The Yankees This Week And Other Thoughts

I wrote somewhat conservatively last week about the West Coast swing the New York Yankees faced despite facing two struggling teams. The week really could not have gone better (other than the Chad Green meltdown that cost the one loss). They went 7-1 for the week and kept pace with the still-winning Bay Rays. The Yankees end their trip with two games against the highly competitive Diamondbacks and then fly home for a weekend set against the Twins. Let's take a look at the week ahead.

Tonight, the Yankees face Zack Greinke and counter with CC Sabathia. The Diamondbacks are 16-13 and battling the Dodgers for the NL West division. And they have a good team, which is surprising considering who departed this season, namely Paul Goldschmidt. To this point, that deal is looking just fine as his replacement at first base, Christian Walker, leads Diamondback position players in WAR and is having a terrific season.

He is not alone. Many of the offensive players on the team are batting well as the team is currently ranked first in slugging percentage in the NL and fifth in OPS. The only batting weaknesses they have are at short, second and behind the plate. Heck, even Zack Greinke has an OPS of 1.731 with two homers.

Greinke is homer-prone, but has won four of his five decisions and has looked particularly good lately. The second starter (tomorrow) is a 30-year-old journeyman getting his first shot in the big leagues: Merrill Kelly. Kelly should be an easier task than Greinke, but the Yankees should be very familiar with Greinke as an organization.

The Diamondbacks' bullpen is deep and talented. After some injury-plagued seasons, Greg Holland is back to being dominant as the closer. Archie Bradley, Yoshihisa Hirano and Andrew Chafin have all been effective. The one caveat with this bullpen is allowing free passes as all of their top relievers are averaging four walks per nine or more. But then again, the same can be said of the Yankees' bullpen.

Neither Gio Urshela nor DJ LeMahieu are in the lineup tonight, which is not good news and are huge losses in this hodgepodge lineup. If the Yankees are to win tonight, Sabathia and the bullpen will need to be sharp and hope the Yankees can scratch out a few runs. At least Sabathia knows what a bat looks like.

Tomorrow, it will be Masahiro Tanaka and the aforementioned Kelly, which seems a wash to me. Tanaka, in my humble opinion, is always a fifty-fifty proposition whenever he takes the mound.

After an off day on Thursday, the Yankees will face the Twins at home. The Twins at Yankee Stadium have always been a welcome sight. But they are a good team this year. They are in first place in the AL Central with a sparkling 17-9 record. Led by new manager, Rocco Baldelli, the Twins are no longer the fusty, old-fashioned team we are used to. Joe Mauer is gone.

The Twins' offense has been effective. Heck, Eddie Rosario has eleven homers already and Byron Buxton has twelve doubles! They are first in the AL in OPS.  The Twins' bullpen might be one of their biggest strengths and they are getting surprisingly good starting pitching considering its rotation makeup.

I am expecting a split in Arizona and a 2-1 edge over the Twins. That Twins series could go the other way, however and in a heartbeat.

With two more injuries, this time to Urshela and LeMahieu, how much more can this Yankee lineup be stretched? Success this week will totally depend on how well they pitch. If they do not pitch well, the week could be a long, long one.

Other Thoughts:

One of the great Yankees sites closed its doors this week as River Avenue Blues called it quits after twelve years. I have been blogging for a long, long, long time and I know how hard it is to keep the drive going. But these guys set the standard for all things Yankees and they were a must read. I remember when working for "It's About The Money Stupid," a favorite saying among the writers when a good idea was written about, only to have it beaten into print by RAB, was, "We've been Axisa-ed again!" Good luck to all their writers and a hearty thank you for their work over the years. One of the best things you could say about them was that they were never jerks or arrogant on Twitter despite being the leaders of the pack. Well done, folks

Chad Green had a terrific first outing for the Triple-A team as he struck out five in two innings without allowing a run. Let's see if he can repeat that a few times because the Yankees really need him.

Jeremy Hellickson and thoughts on defense

I have been looking at all the angles on the Jeremy Hellickson trade that brought two prospects to the Tampa Bay Rays from the Arizona Diamondbacks. And all that contemplation led to some thoughts about the recent history of both teams and what might have contributed from their falls from grace over the past few seasons. A lot of my thoughts ended up settling on defense.

The thought for years was that Jeremy Hellickson was not nearly as good as his results. In 2011 his ERA was 2.95 but his FIP was 4.44. Similarly, in 2012, Hellickson's ERA was 3.10 but his FIP was 4.60. He also had a high strand rate of 80% or better in both seasons.

It all seemed to catch up with Hellickson in 2013 and his ERA ballooned to overtake his FIP and that lack of success continued into his injury-shortened 2014. Those of us who felt that Hellickson was overrated clucked like proud chickens and said, "See!?" Perhaps our thinking is too simplistic.

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The reason this resonates with me was watching the post season this past year. The Orioles and, more pointedly, the Royals seemed to make hay with flawed teams because their fielders seemed to catch everything in sight, especially in big spots. Every time you tuned in, some Royal was diving and making a play. More than anything else besides perhaps the bullpen, defense seemed to define the Royals.

If you look closely at the Orioles, the most drastic change from 2011, when they were terrible, to 2012, 2013 and 2014 was their pitchers' team BABIP or batting average for balls in play. In 2011, the Orioles' BABIP was .302. The next year, that figure went down to .285 and the team won 93 games. In 2014, that figure went down to .280 and they won 96 games.

While BABIP is not a magic bullet to point at for the sole reason a team succeeds, it does point to better defense and team positioning.

The Royals lost 90 games in 2012. Their pitchers' BABIP was .311! The team has won 86 games or better both of the last two seasons and that BABIP is down to the .291 range for both seasons. This corresponds to a defense that ranked first among all teams in team defense in 2014. In 2012, the Royals' team defense finished 18th among 30 teams in team defense. That has to make a difference.

Let's look at the Rays during Hellickson's career. In 2011, the Rays finished second among the thirty teams in defense. The Rays were sixth in 2012. They fell to ninth in 2013 and were only fourteenth in 2014. Just to give you an idea of the drop, according to Fangraphs.com, the Rays' defense was worth 59.8 runs in 2011. It was worth 4.5 runs (total!) in 2014. That is a huge drop. Hellickson's BABIP is only .269 for his career, but has been over .300 the last two seasons.

Just for kicks and giggles, I looked at David Price's BABIP statistics over the years with the Rays and 2014 marked the third year in a row that his BABIP had gone up, so there does seem to be some sort of relationship.

So what is going to happen as Hellickson goes to the Diamondbacks? The Diamondbacks have had a similar and maybe more dramatic fall in team defense. In 2011 the Diamondbacks were the best defense in baseball. They were strong at shortstop, the outfield could fly and they were also strong behind the plate and at third base.  They won 94 games and their pitchers' BABIP was .290.

In 2012 Stephen Drew got hurt, someone thought it was a good idea to break up the terrific outfield defense and put Jason Kubel out there and the defense fell to 13th and the team won thirteen less games. The BABIP for its pitchers went up over .300.

