The Pittsburgh Pirates are in a dogfight for the National League Central title, and the resurgent A.J. Burnett is a big part of the team’s success. Since coming over from the Yankees, the right-hander has put up close to 350 strikeouts with a near-3.00 ERA. All this, and he throws two pitches 95% of the time. Burnett knows he doesn’t have the largest arsenal — he enjoys his reduced repertoire — but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t added a few wrinkles as he’s matured.

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Max Scherzer is an incredible 19-1, and he’s also considered the frontrunner in this year’s race for the American League Cy Young Award. There is no debating the reality of his record — his record is his record, as numbers are numbers. There is, however, debating whether or not he should be in the lead in the award race — the AL has other good starters, too, so Scherzer isn’t in a league of his own. Predictably, then, there is debate regarding the significance of Scherzer’s win/loss record, because not many people have done this before, and that has to count for something, right?

There are few debates in which I can imagine being less interested. That’s not true, there are lots, but I wrote that sentence to make a point. No, you can’t realistically get to 19-1 if you haven’t pitched really well. Scherzer has pitched really well. There is a strong relationship between performance and record, as much as we’d all like to kill the win. Scherzer, though, has also received the most run support in baseball, because his team’s offense has a Miguel Cabrera in it, and there’s a relationship between run support and record, too. If we’re going to adjust for run support, we’re already trying to strip away some context; might as well go all the way and just look at the numbers that really matter. Not included among those numbers are wins and losses.

I like looking at the numbers 19 and 1 as much as the next guy. To be honest, for some reason 19-1 looks better to me than 19-0. But I’m more interested in what’s going on underneath, what’s going on with Scherzer specifically. Scherzer and Rick Porcello have always had a fair number of things in common. This year, they’ve added to the list, and they’ve both been better for it.

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Sometimes, baseball is just cruel.

Source: #Mets’ Harvey has partially torn UCL. Will be shut down. Determination on whether he needs Tommy John surgery will be made later.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) August 26, 2013

A couple of years ago, Stephen Strasburg was the best young pitcher we’d seen in a very long time, and then his elbow gave out. Matt Harvey was the best young pitcher we’d seen since Strasburg, and now it looks like his elbow might end up requiring surgery too. I have no personal affinity towards the Mets, but as a fan of baseball, this sucks. The game does not need any more “what if” stories. We already have one Mark Prior; we don’t need to start a fraternity.

Smart people of the future: Figure out how to keep great young pitchers healthy, please.

Over the weekend, various reports have emerged suggesting that the Angels are likely to fire either GM Jerry DiPoto or longtime manager Mike Scioscia in the wake of their disastrous 2013 season. While Scioscia denies that there is an abnormal rift between the field staff and the front office, there’s enough smoke here to believe that there is a fire somewhere, and it would actually be unusual if someone wasn’t held responsible for a $140 million failure.

Firing decision makers as a response to poor performance is standard operating procedure in Major League Baseball, and the GM and manager are the two guys whose job descriptions include taking responsibility for the results on the field. Both DiPoto and Scioscia know how this game works, and neither one would have much of a right to be surprised if they were let go following the season. However, if the Angels actually want to fix what is broken, they should be more interested in figuring out what went wrong and why rather than just meting out punishment to satisfy the desire to hold someone accountable.

So, what happened to the 2013 Angels? How can a team with the best young player the game has seen in 100 years still manage to be so awful?

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This investigation begins with a simple frustration. I was recently watching the Rays and, after a few solo homers wandered over the fence, I asked myself, “How can a team with such a solid on-base percentage hit so few multi-run homers?”

It makes sense that, if’n a team can matriculate men down to first and second and even third base, they can get more bang for their homer bucks. My frustration reminded me of Jeff Sullivan’s frustrations in 2012, when he wrote the epic monkey’s paw game recap, wherein he bemoaned the Mariners’ solo homeritis.

But, to me, it made sense the Mariners had solo homeritis. The 2012 Mariners had a .296 OBP — worst in the majors by a Deadball Era or two.

So I began a quest, a quest that has lasted several months. I have scaled SQL cliffs, journeyed deep into Pivot Table mines, and waded through the blogger depression swamps. With the support of some eclectic friends, such as Jeff Zimmerman, Matt Hunter, and Steve Staudenmayer, I have concluded that OBP and runs per home run do indeed have a relationship, but that relationship is severely diluted by randomness and unpredictability.
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In a sense, Sunday’s Phillies game shouldn’t have been too important. It’s long been apparent the Phillies aren’t going anywhere, or at least, they’re not going where they’d like. The Nationals, too, probably aren’t going anywhere, and while their playoff hopes aren’t quite so dashed, they’re hardly in the picture. And on the mound, the Phillies had a 36-year-old free agent to be, a guy coming off shoulder surgery, a guy who posted an 8.65 ERA before going on the disabled list after seven starts. The Phillies, thus, weren’t even throwing a prospect.

