Two facts, with which you as a FanGraphs reader are likely familiar:

• The Tampa Bay Rays are among the most sabermetrically-inclined organizations in major league baseball.

• Sabermetrically-inclined folk generally are against the decision to sacrifice bunt.

One more fact, with which you are less likely to be familiar:

• The Tampa Bay Rays have attempted 58 non-pitcher sacrifice bunts this season, by far the highest mark in the major leagues. No other team has even 50.

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Not long ago, it looked like the As were running away with the 2014 American League West. Things have changed. After Sunday night’s game, the Angels are in first place by one game and the As are the first wildcard team at the moment. Whichever team ends up winning the division, barring a shocking twist, the other team will be a very tough matchup for the second wildcard team.

The prospect of facing such a particularly tough opponent in the wildcard game might lead some to think that the second wildcard spot is not all that valuable this season. Not only is the opponent likely to be very good (arguably better than the other division winners), but they will be playing at home. The second wildcard gives a team a chance at advancing, but it does not look like a very good chance. This is probably true most seasons, but it seems particularly clear this year.

Taking that all into account, the question arises as to how much value teams should place on that second wildcard spot. Sure, any team would take that spot over not making the playoffs, but should it really alter a team’s plans with regard to the future budget, trading away prospects, or making other “win now” moves? Is this something that can be quantified?

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Recently, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about a catcher’s ability to frame or receive the pitch in order to get more strike calls. However, that isn’t the only job of a backstop — blocking pitches in the dirt is a far more visible skill to most. Does being good at one affect your ability to be good at the other?

Listen to the skills that different catchers have listed as important to framing a pitch so that the umpire might best call it a strike:

“The less movement you have, the more likely he’s going to call it a strike.” — Jonathan Lucroy.
“Get good at sticking it.” — Jonathan Lucroy
“The emphasis is shifting to being as quiet as you can about receiving the ball and giving the umpire the best view of the pitch that you can.” — Jason Castro
“That’s part of what I’ve integrated into my catching this year is thinking about the angles in which I set up.” — Jason Castro
“Give the lowest target possible.” — Hank Conger
“My stance is narrower.” — Hank Conger
“I usually ask the umpire if I should get lower.” — Travis d’Arnaud

Now listen to the skills involved in blocking a pitch:

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Weird home runs have a very specific appeal. Most homers we see are products of bad pitches left in hittable spots. Flat sliders or errant fastballs, hangers and changeups left up in the zone, the usual. For folks who consume baseball in bulk, it takes something special to quicken our collective pulse.

It is hard to break through the din, however. While each homer is a tiny miracle in its own right, it takes something extra to stand out. This past weekend featured two very interesting and very noteworthy home runs. Two shots that stand out and demand a little extra attention.

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There’s a regular shortstop in the National League you probably don’t think about very often. The Marlins, though, think about Adeiny Hechavarria very often, and they happen to think very much of him. Which, of course, is implied by his still being a regular shortstop, but Hechavarria’s coming off a weekend in which he made some more dynamite defensive plays, and Jarred Cosart went and took himself to Twitter late Saturday:

Hechavarria shows me everyday why WAR and all these #s are garbage. Best defensive shortstop I’ve seen period. Fish fight on 2morrow

— Jarred Cosart (@JarredCosart) August 24, 2014

Cosart isn’t just in it to build himself and his teammates up. And this is a sentiment we’ve heard before from the organization. From November 2013:

[Michael] Hill was befuddled as to how Hechavarria wasn’t among the three finalists for the Gold Glove award, a prize that went to Braves’ counterpart Andrelton Simmons over Ian Desmond and Troy Tulowitzki.

From just the other day:

“They’ve got all these fancy numbers you measure stuff by and I guess I’m just a dinosaur,” [Perry] Hill said. “I go by what I see. I know what my eyes see and my eyes tell me he’s an elite shortstop.”

The Marlins are big believers in Hechavarria, from the front office on down to the players on the field. Those are opinions that can’t just be ignored, because the Marlins have repeated the point time and time again. To them, defensively speaking, Hechavarria’s nothing short of elite. So why don’t we talk about Hechavarria like he’s defensively elite?

