Historically speaking, pitchers don’t win MVP awards — or don’t win them often, at least. There are exceptions to the rule, but the honor historically has been reserved for a league’s top position player. The logic among voters generally follows a couple recognizable lines of reasoning. Pitchers don’t play every day, some voters argue. They have the Cy Young all to themselves, say others. Whatever the justification, the record reveals a preference for position players over pitchers. Consider: since reliever Dennis Eckersley won the American League MVP in 1992, only Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander have been recognized as their respective league’s most valuable player.

It’s possible that some voters aren’t using entirely sound logic to arrive at their conclusions. Even if they’re employing the wrong process, however, they’re still usually arriving at the correct result: pitchers simply aren’t the best players in their leagues all that often. Position players make an impact at the plate and on defense. They just have more opportunities to create value. Their roles give them a competitive advantage.

Or, they usually provide a competitive advantage. This season, however, that hasn’t been the case. This season, the best player in the National League is likely a pitcher. While a lot of obstacles stand between Jacob deGrom and an MVP award, he deserves consideration — and there’s a really good argument he deserves to win.

Before we get to the more compelling arguments in favor of deGrom’s MVP candidacy, it makes sense to entertain the less compelling ones, too. First among them is the Mets, who have been poor this year. While voters are explicitly told that the MVP needn’t come from a playoff team, voters have typically evaluated a player’s performance in the context of his team’s performance, the logic presumably being that the player in question has been an asset in the most important situations. While the Mets are heading for a high draft pick now, it would be unfair to say that deGrom hasn’t been pitching in meaningful games. Thanks to their strong start, the Mets’ postseason hopes were remained alive into mid-June. Even if you wanted to assess deGrom some sort of penalty for playing for a bad team — let’s say you discount his second-half WAR by 50% — he would still lead the National League by that measure. It’s also worth noting that deGrom leads all National League pitchers in win probability added. In the games he’s pitched, in other words, he has been incredibly helpful to the cause of potentially winning a game, even if the end result has been disappointing.

Ultimately, there will be voters who are dogmatic in their views on which players are eligible for the MVP award. To those who contend, for example, that pitchers oughtn’t win it or that it should go to a member of a playoff team, I have little to say other than the rules and ballot history suggest otherwise. For those who are prepared to entertain the possibility of such a thing, however, then Jacob deGrom has a really good case.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Trevor Story’s close call, then (9:04) bring on former MLB pitcher Michael Schwimer, the founder and CEO of Big League Advance, to talk about the mechanics and morality of giving money to minor leaguers in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings if they make the majors, why the company was the subject of a now-dropped lawsuit, the dilemma of low minor-league pay, why Michael maintains that BLA is helping players, BLA’s investment model and efforts to predict pitcher injuries, and Michael’s proposed solution to the rising strikeout rate. Lastly, Ben and Jeff review the interview and offer their thoughts on BLA, minor-league pay, and injury prediction.

Audio intro: Aerosmith, "Make It"
Audio interstitial: Neil Young, "Roger and Out"
Audio outro: Spinal Tap, "Gimme Some Money"

Link to Ken Rosenthal on BLA
Link to Jack Dickey on BLA
Link to Sheryl Ring on BLA
Link to Jonathan Perrin podcast episode

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Tuesday night, the Dodgers played a crucial game against the Rockies, and it was all tied at two in the top of the tenth. After Scott Alexander retired Charlie Blackmon to lead off, he was replaced by Dylan Floro, who was tasked with facing DJ LeMahieu and Nolan Arenado. After four pitches, Floro struck LeMahieu out. It happened on the following sinker:

After four more pitches, Floro struck Arenado out. The sequence included the following four-seamer:

And then it concluded with the following slider:

Floro’s time with the Dodgers hasn’t all been terrific. A month ago, Floro was on the mound when the Dodgers lost to the Mariners on a walk-off balk. That’s the kind of incident that can stick with you for a while. But, overall, Floro has been a stabilizing member of the bullpen since arriving in a midseason trade. The Dodgers have needed the help, and Floro has provided it, even though the trade with the Reds drew barely any attention. When Floro arrived, he was a ground-balling middle reliever. With a little bit of assistance, he’s become something more.

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I hope you will, in the service of a brief investigation into human worry, allow me to engage in some baseless speculation.

