After finally getting the John Farrrell situation resolved, the Blue Jays can move on to other matters coming off of a frustrating season. They have a number of decisions to make, and one of those involves the future of shortstop Yunel Escobar. The Eyeblack Incident and its clumsy aftermath (Andrew Stoeten wrote a good take on the various aspects) was a big embarrassment for the organization. There is little doubt the incident played a big role in the Blue Jays’ rumored desire to trade Escobar. Toronto’s potential success or failure to trade Escobar and get value back for him casts an interesting light on how teams view personality issues.

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We’re to the point now of there being less baseball, which means we’re to the point now of there being more important baseball. The stakes are the highest they’ve been, and all those little managerial decisions people love to complain about during the regular season might at last be worth actually complaining about, because the leverage of everything is suddenly through the roof. Every little decision now could conceivably contribute to a team winning or not winning the World Series. Thursday, we all got news of one decision in particular — for Friday’s Wild Card playoff against the Cardinals, the Braves will start David Ross at catcher instead of Brian McCann.

It feels weird to imagine the Braves deliberately benching McCann at a time like this, where one game will decide whether there are subsequent games. McCann’s long been the regular in Atlanta, up to and including this season, and by and large he’s been a terrific one. You’d think that a team would go with its trusted regulars in a one-game playoff, no matter how much it also trusts its backups. But it’ll be David Ross catching Kris Medlen and the relievers, and more, the decision seems sound.

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Craig Kimbrel is putting the finishing touches on one of the best reliever seasons in history. He has struck out 113 of his 226 batters faced this season, producing a 50% strikeout rate that nobody with 30+ innings in a season has matched or exceeded.

In fact, nobody has ever thrown 30+ innings with a 45% strikeout rate either. Kimbrel isn’t merely en route to establishing a new record. He is about to blow right by the existing record, which was set in 2003 by Eric Gagne. Gagne struck out 44.7% of the opposition in his Cy Young campaign. Only two other relievers have even topped 44% throughout history: Aroldis Chapman‘s 44.4% rate this season, and Kenley Jansen’s 44.0% rate last year. While relievers face such a small sample of batters, and another strikeout or two could materially affect the strikeout rates in question, Kimbrel still has a commanding lead. He has simply been unhittable this season and may have established the new benchmark for evaluating relief pitching performance in this era.

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If you go to the Free Agent Leaderboards, you’ll see Michael Bourn’s name at the top, as the sort for the list is set to descending 2012 WAR, and Bourn has the highest WAR this season (+6.1) of any upcoming free agent. We can pretty much guarantee that Bourn isn’t going to sign the largest contract this winter, though, as free agent value isn’t simply based on a player’s most recent season, nor are all skills as likely to be sustained going forward, and various skills have different valuations in the marketplace. Bourn’s combination of average offense and terrific defense is a valuable package, but how will it translate into market value?

Well, before we figure out how much he’ll get paid, we first have to figure out how much of his 2012 value he’ll retain in future years, or at least, how much teams will expect him to retain. There’s no question that the average offense/great defense package can be highly valuable, but it’s also a young man’s skillset. Here is a list of every player in the UZR era (2002-2012) that has posted a +5 WAR season while running a wRC+ below 110.

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Likely waiting tastefully until the Talk Like a Pirate Day celebrations were in the rear view mirror, longtime Pittsburgh (and short-time Seattle and Atlanta) shortstop Jack Wilson, who was released by Atlanta back in August, is reportedly going to retire after the season. The first thing I think of when I think of Jack Wilson is how I used to always get him mixed up with former teammate catcher/outfielder/first baseman Craig Wilson. Remember when the “Wilson Brothers” and Jason Bay were part of a future Pirates contender? Good thing those miserable days are over. HOKA HEY.

Anyway, Jack Wilson’s reputation was based almost completely on the very good glove he displayed in his prime. Yeah, there was that 2004 season in which he hit .308/.335/.459 (103 wRC+), made the All-Star Game, and people talked about it being a “breakout” year for him. Actually — and I can’t believe this happened to a guy who walked in under four percent of his plate appearances — it looks like that was probably mostly random variation. That was Wilson’s only major-league season with above-average offense, and his career line is .265/.306/.366 (74 WRC+). Despite this, his glove made him a valuable player in his prime, and that was what one should really focus on when thinking of his career.