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his changeup, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades.   -Kiley

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It almost seems funny now, but for the entirety of spring training and into the first few weeks of the season, the Mets were unable to resolve the issue that had been hanging over their head for more than a year: Ike Davis or Lucas Duda? Davis had hit 32 homers in 2012 and had certainly had his moments otherwise, but was never able to produce consistently around an injured ankle and a bout with Valley Fever, and had generally been awful in 2013. Duda had shown he could consistently be something more than a league-average hitter, but he’d never had 500 plate appearances and was such a bad defensive outfielder when forced out there that he was no longer an option anywhere but first base. Both are lefties, and neither can hit lefty pitching, ruling out a platoon. One had to go.

Duda started seven of the first 15 games at first, plus another at designated hitter. Davis started five. Josh Satin, a righty swinger who has long since been dispatched to Triple-A, started three more. On April 18, the Mets finally made a call and dealt Davis to Pittsburgh for minor leaguers Zach Thornton and Blake Taylor. Since then, Davis has been a replacement player — literally, 0.0 WAR — in part-time play for Pittsburgh, and he’s about to lose playing time to the Pedro Alvarez experiment.

The job, then as now, belonged to Duda. You might say that the Mets chose wisely.

* * *

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Matt Shoemaker is good. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim righthander has a 3.56 ERA and a 8.86 K/9 in 103-and-two-thirds innings. His record stands at 12-4 and he flirted with a no-hitter in his last start.

He’s also a good story. A 27-year-old rookie — he turns 28 next month — Shoemaker spent six seasons in the minor leagues after being signed as a non-drafted free agent in 2008. Never ranked among the Angels top prospects, he had a losing record and a 5.38 ERA in 69 Triple-A starts.

Earlier this week I asked Shoemaker for the reason behind his breakthrough. His answer was simple and humble. “A lot of it is just my love for the game,” said Shoemaker. “I want to keep playing as long as I can, and a lot of hard work goes into that. It’s a blessing to be here.” Pressed to elaborate, he owned up to improved command.

Shoemaker has solid command of five pitches: two- and four-seam fastballs, a slider, a knuckle curve and a splitter. He worked on a cutter two years ago, but ultimately shelved it due to a lack of consistency.

His irregular path to the big leagues began in suburban Detroit. Shoemaker told me he played travel ball for the Detroit Braves/Michigan Braves from ages 12-15. On multiple occasions he played against Zach Putnam – now with the White Sox — who grew up in nearby Ann Arbor. Despite excelling in the youth ranks, he wasn’t on the fast track. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re talking about pace-of-game again, in light of the recent vote to identify the next commissioner. Baseball games are taking longer and longer, with replay and constant shifting only adding to the length, and while certain fans believe it’s no issue because that’s just the beauty of baseball, this is one of those areas where you need to look at the big picture, and most people would prefer that games take less time. Baseball games now have a greater duration with the same amount of action, and that’s not the stuff of anyone’s dreams.

Cutting down on game length isn’t as easy as identifying that baseball should want to cut down on game length. The commercial breaks are always going to be there, because they need to be. Teams aren’t going to be real receptive to ideas that limit bullpen usage and flexibility. Every so often someone brings up the idea of a pitch clock, and maybe that’s the sort of step that needs to be taken. The best target for time reduction are all the seconds that pass between pitches. At least, that’s how people frequently feel. They don’t feel like that so much when Mark Buehrle’s on the mound.

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Let’s watch some baseball! Rewind to Thursday night, in Boston, where the Angels were playing the Red Sox. The story of most of the night was Matt Shoemaker, but for our specific purposes, the story didn’t really involve Shoemaker at all.

We’ll pick things up in the top of the sixth. Ahead in the count 2-and-1, Albert Pujols took a high slider, but it got called a strike, much to Pujols’ displeasure. The pitch was received by Christian Vazquez, who seems to be an elite-level pitch-framer.

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