The All-Star Game is over and it’s time to turn our attention to the second half of the season. All of the teams still in contention face questions as games get underway on Friday. We will take a look at those questions in two posts. Today, we’ll discuss what to look for in the National League when play resumes. On Thursday, we’ll address the American League.

The NL East is a four-team race. The Nationals are the leader in the clubhouse at the break, with a four-game lead over the Braves (five in the loss column) and a four-and-a-half-game lead over the Mets (six in the loss column). The Marlins are nine back with the Phillies in last place fourteen games behind the Nats. For the Marlins, that is a lot of ground to make up, but the NL East teams will play a lot of games against each other just after the All-Star Break. That could solidify the Nationals’ lead or tighten the race even further.

The Braves and Mets are essentially tied with the Giants and the Cardinals for the two wild card spots, just behind the Reds, who trail the Pirates by a game in the Central. The Diamondbacks, Marlins and Brewers sit three-and-a-half, four-and-a-half, and five-and-a-half back, respectively.

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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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At the end of May, I observed how the Pittsburgh Pirates had an offense poised for history. They were not just bad at scoring runs, they were great at making outs. They had a team wRC+ twelve points lower than the next-nearest lineup:

I called it a “catastrophe” then, but now it has become a swash-buckle’d turnaround.
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In this, their long-overdue rebuilding year, the Chicago Cubs have redefined terrible on the North Side. They currently sport an Major League Baseball-low 24 wins and have a dreadful duo of punchless offense and impotent pitching.

But they are not without trade chips as they approach a dark second half. Bryan LaHair and Jeff Samardzija — who possess an attractive blend of affordability and upside — and Ryan Dempster, Geovany Soto and David DeJesus will all get a number of inquiries as the deadline approaches. But the team is particularly eager to sell one asset more quickly than the others. His name is Alfonso Soriano.

Signed to a double-albatross contract — awarding the 36-year-old an $18 million salary through 2012, 2013 and 2014 — Soriano has no hopes of playing at a value commensurate with his income. However, he’s not without his strengths, and for certain teams looking for a power-hitting righty, Soriano might be the right fit.
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Lost in the Kansas City Royals’ Yuniesky Betancourt-fueled 5-3 extra-innings win over the Cardinals yesterday was that Alex Gordon tied his franchise record with five walks in a single game. Yeah, I’m as furious as the rest of you that this was overlooked. But hey, at least this time he at least scored a run. When Gordon originally set the record (as I am sure you all remember) back on July 30, 2008 against Oakland, he did not score once. (I remember that game well, as not long before that I had an argument with someone who said that Jose Guillen was the Royals’ only “feared” hitter, unlike that loser Gordon. Guillen hit right behind Gordon in this game. FEAR.)

It was an amazing feat, in a way, but not nearly the most times on base without scoring. In fact, since 1918, there have been 73 players who have gotten on base six or more times without scoring in regular season games. What follows is a look at the most extreme cases.

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This post isn’t going to be overly long, because the data mostly speaks for itself.

One of the primary traits that scouts look for in a catcher is a strong throwing arm, and catchers who can throw out opposing base stealers are often considered to be good defenders regardless of what else they do behind the plate. And, there’s no question that creating outs and intimidating runners into staying put is a useful skill, and a catcher who can shut down the running game can add value to his team.

However, this year’s Pittsburgh Pirates are proving just how small a part of overall run prevention that throwing out runners actually is. Here are the leaderboards for National League teams in opposing SB/CS:

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With a sweep of the Royals this weekend, the Pittsburgh Pirates moved into a tie with Cincinnati for first place in the National League Central. If you read baseball blogs, you probably realize how surprising this is. Sure, last year the Pirates had a winning record as late as August 1 before finishing the season 72-90. But rather than getting into an overall “are they going to regress?” post, I’d like to be more light-hearted (or shallow, depending on your perspective), and look at three curious facets of this particular Pirates team so far.

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Did you know the FanGraphs leaderboards — which already no doubt consume the majority of your time like they do mine — also carry updated minor league data? Yeah, right here:

Under the Leaders tab, yo!

Let us take a moment, you and I, to delve into the numbers of my favorite of the minor leagues, the International League.
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In an age where most picks are revealed on Twitter by Jim Callis or Keith Law, the Astros managed to pull off a legitimate surprise and took shortstop Carlos Correa with the first overall pick in the 2012 draft. Correa offered the Astros premium potential and the likelihood of saving a little bit of money on the selection, which then gave them the opportunity to take Lance McCullers Jr. with their second selection — so the pick had multiple benefits for the team.

But it also created a chain reaction that caused presumed top selection Mark Appel to slide all the way to Pittsburgh at No. 8. And in turn, that is going to make the Pirates decisions today perhaps the most interesting in recent draft history.

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DATA!

Let us delve once again into the numbers. The season is now two months aged and we have more stories unfolding than we have enough digital ink to cover: Will the Red Sox ever find an outfielder? Is Adam Jones the new Matt Kemp? Can the White Sox really make a playoff push in a rebuilding year? And will the 2012 Pirates really go down as one of the worst offenses in modern history?

We will not truly know the answers to these questions for some time, but we can peer into the murky mirror-mirror that is the De-Lucker! and at least get a better feel for the state of everything. Much of the offensive fluctuations in the early part of the season come from strange movements in BABIP. The De-Lucker! attempts to smooth those fluctuations and give us a better guess as to who is doing well and who is not.

And Josh Hamilton, you will see, is in both categories.
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