The worst called ball of the season was literally a fastball in the middle of the strike zone. That makes it genuinely the worst called ball imaginable, with the consolation being that it at least didn’t matter very much. When I’ve written these posts in the past, I’ve noted that the bad called balls look worse than the bad called strikes. There is no called-strike equivalent of a ball on a pitch down the middle. You’ll never see a called strike on a pitch at the eyes. You’ll never see a called strike on a pitch in the dirt. I think the default is to call a ball, unless the pitch does enough convincing, and there are limits to that. Still, one post has to be followed by the other. Writing about the worst called ball means I have to write about the worst called strike. That’s below, and I’m sorry it isn’t more visually hilarious, but this is still the worst of something, over seven months of baseball, and the devil is in the details. The devil loves details.

The second-worst called strike of the season? I’ve already written that up, because it was the worst called strike of the season’s first half. It was a lefty strike, thrown by Max Scherzer to Odubel Herrera to open a ballgame. The pitch measured 11 inches away from the nearest part of the strike zone.

Unsurprisingly, the worst called strike of the whole season is similar, in that it’s a lefty strike away off the plate. Over time, we’ve grown kind of used to the lefty strikes getting called, but the thing about this is lefty strikes are balls. The zone shouldn’t extend off the plate in either direction, for anyone, but it has and it does, and hitters have to live with that. The second-worst called strike was 11 inches away from the zone. The worst called strike was 12 inches away from the zone. That’s 9% worse. Pretty big gap when you’re at an extreme.

The good news is nobody cared.

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Sam Fuld was checking out his FanGraphs page the other day, and noticed that he’s a fairly fast-paced guy at the plate. He produced in 2011 the 36th-fastest pace between that season and the present one (minimum 300 plate appearances), and he’s the 20th-fastest paced batter this year. He also noticed something about the guys around him. “They’re all slap hitters!” he told me before a game against the Rangers.

He wondered if pace was correlated to power, and if this slower pace came through the mechanism of confidence. “I’m the star here,” he said, mimicking a step back out of the box and a shrug of the shoulders that’s a little foreign to the Athletics outfielder with 12 career home runs spread over nine years and 1500-plus plate appearances.

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“Until you step outside of it, you don’t realize how special it is,” Barry Zito said on the field in Oakland, nostalgia in his voice and touch of grey his hair. He was reminiscing about what it was like to have three homegrown young starters peaking at the same time, back when he joined Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder in dominating the American League.

The parallels in Cincinnati are not immediately obvious, nor are they perfectly similar. Anthony DeSclafani, Raisel Iglesias, and John Lamb probably won’t turn into the next Big Three, and they aren’t necessarily all homegrown in the stricter definition of the word.

And yet… standing there on that field, listening to Zito talk and thinking of writing this piece, a little dreaming was possible. Could those three young Reds be the backbone of a strong staff as soon as next year? Just look at them sitting there atop the rookie leaderboards.

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“I don’t care about hitting home runs, I don’t care about any of that sort of stuff,” Joey Votto told me when I mentioned the stat. “I care about improving all of the facets of my game that can be repeatable and that age well.” And really, as great as his season has been this year, no quote better sums up the strides he’s made.

One things we know that ages terribly is contact on pitches outside of the zone (O-Contact%). It drops off the table quickly after 29.

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In years past, I’ve looked at players who might win the Comeback Player of the Year Award. I don’t know why, but I just like this award. It sort of gets lost in the shuffle of awards season. It’s usually a feel-good story. I’ve felt like it is interesting to put some statistical context to the award. This year is no different. I never did last year’s post, but I did this in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The methodology remains the same as it did in previous iterations. From the 2013 post:

Just like last year, the criteria is a player who posted 2.5 WAR or less last year, and has posted at least 1.0 WAR this year. Then I cull the list. The general standard is for a player to have roughly 2.0 more WAR this year than last, but this year I’m making an exception for catchers (roughly 1.5 WAR) and relief pitchers (roughly 1.0 WAR), as WAR may not be as fair to them as it is to others.

From there, we have to decide who is really making a comeback. Sometimes, guys just make the leap, or were never really good to begin with. But first, some honorable mentions.

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Talking to Erasmo Ramirez is refreshing. He always has a smile on his face. Life is fun for him — especially now. He’s having the best season of his career in Tampa Bay. It turns out that changing the use of his slider has been a big part of that success. And certain aspects of his slider may provide a roadmap for other pitchers that should make the same move.

His best pitch is his changeup — “it’s the best one to take me out of troubles,” the pitcher admitted to me — but it’s not good enough to throw every single time. “I try to stay away from it, and show the hitters I’m going to throw every pitch I have in my arsenal,” Ramirez said of his pitching mix.

The grip for the change thrown by Erasmo Ramirez, which has the seventh-best swinging strike rate in baseball (min. 400).

