For fans of Carlos Marmol, it’s been a confusing few days, even beyond the usual confusion baseline. On Tuesday, Marmol was shipped from the Cubs to the Dodgers. On Wednesday, there were initial reports the Dodgers were cutting ties, but now it’s clear they simply intend to send him to the minor leagues for a little while, in theory to get him “straightened out.” Marmol, at some point, should pitch for the Dodgers, and they have more interest in him than they had in the now-departed Matt Guerrier. Cynics will note that the solution to an inconsistent Brandon League isn’t adding another one, but if the odds are X% that League turns it around, the odds are greater that one of League and Marmol turns it around.

Of course, Marmol was just designated for assignment. There’s not a lot there, beyond the strikeouts, the frequency of which is plummeting. Since 2011, among pitchers with at least 150 innings, Marmol ranks 14th-worst in OBP allowed, at .355. He’s hanging around the likes of Dallas Keuchel and Derek Lowe and Edinson Volquez, and though Marmol generally limits batting and slugging, his career isn’t on the way up. Marmol, probably, can be useful, but since 2011 he has a 105 FIP-. Guerrier has a 109 FIP-. Lots of relievers can be useful and Marmol isn’t going to pitch the Dodgers into first place.

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Quick, non-Astros’ fans: who has been Houston’s best position player so far this year? No looking. It is Jose Altuve, right? It has to be Altuve. He had such a good year last year. You think. And he’s small and fun! And, uh, also, you can’t think of the names of any other Astros position players. It’s got to be either Altuve or Morgan Ensberg. Oh, right.

Wrong. It is not Altuve, Ensberg, or even Craig Biggio. The Astros’ best position player so far this year has been their starting catcher, Jason Castro. Altuve has taken a step back from his 2012 performance (.290/.340/.399, 104 wRC+; .295/.328/.379, 92 wRC+ in 2013), but it is not all about Altuve’s problematic plate discipline and lack of power. After having his first seasons in the majors marred by poor hitting, fielding, and injuries, Castro is having a legitimately good year at the plate so far in 2013.

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You know who sucks at hitting? Pitchers. Boy, they just really suck. Pretty much always have, probably always will. Sure, every so often, a random pitcher will run into one and blast a dinger out of nowhere. But the same could be said of Munenori Kawasaki (now), and while pitchers aren’t automatic outs, they’re as close as you’re going to get to automatic outs in a regular major-league baseball game. Maybe this calls for a reminder that pitchers only suck relative to big-league position players. They’re better at hitting than us. But their numbers are always deplorable, and we don’t always have to be all fair-like. When a pitcher bats in a rally, you assume that the rally is over.

The designated hitter became a thing in 1973, following various proposals. From that point on, pitchers stopped hitting in the American League, while they continued hitting in the National League. In the previous sentence I have explained the most basic of rules. Thus, NL pitchers faced a lot of pitchers, while AL pitchers didn’t, even after the advent of interleague play. Unsurprisingly, then, since the DH came into existence, NL pitchers have posted a higher strikeout rate than AL pitchers. They’ve posted a higher strikeout rate every single season.

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Last Thursday, on his 37th birthday, Carlos Lee announced his retirement. Reportedly, Mariano Rivera and Bruce Chen’s fellow Panamanian wanted to keep playing if he could get a two-year deal, but no such contract was forthcoming. That was hardly surprising given Lee’s recent offensive production; .261/.321/.410 (99 wRC+) was just not all that exciting for a first baseman, especially one in his late 30s.

While in recent years Lee may have stood out as a prime example of a bad contract for a team that should have been more serious about rebuilding at the time, Lee was a good player. I doubt anyone is going to be nominating him for the Hall of Very Good, and his defense, especially in his later years, was, shall we say, not great. But Lee was a productive hitter for most of the 2000s. He was a three-time All-Star, and, as Aaron Gleeman pointed out, despite being an consistently good power hitter in his prime, he never struck out all that much, and in the first half of his career stole a surprising number of bases. Lee also stood out from among most of his contemporaries by having a legitimately cool nickname.