The 2013 Diamondbacks won the same number of games as the 2012 version, but this time the defense bounced back to second place. The outfield minus Kubel was again strong and the up the middle infield was strong as well.

2014 was a fielding disaster for the Diamondbacks. Mark Trumbo proved that the team hadn't learned from the Kubel education, Gerardo Parra was moved from left to right. It just didn't work and the team was awful. The team went from a pitching BABIP of .296 in 2013 to .316 in 2014. That is a full twenty point swing!

The bad news is this is what Jeremy Hellickson is getting himself into. However, there is hope. The entire front office and the manager on the field have all been cleaned out and perhaps the focus will again be on defense and preventing runs. Heck, it couldn't get much worse, so it has to get better under Tony La Russa's house.

The Diamondbacks play in Arizona where the hot and dry air means that the baseball flies. Defense has to be a key to how well the team can compete in those conditions. It's not quite  as bad as playing in Coors Field, but it's a tough environment. Hellickson is more of a fly ball pitcher. Outfield defense will be very important to him.

If the Diamondbacks improve defensively, Jeremy Hellickson, if healthy, will thrive in his new environment. He will get to pitch quite a few times in LA, San Diego and San Francisco, which should help even out the Chase Field disadvantage. He will not have to deal with the DH regularly and lineups aren't as deep. IF the Diamondbacks can support him defensively, he can be a nice addition. That is one heck of an IF though.

Chip Hale to manage Arizona Diamondbacks

My first reaction upon hearing that Tony La Russa and the Arizona Diamondbacks had hired Chip Hale to manage the team was, "Who?" And yeah, Walter William "Chip" Hale is not a household name. He played parts of seven seasons as a utility guy, Mostly for the Twins and finished up his minor league career with Memphis, the Cardinals' Triple-A affiliate. As such, La Russa would know him and the choice makes more sense.

The hiring of Hale does fly in the face of what has been going on in managerial hires of the past seasons. New managers have either been former players getting their first managerial starts without much experience (Ausmus, Mattingly and even Kirk Gibson) or former catchers as that field position seems to be favored.

Chip Hale is not a guy without experience and he is not a former catcher. He played just about every infield and outfield position, but was never a catcher. And you can certainly tell he paid his dues managing in the minors.

Two years after his playing career ended in 1998, Hale was hired by the Diamondbacks to manage their rookie league team. He moved up to Double-A in 2002 and to the Triple-A Tuscon Sidewinders in 2003. He spent three years there and his 2006 team won 91 games.

Since then, he has coached in the big leagues, a year with the Diamondbacks and then the Mets. When he lost out on the managerial job there to Terry Collins, he moved on to the Oakland A's where he has been the bench coach since.

It is sort of refreshing to see a baseball lifer kind of guy get the chance. There is no telling if this is a good move for the Diamondbacks or not. We can see with the selection that Tony La Russa is going against the current grain here and that makes the hire interesting by itself. After a miserable 2014, any change in Phoenix has to be a good one. Since hearty didn't work, it might as well be Hale.

Questionable judgement call costs the Pirates

The Pittsburgh Pirates lost a game in extra innings yesterday when a double play was broken up when Nick Ahmed threw up his arm and deflected a throw that might have been an inning ending double play. In the judgement of the umpires, the runner did not intentionally interfere with the play. I find that ruling a bit spurious.

Here is the play:

Ahmed certainly threw his arm up and it wasn't just a natural part of his slide. That's my humble opinion anyway. And if you look at the Interference Rules as listed on Page 17 of the official MLB rule book, intentionally interfering with the act of fielding the ball is interference.

Many old timers like me can remember a similar play in the World Series past when Reggie Jackson did the same thing and got away with it too. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

I would be okay if Nick Ahmed had slid in a normal motion and got hit with the ball. No harm, no foul there. But Ahmed's arm went up in a not natural motion and was clearly trying to block the baseball.

I think the umpires got it wrong here and the play was not reviewable (which is not really a word but has become one in baseball parlance).

One thing I got a kick out of was MLB.com's spin on the play. The headline and writing go a long way out of the way to back up the umpire's call and not give any inkling of a doubt that perhaps there is a problem here.

The bottom line is that the Pirates are in the middle of a battle for the division and the wild card and a judgement call cost them a game.

Aaron Hill in the deep valley

Not a whole lot of good things have happened for the Arizona Diamondbacks this season. Currently, the team is in last place in the National League West behind the equally disappointing Rockies by a half a game. While there have been many reasons for the stumbling of the Diamondbacks this season, Aaron Hill seems to have become one of the real symbols of a team's fall from respectability. This Hill is in a deep valley.

Aaron Hill has had a weird career, hasn't he? His offense over the years, if plotted on a graph would be up and down in nearly every season he has played. He is one guy where you cannot seem to pin a baseline. His career averages have nothing in common with what he achieves from year to year.

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He went from a star with the Blue Jays with an .829 OPS and a .212 ISO in 2009 to a .665 OPS the following season. And just two years ago with the Diamondbacks, Hill put together an .882 OPS with a .220 ISO. His 2012 season is just a dream now that Hill's OPS in 2014 is .639 with an ISO of .122.

While Hill's results went up and down through the years, some of his peripherals remained fairly constant including his walk and strikeout rates and batted ball rates (except for 2010 when he couldn't hit a line drive to save himself). But this year, even some of those constants are off. The bottom line is that at the age of 32, Aaron Hill has really bottomed out and is having a negative season.

Let's look at some of those underlying peripherals to see where Hill has fallen. The first striking example is Aaron Hill's walk rate. Hill has never been a patient hitter. His walk rates have hovered between a 6-8% range with his career average being 6.7%. That is a weakness to his game that has been a constant.

However, this year, this weakness has turned to a lifeblood sucking low. His current walk rate is only 4.7%. Last season, when Hill was injured for much of the season, he compiled 29 walks in 327 plate appearances. This year so far, Hill has walked only 15 times in 344 plate appearances.

Because of his lack of walks, his disappointing .241 batting average is compounded into a .275 on-based percentage this season after finishing last year at .356. The Diamondbacks are 11th of 15 NLteams in team on-base percentage. Hill again is a major symbol of that team failure.

While Hill's walk rate is historically low for him, his strikeout rate is historically high. Hill's strikeout rate has ranged between 10.1% his first season to a high of 15.5% his second season. His average is 13.4%. This season, Hill's strikeout rate is 18.3%, easily the highest of his career.

If you were to look at his success rate against certain pitches over the years, you can see that Hill had success against the fastball in his career and he has always hit the curve ball well.  His success against all other pitches varies from year to year. This season, Aaron Hill does not have a positive value against any pitch type. That's not a good thing at all.

The troubling part of Hill's season (other than all the other reasons mentioned) is that each month has gotten progressively worse. His monthly OPS totals starting in April were: .722, .700, .549 and .472 so far this month. His BABIP had remained fairly static in the mid-.270 range but has fallen to .206 his month, so some bad luck could be involved in July.

