You’re the shepherd of a contending team. Your veteran left fielder is 10% worse than the average major leaguer and your young right fielder is part of a tandem that’s third-worst in the National League at he position. An exciting young corner outfielder is available on the market. Acquiring the upgrade is a no-brainer, right?

A lot of ink will be spilled about how Hunter Pence is over-rated. You can point out that he’s got a below-average walk rate. You can say his strikeout rate is only average. It’s true that his power looks above average when compared to the league but is only about the same as the average right fielder (.163 ISO for Pence, .168 for the average right-fielder). It’s even true that he steals bases at a less-than-efficient rate (63%).

And yet, acquiring Pence makes sense for the Phillies.

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Brad Lidge didn’t top 90 on the radar gun Monday.

Sure, yesterday was a big first step for the 34-year-old reliever. The first appearance of the year — especially when it happens this late in a season — is an important moment for any pitcher who’s recovered from an injury. But, if the muted radar-gun readings are to believed, the outing was perhaps just one point on the long highway back to full strength — at best. At worst, he might find that his new fastball velocity will limit him to the side roads of success. That is, unless he can be legendary with his slider.

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While the barriers between traditional and advanced baseball analysis are falling every day — hearing David Cone cite FanGraphs during a Yankees-Rays broadcast this week was awesome — there are still certain players who are a wedge between non-saberists and saberists. It’s always the same pattern: one side thinks Player X is awesome, the other doesn’t. Flame wars ensue. Each side cites statistics to back up their position, then declares that the other side’s statistics are worthless.

Ryan Howard is one of those players. Traditionalists love him because he posts huge home run and RBI totals; saberists say he’s overvalued because of those same stats. And so the fight continues — wOBA vs. HRs, WAR vs. RBIs. In the end, the debate isn’t about Howard at all — it’s about which stats you want to believe.

I noticed one of these pro-Howard, anti-WAR columns the other day and it made me curious: Can I explain why Ryan Howard’s 2011 season is overrated without using sabermetric statistics? Can I point out that his contract overpays him without using information that would turn off a casual baseball fan? As it turns out, it’s pretty easy to do — though it’s worth noting that saberists might be dismissing Howard’s RBI “skills” too quickly.

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…since 1974, when our play-by-play database begins.

On Monday, I posted about the three worst double plays ever according to Win Probability Added (WPA). From 1974 through yesterday’s games, there have been 89072 double plays caused by groundouts (I’m leaving out other sorts of double plays as, from the hitter’s perspective at least, they have more to do with dumb luck). Of those, only 51 have a positive WPA. However, it does happen from time to time, and while the shifts aren’t as dramatic in terms of WPA, the circumstances make them more interesting (at least to me) than the negative WPA occasions.

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The Chicago Cubs general manager, Jim Hendry, has been described by many as a lame duck, but team owner Tom Ricketts may want to get out the hunting rifle now before the situation deteriorates any further.

Hendry took over the Cubs GM position midway through the 2002 season and has never quite assembled the impressive major league team comparable to the impressive farm system he built in the late 1990s. Once touted for assembling a farm system that included future stars like Corey Patterson, Mark Prior, Eric Patterson, Felix Pie, Rich Hill, and (hey, mildly positive ones!) Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano, Hendry is now widely considered a neither great nor terrible GM.

His on-the-field product reflects that dichotomy:

His great times (2008, 2004) have been great; his good times (2003, 2007, 2009) have been okay; and his bad times (2005, 2006, 2010, 2011) have been numerous.

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Let’s get this out of the way first: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels are pitching like Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz in their prime. They’re Spahn and Sain and a whole lot of pain.

They’re also not that far above, say, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner. Yet the Phillies sit well above the Giants, and ahead of every other team in baseball, with a 61-36 record.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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If the Mariners have gotten a lot of ink this season, it’s for good reason. After finishing with the worst record in the AL, and the second worst record in the majors, last season, they’ve surprised some people by hovering around .500 for most of the season. Since the AL West lacks a standout team, they’ve also hung around the division lead. As long as their pitching keeps rolling the way it has in the first half of the season they might never find themselves out of the race.

It’s pretty clear to anyone, even an NL fan who doesn’t delve much into the junior circuit, that the Mariners’ offense has held the club back. This has been the case for the past three seasons, during which the Mariners have been the worst hitting team in baseball to the tune of roughly four wins. But with their pitching staff they don’t even need a good offense to excel in the AL West. All they need is a mediocre one. The team with the best pitching in the league serves as an example.

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Sandy Koufax is rightfully considered one of the greatest pitchers in the history of baseball. His run from 1963 to 1966 – before his career was cut short by injury – is one of the best four year stretches of pitching in the history of the game, and his dominance is why he was elected to the Hall Of Fame the first time he was eligible in 1972. He might not have had the career length of other all-time greats, but his peak was so good that it was impossible to come to any other conclusion than that he belonged in Cooperstown.

It’s time we say the same thing about Roy Halladay.

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After only throwing 37 pitches through two innings, Roy Oswalt left his start last night due to back soreness. This is definitely disappointing news for the Phillies’ starter, considering he’s already had one DL stint this year as a result of back pain, but I have to say, I wasn’t expecting this sort of a quote from him after the game:

Woh! Talk about retirement? Doesn’t that seem just a leetle bit extreme?

As it turns out, possibly not.

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