Sort this year’s free-agent corner outfielders by last year’s production, and Angel Pagan’s name appears right at the top of the list. Sort that same list by projected production, however, and Pagan falls to seventh best, right behind the recently signed Matt Joyce. We all know how projections work: at the most basic level, they’re the product of past performance and age. For most veteran players, those two variables conspire to create a pretty dependable vision of the future.

Pagan has proven to be a difficult case for projection systems, however. He’s been particularly volatile over the course of his career — specifically with regard to his offensive production. If we could identify the causes of that volatility, perhaps we could improve upon the vision of Pagan’s future provided by the projections. And along the way, we might find him the right team.

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Mike Berardino of the the St. Paul Pioneer Press had an American League Cy Young Award vote this year. He filled out his ballot as follows:

1. Verlander
2. Britton
3. Miller
4. Kluber
5. Porcello

I respect Berardino’s ballot. As a matter of fact, I applaud it — and not only because he placed the three starters in the same order I would have. That’s a secondary consideration. Far more meaningful is the fact that he included both Zach Britton and Andrew Miller, and not just one of the two.

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Over time, teams take on the characteristics of some of their key players in the minds of analysts and fans. The Rays are eternally linked with Evan Longoria, known for power taking precedence at the plate, with a focus on defense. Similarly, Ryan Braun is the poster child for the Brewers, a bat-oriented player without a material defensive presence.

This week and next, let’s allow the players themselves to fade into the background, and draw some conclusions from a simple set of numbers — namely, each of the 10 playoff clubs’ team ball-in-play (BIP) statistics, broken down by exit speed and launch angles. We’ll examine what made these teams tick during the regular season and allowed them to play meaningful October baseball.

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Over the coming weeks, Eric Longenhagen will publish brief, informal notes from his looks at the prospects of the Arizona Fall League and, until mid-October, Fall Instructional League.

Athletics OF Lazaro “Lazarito” Armenteros continues to take better at-bats than I anticipated and has an advanced feel for his strike zone. The power is as advertised, too, though he’s extremely vulnerable against breaking balls and is often so far out on his front foot against them that he can’t do anything but foul them off and live to see another pitch. He has a 40 arm, is a 50 runner and a left fielder for me going forward.

Also of note for Oakland yesterday in a Fall Instructional game against the Angels was RHP Abdiel Mendoza, who just turned 18 in September. Mendoza is extremely skinny but loose and quick-armed. His fastball sat in the upper 80s but I think there’s a good bit more coming and I like Mendoza’s athleticism. He’s purely a teenage lottery ticket but one I think who’s worth following.

For the Angels, INF Julio Garcia took the field at shortstop, which is notable because I hadn’t seen him play there for over a year. Garcia, a switch-hitter, came over from the DSL late last summer and looked tremendous at SS, but has spent this year playing a lot of 2B and 3B in deference to, in my opinion, inferior prospects — and also lost a significant amount of playing time to a facial injury. Scouts like the glove, body and bat speed but want to see a more measured approach to hitting, especially from the left side. The Angels’ middle infield is crowded at the lower levels, a group that includes 2016 draftee Nonie Williams, who posted an above-average run time for me yesterday.

Also of note for the Angels yesterday was the cage work of 2016 2nd rounder, OF Brandon Marsh. Marsh has not played in games since signing (neither in the AZL nor during instructional league) but showed above average raw power during a side session yesterday. The body should grow into even more pop. Mid-way through his session Marsh paused to take instruction from a coach behind the cage and immediately made an adjustment on his subsequent swings.

In last night’s Arizona Fall League game between Peoria and Salt River, Mariners OF Tyler O’Neill posted a plus run time for me yesterday and showed off his plus bat speed on several occasions but I thought his at-bats were a little overaggressive. Seattle LHP Luiz Gohara sat 95-97, touched 98 and flashed a plus slider in the mid-80s but struggled with command and, at age 20, is already carrying what looks like 240-plus pounds.

Padres utility prospect Josh VanMeter squared velocity several times and had three hits. Orioles LHP Tanner Scott was touching 99 but not getting as many swings and misses as you might expect from a 95-plus mph heater and his low-90s cutter/slider wasn’t all that effective, either.

Last week, both Jeff and I wrote about the Orioles and BaseRuns. Jeff said this towards the end of his piece:

In four of the last five years, the Orioles’ BaseRuns record has been better than the projected record by at least six wins. In the fifth year, they were the same. The point being, the Orioles have knocked their projections out of the park, and they’ve done it far more than anyone else.

I ended my article with the following quote:

Haven’t [the Orioles] overperformed their BaseRuns wins for many years now? Yes, they have. But they’re overperforming at run prevention, not run scoring.

That night, Buck Showalter thumbed his nose at us both. Specifically, he mocked and derided the concept of run prevention by refusing to use his best run preventer in a tied elimination game with one out and runners on the corners. That refusal hurt the team’s chances of winning in a high-profile way. And thus another Orioles team bit the dust.

Given what happened, the prospect of talking about the Orioles and run prevention makes me twitch. But I’ll suppress it because there’s some interesting analysis here. Onward!