Is Aaron Hill the latest of a list of second basemen who seem to hit the 32 age and lose it? Or can he bounce back again to be a productive player? Hill's defense has also deteriorated and his WAR is at -0.7 at Fangraphs and -0.9 for baseball-reference.com.

Those valuations are not good news to an Arizona team that has $24 million combined invested in Hill's 2015 and 2015 seasons. His current results and relatively high salary would make it difficult for the Diamondbacks to trade him for any kind of value, if at all.

The Diamondbacks have had a really tough season and the bloom is off the rose for a team that made the post season just two seasons ago. And one of the big symbols of the woes this team has faced in 2014 is Aaron Hill. It will remain to be seen if the player or the team can bounce back from such a season.

Wade Miley - Everyone's favorite regression candidate

Wade Miley was such a surprise last year for the Arizona Diamondbacks that the surprise factor might have cost him the Rookie of the Year Award nod in a very close race with Harper. Nobody expected that Wade Miley would be the tenth most valuable pitcher in baseball in 2012. And his 1.79 walks per nine innings and 3.13 FIP were so fabulous that it had everyone scratching their heads. Thus, it is no surprise that Miley is everyone's favorite regression candidate heading into the 2013 season--so much so that it almost makes you root that he proves everyone wrong.

The problem stems in part because Wade Miley was never a prospect despite being a first round pick in 2008. He never made anyone's list of top tier young guys to watch. Plus, he never had the kind of success in the minors that he had in the majors. He never came close to the depth of his walk rate in the minors. For his minor league career, he averaged 3.1 walks per nine innings. How can that turn into 1.79? His minor league ERA was 3.79. So how did he manage 3.33 in the majors? And it was in Arizona no less, where the thin air flies baseballs. Add to all this lack of history, his mundane strikeout rate and skeptics abound.

The walk rate was a result of two things. First, he was very successful at throwing first pitch strikes, which he did at a 60% rate. Combine that with enticing hitters to swing at pitches out of the strike zone, which he did at a 33.8% rate, the 12th highest rate in baseball.

His heat maps show that he pounded the strike zone against right-handed batters low and inside with his fastball and his change up and then threw is curve on the outer half and down in the zone or out of it. It was a potent mix of getting ahead in the count and then putting batters away on his counts. Forget about left-handed batters. They couldn't hit him at all. Left-handed batters had a triple slash line against him of: .200/.238/306.

But, yeah. It makes sense to look at his walk rate and state that he cannot repeat it. But the projections also predict that he cannot sustain his home run rate. His home runs per nine innings of 0.67 seem unsustainable along with his tiny 6.9% homer to fly ball rate. But that particular skill is one he did display all during his minor league career. His minor league homer per nine inning rate was 0.5.

And why can't he maintain that rate? He keeps the ball down almost exclusively. His ground ball to fly ball rate is 1.28. That is not an extreme ground ball pitcher, but it is certainly far from being a fly ball pitcher. So there is really no reason to expect his homer rate to regress. Sure, his walk rate is in uncharted territory, but not his homer rate.

At least most of the projections have him being somewhat successful. All the ones listed on his Fangraphs.com player page think he'll win more games than he loses, will finish somewhere in the 3.60 to 3.90 ERA range with a more normalized walk rate and a slightly higher home run rate. But Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA rating really is a lot more pessimistic.

That system has him finishing with a 10-13 record with a 4.53 ERA and only a 0.9 WARP. That is a pretty heady fall from his 2012 stats.

Again, there is nothing about any of those projections that are arguable except maybe the jump in homer rate. But the possibility is also there that Miley really found something in 2012 and that with more experience, his strikeout rate will improve above middling and he can keep his walk rate down. The key is his first pitch strike rate and getting ahead of the count. If he can continue that trend for another season, the projections will look a lot different next season.

Defense a big difference between 2011 and 2012 Diamondbacks

The Arizona Diamondbacks have had two seasons that pretty much defy their actual run differential. That defiance was good in 2011 and not so good in 2012. The similarities between the offense was minimal. The Diamondbacks scored 734 runs in 2012 and 731 in 2011. The pitching was not that far off either. The pitching allowed 688 runs in 2012 compared to 662 in 2011. And yet in 2011, the Diamondbacks should have won 88 games and won 94 and should have won 86 games in 2012 and won only 81. Was the team lucky in 2011 and unlucky in 2012? Perhaps. But from what I can see, the difference was the defense.

Circumstantial evidence

Before we look closely at the difference in the two years from a defensive standpoint, let's look at some circumstantial evidence. The real striking Exhibit A is how the team fared in one-run games. The two seasons are a mirror image. In 2011, the team went 28-16 in one run games and 9-4 in extra inning games. In 2012, the team went 15-27 in one-run games and 3-4 in extra inning games. Again, you can chalk that up to luck and the bounce of the ball. But this, to me, is circumstantial evidence of a deeper problem.

Harder evidence

The Diamondbacks as a whole team had a +30 score overall for total zone runs saved over average in 2011 (baseball-reference.com). That figure fell to -6 in 2012. The glaring difference was the outfield. Many Diamondback fans dislike Chris Young and cheered when he left the team this off season. But he was spectacular in 2011 and by missing much of 2012, the center field defense suffered. But the biggest difference was in left field. Gerardo Parra played 128 games in left field in 2011 and left field in total had a fielding score of +11 over the course of that season.

Enter Jason Kubel in 2012 and the outfield defense crumbled. Kubel scored a -12 all by himself. Parra played about eight percent of the innings in left and at least pulled the total up to a -6. But that is a twelve run swing from one year to the next.

The injury to Stephen Drew hurt too. Drew has been an underrated defensive player in a league dominated by Tulowitzki and Rollins. But the shortstop play in 2011 was rated at zero. In other words, based on an average, the D-back shortstops did not cost their pitchers any runs nor saved them any against the league average. In 2012, that figure fell to -6.

Can we see a difference in outfield play in the record? Again, this isn't a one to one cause and effect, but when Arizona pitchers allowed a fly ball in 2012, the opposing batters batted .238 with an OPS of .882. On line drives, the OPS against was 1.730. In 2011, opposing batters batted .209 with an OPS of .770 on fly balls and had an OPS of 1.676 on line drives. Clearly, outfield defense had to have some effect on those numbers.

Keep in mind that the team's workhorse, Ian Kennedy, is a fly ball pitcher. Was the difference in his pitching from 2011 to 2012 the defense? I think a case can be made. The team's other young pitcher, Daniel Hudson, was also a fly ball pitcher before he went down with his elbow. And Josh Collmenter? He is one of the most dramatic fly ball pitchers in baseball and his outfield defense could not have helped him during his disappointing 2012 season.

Losing Young to injury last season probably cost the Diamondbacks two to three wins. Losing Parra's full time defense and adequate offense to Jason Kubel's bad defense cost the Diamondbacks another two wins. That kind of stuff goes a long way in telling a story about how a team can beat its run differential so well in 2011 and then lose to its differential the following season.