The breaking balls haven’t been great. Even as Tony Blengino waxed positively on the pitcher recently, he admitted that “his breaking balls needed reps” coming up. Ramirez this year has been using his curve less (“I’ve been trying to stay away from it, unless I have it rolling.”) but a key change in his slider usage has been huge.

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Owen just wrote about the fact that Joey Votto is having a fantastic season on a team that isn’t fantastic. That’s not exactly what Votto would prefer — on some level, every player has to be selfish, but Votto, like everyone, wants to be on a winner. One benefit of playing for a winner: winning is fun. Another benefit of playing for a winner: winners get attention. Votto is having an MVP-caliber year, but because of the team built around him, he’s putting his season together in almost total silence, which is greatly unfortunate. His overall numbers are outstanding. And his more recent numbers are almost inconceivable.

Maybe you’ve seen some of these; maybe you haven’t. If you saw some of these a few weeks ago, it’s not like Votto has slowed down. I’ll concede that splitting at the All-Star break is mostly arbitrary, but if we do that, then what’s revealed is nuts. It’s not just the categories that Votto’s leading. It’s the extent by which he’s in front. Over the last several weeks, Votto’s posted the highest walk rate in baseball, by eight percentage points. He’s posted the highest wOBA in baseball, by 69 points. He’s posted the highest OBP in baseball, by 101 points. Since about the time the All-Star Game rolled around, we’ve seen a player go the full Votto. The output is bewildering. We can see what’s happened. What’s driven what’s been happening?

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With September here, it’s easy to forget about what’s going on with teams toward the bottom of the standings. The rosters have expanded, prospects are getting looks for the teams who are out of contention, and most articles are about playoff races and potential postseason happenings. There’s one issue with overlooking the cellar-dwellers, however: Joey Votto — who is on one of those dwellers — is having a historically great year, and that merits attention.

2015 could easily be the year that forgot about Votto. The Cincinnati Reds are in last place, the NL MVP conversation has been dominated by Bryce Harper since the first month of the season (for good reason), and a number of chronically unsuccessful franchises are looking like they’re headed to the playoffs. This late stage of the season provides a great opportunity to gauge the strength of the storylines during the past few months of baseball, and 2015 has been anything but a disappointment; quite the opposite, in fact.

That makes Votto’s 2015 strangely interesting. In a season that includes the Cubs and Mets succeeding, possibly the best rookie class ever, and a Bryce Harper mega-breakout, Votto is quietly having one of the best offensive seasons for a last place team since 1969, when the divisional era began.

Let’s investigate. First, it’s important to put Votto’s season in context. I’ve pulled the 25-best offensive seasons by wRC+ (a metric that captures a player’s overall offensive output compared to league average) since the year 2000; Votto’s 2015 season currently ranks 19th overall. Take a look:

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Two seasons ago, I ranked the job security of each general manager and listed GM prospects. I think I did a pretty good job with both lists given what we knew at the time, and may do it again as Opening Day 2016 closes in. We’ve had less executive movement in the last few off-seasons than usual and it looks like the regression is happening this year, with four GM jobs currently open and a likely fifth coming soon. This seemed like a good time to cover each of the situations in flux and target some possible changes in the near future, along with some names to keep in mind as candidates to fill these openings.

The Open GM Spots
We have two teams without a top baseball decision-making executive, in Seattle and Milwaukee:

Mariners
The Mariners moved on from (now former) GM Jack Zduriencik recently, a long-rumored move that club president Kevin Mather admitted he waited too long to execute. Mather has said they’re looking for a replacement sooner than later (likely eliminating execs from playoff teams), with GM experience (eliminating most of the GM prospects you’ll see below), and that the team doesn’t require a rebuild (meaning a shorter leash and higher expectations from day one). This should prove to narrow the pool of candidates a good bit, but this is still seen as the best of the currently open jobs.

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Less than two months ago, some of the game’s best players gathered in Cincinnati to participate in the Midsummer Classic. The game featured Mike Trout being Mike Trout and Jacob deGrom looking like he was ready to graduate to a better league. The night before, Major League Baseball rolled out a new Home Run Derby format that was met with near universal approval. It certainly helped that hometown favorite, Todd Frazier, captured the title.

The derby was something of an emergence for Frazier. While he was coming off a 4.7 WAR season in 2014 and accumulated  11.1 WAR in 1,846 plate appearances between 2011 and 2014, the 29-year-old still carried one of those “underrated because he plays in a small market” weights around his neck. Frazier was a very good player before 2015; our ZiPS/Steamer blend gave him a 3 WAR projection based on average defense at third base, and a 112 projected wRC+.

In your head, you’re probably thinking that projection feels light. Frazier was riding in after a season just short of 5 WAR and was still on the right side of 30. But entering the year, Frazier had a 112 career wRC+ and had never topped 121. Essentially, every facet of his game profiled as average — with the exception of his power. His power looked be above average, but short of great. Then the first half of 2015 happened.

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