Dellin Betances and Craig Kimbrel earn Goose Gossage Awards

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance (BBA) has announced today that Dellin Betances of the New York Yankees has won the American League Goose Gossage Award as the year's best relief pitcher and Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves has earned his fourth consecutive nod as the best relief pitcher of the National League for 2014. See the link for the details.

The General Chapter of the BBA is made up of generalist baseball bloggers (not focusing on one team or one area) and that chapter's official ballot had Betances beat by one vote by Wade Davis, but agreed to the Kimbrel selection. That ballot was compiled with all of the other chapters of the BBA to come up with the eventual winners.

The General Chapter salutes both Betances and Kimbrel for their fine seasons in 2014.

The best and worst bullpens thus far

Measuring how a team's bullpen is doing can be tricky business. You really can't go by WAR like in other positions because, for example, the Red Sox' bullpen leads baseball in WAR. But that may be because they are pitching more innings than other teams' bullpens. The Red Sox' bullpen is actually doing extremely well, but is it the best as the WAR seems to indicate? One thing is for certain: If your team is not doing well in the bullpen, you are quite aware of that fact as it gets ugly.

So how then should we measure bullpens? We can look at FIP, which is probably better than looking at ERA. We can look at WPA. We can look at which teams have better success with inherited runners scoring. We can look at strikeout to walk ratios. We can look at a lot of different things. Let's look at the top and bottom five in each of these categories and see what we can see.

FIP

The top five teams in FIP are:

1. The Braves - 2.32
2. The Royals - 2.88
3. The Athletics - 2.93
4. The Red Sox - 2.96
5. The Padres - 3.02

The worst five teams in FIP

1. The Astros - 4.70
2. The Reds - 4.65
3. The Rays - 4.61
4. The Phillies - 4.60
5. The White Sox - 4.38

WPA

1. The Padres - 3.87
2. The Giants - 3.52
3. The Brewers - 3.35
4. The Red Sox - 2.38
5. The Braves - 1.61

The bottom five:

1. The Astros: -2.51
2. The Cubs: -2.22
3. The Marlins: -1.62
4. The Reds: -1.61
5. The Blue Jays: -1.52

Inherited Runners:

1. The Pirates - 84%
2. The Giants - 83.8%
3. The Padres - 80.7%
4. The Brewers - 79.6%
5. The Nationals - 78.6%

The worst five:

1. The Cardinals - 66.3%
2. The Tigers - 66.8%
3. The Astros - 67.5%
4. The Royals - 68.7%
5. The Rangers and Yankees: 68.8%

K/BB Ratio:

1. The Brewers: 3.53
2. The Braves: 3.47
3. The Cardinals: 3.20
4. The Giants: 3.19
5. Tigers: 3.14

The worst

1. The White Sox: 1.21
2. The Reds: 1.68
3. The Rays: 1.81
4. The Mets: 1.90
5. The Dodgers: 1.96

WAR

1. The Red Sox: 2.4
2. The Braves and Royals: 2.1
3. The Athletics 2.0
4. Two tied with 1.99

The worst:

1. The Mets: -1.3
2. The Rays: -1.0
3. The Astros and Reds: -0.7
4. The Phillies and Angels: -0.4

So have we seen any sort of patterns here? It is hard to pick on the Reds because they went most of the season thus far without Aroldis Chapman. But the worst bullpens appear to be (from appearances at the bottom of the most categories) the Mets, the Astros, the Rays and the Reds. The Yankees have made a run for the worst lately.

As for the best bullpens, thus far, the Braves, Red Sox, Padres and the Brewers appear to have the best bullpens in baseball followed closely by the A's and the Royals.

Jose Iglesias and Andrelton Simmons - Whose BABIP was more out of whack?