We tend to think of player decline as a gradual business. Guys get good, peak, turn 30, and then start to be less good. They lose a step on the basepaths, a tick on their fastball. The idea of making new friends wears them out. Their doctors tell them they just have to live with some uncomfortable stuff now. Any given player’s career might buck those trends, of course. Some fail to develop entirely, nary a peak to be found. Pitchers hurt their elbows and retire young; a designated hitter or two keeps trundling along past age-40. But most players have time to get used to the idea of being at home more.

Except, what if they didn’t? What if for a hitter, it weren’t an issue of injury, or being hit by a car, but the gift deciding, quite suddenly, to leave you? Poof! Gone! We know that isn’t how this stuff generally works. Players age or get hurt or someone better comes along; yips are a throwing dysfunction. But I have often wondered how much of a player’s reaction to any given strikeout is a concern that they will never get a hit again. That this is the first in a series of whiffs and groundouts and balls caught at the track that concludes with them no longer being baseball players. They could hit, and now, quite simply, they can’t.

To wit, Sandy Leon hasn’t had a hit since August 23. In 13 games and 30 plate appearances, he has walked just once and been hit by a pitch twice. He has a -73 wRC+ over that stretch. I watched the at-bats. It wasn’t screaming liners and vindictive BABIP. He has just been quite bad at baseball. He looks resigned. And I wonder how worried he is. I mean, of course he is worried, and probably a lot. He hasn’t played since Saturday. The Red Sox are in a great dream and he is trapped in a small nightmare. But I wonder when he has felt the most worried about this, this idea that he can’t hit anymore, this secret concern, and how worried he was.

You might think the low point was this past Saturday, when he struck out looking against the Mets’ Daniel Zamora, and his own broadcast spent much of the at-bat talking about the Cy Young chances of a pitcher who wasn’t pitching that day, or in the American League.

This was his last at-bat before being benched. He is probably 13 percent worried here. It has been a while. He’s in a bad way.

Or perhaps in the moment after he pointed to his hand so as to assert, yeah, Lucas Giolito had hit him with a pitch, such an obvious plea for and acceptance of charity. Here, 4%. Yes, he’s worried, but also, that hurt. He’s thinking mostly about how much it hurt. And feeling indignant that he was doubted. But also feeling that it hurt. Ouch.

Or perhaps on September 4, when he twice came to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs and twice failed to capitalize. Maybe 10%? That’s a lot of suck in a three hour span, but also, his team won. He was probably high-fived by his teammates at the end of it, though likely in a perfunctory way.

But I think the real answer is September 7, at home against Gerrit Cole. In the bottom of the fifth inning, Sandy struck out swinging, but reached base when the pitch skittered away from Martin Maldonado. This is 18% at least, and probably as high as 25.

He wants to be on first, needs it badly, but not like this. All that erased his failure was someone else’s worse stumble. Maybe there isn’t work as we understand it in a hit-by-pitch, but there is some sacrifice. There’s a dignity in it. Sandy was wounded in a trivial service. But a ball that gets away, a bit of luck that necessitates such a hard run down the line, telegraphing so strongly all his pent-up desperation, his concern he won’t speak of?

After it is clear that Leon is safe, first base coach Tom Goodwin puts out his hand for a fist bump, and there is just the smallest pause from Sandy, a pause in which I assume he looked his worry square on, wondered if he would ever reach base by a hit again, and considered not accepting Goodwin’s gesture. Fist bumps are for ballplayers, and what if suddenly he isn’t one of those anymore, only he doesn’t quite know it yet? Most of him probably moved on to running the bases. But I bet 18-25% didn’t.

…

The other day, my DVD player stopped working in the middle of a movie. I got it a year ago. Sandy Leon will almost certainly hit again. He might tonight! He’s a professional baseball player. He’ll get at least a few more chances. But I bet he is worried, at least 4% of him and maybe as much as 25. Sometimes things just crap out and take your copy of Tombstone with them.

In light of how individual humans not only possess unique genetic traits but are also exposed to a unique collection of experiences as young people and then less young people, it is not surprising to find that they also develop preferences that are distinct from those possessed by all the other humans around them. Some like the color red, for example, while others prefer green. Some enjoy the taste of cilantro, while others seem compelled to curse its existence. Some even appreciate the work of Canadian rock band Rush, while others are not my roommate Dan from college.

Despite the wide range of tastes possessed by the individual specimens of our dumb species, there do also appear to be some cases of general agreement. In some instances, the reasons are obvious. Humans tends to prefer temperatures in the vicinity of 70 degrees, probably, because anything much colder or much warmer actually becomes a health liability. In some instances, the reasons are more obscure, but the effects are detectable anyway. This appears to be the case with physical spaces. People, it seems, are naturally drawn to areas that facilitate pedestrian traffic — and are built according to what urban designer Jan Gehl, who has studied the matter in some depth, characterizes as “human scale.”