As of right now, Kubel is still the projected left fielder for 2013. Cody Ross takes over in center and he isn't bad out there and has had some decent seasons. But even Ross's best season does not add up to Young's two best seasons. It seems the Diamondbacks had a winning formula in 2011 and should have stuck with it.

Six things you might not know about Ian Kennedy

Ian Kennedy had some real pretty numbers in 2011 and some less pretty numbers in 2012. Even so, Kennedy's 2012 season ended on a high note and he finished at 15-12 to give him a two year win-loss record of 36-16, which again looks very pretty. Those 36 wins are the fourth most in baseball over those two combined season. But, of course, we all know that the win-loss statistic is not very favored these days in the analytic community. And for the most part, that is the correct call. As such, Ian Kennedy is not really considered to be an elite pitcher and nobody's list of the ten or twenty best pitchers in baseball would include him.

But there are some things you may not know about Ian Kennedy and you should. Some of them defend his lack of elite status and some fly in the face of it. Here, then is a list of things you probably did not know about Ian Kennedy's pitching.

1. Most of the batted balls off of Ian Kennedy are fly balls. Kennedy's ground ball percentage over the last three seasons has been 37.7 percent. Only thirteen other starters over that three-year time period have had a lower ground ball percentage. And this is despite increasing the number of two-seam fastballs he throws.

The belief here is that this statistic is the difference between his 2011 and 2012 seasons. In 2011, the Arizona Diamondbacks had the fourth best fielding runs saved from their left fielders and the best fielding runs saved in center field. Garardo Parra was terrific in left and Chris Young was terrific in center. In 2011, Ian Kennedy's BABIP on fly balls was .110 and .730 on line drives. In 2012, Jason Kubel played left field most of the season and Chris Young missed more than 30% of the season. In 2012, Kennedy's BABIP on fly balls was .162 and .784 on line drives. The Diamondbacks went from seventh in overall defensive efficiency in 2011 to 23th in 2012.

2. Ian Kennedy has been really durable. Kennedy has made 98 starts over the last three seasons, tied for seventh in all of baseball over that span. He has been a rock in the Diamondback's rotation.

3. Ian Kennedy is a strike throwing machine. Only five pitchers have thrown more strikes than Ian Kennedy in the last two seasons combined. In that same time period, he is tied for eighth in first pitch strike percentage. He was seventh over those two seasons for most pitches seen in the strike zone. And most people do not consider Kennedy a strikeout pitcher, but his 8.05 strikeouts per nine innings over the last two seasons is more than respectable. His strikeout to walk ratio has been 17th best among starters when you combine the last two seasons. And it is better than David Price and Matt Cain over that time period.

4. Despite his control, he is fifth in baseball in hitting batters over the past two seasons.

5. His five balks over the last two seasons are the second most in baseball. That's weird.

6. Ian Kennedy does not have a dominant pitch. That's right, everything he throws is rather ordinary. None of his pitches: fastball, curve, change up and slider have finished in the top thirty for pitch value over the past two seasons. There is not one pitch you can point to and say, "that is why Ian Kennedy is successful."

There you have it, six things you might not have known about Ian Kennedy. This observer has a real soft spot for him, so the perspective here is that he is a better pitcher than people think. But the numbers give mixed reviews. The best things he does are throw strikes and take the ball every fifth day. And he certainly wins a lot. The fact that he does not have a dominant pitch and has had a higher FIP than ERA the last two seasons tend to show that perhaps he isn't as good as this man-crush warrants. But what the heck, right? The heart goes where it will.

Why Wade Miley should be Rookie of the Year

Picking a favorite for the Rookie of the Year Award is always complicated when the two best candidates are a pitcher and a position player. The two candidates that rise above all other National League rookies are Wade Miley of the Diamondbacks and that Harper kid from the Nationals that you may have heard about. Harper, of course, has gotten all the attention and his every move is documented. And rightly so. He just turned nineteen and has all the tools and desire to be a star in the league for years to come. Plus, his team has made the playoffs after a 31 year absence. All of those things make Harper attractive and he has to be the favorite with sports writers due to familiarity and...well...hubris. But there is a stronger candidate from this observation post who has not been the toast of the town and his team is not in the playoffs--Wade Miley.

Again, it's a bit difficult to pick between apples and oranges. WAR tries to bridge that argument. But though it is a good starting point, WAR is not the total answer. Here is how the sites rate the two players in WAR:

• Baseball-reference.com:  Miley - 3.5, Harper - 4.5
• Fangraphs.com: Miley - 4.5 , Harper - 4.6
• Baseball Prospectus: Miley - 2.6 ,Harper - 3.9

If you go simply by WAR, it would appear to be Harper as he averages over the three sites at 4.33 compared to Miley's 3.2 average. But again. WAR is just a starting point.  All the sites build a position player's fielding into their equation and nobody can agree on the best system for measuring fielding and nobody is real happy with what we currently have. A full 1.2 wins for fielding are part of Fangraphs' valuation, for example.

WPA is another item we can look at. Win Probability Added measures how much a player's efforts added to or took away from a team's effort to win ballgames during the course of the season. Harper has the edge here again as his WPA on B-R is 1.6 and at Fangraphs is 2.12. Miley's WPA are 1.22 on B-R and 1.20 on Fangraphs.

Yeah, it looks like a case is being built for Harper. But there is more. Let's compare Harper's OPS+ to Miley's ERA+. Harper's OPS+ is 115 compared to Miley's 128. In other words, compared to league average (use 100 as a round number), Harper is 15 points above all league average batters whereas Miley is 28 points above league average pitchers.

There is also their relative rank to the leaderboard. Harper (according to Fangraphs) is the 29th best position player in baseball this season. Miley is the 13th best pitcher. Miley is also eighth among all starters in home runs per nine innings allowed despite pitching half his games in Arizona where the ball flies. Miley is also eighth in walks allowed per nine innings, which for a rookie, is amazing. On the other hand, Harper is not among the top ten in any of the major offensive categories.

Miley pitches in one of the worst parks for pitchers in baseball. Even so, his OPS against is better at home than it is on the road. He led the Diamondbacks' starters in ERA, WHIP, BB/9 and SO/BB ratio. Harper led his team in runs scored. That's it.

Don't get the post wrong. Harper is an exciting young player who is going to provide his team value for years to come. But to choose one rookie that stood out in terms of team performance, home ballparks, and overall comparison with the league's players, Wade Miley has had a more impressive rookie season.

Aaron Hill has had a great season

What a shame it is when a player has a fantastic season for a team that has never been in serious contention in a season. Aaron Hill has had such a season for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He did not make the All Star Team. His team is never considered for national television because they simply have not been a factor this season after winning their division last season. If you hear about the Diamondbacks at all, it is about whether or not the team will trade away its young superstar right fielder. And that is too bad because Aaron Hill has easily had the best season of his career.

Hill has played alongside five different shortstops. But he has manned his position steadily all season. His fielding metrics are good. His offense has been terrific. As of right now, with a week left in the season, Aaron Hill has been the second best second baseman in all of baseball. Only Cano is rated higher. Aaron Hill has had a better season than Pedroia. He has been way better than Espinosa, Phillips, Kendrick, Murphy, Weeks, Kinsler and any other second baseman you want to talk about.