Jose Iglesias, if he plays full time, will be part of a debate between he and Andrelton Simmons on which is the better fielder. Simmons is fresh off one of the best fielding seasons for a shortstop...ever. Iglesias has that kind of reputation, but other than a few other-worldly highlights from 2013, has yet to put a full season together. But today, the focus is not on their fielding, but on which of the shortstops had a more unrealistic batting average based on balls in play (BABIP).

Iglesias ended the season with a batting average of .303 and a BABIP of .356. Andrelton Simmons ended the season with a BABIP of .247 and a batting average of .248. Since a large part of the two free-swinging batters on-base percentage is based on batting average (they do not walk much), this is an important question moving forward on their potential offensive worth.

Simmons did hit 17 homers in 2013, which Iglesias will never do, so Simmons does have that advantage. But looking at just the on-base percentage equation, the two players could not have had a more different outcome.

Here is a look at some BABIP figures for both as compared to each other and to the league average as a whole for 2013:

Where hit - MLB - Simmons - Iglesias

• Ground - .240 - .183 - .304
• Flyball - .182 - .145 - .200
• Line Dr - .674 - .642 - .708
• Pulled  - .391 - .317 - .545
• Up Mid. - .301 - .265 - .275
• Opp Fld - .307 - .195 - .367

While it is not a proper equation because of the percentage hit of each, you can see that Simmons is under on every category to the tune of a total of -348 points! Iglesias is over on every category except up the middle and is over by a total of 304 points. Those are some pretty glaring anomalies.

Most of Jose Iglesias' success with batted balls happened in the first three months of the season with the Red Sox. Regression set in during the month of July. At the end of July (the 30th), he was traded to the Tigers. In August with that team, his BABIP was .364. In September, he had another correction down to .243.

Of Iglesias' 290 balls in play for 2013, 18 of them were bunts. He beat out eleven of them. That 61.1% success rate would up his BABIP by four points. That's not a big push, but it does help. After looking at Iglesias' spray charts, a large percentage of his ground balls went to the left side of the infield and he beat out his share of those too. Those kinds of things help.

But, his BABIP was still a bit of a fluke as there were plenty of bloops and dribblers in there as all the Twitter conversation in April and May would attest.

Andrelton Simmons bunted thirteen times and beat them out for singles on four occasions, a .307 average. While still good, that will not make much of a dent on his BABIP. Like Iglesias, Simmons pulls a lot of his ground balls. But by attesting to his .183 average when hitting them, he does not beat a lot of them out.

Judging from Simmons' spray chart, he might be quite easy to defense as he does hit almost all of his ground balls to the left side: Source: FanGraphs 

Let's face it, if Simmons and Iglesias can be huge positives on defense for their teams, then it matters much less how well they hit. But every run gained is a positive one for a team. Simmons, despite hitting a large amount of ground balls to the same place in the infield, was unlucky overall in 2013. He should get better results if he can at least attain a BABIP near league average (.300). Iglesias will have to prove that his batting success in 2013 was not the fluke that it appears to be.

Freddie Freeman - fabulous or fluky?

Freddie Freeman's first two years in the Major Leagues were remarkably similar. He finished his rookie season of 2011 with an OPS of .795. He then finished his second full season with an OPS of .796. Since Freeman was a first baseman which is supposed to be an offensive position, the two finishes seemed to indicate the kind of player Freeman was and it was not quite good enough. For example, he was the thirteenth best first baseman in 2012. But then 2013 happened and Freeman's OPS jumped a hundred points to .897 and suddenly he was the fifth best first baseman in baseball. Which is the real Freeman?

The two projection systems checked for this piece--Oliver and Steamer--both predict Freeman to be better than he was the first two years but not as good as he was in 2013. Do you buy that? Should we buy that? Projections are simply computer calculations based on historical data used to project future performance. Success of those projections are certainly better than flipping a coin, but certainly not in the 100% category of a biblical prophet.

So what should we expect from Freddie Freeman then? I literally poured over his numbers and devoured them like Christmas dinner and came up enthusiastic. There are two outstanding things that jumped out at me. The first was his age. Entering his fourth full time season, Freeman is only 24 years old. The second is that Freddie Freeman is a line drive machine.

