Let us acknowledge, with the 2012 regular season drawing to a close, that there’s been a fun debate surrounding the American League Most Valuable Player award. If not fun, then — at the very least — interesting. Let us acknowledge that there was a time at which it looked like voters would really, deeply, have to think. Let us now acknowledge that, with the Tigers probably going to the playoffs and the Angels probably not going to the playoffs, there’s probably going to be a little less thought, at least for some. It looked like we were going to have a rare contest between two guys not playing extra baseball, but now it’s looking like no such luck.

It’s all about Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera, with Adrian Beltre being the subject of the occasional whisper. Pretty much everybody I’ve read has an opinion one way or the other; I suppose without an opinion, one probably wouldn’t be writing. Trout has many of the overall season numbers on his side, and the Cabrera argument wouldn’t have so much steam if it weren’t for his torrid offense down the stretch when the Tigers have needed it most. Cabrera, they say, has stepped up while Trout has stepped back, and these have been the most meaningful games. And that’s why Cabrera is deserving of consideration, at the very least.

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As it happens, we were at Doug Fister’s major-league debut. By “we” I mean myself, Dave Cameron, and some hundreds of USS Mariner and Lookout Landing readers. We weren’t there specifically for Fister; we were there for a blog event and a game, and Fister just happened to pitch in it. He pitched after Sean White, who pitched after Garrett Olson, who pitched after Chris Jakubauskas, who pitched after Ian Snell. The Mariners did not win that game.

Fister’s debut drew a modest response, because it’s always cool to see a guy play for the first time, and because the Safeco PA system uttered the name “Doug Fister” for the first time. But nobody had attended in the hopes of seeing Doug Fister pitch, because Fister was generally considered a no-stuff non-prospect. He could conceivably fill out the back of a bullpen or serve as rotation depth, sure, maybe, but he wasn’t thought of as someone to get excited over. Fister debuted in August 2009. All these sentences bring us to this:

It’s been a weird ride.

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Science is neat. In many scientific experiments, you can run trials, generate results, slightly change the conditions, run trials, and generate other results. Then you can compare those results to measure the effect of the change that you made. I used to work in a neuroscience lab with fruit flies, and one of the first projects to which I was assigned attempted to measure the draw of potential mates against the draw of fresh food. Without going into detail, we were constantly futzing with the method and seeing what happened to the numbers in the end. It was not a very good experiment and it never came close to getting published. At least there were usually donuts.

Baseball isn’t like science. In baseball, there is but one trial, and it’s always going on. We can speculate about the effects of certain things, and we can feel pretty confident about our speculations, but we can never know for sure. We can never know for sure how many wins above replacement a player is or was worth. We can never know for sure the significance of a borderline pitch call. And we might never know the meaning of a play that Alex Gordon made in Detroit Wednesday evening.

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While I wrote most of what I had to say about the AL MVP discussion a few days ago, I do have one more question I want to ask – what’s so different about Cabrera this season compared to 2010?

Most of the case for Cabrera’s candidacy rests upon the idea that he’s having an historic offensive performance, and that denying him the award would be some kind of historical injustice. But, if we look at his 2012 season and his 2010 season side by side, can we really make the case that this year is all that different from what he did two years ago?

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There has been a lot of banter about the Most Valuable Player Award this week. While the National League has an even field with multiple candidates, it’s the American League — with  Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera — that’s gotten most of the attention.

At the center of the debate is baseball’s triple crown, an incredibly rare achievement that is within reach for Cabrera. The fact that Trout is going to finish with the better season, regardless, has led many to pooh-pooh the fact that Cabrera has the chance to become just the 14th player since 1901 to win the elusive title. And while the triple crown in and of itself doesn’t signify greatness, it has only been won by great players. And most often, the league’s best player has won it.

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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 »