But you might say that Hill plays in Arizona, a nice place to hit with its dry, hot air that helps a ball carry. Yes, he has a .910 OPS in Arizona. But he also has an .844 OPS on the road and that is not shabby by any means. As a right-handed batter, he has an .888 OPS against right-handed pitching and an .860 OPS against left-handed pitching. Throw anything you want at him and he's been good.

And this is a former Number One draft pick the Blue Jays ran out of town. And who is to blame them, really? Yeah, he had a fantastic 2009 season. That season, he had 195 hits with 36 homers, 37 doubles, 103 runs scored and 108 runs batted in. It looked like he had come into his own as a star player in baseball. Heck, he came in 12th in MVP voting. And then 2010 happened.

Aaron Hill lost the ability to hit in 2010. His final triple slash line that season was .205/.271/.394. Ugh! It was awful. He still hit 26 homers, but everything else was a disaster. He did not bounce back for the Blue Jays in 2011 either. After 108 games with that team in 2011, his OPS was actually ten points lower than his paltry .665 for 2009. And his power had gone away as he hit only eight homers.

Fortunately for Hill, the Diamondbacks had that Cinderella season a year ago and weren't overly happy with Johnson at second. They wanted a little more zip at the position and traded Johnson to the Blue Jays in a trade deadline deal for Hill and McDonald. Hill responded with a good run down the stretch for the Diamondbacks as his .878 OPS in those 33 games did much to help the Diamondbacks. He then put an .879 OPS together in the series loss to the Brewers in the playoffs.

So basically, Aaron Hill has played a season and a third for the Diamondbacks and his OPS has remained as steady as anything. .878 down the stretch last season, .879 in the playoffs and now .876 this season. That gives every indication of not being a fluke.

This season, Hill has the most walks of his career and his highest walk percentage. He has hit 40 doubles to go with six triples and 24 homers. His OPS+ is the highest of his career. His wOBA is the highest of his career. Even his ISO is higher this year than his big season of 2009. His swinging strike percentage is the lowest of his career. Everything has come together for Aaron Hill this season.

Hill is only 30 years old. What if 2009 and this season are the real Hill and 2010 and 2011 were just a funk or a lack of adjustments to what pitchers were doing, or an undetected flaw in his mechanics or an undisclosed injury? Hill could not repeat what he did in 2009. He will need to show that he can repeat his 2012. But for this season at least, he has been a terrific player, the second best second baseman in baseball, all without a lot of fanfare or team success. A tip of the coke glass to you, Mr. Hill.

Confused on the Justin Upton situation

The Arizona Diamondbacks' Justin Upton is not having as good a season as last season. That fact is obvious. But how and why does that translate to wanting to trade a former 1st Round draft pick who is only twenty-four and already has 99 homers to his credit? And how bad is his current season? His fWAR is the exact same as Nick Swisher. And even with his diminished season, Upton has already performed to a Fangraphs.com value of $7.8 million. He is currently making $6.5 million. What the heck is up with this trade talk? Is not Justin Upton a piece you build a franchise around?

By the time this season is over, Justin Upton will have hit as many or more homers before his 25th birthday than Mark Teixeira, Frank Thomas and Gary Sheffield. In five full seasons, he has compiled 16.6 WAR or an average of more than five a season. That's a pretty good career start. He is an above average fielder in right and a far above average base runner. So can somebody give this observer a clue as to why the Diamondbacks sounds so hot to do this?

Since this writer is not the only one to be baffled by the trade rumors, the inevitable has happened and people are looking for dark secrets and painting Justin Upton as a malcontent. His agent and his general manager have both said those rumors are stupid.  Now what isn't known is Upton's relationship with his manager and his teammates. But unless there is something concrete to talk about, any talk about those relationships being the reason for Upton's rumors would be unfair. You could read into those dumb statements made earlier in the season by Ken Kendrick that singled out Upton and Drew, but that statement was made silly by the fact that Drew was recovering from a broken leg for crying out loud.

Even if they were true, big deal. Babe Ruth had trouble with his managers. Reggie Jackson was not universally loved by his teammates. Gary Sheffield did not have a mild personality. So what? And can much be made of Upton's below-par season? Not really. If he puts a string of sub-par seasons together like Hanley Ramirez has, then the talk would be appropriate. But that is not the case here.

So again, why would the Diamondbacks be so anxious to trade him? Upton has a favorable contract for the next few years if you go by Upton's body of work. Just a season ago, at the age of 23, he had a near MVP season. Something doesn't make sense here. Justin Upton is the kind of young talent that every team is looking for. He has had major league success. He has nothing but a positive future ahead of him. Color this observer clueless because the whole thing seems ridiculous.

What the heck, Joe Saunders?

Joe Saunders of the Arizona Diamondbacks has made four starts. His ERA in those four starts is 0.90. What the heck is wrong with this picture? His performance thus far has earned him a 0.7 fWAR in thirty innings when he only earned 1.0 fWAR in 212 innings last season. Again, what is going on here? He has given up only nineteen hits in his thirty innings of work and has a WHIP of 0.87. Are you serious!? Joe Saunders!?

There are some indications that Joe Saunders has remade himself as a pitcher. When he pitched for the Angels, Saunders featured a four-seam fastball, a pitch he threw sixty percent of the time. He now throws the two-seam fastball--a pitch he never had with the Angels--47 percent of the time and is only throwing his four-seamer 21 percent of the time. As a result, his ground balls have risen sharply.

For most of his career, batters against Saunders have hit about 45 percent ground balls and about 35 percent fly balls. Some years were just over or under those basic figures, but he was pretty consistently in those ranges. This year, his ground ball rate has risen to 54.9 percent and his fly ball rate is down to 28 percent. This is really important because Joe Saunders always gave up a lot of homers. His career homer rate of 1.1 per nine innings was not good. This year it sits at 0.30.

So, yes, Joe Saunders is a different kind of pitcher than he was for the Angels. But there are some red flags here. First, his strand rate of 89.8 is not sustainable. That will fall to the norm of in the mid to high 70's in percentage. Secondly, his BABIP against is only .214. His career BABIP is .287 or just below league average. The ground balls will help his BABIP but it hardly seems likely for him to continue that low all season.

Saunders' FIP of 2.96 is excellent, but is a full two runs higher than his actual ERA. His SIERA is even higher at 3.74. So, no, Joe Saunders will not be THIS good all season. But perhaps his four starts do indicate a different Joe Saunders than the one we've seen in the past. No longer are his starts a cringe-worthy occasion. Now, when Saunders' rotation spot comes up, this Arizona Diamondbacks have a good chance to win the game.

Baseball never ceases to surprise us.

The Scrum for the NL West: Diamondbacks

The Arizona Diamondbacks had such a magical season in 2011 and won 94 games. Despite their success, Baseball Prospectus does not even project the team to win the division in 2012. In fact, BP projects the division to be among the closest and yet nearly the most mediocre division in baseball with only seven games separating the teams from top to bottom. In this, the first segment of a five post series, an attempt will be made to sort out the division. First up, those same Diamondbacks.

