Some time ago, the Angels attempted to trade Dan Haren to the Cubs in exchange for Carlos Marmol. The Angels had concerns about Haren, and wanted to turn him into something useful. The Cubs had concerns about Marmol, and wanted to turn him into something useful. On paper, the deal looked lopsided in the Cubs’ favor, and so one had to consider that maybe the Angels knew something scary about Haren’s medicals. Sure enough, the deal fell through, and now Haren is a free agent looking for a short-term contract. No one’s going to be ballsy enough to give him a long-term contract.

Friday, the Angels completed sort of the opposite of that Haren/Marmol trade. Instead of the Angels dealing a troubled starter to get a troubled reliever, they’ve dealt the somewhat troubled Jordan Walden to the Braves in exchange for the troubled Tommy Hanson. Unlike with Haren, we don’t have to speculate that something might be up with Hanson, physically — we know that his shoulder has been groaning. The Angels, without question, know that they’re taking a chance, here. They determined, at the cost of Jordan Walden, the chance is worth taking.

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For several months, now, the Atlanta Braves have looked like a fitting future home for B.J. Upton. Once Upton officially became a free agent, the Braves made no secret of their interest, and in fact nearly two weeks ago it was suggested to me that I begin writing about Upton signing with Atlanta. That turned out to be not so much a false alarm as a hasty one — Upton didn’t sign then, and other teams sniffed around, but Upton has signed now, with the Braves for five years and just over $75 million. The predictable match is indeed the match that we observe, as Upton has landed his big-money contract, and as the Braves have landed their top offseason priority.

With the Braves, Upton basically replaces Michael Bourn in center field. The Braves aren’t done, as they still have a hole on one side of Upton (assuming Martin Prado shifts to third), but that’ll be addressed in time, and that also isn’t what’s relevant today. B.J. Upton is 28 years old, with a new employer that just made a substantial long-term commitment, and he should be discussed.

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Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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Just a couple years ago, it was Jason Heyward and Giancarlo Stanton that were tearing up baseball, looking like an unprecedented pair of rookie talents ready to continue on into the stratosphere together. Now, just two years later, we’ve got Mike Trout and Bryce Harper one-upping them. That’s just how it goes.

With an injury (and a team deflation) taking some of the wind out of Stanton’s sails, and Buster Posey blowing up the National League Most Valuable Player debate, the new toys got a lot more attention than the old new ones. Perhaps rightfully so. But a lot of the value Heyward accumulated last season he did in a fashion that might seem… Troutian.

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Technically, or literally, the year’s longest plate appearance was probably this one, in which a visiting Miguel Cabrera insisted upon the re-drawing of the batter’s boxes. The discussions and subsequent work by the groundskeepers caused something like a nine-minute delay before Cabrera flew out on the very next pitch. So that’s one way of looking at this, but that’s probably the most annoying way of looking at this. Let’s look at this in a more standard way.

On May 12, 2004, Alex Cora batted against Matt Clement in the bottom of the seventh in Los Angeles. The first pitch was a ball, the second pitch was a strike, the third pitch was a ball, and the fourth pitch was a strike. The next 14 pitches were also all strikes, and the 18-pitch at-bat culminated in an Alex Cora home run. Even though video highlights are no longer widely available — I remember first seeing this on RealPlayer — this at-bat has stuck with me ever since. Sometimes I forget the number of pitches, but I always remember Alex Cora, Matt Clement, a long at-bat, and a home run.

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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The big news associated with the MVP award announced today will be the winners, especially this year with the Trout vs. Cabrera debate. Besides the winners, the below average players who receive votes get a bit of press. Today, I will look at another group of hitters, those who had a good season, but may not get a single MVP vote.

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A couple of years ago, I wondered why David Ross was taking such small contracts to back up Brian McCann in Atlanta when he seemed to be good enough to start elsewhere. Whether it was a lack of interest from other teams or Ross’ desire to stay in Atlanta, it puzzled me. When he was eligible for free agency again this season, I figured he would probably just stay in in Atlanta as he had before, since he appeared disinclined to play hardball with his employers at contract time.

However things turned out behind closed doors in the meetings that did or did not happen, Ross surprised many people by reportedly signing a two-year, $6.2 million contract with the Red Sox this weekend. Why the Braves let him go and the Red Sox are both a bit puzzling, but, as we will see, Ross, the seemingly eternal backup, compares favorably to a good number of starting catchers in the league.

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With very rare exception, walks are bad, for the pitcher and for the pitcher’s team. Sometimes a pitcher will walk an opposing hitter on purpose, but sometimes that’s not even the right thing to do. Walks are just bad, as a general principle. But, of course, some walks are worse than others. There’s an entire spectrum, from okay walks to awful walks, from forgivable walks to unforgivable walks. It’s usually worse to walk a guy on four pitches, unintentionally. It’s usually worse to walk a guy with the bases loaded. It’s usually worse to walk an opposing pitcher, since pitchers are like the worst hitters ever. Now combine all three of those things.

It seems to me — and, upon checking, it seems to Dave Cameron — that the most unforgivable walk would be a four-pitch walk of the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded. Obviously, that’s something that wouldn’t happen very often, because you’re selecting for a few unlikely scenarios. But this past season, that happened two times. Two times, a pitcher was walked on four pitches to bring home a run. Once it even happened in a one-run game. Both times it happened, it happened in Arizona, in the Diamondbacks’ favor. We review, in no order. An order wouldn’t even really make sense. We’re reviewing two events. We have a list of two.

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Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

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