Special thanks to Brandon McCarthy for taking the time to walk me through his experiences as a pitcher, and providing me with countless insights I never would have discovered researching on my own.

There has been plenty of ink spilt this season over Justin Verlander’s American League MVP candidacy, and he is a shoo-in for the AL Cy Young Award. A large part of the narrative is the 24 wins, but one would assume that all the gushing means he had one of the most dominant pitching seasons of the last decade. However, when controlling for run environment, Dave Cameron notes that the last two AL Cy Young winners, Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez, had better ERA’s relative to league average than Verlander. Moving on to the advanced stats, Verlander did not even lead the league in FIP in 2011. Neither did his nearest competitor for the award, CC Sabathia. It was in fact Brandon McCarthy of the Oakland Athletics.

In 2010, McCarthy was a 26 year-old pitcher with 372.2 Major League innings under his belt toiling away in Oklahoma City, AAA affiliate of the Texas Rangers. He had been cut from the big league club following a rough Spring Training, and was toying with his mechanics and pitch repertoire, all while battling micro stress fractures in his right shoulder. Injuries limited him to 56.1 innings that season, and while the 3.36 ERA looked tidy, a 79.9% strand rate masked a less impressive 4.23 FIP.  As a pitcher who is in tune with defense independent statistics and had experienced severe arm injuries four years in a row, McCarthy said “it was at that point that I was going to have to start considering my options outside of baseball.” A year later, he was the American League FIP leader.  To figure out this transformation, let’s travel back in time.

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The corner outfielder often gets lumped into the mix with the first basemen / designated hitter types. You might call that part of the market the ‘last piece saloon.’ But, Raul Ibanez aside, corner outfielders need to be able to run a little bit, too.

Oh, would you look at that, Ibanez is a free agent. But who needs a corner outfielder at all? Depending on how they put their team together, the Braves could maybe use another outfielder. The Red Sox have an opening, but after their last high-priced acquisition in the outfield, and their plethora of in-house options, it might not be a priority. Both Chicago teams are a maybe, with the NL version more probable. Do the Dodgers have any money? The Giants will sign one for sure. The A’s will wait for a bargain, as they always do. The Mariners have to be considered dark horses for any piece of offense. The Nationals could try again. That pretty much defines your market, and it’s a pretty decent one in terms of demand.

What does the supply look like?

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It seems to be a foregone conclusion in Milwaukee that Prince Fielder is a goner. A rough estimate of the Brewers’ payroll might have them about $10 million short of 2011’s outlay once arbitration numbers are final, and $10 million a year is not enough to sign Prince Fielder. But baseball benefits from a long, well-recorded history. What can we learn from the other Prince Fielders that have left before?

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Whereas first base features a few of the top talents available in the coming period of free agency, second base… does not. That is hardly surprising. Second basemen are generally culled from a pool of players from which the best bats generally move to third base while the best defenders go to shortstop. The leftovers become second basemen (or Bloomquist-ian utility players). There are a few impact players at second base, and none of them are going to be available as free agents this winter. However, second basemen have been getting paid relatively little in free agency the last few years, and some of the available players could represent an inexpensive, short-term upgrade for a number of teams. A few of the better options are discussed below.

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If heteroscedasticity lasts longer than three hours, consult your physician immediately.

“Honey, I think I’ve got heteroscedasticity,” I said to my wife when she walked in the door. As a writer who works at home, I spend the majority of my time locked away in my windowless home office, concocting ways to frighten my dear wife who works all day.

“And it’s ruining my spreadsheets,” I finally added, after she had stood wide-eyed and wordless for a few moments.

On Tuesday, we examined the fantastic and bizarre case of rookie right-hander Jeremy Hellickson, whose high swinging-strike rate has not translated into an equally high strikeout rate (K%). Today, let’s expand the scope of that investigation.

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Join me! The rabbit hole is suspiciously warm.

The Tampa Bay Rays are now down 1-2 in the ALDS, placing their hopes for a Rangers rout on the shoulders of rookie right-hander Jeremy Hellickson. The so-called Hellboy takes the mound at 2:07 p.m. ET today, facing Rangers lefty Matt Harrison.

The match-up, to say the least, favors the Rangers. Not only does Harrison have the edge in FIP (3.52), xFIP (3.85), and SIERA (3.94), he has the added bonus of a seemingly normal BABIP (.290) and LOB% (72.3%). Hellickson has only an ERA edge (2.95); the rest suggests impending doom: 4.44 FIP, 4.72 xFIP, 4.63 SIERA, .223 BABIP, and 82.0% LOB%.

Well, Hellickson does have at least one major thing going for him: A serious and unusual strikeout regression.
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Players who combine power and speed are fun. There, I said it. I know, shocking stuff. Most of the time such players are good, but not always. I didn’t find any bad offensive seasons with 30 or more home runs and steals, but once I lowered the standard to 20-20, well, let’s just say some guys could stand to take a few more walks. It’s a bit of a random collection, overall, so let’s take a look at the worst individual offensive seasons with at least 20 home runs and 20 steals.

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The MLB season is drawing to a close, which means it’s about time for rampant speculation about next year’s free agents. One of my favorite off-season storylines is that of the east Asian baseball markets both giving and absorbing talent.

This past off season, we witnessed the likes of Chad Tracy, Wladimir Balentien, and Micah Hoffpauer head west to the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league while Japan sent Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Ryan Vogelsong Minnesota and California’s way.

Let’s look at the present NPB league statistics, so we can start writing our wishlists and dreaming about next year’s rosters.

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Most contenders didn’t get a shot at some of the biggest bats to hit the waiver wire. Earlier this week the Twins placed two desirable hitters, Jim Thome and Jason Kubel, on trade waivers, and both were claimed by teams on the fringe of contention. Kubel will stay put, while Thome heads to Cleveland. Left in the dust were teams such as the Angels, Rangers, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, and the entire National League. Yet if any of these teams want to add a left-handed bench hitter there is one readily available.

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Rich Harden is effective when healthy, but that caveat is more relevant for him than it is for most others. Over nine major-league seasons, he has never thrown 200 innings in a single year. Since logging 189.2 frames in 2004, he hasn’t even thrown for more than 148 innings in a season — and he’s working on his second consecutive year with fewer than 100 innings to his stats line.  He can’t seem to stay healthy long enough to have an impact commensurate with his talent.

Regardless, Harden’s possibilities are tough to ignore. He misses bats at an elite rate for a starter and induces feeble contact when batters connect. He has a career .274 batting average on balls in play, significantly lower than the league average. He also ranks third among starters with at least 200 total innings since 2008 with a 10.1 K/9: only Brandon Morrow and Tim Lincecum have a higher rate. Over the same span, batters have whiffed at 13 percent of Harden’s offerings, by far the highest rate for a starting pitcher. Cole Hamels ranks second at 11.7 percent. He’s a starter with elite reliever numbers.

It’s easy to see why teams are always interested in him despite the checkered injury history, and why that interest persists even with a small sample of starts this year.

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