But they were throwing an unknown, by the name of Roy Halladay. Halladay was making his first start since going under the knife, and given who he is and who he’s been, the game captured the interest not just of Phillies fans, but of baseball fans, fans who grew accustomed to thinking of Halladay as unbreakable and automatic. Healthy Halladay was the very picture of the shutdown workhorse. Unhealthy Halladay was a grim reminder that rooting for pitchers sucks. Many were eager to find out what Halladay might have left in the tank, and Sunday he and the Phillies knocked off Patrick Corbin. Following is something of a Halladay start in review.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the second part of this edition of the series I wish I didn’t schedule for Fridays, when working Americans are supposed to be able to mentally check out in the early afternoon. I remember, at my old biotech, when Friday rolled around, the workday was basically over by lunch time. Now, not only do I work a full Friday — by the time this post goes up, much of the audience has already mentally and/or physically begun the weekend. One thing I could do is just not work on these things very hard, but I think I’m at the point at which I’m addicted to writing underneath images. I don’t know what I’m going to do in November. Tremble a lot, probably. Here’s a link to the series archive, to change the subject.

Wild swings are what we have, at breaking balls intended to hopefully generate wild swings. This edition comes with five wild swings and a bonus non-swing that still makes it into the post for reasons you might or might not be able to guess. Basically everything is something you might or might not be able to guess. That covers just about all the options. Today’s research excluded a bunch of check-swing strikes, from players like Matt Wieters, Ryan Zimmerman, Mike Moustakas, and Chris Davis. Players very much like them. Players so much like them, in fact, they are them. We’ll get going now to the five wild swings and the bonus. The sooner we all start, the sooner we’re all done.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the first part of another edition of The Worst Of The Best. You’ll see in the headline it’s written as “The Worst of the Best” — with fewer capital letters — in accordance with our editorial policies, but I like capital letters because they make me feel important, so the first sentence of this post is my own form of stubborn protest. Now, this is obviously a departure from the news of the day. Yesterday, Ryan Braun released a statement of apology, and everywhere today you can find somebody’s hot takes. The consensus: the apology was a good step, but not enough. Not enough to make up for cheating and lying and accusatory behavior. A written, prepared apology was not enough to make up for that. That is the thesis of just about every article on the matter I’ve seen. So, yeah, I’m glad this is a departure from the news of the day, because the news of the day is stupid.

In this departure, we look at the wildest pitches thrown between August 16 and August 22. Here’s an archive of the whole series, if you feel like throwing your day away or destroying your processor. It’s PITCHf/x and simple math and identifying locations furthest from the center of the strike zone. Some pitches just missing our top five: Andy Pettitte to David Ortiz on August 16, Taylor Jordan to Freddie Freeman on August 16, and Rubby De La Rosa to Robinson Cano on August 18. The pitches that didn’t miss our top five are the top five, presented below. I should warn you: this is a particularly confusing week. I had some trouble with this, and Nationals and Braves fans can probably guess why. The rest of you will just have to wait, a few seconds.

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It is tough to criticize the Texas Rangers’ decisions. If the current standings hold up, they will win the American League Westfor the third time in four years. Even if Oakland catches up, the Rangers will still probably make the playoffs for the fourth season in a row. They went to the World Series in 2010 and 2011. No team has a spotless record when it comes to personnel decisions either at the time or in hindsight. Every team enjoys some good luck and suffers some bad luck. These days, no team has a lineup full of superstars or even above-average players. Most teams have to get by with at least one or two mediocre players, usually to save money so that it can be spent elsewhere.

Thus, it is not completely strange that Rangers are making do with Mitch Moreland as their primary first baseman once again. Moreland got off to a hot start this season, but came back to earth with a current seasonal line of .244/.306/.446 (98 wRC+). He is is even starting to lose playing time in a semi-platoon with journeyman Jeff Baker. Moreland was only a bit better last season, which he finished with a 105 wRC+ after splitting first base duties with Michael Young and Mike Napoli. Moreland is pretty much a league average bat, which does not cut it as a first baseman, even if it does not kill the Rangers given their other strengths. As written above, few teams are without a weak spot on the diamond.

Nonetheless, the Rangers would obviously like to be better at first base. From that perspective, it is interesting to see the talented first baseman that came up with Texas over the last decade or so and have since moved on.

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Today, the Rays acquired David DeJesus from the Nationals a few days after Washington got him from the Cubs. The cost of both acquisitions was either a minor prospect or cash, as DeJesus is being moved essentially as a cost savings maneuver. He wasn’t in big demand at the trade deadline, and isn’t seen as a major acquisition.

A few weeks ago, the Rangers acquired Alex Rios from the White Sox, after this transaction was rumored for weeks heading up to the trade deadline. The Rangers received a lot of praise for getting a deal done in the wake of Nelson Cruz’s suspension, with several people noting that the Rangers got both “the best hitter” (Rios) and “the best pitcher” (Matt Garza) available this summer.

Perception is a funny thing. Here’s David DeJesus and Alex Rios, season to date.

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