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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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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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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While watching the Mets pound on the Cubs yesterday, I noticed that David Wright still has a walk rate (BB%) higher than his strikeout rate (K%). If Wright managed to continue this trend through the end of the season it would be the first time in his career he achieved such a feat.

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In Tuesday night’s game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Nationals’ manager Davey Johnson asked home plate umpire Tim Tschida to examine the glove right-hander Joel Peralta for foreign substances.

Peralta was subsequently ejected for having pine tar on his glove.

This is not new. Baseball has a long history of players skirting around the rulebook in hopes of gaining an edge on their opponent. Whether it is spitting on the baseball, taking performance-enhancing drugs, corking bats, cutting the baseball, or even just (allegedly) having a man in white standing in the outfield bleachers, cheating is as much a tradition in baseball as hot dogs and cracker jacks.

As they say, if ya ain’t cheatin’, ya ain’t tryin’.

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Coming into the season, big things were expected of Matt Moore. He was ridiculous down the stretch and in the playoffs last year — striking out 23 batters in 19 innings pitched between the regular season and the playoffs — and was considered to be on par with prospects like Bryce Harper and Mike Trout heading into the year. However, while Harper and Trout are posting historically great seasons for their ages, Moore is struggling to live up to expectations, and has been a below average big league pitcher in the first third of the season.

The strikeouts are still there, but a cursory glance at his stat line reveals problems with walks (10.9% BB%) and home runs (1.44 HR/9), which are not a great combination. But, in reality, a cursory glance doesn’t really tell the whole story. The root of Matt Moore’s underlying problems are found on his splits pages.

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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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This might seem like a weird time to be writing an article about James Shields experiencing a breakout season, given that his 3.95 ERA this season is over a run higher than the 2.82 mark he posted last year. From a traditional standpoint, if Shields made an ace like leap, it was last season, and this year he’s simply regressing back to something less than ace-worthiness.

But, of course, I’m not exactly a big fan of ERA, especially when it comes to evaluating changes in pitcher performance. There are so many variables in ERA that a pitcher has little or no control over, and evaluating a pitcher by the amount of “earned runs” (whatever that means) he allows often causes us to miss real changes that do tell us something about what we should expect in the future. That looks to be the case with James Shields right now.

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Godzilla’s back, and there’s gonna be trouble.

Hideki Matsui, after a somewhat* underwhelming display in Triple-A, will join the Tampa Bay Rays tonight as they take on the Chicago White Sox at home. Some might suspect the move has to do with Monday afternoon’s outing against the White Sox in which Chris Sale struck out 15 Rays hitters — against a lineup featuring backup catcher Jose Lobaton as the DH, minor league veteran Rich Thompson playing left field, and a menagerie of infielders who started the season in the minors or the bench.

*I say somewhat because he was still hitting the ball well.

But the Rays front office rarely works hastily, and in fact Matsui’s callup is somewhat late. The team had previously suggested Matsui would arrive for the preceding Red Sox series, but instead delayed that transaction.

With the move, utility outfielder Stephen Vogt will likely return to the minors and will have to wait a little longer for his first major league hit or walk (he has 17 PAs but not yet reached even first base). How does Matsui fit on this Rays team — a team that already features five left-handed hitters? The answer is not fully clear, but there’s going to be a problem somewhere.
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Fernando Rodney’s 2012 season is redefining relief domination. The veteran flamethrower is turning into the real life version of Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn, transforming from a wild pitcher who never harnessed his stuff into one of the surest ninth innings in baseball. Rodney will carry a 38 FIP- and an incredible 11 ERA- into his next appearance. It’s only 22.2 innings, but Rodney would need to walk 25 batters and allow 15 runs in his next 9.1 innings to equal his totals from 32 innings last season.

Ricky Vaughn didn’t find the strike zone until manager Lou Brown discovered that his fireballer needed glasses. It’s unclear if Joe Maddon, pitching coach Jim Hickey or some other Rays coach is the Lou Brown in Rodney’s story, but Rodney definitely has his own version of Vaughn’s glasses this season. Observe, Rodney’s release point in 2012, compared to 2011:

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