There has been a lot of banter about the Most Valuable Player Award this week. While the National League has an even field with multiple candidates, it’s the American League — with  Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera — that’s gotten most of the attention.

At the center of the debate is baseball’s triple crown, an incredibly rare achievement that is within reach for Cabrera. The fact that Trout is going to finish with the better season, regardless, has led many to pooh-pooh the fact that Cabrera has the chance to become just the 14th player since 1901 to win the elusive title. And while the triple crown in and of itself doesn’t signify greatness, it has only been won by great players. And most often, the league’s best player has won it.

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It’s that time of year again – with just a few weeks left in the season, baseball writers are turning their focus to the postseason awards, and as usual, the MVP races are the ones that are going to get the most attention. In the NL, the conversation is mostly about finding ways to make sure that Ryan Braun doesn’t win his second straight trophy, with Buster Posey stepping up to provide BBWAA members the out that they so desperately want. Over in the AL, there hasn’t been as much discussion for most of the summer, as Mike Trout has been running laps around the rest of the contenders, making it hard to put together any kind of realistic argument for a non-Trout candidate.

However, Miguel Cabrera is having a monstrous September, hitting .373/.426/.797 over the last couple of weeks, and now that he’s taken the lead in both batting average and runs batted, the talk of a potential “triple crown” has breathed life into his candidacy. Jon Morosi went so far as to call the decision to give Cabrera the award “a formality” and say that it’s “obvious” that Cabrera is the right choice. Instead of engaging in a hyperbole-off, however, let’s actually investigate the actual differences between them this season and see whether the case for Cabrera actually stands up to logic and reason.

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There is no hitting A.J. Griffin this season. The 24-year-old rookie continued his remarkable run through the American League Wednesday night as he stifled the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim to the tune of eight shutout innings. The swiftly rising righty struck out six Angles against six hits and no walks. The dominant outing lowered Griffin’s ERA to 1.94 to go with an splendid 2.98 FIP.

The plan of attack for Griffin was a simple one: get ahead and stay ahead. The Angels seemed only happy to oblige.

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In a recent article discussing the latest crop of international talent, valued commenter “Nate” offered a great, concise preview of soon-to-be international free agent Kyuji Fujikawa, who’s presently playing in the Nippon Professional Baseball league:

Kyuji Fujikawa – Closer for the Hanshin Tigers. Closest thing Japan has had lately to a Mariano Rivera-type. He’s 32, but will be a full free agent, so won’t require a posting fee. Expensive teams that forgot to buy a bullpen should look at him *cough* Angels *cough*.

And Nate is correct many times over; not only does one of Japan’s best relievers appear ready for a jump across the river, but he also has every chance to be an elite reliever in the United States.

Take a look at his numbers in Japan:

This is legit. And he could make for a talented addition to a number of teams in 2013.
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Odds are, as FanGraphs readers, you aren’t Oakland A’s fans, but you are at least somewhat familiar with Jerry Blevins. You know something about who he is and what he does for a living. You might have an idea of how good he is at it. To you, this isn’t weird; Blevins is a baseball player, and you know a lot about a lot of baseball players. To other people outside the baseball-fandom bubble, you know a lot about a lot of guys you’ve never met. Speaking generally, it is profoundly unusual to be familiar with Jerry Blevins. Tuesday night, though, Blevins got himself in headlines, so it’s very slightly less unusual to be familiar with him than it was before.

As you might’ve seen or read about already, Blevins came through with a clutch ninth-inning relief appearance that allowed the A’s to beat the Angels, 6-5. According to Cool Standings, the win boosted Oakland’s playoff odds from 85 percent to 90 percent, and the loss dropped LA’s playoff odds from 32 percent to 26 percent. Recall that the Angels were supposed to be one of the best teams in recent baseball history. There is now a three-in-four chance they don’t even reach the one-game playoff. I don’t know how these odds would’ve swung had the Angels rallied and won, but suffice to say things would look very different indeed.

