Loney’s supposed team-MVP first half of 2010.

Loney has had a solid year at the plate – his .334 wOBA is good for a 109 wRC+ in this year of the pitcher. However, that’s not nearly as good as any of the top three hitters on the Dodgers to date: Manny Ramirez (.396), Rafael Furcal (.386), or Andre Ethier (.380). Also, there are clear problems with Loney’s game that keep him from becoming anything more than an average hitter. First, he hasn’t showed much discipline this year – only 84% of the league average walk rate. Secondly, he hasn’t shown any power, as his POW score of .152 is exceptionally low for a first baseman. He does make a lot of contact, which makes his .329 BABIP help his line even more than the typical hitter. However, if that BABIP drops, that means that his one real skill – contact – won’t be quite as meaningful.

Is this typical of Loney’s career?

Loney actually showed better peripherals in 2009, particularly in the plate stats of BB% and K%. In both of those categories, he was excellent. However, his power was even lower, and his BABIP wasn’t nearly as high. That exacerbates his lack of power and lessens the impact of his impressive contact rates – simply put, it doesn’t matter if you make a lot of contact if it’s weak contact. His 2008 was similar to what he’s done in 2010 so far, but with a lower BABIP.

Loney hasn’t shown any power since 2007, when he posted a .240 POW. As we get farther and farther away, that 375 PA sample, the only sample in which we see Loney demonstrate MLB first baseman type hitting, it will factor less and less into our evaluations. Instead, we’ll see a high-contact, low-power, inconsistent discipline type of player. That’s an average to slightly above average hitter, as Loney has been the last three years, and that’s great if he’s at a premium position. However, Loney is a first baseman, and even if his defense is better than his -5 career UZR suggests, that bat simply doesn’t add up to more than an average player. Loney is a decent role player, but his perception, as the above tweet shows, is much more than his reality. Some team is going to spend way too much money for his services in a couple years. Just hope that it’s not your team.

Arizona Interim GM Jerry DiPoto, via Nick Piecoro of AZCentral.com

“He’s a pedigreed major league pitcher who has accomplished quite a bit. I believe it’s a .630 winning percentage in his major league career. We’re getting a pitcher for our major league club who comes in and delivers a message to our guys that this is about winning now and winning in the future.”

Jerry DiPoto has been largely panned for this statement on why he traded Dan Haren for a package including Joe Saunders and prospects, particularly among those in the sabermetric community. Of course, we know that pitcher wins don’t tell the whole story; after all, how many times have we seen a pitcher have a win blown by his defense or the lineup, and how many times have we seen a pitcher bailed out by spectacular run support?

However, with enough games, these things tend to even themselves out, and wins begin to track true talent. Looking just at starters with at least 690 innings pitched, winning percentage and ERA+ correlate strongly, with r^2 = .500. ERA+ is a simple statistic to use here, but I feel that it works given the sample, and the park adjustments come into play as well. Obviously, correlation doesn’t imply causation, but for the most part, pitchers that receive a win in most of the games that they start are better.

This is a pretty simple conclusion to make, but it does, in part, justify the statements made by Jerry DiPoto. Joe Saunders has a 54-32 career record, good for a .628 winning percentage, good for 16th all time among pitchers with as many innings pitched – 692 – as Saunders. Some pitchers with similar winning percentages? Juan Marichal, Dwight Gooden, Roy Oswalt, Rich Harden, and Justin Verlander – a pretty solid group. If Saunders’s true talent was indeed akin to these pitchers, this trade would not be so widely panned.

Saunders, however, simply isn’t that good. The correlation between winning percentage and ERA+ isn’t perfect, and Saunders is a great example of that.

We see Saunders is well below the ERA+ that we would expect given how many of his games he has won. That’s because Saunders has spent his career playing for good teams, for the most part, and also with decent defenses. What about his counterpart in this trade, Dan Haren? Haren’s 120 ERA+ is well above what we’d expect from a player who has won 55% of his decisions, although it’s not terribly out of the ordinary – Erik Bedard, Cole Hamels, and Kevin Appier have similar careers.

