It has been a fun and exciting week of awards and the debates around them. Now it is time to get serious. We have just finished celebrating the best players of the 2012 season, whether or not one agrees with those officially recognized as such. Snarky jerks (present writer very much included) have had fun at the expense of the worst. Only one task remains: acknowledging those in the middle, the most average position players of 2012. One might think this is no big deal. I disagree. Isn’t the bulls-eye right in the middle of the target?

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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So much of what makes pitchers effective at the major league level is their ability to keep hitters off-balance. Sure, a 95 mph fastball with movement and a Lord Charles curveball help, but even these physical tools are only as effective as a pitcher’s ability to create uncertainly in the hitters mind from pitch to pitch.

One — admittedly crude — way of looking at this is whether a pitcher throws the type of pitch that’s expected in a given count. Does a pitcher throw fastballs in “fastball counts”, or do they throw off-speed pitches? Pitchers that throw counter to expectations are often said to “pitch backwards”. The Rays’ James Shields is someone that has been referenced as such a pitcher over the past few years.

But exactly how backwards does Shields pitch? And who are some other pitchers that fit into this category?

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That’s right: end of the season, time for me to hand out awards based on semi-goofy. questionable stats. Along with the Carter-Batista Award, this is one of the first I started publishing.. In fact, my very first post at FanGraphs (three years this week! Time flies when you’re wasting it.) back in 2009 was a King of Little Things award presentation. You can also check out the 2010 and 2011 versions for the thrilling results. So which 2012 hitter contributed to most his teams wins in ways not measurable by traditional linear weights?

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The trade and free agent markets are flush with competent centerfielders this offseason. While Josh Hamilton and Michael Bourn are the marquee free agents, the second, third and even fourth tiers of conceivably available centerfielders features players capable of starting for many teams.

B.J. Upton is the most frequently mentioned player after Hamilton and Bourn. Angel Pagan — perhaps the most underrated player in the game — has also garnered plenty of attention in recent weeks. Before getting traded to Oakland, Chris Young was gaining recognition as a potential trade target, and his arrival could put Coco Crisp back on the market. The Angels’ Peter Bourjos plays the position better than mostly everyone in baseball, but he’s blocked by perhaps the best player in the game. Shane Victorino presents an interesting case — as one of the best all-around players at the position — but one who is getting older and coming off of one of his worst seasons.

Denard Span isn’t discussed as much as a potential trade target, but he combines some of the best attributes of everyone mentioned above: He fields the position terrifically, he’s a very good baserunner, he has a high career walk rate and a wRC+ 5% better than the league. He’s also signed to a team-friendly contract.

There’s certainly risk in acquiring him — his health has been questionable during the last two seasons — and the Twins will surely look to bring back a significant haul. But he’s also an underrated player, and he represents the type of cost-effective option teams wary of the Hamilton’s, Bourn’s and Upton’s should seriously pursue.

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I have finally had enough time to muddle through the 2012 MLB transaction data and have compiled a complete disabled list (DL) data set for the year(second link). Let’s get right to the data.

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The chapter began with the Minnesota Twins signing Tsuyoshi Nishioka to be a starting middle infielder. Two years later, the chapter ends with the Twins releasing Nishioka at his own request. There remained another year and some millions of dollars on Nishioka’s contract, but Nishioka has chosen to forfeit all of that and walk away. Reports say the news didn’t come as a surprise to the Twins organization, and, clearly, just from reading this paragraph, it’s evident that things didn’t go how they were supposed to go at the start.

There was promise, once. In Japan, Nishioka won awards for his defensive work. In 2010, he led his league in hits. That year Patrick Newman liked Nishioka as his Pacific League MVP. Obviously, the Twins thought they were getting a pretty good player. In Japan in 2010, Nishioka batted .346/.423/.482. In Japan in 2010, Norichika Aoki batted .358/.435/.509. With the Brewers, Aoki’s been successful. With the Twins, Nishioka was a nightmare.

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Lost in all the hoopla created by Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera’s run at the Triple Crown, and the various pennant races is the fact that Joe Mauer is having another amazing season. He currently leads all of baseball with a .414 OBP and has what feels like the quietest 141 wRC+ in baseball history. He is seeing more and more time at first base and DH these days (only 70 starts behind the plate this year), but that’s an amazing offensive effort regardless of position. It’s part of the reason why his performance on Wednesday afternoon is so noteworthy.

The 29-year-old Mauer has now played 1,059 games in his big league career, and on only six occasions has he struck out three (or more) times in a single game. Two of those six games came back in 2005, which was essentially his rookie season after the knee injury in 2004. Another came in 2007, another in 2009 (his only career four-strikeout game), and two this year. Ryan Dempster got him three times during interleague play back in July, and yesterday CC Sabathia struck him out in each of his first three at-bats. That’s not all: those three strikeouts came on nine total pitches.

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Of all the big Tuesday night games, perhaps none was bigger than the barn burner in Minnesota between the Twins and the Royals. The Twins failed in their quest for that elusive 60th win, and the Royals solidified their grip on third place in this 9-1 thriller. Some might say the game was not compelling, but I found at least two things that drew my attention in the first inning alone: a failed bunt and a failed steal. When these plays first happened, I found each a source of irritation and I planned on writing that up. However, after looking a bit more closely, things were not so clear cut, and I thought it would be even more interesting (to me, at least) to write that up.

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“I love his upside. If he can harness his fastball, throw a few more strikes, he’s got a chance to be pretty good. Guys have a tough time squaring up balls against him; it’s tough to make solid contact. When you see some of the reaction of some of the hitters, I don’t think there’s any fluke about it.” — Ryan Doumit on Samuel Deduno

Few things are inevitable in baseball. Preseason favorites fail to deliver postseason destinies, future Hall of Famers go through prolonged slumps both at the plate and on the mound, and under-the-radar prospects burst onto the big league stage and become household names in a matter of weeks. It’s one of the main reasons we so passionately follow the game.

As of mid-August, though, perhaps nothing seemed so inevitable as the downfall of right-hander Samuel Deduno.

The 29-year-old journeyman began his season in Triple-A Rochester for the Minnesota Twins — his third team over the past three years — and eventually worked his way into the big league rotation. He took advantage of the opportunity by only allowing eight earned runs in his first 29 innings, winning three of his first five decisions and posting a 2.48 ERA. Given the state of the Twins’ starting staff, that type of production secured him a permanent place in the rotation for the remainder of the season.

Plenty of reasons for concern existed, however. Our very own Mike Podhorzer outlined why Deduno was unlikely to continue his early success on the mound, which largely centered around his lack of command. He has historically struggled to command his pitches — particularly his fastball — and that resulted in an astronomical walk rate. Even today, his walk rate currently stands at 5.45 BB/9. Far too high for a guy who possesses a below-average strikeout rate.

Almost a month later, Deduno’s statistics continue to defy common sense. His 1.12 K/BB ratio currently ranks seventh-worst in the league amongst starting pitchers who have thrown at least fifty pitches this season. He owns a 5.06 FIP and 4.93 SIERA. His 80.3% strand rate continues to beg for a regression.

Yet, instead of experiencing a tremendous regression of his skills on the mound, Samuel Deduno has shown marked improvement in recent starts. He has only surrendered four earned runs in his last three starts (spanning 20 innings), while striking out 19 and only walking six. And as his catcher Ryan Doumit said in the quotation above, success for the right-hander begins with throwing more strikes.

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