Wednesday night, Kevin Millwood was laboring through shoulder discomfort in a start in Toronto. Still, he’d kept the Blue Jays hitless through three and a third. That’s when he let an 0-and-2 fastball to Edwin Encarnacion catch a little too much of the plate. Encarnacion blasted the pitch way out to left field, and the Jays got on the board. It was the 22nd home home run of Encarnacion’s 2012 season. That ties him for the second-most in baseball. A glimpse at the current leaderboard:

1. Miguel Cabrera, 24
2. Edwin Encarnacion, 22
3. Ryan Braun, 22
4. Giants, 22

Whoa, wait, hold on a second. What?

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There was a handful of crucially important series over this past weekend, and among them was Dodgers vs. Giants in San Francisco. The Dodgers came in four and a half games behind the Giants for first place in the NL West, and they were looking to make up ground in a hurry. They emerged five and a half games behind the Giants for first place, and according to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ playoff odds dropped from about 23 percent to about 22 percent. That isn’t a very powerful sentence, let’s try again. According to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ odds of winning the division dropped from about 12 percent to about four percent. Yes, that’s much better.

Plenty of things happened in the three-game series between rivals, as tends to be the case when you’re talking about three games. Some of them were a lot more significant than others. At one point, on Sunday, Buster Posey hit a home run off of Joe Blanton. The home run meant little at the time, and it meant next to nothing in hindsight. Posey batted with the Giants up 3-0 in the sixth, and he put the Giants up 4-0. The Giants won 4-0, and Posey’s dinger had a win probability added of about three percent. In many of the game recaps, Posey’s homer was given just a passing mention.

Yet what I want to talk about here is Posey’s homer. It wasn’t the homer itself that was the most impressive homer, although it did fly out to straightaway center field. It was more about the process that led up to the homer. I’ll let Joe Blanton explain before I start to explain.

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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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The Dodgers have gotten plenty of attention for their in-season roster shakeup, and justifiably so, because the Dodgers have been busy. Beginning in late July, they added Hanley Ramirez, they added Brandon League, they added Shane Victorino, they added Joe Blanton, they added Adrian Gonzalez, they added Nick Punto, they added Josh Beckett, and they added an injured Carl Crawford. It’s hard to believe the Dodgers did everything they did because those were a lot of big moves in a short amount of time. Yet when the Dodgers made their first big move, adding Ramirez, they were eight games over .500 and sitting in second place. Today the Dodgers are eight games over .500 and sitting in second place.

They’re chasing the Giants, and the Giants made some moves of their own. On July 27, the Giants picked up Marco Scutaro, and on July 31, the Giants picked up Hunter Pence. Pence hasn’t worked out yet, and the Giants also lost Melky Cabrera to a suspension. But Scutaro has worked out and then some, and it’s Scutaro to whom the rest of this article is devoted.

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Yesterday, the venerable Joe Posnanski sent out this message on Twitter.

The most underrated player in baseball is easy: Alex Gordon … so underrated nobody even talks about him being underrated.

— Joe Posnanski (@JPosnanski) September 5, 2012

Posanski’s right about Alex Gordon being better than people think, as his arm makes him a real weapon in the outfield and he’s developed into a pretty good hitter after a disappointing start to his career. There’s no question that Gordon is an underrated player, as his particular set of skills aren’t as sexy as some others, and of course he plays in relative obscurity in Kansas City.

But, at the same time, Gordon simply falls in line with the typical formula of underrated players. Small market, bad team, good but not great hitter, strong defense at a corner position – these types of players are always underrated. So, in that sense, it’s not really Gordon that’s underrated as much as it is his particular combination of skillset and geography. And for me, that’s a little less interesting. If we knew that Gordon would get more press if he simply played for a winning team or in a more prominent market, then Gordon isn’t so much “the most underrated player” as he is a victim of the media coverage of lousy midwest franchises.

