It was almost too easy to call the demise of Ryan Dempster when he was dealt from the Cubs to the Rangers in July. DIPS theory will always have its share of headscratchers, but Dempster’s case was clear cut: with the Cubs, he managed a .242 BABIP and a 9.0% HR/FB compared to career marks of .301 and 10.5% respectively. Upon being moved out of one of the worst divisions and into one of the toughest — and one of the toughest parks to pitch in — Dempster has allowed a .319 BABIP and a 13.5% HR/FB. His ERA skyrocketed from 2.25 with Chicago to 4.64 with Texas. Simple stuff.

Now, thanks to a remarkable charge by Oakland, the Rangers are left with one last game to claim the American League West and avoid the dreaded Wild Card play-in game with Dempster on the hill. Even since being traded out of the cozy confines of the National League, Dempster has had success in the larger American League road parks. He allowed eight runs in six innings against the Yankees, but in his other five road starts, Dempster owns a 2.82 ERA with a 3.48 FIP, including 29 strikeouts against 10 walks in 28.2 innings.

The key difference between Dempster on the road — the Dempster we’ll see this afternoon in Oakland — and Dempster at home? Road Dempster attacks the strike zone.

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When the Angels traded actual value(!) for the overwhelming bulk of Vernon Wells‘ contract(!), it didn’t look like there were very many ways by which the Angels could come away looking smart. There were more ways by which the Angels could come away feeling content, though, like if Wells performed well enough, even if not well enough to be worth his salary. These days the Angels appear neither smart nor content, although in fairness the front office has since turned over. What the Angels didn’t need was for Wells to suck. What the Angels really didn’t need on top of Wells sucking was for Mike Napoli to hit the crap out of the Angels.

Sunday, the Angels and the Rangers played a critical doubleheader. The Angels won the first game, and Mike Napoli went 0-for-1 as a pinch-hitter. The Angels lost the second game, by one run, and Napoli went 3-for-3 with a walk, a double, and two homers. The loss pushed the Angels one decision from playoff elimination, and Napoli’s big game capped off a big season against his former employer.

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Alternate headline: Yu Darvish Stops Being Polite, Starts Getting Real

Yu Darvish pitched again on Thursday, and Yu Darvish dominated again on Thursday. Unlike when he dominated the Mariners in his previous outing, this time he dominated a good team on the road, allowing a run over eight innings against the Angels. The Rangers beat the Angels, which the Angels found particularly devastating, and while it wasn’t all Darvish’s fault, it was a lot Darvish’s fault. Said Michael Young afterward:

“Yu has just been awesome,” said 3B Michael Young. “I hope people are appreciating what they are seeing, because rookies don’t usually get stronger as the season goes on. It’s usually the other way around. Guys are running on fumes as the season is ending. Not Yu. He’s getting stronger and better. He’s just been rock solid.”

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People care about home-run distance, because people like impressive home runs, and impressive home runs tend to have considerable distances. One is impressed when a batter drives a baseball 480 feet and out of the yard. As far as quality of contact is concerned, though, what might be more significant is the baseball’s speed off the bat. All a hitter ever wants to do is hit the baseball hard, so looking at the speed off the bat tells us who hit the baseball the hardest. The ESPN Home Run Tracker provides this data for dingers, and unsurprisingly, the hardest-hit homer of the year so far was hit by Giancarlo Stanton. It was a homer that damaged a scoreboard.

You can sort the data in the other direction to see the weakest-hit home runs. On average, home runs have left the bat at 103.5 miles per hour. The weakest homer was hit by Jayson Nix, to right field in Yankee Stadium. It left the bat at 89.8 miles per hour. The next-weakest was hit by Chris Iannetta, also in Yankee Stadium. Then the next two weakest after that were hit in Fenway Park. These aren’t astonishing results — people are familiar with the idea of Yankee Stadium and Fenway conceding some cheap dingers. People love dingers, but some of those cheap ones can make them roll their eyes.

The fifth-weakest dinger of the year so far was hit in Petco Park.

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After seeing Jurickson Profar play in the South Atlantic League in mid-2011, I returned home and wrote a piece for the now defunct Roto Hardball discussing the teenage phenom as the best shortstop prospect in baseball. In fact, if asked to name the top five prospects I’ve ever scouted in person, Profar would be listed alongside Jason Heyward, Mike Stanton, Bryce Harper and Dylan Bundy.

Video after the jump

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After brutal June and July performances, Josh Hamilton has performed well in the first few weeks of August, hitting .320/.382/.580 in 55 trips to the plate. According to both Hamilton and his coaches, the improvement is the direct result of his willingness to finally make adjustments in terms of which pitches to swing at. After months of hacking away at pitches well out of the strike zone, he’s finally learned his lesson.

