Today marks, basically, the beginning of the postseason, as it’s now that good teams begin being eliminated. There are fewer games each day than before, with every game being more and more important, and there will be a corresponding level of daily analysis. People are going to try to find keys to individual baseball games, because this is how it’s always been, and it’s with that in mind that I’d like to issue you a quick reminder. Last year, MLB debuted the one-game wild-card playoffs. People tried to analyze Orioles vs. Rangers. They tried to analyze Cardinals vs. Braves. In the former game, Joe Saunders bested Yu Darvish. In the latter, the hosts were undone in large part due to errors by Chipper Jones, Dan Uggla, and Andrelton Simmons. The point of the lead-up is to try to know; the magic of the game is that there is no knowing. This is forever going to be the truth.

But it’s still fun to try, to pretend like we could figure things out, and tonight the Rangers host the Rays as the teams battle in a one-game playoff for the right to make another one-game playoff. The starters are going to be Martin Perez and David Price, and there’s something about Price people have honed in on. Price, see, has an ugly history against Texas, and this information is presented to make people think he could struggle again in another big game.

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About half-way through May, something strange was going on in Jake McGee’s world. The 27-year-old reliever was giving up hits and home runs to left-handed hitters. For a lefty with 96 mph gas and a wicked slider, that was out of the norm. But, as most pitchers do over the course of the season, he made an adjustment and figured the problem out. If there ever was one to begin with.

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Monday night, Rays manager Joe Maddon pinch hit James Loney for right-handed Sean Rodriguez. After a foul knubber to the right, Loney went all walk-off on Tommy Hunter.

But as much as pinch-hit walk-off home runs are the soup of Hollywood executives, they are the rarest of meats in the MLB reality. In fact, pinch hitting is most often a choice between lesser evils — a choice between a bad wOBA or a terrible wOBA.

A closer look at the last five seasons of pinch hitting reveals success has not between distributed evenly, and the effectiveness of of some pinch-hitting efforts may be a product of systematic choices rather just tough breaks.
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Typical  Billy Hamilton story outline: Ordinary introductory paragraph noting Hamilton’s speed when running the bases. Reference to Hamilton’s record-breaking stolen-base numbers in the minor leagues. Note regarding Hamilton’s immediate base-stealing success in the majors. Cautionary remark pertaining to Hamilton’s limited offensive potential at the plate. Renewed appreciation of footspeed. Statement that Hamilton could be one-of-a-kind, at least for his generation. Explanation that — while base-running scores tend to be close to zero — Hamilton looks like an actual valuable weapon. Insert joke that Hamilton is so fast he’s already finished reading this article.

Run-of-the-mill paragraph pointing out how slow Jose Molina is. Note that Molina is perhaps the game’s slowest runner. Obligatory reference to Molina’s high-quality pitch-framing. Joke that Molina slows the game down in more ways than one. Acknowledgment that no one expects catchers to be able to run; decent speed is just gravy. Acknowledgment of Molina’s relatively advanced age. Note that this is not intended as a criticism. Statement that this is just a fact, to which Molina would certainly admit without shame.

Predictable musing about how Hamilton and Molina might compare.

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Why do some teams hit multi-run homers while other teams struggle? The relationship is not as simple as: better OBP, better rate of multi-run homers. I recently dug through sevens season of WPA logs and determined the baseball gods are not totally logical.

Observing the variation is one thing, but to ascribe it all to purely noise is another. Teams can control their runs per home run rate through constructing rosters and lineups predisposed towards greater home run efficiency. So we can’t consign variations to the random luck spittoon until we’ve more specifically assessed what’s happening in the lineup.

In the previous article, I briefly outlined what I called the Giancarlo Problem — where a team’s best OBP and best HR-rate are located within the same player. The Giancarlo Problem can result in deceiving team-wide statistics. So in this second venture, we are going to examine three dimensions instead of two: 1) OBP, excluding home runs, 2) home run rates, and 3) lineup positions.
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Today, the Rays acquired David DeJesus from the Nationals a few days after Washington got him from the Cubs. The cost of both acquisitions was either a minor prospect or cash, as DeJesus is being moved essentially as a cost savings maneuver. He wasn’t in big demand at the trade deadline, and isn’t seen as a major acquisition.

