The Oakland A’s want to move to San Jose, approximately 45 miles south of Oakland and 50 miles southeast of San Francisco. The Giants oppose the move on the ground that the A’s granted the Giants the “territorial rights” to San Jose and the rest of Santa Clara County back in the 1990s when the Giants were trying to build a ballpark in Santa Clara.

Earlier this year, I explained the history of the Giants/A’s territorial-rights dispute over at Baseball Nation.

Territorial rights describes the way Major League Baseball divides the major metropolitan areas of the United States for its 30 franchises. (Well, 29 franchises in the U.S., plus one in Toronto, Canada). According to research done by baseball researcher and writer Doug Pappas in 2002, Major League Baseball amended its rules between 1990 and 1994 to expand the definition of territorial rights to include not just each team’s home city, but also the surrounding counties.

All of the two-team territories but one share the same counties: the Yankees and Mets; the White Sox and Cubs; and the Dodgers and Angels. Only the Giants and A’s split the counties surrounding their home cities. The A’s territory includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties; the Giants’ territory includes San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and Marin counties, “plus Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team.” San Jose is in Santa Clara county. To get your bearings, look at this map of California counties.

—snip—

[T]he Giants never built a stadium in Santa Clara county, because several voter initiatives to fund such a stadium failed. Instead, [owner Bob] Lurie sold the Giants to a Peter Magowan-led group, who in turn privately financed what is now called AT&T Park, in downtown San Francisco. Nevertheless, the MLB rule granting the Giants “Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team” was never amended.

Under MLB rules, a team can move into the territory of another team upon the vote of three-fourths of the owners, the two ballparks are at least five miles apart; the move results in no more than two teams in a single territory; and the team moving compensates the team already in the territory.

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The Dodgers have gotten plenty of attention for their in-season roster shakeup, and justifiably so, because the Dodgers have been busy. Beginning in late July, they added Hanley Ramirez, they added Brandon League, they added Shane Victorino, they added Joe Blanton, they added Adrian Gonzalez, they added Nick Punto, they added Josh Beckett, and they added an injured Carl Crawford. It’s hard to believe the Dodgers did everything they did because those were a lot of big moves in a short amount of time. Yet when the Dodgers made their first big move, adding Ramirez, they were eight games over .500 and sitting in second place. Today the Dodgers are eight games over .500 and sitting in second place.

They’re chasing the Giants, and the Giants made some moves of their own. On July 27, the Giants picked up Marco Scutaro, and on July 31, the Giants picked up Hunter Pence. Pence hasn’t worked out yet, and the Giants also lost Melky Cabrera to a suspension. But Scutaro has worked out and then some, and it’s Scutaro to whom the rest of this article is devoted.

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Yesterday, the venerable Joe Posnanski sent out this message on Twitter.

The most underrated player in baseball is easy: Alex Gordon … so underrated nobody even talks about him being underrated.

— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) September 5, 2012

Posanski’s right about Alex Gordon being better than people think, as his arm makes him a real weapon in the outfield and he’s developed into a pretty good hitter after a disappointing start to his career. There’s no question that Gordon is an underrated player, as his particular set of skills aren’t as sexy as some others, and of course he plays in relative obscurity in Kansas City.

But, at the same time, Gordon simply falls in line with the typical formula of underrated players. Small market, bad team, good but not great hitter, strong defense at a corner position – these types of players are always underrated. So, in that sense, it’s not really Gordon that’s underrated as much as it is his particular combination of skillset and geography. And for me, that’s a little less interesting. If we knew that Gordon would get more press if he simply played for a winning team or in a more prominent market, then Gordon isn’t so much “the most underrated player” as he is a victim of the media coverage of lousy midwest franchises.

In thinking about Posnanski’s tweet, I wondered if we could tease out the geography and team record aspects, and try to find out which player is perhaps the most underrated based simply on his own merits, rather than because he plays in obscurity due to the failings of his teammates or because of his current zip code. What we’re looking for is a good player who doesn’t get much recognition for his value despite playing on either a winning team or in a major media market with significant television exposure and national coverage.

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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 »

Subjective questions swirl around most awards discussions — should a pitcher win MVP, should the Rookie of the Year be the best player that season or the one with the brightest future, does the Manager of the Year and/or MVP need to come from a playoff team, etc. But Comeback Player of the Year may be the most loosely defined award. As I detailed in this exercise last season, the only criteria is that a player “re-emerged,” which is very much open to interpretation. So, let’s try to take an objective look.

