Much of the focus this past week was devoted to Derek Jeter, who homered off of David Price on Saturday to become just the 28th player in major league history to record 3,000 hits. The attention was well deserved, as this was a monumental feat worthy of celebration. When the on-field festivities subsided, however, I couldn’t help but hearken to an earlier article about milestones that buck the Hall of Fame tradition.

No, this has nothing to do with Jeter, who was a first ballot Hall of Famer even if he ended his career at 2,999 like Stan Ross, but rather a current member of the Rays who was in attendance this weekend: Johnny Damon.

Damon has 92 hits this season and is projected to finish with 155, putting him right in line with his totals over the last several seasons. Finishing with 155 hits would also push his career tally to 2,726. Assuming he falls somewhere in the vicinity of that projection, wouldn’t it seem like the 37-year old Damon is a virtual lock for 3,000 hits? He would have to decide to stick around for at least another two seasons, and find an American League team in need of a designated hitter and occasional left fielder, but neither of those caveats seems far-fetched.

Damon has averaged around 150 hits/yr since 2007. With 2,726 entering next season, he would only need to average 137 hits for two seasons, or 91 hits for three seasons. Sure, injuries could derail his pursuit, but I find it difficult to argue that he couldn’t average 90-100 hits from 2012-14, hanging up his cleats as the 30th member of the 3,000 hits club (Alex Rodriguez will get there sooner).

If he gets to that plateau, either his induction into the Hall of Fame becomes automatic, or the milestone itself is cheapened. Given that he would be the 30th person ever to achieve what is considered to be a holy grail of baseball accomplishments, the former scenario seems much more likely than the latter. Yet, Damon has never felt like a Hall of Fame player. He has barely even felt like a superstar. How is it possible that someone with a high probability of getting 3,000+ hits in his career, who won’t have played 25+ seasons like, say, Nolan Ryan or Jamie Moyer, has had such a relatively forgettable career?

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The San Francisco Giants won the World Series last season in large part due to a fantastic pitching staff. However, the offense provided timely hitting down the stretch of the regular season and in the playoffs thanks to some key acquisitions made before, or during, the season. Oddly enough, three of the key players on their championship squad were picked up off of the scrapheap. Each member of the trio was available to virtually every team either through free agency, outright release, or waivers, yet all three wound up in San Francisco, and boy did they pay dividends.

Aubrey Huff was acquired at the start of the season, after having put together an abysmal 2009 campaign. He produced 1.8 wins below replacement level that year as part of an erratic prime. Pat Burrell joined the team in June after being released by the Rays. Suffice to say, he came nowhere near living up to expectations after signing a two-year deal to DH for the reigning AL champs. Cody Ross was acquired off of waivers towards the end of August, costing only his remaining $1 million in salary.

These three players illustrated the inherent value in scouring different areas of the talent spectrum. Not every move needs to be substantial to make a difference, and sometimes improving in a few smaller areas can reap the same reward.

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The All-Star game rosters were announced Sunday, which of course means chaos ensued when the selections were revealed. Player X shouldn’t have gotten in while Stats-Stud Y should have been a lock. Since many of the selections were pretty predictable, those snubbed from the festivities, as usual, garnered a tremendous amount of attention.

Of those who were not selected, perhaps nobody was more egregiously snubbed than Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The 24-year-old center fielder ranks eighth among National League hitters with a .395 wOBA. His 6.9 fielding runs derived from solid play at the toughest outfield position ranks third in the league behind Shane Victorino (also snubbed, but on the final vote, unlike McCutchen), and Troy Tulowitzki.

All told, his 4.6 wins above replacement ranks him ahead of everyone except the two Joses: Bautista and Reyes. Any list of first-half MVP contenders would be incomplete without his name, and yet fans, players and the coaching staff of the National League team somehow found a way to select other less-qualified players. That he isn’t even included on the final ballot for fan voting — the list includes Victorino, Todd Helton, Ian Kennedy, Michael Morse and Andre Ethier — further perpetuates the madness. McCutchen is one of the top players in the sport right now, better than Jay Bruce, Carlos Beltran, Chipper Jones, Morse and Ethier. Yet the first three members of that group were voted in by the players, and the latter two still have a fighting chance of making the team.

