Last year, the AL MVP debate turned into something resembling a culture war, with Miguel Cabrera representing the traditional methods of player evaluation while Mike Trout was the darling of the sabermetric community. In the final tally, Cabrera won in a landslide, receiving 22 of the 28 first place votes, but Trout and Cabrera were #1 and #2 on 27 of the 28 ballots submitted, with Trout sliding to third on just one ballot. While there was disagreement over which of the two was more valuable, there was broad consensus that they represented a tier unto themselves, with everyone else looking up to their excellence.

Well, it’s happening again. If you pull up the leaderboard for American League hitters, there’s Mike Trout at #1 (+6.9 WAR), followed more closely than last year by Miguel Cabrera at #2 (+6.4 WAR). While Trout blew away the field by WAR last year, Cabrera’s having an even better season in 2013 than he did a year ago, while Trout is just a little shy of last year’s remarkable pace. This year, instead of the big gap in WAR being between Trout and Cabrera, the gap is between Trout/Cabrera and everyone else; Chris Davis, at +5.1 WAR, is a distant third.

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Cleveland crushed Chicago 6-1 yesterday, largely due to Chicago’s year-long inability to get anything going on offense and Ryan Raburn’s huge day. The domination of Chicago’s terrible hitting was not all that unusual, but Raburn’s performance was awesome. He had three hits, including two home runs, driving in four. More impressively, two of those hits (and one of those homers) came against Chris Sale. However bad the White Sox’ offense is, Sale has been the opposite of that as a starting pitcher since the beginning of last season.

One might point out that Raburn has always hit much better versus southpaws. Still, it is not as if Sale is a left-handed version of, well, Justin Masterson. Raburn was put in a position to succeed and has been used quite well this year by Terry Francona, who had enough confidence to have Raburn hit third yesterday against one of the American League’s best pitchers.

Raburn has been a great pickup for Cleveland, who right in the wildcard hunt. Inspired by Raburn’s big day and season, let’s take a closer look at him and two other part-timers, Mike Carp and Eric Chavez, who have provided very good value in part-time platoon roles.

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Earlier Tuesday, a lot of the talk was about whether or not the Red Sox ought to go for it and trade for Cliff Lee. Lee, of course, is an ace, a rare breed, but he’s also paid like one, and reports suggested the Phillies were holding out for a wheelbarrow of prospect talent, along with complete contract assumption. People occupied both sides of the conversation, but it didn’t look like a wise idea for the Sox, given how much they’d have to give up for one individual shorter-term interest. The Red Sox really wanted a starter, but they also really wanted to not give up their top-level young talent. It was up to them to find a way.

Later Tuesday, the Red Sox got their good starter. According to reports, the Red Sox and White Sox couldn’t work out a straight-up Jake Peavy trade, but then they got the Tigers involved and a deal was struck. Peavy is off to the other Sox, while the Tigers are up one Jose Iglesias and the White Sox are up one Avisail Garcia. And, of course, there are some other bits. The complete summary:

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While the Tigers had been pegged by the media as buyers of expensive proven closers, Dave Dombrowski just ignored the high profile end of the relief market and found a much better value in Jose Veras, who they acquired from the Astros today for outfield prospect Danry Vasquez and a player to be named later.

While he isn’t a big name, Veras has quietly turned into a very effective reliever. In 43 innings this year, opposing batters have a .265 wOBA against him. For comparison, hitters have a .266 wOBA against Yu Darvish, a .269 wOBA against Stephen Strasburg, a .270 wOBA against Adam Wainwright, and a .274 wOBA against Felix Hernandez. Sure, it’s easier to pitch in relief, so this isn’t exactly apples to apples, but it at least gives you an idea of the level that Veras has pitched at.

If you want a reliever-to-reliever comparison, well, how about this one?

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Rick Porcello has changed his pitching mix this year. Most noticeably, he’s ditched his cutter for a curveball. The move was done for a variety of reasons, but the work continues to this day. Because even once you make a change, you have to work hard to maintain it.

The Tiger starter told me that he “really dedicated” himself to working on his curve this offseason, mostly because the cutter/slider “wasn’t really working.” Since it moves left to right, it cuts right into the meat of the plate for lefties. “The curveball is a more effective pitch to left-handers, which is something I struggle with,” Porcello admitted to me before his team played the White Sox in Chicago this week. Over his career, the pitcher has allowed lefties lower strikeout and grounder rates and higher walk rates than he has allowed to righties.

