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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about their upcoming eclipse event, Jered Weaver’s retirement, a Tommy Pham tweet, and two recent examples of unorthodox positioning, then follow up on player nicknames, odd fields, two-touch fielding, and Khris Davis’s arm and, finally, answer listener emails about the Indians’ record and run differential, the Giants’ disaster season, whether javelin throwers would make amazing pitchers, Chris Davis striking out on pitches down the middle, whether Albert Pujols is underpaid, a blind free-agent market, the deadline acquisitions that have paid off the most so far, and more.

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There’s a difference between watching the game at home and watching at the park, that much is obvious. Personally, I’m more analytical at home, where I have the tools to identify pitch type and location with some precision, for example. At the field, I can only tell velocity and maybe spot the curveballs, so I get an adult soda, a good companion, and I talk and wait.

What am I waiting for? “People go to the game to see us put the ball in play, throw the ball away, and fall down,” Giants starter Jeff Samardzija told me the other day. “They want to see people doing things,” said Indians slugger Jay Bruce. I couldn’t disagree. The problem, if this is true, is that baseball is trending in the opposite direction. There are fewer balls in play now than at any other point in the history of the sport. There’s less of people doing things, to use Bruce’s words.

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Miguel Cabrera and Joey Votto — they’re both cinch future Hall of Famers, as close approximations as any among current major leaguers to the ideal all-around hitter. They have consistently made hard contact to all fields, hit for average and power, and not conceded many free outs to opposing pitchers. And obviously, they’ve done it without any contribution from their legs; it’s been all bat.

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Because no one in the AL wild-card hunt feels much like being assertive, yesterday the Orioles and the Mariners played a game with potential playoff implications. The Mariners held a three-run lead going into the top of the ninth, but then Edwin Diaz came apart. Over the span of seven batters, Diaz walked three guys and hit two more. He benefited from a tremendous catch and from a borderline third strike call, but still Diaz couldn’t close it out. With the bases loaded in a 7-6 game, Marc Rzepczynski was called on to deal with Chris Davis. Rzepczynski was going for his second career major-league save.

The first pitch was a fastball off the plate inside, but Davis swung and missed. The second pitch was a fastball over the plate inside, and Davis swung and missed again. At 0-and-2, Davis had no reason to expect a fastball down the pipe. Rzepczynski had no reason to throw a fastball down the pipe. Rzepczynski threw one anyway, and Davis watched it sail. He watched it, and he watched it, until there was nothing left to watch.

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While there are certain events (like strikeouts, walks, and home runs) over which a pitcher exerts more or less direct control, it seems pretty clear at this point that there are some pitchers who are better at managing contact than others. It’s also also seems clear that, if a pitcher can’t manage contact at all, he’s unlikely to reach or stay in the big leagues for any length of time.

Consider: since the conclusion of World War II, about 750 pitchers have recorded at least 1,000 innings; of those 750 or so, all but nine of them have conceded a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .310 or less. Even that group of nine is pretty concentrated, the middle two-thirds separated by .029 BABIP. The difference between the guy ranked 125 out of 751 and the guy ranked 625 out of 751 is just three hits out of 100 balls in play. Those three hits can add up over a long period of time, of course, but it still represents a rather small difference even between players with lengthy careers. For that reason, attempting to discern batted-ball skills among pitchers with just a few seasons of data is difficult. Thanks to the emergence of Statcast, however, we have some better tools than just plain BABIP to evaluate a pitcher’s ability to manage contact. Let’s take a look at what the more granular batted-ball data reveals.

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It’s been a long season, so let me remind you of the start. These days, Sam Dyson is pretty good, and he pitches for the Giants. In April, Sam Dyson was pretty bad, and he was pitching for the Rangers. In the first game of the season, the Rangers led the Indians 5-3 in the seventh. The lead slipped away, and Dyson allowed three runs in the ninth to take the loss. In the third game of the season, the Rangers led the Indians 6-4 in the ninth. The lead slipped away, and Dyson allowed five runs to take the loss. The big knock was a one-out grand slam by Francisco Lindor; that currently stands as having been the third-highest-leverage plate appearance of the Indians’ year. The half-inning was as unforgettable as any half-inning can be in the first week of April.

The Indians got things started with a sweep, a sweep that featured plenty of good clutch hitting. That’s a great way to kick off a campaign, and it comes as little surprise that, in the middle of August, the team’s sitting fairly comfortably atop the AL Central. They’ve done well to hold off the Twins. They’ve done well to hold off the Royals. Ask the Indians, and they’d probably tell you they’ve expected to return to the playoffs from day one. They are plenty good enough. And yet in one sense, while the Indians have a good record, they’ve won despite their own efforts.

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Anthony Castro is emerging as one of the top pitching prospects in the Detroit Tigers organization. Two years removed from Tommy John surgery and armed with plus stuff, the 22-year-old right-hander is 9-4 with a 2.70 ERA in 18 starts for the Low-A West Michigan Whitecaps.

Following his last outing, a coach for the opposing team was highly complimentary of Castro’s cutter, which is actually a mid-90s four-seam fastball that has natural cutting action. As the native of Caracas, Venezuela, explained, “It just comes out that way. That’s crazy.”

It’s not crazy to believe he’s ready to prove himself at the next level. As the aforementioned coach told me, “I’m not sure why the kid is still in the Midwest League.”

Castro has taken his family out of their homeland, and for perfectly understandable reasons: with the situation in Venezuela growing increasingly worse, the youngster feared for their safety and well-being.

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For much of the season, the Indians and Cubs appeared to be afflicted by the same sort of World Series hangover. Is it possible that last year’s Game 7 was so intense, crazy, joyous, and heartbreaking that its effects would linger? Most likely not, no, but it makes for a nice, tidy narrative anyway.

Some nine months after the epic, decisive game, however, an important part of the Indians’ roster appears to be getting its act together just as the high-leverage games of September and beyond draw near.

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