However, even a glove-first shortstop will manage some big hits over 5,339 plate appearances. So, in honor of his impending retirement, let’s use the story stat, Win Probability Added (WPA), to look at three of Jack Wilson’s biggest hits in terms of their in-game impact.

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Being a Mariners fan, I’m spoiled by the fact that I get to watch Brendan Ryan play defense almost every day. I’m anti-spoiled by the fact that I also have to watch Brendan Ryan play offense almost every day, but memories of watching Yuniesky Betancourt in the field are still fresh in my brain, and it’s difficult for me to imagine that there’s a better defensive shortstop than Ryan currently in the major leagues. I don’t even know what such a shortstop would look like; seems to me that, if there’s a fieldable ball in play, Ryan will turn it into an out or two, provided it’s somewhere within screaming distance of his starting position.

Ryan, absolutely, is one of the best. Some of the numbers suggest that he is indeed the very best. Even ignoring the numbers, his ability is readily evident to the casual observer. If there’s one guy who’s better, though, he plays in Atlanta. And he isn’t Tyler Pastornicky.

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There’s a sentiment that the players for the Miami Marlins have more or less given up. Not too long ago, Buster Olney wrote about it, and Ozzie Guillen fired back in fairly colorful fashion. On one hand, since June 5, the Marlins have gone 35-61, better only than the Astros in the National League. On the other hand, since the start of August the Marlins’ run differential is essentially even. There’s some evidence pointing both ways, and when uncertain, it’s probably wisest to err on the side of professionals behaving like professionals.

Wednesday, it might not have mattered whether the Marlins have given up or not, because Wednesday the Marlins went up against Kris Medlen. The Marlins beat the Braves in ten innings on Tuesday, but Wednesday they were left as Medlen’s latest victims. The Braves scored three times, which was two more times than they needed to, as Medlen worked eight scoreless before handing the ball off.

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In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be treated to a couple of one-game, winner-take-all showdowns to determine the final playoff team in each league. The addition of the wild card play-in game changes the context of the playoff races in a new and meaningful way, and also creates some interesting questions for a handful of teams. While MLB has had tie-breaking games before, they’ve never been known to be necessary until the final day of the regular season, and teams simply had to make adjustments to play an unscheduled game at the last minute.

Now, however, it’s likely that one or more teams are going to head into the final few days of the regular season essentially certain that they’re going to be involved in the play-in game. For instance, the Braves currently have a seven game lead over St. Louis in the wild card race, and even after sweeping Washington this weekend, they’re still 5.5 games back in the NL East. CoolStandings currently gives the Braves a 96.3% chance of winning one of the two wild card spots, but only a 3.6% chance of winning their division. Barring some kind of epic collapse by either the Braves or Nationals, Atlanta is going to be one of the two NL teams in the play-in game, and they can start planning for that game right now.

And, as part of that planning, they should seriously consider the idea of skipping the starting pitcher entirely.

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Very recently, Dan Uggla was one of the better players in baseball. Two years ago, his 135 wRC+ put him in the same company as Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Adam Dunn, and Joe Mauer. He hit for average, he hit for power, he drew walks, and he faked it at second base well enough to provide a lot of value, averaging +4 WAR per season during his first five years in the big leagues.

Last year, Uggla looked lost for the first three months of the season, as he wasn’t drawing walks and his BABIPs were below .200 in each month from April through June. However, for as bad as his first half was, his second half was equally amazing, as his power spiked, his BABIP returned to normal, and he closed the year looking like the Dan Uggla of old. The overall line was down a bit from his years in Miami, but given how well he closed the season, it didn’t seem like an early decline was in his future.

However, there was some evidence of worrying trends, even while Uggla was killing the ball last summer, and this year, the continuation of those trends has cost him his job as the Braves starting second baseman.

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We’re only three days from the expansion of major league rosters. On Sept. 1, all players on a team’s 40-man roster will be eligible to play in the big leagues without an accompanying move. Often times, baseball fans are treated to a sneak preview of teams’ top minor league talent as a result of September call-ups; or they’re surprised by a relatively unknown player who manages to contribute over the season’s final month.

In preparation for this year’s roster expansion, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the greatest-ever September call-ups, defined here as players that made their major league debut during the month of September.

There are, of course, two ways to look at this: The first is to look at players — position players and pitchers — who generated the most value for their clubs during their call-up. The second is to look at players whose careers began as a September call-up and then went on to have great careers.

I’m looking at both. Read the rest of this entry »