You can’t talk about Major League Baseball’s financials these days without hearing about how much money is flowing into the sport. New television contracts are everywhere. MLB Advanced Media is one of the most valuable technology companies in the world. The Dodgers ownership group has their own printing press, apparently. Baseball is rolling in cash, and everyone involved with the sport is getting rich.

Except for Joel Peralta. If he pays attention to any of this stuff, he has to be wondering why his own personal experience is so different than everyone else’s.

In 2010, Joel Peralta threw 49 excellent innings for the Nationals, posting a 50/76/86 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- line thanks to his excellent command of the strike zone. For his efforts, he was non-tendered, as the Nationals decided they didn’t want to give him a raise that a pitcher with those numbers would get in arbitration. The Rays eventually signed him for $925,000, or about $500K more than the league minimum.

Since joining the Rays, Peralta has thrown 135 innings, with his minus stats lining up nicely – 84 ERA-/83 FIP-/87 xFIP-. His fly ball tendencies finally turned into a small home run issue, but his ability to limit walks and rack up strikeouts allowed him to be a good reliever even while putting the ball in the air all the time. While there is understandable skepticism about putting homer prone pitchers in the game with one run leads, he has basically the same skillset as Huston Street, and he’s had no problems collecting big paychecks throughout the years.

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It was a rough week for Team Entropy, as sweeps by the Orioles and Athletics knocked out most of the larger snafus the Rays and Angels could have caused over the final three games:

There’s still room for a three-way tie between the Athletics, Rays and Angels, though, and the AL East, AL West and NL Wild Card could also see tied finishes as the year comes to a close.

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Rays reliever Jake McGee has, at this writing, struck out seven consecutive batters. McGee has not, as I was led to believe by a certain other distinguished FanGraphs author, struck out nine consecutive batters. This fact was uncovered embarrassingly late in the research and article-development process. A streak of seven is less impressive and less unlikely than a streak of nine. But a streak of seven is still impressive, and still unlikely, and of course, McGee’s streak of seven is still alive, pending the next plate appearance. So McGee’s streak is still worth writing about. Consider for reference that Aaron Cook registered seven strikeouts through his first ten starts, spanning 237 batters. McGee has done that against 230 fewer batters.

Tampa Bay has a critical series coming up against New York, but they’re coming off a critical series against Baltimore, a critical series in which they got swept. Their Cool Standings playoff odds dropped from about 61 percent to about 27 percent, as the Rays went from looking like favorites to looking like underdogs. They’re left now to lick their wounds and try to bounce back against the Yankees, but one Ray who has nothing to feel bad about is McGee, who did the best against the Orioles that he possibly could have.

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There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

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Things to know before we proceed with this article about B.J. Upton:

(1) B.J. Upton is set to become a free agent after the end of this season, and he is newly 28 years old.

(2) Yesterday, in the last game of a series between the Rays and the Rangers, B.J. Upton slugged three home runs. They were his 19th, 20th, and 21st home runs of the year.

I was tricking you before — this article about B.J. Upton began with the word “Things”. Now let us move on to the rest of it!

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Tuesday night, just before the Mariners started playing the Red Sox, ROOT Sports introduced a little graphic showing the Mariners’ record before and after the Ichiro trade, and showing the Yankees’ record before and after the Ichiro trade. If you’ve been paying any attention to baseball, which you probably have, you know that the Yankees haven’t been playing well lately, and you might know that the Mariners have. Why? If you’re a fan of correlation-to-causation alchemy, because of the Ichiro trade. Clearly, Ichiro is toxic. Alternatively, on July 19, the Yankees traded Dan Brewer to the Braves. That could be the problem. There are correlations everywhere. There are correlations everywhere.