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There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

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Within the drama of the pennant races and playoff chases exists a more morbid pursuit. Towards the end of the season, I always like to rummage through our vast chasm of data to see if there are players that have a chance to be historically bad in any particular category. Maybe it’s because I typically root for teams that play below .500 baseball, but I have an appreciation for the uniqueness of the ugly.

To that end, I looked at starting pitchers. Specifically, pitchers that had a penchant for allowing home runs. And that turned up Ervin Santana. (honorable mention to Phil Hughes). Suddenly, I have a new outcome to root for.

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Over the past month or so, who’s been the worst regular or semi-regular hitter in baseball? I’m actually asking you, because I don’t have the answer. I could look it up really easily but wouldn’t you know it, I haven’t looked it up. Huh. The answer might be Mark Trumbo. If the answer isn’t Mark Trumbo, then Mark Trumbo is probably close to being the answer, because over the past month or so, Mark Trumbo has just been terrible.

If you look at Trumbo’s game log, you might think that he showed signs of snapping out of this Thursday night. Against Jon Lester and the Red Sox, he finished 2-for-4 with an RBI. But one of those hits was a weak groundball single, the other hit was just a regular single, Trumbo struck out once, and Trumbo swung and missed several times. Also this was just one game. I don’t know what it’s going to look like if and when Trumbo returns to being something like himself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we couldn’t recognize it at the time.

It’s a really bad slump that Trumbo has been in. You could simply take my word for it, because I wouldn’t lie about something like this on the front page of FanGraphs, but I’ll go into some detail anyway, just in case you were unaware of the slump or unaware of the magnitude. It wasn’t that long ago that Trumbo looked like an out-of-nowhere superstar slugger. His overall numbers are still terrific, but looking at the overall numbers ignores a trend and, as humans, we really like trends.

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Coming into the season, the Angels picking up Dan Haren’s $15.5M option for the 2013 was a foregone conclusion. He had been a workhorse in recent years, throwing 1581.1 innings between 2005 and 2011 and compiling an 81 ERA- and 82 FIP- over that stretch. A $15.5M option was a no-brainer for a five-or-six win player.

Now, sitting with a disappointing 4.82 ERA in late August and concerns lingering about his health, Angels GM Jerry Dipoto and his staff must determine whether Haren is a smart investment for the organization.

The questions about his health started in early July, when Haren spent 19 days on the disabled list with a back injury — one that has reportedly been an issue since spring training. It marked his first stint on the disabled list as a professional. It also helped explain his uncharacteristic struggles on the mound.

More specifically, the injury accounted for his significant velocity decrease from 2011 to 2012. Our own Wendy Thurm examined the effects of less velocity on every one of his pitches this year. The real problem, however, reared its head when Haren’s velocity didn’t improve after his stint on the disabled list. If anything, his velocity decreased even more:

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In advance of the trade deadline, the Angels seemed poised to make a run, and that was before they traded for Zack Greinke. The Angels traded for Zack Greinke and at least on paper, that made their starting rotation laughably awesome. Even though the trade might’ve had more to do with the playoffs and signing Greinke long-term, the Angels still had to finish well in the regular season, and there was little reason to believe Greinke wouldn’t help them do that.

Greinke hasn’t helped them do that, at least not yet. He very easily still could — there’s a lot of season left — but so far the Angels are 1-4 in Greinke starts, and he’s averaged about a walk or a hit batter every other inning. He’s allowed 22 runs in 32 innings, and all in all he just hasn’t looked like the same Zack Greinke capable of posting comical strikeouts and walks. Greinke’s another player for whom the Angels are crossing their fingers, where the idea was that Greinke would be a player they could take for granted.

What follows isn’t intended to explain everything that has gone wrong. I think the best explanation for what’s happened with Greinke might be Baseball!, just as that’s the best explanation for how Chris Davis earned a win over Darnell McDonald. What follows might not actually explain anything, but Greinke’s struggles provided a convenient opportunity to bring this up and I’m nothing if not opportunistic. Actually that isn’t true, one could never be nothing. By definition, one is always something. I am something, and possibly opportunistic. All right, moving on.

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