One of the largest differences between winning percentage and ERA+ comes from Haren’s former Diamondbacks teammate, Brandon Webb. Webb’s 142 ERA+ is nothing short of elite, ranking fourth among players with at least 690 IP and 95% of their appearances as starts, right between Roger Clemens and Randy Johnson. However, Webb has only won 58.4% of his decisions, well below the 65.8% mark from Clemens and the 64.6% from Johnson. Why? The Diamondbacks haven’t been as good as a team as the Angels or most of Clemens and Johnson’s teams. Outside of the 2007 playoff season, Arizona has had 3 seasons with win totals in the 70s, one in the 80s, and this year’s team is on pace to win 61 games.

Simply put, in many situations, DiPoto would be right to go after the pitcher with the higher winning percentage. I’m not sure that he actually used winning percentage in his evaluation – that may just be a media talking point. Regardless, this is just another example of how we need context with all of these stats, and particularly with statistics like wins. With context, it’s clear that Saunders’ winning percentage doesn’t mean he’s an elite pitcher, and Dan Haren and Brandon Webb are good to great pitchers despite poor luck in the win column.

The Rays finally learned what it’s like on the good side of the no hitter today. Matt Garza faced the minimum tonight against the Detroit Tigers, walking only one batter. Garza added six strikeouts as well, and finished the job in 120 pitches.

To be sure, this Detroit Tigers lineup is not the lineup that was 31 runs above average entering this season. Magglio Ordonez, Carlos Guillen, and Brandon Inge were out, replaced by Will Rhymes, Don Kelly, and Ryan Raburn. Ordonez is a well above average hitter, and Guillen and Inge have performed around average this season. Tonight was Rhymes’s third major league game. Raburn has struggled mightily this year but is projected around average. Kelly has also struggled mightily, but his struggles, according to ZiPS, are more indicative of his true talent. This lineup is demonstrably worse, but the presence of players like Miguel Cabrera, Austin Jackson, Brennan Boesch, and Johnny Damon still signify some firepower in the Tigers’ lineup.

That said, no hitting any major league lineup is impressive, and we can’t ignore the fact that the Tigers lineup just might contain the best hitter in the American League. How did Garza do it? His four-seam fastball was utterly dominant. He threw a whopping 96 four-seamers out of his 120 pitches. Sixty-seven of these four-seamers went for strikes and ten of those 67 went for swinging strikes, both of which are fantastic numbers. The Tigers just couldn’t put good wood on the fastball. The pitch type linear weights over at Brooks Baseball have Garza’s flour-seamer at a staggering 6 runs above average tonight. That mark would rank 33rd among all pitchers in baseball over the course of the whole season; Garza’s fastball was 3.5 runs above average entering the game.

Games like tonight are the reason that Tampa Bay was willing to deal a top prospect like Delmon Young for Matt Garza. Garza’s performance immediately goes down as the most memorable performance by a Rays’ pitcher, and this performance on a national stage will make sure that anybody who wasn’t paying attention to the Rays before is paying attention now.

Previous Four Factors Entries:
Carlos Gonzalez
Joe Morgan
Brennan Boesch
Martin Prado

Shin-Soo Choo is a star. I’m not sure if people recognize him as such, mainly because he somehow hasn’t reached any all-star games. Still, there’s no getting around his production. 2010 marks the third straight season in which Choo has a wRC+ above 140, and in all 3 of these seasons Choo has put up at least 2.9 WAR and at least 4.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances. Those are star type numbers, but they often get lost due to the lack of talent surrounding him in Cleveland. Let’s look at what has made Choo such a fantastic hitter these last three seasons.

2008 was Choo’s breakout season, his second year in Cleveland after coming over a deal for Ben Broussard. He showed a solid walk rate and great power, although a big part of what powered his big season was a .367 BABIP. Even without it, Choo would’ve been a solid hitter – the walks and power were there – but that performance on balls in play pushed his season from above average to elite. It’s important to remember that this was a short season for Choo, in which he played 94 games and accrued 370 plate appearances, and that may impact some of these numbers – POW typically won’t stabilize until later in a season.