Baseball Prospectus most likely based their projection for the Diamondbacks in 2012 on the fact that nearly the same team will return in 2012 and the team beat its Pythagorean won-lost record by six games in 2011. The Pythagorean system as it relates to baseball looks at the amount of runs a team scores and allows and with math that only Jason Wojciechowski would understand, figures out how many games a team should have won provided their run differential. No doubt the formulas involved are longer than that last sentence. At any rate, the Diamondbacks should have only won 88 games last season. BP's projections are similarly based and project to only 83 wins in 2012 and a second place finish (behind the Giants).

Looking at the Diamondbacks' roster, such a pessimistic projection for a division winning club is understandable. They have questions at shortstop, first base, left field and the bottom two spots of their pitching rotation. Plus, you have to remember that this club is only two years removed from winning only 65 games in 2010. Manager, Kirk Gibson, was given much of the credit for the club's turnaround and deservedly so. The question is whether Gibson can consistently coax more wins out of a team than its talent level. Let's take an in-depth look at this team starting with the pitching staff.

The starting rotation begins with two of the best young pitchers in baseball in Daniel Hudson and Ian Kennedy. This dynamic duo won 37 games between them last season. Kennedy led all starting pitchers in WPA and won 21 games. Hudson won 16 but his overall stats were nearly identical to Kennedy's. Both keep walks to a minimum, are fairly stingy with allowing balls to be hit over the fence and let batters pound the ball into the ground to a very good defensive infield. While a lot of good fortune goes into the won-loss record, serious regression should not occur in the statistics for either pitcher overall.

The Diamondbacks did make one major move in the off season to bolster the rotation and brought in Trevor Cahill from the Oakland Athletics. Cahill is a solid, if unspectacular starting pitcher. He is an extreme ground ball machine and has made thirty or more starts for three years in a row. However, his somewhat unexciting statistics drew great benefit from pitching all his home games in Oakland's house of horror. To say that his splits from home and away are extreme would be an understatement.  His success for the Diamondbacks will largely depend on how many of his ground balls find infielder gloves.

Cahill should be a great improvement on the third starter from a year ago. That's the good news. The bad news is that the Diamondbacks brought Joe Saunders back to be their fourth starter. Nearly the only possible good thing to say about Saunders as a starter is that he'll consistently take the ball every fifth day. He is a durable innings-eater. Plus, he is left-handed. The reality is that he doesn't miss any bats and tends to be homer prone. His ERA of 3.69 of a year ago was more than a run less than his FIP. There is little hope of him being able to replicate that in 2012. 

The fifth starter might be less dicey with Josh Collmenter and his funky over the top delivery. Collmenter became a sensation as a rookie a season ago when his first eleven appearances led to a 3-1 record and an ERA under two. But the league caught up with him in June and he was somewhat mediocre after that fast start. But the nice thing about Collmenter is that he helps his cause by limiting home runs fairly well and is very stingy with giving away free passes. Low walk rates are stressed with success in Arizona and Collmenter was their flag bearer.

If any of the rotation faulters, Trevor Bauer is nearly ready for prime time. The Diamondbacks' preference would be for Bauer to start the season in the minors, but he could prove to be a factor as the season hums along. Wade Miley could prove to be another decent option. Fortunately, the Barry Enright, Armando Galarraga and Zach Duke days won't have to be repeated.

The Diamondbacks have the makings of a terrific bullpen. J.J. Putz was money last season and his last two seasons have proved that if you use him wisely, he shouldn't break down like he did after the Mariners ran him into the ground. Putz has been Rivera-like in avoiding walks and might be the most underrated closer in the game today.

Putz is backed up by the returning solid trio of David Hernandez, Joe Paterson and Brad Ziegler. They have been augmented by what might one of the sleeper off season upgrades of the season when they received Craig Breslow in the Cahill deal. Breslow, if used correctly, is one tough lefty out of the bullpen.

Paul Goldschmidt certainly had a whirlwind season in 2011 as he made the jump from an A+ league in 2010 to Double A in 2011. Late in the season and in desperation, the Diamondbacks turned to the eighth round draft pick who put together three Pujols-like seasons in the minors. Goldschmidt had some huge moments for the Diamondbacks down the stretch. Despite the heroics, he can look over-matched at times and struck out nearly thirty percent of his at bats. The first base job will be his, but it will be interesting to see how he fares over a full season. Projections are fairly bullish for him to have a fine season, but this one falls in the question mark category here. Lyle Overbay is a good guy and will back up Goldschmidt.

Another question mark is at shortstop with Stephen Drew trying to return from a very serious ankle injury. Early indications are that he should be physically ready to go, but the injury is a scary one and the Diamondbacks will have to hold their breath. Drew is an excellent shortstop when healthy though his bat never seemed to develop the way it was thought it would. If Drew can man his position, that will be terrific because otherwise that would lead to more serious playing time for Willie Bloomquist. Bloomquist at best is a utility guy and the Diamondbacks lose a lot at short if he has to play there a lot.

The last question mark is left field. Gerardo Parra had his best season in the majors last year with a career best offensive and defensive season. He won the Gold Glove Award. His reward this year after such a fine season was to possibly lose his starting spot to newcomer Jason Kubel, who was signed as a free agent. Kubel can be an effective slugger but the Diamondbacks will lose a lot of defensive capability to put him in left over Parra. Parra is expected to play all over the outfield as the fourth outfielder and could see significant at bats. But this observer is not a big fan of this move.

Everyone fell in love with Ryan Roberts last season as he became a bit of a cult personality with his tattoos and at times flamboyant play. Roberts is a terrific fielding third baseman with some pop in his bat and good plate discipline. Third base is currently a market inefficiency in baseball and Roberts is a valuable player for this team.

Second base should probably have been put in the question mark category. Aaron Hill will occupy the position and he is a plus defender but a very confusing offensive player. Hill followed a career year in 2009 with the Blue Jays to two years of ridiculously low BABIP scores and troubling statistics. He seemed to find himself at the plate after a trade deadline deal sent him to the Diamondbacks. So his offensive 2012 will be fascinating to watch.

Chris Young has developed into a terrific center fielder but fell off slightly at the plate last season. But he is coming into his peak seasons. His combination of good power, plus base running and the way he can go get the ball in center make him a rare commodity. He has put together two 4.6 fWAR seasons and could be even better. Young is definitely a strength of this team.

And, of course, his outfield partner in right is one of the best young players in the game and Justin Upton is the core of this team. Amazingly, Upton will only be 24 in 2012 and his superstar status will continue to grow year by year. Upton has also become a fine fielder in right after adjusting to the position for a couple of seasons. 

The Diamondbacks also have one of the best catchers in the game right now in Miguel Montero. Montero is in the last year of his contract and will have the extra incentive in this, his walk year. Montero is that rare breed of good offense and good defense. He's everything you'd want in a catcher. But he'd better stay healthy because if he goes down, he is backed up by Henry Blanco. And you don't want to go there full time.

