Source: FanGraphs

Baseball statistics can be very quirky, especially the ones we carry here at FanGraphs. Players can be worth half-a-win, a hit can produce fractions of the run, stuff like that can be difficult to accept at first. Things happen in wholes in the real world — a team gets credited either with one full win or no win in any single game, that hit either drives in a run or it doesn’t — and understanding that these bits and pieces contribute to the whole isn’t exactly something that gets explains clearly or often enough.

Last night, Red Sox closer Alfredo Aceves lost more than one game. The Sox and Angels played a wild back-and-forth affair with seven total lead changes, including five after the seventh inning. The 29-year-old Aceves was on the mound for three of those lead changes despite only being credited with one full inning of work. He allowed three runs in the top of the ninth to blow a two-run lead, was let off the hook when Cody Ross hit a solo homer to knot things up in the bottom half, then went back out to the mound in a tie game in the tenth only to surrender two more runs.

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Prior to this past offseason, five of Dave Cameron’s top ten free agents were starting pitchers. Both CC Sabathia (#3) and C.J. Wilson (#5) landed mega-contracts while Roy Oswalt (#9) decided to take the Pedro Martinez/Roger Clemens route and sign midseason. The other two guys — Hiroki Kuroda (#8) and Edwin Jackson (#10) — signed nearly identical one-year contracts. Eight months later, they share another thing in common: they’re pitching for the team with the best record in their respective league.

Kuroda, 37, landed a $10 million salary from the Yankees. At 3.3 WAR, he’s already had the third-best season of his five-year MLB career and appears poised to zoom past his career-high 4.1 WAR from 2010. Jackson, 28, signed with the Nationals for $11 million, but is having a slightly down year by his standards. He’s at 1.6 WAR and seems likely to a) fall short of the 3.6-3.8 WAR level he’s established these last three years, and b) still provide the Nationals plenty of surplus value.

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The AL East has been hit hard by injuries this season, with about a dozen above-average to star-caliber players needing lengthy stints on the disabled list. The Yankees have been without Michael Pineda all year and without Brett Gardner and Mariano Rivera for most of the season, and now they’re going to be without Alex Rodriguez until sometime in September. Felix Hernandez clipped him with a 3-1 changeup last week, breaking a bone in his left hand.

The Yankees have a healthy lead in the division — eight games in the loss column — and will platoon Eric Chavez and Jayson Nix at the hot corner for the time being. The 34-year-old Chavez is very quietly having a solid season off the bench, posting a 101 wRC+ overall with a 121 mark against righties. Nix, 29, has a 95 wRC+ overall and a 112 wRC+ against lefties. The concern is that all the extra playing time will expose Chavez to injury and just expose Nix in general given his career 72 wRC+. For the time being, they’ll do.

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The starting rotation was supposed to be a strength for the Braves, but they instead opened today with just one qualified starter with a sub-4.40 ERA. Ben Sheets has provided a lift two starts into his comeback and Tim Hudson has been his typically reliable self, but Mike Minor, Randall Delgado, and Jair Jurrjens have struggled to varying degrees while Brandon Beachy blew out his elbow. Atlanta remains right in the thick of the playoff hunt despite ranking middle of the pack in rotation ERA and FIP (both 4.04).

In an effort to shore up the staff, the Braves acquired Ryan Dempster from the Cubs this afternoon. It’s unclear what they gave up as of this writing, though Delgado has been rumored. Dave O’Brien, Jon Heyman, and Mark Bowman all deserve some credit in breaking the news. The veteran right-hander has ten-and-five no-trade protected but waived it to join Atlanta. He reportedly did not demand any kind of extension or other compensation to approve the trade, so he gets brownie points for that.

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The Braves are four games back of the Nationals in the loss column in the NL East and four games up on a wild-card spot, so they’re right in the thick of the playoff hunt. They’ve survived some terrible pitching performances and injuries thanks to one of the game’s most productive outfields — a unit that ranks third in baseball with 10.5 WAR. Michael Bourn (4.2 WAR), Martin Prado (3.7 WAR) and Jason Heyward (3.5 WAR) all rank among the 15-most-valuable players — and among the eight most-valuable outfielders — so far this season.

Bourn will be a free agent after this season and Heyward is under team control through 2015, so those two are on the opposite ends of the contract spectrum. Prado, 28, is kind of in the middle. He’ll be arbitration-eligible for the third time next season before becoming a free agent 15 months from now. Atlanta is going to try to prevent that from happening… Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves came into the season with enviable pitching depth, enough that they were able to trade innings eater Derek Lowe to the Indians in a cash-saving deal over the winter. Tim Hudson missed the first month of the season recovering from a back procedure, but they still had a solid rotation led by Tommy Hanson, Brandon Beachy, Jair Jurrjens, and Mike Minor. The prospect trio of Randall Delgado, Arodys Vizcaino, and Julio Teheran provided depth at Triple-A.

