The Washington Nationals face elimination from the playoffs today at home, down 2-1 in their NLD Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Pitching for the Cardinals is Kyle Lohse, who is a fine, if not excellent, starter. The Nationals counter with left-hander Ross Detwiler — or, as he will likely be referred to more than once by TBS broadcasters Dick Stockton and Bob Brenly, “Not Stephen Strasburg.”

The reader probably hasn’t heard about it even once, so allow me to say: Stephen Strasburg is an excellent pitcher for the Nationals. He had Tommy John surgery towards the end of the 2010 season. He rehabbed for the majority of the 2011 season. Entering 2012, the Nationals suggested that they’d enforce some manner of innings limit with Strasburg — just as they had the previous year with other, young Tommy John-survivor Jordan Zimmermann. Then both Strasburg and the Nationals were really good — like, good enough, at one point, that the playoffs became a foregone conclusion (which is weird for the Nationals). Then people were like, “Are you really going to shut down Stephen Strasburg?!?” And then the Nationals were like, “Yes.” And then they did. In September.

It’s not necessarily the case that Stephen Strasburg would be pitching this game today, but it’s also the case that the only reason Ross Detwiler is pitching this afternoon is because Stephen Strasburg was shut down. Otherwise, the Nationals would have likely deployed a playoff rotation of Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Zimmermann, and Edwin Jackson — with Strasburg pitching a hypothetical fifth game.

What the people are certainly wondering — and which question Stockton and Brenly will certainly ask today — is “How much is Strasburg’s absence actually worth in terms of run prevention?” Or, alternatively: “How many runs would Strasburg have saved over his replacement(s)?”

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The St. Louis Cardinals won Game Three of their NLD Series against the Washington Nationals on Wednesday, taking a 2-1 lead in said series in the process. Besides Chris Carpenter, who pitched 5.2 scoreless (if not always dominant) innings, the player most directly responsible for the Cardinal victory — by Win Probability Added, I mean — was shortstop Pete Kozma, whose second-inning three-run homer (at .128 WPA) was the game’s single most decisive play and whose 0.11 WPA for the game was tops among Cardinal hitters.

Here’s how you, the reader — provided you’re not a Nationals fan, at least — feel about Pete Kozma, probably: you like him. Here’s why you like him, maybe: because he’s just a little guy. Or here’s why else, maybe: because he was in the minors until the end of August and is now the starting shortstop for a playoff team. Or here’s a third reason, perhaps: because he’s produced better offensively over the last month-plus in the majors than he did at any time, basically, during his previous five months in the very offensive Triple-A Pacific Coast League.

One other possible reason you like Pete Kozma is because you’re his mother — in which case, that’s really great how curious you are about advanced baseball analysis, Mrs. Kozma. Welcome.

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Allow me to state an obvious thing about the Nats-Cards NLDS, which is that it (i.e. the Series) is now tied at 1-1 after St. Louis’s 12-4 victory on Monday (box).

Allow me to state another (mostly) obvious thing, which is that the following predictions about the remainder of the Nats-Cards NLDS — while almost reasonable — are also almost certain to be wrong.

In any case, here they are — three almost reasonable predictions regarding the Nats and Cards:

Trevor Rosenthal Will Post the Cards’ Second-Highest gmLI Henceforth
Leverage Index (LI) is a measurement for how “critical” any given moment of a game is, where 1.00 is average and above 1.00 is “more critical.” So, for example, the most critical moment in Game Two on Monday — which featured a 2.08 LI (just over twice as important as a regular at-bat) — was when Jordan Zimmermann was batting in the second inning with Washington up 1-0 the game tied 0-0, runners on first and second, and one out. This represented the moment by which the game’s fate would be most significantly decided. By contrast, the game’s lowest LIs (zero, basically) occurred in the eighth and ninth innings, with St. Louis having established a considerable lead.

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At this point, it might not make a whole lot of sense to talk about Sunday’s Game 1 of the Cardinals/Nationals NLDS, since Game 2 is already well underway at this writing. And if we’re going to talk about Sunday’s Game 1, it might not make a whole lot of sense to focus on just one single pitch. Game 1 featured several pitches, dozens of pitches, and each was important. But where many have discussed the decision to replace Mitchell Boggs with Marc Rzepczynski in the top of the eighth, I want to discuss the result of Rzepczynski’s first at-bat.

The controversy, if you want to call it that, is that the Nationals had two runners in scoring position with two out, and instead of letting Boggs face the left-handed Chad Tracy, Mike Matheny chose to have the left-handed Rzepczynski face the right-handed rookie Tyler Moore. Moore singled home two runs, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead, and the win-expectancy swing was about 47 percent. That single won Game 1 for the Nationals — it was a pretty important single.