“I’m just making my mind up that I’m going to try to focus better on taking more pitches and getting in better hitter’s counts,” Hamilton said. “You see the difference. My third at-bat, I struck out. He didn’t throw me a strike. I asked the umpire, ‘Did he throw any strikes?’ He said, ‘No.’ That was the difference, being patient and getting in good hitter’s counts and knowing that if they’re pitching it there, you can hit it instead of trying to make something happen. Just take your base and score runs.”

He’s definitely saying the right things, and his recent performance is a dramatic improvement. So, is Hamilton really becoming more selective?

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The 2012 MLB season began with a very public bounty of international talent — Japanese stars, Cuban expats and even a Taiwanese surprise. With the season dipping into its final six weeks, we are beginning to see both the good and the bad of these international players who made the direct transition to MLB rookie.

SP Yu Darvish — The biggest star from Japan since Daisuke Matsuzaka has had a very Daisuke Matsuzaka season — much despite steady predictions of the opposite. Well, actually, he has an 86 FIP-minus and 94 xFIP-minus. That’s at least a better FIP than Daisuke’s rookie year, but an identical xFIP.

Dave Cameron has written extensively on Darvish lately, noting Darvish has a command problem, the league has realized Darvish has a command problem, and Darvish has a scary group of command problem comparables.

At the same time, though, Darvish has been adjusting his approach to a less-aggressive (compared to the NPB) league. He has been toying with his repertoire, and I would not be surprised if he entered the 2013 season with a streamlined pitch selection that sets up his elite slider (one of the best in the league) more effectively and simply.
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Mike Napoli was, at least at the time, an under-discussed portion of not only one of the worst trades of recent times, but also the puzzling follow-up trade in which the Jays sent Napoli to the Rangers for reliever Frank Francisco. Even given that at the time Napoli was not projected to be the monster he turned to be in 2011, that seems really weird given that his hitting style seemed to fit right into the type of sluggers the Jays love to collect.

In any case, after dealing with injury issues early in the year Napoli turned into one of the great stories of the 2011 season, as he not only hit for great power even by his previous standard, but significantly upped his average (by cutting his strikeout rate and boosting his BABIP) to finish the season with a .320/.414/.631 (144 wRC+) line that rivaled Josh Hamilton’s from 2010.

Even given reasonable expectations for regression, Napoli’s 2012 has been disappointing. While he has dealt with health issues this season, going on the disabled list this weekend after trying to play through an injury, Napoli has never really gotten going in 2012. After a career best wRC+ in 2011, Napoli currently has a seasonal career worst 105 wRC+. The easy thing would be to simply point to average on balls in play dropping back closer to his pre-2011 rates, but the issues go beyond that. His drop in power is particularly interesting.

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Last night, Yu Darvish took the mound against the Red Sox, and not surprisingly, he racked up a lot of walks and strikeouts. This is a common trend for Darvish, who has ended 39.6% of opposing plate appearances with a walk, hit batter, or a strikeout. Darvish is the kind of pitcher who succeeds or fails on his own, relying less on his defense than just about any other pitcher in the sport.

It’s not unusual for guys with premium stuff — which Darvish definitely has — to struggle with command early in their careers. However, as Bill Petti showed back in May, normal aging curves for starting pitchers don’t show a drastic improvement in command. Is it any different with high walk, high strikeout guys who simply need to learn to harness their stuff? Or, to put it another way, have other Darvish-like starting figured out how to throw strikes and take advantage of their velocity and movement?

To look at this, I applied the new filters available on the leaderboard to restrict the list to guys who matched three variables – walk rate, strikeout rate, and fastball velocity. Since we’re relying on velocity as an input, that means we can only look back to 2002, so our sample is smaller but we’re more likely to get a better match in terms of stuff, so that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make. To come up with a list of guys who have had similar seasons to what Darvish is having now, I filtered using a minimum of 100 IP, 12% BB%, 20% K%, and FBv of 91.0 mph. While Darvish is well above the 20% strikeout mark, we do want to account for the fact that strikeout rate has been trending upwards, and so slightly lower K% in prior years were similar in terms of difference to league average. The list of names who match those inputs aren’t all that flattering.

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As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, the Rangers have summoned third base prospect Mike Olt from Double-A, and he’ll be joining the team in Texas in time for tonight’s game against the Angels. With Adrian Beltre manning the hot corner, though, third base is not in his immediate future, and the Rangers certainly aren’t calling Olt up to sit on the bench. Instead, his arrival signifies the likely end of the Michael Young Era in Texas. At least, the era where Young played any kind of meaningful role on the team.

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