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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Hello friends, my name is Jeff. You might recognize me from Lookout Landing or Baseball Nation, or from being my mother, Mom. Beginning today, right now, I’m going to be doing a lot of writing over here, and I hope that we can get along famously. If we don’t, remember that it wasn’t my idea for them to hire me. People make mistakes. Now let’s talk about baseball.

I was nervous about starting over in a new place, so I was hoping that Dave would spoon-feed me an easy topic suggestion. Of all the things currently going on in baseball, perhaps the most fascinating scenario is unfolding in Anaheim, and that’s what I’m here to tackle now, as Dave came through in the clutch. Perhaps you’ve noticed that the Angels have fallen on their faces of late. Perhaps you haven’t! Considering what the Angels were supposed to be, this is worthy of some discussion, and then some more.

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Mike Napoli was, at least at the time, an under-discussed portion of not only one of the worst trades of recent times, but also the puzzling follow-up trade in which the Jays sent Napoli to the Rangers for reliever Frank Francisco. Even given that at the time Napoli was not projected to be the monster he turned to be in 2011, that seems really weird given that his hitting style seemed to fit right into the type of sluggers the Jays love to collect.

In any case, after dealing with injury issues early in the year Napoli turned into one of the great stories of the 2011 season, as he not only hit for great power even by his previous standard, but significantly upped his average (by cutting his strikeout rate and boosting his BABIP) to finish the season with a .320/.414/.631 (144 wRC+) line that rivaled Josh Hamilton’s from 2010.

Even given reasonable expectations for regression, Napoli’s 2012 has been disappointing. While he has dealt with health issues this season, going on the disabled list this weekend after trying to play through an injury, Napoli has never really gotten going in 2012. After a career best wRC+ in 2011, Napoli currently has a seasonal career worst 105 wRC+. The easy thing would be to simply point to average on balls in play dropping back closer to his pre-2011 rates, but the issues go beyond that. His drop in power is particularly interesting.

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According to reports, this is how Billy Beane feels.

The casual fan will be excused for not knowing this, but Yoenis “La Potencia” Cespedes is having a phenomenal rookie year.

The Cuban import entered the league this past offseason with a fanfare rivaled only by that of Yu Darvish, who had the weight of his own nation’s media trained on him. But Cespedes — he of the plucky YouTube training video, he of the flight from totalitarian Cuba — has been just as worthy, if not more, of the media’s eye.

His rookie campaign started with a little old fashioned oh-em-gee — three home runs in the opening Tokyo series against the Mariners — but then the excitement petered out as an injury, a muscle sprain in his left hand, stalled his season.

But do not let that trick you. Not only is Yoenis Cespedes crushing the ball this season, he is hitting like one of the best rookies in the league — and if this were any year but Mike Trout’s, then he’d be in serious Rookie of the Year contention.
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On Friday night, the Angels landed the big prize of this trade deadline season, acquiring Zack Greinke from Milwaukee in exchange for shortstop Jean Segura and pitchers Ariel Pena and John Hellweg. Given all that the Angels have invested in their current club, pushing the team forward with another big upgrade makes sense on paper. In fact, given that they’ve cut the Rangers lead down to five games in the AL West, the value of a marginal win for Anaheim is extremely high, as the difference between a division winner and a wild card is enormous.

So, acquiring an impact player makes sense given the Angels position in the standings and their desire to win in the short term, but in looking at the specifics of the Angels roster, I wonder if they won’t realize a smaller improvement than one might expect from a team acquiring a top flight starter.

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