A few weeks ago, I advocated for a wild card play-in game strategy that involved beginning the game with a reliever and relying heavily on a team’s bullpen to get them through. In that scenario, we used the Atlanta Braves as the example of how it could work. Well, we’re not yet to the wild card play-in game, but with Texas and Oakland going head to head for the AL West title in a few hours, we’re presented with another situation where skipping the starter makes a lot of sense – specifically, the Oakland A’s should try to maximize their chances of winning Game 162, and they can do so by diminishing A.J. Griffin’s role in today’s game.

Make no mistake, Griffin has pitched really well for the A’s since they called him up from Sacramento in late June. While his ERA is heavily dependent on an unsustainably low BABIP, his FIP and xFIP are both above average as well, as his 3.76 K/BB ratio is the kind of thing that usually leads to success. This isn’t a knock on A.J. Griffin – the A’s can simply maximize their chances of winning by minimizing the amount of batters he faces.

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Monday night, the Athletics played a critical game against the Rangers, which is not what this is about. The starter and the winning pitcher for the Athletics was Jarrod Parker, which is more what this is about. Parker allowed three runs in six innings, with two walks and six whiffs. One notes that, through his first 13 starts of the season, Parker had 39 walks and 61 strikeouts. One notes that, over his final 16 starts of the season, Parker had 24 walks and 79 strikeouts. And a higher ERA. But anyway.

Early on in the Oakland/Texas action, I got people on Twitter asking me to whip up a .gif. It seemed Jarrod Parker had thrown a particularly unhittable pitch to Josh Hamilton to close out the top of the first inning, and people wanted to be able to watch that pitch over and over in a low-quality repeating image. I didn’t immediately make a .gif, because I was otherwise occupied, but I made the .gif just a little while ago. And then I .giffed the last pitch Parker threw to Hamilton in the top of the third inning, too. They are presented below for your viewing pleasure, or for your viewing torture, if you are Josh Hamilton.

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While many baseball players are not able to live up to the expectations created before they arrive in the big leagues, Yoenis Cespedes has lived up to and probably has exceeded the expectations created around him. When he first started seeing major league pitching in spring training, some baseball experts expected that he may have problems with plate discipline. Cespedes has answered the critics by making more contact with non-fastballs.

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The other day, a clerical error on Major League Baseball’s part gave Athletics pitcher Travis Blackley another chance to be a freshman. As a result, the A’s — who had already received more than 60 starts from rookie pitchers — moved even further up the leaderboard of games started by rookie pitchers. But while many rookie-laden pitching rotations stumble, Oakland has gotten some of its finest efforts this season from its group of youngsters.

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Things are setting up for an exciting final week in the American League Wild Card race. With the Orioles and Athletics unable to break away from the Angels and Rays — just two and three games behind Oakland respectively, and another half game behind Baltimore — it could be a wild seven days for Team Entropy. MLB will need to get its contingency plans in place, as there are a number of scenarios that lead to three or even four-team ties:

The cases in black preclude involvement in any tie. Every other result for each team leads to at least the possibility of involvement in a three or even four team tie after 162 games. Then, of course, the question becomes just how likely each possibility is.

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“Bats, they are sick. I cannot hit curveball. Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come, take fear from bats. I offer him cigar, rum. He will come.” — Pedro Cerrano

The archetype of power hitters feasting on fastballs and whiffing on offspeed pitches has long floated within baseball circles. The quotation featured above from the movie Major League highlights how pervasive the idea that “power hitters are fastball hitters” has become in baseball.

Alfonso Soriano has long found success by smashing fastballs, and he now receives a heavy diet of sliders and curveballs to counter that strength. Adam Dunn, Mark Reynolds, and Garrett Jones also serve as fruitful examples of sluggers who have experienced the vast majority of their success against fastballs.

The stereotype often proves true, so you’ll have to excuse me for jumping to conclusions when assuming that Oakland Athetics’ outfielder Josh Reddick would fall into that same broad category. After all, his 29 home runs, .216 ISO, and .242 batting average all suggest on the surface that he’s merely another power-hitting, fastball-feasting slugger who needs to adjust to big league breaking pitches to become more consistent at the plate.

That’s not just a misleading statement, though. It’s blatantly wrong. In fact, amongst qualified batters this season, Josh Reddick has the worst batting average against fastballs in all of baseball, and it’s not particularly close.
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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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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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Wednesday, we all thought at the time, was the worst day. Wednesday, during a start against the Angels, Brandon McCarthy was hit in the head by a line-drive comebacker. Though McCarthy managed to turn his head away before impact, all that did was spare his face; a line drive still struck him in the skull, and McCarthy went down to the ground, hitting his head. It’s just a nightmarish sight every time that this happens, and McCarthy, of course, was removed from the game. But he walked off under his own power, and immediate reports were positive. It sounded like McCarthy had avoided serious injury.

Thursday was the actual worst day, for the public. Thursday, we all found out that, Wednesday night, McCarthy had undergone two hours of brain surgery. The terms were chilling: epidural hemorrhage, skull fracture, brain contusion. Really, “brain surgery” was sufficient. Doctors needed to go through McCarthy’s skull to relieve pressure on his brain, pressure that could’ve killed him if left untreated long enough. Wednesday brought the incident, but Thursday brought the grisly details.

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The Oakland A’s want to move to San Jose, approximately 45 miles south of Oakland and 50 miles southeast of San Francisco. The Giants oppose the move on the ground that the A’s granted the Giants the “territorial rights” to San Jose and the rest of Santa Clara County back in the 1990s when the Giants were trying to build a ballpark in Santa Clara.

Earlier this year, I explained the history of the Giants/A’s territorial-rights dispute over at Baseball Nation.

Territorial rights describes the way Major League Baseball divides the major metropolitan areas of the United States for its 30 franchises. (Well, 29 franchises in the U.S., plus one in Toronto, Canada). According to research done by baseball researcher and writer Doug Pappas in 2002, Major League Baseball amended its rules between 1990 and 1994 to expand the definition of territorial rights to include not just each team’s home city, but also the surrounding counties.

All of the two-team territories but one share the same counties: the Yankees and Mets; the White Sox and Cubs; and the Dodgers and Angels. Only the Giants and A’s split the counties surrounding their home cities. The A’s territory includes Alameda and Contra Costa counties; the Giants’ territory includes San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey and Marin counties, “plus Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team.” San Jose is in Santa Clara county. To get your bearings, look at this map of California counties.

—snip—

[T]he Giants never built a stadium in Santa Clara county, because several voter initiatives to fund such a stadium failed. Instead, [owner Bob] Lurie sold the Giants to a Peter Magowan-led group, who in turn privately financed what is now called AT&T Park, in downtown San Francisco. Nevertheless, the MLB rule granting the Giants “Santa Clara County with respect to another major league team” was never amended.

Under MLB rules, a team can move into the territory of another team upon the vote of three-fourths of the owners, the two ballparks are at least five miles apart; the move results in no more than two teams in a single territory; and the team moving compensates the team already in the territory.

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