Lee’s career numbers are easy enough to look up, so as we often do, let’s remember him by taking a look at his three biggest hits according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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Part of this is the easy part. The Tigers are good and the Astros are bad, and that much you knew. That much you’ve known for weeks, or months, or years I guess depending on things. The Tigers lost on Wednesday, but they lost because of Jose Valverde and James Shields, and they still have a comfortable lead in the American League Central. I’m writing this before there’s a Wednesday Astros result, but by the time you read this they probably will have lost, because they’re bad. Maybe I’m going to come away looking like an idiot, but win or lose, they’ll be in the AL West basement. The Astros were supposed to be terrible, and they’re ahead only of the Marlins, who’ve recently received a healthy new Giancarlo Stanton.

Now, the Tigers don’t have the best record in baseball. That belongs to the Cardinals, and the Tigers are a good distance behind. They’re also behind a bunch of other teams, and tied with the Orioles. Meanwhile, while the Astros have been dreadful, they do have a better record than those Marlins, and they’re theoretically within striking distance of the Cubs. Neither of these teams looks to be extreme. But by one important metric, the Tigers are on pace to be one of the best teams in a very long time. And the Astros are threatening to be one of the worst.

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You’re going to see a lot of college seniors taken in the middle rounds of the draft today, as teams look to save bonus pool money in order to take a shot on an over-slot pick that they either drafted yesterday or might look to take at a certain spot today. College seniors often sign for a relative pittance since they don’t have any real alternatives other than to sign for what they’re offered. While college juniors can always threaten to go back to school, seniors don’t have a stick with which to negotiate, so their price falls accordingly.

That is the kind of leverage — the pressure created by having an alternative option — that most people are familiar with, at least in terms of how things work in MLB. The secondary path forces teams to negotiate a fair price, and players without a valid alternative sign for a deep discount. That theory holds in some cases, but Mark Appel is about to demonstrate that leverage can come in other forms as well.

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In the 1990s, the Yankees had a pretty fantastic offense. They won three World Series trophies, and would win a fourth to kick off the aught’s. Everyone remembers their great offense. But what might get lost in the weeds a little bit is just how fantastic the Astros’ offense was in the ‘90s, because they were pretty great too. They had the best offense in the National League for the decade, and they would really hit their stride in 1998, when they put up the best offensive team performance in the wild card era.

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The first round of the Major League draft is just a little over three weeks away, and the Houston Astros will select first for the second consecutive year. Right now, the consensus belief is that there are two college pitchers — Mark Appel of Stanford and Jonathan Gray of Oklahoma — who are a step ahead of the rest, though University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant is putting on quite the power display and could be an option if the Astros preferred to build around bats rather than arms. However, the decision for the Astros may not be made simply on talent alone.

Last year was the first draft under the new bonus structure, which assigns a fixed amount of dollars to each team based on where they pick in the draft, with some pretty severe penalties for exceeding those limits. Now, if a team is interested in paying over the slot value for a pick, they’ll have to borrow the money for that overpayment from another pick, making the draft as much a game of cost management as it is talent acquisition.

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Jed Lowrie has played for three organizations already, despite having accrued little more than two full seasons worth of Major League plate appearances. That might be because the oft-injured 29-year-old has never had so much as 400 plate appearances in a given season since his major league debut in 2008. Through it all, he’s been trying to shake off those injuries and prove himself as a young veteran in the league. Maybe we’re just getting to know the real Jed Lowrie now.

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The Astros are not a good baseball team. But, as Tyler Kepner detailed in the New York Times this weekend, they are a baseball team with a plan. Whether or not that will lead to wins this season is another matter, but the fact that they have a plan is shining through, even amidst the deluge of runs allowed. Read the rest of this entry »