Blanco is part of a pretty weak bench completed by Overbay, Bloomquist, John McDonald and Geoff Blum. This lack of depth is a bit troubling if any of the regulars miss significant time.

The opinion here is that the Diamondbacks could easily win 90 games this coming season in a division where 88 wins could win the division. Despite BP's projection, the projection here is that they are the team to beat in the National League West. We shall see in the next four installments of this series if any of the other four teams in the division will have anything to say about that.

Aaron Hill And Predictability

After a player has put in seven years of service encompassing 908 games, you have a pretty good gauge on what kind of player he is. Things like luck can cause minor spikes and contrasts, but normally a baseline can be reached. You can forget all about that with Aaron Hill. His career reads like a stock market chart. He started his career as a low strikeout, low power kind of guy. Then suddenly he's hitting 62 homers in two years. Then he goes back to no power again. What the heck? Take a look at just two statistics, his ISO and his wOBA over the course of his career. The following charts give you a visual representation.

How are you supposed to get a feel for what kind of player Hill is by looking at that mess? And those aren't the only statistics that drive you crazy with Aaron Hill. Take his line drive percentage. Here is a list of his line drive percentages during his career: 23.1, 19.2, 20.8, 17.3, 19.6, 10.6 and 21.2. See any pattern there? No, not here either. 

There are a couple of trends you can see though. When he first came up, he hit more ground balls than fly balls. His first three years, his ratio of ground balls to fly balls were 1.5, 1.33 and 1.04. Since 2008, that trend disappeared and he's become a batter who hits more balls in the air. That same ratio since 2008 looks like this: 0.74, 0.96, 0.65 and 0.87. At the same time, after three years of single digits in infield fly pops his rate exploded starting in 2008 and has been in double digits every year since. Perhaps he figured out that chicks dig the long ball. Well, the long ball is fine as long as all the other numbers look pretty along with the homers.

But that's not the case after his breakout year in 2009. He did still hit 26 homers in 2010, but everything else tanked. You would think that the longer Hill plays in the majors that his plate discipline would get better and better. But it's just the opposite with Hill. When he first came up, his O-swing rates (swings at pitches outside the strike zone) were excellent at 15.4 and 18.7 percent his first two season. In his last two seasons, that has ballooned to 31.3 and 29.5 percent--easily the highest of his career. 

You can't even get a read on Hill by looking at his pitch type values. Those are valuations against various pitch types as compiled by Fangraphs (among others). Some years he's good against fastballs. Other years, he's terrible. Some years, he's good against curves. Other years he isn't and so on with every pitch type. Over the years, it seems he's had more success with the curve than against any other pitch type. Strange.

All these thoughts came about because this author was trying to decide if the Arizona Diamondbacks did a smart thing by signing Hill for two years at just above $10 million. The answer really becomes, "We'll have to wait and see." It could pay off big as Hill has compiled a value (per Fangraphs) of $58.4 million in seven years or an average of $8.4 million a season. That means that Hill has a lot of upside on making a little over $5 million a season. But it also seems a crap shoot because Hill's valuation through those years has been all over the place. 

Micah Owings is Perfect

Great anecdotes of our sport of baseball defy cold statistical analysis. The truth of the matter is that anything under the sun can happen for a player at any time. Ryan Roberts had never hit a grand slam in his professional life and now he's had two in his last six games. That's not putting down analysis. That way of looking at baseball is fun too. And it doesn't matter if those analysts put down these anomalous moments for what they are. Those happenings happened and you can't...well...unhappen them. Take the season of Micah Owings, pitcher of the fighting Arizona Diamondbacks.

Owings stepped into a game getting out of control last night. With the Diamondbacks needing a win to extend their series with the Brewers to a full five games, their starting pitcher, Joe Saunders, was in a battle with Milwaukee's Randy Wolf to see who could stink up the joint more from a pitching stand point. Saunders gave up a run in the first. Wolf gave up five in the first. Saunders gave up another run in the second and then another one in the top of the third. Kirk Gibson, to his credit, saw the way things were going and smartly pinch hit for Saunders. Gibson's choice of the little known player with the unlikely name of Collin Cowgill paid off huge dividends as Cowgill hit a two-run single to extend the D-backs' lead to 7-3. Into the game stepped Micah Owings.

Fans of this site know that Owings is a favorite here. Fans don't choose favorite players. The players choose the fans. And Owings has always been close to this heart. The root of that fan-hood probably comes from a DH-loving writer who also loves pitchers that can hit. Owings can hit. As a tweeter pointed out last night, Owings has a career rWAR of 0.2 as a pitcher and 3.0 as a batter. But as much as this Fan love him some Micah Owings, the understanding that Owings has never been a very good pitcher has been there. That didn't matter. This writer still loved the guy.

So imagine how ecstatic this Fan would be that Micah Owings has had a perfect season. Perfect? Well, only if you show that his win-loss record--a statistic genuinely hated by all card-carrying members of analytically loving crowd--was a perfect 8-0 during the regular season. Yes, Owings also compiled his career's best ERA of 3.57. But folks, it's a fluke. If you look at Owings' FIP and xFIP, he really wasn't any better this year than any other of his not-so-good seasons. He was simply more fortunate. That's the reality. But the alternate reality is that those eight wins against no losses are still there and you can't ever erase them from the record books. As long as Baseball-reference.com stands, that record will be there.

And now, in the Diamondbacks' somewhat storybook season, Micah Owings is again perfect in the NLDS. His two scoreless innings helped him inherit the win from a starter who couldn't make it to the fifth inning. So now Owings is 9-0 this season: 8-0 in the regular season and 1-0 in the post season. Don't you love it? 

Baseball has an affectionate term for the kind of win that Owings got last night in Arizona. They are called vulture wins. Owings did make four starts this season. He never pitched longer than 5.1 innings in any of them, yet he won three of those games and his team won all four. The rest of his five regular season wins came like last night when Owings entered a game that was either tied or his team was behind or the starter couldn't get the required five innings for the victory. Owings swooped in and nabbed that win. He had three holds during the season, but overall, Owings was the talisman for the Diamondbacks. If he got into a game, good things were going to happen.

It doesn't matter that it's all anomalous. It doesn't matter that his efforts garner any love from analysts. It doesn't matter that Owings really hasn't been any better than any other of his previous seasons. In 2011, Micah Owings was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Diamondbacks Unbelievable Game

The Diamondbacks' improbable and amazing comeback yesterday against the Dodgers is a mini-microcosm of their improbable and amazing season. While this writer will not rehash the Diamondbacks' season (already wrote this last week), the game itself was amazing.  Stunning.

The first part of the problem for the Dodgers was the long-held belief by major league managers that a five run lead is safe in major league baseball. With the emphasis on saves and holds and close-game bullpen management, managers often find a way to get less than stellar relievers in the game to start the last inning when their teams are "comfortably" ahead. Don Mattingly was no different. But the Fan is getting ahead of himself just a bit. Let's start at the beginning.

