[Image by Justin Bopp]

After one of the lamest comeback attempts in recent memory (Manny Ramirez probably takes that trophy home), Jason Kendall has retired. While Kendall’s last few seasons were pretty miserable performances (although that did not stop the Royals and Brewers from marching him out there as much as they possibly could — indeed, Kendall insisted on it), he was quite good for a long time before bottoming out. Kendall is no Hall of Famer, but his career holds up pretty well against some of his more celebrated contemporaries. He had some bad times at the end, a testimony to the elusive-but-ever-present charms of “veteran catcher.” However, without delving into the salacious details of his personal life or discussing his tremendous way of handling tough questions from the press, it is worth recalling how much Kendall managed to accomplish in his distinguished career.

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And SHAZAM! Now’s there’s parity in the MLB!

The MLB is a funny organization. One would think that in a sport producing most of the world’s largest guaranteed contracts, the production being paid for on the free agent market would guarantee on-field success. But that is not the case. Large payrolls have been large busts, such is life.

We know that a larger payroll leads to more wins, if not necessarily a playoff appearance, but also that teams need a strong input from their farm system, too. Teams have to strike a balance with these two inputs. For some teams — like the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics — the vast majority of their talent input must come from the draft. They can afford only the January Free Agents — the unwanted scraps of the big market teams. Because of a matter of geography and history, newer teams in smaller markets like the Diamondbacks, Marlins and Rays will probably never again draw the kind of income the Mets and Yankees do.

So, an outsider might look at Wednesday’s Competitive Balance Lottery (CBL) and say, “Hey, well it’s good the MLB is trying to even things out a little bit, help out the little man.” But in truth, the CBL is a weak offering to a ever-crippled lower class. And if the MLB wants to keep small-market teams like the Rays capable of winning, they must undo their recent changes.
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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated posted the results (in slide-show form, yay!) of recent survey they took asking 228 MLB players to name the most underrated position player in the game. These sorts of things usually generate “interesting” results, and this case was no exception. This is supposed to be a fun exercise, so it would be unfair to complain about the “unscientific” nature of the poll: why 228 players? How were they distributed across the teams? Were they position players themselves or a mix? How many votes did each player get? The notions of “underrated” and is itself vague (underrated by the media? The fans? Statistics?), so the respondents may have been thinking of different things when answering. Wouldn’t a truly underrated player fail to show up on a list of “top underrated players” at all?

Such complaints sort of miss the point. I assume this was simply meant to be a fun way to generate discussion. I personally would have liked to have seen one or two comments from respondents about each player to get a sense of what the respondents were thinking about when they answered. In any case, the list has some results that are pretty hilarious, as one might expect. One way of responding would be to come up with a different list. Grant Brisbee wrote up an excellent list of his own. Another would be to simply go through SI’s list and comment on it.

This post takes the second path, but the truth is, it is not quite the “fisking” one might expect. Yes, some choices are downright hilarious. However, given the qualifications above, I thought the responding players did okay. It is not the list I would have made, but they made some decent choices. Or maybe the list is like the movie Juno: the beginning is so horribly annoying that the rest seems better than it actually is.

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Yesterday we talked about the questions facing the National League contenders. Today, we turn our attention to the American League. Every team but the Twins, Royals and Mariners are within four-two-and-a-half games of a spot in the postseason, if you count the wild card play-in game part of the postseason. That leaves us with eleven teams still playing for something in 2012. Or does it?

In the American League East, the Yankees have a comfortable seven-game lead, and seem poised to pull away with the division title. Yes, with injuries to CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte, the Yankees could improve by adding a dependable starting pitcher, but so far they haven’t been linked with the starters most likely to hit the trade market. Overall, though, the Yankees are in the best shape of any team heading into the second half.

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Fare thee well, father, mother. I’m off
to de-luck the f*** out of this s***.

With this All-Star break forcing to watch so little baseball, we now have a moment to drink up the frothy milkshake of statistics from the first half. So, you and I, we shall dissect the stats and find out who has been lucky, unlucky and a little of both.

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Each year, about 15 minutes after the excitement of seeing who was named to the All-Star Game has worn off, the next step we take is to start carping about who didn’t make it. It’s a summer rite of passage as old as the game itself. Here at FanGraphs, we’re no different, so let’s take a look at the snubbiest snubs that were snubbed.