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Zach Britton has recently found himself at the forefront of baseball consciousness for a lot reasons, mostly positive, some negative, albeit through no fault of his own. He had a supremely excellent season in a tightly tailored, typical closer’s role for the Orioles, and his non-usage in last week’s wild-card game has almost become a caricature, a metaphor for outdated laissez-faire managerial strategies.

He will certainly receive many, many Cy Young votes, and might even walk off with the award. In my piece here last week, I compared his 2016 performance to some of the top seasons produced by AL starters, utilizing granular batted-ball data, and found that, while Britton does at least belong in the conversation, he didn’t deliver as much production to his club, in a year that is admittedly without a runaway choice among starting pitchers. What if I told you, however, that Britton didn’t even have the best season among AL relief pitchers?

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You already know the story of last night’s AL Wild Card game. The Orioles lost, and Zach Britton didn’t pitch. Everyone is talking about it today. Jeff Sullivan wrote a good piece on Showalter’s call, as did basically every other baseball writer in existence. Now, 12 hours later, it’s still hard to believe that it actually happened.

In reading the accounts from those who talked to Showalter — this one by Tyler Kepner, in particular, was really well done — you can feel the respect people have for him, and rightfully so. Showalter is one of the winningest managers in baseball history, and despite what he did last night, he didn’t get that way on accident. Two years ago, I wrote a post extolling Showalter’s postseason usage of his relievers; he clearly understood then that the postseason is a different animal, and needs to be handled differently from the regular season.

And while I certainly was among the chorus calling for Britton in the eighth inning — and every inning after that — you don’t have to squint too hard to see some logic in how Showalter used Mychal Givens, Brad Brach, and Darren O’Day. The Jays lineup is very right-handed, and those pitchers all throw from difficult angles for RHBs. Britton is the Orioles’ best reliever, but especially against a right-handed lineup, Showalter was picking from a variety of good options, all of whom were likely to pitch well in that situation. Britton might have been a bit more likely, but when factoring in the platoon splits, you can least kind of see why Showalter might have felt comfortable with his three primary right-handed setup guys.

But while Showalter stated in the postgame press conference that his decision wasn’t based on some philosophical issue, the 11th inning suggests differently. Because the only way you rationalize letting Jimenez face Edwin Encarnacion is if you’re dead set against using your closer in a tie game on the road.

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There is one article to be written about Tuesday’s American League wild card game, and that article will be written in 25,000 different places. I thank you for taking the time to read our own version. I can’t promise that it’s a different version from what’s likely to be already out there, but, see, that’s just the thing. There was a problem with how Tuesday played out for the Orioles, and everybody but perhaps the TBS broadcasters has been able to put their finger on it.

The Orioles lost, sure, and that’s the biggest problem. There’s no problem that affects them more. But the Orioles lost in extra innings. After Chris Tillman was removed, Buck Showalter cycled through six different relievers. Not one of those relievers was named Zach Britton, a closer who spent the year being so dominant he’s constructed a case for the Cy Young. The final pitch of the Orioles’ season was thrown by Ubaldo Jimenez. This is about what it looked like, and then it was time for them all to get packing.

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The Blue Jays just walked off against the Orioles, with Ubaldo Jimenez giving up the game-losing home run to Edwin Encarnacion in the bottom of the 11th inning. The story, though, is that the Orioles used seven pitchers in their final game of the season, and potential Cy Young winning closer Zach Britton was not one of them. The Blue Jays beat the Orioles in large part because the Orioles didn’t use their best pitcher tonight.

At this point, there are two possible explanations for Buck Showalter’s decision.

1. Zach Britton wasn’t available, or felt something off when he warmed up in the 8th inning. Given that Buck Showalter seems like a reasonable human being, this should probably be our default assumption right now. Often times, when a manager does something inexplicable with their bullpen usage, there’s information asymmetry, and they know something we don’t know. That may very well be the case here.

OR

2. The “save” stat just cost the Orioles their 2016 season. If Showalter really used Brian Duensing and Ubaldo Jimenez before Zach Britton because he was waiting to get Britton a lead so that he could earn a save, then this is the craziest managerial decision that I can remember in my baseball-watching life.

I don’t see another possibility, really. Either Britton is hurt or Buck Showalter just screwed up in an historic way. It will be interesting to find out how honest the team is about Britton’s availability in postgame comments.

Update: It was option #2. A few quotes from Showalter.

Buck: "He was available"

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

Buck: "You could (regret) afterwards, but we went 4 innings trying to get to that spot (of using Britton)."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

Buck: "Playing on the road had something to do with it too."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

"Nobody has been pitching better for us than Ubaldo."

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) October 5, 2016

As an Orioles fan, BaseRuns is never far from my thoughts. Since 2010, the team has outperformed its BaseRuns record every year — most notably in 2012, on the way to its first playoff appearance in over a decade. This year’s Orioles are no different, sitting last week at +5 wins versus what BaseRuns models. Fans say it’s Orioles Magic. The algorithm says such performances are expected. Jeff Sullivan doesn’t know precisely what to say.

After the team signed Pedro Alvarez, I paid attention when Dave asked if they would strike out too much, where by “too much” he meant “to such an extent that they’d win fewer games than their BaseRuns record suggests.” With another season in the books, I’ve picked up here where Cameron left off, exploring the relationship between a team’s strikeout rate and its BaseRuns in a few more ways.

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