We’ve reached Threat Level Midnight. With last night’s victory over the Yankees, the Orioles are now tied with New York American League East lead. Whatever one makes of the Orioles’ chances, this is surprising for pretty much anyone who made a serious attempt at being objective prior to the season. When is the last time a team coming off of a sub-70-win season that got their old GM fired could turn around and parley (among other things) a couple of good pitchers, a breakout performance from an young outfielder, some “luck” with respect to their run differential, and Joe Saunders into a (potential) divisional championship?

Actually, as you may have guessed already, something very similar happened last year in Arizona.

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If you knew exactly what pitch was coming, it would probably be easier to hit. Somehow, Wade Miley is an exception.

Miley’s season has been quite a pleasant surprise for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He’s amassed 14 wins and a shiny 2.80 ERA, corroborated by a 3.09 FIP. He’s given up fewer hits than innings pitched and he’s been almost as stingy as Cliff Lee with his walks. He’s probably the leading candidate for NL Rookie of the Year right now, or at least one of the co-favorites along with Todd Frazier.

And yet, Miley is getting it done by throwing almost 75% fastballs. If they were really special fastballs, that’s one thing – but the league average fastball velocity is 91.1 mph and Miley’s is, yep, 91.1 mph. So how is he finding success throwing average fastballs perpetually in the strike zone?

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Consider for a moment that the top three teams in the American League wild card standings right now are the Rays, Orioles, and Athletics. Now consider in the following moment that the three teams right behind them are the Tigers, Angels, and Red Sox. This is not new information, for any of us, but it seems like the kind of thing we might not be appreciating for everything it’s worth. Regardless of how things turn out, this is the way things are toward the end of August. Baseball is amazing.

Now then, because it’s August, trades can still be made that affect regular-season and postseason rosters, and because the wild card race is so tight, teams are looking to make even slight improvements. On Monday night, as announced during their own game, the A’s made what they feel like is an improvement, acquiring Stephen Drew from the Diamondbacks in exchange for minor leaguer Sean Jamieson. Nothing against Sean Jamieson, but this is the last time he’ll be mentioned in this article. For the Diamondbacks, this was not about the talent return; it was about saving money. For the A’s, it was about getting a little better where getting a little better might make all the difference.

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Paul Goldschmidt had some pretty robust projections entering the year — Steamer projected him to have the seventh-highest wOBA among first basemen, for instance — considering that he had just 177 major league plate appearances under his belt. And despite a slow start, the 24-year-old slugger is living up to those projections and then some. If he keeps producing for the final six weeks in the same fashion, he will need to be considered one of the best first basemen in the game.

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Aaron Hill hit 62 home runs between the 2009 and 2010 seasons. It took him just two years to over triple the home run output of more than 1800 prior plate appearances.

Hill is just one beneficiary of Rogers Centre’s kind left field, a list that now includes Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and apparently Jeff Mathis. The main difference between pre-2009 Hill and post-2009 Hill was a change in fly ball rates — an increase of about seven percentage points. By lofting the ball and utilizing that left field, Hill turned from an unremarkable contact-hitting second basemen into an elite power force at the position — for reference, Robinson Cano has 61 home runs over the past two calendar years (covering 320 games).

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The first time the D-backs lost Daniel Hudson to injury, it seemed like it would be a big blow to their playoff hopes, but Wade Miley stepped in and opened people’s eyes. When he went down the second time, it seemed like it would really put Arizona in a bind, as while Miley was by then a rotation fixture, Joe Saunders was out of action as well. Neither Josh Collmenter not touted prospect Trevor Bauer were able to get the job done, but the void has been filled quite amply as of late by left-hander Patrick Corbin.

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Justin Upton is still a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. During the off-season, there was no reason to think that the 24-year-old outfielder would be a potential trade candidate. Upton was coming off a phenomenal season, in which he hit .289/.369/.529, and finished fourth in the NL MVP voting. But things have changed in just a few months. While there seems to be some internal reasons for the team wanting to trade their star, Upton’s performance this season hasn’t helped matters. Upton has slumped to just .269/.358/.396. If Upton wants to dispel those rumors, he’s going to need to start producing like everyone expects. In order to do that, he’s going to have to start putting more balls in the air.

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I’ve written quite a bit this year on trends in pitcher aging, specifically velocity loss and gain. In the last iteration I focused on the odds of pitchers gaining velocity back after a season where their fastball dropped by at least 1 mph.

In that piece I listed a few pitchers to keep your eye on given that their velocity was down from 2011. In June, I wrote about CC Sabathia for ESPN and noted that the big lefty is likely beginning to “age”, as the odds are quite a bit higher that pitchers over the age of 30 do not gain their velocity back once they’ve lost it.

After thinking about it a while it occurred to me that there is of course the chance that these pitchers will gain their velocity back by the end of the year (as I noted in both pieces). We know that, generally speaking, pitchers gain velocity as the season goes on. Temperatures rise, and so too do fastball velocities. If this is the case I wondered at what point in the season we can say with greater certainty that a pitcher is throwing as hard as he is going to throw. Is there a particular month where a velocity decline is more likely to translate to or predict a full season velocity decline?
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Following Trevor Bauer’s Tuesday start against Cincinnati — three innings, five walks, one hit (a home run) and three earned runs — the Diamondbacks returned their top prospect to the minor leagues. In four starts with Arizona this season, Bauer lasted just 16.1 innings. He struck out 17 but walked 13 and allowed two home runs. The result is an ERA of 6.06, a FIP of 5.15, and a deserved demotion back to Triple-A Reno.

Mike Newman saw Bauer pitch in Double-A and noted his well-documented tendency to throw his fastball up in the strike zone. Newman talked to a scout who mentioned this might be a problem:

Bauer will have outings where he looks like a young Kerry Wood and strikes out 15, but he’ll also be chased in the second on occasion as well. He just kind of throws the fastball up there. It also makes me wonder how he’ll fare a second time through the league.

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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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