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The minor leagues are a vast landscape of prospects, fillers and veterans. Each year, players from all three of those category impact the major leagues — sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But before they make their September callups or injury replacements, let us familiarize ourselves with some of the standouts.

International League (AAA)
IL Leaderboards

Brad Eldred (.374 OBP, .695 SLG, .465 wOBA, 197 wRC+)

The 31-year-old Eldred was slugging away in the Tigers minor league system (since released and playing in Japan). Like Dan Johnson (173 wRC+) with the White Sox, Eldred would have required multiple injuries before getting consideration at first base. The Tigers have both Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder, while the Sox have a trio in Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko and now Kevin Youkilis. That cavalcade of injuries never came — nor an age of enlightenment in which Delmon Young is no longer a DH in Detroit — Eldred never got a steady shot with the Tigers.

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Yoenis Cespedes is on his rehab assignment and nearing a return this weekend. When he returns, something will be different about him. Beyond the fact that he might play left field — he’s played there at least once while in the minor leagues — the careful observer might notice something different about his swing. The Athletics have asked him to stop holding the knob of the bat. From Susan Slusser:

There is thought that holding the knob in the palm might have contributed to the strained hand muscle that put him on the DL this month.

Sluggers have used this grip since the days of Babe Ruth if you listen to the stories. Has the practice been contributing to injury all this time?

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During the 2011 postseason, I wrote about Brandon Inge and the unusual circumstances of his season with the Detroit Tigers. In post entitled Brandon Inge’s Rare Feat, I explained that:

Based on my research, Inge appears to be the only player in the past 10 years with more than five years of major-league service who was designated for assignment, then was recalled by the major-league team that sent him down and then went on to play a significant role [for that team] in the postseason.

The Tigers had designated Inge for assignment last July after he batted .144/.202/.196 in 239 plate appearances. He reported to the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate in Toledo, and hit his way back to Detroit in August. Upon his return, he batted .262/.315/.436 in 54 plate appearances and earned a spot on the Tigers’ postseason roster. He contributed a .429/.500/.571 line to the Tigers’ winning effort over the Yankees in the League Division Series and a .267/.389/.467 line in the Tigers’ loss to the Rangers in League Championship Series.

Heading into the 2012 season, Inge expected to play third base for the Tigers in the final year of his 2-year/$11 million contract. But Victor Martinez blew out his knee and was lost for the season, leading the the Tigers to sign Prince Fielder and move Miguel Cabrera to third base. The Tigers moved Inge to second base, where he split time with Ryan Raburn and Ramon Santiago. In twenty plate appearances, Inge hit .100/.100/.300. The Tigers released him on April 26.

Four days later, the Oakland A’s — desperate for just a replacement-level third baseman — signed Inge. In eleven games, Inge is producing for Oakland like he did for Detroit last postseason. In 50 plate appearances, Inge is hitting .227/.300/.545 with five walks, two doubles and four home runs. Two of Inge’s   homers have been grand slams, including this walk-off slam against the Toronto Blue Jays last week:

He’s also made some nifty defensive plays for the Green-and-Gold, including this catch of Omar Vizquel’s bunt attempt in the same game as the walk-off grannie.

Whether Inge will continue to produce for the A’s remains to be seen. Fifty plate appearances is a tiny sample size and runs counter to Inge’s career numbers: .234/.304/.389, .301 wOBA and 81 RC+.

Even so, Inge has already accomplished something few other major leaguers have: getting released from one team mid-season, signing with a new team that season, and making an immediate impact for the new team.

To be sure, there are dozens of players who’ve redeemed their careers in the the seasons following an outright release. Among pitchers who’ve recently turned their careers around after getting released there’s Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Vogelsong, Kevin Millwood, Clay Hensley, and Tim Byrdak. Among  position players, there’s Casey Kotchman, Melky Cabrera, and Jeff Francoeur.

But few players turn their season around with a new team following a release. Bobby Abreu’s been given a second chance with the Dodgers this season, after the Angels released him on April 26. After batting .208/.259/.303 in 27 plate appearances with Anaheim, Abreu’s posted a .296/.345/.444 line in 29 plate appearances for the boys in blue. Livan Hernandez has been useful out of the bullpen for the Braves this season, after getting released by the Astros at the end of spring training. In 22 1/3 innings, Hernandez has a 2.17 K/BB ratio and is stranding 81 percent of the runners on base.

