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Aaron Bummer made 30 relief appearances for the Chicago White Sox this season. The first two were especially memorable. The 24-year-old left-hander stepped onto a big-league mound for the first time on July 27 and promptly struck out crosstown rival Anthony Rizzo. Two batters later, he gave up a bomb to Kyle Schwarber.

On July 29, Bummer entered a tie game with two on and two out in the top of the eighth inning, and retired Cleveland’s Michael Brantley. He then came back out for the ninth and took the loss in atypical fashion. Lifted with two on and two out in the ninth, Bummer watched as the pitcher who replaced him plunked consecutive batters (yes, Brandon Guyer was one of them), forcing in the deciding run.

A few days later, I talked to Bummer about those experiences — and about earning his degree from the University of Nebraska while recovering from Tommy John surgery — when the White Sox visited Fenway Park.

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Bummer on reaching the big leagues: “The past week has definitely been surreal. Things started calming down as I got into a routine — it turned more into just baseball — but now that I’m in Fenway Park… I mean, this is as pinnacle as it gets. Coming here kind of brought the surreal back, kind of got those butterflies going again.

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Some of you might be sick of hearing about him by now, I don’t know, but I’m endlessly fascinated by the fact that Aaron Judge just put in a whole season as the best player in baseball. Now, sure, that’s just me looking at WAR, and, sure, it was only possible because Mike Trout got injured, but think about what Judge was before, and think about what he became. We like to tell ourselves that we can see the best players coming. Judge, in spring training, was a major question mark. In his initial cup of coffee, he batted .179 with almost three times as many strikeouts as hits. Judge was terrible, and then, almost without warning, he was the best. That’s incredible!

Judge is endlessly fascinating just in general. One of the other interesting things about him is the sense I get that people remain unconvinced. Like, we all saw what he did in 2017 — it was impossible not to — but the jury’s still out on what Judge really, truly *is*. The playoffs left a certain impression. Judge was a fine hitter, by the results, but he struck out a whole bunch. He almost felt exposed, and there’s some doubt here that remains.

So this is another post built around some polls. There are three polls in here, the last of which will ask who you’d rather have next season: Aaron Judge or Paul Goldschmidt? The question itself is pointless, artificial. No one will actually have to make that choice in real life, certainly not based on WAR. But I want to know what all of you think. Judge is here for obvious reasons. Goldschmidt is here because he’s been super consistent. Nobody out there is a Paul Goldschmidt skeptic. Give this post feedback! Give this post the feedback I so deeply crave.

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There’s a growing number of windmills sprouting around the country. One can see fields of them from plane windows at 30,000 feet. There’s even a giant one on the east side of Cleveland that’s visible, on a clear day, across Lake Erie from the shores of Bay Village, Ohio, a small municipality on the west side of the city, where this author now resides. The windmills are harnessing the power of the wind to create clean energy, which can be delivered anywhere, I presume, including the car-charging stations I’ve noticed pop up in places like the nearby Whole Foods parking lot. Despite very conspicuous advances and installations, we’re apparently decades away — perhaps not until the 2040s — from reaching Peak Oil, according to Reuters. Clean and renewable energy is taking some time to gain market share.

Some innovations take time to grab hold, others advance quickly. It can be difficult to project when a trend will reach its high-water mark. But we might have seen a prominent 21st trend and strategy reach that point in major-league baseball. In 2016, after a dramatic rise this decade, baseball might have reached Peak Shift.

This year, shifts declined for the first time since their rapid rise earlier in the decade. Ten years ago, shifts were being used against left-handed power hitters exclusively. There wasn’t a shift employed against a right-handed hitter, according to the Baseball Info Solutions database, until June 11, 2009, when the Phillies moved three infielders to the left side of second base against Gary Sheffield. At that point, in the late 2000s, the Rays and Brewers were at the vanguard of wholesale shifting. In 2012, league-wide shift usage doubled, though it was still modest in terms of raw numbers. Gradually more teams bought in — teams like the Pirates, who increased their shift usage by 400% from 2012 to 2013. In 2014, usage doubled again, as the 10,000-shift mark was breached for the first time. The practice has since proliferated across the sport.

From 2012 to -16, shift usage grew by at least 34.8% each season.

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Episode 782
“The Good Face” isn’t necessarily a concept that required further examination. That hasn’t stopped guest Kate Preusser of Lookout Landing from providing it, anyway.

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 6 min play time.)

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan mourn the loss of (and celebrate the greatness of) Roy Halladay, then answer listener emails about Halladay’s career, what Aaron Judge and the Astros teach us about strikeouts, whether better pitchers are also better at hitting, the players with the wildest fluctuations in WAR, Eric Hosmer’s stats-defying Gold Glove, the ideal sequencing of 2017 World Series games, the difference between tanking and rebuilding, Yasmani Grandal, Austin Barnes, and the value of catchers, pitch-tipping and gamesmanship, an MLB star signing in NPB, and more.

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The season’s complete, which means the numbers are official. This is convenient for a writer, because it means there shouldn’t be any issues anymore with comparing 2017 to another full season in the past. A full season is a full season. So how about a quick full-season review of the pitch-framing data? There’s something interesting going on. Something dramatic, something that shakes the foundation of the numbers themselves. I have the graphs to prove it.

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There’s no doubt that Mets shortstop Amed Rosario had a tough debut. He walked three times and struck out 49. Though he showed some power, he usually hit the ball softly and on the ground. Really the only thing that went well, looking back, is that he provided good defense at a position where the team could use an upgrade.

But. How much do we really know about a player after 170 plate appearances? Especially one who hasn’t turned 22 yet? How pessimistic should we be?

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If Shohei Ohtani isn’t able to play in the major leagues next season, that would quickly make Yu Darvish the clear No. 1 free agent available this winter — and perhaps the only clear top-of-rotation arm. And even if Ohtani is cleared to migrate across the Pacific to play professional baseball, Darvish is likely to walk away as the highest-paid player from this free-agent class.

Yes, Darvish’s awful World Series performance is still fresh in the collective consciousness, but that shouldn’t negate his late-season work with the Dodgers. After some data-informed tweaks (documented here by Eno and also by Andy McCullough of the L.A. Times), Darvish was excellent. With the Dodgers in the second half, the right-hander struck out 61 and walked 13 in 49 innings.

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