A few weeks ago, the Rangers acquired Alex Rios from the White Sox, after this transaction was rumored for weeks heading up to the trade deadline. The Rangers received a lot of praise for getting a deal done in the wake of Nelson Cruz’s suspension, with several people noting that the Rangers got both “the best hitter” (Rios) and “the best pitcher” (Matt Garza) available this summer.

Perception is a funny thing. Here’s David DeJesus and Alex Rios, season to date.

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As some of you might remember from previous articles, velocity trends in July provide the strongest signal in terms of whether a pitcher is likely to experience “true” velocity loss over the course of a full season.

Yes, I know, we are more than halfway through August. However, between work, vacation, and Saber Seminar (which, if you didn’t attend you really missed out. You can still purchase posters and t-shirts, so get on that. It’s for a good cause) I’ve struggled to sit down and run the numbers. Better late than never.

Again, for reference, the table below breaks out the percent of pitchers who experience at least a 1 mph drop in their four-seam fastball velocity in a month relative to that same month a year ago and who also went on to finish the season down a full 1 mph. It also shows the relative risk and odds ratios for each month — meaning, the increased likelihood (or odds) that a pitcher will experience a true velocity loss at season’s end when compared to those pitchers that didn’t lose 1 mph in that month.

So while the overall rate of velocity loss based on a loss in June and July look pretty even, the relative risk and odds ratios increase by a solid amount in July.

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Probably every day of every year, baseball fans wonder out loud whether it’s possible and allowed to trade players while they’re injured and on the disabled list. Every year, for a few years, we’ve been able to cite the Jake Peavy trade to Chicago as evidence that, yeah, you can trade players, even if they’re on the DL. There would be no reason to prevent such an exchange, provided the team getting the injured player was aware that the injured player was an injured player. Now we have a newer, fresher example, since the old one was getting beat to death. Jesse Crain, right now, is on the DL with a shoulder strain. And Jesse Crain just got traded from the White Sox to the Rays. It’s a trade deemed perfectly acceptable by the people whose permission is necessary for a deal to go through.

There was building talk that Crain would get moved to Tampa Bay. Actually, let’s go back, first. Crain was a goner. He was a good reliever on a bad team in a contract season. Dave wrote about him as a Jonathan Papelbon alternative. Crain was sure to get traded, until he injured his shoulder and had to sit out. The assumption was that his value was destroyed, and the White Sox even tried to rush him back to the bigs without a rehab assignment, just to get him to pitch before the deadline. It didn’t work, but still Crain had the Rays intrigued, and still this trade wound up being made. The return is conditional, as Crain and cash considerations have been traded for players to be named later or cash considerations.

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Here’s one thing that probably won’t surprise you: at present, the Red Sox are the major-league leaders in wOBA and OPS. Here’s another thing that probably won’t surprise you: at present, the Red Sox are the major-league leaders in average pitches seen per plate appearance. That’s a team that grinds out at-bats, and that’s a team that squeezes juice out of them. Here’s one thing that might surprise you, then: David Price just beat the Red Sox, with a complete game, in which he threw just 97 pitches. Against the Red Sox, Price was able to be effective; against the Red Sox, Price was able to be efficient.

Price has now made five starts since coming off the disabled list, having recovered from an arm injury. In three of those starts, he’s gone the distance, and in zero of those starts has he reached 100 pitches. In one of them, he didn’t even reach 90. I’ll grant that Price has started twice this month against the Astros, and the Astros are terrible, but he’s been doing something unusual, and something he’s never personally done before, at least not to this extent.

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People customarily like to think of the All-Star break as separating the first half from the second half. The season right now is well past halfway over, with the Red Sox having played 97 games, and the Mets having played 91. Last year’s Reds finished 97-65, and no one would say they finished .500. But the terminology isn’t really important, and what the All-Star break really provides is an opportunity to look back on everything that’s happened, without much new stuff simultaneously happening. One of the things that’s happened is the season’s most clutch hit, objectively determined by Win Probability Added. Below, said hit is explored.

We know there exists a hit of maximum clutchness. It’s a home run, a grand slam, with the bases loaded and two outs while trailing by three in the bottom of the ninth, or beyond. If you want to get really detailed, it would be hit in an 0-and-2 count, and the best hit ever would be this hit in Game 7 of the World Series. We haven’t seen such a grand slam yet in 2013 — they’re rare! — but we have seen one somewhat comparable hit, one hit that has a good lead in the WPA leaderboards. It took place all the way back on May 11.

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