Monday night and Tuesday morning, the A’s and Angels played a game for the ages, a 19-inning affair that saw the hosts rally in the ninth and the 15th before walking off in the game’s seventh hour. The game featured 18 runs and nearly 600 pitches, and in the end, the A’s improved to 15-12, while the Angels fell to something much worse than that. Generally, such games are immediately thought of as turning points, and generally, such games don’t go on to work that way. But this was a game that few will forget, regardless, simply because the duration grew to be so extreme.

FanGraphs isn’t in the business of issuing game recaps, particularly several hours after the fact. But still, some attention to the game should be paid, and I’m electing to focus on a particular intentional ball. With two out in the top of the 11th inning, Grant Balfour intentionally walked Albert Pujols. We consider the 3-and-0 pitch.

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Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

This week has been full of little developments in stories I’ve written. Rather than wait until they blossom into big developments — if that ever happens — I’ll run them down here.

StubHub loses fight in California Legislature

On Tuesday,  I wrote about a bill pending in the California State Assembly that would prohibit ticket sellers from placing restrictions on ticket re-sales, like what the Los Angeles Angels have done this season. The Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media had a hearing on the bill Tuesday morning and were none too pleased with its provisions. The Committee gutted the bill, and left in only the provision to outlaw computerized ticket-buying software that brokers often use to scoop up tickets to high-demand events. The Committee is stacked with members from southern California, where the entertainment industry holds tremendous sway, so the bill’s demise isn’t surprising.

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The ranking might change day-by-day, Jarrod Parker said, but he agreed: “Overall I would say the fastball and changeup are my two better pitches.” And that changeup is special — he threw it more than any secondary pitch last year, it was his best-rated pitch, and a big part of why he had the 21st-best swinging strike rate among qualified starters. It wasn’t always that way, though. Coming out of high school, Parker was a fastball/curve guy. So what happened?

“I got hurt and didn’t want to throw as many breaking pitches, so I started working on a changeup.”

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Between August 14 and August 17 in 2011, Giancarlo Stanton hit home runs in four consecutive games. One of baseball’s premier true power hitters, Stanton has never put together a longer streak, although in fairness his career is still just beginning. Between September 23 and September 27 in 2011, Adrian Beltre hit home runs in four consecutive games. Beltre is undeniably strong, but he’s never put together a longer streak. Troy Tulowitzki has topped out at four games. Matt Holliday has topped out at four games. Jose Bautista has topped out at four games. Ryan Howard has topped out at four games. Coco Crisp has topped out at four games, but the difference is that his streak is still active.

Five days ago, Crisp went yard off Brad Peacock. Four days ago, he went yard off Bud Norris. Three days ago, he went yard off Lucas Harrell. Yesterday, he went yard off C.J. Wilson. Crisp also has five doubles to his name in the early going, and it all adds up to a .343 average, a .829 slugging percentage, and a .486 ISO. That ISO presently ranks fifth in the league, between Mark Reynolds and Colby Rasmus. Justin Upton and Chris Davis, for the sake of your own curiosity, lead the way.

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One of the great subplots of every Major League season is the rookies that come up and show a glimpse of baseball’s future. It’s what had us enthralled by Jackie Bradley Jr. all spring, what has us dutifully analyzing Julio Teheran appearances, and what has us so eagerly waiting for Jurickson Profar and Wil Myers. This season, we will track rookies, both the prospects and suspects, as they make adjustments to playing in the bigs. This bi-weekly list will highlight rookies who have accomplished the most in 2013, regardless of future projection (though that will always be discussed). These are the players whose week one performances deserve recognition.

1. Dan Straily, RH SP, Athletics

If we’ve learned anything from Yu Darvish this season, it’s that success pitching against the Astros is not exactly analogous to pitching against baseball’s other 29 teams. The Athletics know this, why is probably why just one day after an 11 strikeout, 0 walk performance (a start worth an unofficial 0.6 WAR by our metrics), the A’s were comfortable sending Straily back to Triple-A. As sixth starters go, Straily is an excellent one, with a fastball at 90-93 mph, 83-86 mph slider, and 82-85 mph change (let’s agree to ignore that low 70s curveball, please). He showed great command against the Astros, the best he’s had in all 8 starts at the Major League level.

But, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in Straily’s success. The Astros, as we’re finding out, are a historically swing-and-miss team. All 11 of Straily’s strikeouts were of the swinging variety, and amazingly, nine were against left-handed hitters. Brett Wallace and Rick Ankiel struck out a combined 6 times, all on Straily fastballs. While Baseball America’s scouting report of him, as the A’s #6 prospect, reads “[His] slider and change up are his two best offerings and account for the bulk of his strikeouts,” that wasn’t true against Houston. Eight of the 11 strikeouts were from the fastball, and a remarkable number of them looked like this to Jason Castro — right down the heart of the plate. If you want to see why we simply can’t get too excited about Straily yet, consider the caliber of competition:

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Sean Doolittle is a lefty and throws one pitch 87% of the time. Even without knowing his back story — he was a first base prospect that couldn’t stay healthy on the field, and pitching was his chance to “activate his insurance plan” as he put it — you’d be forgiven for throwing the dreaded “LOOGY” moniker on him. First basemen aren’t generally known for their arms, he can’t have a great breaking ball with so little experience pitching, and he’s a lefty with one pitch. He must be there to get lefties out.

But no, Doolittle is not a LOOGY, and he talked to me a little about how he makes that one pitch work for him.

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When FanGraphs was in Arizona earlier this spring, our merry band of nerds made our way to a Jarrod Parker vs Chris Sale afternoon tilt. The result on that 16th of March — an 11-5 win for the White Sox and bad performances from the two starting pitchers — was mostly unimportant to everyone in involved. But a few innings sitting behind the plate did provide some insights, including some reasons why those results were unimportant.

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Here on the site, we’re currently doing a series called the Positional Power Rankings, going through each team’s strengths and weaknesses at each spot on the field. Well, this is also a positional power ranking of sorts. The position is each team’s financial health. The ranking? More like placing the teams in tiers: the teams most constrained by their finances; the teams in the middle; and the most financially-successful teams.

We can’t get to the same level of precision on team finances because we have to rely on publicly-available information that we haven’t generated, and that publicly-available information lacks the kind of details we’d need to really flesh out the small differences between franchises in the same tiers. However, we do have enough information to paint with broad strokes, so as part of our attempt to give an overview of where each team stands as 2013 begins, we’ll look at their access to monetary resources for the upcoming season.

Today we begin our look at the financial health of all thirty major-league teams, starting with the bottom ten. Tomorrow we will look at the middle ten and on Friday the top ten. We will focus on ticket-generated revenue (attendance), local TV revenue, and player payroll. That leaves some holes, to be sure, particularly where team owners are carrying significant debt. Some of that information is publicly-available, but not all, and even the publicly-available information may not accurate or verifiable. This isn’t precise, but hopefully, it’s still informative.

With those caveats, let’s begin.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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Part four. Live free or veto hard. You can find parts one, two and three here, here and here.

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