2009 was a very similar year for Choo, although the power dropped off over the course of a full season. It’s hard to be too disappointed, though, given that Choo still gave the Indians a performance that lives up to many of the elite hitters in the game. Twenty home runs and 38 doubles supplied the power for Choo, which was slightly disappointing given the fact that he put up 14 homers in only 370 PAs the year prior. Still, any player that can put up any sort of decent power numbers – and a POW that was 136% of league average certainly qualifies as decent – while also putting up OBPs near .400 is a fantastic offensive player. Despite this, there’s the elephant in the room – another high BABIP, this time at .370. Even after 1000 PAs, we can’t be sure that it would stay so high, and would Choo remain at such a high level without it?

In 2010, we get the answer to that question: a resounding “yes.” The power dropped off a little bit along with the BABIP, but the plate numbers, BB% and K%, have both moved enough to compensate. A 2% increase in walk rate doesn’t seem that significant, but it moved Choo from 128% of league average to 156%. The big difference is the strikeout percentage. Choo is now striking out less than the league average after two seasons in which he was well above. This almost entirely compensates for the drop in BABIP, as the fact that he now has more balls in play emphasizes his still solid BABIP as well as his good POW score. Of course, we’re dealing with a small sample here, but after 360 PAs, both BB% and K% should start to stabilize.

The Indians haven’t had a good team this year, but Shin-Soo Choo is an excellent piece to build around. As an outside observer and a big fan of Choo, I hope that the Indians can put a solid team around him, if only so that the general public can begin to notice just how incredible a hitter he is.

Obviously, it has not been a successful year for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Yesterday’s demoralizing extra innings loss to San Francisco left the Diamondbacks at 37-62, 22 games behind the Padres in the division, with a .374 winning percentage. The only team in the National League with a worse record this season is the Pittsburgh Pirates, who are below .500 for the 18th straight season and currently have a 34-64 record. By any standards, the 2010 has to be a failure for the Diamondbacks.

That doesn’t mean that 2011 has to be a failure as well. The Diamondbacks’ impressive core led to an 87 win projection from our FAN projections, and PECOTA, CAIRO, and CHONE had projections ranging from 79 wins to 85 wins. Clearly, none of these systems foresaw how historically bad the Diamondbacks bullpen is this season. Despite a solid July (+1.16 WPA), the D’Backs bullpen still has a WPA of -6.92, more that 2.5 wins worse than the next worse team. Aside from that, the team has performed relatively well. The offense has been slightly below average, as has the starting rotation, but not to the point where the team should be 25 games below .500. The rest of the team has played closer to a .470 team than a .370 team, but that bullpen exposes all the flaws and more.

Many of the key pieces will be around for next year and beyond. Any discussion of the D’Backs core has to start with Justin Upton. Upton is having another solid season, with 2.8 WAR in 416 plate appearances, and he’ll be around until 2015 under a favorable $51.5 million contract. Chris Young is in the middle of a breakout season and is around until 2013. Mark Reynolds is under control until 2012, as is Stephen Drew. Kelly Johnson has one more year of arbitration remaining. Edwin Jackson is under control for 2011 and Ian Kennedy will be around until 2014. As a group, these players have compiled 15.8 WAR, on pace for around 25 WAR over a 162 game season. Young and Johnson have overplayed their projections, but Reynolds, Upton, and Drew have underplayed their own – as such, I feel like 25 WAR is a good, rough estimate for this group as a whole. If you are of a more conservative vein, anything in the range of 20-25 would be possible.

The problem is that these seven players have been surrounded by incompetence. Chris Snyder and Miguel Montero have performed well with split time at catcher, but other position players have been largely poor. The starting rotation has severely missed Brandon Webb, enough so that it has had to rely on players like Rodrigo Lopez, Billy Buckner, and Dontrelle Willis. We’ve already covered how terrible the bullpen has been.