Let’s assume, you and I, that it isn’t that simple. There are very complicated reasons behind the relative rise of the Mariners, and there are very complicated reasons behind the relative fall of the Yankees. We’ll stop talking about the Mariners now because they don’t have anything to do with the rest of this article, as we’re going to focus on the AL East. No matter the reasons, there’s no getting around what’s taken place. There’s no changing the standings as they are, and where once the Yankees had a massive lead over everyone else, Tuesday night they dropped into a tie. The Yankees woke up Wednesday without sole possession of first for the first time since June 12. (That was a very long time ago.) (Sort of.)

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The double-surprise success of Fernando Rodney has received appropriate documentation and laud, but a grander epic is unfolding daily in the Tampa Bay Rays bullpen.

The Rays ‘pen has the second best ERA and third best FIP in the MLB. Their ERA trails only the National League Reds, and their FIP has only one AL rival, the New York Yankees. Only the Rangers (30) and the Diamondbacks (35) have fewer meltdowns than the Rays bullpen at 36 (and the Rangers have a much better offense, meaning fewer meltdown opportunities).

And it has been the same story since 2008. The Rays bullpen has made relief magic on a mom-and-pop-store budge:

Source: USA Today.

The Rays are paying approximately one (1) Jonathan Papelbon this season for one of the best bullpens in the Majors. And they are accomplishing this one excellent pitch at a time.
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Felix Hernandez’s perfect game on Wednesday was a testament to both his excellent stuff, but also a well-deserved outcome for an excellent game plan executed by he and catcher John Jaso. A former Ray himself, Jaso appeared to know just how to approach the Rays lineup, getting increasingly good results as the game went along:

That’s 5 swinging strikes through the first 61 pitches, and then 19 through the remaining 53 pitches. How did Felix do this? He and Jaso took advantage of an aggressive Rays plan by placing filthy breaking stuff further and further from the zone.
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On Tuesday, Tampa Bay activated Evan Longoria from the disabled list; they haven’t lost since. This correlation between Longoria’s return and the team’s six game winning streak seems a bit flukey when you see his .261/.308/.304 line since coming off the DL and note that the’s not healthy enough to play the field yet, so he’s not producing any defensive value either. However, Longoria’s return has produced something of a chain reaction that has helped the team run off six straight victories, and bodes well for their ability to stay in contention down the stretch.

With Longoria manning the DH spot, the Rays had to find a spot to put Jeff Keppinger, who has quietly been one of the Rays best offensive weapons this year. Since he’s a lousy glove guy, it’s easier to hide him at third base than second base, so they installed Keppinger at third and shifted Ryan Roberts over to second base. That closes off second base for Ben Zobrist, so over the weekend, Joe Maddon decided to give Zobrist another shot at shortstop, playing him on the left side of second base for the first time since 2009.

It’s an idea that the Rays should probably stick with, as Elliot Johnson and Sean Rodriguez have been offensive black holes that have dragged the team down all year. Zobrist isn’t a classic shortstop, but defensive metrics have loved his work at second base over the last four years, and it’s unlikely that he’s capable of being a terrific defensive second baseman while being completely unable to handle shortstop. He might not be a great defender there, but the offensive upgrade that is created by opening up a line-up spot for either Keppinger or Roberts in lieu of Johnson or Rodriguez is substantial.

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Last week, I wrote about some findings regarding in-season fastball velocity loss and how experiencing a loss in different months affects a pitcher’s chances of finishing a season with diminished pitch speed. The general takeaway was that June and July were the most telling months.

But what about velocity gain? We know that, generally speaking, pitchers lose velocity more than they gain it. So while velocity loss isn’t good, it’s to be expected — and starting pitchers seem to be able to deal with that loss better than relievers. Pitchers who can stave off velocity loss (year-over-year change between +/- .5 mph) perform even better. Moreover, if a pitcher gains at least 1 mph on their fastball in a season they are twice as likely to maintain some or all of that gain the following year.

Gaining velocity, while not a guarantee of better performance, is certainly a boon to a pitcher and his organization. But given that velocity varies for all sorts of reasons, when can a team have confidence that the increase they’re seeing is real and sustainable?

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