Two players I have always rather enjoyed — Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui — are in the twilights of their careers. And not only that, they are both having relatively miserable seasons at the plate.

At present, Suzuki is at a career-low 77 wRC+ and .281 wOBA. Matsui — playing in a reserve/pinch-hitting role for the first time in his career — has a disastrous 18 wRC+ and .195 wOBA. But both of these players have unusually low BABIPs and it is hard to know for certain if there has been a change in true talent levels or if this is random variation coupled with only mild aging.

In his reaction piece to the Ichiro trade, Eric Seidman rightly observed that Ichiro’s numbers should improve as he transitions from what has become an offensive deadzone in Safeco Park to the lefty-friendly grounds of Yankee Stadium, but how much can we expect his BABIP to improve? And what can the Rays expect from a 38-year-old Matsui, who may be needed more than ever with Luke Scott back on the DL?

Recent history suggests that both players are having abnormally bad BABIP, and they should improve if given consistent playing time through the rest of the season. But whether teams want to — or should — take that risk is another matter.
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And SHAZAM! Now’s there’s parity in the MLB!

The MLB is a funny organization. One would think that in a sport producing most of the world’s largest guaranteed contracts, the production being paid for on the free agent market would guarantee on-field success. But that is not the case. Large payrolls have been large busts, such is life.

We know that a larger payroll leads to more wins, if not necessarily a playoff appearance, but also that teams need a strong input from their farm system, too. Teams have to strike a balance with these two inputs. For some teams — like the Tampa Bay Rays and Oakland Athletics — the vast majority of their talent input must come from the draft. They can afford only the January Free Agents — the unwanted scraps of the big market teams. Because of a matter of geography and history, newer teams in smaller markets like the Diamondbacks, Marlins and Rays will probably never again draw the kind of income the Mets and Yankees do.

So, an outsider might look at Wednesday’s Competitive Balance Lottery (CBL) and say, “Hey, well it’s good the MLB is trying to even things out a little bit, help out the little man.” But in truth, the CBL is a weak offering to a ever-crippled lower class. And if the MLB wants to keep small-market teams like the Rays capable of winning, they must undo their recent changes.
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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated posted the results (in slide-show form, yay!) of recent survey they took asking 228 MLB players to name the most underrated position player in the game. These sorts of things usually generate “interesting” results, and this case was no exception. This is supposed to be a fun exercise, so it would be unfair to complain about the “unscientific” nature of the poll: why 228 players? How were they distributed across the teams? Were they position players themselves or a mix? How many votes did each player get? The notions of “underrated” and is itself vague (underrated by the media? The fans? Statistics?), so the respondents may have been thinking of different things when answering. Wouldn’t a truly underrated player fail to show up on a list of “top underrated players” at all?

Such complaints sort of miss the point. I assume this was simply meant to be a fun way to generate discussion. I personally would have liked to have seen one or two comments from respondents about each player to get a sense of what the respondents were thinking about when they answered. In any case, the list has some results that are pretty hilarious, as one might expect. One way of responding would be to come up with a different list. Grant Brisbee wrote up an excellent list of his own. Another would be to simply go through SI’s list and comment on it.

This post takes the second path, but the truth is, it is not quite the “fisking” one might expect. Yes, some choices are downright hilarious. However, given the qualifications above, I thought the responding players did okay. It is not the list I would have made, but they made some decent choices. Or maybe the list is like the movie Juno: the beginning is so horribly annoying that the rest seems better than it actually is.

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Recently, Tampa Bay Rays first-round pick Taylor Guerrieri received a tremendous write up for Bullpen Banter by JD Sussman. In it, the young right-hander showed enough to “profile as a top of the rotation arm.” Prior to Guerrieri’s next start, he tweaked something during pre-game warm ups and wound up being a late scratch. After a few days rest and routine bullpen session, I lucked into seeing Guerrieri last Sunday in Auburn, New York.

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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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