The Diamondbacks naturally want to win as they fight for second seed in the playoffs, but unlike the Brewers, do not want to use one of their better pitchers to accomplish that goal. It was the perfect time to start Jarrod Parker. Parker was drafted in the first round by the Diamondbacks back in 2007. Just 22 years old, Parker had a successful, if somewhat disappointing season in Double A this season. Baseball America rated Parker the 33rd best prospect in baseball this past off season. Parker did his part by pitching five and two-thirds innings of four hit ball with one walk and one strikeout. Nice. He also picked up his first major league hit. And lest that last fact be a surprise, Parker has a .271 lifetime BA in the minors.

So Parker matched Hiroki Kuroda, who did what he usually does: give up no runs and not get a win. With both starters out of the game, both teams scored a run in the seventh. Dee Gordon drove in a run in the top of the inning for the Dodgers and then Lyle Overbay doubled in a run for the Diamondbacks in the bottom of the frame. Overbay is a nice player on the bench for the D-Backs. In a totally meaningless statistic, the D-Backs are 13-4 in games Overbay plays.

And so the game stood at 1-1 through the regular duration of the game and we get to the top of the tenth inning. The Diamondbacks brought in Micah Owings, owner of this writer's heart as a man-crush. Except he got crushed. On top of giving up four hits and a walk in the frame, Owings also made a fielding gaffe that cost another base runner. Chris Young also made a fielding boondoggle and by the time the inning was over, Owings had given up five runs, four of them earned. Game over right?

Except Mattingly fell into that dreaded manager malady of the safe relief appearance. Blake Hawksworth is Mattingly's fifth best reliever. And he showed why (although not all of it was his fault). Hawksworth actually retired the first two batters on routine ground outs. But then Cole Gillespie singled (his first hit of the season). Miguel Montero singled and Gillespie went to third. Chris Young walked. John McDonald pinch hit for Owings (Owings might be the better hitter of the two) and hit a hard grounder to third. Aaron Miles booted it and Gillespie scored. That could have been the third out.

And as happens so often in these "safe" relief appearances, Mattingly had to go to his closer anyway and he had to bring in Javy Guerra. Closers are strange people anyway and it's always better to start an inning with them than to bring them into tough situations. But Guerra needed to get just one out. It never came. He first walked Aaron Hill to force in a run. And then this happened. It was cute how Roberts mimicked his manager's famous home run trot in the World Series.

And thus the improbable happened. But why shouldn't it for the Diamondbacks? The Dodgers found a way to lose the game and the D-Backs found a way to win it. As for the Fan's man-crush, Micah Owings ended up with the vulture win and finishes the season, 8-0.  In a visual of how loony this game was, the Fan leaves you with the win probability graph of the game thanks to the good folks at Fangraphs.com. It sure looks like a roller coaster.

The Diamondbacks Are a Lovely Story

Isn't it sort of refreshing that four of the six divisions will feature a different division champion than the previous season? The World Champion San Francisco Giants will not repeat or even make the playoffs. The Reds were never a factor. The Bay Rays will not win their division again nor make the playoffs and the Tigers ended the long hold the Twins have had on the AL Central. There are a ton of great stories in there. Jim Leyland has done a wonderful job with the Tigers. Joe Girardi did a wonderful job getting the Yankees were they are. Milwaukee is loving their Brew Crew. But the story that captivates this writer more than any is the division title from the Arizona Diamondbacks.

First of all an admission. This writer did unequivocally state before the season that Kirk Gibson was the wrong guy for the Diamondbacks. If ever there was a stupid statement made by this writer, it was that one. Managers do get too much credit when their teams win, but you'd have to say that Kirk Gibson set the tone in Arizona and it has flowered in the desert. The Diamondbacks are a full six games over their Pythagorean O/U for the season. You have to give the manager some props for that kind of magic.

But who picked the Diamondbacks to win the division this season? Gibson was unable to turn them around after taking over last year's team. They won only 65 games in 2010. So this writer wasn't alone in not giving the Diamondbacks any hope of competing this season. Once again, baseball shows us that the more we know, the more we don't know and can't predict what will happen when the games are actually played. Everyone loves a good Cinderella story, right? The Padres almost pulled it off last season. The Diamondbacks did fill the bill this year of Cinderella and they are going to the ball.

The numbers say that the Diamondbacks are unremarkable. They are tenth of sixteen NL teams in batting average. They are eighth in on base percentage. Their pitching ERA is eighth, or smack in the middle of the National League. They are fourteenth in the NL in pitcher strikeouts. Their two big off season acquisitions were Joe Saunders and Jason Marquis--two 30-something pitchers coming off of terrible seasons. Marquis got hurt early. Saunders has given them surprisingly effective innings. They traded away Mark Reynolds and his strikeouts after setting a record last year in that statistic. But they still strike out more than twelve other teams in the National League. If you look at the numbers, you have to wonder how this has happened.

Can you say that somehow the stars have aligned? Josh Collmenter came out of nowhere to win nine games and had a 3.56 K/BB ratio despite only 5.9 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. Micah Owings hasn't looked like much more than a novelty act for most of his career and somehow went 7-0 in vulture wins and spot starts to compile a nifty 3.10 ERA. Aaron Hill had looked like his career was withering for the Blue Jays the past two seasons. Yet he came to the desert at the trade deadline and has hit at an .876 OPS clip for the D-backs. But if you want a little pixie dust, look no further than first base.

The Diamondbacks employed no fewer than seven players at first base. Combined for the season, the D-backs first basemen have a collective .740 OPS. For an offensive position, that isn't very good. But the last guy they tried, Paul Goldschmidt, an eighth round draft pick on nobody's prospect radar, has an .830 OPS and hit the division-clinching triple in last night's game. Talk about serendipity! In just 43 games, Goldschmidt has seven game winning hits. Amazing.

So what exactly do the Diamondbacks do well? They field the ball very well. They are fifth in the NL in fielding efficiency and in the top five in fielding percentage, but are just mere points behind the leaders. They don't hit into double plays. Their 79 GIDP are by far the fewest in the National League. Their pitchers don't walk people. Only the Phillies and the Brewers' pitching staffs have allowed fewer walks in the National League than the Diamondbacks. They do not allow free bases to other teams either. Their 41 percent success rate at preventing stolen bases leads the National League. 

To be sure, the Diamondbacks have had some outstanding breakout seasons by Justin Upton and Ian Kennedy. Daniel Hudson has been a top starter all season. J. J. Putz has had a fantastic season as the closer. But in the end, this is simply a team that seems to do a lot of little things well and that has to reflect some on the manager and his staff and the front office led by Mr. Towers. 

The Diamondbacks are a lovely story. Who knows what will happen in the playoffs. Those events are usually determined by who gets hot when and how the ball bounces. It would be kind of neat for a Diamondback/Yankees World Series ten years later than the last one. But, for the Diamondbacks to lose 97 games in 2010 and come back to win the National League West a year later is truly one of the best stories of the year in MLB. The Diamondbacks make you smile. That's all there is to it.