It’s that time of year again – with just a few weeks left in the season, baseball writers are turning their focus to the postseason awards, and as usual, the MVP races are the ones that are going to get the most attention. In the NL, the conversation is mostly about finding ways to make sure that Ryan Braun doesn’t win his second straight trophy, with Buster Posey stepping up to provide BBWAA members the out that they so desperately want. Over in the AL, there hasn’t been as much discussion for most of the summer, as Mike Trout has been running laps around the rest of the contenders, making it hard to put together any kind of realistic argument for a non-Trout candidate.

However, Miguel Cabrera is having a monstrous September, hitting .373/.426/.797 over the last couple of weeks, and now that he’s taken the lead in both batting average and runs batted, the talk of a potential “triple crown” has breathed life into his candidacy. Jon Morosi went so far as to call the decision to give Cabrera the award “a formality” and say that it’s “obvious” that Cabrera is the right choice. Instead of engaging in a hyperbole-off, however, let’s actually investigate the actual differences between them this season and see whether the case for Cabrera actually stands up to logic and reason.

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There exists the perception that the Detroit Tigers are just this total disappointment. The Tigers, you’ll recall, came into the year looking like the favorites in the AL Central, and now it’s the middle of September and they’re three back of first. They’re about as far out of the wild card as the Padres are, which means for the Tigers it’s probably division title or bust. They won’t play the leading White Sox again down the stretch. Many thought the Tigers would be able to coast to the playoffs, and now the Tigers are fighting for their very playoff lives.

Truthfully, I’d say it’s less about the Tigers being surprising, and more about the White Sox being surprising. Major media types liked the Tigers because of their stars, but check out those linked projections above. Statistically, the Tigers didn’t look like an elite team, and they’re on pace to win 85 games. People just didn’t expect for the White Sox to give them such a push.

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Rick Porcello throws a slider. He doesn’t throw it very often, but when he does, the results are typically disastrous. You might be able to work in a not-very-great pitch if everything else you had in your repertoire was overwhelming, but for the ground-balling Porcello, that’s just not the case.

But let me step back a moment. Rick Porcello is having a very Rick Porcello-like season, which, objectively, is just a wee bit better than your average starter. His 4.57 ERA is spot on with his career 4.55, his 3.82 FIP is the lowest of his career, and he’s striking out more batters than he has in his career with a 13.6% strikeout rate. Peachy.

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The Tigers’ projected domination of the 2012 American League Central never quite came off. However, after a disappointing first couple of months that saw them below .500, the Tigers have been winning ever since. They were looking forward to this weekend’s showdown at home in Detroit with the division-leading White Sox. Detroit was only two games back.. All they had to do was get through the three-game series with the Royals in Kansas City in order to set themselves up. Sure, Anibel Sanchez had been mostly terrible since coming to the Tigers, and Rick Porcello was having yet another disappointing season (at least in terms of ERA), but they were matched up against Bruce Chen and Jeremy Guthrie, respectively. No way the Tigers offense doesn’t light those guys up, right? If that wasn’t enough, Justin Verlander was matched up against Luis Mendoza.

According to Cool Standings’ “Smart” standings, going into the series in KC the Tigers had a 32 percent chance of winning the division and 61.4 percent chance of making the playoffs. A series win in KC would set them up nicely going into the weekend and for a shot at the playoffs generally. Things didn’t exactly work out that way. The Tigers got swept. As of today, the “smart” standings have Detroit down to a 40 percent chance of making the playoffs. What?

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We’re only three days from the expansion of major league rosters. On Sept. 1, all players on a team’s 40-man roster will be eligible to play in the big leagues without an accompanying move. Often times, baseball fans are treated to a sneak preview of teams’ top minor league talent as a result of September call-ups; or they’re surprised by a relatively unknown player who manages to contribute over the season’s final month.

In preparation for this year’s roster expansion, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the greatest-ever September call-ups, defined here as players that made their major league debut during the month of September.

There are, of course, two ways to look at this: The first is to look at players — position players and pitchers — who generated the most value for their clubs during their call-up. The second is to look at players whose careers began as a September call-up and then went on to have great careers.

I’m looking at both. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 232
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• The recent Mega Deal™ between Boston and Los Angeles.
• More about that same Mega Deal™.
• Max Scherzer, his performance from Max Scherzer Schunday.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 26 min. play time.)

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At the end of May, when his seasonal numbers were still pretty ugly, Max Scherzer was interviewed by our own David Laurila. At the time, people were puzzled by Scherzer’s high strikeout rate (12 per nine innings) accompanied by a very high ERA (5.67). In the interview, Scherzer acknowledges the problems he has had, and does not use BABIP “luck” as an excuse. But he also says that “My stuff, right now, is where I want it to be.”