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Pitchers whose ERAs and estimators disagree are extremely interesting to analyze. On one hand, their signature run prevention mark might appear toward the top of leaderboards while the underlying numbers aren’t as fruitful. On the other side of the spectrum are pitchers like Zack Greinke, who, as Chris Cwik pointed out yesterday, has a vast disconnect between his ERA and FIP. In fact, it’s been that way since the first week of May when he came off of the disabled list.

His 2.63 FIP and 2.12 xFIP suggest that the newly-minted Brewers starter has been one of the best in the league. But Greinke’s actual 5.63 ERA is closer to the bottom than the top, and is three runs higher than his adjusted marks. One of the more popular stats here is E-F, a sortable number that measures the gap between ERA and FIP. Pitchers with a large separation are expected to regress in some fashion, because it is incredibly rare for anyone to finish with a huge disagreement between those two data points.

I thought about taking that concept a bit further and calculating the difference between ERA and xFIP, since the latter metric is a better predictor of future earned run average than its predecessor. This makeshift ‘E-X’ number would be measurable from 2002-now, and it piqued my curiosity to see which pitchers had the largest such gaps in that span.

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Adam Dunn has been one of the most consistent players in baseball during the past eight seasons. King of the three true outcomes, Dunn could be counted on to post high walk and strikeout rates, and regularly knock the ball out of the yard. From 2004 to 2010, his raw home run totals were eerily consistent: 46, 40, 40, 40, 40, 38, 38. Now? Well, that level of consistency is unlikely to be replicated, since he’s mired in an epic slump, the likes of which he’s never experienced in his career.

Through 66 games and 275 plate appearances, Dunn is hitting a measly .173/.308/.316. His walk rate is in line with his career mark — and his OBP is still high relative to his batting average — but the slash line components sandwiching that rate are downright miserable. Given his propensity to strike out, Dunn never has been known for posting high batting averages. But these days, he’s whiffing at an otherworldly level.

While his batting average on balls in play is low at .262, this isn’t a case of a putrid success rate suppressing otherwise decent numbers. He’s struggling to make contact, and he’s not faring all that well when he does connect.

Entering the season, there were three or four sure things in baseball. Dunn posting a .240+ ISO was one of them.* At .143, though, he’s 122 points below his .265 career average. And while 275 plate appearances is still a small sample, we’re deep enough into the season to start wondering whether he’ll go back to the old Adam Dunn.

While my colleagues have attempted to determine the root cause of his issues, I’m more curious as to how frequently someone has cratered in this fashion.

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My followers and I had some fun on Twitter the other night, trying to compare actors to baseball players. Josh Hamilton to Robert Downey, Jr was a solid comparison. Robert DeNiro drew plenty of Cal Ripken, Jr, or Ken Griffey, Jr responses. Clint Eastwood was a toughy, as someone who was great in one area for an extended period of time, switched positions, and was equally great, if not better, in that area. 

Robin Yount fit that description, as he began his Hall of Fame career as a shortstop, before switching to center field.

Yount won two MVP awards in his career, recorded 3,142 hits, and finished with a .344 wOBA and 66.1 wins above replacement. He made just three all star teams in his 20-year career from 1974-1993. From 1980-83, Yount’s 25.9 WAR ranked behind only Rickey Henderson, Mike Schmidt, and Andre Dawson. He was the second best infielder in the game, and was named an all star in 1980, 1982, and 1983, only missing out in 1981, in part due to the labor strike.

He didn’t even make the all star team in 1989 when he won his second MVP award at 33 years old. The idea of a player winning a coveted end of season award while not being considered good enough in the first half to make a roster supposedly comprising the best players in each league piqued my interest.

