After last night’s victory over the Mariners, the Orioles announced they were calling up top prospect Manny Machado from Double-A and giving him the third base job for the stretch run. Wilson Betemit hasn’t been a total disaster, posting a 100 wRC+ in 356 plate appearances, but he’s one of the worst defensive players in baseball and is dreadful against lefties, so moving him into a 1B/DH platoon isn’t a bad use of his skills.

The promotion is still a bit of a surprise, however, as Machado is a teenager whose numbers in Double-A don’t suggest that he’s ready to start hitting Major League pitching right away. A .266/.352/.438 line isn’t all that different from what Betemit is doing, and of course Machado is posting that line against inferior pitching. But, despite the mediocre looking slash line, there are reasons to think that Machado might be more ready for the big leagues than the raw numbers suggest.

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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated posted the results (in slide-show form, yay!) of recent survey they took asking 228 MLB players to name the most underrated position player in the game. These sorts of things usually generate “interesting” results, and this case was no exception. This is supposed to be a fun exercise, so it would be unfair to complain about the “unscientific” nature of the poll: why 228 players? How were they distributed across the teams? Were they position players themselves or a mix? How many votes did each player get? The notions of “underrated” and is itself vague (underrated by the media? The fans? Statistics?), so the respondents may have been thinking of different things when answering. Wouldn’t a truly underrated player fail to show up on a list of “top underrated players” at all?

Such complaints sort of miss the point. I assume this was simply meant to be a fun way to generate discussion. I personally would have liked to have seen one or two comments from respondents about each player to get a sense of what the respondents were thinking about when they answered. In any case, the list has some results that are pretty hilarious, as one might expect. One way of responding would be to come up with a different list. Grant Brisbee wrote up an excellent list of his own. Another would be to simply go through SI’s list and comment on it.

This post takes the second path, but the truth is, it is not quite the “fisking” one might expect. Yes, some choices are downright hilarious. However, given the qualifications above, I thought the responding players did okay. It is not the list I would have made, but they made some decent choices. Or maybe the list is like the movie Juno: the beginning is so horribly annoying that the rest seems better than it actually is.

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The still-surprising Baltimore Orioles are rumored to be “poking around” on Seattle Mariners pitcher Jason Vargas. I am not sure how that sort of physical contact is permissible (nailed it!), but it makes some sense for the Orioles to try and improve their team. Is Vargas the right pitcher to aim for, though, even if they can’t get player like Matt Garza?

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Yesterday we talked about the questions facing the National League contenders. Today, we turn our attention to the American League. Every team but the Twins, Royals and Mariners are within four-two-and-a-half games of a spot in the postseason, if you count the wild card play-in game part of the postseason. That leaves us with eleven teams still playing for something in 2012. Or does it?

In the American League East, the Yankees have a comfortable seven-game lead, and seem poised to pull away with the division title. Yes, with injuries to CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte, the Yankees could improve by adding a dependable starting pitcher, but so far they haven’t been linked with the starters most likely to hit the trade market. Overall, though, the Yankees are in the best shape of any team heading into the second half.

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When it comes to prospects and young players, I’m an absolute sucker for tools. Yes, I’m one of those idiots who reaches for B.J. Upton in fantasy drafts. I still follow Mark Prior’s career closer than I should. And the news that Scott Kazmir has started a comeback attempt piqued my interest. I was bullish on Mark Trumbo coming into this season based solely off his insane power, and I near-hopelessly believe that Derek Holland will blossom into an ace one of these years.

In recent years, one of my recurring crushes has focused on Baltimore Orioles starting pitching prospects. Remember how they had a trio of young studs who were supposed to carry the franchise to new heights? Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman and Jake Arrieta were supposed to be The Future. Unfortunately, so were the Hindenburg and the RMS Titanic.

So when Arrieta started off his 2012 season on a dazzling streak of success, I was initially skeptical. After all, Arrieta is 26 years old and he’d shown no sign of putting things together. He was way too wild (11% walk rate) in the past, and even if he were limiting his walks, what were the odds he could keep it up? But then I caught another glimpse of his mid-90 mph fastball and his stellar curveball, and I picked him up in the FanGraphs staff ottoneu league. What can I say, I’m a sucker.

Immediately following this —  of course — Arrieta went into a dark period, and his season line is about what you expected coming into the year. His 6.13 ERA is the second-worst in the majors among all qualified starters, edging out Tim Lincecum by about a third of a run. He hasn’t thrown a pitch at 90% the speed of light, but the end result has been about the same.

And yet, call me crazy. I still believe in Jake Arrieta. Even if the Orioles don’t.

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All-Star Week was marred by the surprising news that Jay Gibbons retired. It was surprising in the sense that many probably did not realize that Gibbons was still “in baseball.” It has been a semi-interesting wild ride for the 35-year-old. Gibbons never went to the playoffs. While he made contact and had nice power, his low on-base percentage and poor defense at non-premium positions limited his usefulness. He dropped off of the map for a while after getting named in the Mitchell Report. Nonetheless, for some reason Jay Gibbons has always been on the periphery of my attention.

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Fare thee well, father, mother. I’m off
to de-luck the f*** out of this s***.

With this All-Star break forcing to watch so little baseball, we now have a moment to drink up the frothy milkshake of statistics from the first half. So, you and I, we shall dissect the stats and find out who has been lucky, unlucky and a little of both.

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The trade that sent Erik Bedard to the Seattle Mariners is famous for bringing Adam Jones to Camden Yards. Jones wasn’t the only big talent included in the infamous deal, though — Chris Tillman, a 6’5″ right-handed pitcher and the Mariners’ second round pick in 2006 was considered at at time to be an ace in the making. Topping out as the 22nd-best prospect in the game according to Baseball America in 2009, Tillman was billed as a future staple of the Orioles’ pitching staff.

But Tillman’s tires spun in the major leagues. In 36 starts over the past three seasons, Tillman managed just a 5.58 ERA and a 5.31 FIP. Tillman made his 2012 debut Wednesday night in Seattle, and as the east coast launched Fourth of July fireworks, Tillman torched the Mariners. His final line: 8.1 innings, two unearned runs, two hits allowed, seven strikeouts, and two walks.

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It’s not often I head to the park having never heard of a catcher only to leave believing he was a future big leaguer. The last time it happened was in 2010 After seeing Giants Hector Sanchez gun down an opposing runner at second base with a 1.93 second rocket from his knees and swing the bat from both sides of the plate. More recently, Gabriel Lino left a similar impression in April as the starting catcher for Dylan Bundy’s professional debut as a member of the Baltimore Orioles organization. With his being dealt to the Phillies as part of the Jim Thome deal, Lino finds himself in an organization that has had quite a knack for developing young catchers in recent years.

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Pitchers get hurt all the time, but I think we can all agree that CC Sabathia was on the short list of guys who we would expect to make every start in a given season. He’s been a workhorse of the first order for the last decade, but yesterday a twinge in his left groin sent him to the disabled list for the third time in his career and first time since 2006. The Yankees insist that their ace will only miss two starts and return immediately after the All-Star break.

Sabathia’s injury hurts New York but two starts isn’t the end of the world. Unfortunately for them, he wasn’t the only starter they lost on Wednesday. Andy Pettitte (1.4 WAR in nine comeback starts) was struck by a batted ball and suffered a fractured left ankle in yesterday’s game, sending him to the sidelines for a minimum of six weeks and more realistically 8-10 weeks. In the span of about four hours, the Yankees lost their two best starting pitchers.

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