A team that produces 32 WAR is typically a league average team, and 40-45 is should be enough to earn 90 wins and the playoff berth that typically comes with that total. Between the 20-25 WAR produced by the aforementioned core and the 5.0 produced by Haren, it shouldn’t take long to develop the supporting cast necessary to produce the remaining 10-15 WAR necessary to reach the playoffs. Relievers are fungible and the most abundantly available resource, and the Diamondbacks have a solid player in Brandon Allen and his .905 OPS in AAA coming up at first base. Perhaps the budget wouldn’t be enough to compete in 2011, but a large majority of those important players, including Dan Haren, would have been under control for more than just next season. The core that still remains probably needs one more star to compete, and with the relatively weakness at SP, Haren was the perfect fit.

The Diamondbacks, however, saw a .347 winning percentage and a situation that simply wasn’t salvageable, and the interim management reacted by dealing Dan Haren for a significantly worse but significantly cheaper starter in the short term. The move says to me that they don’t feel that this core can win games and reach the playoffs. Now, with Dan Haren replaced by a below average starter in Joe Saunders, they’re probably right. All the pieces were in place for Arizona. It’s simply disappointing to see such a young, promising team broken up at this stage in the game.

Dave Duncan is a tremendous pitching coach. He’s taken on countless reclamation projects and has somehow turned the scrap heap of the major leagues into legitimate, MLB quality pitchers. This season, Duncan received the ultimate test of his resurrection abilities when the Cardinals brought back Jeff Suppan, a member of the 2006 World Series team who won the NLCS MVP that season and has done nothing else of note whatsoever over the course of his entire career. Suppan was finally released of the worst contract in Milwaukee Brewers history in early July after posting a 4.89 FIP and 5.06 xFIP – numbers that are bad, but not jettison worthy, until you consider that they came in 13 relief appearances against only two starts. Basically, Suppan was the definition of replacement level in Milwaukee.

The Cardinals rotation has suffered injuries and had to deal with incompetence from the back-end all season, despite the stupendous trio of Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, and Jaime Garcia at the front. I was sure that Jeff Suppan’s career was over after the Brewers mercifully released him, but the Cardinals decided to bring their former player back into the organization and give him a shot as the #5 starter.

If Dave Duncan had some sort of voodoo magic surrounding him, Jeff Suppan might be pitching well, or at least above replacement level. Instead, it appears that 35 year old, no stuff, no control pitchers are Duncan’s limit. Suppan made his 7th start of the season against the Cubs this afternoon. He entered the start with 13 strikeouts, 12 walks, and four home runs allowed in 30 innings – yet again, essentially defining replacement level. Against the Cubs, Suppan threw six innings, allowing 10 hits, three home runs, three walks, and striking out nobody. Somehow, the Cubs only scored five runs off of this barrage, but that was more than enough, as Randy Wells shut down the Cardinals lineup.

This isn’t meant as a slam against Dave Duncan at all – nobody with any sort of rational expectations for Suppan would’ve expected anything significantly above replacement level, and this terrible performance today should push Suppan’s WAR with St. Louis well into the red. If anything, seeing Suppan continue to perform terribly is a relief. As a fan of an NL Central team, it’s painful for me to see a pitcher sign with St. Louis, knowing that Duncan could turn them into this year’s version of 2009 Joel Piniero. At least this gives me the comfort of mind to know that Dave Duncan can’t fix everybody.

The Angels entered play yesterday with a .262 wOBA from their third baseman, the worst mark in the major leagues, largely thanks to the terrible play of Brandon Wood. In order to rectify the situation, which they have previously attempted to patch with the utility men Kevin Frandsen and Maicer Izturis, the Angels have acquired Kansas City Royals third baseman Alberto Callaspo in exchange for starters Sean O’Sullivan and Will Smith.

Callaspo’s offensive game has taken a major step down from last season, as the walks are down and his BABIP has dropped from .312 to .278. ZiPS projects a slightly above average .329 wOBA going forward. At this point, Callaspo’s only real hitting skill is his ability to make contact, as his 8.6% career strikeout rate is well below the league average, which is enough to make Callaspo an above average hitter at a premium position.