That may have seemed a bit cocky coming from a pitcher with a 5.67 ERA. But after April’s 7.77 ERA mess, Scherzer’s performance as measured by ERA, at least, has improved each month: 4.04 in May, 3.86 in June, 3.62 in July, and 2.25 so far in August. All the problems of ERA are exacerbated by dividing an already spartial-season sample into months, but it does catch the eye. Did Scherzer change something that spurred the improvement, or is this just the vicissitudes of in-season variation striking again?

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In a start earlier Thursday, Justin Verlander just abused the Blue Jays for nine innings. In fairness to the Blue Jays, theirs was a lineup missing Jose Bautista, J.P. Arencibia, and Brett Lawrie, and it was a lineup with Omar Vizquel batting sixth and Jeff Mathis batting seventh, but outside of one pitch Verlander cruised, as he’s so often cruised. He threw another nine frames, with another dozen strikeouts and another paltry two runs allowed. Verlander is a leading Cy Young candidate, and every time he takes the mound, you expect him to do something not unlike this.

What Verlander has done is build a reputation of being perhaps the most consistent starter in baseball. He’s not just excellent; he’s routinely excellent, and a Google search for “Justin Verlander” + “consistent” yields nearly a million results. Of course, a Google search for “A.J. Burnett” + “consistent” yields more than 700,000 results so maybe this isn’t good science. Look at the performance record. I can’t pinpoint the precise moment that Justin Verlander became Justin Verlander, but it’s easy to put it somewhere between 2008 and 2009. Since 2009, Verlander hasn’t posted a FIP below 2.80 or above 2.99. He hasn’t posted an xFIP below 3.12 or above 3.52. He keeps starting and he keeps thriving. He keeps on being Justin Verlander.

Statistically, one can’t deny that Verlander has been consistent, nor should one want to. Perhaps consistency isn’t predictive, but we can identify it in retrospect. On the surface, Justin Verlander has hardly changed at all. Yet it’s interesting to see what turns up when you dig.

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When Doug Fister broke into the big leagues, he was a soft-tossing, pitch-to-contact change-up artist, who threw strikes with mediocre stuff and projected as a back-of-the-rotation innings eater or a bullpen guy. He wasn’t bad, but the lack of a quality breaking ball and his reliance on his change as an out-pitch meant that he didn’t have anything to strike out right-handed batters with, and he wasn’t generating as many groundballs as you’d expect from a 6’8 guy with good command. Over his first year and change in the big leagues in 2009-2010, he was basically the definition of average, running a 102 ERA-/99 FIP-/99 xFIP- in 232 innings. He limited walks and avoided home runs, so he looked like any member of the Twins rotation over the prior 10 years. Nothing wrong with that, but certainly not a lot of upside beyond strike-throwing middle-of-the-rotation guy.

Then, last year, Fister began to change. His velocity picked up, and instead of topping out at 91-92, he started hitting 93-94 with regularity. By the end of 2011, his average fastball was over 90 mph, up two full ticks over his 2010 average. At the same time, he began to rely less on his fastball/change-up combo, and increased his breaking ball usage, especially against right-handed batters. The increased velocity and pitch mix led to a spike in his strikeout rate, which jumped from 12.9% to 16.7%. In fact, he ended the year with a 28% strikeout rate in September, looking nothing like the pitch-to-contact guy who showed up a few years earlier.

This year, the velocity has regressed back to previous norms — perhaps due to a costochondral strain that landed him on the DL twice — but the strikeout rate has still taken yet another leap forward. Once again, Fister has reduced his reliance on his fastball, and now he’s featuring his curve ball more than ever before. In his start against the Yankees yesterday, he snapped 25 curveballs, 15 of which went for strikes. This big bending curve has now become his #2 pitch, and its effectiveness has been the driving force beyond his second drastic increase in strikeout rate.

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There’s a distinction to be made between the terms “power hitter” and “hitter with power.”

The former typically lives and dies with three true outcomes — maybe only two if they lack discipline. Adam Dunn perfectly represents this group, a hitter who would be nothing without his ability to mash the ball 500 feet. Jose Bautista has other skills, but driving fly balls out of the park tends to define his performance. Other examples include Carlos Pena, Russell Branyan, Mark Reynolds.

And then you have the hitters with power. These are the guys the scouts note for their “hit tool” first and their mammoth power second. They can do it all — make contact, draw a few walks, and it just so happens that when they make contact the ball goes pretty far too. Think David Wright, Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, Robinson Cano, Ryan Braun.

Prince Fielder broke into the majors as a power hitter. He struck out often thanks to his uppercut, all-or-nothing swing. But over the last few years, we’ve seen him reshape himself as a hitter with power.

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