This is not how a catcher reacts to your typical regular-season caught stealing:

And this is not the sort of enthusiasm with which a catcher is typically met in the post-game high-five line:

If you missed what happened in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s game between the Cleveland Indians and the Kansas City Royals, I’ve already spoiled the surprise. Terrance Gore, pinch-runner extraordinaire, was caught stealing in a regular-season game for the first time in his career. He’d gone 17-for-17 before Wednesday night. He’d gone 4-for-5 in the postseason, too, and his only caught stealing came at third base on a play in which he beat the throw and was originally called safe, only to have the verdict changed because his foot came off the bag for a split-second.

For more than a century prior to the advent of instant replay, Gore’s only caught stealing before Wednesday night wouldn’t have been a caught stealing at all, and even with replay, the ruling was dubious. Gore was damn near 21-for-21 in steal attempts to begin his career before Wednesday night, and the major-league record in the expansion era is 26, set by Mitchell Page in 1977. What was amounting to an historic streak has now come to a close, at the hands of Indians catcher Roberto Perez and reliever Cody Allen.

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I don’t know how else to begin, so let’s begin like this: Over 126 games spent with the Astros, Carlos Gomez was worth 0.6 WAR. Over 25 games spent with the Rangers, Carlos Gomez has been worth 0.7 WAR. Now you know the story — there are characters, there’s a plot. When the Astros acquired Gomez in the first place, they figured he could be a real difference-maker. He’s making a difference now, just for a division rival instead.

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Alex Reyes was only called up in August. He’s appeared in just 10 games, started just three and thrown only 35 of the Cardinals’ 1352.1 innings. He is certainly not the most valuable player on the team. He isn’t the most important, either. He’s not their best reliever (because of Seung Hwan Oh’s great performance), and he’s not the best starter on the team (that’s Carlos Martinez). When it comes to being in the right place at the right time, however, and taking on multiple roles out of the bullpen and, most recently, pitching seven shutout innings against a team also threatening for a Wild Card spot in the Giants, there is an argument to be made that Alex Reyes has saved the Cardinals’ season.

Reyes is the type of prospect over whom fans drool, and his arsenal has translated immediately to the majors. He’s already topped 100 mph on his fastball 18 times this season. He has a curveball with more vertical movement than any other pitcher in the big leagues. He has a changeup that averages 89 mph and earns a swing and a miss 25% of the time Reyes throws it. He’s far from the perfect pitcher, of course, and continues to struggle with command — both with the fastball and his offspeed offerings. The problems Reyes experienced with control in the minors — where he recorded at least a 10% walk rate at every stop — have carried over to the majors, where’s he’s produced a 13% mark so far this season. He doesn’t always have great command of his pitches, but thanks to a lack of homers, his FIP is still a quite low 2.76 while a low BABIP and high left-on-base percentage has left his ERA at an unsustainably low 1.03 on the season.

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In the past, I’ve done a few Let’s Watch posts about Billy Hamilton’s baserunning. This is because Billy Hamilton is probably the best baserunner in baseball, so some of the things he’s able to do are extraordinary. I know we’ve all gotten used to it — one of the great shames of existence is how quickly we get used to certain things — but Hamilton is legitimately amazing, regardless of whether he ever hits. Mike Trout is the Mike Trout of baseball, but Billy Hamilton is the Mike Trout of the running-the-bases part.

At the suggestion of Ryan Tinetti, this is going to be a Let’s Watch post about Miguel Cabrera’s baserunning. Hamilton, again, is probably the very best baserunner. Cabrera has been nearly the very worst baserunner. That doesn’t have to be about his instincts; people love to compliment Cabrera’s baserunning instincts. But he’s just, you know, not so physically capable. Hamilton could probably outrun a Mazda. Cabrera moves like a lawnmower falling out of a pickup truck. And yet, in part specifically because Cabrera isn’t great at running the bases, Tuesday night he made a run happen. As the Tigers try to make a charge to the playoffs, Cabrera is pushing himself beyond his own limits. Let’s watch, in detail, his 360-foot tour around the diamond.

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In 2012, Kenta Maeda threw a curveball or two a game. He threw three or four four-seam fastballs for every sinker. He was a four-seam/slider guy with the occasional changeup, is what he was. And that’s what I had to work with when I tried to find a comp for him and settled on pitchers like Aaron Nola and a young Kenshin Kawakami.

I was probably wrong, but it’s also possible that what we’re seeing now is a different Maeda. He allows that it’s possible, too.

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On Monday night in Baltimore, Rick Porcello allowed two earned runs in a complete-game victory, striking out seven batters without a walk. That outing lowered his season ERA to 3.08, topped in the American League only by Masahiro Tanaka and Chris Sale. It raised his innings total to 210.2, topped in the AL only by Sale and Porcello’s teammate, David Price. It improved his pitcher record to 21-4 — which, I don’t need to tell you how poor of an evaluating tool pitcher record is, but there’s a part of me that refuses not to be at least a little impressed by 21-4.

Porcello, over the last month or so, has gone from fringe Cy Young candidate to a legitimate possibility. Sale is the only AL pitcher with a higher RA9-WAR and FIP-WAR than Porcello. The argument is right there if you want to make it. Sure, you could probably make the argument that Porcello’s ERA is more a product of good fortune than performance by pointing to his .260 batting average on balls in play, which is 42 points lower than his career mark. But then also you’ve got to consider that his career mark’s probably unfairly inflated by his being a ground-ball pitcher in front of Detroit’s defense for so many years, and that the BABIPs of his strongest Cy Young competitors are similarly depressed.

So you could make the case that Porcello’s numbers point more to good fortune than performance, or you could make the case that Porcello has made some legitimately compelling strides in the way he pitches.

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Episode 683
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he discusses the recent dismissal of Arizona front-office member De Jon Watson and what hand Watson likely had and didn’t have in some of the club’s curious decisions; addresses the recent but unsurprising suspension of San Diego general manager A.J. Preller; and speculates wildly about what discoveries Statcast might have facilitated during baseball’s last dramatic increase in power numbers.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 39 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
St. Louis at Colorado| 15:10 ET
Weaver (33.2 IP, 70 xFIP-) vs. Marquez (5.1 IP, 118 xFIP-)
In Marcel Proust biopic Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a frenzied crowd chants “two men enter, one man leaves” before a gladiatorial duel that pits Mel Gibson against a developmentally disabled giant. Following wins by San Francisco and St. Louis last night — plus a loss by the Mets — the current National League wild-card situation bears some similarity to that post-apocalyptic mise-en-scène. Except, instead of perspiring Australians, the competitors are the three aforementioned clubs. And instead of two of them, there’s three. And also Tina Turner’s not there.

Here are the current standings and probabilities per this site’s methodology:

Less urgent but still notable is the pitching matchup here. St. Louis right-hander Luke Weaver has produced the highest strikeout rate (tied with Rich Hill) among all starters to record 20 or more innings over the last month. German Marquez, meanwhile, is scheduled to make his first major-league start. Owner of a plus fastball, he produced decidedly above-average strikeout and walk numbers as just a 21-year-old in the high minors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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