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Almost three months into the season, more statistics are beginning to stabilize, and certain stars are emerging. It has become clear that some players, whose success was initially thought to be the byproduct of small sample trickery, are legitimately on their way to an All-Star caliber season. Some of these players are in the process of establishing new levels of performance. Some are merely reverting to a previously established high level of productivity that was thought to be long gone. Others are living up to their billings as prospects worth monitoring, perhaps reaching that destination sooner than was originally thought.

And in the cases of the players highlighted in this post, some are unexpectedly leading their teams in wOBA. Here are five players having fantastic seasons, but whose names are surprising to see atop their team wOBA leaderboard.

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Paul Konerko is sitting at 381 home runs. The 35-year-old has averaged 32 homers per season in his last six, and he looks to be on pace for 30 to 35 more this year. Erring on the conservative side, let’s say he finishes with 30 dingers — 14 more than his current total. He would finish the 2011 season with 395 career home runs. He has two years remaining on his contract, and as long as he continues to hit like this, he should have no problem DH’ing for another few seasons after that.

Is it far-fetched to think that Konerko couldn’t average at least 21 homers from 2012 to 2016? Because with that average, he’d reach the 500-home-run milestone.

Along with achieving 3,000 hits, or winning 300 games as a pitcher, getting to 500 home runs — insert generic PED disclaimer here — tends to trigger automatic election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But as Chris Cwik covered earlier this week, Konerko is obviously not a Hall-of-Fame player. Even if he joins the 500-home-run club, he’s unlikely to garner much HoF support, which is interesting because it would mean the milestone isn’t what it used to be.

With that idea, let’s discuss other players who might buck the milestone trend. These players would have achieved grand milestones almost under the radar, and would be considered longshots for the hall of fame despite their accomplishments.

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Evaluating trades is one of the most fun aspects of baseball analysis. The best evaluations often are made at the time of the trade, based on perceived mindsets of the teams involved and on the information available at the time the deal was conceived. Hindsight makes things easier, but often winds up with less accurate assessments. Still, taking another look after a couple of years can be an interesting exercise, especially when players involved in the original deal moved to new teams.

Suddenly, one move can impact the roster of four or five different teams depending on the eventual destinations of the players involved. One recent deal involved the Florida Marlins sending all-stars Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers for Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Burke Badenhop, Mike Rabelo, Dallas Trahern and Eulogio De La Cruz. Though the latter four players have their merits, the December 2007 deal was really two of the top prospects in baseball for Cabrera and the ability to not have to pay Willis.

Three years later, the Marlins essentially unloaded a hall-of-fame player for three middle relievers — as both Maybin and Miller are on new teams and only one of the original players acquired remains on the major league club.

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The decline of Chone Figgins over the past two seasons is no secret to baseball fans. He produced 1.1 WAR last season after an impressive 6.9-win campaign a year earlier. He also averaged 3.6 wins above replacement in 2007 and 2008, establishing himself as as a patient hitter with excellent baserunning skills and strong defensive skills. His past 940 plate appearances have been so utterly unimpressive, though, that it is hard to remember he was once considered a threat at the plate. On top of that, his fielding marks have suffered substantially. He is nowhere near the guy who earned a lucrative deal last season.

In 55 games this season, he has a negative UZR, a below average baserunning mark and a putrid .211 wOBA. All told, Figgins has cost the Mariners 1.2 wins. His walk rate has progressively dropped from 13.9% to 10.5% last season, and now sits at 5.5%, which would be the lowest of his career if the season ended today. Since 2009, his wOBA has dropped from .358 to .302, all the way to the current .211 mark, which had Joe Pawlikowski wondering how much longer the Mariners would continue to write his name on the lineup card.

I recently wondered if Jose Bautista’s rise to superstardom was unprecedented in the annals of baseball history. So what if I repeated that research in the opposite direction? Namely, is the 33-year old Mariner’s decline unprecedented?

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