Justin Verlander notched win No. 20 this past weekend. With the victory, he became the season’s first to reach the milestone, and perhaps most impressively, the first AL pitcher to hit the 20-win mark through August since Roger Clemens did it in 1997 with Toronto.

Combine factoids like this with his tremendous numbers so far, and it’s easy to see why many are boarding the Verlander-for-Cy Young Award bandwagon. And that might just be the start: Verlander now has emerged as a legitimate candidate for the American League’s Most Valuable Player award. But should be considered for the honor? In fact, should any pitcher win an MVP? Heck, is Verlander even a lock for the Cy Young?

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Over the next few days, you’re going to read an awful lot about how Jered Weaver left money on the table to re-sign with the Angels and pitch close to home. That is almost certainly true, since he probably could have commanded a significantly larger deal had he stayed healthy through 2013 and hit the free agent market, where prices for pitchers of his quality are significantly higher than the $17 million per year he just agreed to. But in addition to his desire to stay close to home, Weaver also knew that re-signing with the Angels was in his best long-term interests, because he’s pitching in one of the best environments possible for his skillset.

More than anything else, the defining characteristic about Jered Weaver is that he’s a fly ball guy. In fact, he’s one of the most extreme fly ball pitchers in all of baseball. Since the start of the 2009 season, the only starter who has generated fewer ground balls than Weaver is Ted Lilly – Weaver is 73rd out of 74 qualified pitchers in ground ball rate.

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Jered Weaver is one step closer to becoming an Angel For Life. Sunday night, the Los Angels Angels of Anaheim agreed to a five-year, $85 million dollar contract with their 28-year-old ace.

Weaver’s status as one of baseball’s premiere pitchers is certain. Weaver has only once failed to post an ERA below 4.00 (2008) and is now in his second straight season with both ERA- and FIP- marks below 75. He ranks third among qualified starters in ERA- over the past two seasons and fourth in FIP-, among such names as Justin Verlander, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Felix Hernandez, to name a few.

Two of Weaver’s contemporaries near the top of the list supply near-perfect context with which to evaluate his new extension. Justin Verlander signed a five-year, $80 million contract extension with the Tigers before the 2010 season, and the Mariners locked up Felix Hernandez with a five-year, $78 million extension.

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Friday night, Angel outfield prospect Mike Trout hit the second home run of his very short career. That Trout has any home runs at all at his age places him into a pretty exclusive club.

Though Trout is technically 20 years old — having celebrated his birthday on August 7th — he’s currently in his age-19 season (the cutoff being July 1st, or roughly halfway through the season).

Over the last 25 years, only 10 major leaguers have hit a home run before their respective age-20 seasons. Below is that list of players, including how many homers each one hit in his age-19 season and also each player’s career WAR per 650 plate appearances:

Obviously, these players didn’t go on to have (almost uniformly) excellent careers because they hit a home run at age 19. Rather, the mere fact that each was given the opportunity to play at that age is indicative of the sort of skills each possessed.

In either case, it’s excellent company that Trout is keeping at the moment.

Search made possible by BR’s Play Index.

We often roll our eyes when announcers cite a player’s stats over the past 15 days. We’ll groan when they tout how many home runs he’s hit since the All-Star break. We’ll throw the remote when a pitcher’s last five starts are mentioned. And yet, when we attempt to analyze a player here, there’s nary a blink if ‘last season’ is mentioned.

Well, guess what. Seasons are also arbitrary endpoints. Yes, they are arbitrary endpoints that allow for easy analysis, and ones that we have all agreed to use. And, if we didn’t use them, statistical analysis would be rendered fantastically difficult. Our record books would look very strange. We’d have to phrase things very carefully.

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Ichiro Suzuki is getting old. In life, that’s not a bad thing. In baseball, it is.

He is now in season 11 of the MLB portion of his career and season 20 of his professional career. Despite his age, he has played in 102 of the Seattle Mariners’ 103 games this year (not counting today). Moreover, he has more plate appearances (457) than anyone over age 35 in 2011. The next closest, Paul Konerko, is over 30 PAs behind him.

Ichiro may look as healthy and athletic as ever, but his numbers this year have been very un-Ichiro-like:

wOBA: .285
wRC+: 80
UZR: -8.4
Bsr: 2.3

All, except for the base-running (UBR) numbers, are career lows for Ich-dawg. We have long-anticipated Ichiro would slow down his ageless mastery of baseball at some point, but the depreciation in his 2011 statistics seem rather sudden. Worth noting:

BABIP: .289
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The Texas Rangers have been the talk of the league lately. Just a few weeks ago they were tied atop the AL West, a division that featured no clear frontrunner. The Angels and Mariners stayed close enough to create some intrigue, but it didn’t last long. In a run that started on Independence Day, the Rangers have taken 11 straight and have eliminated at least one division contender, the Mariners, by beating them four times. They now have a four-game cushion. It could have been more, too, had the Angels not put together a modest run of their own.

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It’s trade rumor season. It’s time for fans of contenders to lust after the best players on lesser teams. The airways of AM radio are already full of trade ideas, many of them ridiculous. Their most valuable player for your least valuable prospects is no way to build a trade, and those rumors are easy to dismiss.

The problem is, even if we set the filter higher, and listen only to rumors that come from reputable sources and concern acquirable names, we are still going to hear a decent amount of hogwash. Let’s just take a couple tasty morsels and examine why the rumored swap makes little sense for one team in the dance. Even a real rumor from a real source can be a real silly idea.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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By now, I’m sure everyone has heard the big news: top prospect Mike Trout has been promoted to the majors. He’s filling in now that center fielder Peter Bourjos has strained a hamstring and is expected to be out through the All-Star Break (and who knows for how much longer). In a season where we’ve already seen a wide range of top-rated prospects get promoted to the majors — Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Dustin Ackley, Michael Pineda, etc. — this promotion takes the cake; Trout is arguably the best prospect in baseball (only Bryce Harper can give him a run for his money), and he’s a mere 19 years old.

Most people weren’t expecting to see Trout with the Angels until 2012, but it’s tough to argue that he doesn’t belong in the majors right now. From all reports, his tools are out of this world, and he’s given the Texas League (Double-A) a thrashing this season to the tune of 9 homeruns, 28 stolen bases, and a .429 wOBA.

That doesn’t quite do Trout justice, though. If you need a bit more perspective on his awesomeness, here are some #TroutFacts:

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