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Episode 257
First, imagine FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron. Next, imagine all baseball. Now, imagine Dave Cameron analyzing all baseball. That’s precisely what follows in this episode of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 34 min. play time.)

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It is known by the educated and handsome everywhere that Virgil’s Aeniad begins with the words “Arma virumque cano” — or, in English, “I sing of arms and the man.” After that part, much less is known — except that, at some point, a she-wolf saves a human child via suckling.

In any case, everyone knows that Virgil sang of arms and one man. What this post presupposes is: what if he sang of three men? And what if by arms he didn’t mean weaponry but actual arms on a person’s body? And what if Virgil knew that both baseball and the internet were things?

He would probably sing about three arms from the first game of the Nationals-Cardinals divisional series, is what.

Adam Wainwright’s Arm
Adam Wainwright’s arm was excellent on Sunday. How excellent? Here’s one answer: until walking Kurt Suzuki with two outs in the sixth — which would prove, actually, to be his 26th and final batter of the game — Wainwright had posted the lowest single-game FIP- of any start ever of his career (around 17, I think it was). As it is, Wainwright’s 10-strikeout performance againt the Nationals still qualifies as one of the best starts of his entire career.

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Shortly after the Mariners made the mistake of trading Brandon Morrow for Brandon League and another guy, it was noted by the Mariners’ front office that, the season before, League had thrown baseball’s most unhittable pitch. No pitch in baseball, apparently, generated a lower contact rate against than Brandon League’s splitter, and that gave us Mariners fans something to look forward to. What it actually wound up doing was give us something to complain about all the time, but no matter. That was the first I’d personally heard of a most unhittable pitch, and I fell in love with the concept. What better measure of dominance than whiffs over swings?

Of course, we all understand that pitches don’t exist in isolation. That year, League’s splitter was baseball’s most unhittable pitch, but it wouldn’t have been so if League only ever threw his splitter and never threw his fastball. There’s a lot of game theory stuff at play, so isolating individual pitch types is a little improper and misleading. Still, it’s a fun exercise, and I’m about to indulge. So we’re all about to indulge.

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Every year around this time fans, broadcasters, and baseball people get into the whole expanded rosters debate. Some don’t like that the final month of the season is played under a different set of rules while others don’t mind the extra players. What always seems to get lost in the shuffle is that very few September call-ups actually have an impact when they’re brought up. Most are relegated to mop-up relief innings or pinch-running duties, minor roles like that, but every once in a while someone will come up and become an instant difference maker.

Perhaps the greatest September call-up in recent memory is Francisco Rodriguez, who went from dominating the minor leagues — 13.0 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 with a 2.27 ERA in 83.1 innings between Double-A and Triple-A — to a key setup cog for the World Champion Angels in 2002. K-Rod pitched so well in his 5.2-inning trial (13 strikeouts and one unintentional walk) that the Halos squeezed him onto the playoff roster, where he threw another great 18.2 innings (28 strikeouts and five walks). The Angels struck September call-up gold that season.

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There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

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Nationals Ballpark sits in the southeast quadrant of Washington, D.C. Take a look at this map of the District and its environs. More than half way down, right of center, is a marker for Washington Navy Yard. That’s approximately where the  ballpark is. As you can see, the area is accessible by highways connecting the District to Virginia and Maryland. There is also a Metro stop at the ballpark. Metro is the subway run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Here’s the Metro map. Notice the stop on the Green Line for Navy Yard-Ballpark.

The Nationals encourage fans to take public transportation to the ballpark, but also provide plenty of options and information for driving to — and parking near — the ballpark. The Nationals may keep track of how many fans drive to games, versus take public transportation, but that information isn’t publicly available.

The Metro stops running at midnight Sundays through Thursdays.. Typically, that’s not a problem for Nationals fans traveling to and from the ballpark on the Metro, as the night games start at 7:05 p.m. local time. Unless a game extends well into extra innings, fans usually have plenty of time to take a Metro train home.

But some games have gone well into extra innings, and that’s been a problem for fans who took Metro to the game and expected to take it home. This issue first arose in June, when the Nationals played the Mets on June 5, and the game lasted into the 12th inning. As the game moved toward 11 p.m., ballpark officials announced the Metro would stop running at midnight. That meant that fans had to leave the ballpark with enough time to catch a train at the Navy Yards/Green Line station and get to their destination by midnight. Some fans left, and missed the Nationals’ walk-off victory on a Bryce Harper single in the bottom of the 12th, at 11:20 p.m.

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