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Major League Baseball suspended Melky Cabrera for 50 games after he tested positive for testosterone, a substance banned under the league’s Joint Drug Policy. The suspension is immediate, meaning Cabrera won’t be seen in the orange and black, patrolling left field and accumulating hits, for the rest of the season. After their loss yesterday to the Nationals, coupled with the Dodgers win over the Pirates, the Giants fell out of first place in the National League West for the first time since late June. Losing Cabrera will hurt the Giants as they battle the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks for the division title, and try to stay in the hunt for a wild card spot.

Cabrera’s has been the Giants’ second-most productive hitter, behind Buster Posey. His season line is .346/.390/.546 for a .387 wOBA and a 146 wRC+. He was a steady and effective presence as the number three hitter in the Giants’ lineup, where he whacked 25 doubles, ten triples and eleven home runs in front of Posey. It will be impossible to replicate that production. The question is how best to replace it.

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The Giants took it on the chin Tuesday night, losing 14-2 to the Nationals. But that didn’t stop catcher Buster Posey from adding to the spectacular numbers he’s posted since the All-Star break: .457/.531/.787 with seven doubles and eight home runs in 113 plate appearances. His wRC+ over that time is an astounding 248. Simply put, he’s been the best hitter in baseball in the second half, and it’s not particularly close. Mike Trout — regularly regarded as “the best player on the planet” — has accumulated 2.3 WAR to Posey’s 2.6 over the past 30 days, and that’s with Posey’s catchers-legs base running and lower defensive rating.

For the season, Posey’s batting .332/.406/.547 with 19 home runs. His 158 wRC+ ranks fourth in the National League, behind Joey Votto, Andrew McCutchen, and Ryan Braun. He’s accumulated 5.0 WAR, good for fifth in the league, behind McCutchen, David Wright, Braun, and Michael Bourn. And again, Posey takes a hit for his base running.

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Melky Cabrera is having a career-year. After posting 4.2 WAR last year, Cabrera has once again been effective. The 27-year-old outfielder has already passed that total this season, accumulating 4.8 WAR so far.

Cabrera’s performance comes at a great time for him. At the end of the season, he can become a free-agent. And it looks like he’ll have a chance to hit the market, since the San Francisco Giants have put off negotiations with him until then. Cabrera’s two-year breakout is also interesting since he’s never produced like this before. All of those factors make Cabrera one of the most unique players to hit the market in quite some time. Because of that, no one is really sure how much he’ll make.

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The San Francisco Giants today acquired Hunter Pence from the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for outfielder Nate Schierholtz, catching prospect Tommy Joseph, and right-handed pitcher Seth Rosin, who’s still in Single-A. The Giants will be responsible for the remainder of Pence’s $10.4 million salary for this season. Update: The Giants will receive cash from the Phillies to cover some portion of the $3.3 million remaining on Pence’s salary this season, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Next season will be Pence’s last year of arbitration-eligibility after which he will become a free agent.

Pence is a right fielder and will replace the Gregor Blanco-Nate Schierholtz platoon that’s patrolled right field at AT&T Park this season. Pence will upgrade the Giants on offense but could be a liability on defense, particularly in the tricky corners of the right-field wall and Triples Alley at AT&T.

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[With apologies to Mike Keneally]

[Author’s note added later for anyone who cares: the mentions of the differences between subjective and objective senses of time should not be taken as technical or precise in the way one would expect when reading, say, a historical explication of classic philosophies of time. This is just supposed to be an entertaining way of launching a discussion of how a few years can seem so distant with respect to certain things in baseball. For a technical and precise account of the different senses of time in Augustine, Husserl, or whomever, you should look elsewhere. Sorry.]

The existential experience of time passing is different than the intellectual acknowledgement of “how much time has passed.” I do not mean anything “deep” by that — I’m generally opposed to depth, or at least the appearance of depth. What I mean is simply that while, for example, every year is about 365.242199 days, on a subjective, personal level, it feels as if some slices of time go by faster than others. An hour spent staring at a clock feels longer than an hour playing video games. An hour watching Stephen Strasburg pitch flies by faster than an hour watching Jonathan Sanchez pitch. You get the idea.

That is all a prelude to saying that 2009 “feels” pretty recent to me. I am not sure why. Maybe because when I first started blogging (for the dearly-departed SB Nation site Driveline Mechanics) around that time. “Pretty recent” is itself a vague description — it is not “objectively” a correct or incorrect description. But it really has been a while since 2009. It was three birthdays ago. Looking at the changing perceptions of particualr baseball players is one way of measuring how much time has passed. Without giving a full recap of the year, here are a few things from 2009 that drove home the reality that, in fact, 2009 was a “million” years ago.

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