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In just a short while, the Rangers and Rays will begin determining the American League’s second wild card. In a less short while, the second wild card will have been determined. One of these teams is going to live to play the Indians, while the other will not live, which I guess means it dies. It will subsequently be revived, in time for offseason roster maneuvering. One-game wild-card playoffs were introduced last year as a means of increasing excitement. Because of those wild-card playoffs, this particular one-game playoff feels a little less dramatic, but even so, a lot is resting on 9+ innings. Whole seasons, and their fates.

So why is this game being played? Because, of course, the Rangers and Rays finished with identical 91-71 records. It’s not the sort of tie you break by looking at head-to-head record. This has to be sorted out on the field, and as luck would have it, Monday was otherwise a scheduled off day. There’s no arguing that the Rangers and Rays have achieved an identical number of wins. There’s something to be said, though, about their respective paths.

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Here is a quick look at the called strike zone and strikeout and walk rates for the three home plate umpires over the next three nights.

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Today marks, basically, the beginning of the postseason, as it’s now that good teams begin being eliminated. There are fewer games each day than before, with every game being more and more important, and there will be a corresponding level of daily analysis. People are going to try to find keys to individual baseball games, because this is how it’s always been, and it’s with that in mind that I’d like to issue you a quick reminder. Last year, MLB debuted the one-game wild-card playoffs. People tried to analyze Orioles vs. Rangers. They tried to analyze Cardinals vs. Braves. In the former game, Joe Saunders bested Yu Darvish. In the latter, the hosts were undone in large part due to errors by Chipper Jones, Dan Uggla, and Andrelton Simmons. The point of the lead-up is to try to know; the magic of the game is that there is no knowing. This is forever going to be the truth.

But it’s still fun to try, to pretend like we could figure things out, and tonight the Rangers host the Rays as the teams battle in a one-game playoff for the right to make another one-game playoff. The starters are going to be Martin Perez and David Price, and there’s something about Price people have honed in on. Price, see, has an ugly history against Texas, and this information is presented to make people think he could struggle again in another big game.

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Sure, Game 163 is looming, and it counts as part of the regular season, but aside from some tweaks, the numbers are pretty much in for the 2013 season. We are close enough for at least some simple retrospectives on certain numerical accomplishments from the almost finished season. Some of the metrics involved are more meaningful or useful than others, but this post will not focus on analysis. As long as one does not confuse the listing of some metric below with an endorsement — or a criticism, for that matter — of its value, it is fine to simply take pleasure these accomplishments..

Some of these achievements have more historical resonance than others (and to a certain extent that is in the eye of the beholder). This is not presented as an exhaustive list, either. To begin, though, we do have two all-time marks set by relief pitchers this season.

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Over the weekend, the Giants made the first big signing of the off-season, even though it wasn’t technically the off-season yet. Rather than let Hunter Pence get to free agency and potentially start a bidding war for his services, the Giants chose to sign him to a five year, $90 million contract before he got to test the market. I did a very short post in the aftermath of the deal, noting that Pence has pretty similar numbers over the last three years to what Nick Swisher did in his run up to free agency, but that the price to sign the two was pretty different. However, no decision on contract pricing is ever that simple, so let’s take a closer look at what the Giants are paying for in Hunter Pence.

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I recently posed a question to 12 players. It was a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Given the subjectivity involved, it doesn’t even have a right answer.

If you have to win one game, who do you want on the mound?

Players could not choose a teammate and only active pitchers were eligible. Their responses are listed below in alphabetical order. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, we’ll have a more thorough write-up of Hunter Pence’s new $90 million contract with the Giants. For now, though, I figured this comparison was kind of fun: Here’s Nick Swisher in the three years leading up to the free-agent contract he signed last winter, compared with Pence’s performance during the past three seasons.

Swisher got 4/56. Pence got 5/90. Pence is a hitting free agency a year younger and is coming off a significantly better walk year season, so it’s not a surprise that Pence got more than Swisher. Plus, with baseball’s economic strength, salaries should be expected to inflate every year for the foreseeable future. This is still a pretty big gap though.

The Pirates have done us the favor of getting better gradually. Four years ago, they were absolutely dreadful. The next year, they were fine through July. The next year, they were fine through August. Now they’ve been good through September. We’ve been able to see the Pirates coming, to some extent, and so this 2013 success hasn’t taken us by complete surprise. We were prepared for this, and we can make sense of this, and we’re not fighting whiplash as a consequence of watching the Pirates blow by. The Pirates are evidence that a good plan takes time, and that time can bear fruit.

But it’s still weird seeing the Pirates in the neighborhood of baseball’s best record. They’re still, technically, in contention for the National League Central entering the last weekend, and they’re in line to play at home in next week’s one-game NL wild-card playoff. And you notice something, in the standings: the Cardinals have a +172 run differential. The Reds are at +119. The Pirates are at +47. We know that run differential isn’t everything, and we’ve been over this so many times, but it’s still worth quickly examining one thing the Pirates have been doing in particular to allow them to amass all these wins. In one category, the Pirates have been blowing baseball away.

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With one weekend left in the regular season, there are some important things still at stake. In the American League wild-card race, for example, the Rangers are still alive, one back of the Indians and two back of the Rays. The Pirates and the Reds will go head-to-head, basically to decide who gets home field in next week’s likely one-game playoff. And the Braves and Cardinals will figure out who finishes with the National League’s best record. They’re not about to play one another, but they’re each about to play three games, and the team with the best record will face the not-Dodgers in the NLDS.

And that would be nice, since the Dodgers have gone 61-26 since they started 30-42. Right now, the Braves and the Cardinals have the same record. The Braves, also, hold the tiebreaker, having won the season series against St. Louis, so at this point we’re looking at Braves vs. wild card and Cardinals vs. Dodgers. But it’s not set in stone, so, clearly, the teams have something left to play for as they prepare for October. No team would ever admit it’s afraid of another team, but the Dodgers don’t look like a favorable draw.

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