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The last time I wrote about Edge% it was in the context of the Tampa Bay Rays using it to get their pitchers into more favorable counts on 1-1. But now I want to take that topic and drill a little deeper to understand how often edge pitches are taken for called strikes.

Overall, pitches taken on the edge are called strikes 69% of the time. But that aggregate measure hides some pretty substantial differences. Going further on that idea, I wanted to see how the count impacts the likelihood of a pitch on the edge being called a strike.

Here are the results:

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Some years ago, when they were up-and-coming instead of bad, Yuniesky Betancourt and Jose Lopez were both Seattle Mariners. The Mariners are well known for their advertising campaigns, and in one they pitched Betancourt and Lopez as the “double play twins,” middle infielders who did everything together, both on and off the field. Betancourt and Lopez, at the time, had a lot in common. Today, they continue to have a lot in common, which is too bad. But they were teammates, and they were sold as a pair.

A much better pair of teammates today includes Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder. The two are commonly discussed as a duo, as they make up perhaps baseball’s most intimidating lineup core. Cabrera and Fielder are supposed to do some things together, like crush baseballs. In the third inning on Saturday, for example, they slugged back-to-back dingers. What they’re not supposed to do together is steal. Cabrera and Fielder, combined, have fewer career steals than John Kruk. But, Sunday afternoon, the two pulled off a most unlikely double steal, and this demands to be investigated.

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Justin Verlander was excellent yesterday against Toronto, throwing seven shutout innings en route to the Tigers’ 11-1 demolition of the Blue Jays. He was not quite as dominant as the Verlander of 2011 and 2012, but that is a pretty high standard. Actually, the 2013 Verlander has not really measured up to that standard all year. Verlander won both the Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player in the American League in 2011, then was just as good in 2012. He pitched a cumulative total of 489 and a third innings and had a 2.52 ERA during those seasons.

By reasonable standards, Verlander’s 3.54 ERA and 112 innings pitched at the halfway point of the 2013 season is very good. By his own recent standards (as well as that being set by his 2013 rotation mates Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez), it is somewhat disappointing. It is not that Verlander’s 2013 is bad in itself, and it is hardly the Tigers’ main main problem — that would be the bullpen (solution: move Verlander to the ‘pen!). Still, Verlander’s apparent decline might concern some people. My intention is not so much to evaluate Verlander’s current true talent or possible health problems, but to put his recent performance in historical perspective relative to pitchers with similar stretches of success.

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Last year, we were pro-Mike Trout. The AL MVP debate pitted the Triple Crown against overall performance, and we came down on the side of evaluating players by things other than batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Unfortunately, being pro-Mike Trout meant that we were perceived to be inherently anti-Miguel Cabrera. It’s not that we had anything against Cabrera, but he became the personification of The Other Side. In order to help explain why Trout was better, we had to point out where Cabrera was deficient relative to the guy we supported. It’s the nature of comparisons, but it’s not always fair to the guys being compared, especially when picking between multiple great players while trying to decide which one happened to be the greatest.

This post is not a comparison. This post is just about Miguel Cabrera, and appreciating how good he actually is, because as a follow-up to his Triple Crown season, Cabrera’s 2013 season is shaping up to be his best season yet, and one of the best offensive seasons in baseball history.

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You know who sucks at hitting? Pitchers. Boy, they just really suck. Pretty much always have, probably always will. Sure, every so often, a random pitcher will run into one and blast a dinger out of nowhere. But the same could be said of Munenori Kawasaki (now), and while pitchers aren’t automatic outs, they’re as close as you’re going to get to automatic outs in a regular major-league baseball game. Maybe this calls for a reminder that pitchers only suck relative to big-league position players. They’re better at hitting than us. But their numbers are always deplorable, and we don’t always have to be all fair-like. When a pitcher bats in a rally, you assume that the rally is over.

The designated hitter became a thing in 1973, following various proposals. From that point on, pitchers stopped hitting in the American League, while they continued hitting in the National League. In the previous sentence I have explained the most basic of rules. Thus, NL pitchers faced a lot of pitchers, while AL pitchers didn’t, even after the advent of interleague play. Unsurprisingly, then, since the DH came into existence, NL pitchers have posted a higher strikeout rate than AL pitchers. They’ve posted a higher strikeout rate every single season.

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