Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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You’re familiar with the term “contract year” because there exists a belief that some players perform better the season before they hit free agency. Playing for a new contract allegedly serves as a motivator. Obviously, pre-free-agency performance matters, and the most recent performance matters the most. A player should want to go into free agency on a high note. A player should really try to avoid going into free agency on a low note. For like a whole bunch of reasons actually.

One guy who’s going into free agency on a low note is Jose Valverde. Just one year ago — just one year ago! — Valverde converted all 49 of his save opportunities and ran a near-2 ERA. He blew his very first save opportunity of 2012. His 2012 season wasn’t a disaster, but it was in the playoffs, when he allowed nine runs in four games. Teams are now going to be understandably nervous about Jose Valverde’s future prospects. Another guy who’s going into free agency on a low note is Brandon McCarthy. Doctors recently had to cut into his head.

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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We already know that the three finalists for the 2012 American League Rookie of the Year Award are Mike Trout, Yoenis Cespedes, and Yu Darvish. We basically already know that Mike Trout will be named the unanimous winner later on Monday by the BBWAA. There is no particularly convincing argument for any of the other guys over Trout, unless you pretend like pitcher wins are the only statistic that exists. You’ll know if Trout does not win unanimously because in that event Twitter would go down on account of all the Internet rage. It doesn’t take a lot to make the Internet rage.

The award itself is something that matters only sort of. It would probably matter a great deal to Trout and to Trout’s family. It’s something that would immediately go on Trout’s resume, and it’s something that would be brought up in any Mike Trout Hall-of-Fame discussions. The recognition would boost Trout’s self-esteem but it would not give him a new house, and it would not give the Angels more wins. It certainly means little to the fans. I don’t think fans care about the awards because of the winners; I think they care about the awards because of the arguments for which they allow. On the surface, there’s not much room for argument in the 2012 AL RoY. But what follows is an argument in favor of Oakland’s Jarrod Parker.

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Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

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Extreme performances are exceptional performances, so it stands to reason that there are relatively few extreme performers. Granted, there are a lot of different ways in which one can be extreme or exceptional, but still, most players fall somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t make those players uninteresting on its own, but it also definitely doesn’t make those players more interesting. Extremes are interesting.

There are two Chris Youngs in baseball, and they’re independent of one another, linked only by profession and coincidence. Still, it’s fun to compare them on account of their names, and one notes that Outfielder Chris Young has a career 16.3 WAR, while Pitcher Chris Young has a career 16.3 RA9 WAR. It’s never been a secret that Pitcher Chris Young occupies an extreme. Two of them, in fact. Not only is Pitcher Chris Young extremely tall; he’s also extremely fly ball-prone. Since 2002, Young has posted the lowest groundball rate in baseball. I suppose one could argue Young is also extremely fragile.

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So much of what makes pitchers effective at the major league level is their ability to keep hitters off-balance. Sure, a 95 mph fastball with movement and a Lord Charles curveball help, but even these physical tools are only as effective as a pitcher’s ability to create uncertainly in the hitters mind from pitch to pitch.

One — admittedly crude — way of looking at this is whether a pitcher throws the type of pitch that’s expected in a given count. Does a pitcher throw fastballs in “fastball counts”, or do they throw off-speed pitches? Pitchers that throw counter to expectations are often said to “pitch backwards”. The Rays’ James Shields is someone that has been referenced as such a pitcher over the past few years.

But exactly how backwards does Shields pitch? And who are some other pitchers that fit into this category?

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Four years ago, Joey Devine was a sensation with the Oakland Athletics. The 24-year-old rookie torched the American League for 45.2 innings, allowing just three earned runs to cross the plate in his 42 appearances.

In professional baseball history, there have been 24,553 pitcher seasons with at least 40 innings thrown. In 1911, Buck O’Brien of the Boston Red Sox set an ERA- record that has never been broken. He allowed two earned runs in five complete game starts (covering 47.2 innings, even), enough for an 11 ERA-. Many have come close, but none closer than Devine in 2008 — his 0.59 ERA translates to a 14 ERA-, the second-best mark in history.

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Over the weekend, the Oakland A’s traded for Chris Young, paying very little for an undervalued asset that gives them a leg up on the offseason. It also gives them an interesting set of permutations with which to arrange their lineup next season, given their current roster configuration.

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Billy Beane cares not for outfield log jams. Last season, Beane’s Athletics acquired Seth Smith for Guillermo Moscoso and Josh Outman despite already having Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick and Coco Crisp on hand. Saturday, Beane added another outfielder to the mix, acquiring Chris Young from Arizona in exchange for Cliff Pennington and infield prospect Yordy Cabrera.

The situations aren’t entirely analogous — the Athletics had DH at-bats to hand Smith but may not have those for Young (or another member of the Oakland outfield), but the general idea remains: when an asset can be acquired on the cheap, the Athletics will make it happen.

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