Last season, the Rays released Cory Wade from their Triple-A affiliate in June only to see him become a steady reliever out of the Yankees bullpen.  The Rangers faced Arthur Rhodes in the World Series after they released him  August and he signed on with the Cardinals.

Pat Burrell turned his career around with the Giants in 2010, after the Rays released him in the second year of a 2-year/$16 million contract. At the time he left Tampa, Burrell was batting .202/.292/.333 with two home runs in 96 plate appearances. In San Francisco, Burrell batted .266/.364/.539 with eighteen home runs in 341 plate appearances and was a key component of the Giants’ first World Series Championship since the team moved to San Francisco in 1958.

Unlike Burrell and Abreu, there’s nothing in Inge’s career numbers to suggest he can sustain this offensive production for the A’s over the rest of the season. But Inge has proved us wrong before. And he may just do it again.

Even before Billy Beane and Scott Hatteberg and Moneyball, the Oakland A’s were a team that took a lot of walks. Over the 50 years of the Expansion Era (1961-2011), the A’s ended the season with a walk rate below the league average only eight times. Of those eight seasons, in only one did the A’s have a walk rate more than one percentage point lower than the league average. In 1978, the league average walk rate was 8.5 percent and the A’s walk rate was 7.3 percent.

On the flip side, Oakland has three of  the top fifteen walk-rate seasons in the last fifty years. The 1999 A’s share the record with the 2000 Mariners for highest team walk rate in the Expansion Era at 12 percent.  The 2000 A’s came in at 11.7 percent and the 1992 A’s at 11.3 percent. The league average in those seasons was 8.5 percent (1992), 9.5 percent (1999) and 9.6 percent (2000).

After Monday’s action, the A’s team walk rate is 7.9 percent, below the league average of 8.3 percent. That fact isn’t particularly interesting. But the way the A’s get to their 7.9 percent team walk rate is.

The A’s have three players in the top thirty in walk rate for batters with more than 50 plate appearances so far this season. Seth Smith leads the team with a 17.6 percent walk rate (15 in 67 plate appearances), followed by Jonny Gomes at 14.5 percent (9 in 51 plate appearances) and Daric Barton at 13.4 percent (9 in 57 plate appearances). The Indians also have three players in the top 30 (Carlos Santana, Travis Hafner and Shelley Duncan). No team has more than three players in the top 30. Ten teams have no players in the top 30.

The player with the lowest current walk rate in the majors for hitters with more than 50 plate appearances also plays for the A’s. Catcher Kurt Suzuki has one walk in 98 plate appearances, giving him a walk rate of 1 percent. Teammates Josh Reddick and Cliff Pennington also make the top 50 in lowest current walk rate. Reddick is at 4.1 percent (five walks in 121 plate appearances) and Pennington is at 4.4 (5 walks in 114 plate appearances).

If Smith, Gomes and Barton continue on their path and Suzuki, Reddick and Pennington continue on theirs, the A’s could match some interesting records for teams in the Expansion Era.

Since 1961 (and not counting the strike years of 1981 and 1994), only one team has had three players draw 20 walks or less in a season, among players qualifying for the batting title. On the 2007 Seattle Mariners, Jose Lopez drew only twenty walks, while Yuniesky Betancourt and Kenji Johjima drew fifteen each.

Only eight other teams over the last fifty years had two players end the season with twenty or fewer walks among players qualifying for the batting title (again, not counting the strike years).

The 1977 Cardinals were one of those teams. Ken Reitz drew nineteen walks that season. Garry Templeton drew only fifteen. But that Cardinals team also boasted two players who ended the season with more than 75 walks. Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons each drew 79 walks. The 1977 Cardinals are the only team in the Expansion Era to have two players with twenty or fewer walks and two players with 75 or more walks in the same season.

Will the A’s match the 2007 Mariners for most qualifying players with twenty or fewer walks in a season? Will they match the 1977 Cardinals with two qualifying players with twenty walks or fewer and two players with 75 walks or more in the same season? Will they match both Expansion Era records?

We’ll have to watch and be patient. As patient as Seth Smith, Jonny Gomes and Daric Barton.