We’ve already run through first basemen and designated hitters, corner outfielders, and middle infielders who could be available at the trading deadline. Today, we cover five relievers who could be switching teams over the next two months.

PLAYER: Heath Bell
TEAM: Padres
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Cardinals, Indians, Phillies
CONTRACT STATUS: $7.5 million, free agent after the season
PROJECTED WAR: 1.3

Bell is pretty clearly the best “proven closer” on the market, and he’s likely the best overall reliever as well. Even though his K/9 is down to 7.0 this year, his swinging strike rate of 9.1% indicates that it’ll increase a bit, even if it doesn’t get all the way back to his gaudy 11.1 rate from 2010. To compensate, Bell’s ground ball rate is up to 51% this year — an especially nice quality to keep were he to exit spacious PETCO Park.

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The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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James Loney is having a horrible start to the 2011 season. His wRC+ of 58 is by far the lowest of his career and is the seventh worst in the league. That kind of performance from first basemen is unacceptable. But the Los Angeles Dodgers have started him in every one of their 51 games this year (@truebluela notes that Loney has started in the past 120 Dodgers games). With Loney at first for the foreseeable future it is important to see what are the causes of his problems.

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If you want a quick glimpse of some players who probably shouldn’t qualify for the batting title, go to the leader boards, click on Advanced, and then click on wOBA. There you will see a list of players whose wOBAs range from pretty damn bad, Will Venable at .285, to downright putrid, Miguel Tejada at .224. Some of these players figure to rise from their unworthy starts and earn their spots in the lineup. Others will find spots on the bench, or, in some cases, the waiver wire. Such is life in baseball.

Despite their horrible overall production, some of these players have managed to get their scant few hits in a timely manner. A few of the bottom dwellers have racked up a decent number of runs and RBI in their travels. While it’s not at all indicative of their talent, it has helped their team in some small way. I’d like to highlight a couple of these instances today.

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“Hey, guys. Remember how I’m really good at baseball? Yeah, me too.”

This edition of One Night Only (from a super-extra-special guest host!) contains:

1. Expanded previews for two games: a matchup of aces in Boston, and a West Coast rivalry game featuring two solid young pitchers.

2. Additionally, find enclosed brief previews for three other, only slightly less titillating tilts: Atlanta at Arizona, Chicago (AL) at Cleveland, and Milwaukee at San Diego.

3. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

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Matt Kemp may have grabbed the early headlines for the Los Angeles Dodgers, but Andre Ethier is the talk of Hollywood right now. Propelled by a 24-game hitting streak, Ethier has been punishing baseballs the entire season. Ethier’s strong start continued Wednesday as he not only extended his hitting streak, but hit the eventual game winning home run in the 10th inning. As with most players on extended hitting streaks, Ethier has benefited from a great deal of luck this season. While that unfortunately makes Ethier a candidate for regression as the season progresses, there are a few interesting nuggets (copyright Peter King) in his stat line that indicate Ethier is completely locked in at the plate.
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A pitcher’s hitting ability often goes unremarked upon. For roughly half the league, that’s fine since pitchers don’t hit. In the National League they do however, and while nobody ever expects much out of them, pitchers do occupy a spot in the batting order and what they do with it is part of the overall package of value that they deliver to the team.

On its own, that’s never a surprising statement to make. What I think is surprising is the range in values of hitting value that pitchers display. Granted they are always over small seasonal samples so I am taking care not to mention skill or repeatability here. Nevertheless, pitcher’s plate appearances do matter and managing not to be a federally declared disaster at the plate can be a stealthy way for a pitcher to add a significant amount of value.

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In a couple of hours, for The Morning After, you’ll see the story of the Dodgers and Braves playing a fun, exciting, memorable game. It featured pitching dominance, comebacks, clutch two-out hits, and a walk-off. The game went 12 innings, but it could have gone longer. It probably should have gone longer, really. But Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez made a decision in the 12th that, I think, cost his team the game.

Criticizing the manager is as old as baseball itself, and most of the time it amounts to petty bickering. Armchair managing is easy, because the moves never blow up in our faces. But every once in a while there is a move so painfully wrong that a comment from the ivory tower is warranted. This is one of those instances. I simply cannot understand why Gonzalez would pitch to Matt Kemp in the 12th.

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Last night, the commissioner’s office released a statement noting that the league would “appoint a representative to oversee all aspects of the business and the day-to-day operations of the (Los Angeles Dodgers) Club.” Essentially, Bud Selig was seizing control of the Dodgers “because of my deep concerns regarding the finances and operations of the Dodgers and to protect the best interests of the Club.”

As Jonah wrote last night, the last time Major League Baseball owned a franchise, it was an utter disaster. The way the Expos were ran during the time that the league had stewardship over them was an embarrassment, and highlights the problems that can arise in this kind of natural conflict-of-interest situation. With the other owners incentivized to not lose games to a property they had an ownership stake in, the Expos were essentially turned into baseball’s version of the Washington Generals.

But I have to believe that Selig learned some lessons from just how poorly that situation was handled, and he knows that he can’t make those same mistakes again. Additionally, Los Angeles is not Montreal, and with all respect to Jonah’s memories, the Dodgers are not the Expos. This is a storied franchise in the largest media market on the west coast – the problem won’t be finding a new owner, but rather picking from among the horde of people who will be interested in purchasing the team.

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“Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.”

-ye olde Bill Shakespeare (Friar Laurence from Rome and Juliet)

After waiting many hard winter months without any baseball, it seems unfair to ask us sabermagicians to wait even longer to saberize our favorite teams and players. Unfortunately, that is what we must do. One of the core principles of sabermetric thought is the value of sample size.

We cannot do as our detractors think we do: We cannot resort to looking for greater truths from lesser findings.

So, this early part of the year features a lot of articles about players’ plate discipline numbers and pitchers’ pitch f/x changes — small slivers of reality that give us clues to how the big reality will start to look.

One such thing we can look at early in the season: batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Why? BABIP stabilizes slowly, but tends to stay in a particular range for hitters (somewhere between .250 and .350, with most hitters being quite near to .300). So, early in the season, we can usually take a gander at the Luck Loserboard (those hitters with BABIPs at or beneath .200) and get a good idea about which players are poised to rebound.
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