Fast-forward three months and things have changed rather dramatically. Both Beachy (2.00 ERA and 3.45 FIP in 81 IP) and Vizcaino are out with Tommy John surgery, Minor has been awful (6.20 ERA and 5.51 FIP in 85.2 IP), and Jurrjens was so bad earlier in the year (9.37 ERA and 7.89 FIP in 16.1 IP) that he was sent to the minors. He’s since resurfaced to take Beachy’s spot and has turned in two solid outings. Delgado is doing about as well as a 22-year-old can do in the show, with a 4.52 ERA and 4.17 FIP in 79.2 IP. Overall, Atlanta’s rotation has pitched to a 4.22 ERA and 4.35 FIP, the 19th and 22nd best marks in baseball.

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Pitchers get hurt all the time, but I think we can all agree that CC Sabathia was on the short list of guys who we would expect to make every start in a given season. He’s been a workhorse of the first order for the last decade, but yesterday a twinge in his left groin sent him to the disabled list for the third time in his career and first time since 2006. The Yankees insist that their ace will only miss two starts and return immediately after the All-Star break.

Sabathia’s injury hurts New York but two starts isn’t the end of the world. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t the only starter they lost on Wednesday. Andy Pettitte (1.4 WAR in nine comeback starts) was struck by a batted ball and suffered a fractured left ankle in yesterday’s game, sending him to the sidelines for a minimum of six weeks and more realistically 8-10 weeks. In the span of about four hours, the Yankees lost their two best starting pitchers.

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Many people expected the Nationals to be legitimate contenders this season for the first time since moving to town, but I don’t think many expected them to have the second best record in baseball more than one-third of the way through the campaign. The Nats came into Wednesday’s action with a 37-23 record to go along with their +38 run differential, the fifth best mark in the game. They’ve relied on utterly dominant starting pitching so far, riding a staff that owns baseball’s best ERA (2.94), FIP (3.15), and WAR (8.3).

Great starting pitching only goes so far though, and Washington is really lacking in the run creation department. Their offense owns a .307 wOBA (sixth worst in MLB) and a 90 wRC+ (seventh worst) through their first 60 games, resulting in a 3.90 runs per game average that is the second lowest among teams with a .500+ winning percentage. Bryce Harper has been nothing short of brilliant so far — 153 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR through 172 PA — and Michael Morse’s recent return from the disabled list should provide a boost as well.

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For the first month of the season, the Red Sox didn’t just have a bad bullpen, they had one of the worst bullpens in recent memory. Manager Bobby Valentine’s relief corps pitched to a 6.10 ERA with a 5.13 FIP in April, both easily the worst marks in the game. Boston’s pen has gone on to post a 2.31 ERA with a 2.97 FIP since the calendar flipped to May, bringing their overall season performance down to a much more respectable 3.55 ERA and 3.75 FIP.

A turn around like that can be attributed to many things, first and foremost just simple regression to the mean. A .337 BABIP and 16.4% HR/FB ratio certainly aren’t performances you’d expect an entire pitching staff sustain over a full season. It’s possible, just unlikely. Secondly, the Red Sox did what you would expect them to do and made some personnel changes. Mark Melancon (49.50 ERA/37.55 FIP (!!!)) was shipped to the minors while Justin Thomas (7.71/3.27) and Michael Bowden (3.00/6.38) were cut loose. Changing the names is the easiest way to change performance.

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It’s been a rough few weeks for the Rangers. They got thumped by both the Mariners (21-8) and Athletics (12-1) within the last week and are just 21-22 since an eight-game winning streak in the middle of April. Texas has already lost Neftali Feliz for an extended period of time due to an elbow sprain and today they lost another young hurler, southpaw Derek Holland with left shoulder fatigue according to Jeff Wilson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The 25-year-old Holland had already been battling a stomach virus that reportedly cost him 10-15 pounds and apparently also some giddy-up on his fastball*. He allowed 18 runs in 19.1 innings across the four starts immediately prior to this shoulder issue, contributing to the team’s skid. Scott Feldman — 7.01 ERA and 5.48 FIP in five starts and five relief appearances — is already in the rotation for Feliz, and now Holland’s injury forces Alexi Ogando into the starting staff per Jeff Fletcher of Bay Bridge Baseball. Relief prospect Tanner Scheppers will come up to fill out the bullpen.

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