Five years ago, I wondered which ballparks, by virtue of their location, might best lend themselves to human scale (although that’s not exactly how I phrased it). After a very poor attempt at answering the question, I published a less poor attempt at answering it using the walkability metrics available at Walk Score. Because they are based on proximity to shops and cafes and other services relevant to daily life, the Walk Scores figures aren’t necessarily a perfect representation of human scale, but they nevertheless serve as a decent proxy.

Here is a basic explanation of what the walk scores signify:

• 90–100 Walker’s Paradise
  Daily errands do not require a car
• 70–89 Very Walkable
  Most errands can be accomplished on foot
• 50–69 Somewhat Walkable
  Some errands can be accomplished on foot
• 25–49 Car-Dependent
  Most errands require a car
• 0–24 Car-Dependent
  Almost all errands require a car

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Monday evening, the Pirates beat the Royals, 7-6. The Royals were up by two in the bottom of the eighth, but the Pirates rallied to tie, and then they walked it off an inning later. With Kevin Kramer leading off second base, Jacob Stallings sent a low line drive into left field, and Kramer beat Alex Gordon’s throw home. The Pirates rushed out of the dugout to celebrate the victory:

Now, this season, the Pirates are going nowhere. The Royals are even worse. The win did, I suppose, push the Pirates back over .500, but it’s worth remembering that every game is a competition. Every game features major-league baseball players trying to win, and so every actual win legitimately feels like an achievement. Especially for teams full of players just trying to make a good impression to extend their careers. Recently, the dreadful Royals walked off against the dreadful White Sox, after a throwing error on a would-be sac bunt. The Royals celebrated in regular fashion:

So part of this is just that a walk-off is fun. You never know when you’re going to be part of another. Seize happiness; it’s fleeting. Celebrate your achievements. Few people in the world ever get to participate in a win in the major leagues. What an incredible thing it is to experience.

There’s something else about the Pirates’ victory, though. None of the players would’ve known it at the time, but you can see their celebration as symbolic if you want. The win was the Pirates’ 75th of the season. But it was also the National League’s 151st win in interleague play. Every year, every team plays 20 interleague games. That means there are 300 interleague games in all. And for the first time since 2003, the American League isn’t going to win the majority of them. It won’t win exactly half of them. Interleague play, in 2018, belongs to the senior circuit.

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John Gibbons is in his second go-round as the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays. The 56-year-old former catcher skippered the A.L. East team from 2004 to -08, and he’s been back at the helm since the beginning of the 2013 season. There have been a pair of postseason berths along the way — in 2015 and 2016 — and he heads into the waning days of the current campaign with a managerial record, exclusively with Toronto, of 789 wins and 782 losses.

It’s no secret that this will be his last year on the job. While nothing has been made official, the Blue Jays are expected to replace Gibbons once the season concludes. He won’t be fading into the sunset, though — at least not right away. Gibbons hopes to stay in the game, in one capacity or another, for the foreseeable future. As for his pair of tenures in Toronto, and the roads he traveled to get there… it’s safe to say that he’s enjoyed the ride.

———

John Gibbons: “In 1990, I was in Triple-A with the Phillies and kind of at the end of my rope as a player. Being a catcher with a little big-league experience, you can always find a job, but I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted. My original organization, the New York Mets, called. They wanted to know if I was interested in being their roving catching instructor. I debated whether I wanted to keep playing a little longer or get into coaching. I decided to go into coaching.

“After I roved for a couple of years, the Mets gave me a managing opportunity in Kingsport, Tennessee, in the Appalachian League. That was actually the first league I’d played in, back in the day. Things just kind of took off from there.

“I ended up with the Toronto Blue Jays when J.P. Ricciardi was hired as the general manager. I was originally in the bullpen, but then they made a couple of changes and I was the first-base coach. A few years later they made more changes, and I was the manager. So it’s been a long, crazy career. It wasn’t a very good one as a player, and from there it’s been what it’s been.

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Episode 834
A former research assistant for Bill James and writer for ESPN at the dawn of the internet, Rob Neyer has recently authored a book, Powerball, that uses an A’s-Astros game from September 2017 as an entree into meditations on the current state of the sport.

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 1 hr 1 min play time.)

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