If you’re searching for a compelling National League division race, the only place to turn is the west coast. With the Nationals currently 7-1/2 games up on the second place Marlins and the Cubs sporting an even wider 13-game lead on the Cardinals, the one game separating the Giants and Dodgers at the top of the western division makes it the only intriguing race going. Given that the Dodgers are arguably the favorites to win the division and inarguably a playoff contender, I have what should be an easy question: Which five pitchers are currently in the Dodgers rotation?

Don’t wrack your brain too hard; it’s a trick question. There are the two pitchers who have been healthy all season, Kenta Maeda and Scott Kazmir, and then there’s Brandon McCarthy who returned to the rotation in July from his Tommy John Surgery. Beyond that it gets increasingly murky.
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There was a time, not very long ago, when Andrelton Simmons mesmerized us on a regular basis. You couldn’t go more than a week without some preposterous defensive play flooding into your Twitter timelines attached to phrases like “whoa,” “wut,” and “OMG.” Yet over the last year or so, that interest in Simmons’ plays has died down.

One reason might be MLB’s stringent social media policing that has deterred sharing GIFs and Vines of baseball-related content, but it’s not like those rules have shut down our collective love fest with Giancarlo Stanton home runs or Noah Syndergaard fastballs. Perhaps there is something about good defense that requires a visual aid in a way that other things don’t, but there’s probably more to it than that.

To understand this troubling decrease in Simmons-related online joy, we first have to ask ourselves if Simmons is still the elite defender he was at the peak of his internet glory. If he is, we must then wrestle with the reasons why he no longer seems to impress us to the same degree.

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I cannot venture to say that Alex Rodriguez is a complicated individual any more than any other person, but I can fairly easily say that Alex Rodriguez the baseball player is full of complications. He’s an all-time great who has twice signed two of the most expensive contracts in baseball history, been suspended for PED use, and is currently being shoved out of the organization he has played for the past 13 seasons despite putting up colossal numbers and leading the team to a World Series championship during the 2009 season. This post is not meant to analyze Rodriguez’s career, celebrate his accomplishments or discuss his flaws. The question here is should Alex Rodriguez retire, and like most Rodriguez-related issues, it is complicated.
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Exit velocity! We love it! Sorry for shouting. But we do! We love to sort the leaderboards, and we love to write articles using the information gleaned from those leaderboards. This is one right here! Beat writers love to tweet the exit velocity when a player they cover dongs a dinger, and even the folks who don’t always love the application of exit velocity in the public sphere agree that its tracking can only mean positive things for the future of our understanding of the game. Exit velocity: it’s for the people. Can you believe just a few years ago we didn’t have this stuff?

We have it now, and for as little as we have grasped about the subject, it’s intuitive that the higher the average exit velocity, the better. Hard-hit balls can go for home runs, and home runs are the best. In first place on this year’s average exit velocity leaderboard is Nelson Cruz. Good hitter. In second place is Giancarlo Stanton. Good hitter. Third place? Mark Trumbo. I’m on a word count, so I’ll stop here. You get the point. Good hitters having good seasons are hitting the ball hard, and that should surprise no one.

There’s a flip side to that leaderboard. Some bad hitters are having bad seasons and hitting the ball not-hard. The guy with the lowest average exit velocity and more than 200 balls in play is Billy Hamilton, who’s averaged just 83.3 miles per hour on his batted balls. Hamilton’s having a fine season, overall — he’s projected to finish the year right around +3.0 WAR thanks again to his elite defense and baserunning — but we’re now nearly 1,500 plate appearances into Hamilton’s career, and it’s beginning to look like the bat might wind up being more Alcides Escobar than the league-average production we all dreamed on when Hamilton broke into the league.

But that’s not going to stop me from writing about Hamilton. Because even though we might like to see what happens were he to hit the ball harder, there’s a lesson to be learned from when he hits it softly. Kudos to you if you already see where this is going.

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Dear reader, please allow this internet article to serve as the official announcement of the fourth annual FanGraphs Boston Meetup on Saber Seminar Eve. As the title makes clear, this year that day is Friday, August 12th. We’ll kick off around 7 pm, and the televisions will display the baseball match between the Boston Red Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks. We’ll talk about it, and baseball, and beer, and maybe how ridiculous it is that the other TVs in the bar are showing preseason football because who watches those?
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Earlier this week, the Cardinals called up a promising young arm in Alex Reyes, who’s already enjoyed some success out of St. Louis’ bullpen. Another promising young arm is set to debut for the Cardinals tomorrow, as 22-year-old Luke Weaver will get the start against Cubs. What should we expect from him?

One thing we know for certain is that Weaver was undeniably excellent in the minors this year. In 13 starts this year — most of them at Double-A — he pitched to a sparkling 1.30 ERA and 2.11 FIP. He struck out an impressive 28% of opposing batters, while walking fewer than 4%, which is equally impressive. It wasn’t the first time he tasted success either, as he pitched well last season in High-A, albeit with a more underwhelming 21% strikeout rate.
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When I click over to the leaderboards, I see that, right now, Jose Altuve is the major-league leader in wOBA. Which means that, by that measure, Altuve has been baseball’s best hitter, which is absolutely nuts. Not that we didn’t know Altuve was good, but he’s having a Mike Troutian season. Altuve is simultaneously breaking down pitchers and breaking down barriers, and it’s just so much more fun to have him leading the stat than some ordinary muscle-bound giant. It makes us second-guess what’s possible. Lots of things are possible.

Like this. When I click over to the leaderboards, and then significantly drop the minimum number of plate appearances, I see that, right now, the major-league leader in wOBA is Sandy Leon. Unlike Altuve, Leon’s offensive season isn’t “qualified.” So we can’t take it close to so seriously. But you might not understand how ridiculous this is, and you might not understand how critical it’s been for a Red Sox club trying to hang in the race.

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Ben Heller was called up to the big leagues for the first time yesterday. He arrived as a member of the Yankees, having been acquired by New York from Cleveland at the trade deadline as part of the Andrew Miller deal. As luck would have it, the 25-year-old right-hander’s first MLB venue was Fenway Park.

His debut will come elsewhere — the Bombers left Boston without him appearing in the game — and when it does, you can expect to see heat. Heller throws hard. Baseball America rated his fastball tops in the Indians system, and opposing hitters have certainly taken notice. In 45 relief innings this season, Heller has allowed 24 hits and fanned 52 in 45 innings at the Double-A and Triple-A levels.

Heller talked about his game, and the excitement of putting on a big-league uniform for the first time, shortly before taking the field at Fenway. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk to Georgia State University Assistant Professor Tim Kellison about his initiative to combat misinformation about public stadium funding for sports teams.

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