In thinking about Posnanski’s tweet, I wondered if we could tease out the geography and team record aspects, and try to find out which player is perhaps the most underrated based simply on his own merits, rather than because he plays in obscurity due to the failings of his teammates or because of his current zip code. What we’re looking for is a good player who doesn’t get much recognition for his value despite playing on either a winning team or in a major media market with significant television exposure and national coverage.

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We’re only three days from the expansion of major league rosters. On Sept. 1, all players on a team’s 40-man roster will be eligible to play in the big leagues without an accompanying move. Often times, baseball fans are treated to a sneak preview of teams’ top minor league talent as a result of September call-ups; or they’re surprised by a relatively unknown player who manages to contribute over the season’s final month.

In preparation for this year’s roster expansion, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the greatest-ever September call-ups, defined here as players that made their major league debut during the month of September.

There are, of course, two ways to look at this: The first is to look at players — position players and pitchers — who generated the most value for their clubs during their call-up. The second is to look at players whose careers began as a September call-up and then went on to have great careers.

I’m looking at both. Read the rest of this entry »

Subjective questions swirl around most awards discussions — should a pitcher win MVP, should the Rookie of the Year be the best player that season or the one with the brightest future, does the Manager of the Year and/or MVP need to come from a playoff team, etc. But Comeback Player of the Year may be the most loosely defined award. As I detailed in this exercise last season, the only criteria is that a player “re-emerged,” which is very much open to interpretation. So, let’s try to take an objective look.

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Major League Baseball suspended Melky Cabrera for 50 games after he tested positive for testosterone, a substance banned under the league’s Joint Drug Policy. The suspension is immediate, meaning Cabrera won’t be seen in the orange and black, patrolling left field and accumulating hits, for the rest of the season. After their loss yesterday to the Nationals, coupled with the Dodgers win over the Pirates, the Giants fell out of first place in the National League West for the first time since late June. Losing Cabrera will hurt the Giants as they battle the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks for the division title, and try to stay in the hunt for a wild card spot.

Cabrera’s has been the Giants’ second-most productive hitter, behind Buster Posey. His season line is .346/.390/.546 for a .387 wOBA and a 146 wRC+. He was a steady and effective presence as the number three hitter in the Giants’ lineup, where he whacked 25 doubles, ten triples and eleven home runs in front of Posey. It will be impossible to replicate that production. The question is how best to replace it.

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The Giants took it on the chin Tuesday night, losing 14-2 to the Nationals. But that didn’t stop catcher Buster Posey from adding to the spectacular numbers he’s posted since the All-Star break: .457/.531/.787 with seven doubles and eight home runs in 113 plate appearances. His wRC+ over that time is an astounding 248. Simply put, he’s been the best hitter in baseball in the second half, and it’s not particularly close. Mike Trout — regularly regarded as “the best player on the planet” — has accumulated 2.3 WAR to Posey’s 2.6 over the past 30 days, and that’s with Posey’s catchers-legs base running and lower defensive rating.

For the season, Posey’s batting .332/.406/.547 with 19 home runs. His 158 wRC+ ranks fourth in the National League, behind Joey Votto, Andrew McCutchen, and Ryan Braun. He’s accumulated 5.0 WAR, good for fifth in the league, behind McCutchen, David Wright, Braun, and Michael Bourn. And again, Posey takes a hit for his base running.

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Melky Cabrera is having a career-year. After posting 4.2 WAR last year, Cabrera has once again been effective. The 27-year-old outfielder has already passed that total this season, accumulating 4.8 WAR so far.

Cabrera’s performance comes at a great time for him. At the end of the season, he can become a free-agent. And it looks like he’ll have a chance to hit the market, since the San Francisco Giants have put off negotiations with him until then. Cabrera’s two-year breakout is also interesting since he’s never produced like this before. All of those factors make Cabrera one of the most unique players to hit the market in quite some time. Because of that, no one is really sure how much he’ll make.

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