The question is if his glove can play there. Callaspo has recorded a meager 99 games started at 3B and about 900 innings, making his +5 UZR essentially meaningless. The Fans Scouting Report had Callaspo as one of the league’s worst fielding second basemen last season, for reasons which likely prompted this move to third base. One of the reason’s Callaspo was rated so poorly were his “Hands/Catching,” which along with mediocre “Reactions/Instincts” doesn’t exactly project well at the hot corner. It’s certainly possible that, for some reason, Callaspo is simply much better at third, but I’m not buying it until I see a significant sample, and the underlying opinion of Callaspo’s defense around the league seems to be that it’s poor.

That said, if “poor” means something like -5 runs per 150 games, that still makes Callaspo a decently valuable, roughly league average player. A 2.0 WAR player like that would be a blistering 6.9 wins above Brandon Wood’s terrifically abysmal -1.5 WAR in 185 PAs this season, so this should be a significant pickup for Los Angeles. If Callaspo’s defense isn’t what they hoped for – in the -10 to -15 zone, then Callaspo turns from a legitimate starter into more of a role player in the grand scheme, but short term he still represents an improvement. If his defense turns out to be better than average or even great for some reason – just some sort of deep, inner zen with third base, or something like that – then Callaspo could be a key, 3.0 WAR+ player, but I wouldn’t wager any sort of significant sum on that kind of outcome.

Callaspo’s contract status is favorable, as he will enter his first season of arbitration in 2011. The raises that he looks to get in arbitration may not have been the best way for the Royals to use their limited funds in the upcoming seasons, but it’s a small price for the large-market Angels, and Callaspo certainly hasn’t put up the kinds of seasons worthy of a huge arbitration reward, nor does his skillset suggest that he will be overvalued by the system.

The pitcher leaving Los Angeles, O’Sullivan (21) and Smith (20), are both young starters with slight promise, but they aren’t system toppers by any means. There is a good chance that each of them turns out to be organizational depth, which certainly isn’t worthless, but given the chance to improve the big league club at a position of extreme need, it’s not a steep price to pay. Callaspo should fit right in with the Angels, and although this certainly doesn’t make them a contender with Texas in the AL West yet, this move improves the club for this year and ostensibly the next three as well.

I find Livan Hernandez to be absolutely fascinating. Hernandez has put together a pretty mediocre career, with a 4.40 ERA and a nearly identical 4.42 FIP, but his career also spans 2800 innings and 15 seasons. He also has one of the more impressive streaks in baseball, as he has started at least 30 games every season since 1998. Somehow, he’s managed to keep latching on with teams, both contenders and bottom feeders, and he’s managed to put together seasons just good enough to earn a roster spot again the next year.

2010, however, has been different. Entering his 20th start of the season today against the Reds, Hernandez had posted a remarkable 3.27 ERA. His HR/FB rate of 5.8%, LOB% of 76.2%, and BABIP of .276 are all well on the favorable side of both his career averages and his recent performance, indicating that there’s a bit of luck involved here. Still, Hernandez has pitched pretty well, as he has limited walks (2.77 BB/9) while maintaining a similar strikeout rate (4.73 K/9) to prior seasons. He has also turned a few line drives into ground balls this season, but it’s hard to say how meaningful that is given the blurry line between batted ball types. FIP and tERA have Hernandez at 3.94 and 4.13 respectively, in a range of slightly above average to average. His xFIP of 4.70 is directly from his low HR/FB rate, but it also still suggests that Hernandez is a MLB-quality pitcher, not a replacement level scrub.

If any game was just asking for HR/FB regression for Hernandez, it was today’s start. He faced the Reds today in Great American Ballpark. The Reds have the second most home runs in the National League, in no small part due to their home field. StatCorner has the park factor for HRs in Cincinnati at 122 for right handed hitters and 135 for lefties – that’s essentially the definition of a bandbox. Of course, not all of the Reds’ prolific home run totals can be attributed to their park – we can’t forget the contributions of Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, and Jay Bruce, among others in the Reds lineup.

Of course, Hernandez went out and had a start right in line with his fantastic season so far, as he threw a complete game, allowing only one run on seven hits while striking out five and walking none, undoubtedly partially thanks to the absence of Scott Rolen and Joey Votto from today’s lineup. The story for this game was similar to the story for the season – limit the walks, strike out just enough, and allow a ton of balls in the air but don’t let any leave the stadium. Fifteen of the 28 contacted balls against Hernandez went into the air, but the eight fly balls and seven line drives resulted in merely seven harmless singles. The Reds had all of four at-bats with runners in scoring position – scoring runs without walks or particularly power hitting is an incredibly difficult task.

Has Livan Hernandez discovered greatness at age 35? Of course not, but this is a legitimately good season that Hernandez has thrown together, and if nothing else, Hernandez’s longevity continues to be a baseball marvel. Today’s start was just the most recent example of Hernandez defying age. At this point, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if he’s still filling the back ends of rotations in 2020.

In case you weren’t awake at 2:25 Eastern Time, when the Arizona Diamondbacks finally sealed their 14 inning, 4-3 victory against the New York Mets, you missed a thriller. Extra innings, five home runs, 1.1 scoreless innings from Oliver Perez, and an unfathomable eight scoreless innings from the historically awful Diamondbacks bullpen – this game had it all. Here are the top five moments of the game by leverage index. Click on the game graph below for the full statistical summary.

5: Augie Ojeda vs. Raul Valdez, bottom 9th. LI: 3.89

Ojeda had the chance to end the game in regulation, batting with a runner on second and two outs in a tie game against Valdez. Instead of delivering a single to end the game or a walk to continue the inning, Ojeda popped out to second, ending the inning and delivering a hellish round of extra innings to Mets fans in the Eastern Time Zone. The Diamondbacks’ win expectancy fell from 61.4% to 50.0% on this play.

4: Chris Snyder vs. Fernando Nieve, bottom 14th. LI: 4.27

With runners on first and second and one out, Chris Snyder came to bat against the seventh Mets pitcher, Fernando Nieve. Nieve lived up to his performance to date this season – a staggering -0.9 WAR in 38 relief appearances and one start – as Snyder singled, plating Justin Upton, who doubled to open the inning. Snyder’s single raised the Diamondbacks’ win expectancy from 71.7% to, obviously, 100%. The walk off hit turned out to only be the fourth biggest situation in the game, as the Diamondbacks had many other missed opportunities in extras before finally striking here.

3: Adam LaRoche vs. Raul Valdez, bottom 10th. LI: 4.45

Raul Valdez put in a pretty heroic effort for the Mets last night. Valdez, a 32 year old rookie, went three innings and struck out four, somehow making Jerry Manuel’s decision to avoid Francisco Rodriguez in a non-save situation at all costs look pretty good. Valdez was in a jam here against Adam LaRoche, but he managed to induce a flyout to left field with two on to end the inning. The Diamondbacks win expectancy fell from 61.8% to 50.0% – essentially the same situation as the inning prior.

2: Stephen Drew vs. Oliver Perez, bottom 12th. LI: 5.39

It’s not terribly surprising that the biggest jam that the Mets faced in extras came as a result of two Oliver Perez walks, even though one of them was intentional. The walks resulted in Stephen Drew’s bases loaded, one out at bat in the twelfth inning. Given the location of the first two pitches to Drew – both balls well out of the zone – some can certainly question his decision to swing at Perez’s third pitch.

Drew should have driven that pitch – an 86 MPH fastball which caught much of the plate – but instead he popped it up to third base. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but that swing easily could’ve resulted in a base hit or a fly ball necessary to win the game. I certainly understand the decision to swing there, but it resulted in a drop in win expectancy from 83.9% to 66.5%

1. Adam LaRoche vs. Oliver Perez, bottom 12th. LI: 6.39

But Ollie wasn’t out of the woods yet. He still had to manage to get through another hitter without throwing four more balls – a tough task indeed for Perez. All joking aside, Perez was around the strike zone with all six of his pitches against LaRoche, who, after fouling two pitches off, flew out to left field to end the inning, reducing Arizona’s win expectancy from 66.5% to the ever familiar 50%.

It certainly wasn’t the best baseball game of the season or even the night, but there was plenty of drama to go around in this marathon game. Mets fans and D’Backs fans, enjoy a well-deserved nap today if you managed to stay up through the whole game.