The age thing really surprised me and it probably should not have if I was paying attention. I really had no idea he was that young. His next three to five years should be peak and he is learning on the job and adjusting well as he goes. Some recent studies have questioned the regression cycles that have long maintained that after the age of 28 or 29, regression is inevitable. The new studies seem to suggest that the age of regression starts younger. So perhaps Freeman is as good as he is going to get. But if that means his 2013 numbers, we'll take it.

Anyway, the line drive thing. If you have looked at batted ball data, line drives are the bomb. The Major League average BABIP on line drives was .664 in 2013. In other words, if you hit a hundred line drives over the course of a season, sixty-six of those will fall in safely. The problem is, very few hitters hit a hundred line drives over the course of a season.

Freddie Freeman hit 132 line drives in 2013! The average player in the Majors hits between eighteen and nineteen percent of his batted balls as line drives. Freeman's line drive percentages over the last three years? Try 23%, 26% and 26.7%. His prodigious line drive percentage rivals Votto's.

What has happened to those line drives over his past three seasons have been the major factor in his overall BABIP and thus his batting average. Remember I said that the average BABIP on line drives is .664. In 2011, when Freeman batted .285, his line drive BABIP was an incredible .795--way over average. In 2012, when his batting average fell to .259, his BABIP on line drives went down to just above league average to .667. In 2013, it rose again to .765. A remarkable 100 of Freeman's 2013 hits came on line drives in 2013!

Those numbers can be looked at two ways. First, you could figure that 2012 was a more realistic line drive BABIP since it was league average. But then again, two of his three seasons have been amazingly higher than league average and the fact that his spray chart shows his line drives going all over the field, lead me to think that the two high years are his norm and not 2012.

Freeman's fluctuating total BABIPs over the three years are probably one of the things that dampens his projections a bit. They were respectively: .339, .295 and .371. His BABIPs on ground balls and fly balls have been stable so the difference has been the line drives. If his spray charts were more mundane, I would tend to go with a dampened projection as well. But I don't think that will be the case.

The other thing to notice about Freeman is his consistent power numbers. His home run per fly ball rate has only risen slightly in three years. They were: 14.0%, 14.8% and 15% respectively. Thus, his home run total has been like a metronome with seasons of 21, 23 and 23. His overall OPS then would seem to continue with similar slugging and ISO numbers. Oliver projections, which does a five year projection, has his home run total pegged at 23 every year of the five years, which is somewhat comical.

It would seem natural that his power numbers would go up as he matures as a hitter. If that is the case, even if his line drive BABIP, that we talked about so much already, falls to league average, his slugging percentage should rise to make up the difference. I do not see any reason why he cannot raise his home run total to 30 in the coming years.

What else is there to like about Freeman? Well, there is also his splits, which improved greatly in 2013. His OPS against left-handed pitching in 2011 and 2012 were rugged with 2012 being slightly higher at just above .700. But that went up to a respectable .764 in 2013 and if he can maintain that or get even better against southpaws, then he will continue to improve as a hitter.

Another thing that I noticed was his success in 2013 in high leverage situations and with men in scoring position. Freeman was pretty abysmal in both of those situations in his first two full years. Last year, he was fantastic in both and perhaps that is another indication of his growth and maturity as a hitter.

One of the largest amount of negative feedback this site has ever seen was last year when I mentioned that Freeman was not much of a fielder at first base. Braves fans accused me of all kinds of boorish behaviors. Heh. The truth is that he has scored negatively at first base on both Fangraphs.com and on Baseball-reference.com. The two sites have not agreed at the level of that negativity. Fangraphs has been much harder on him than B-R.

But both sites showed great improvement in 2013. B-R has come to use BIS defensive runs above average for their WAR calculations and Freeman had a +7 in BIS for 2013. Fangraphs still has him at a -3, but that is a vast improvement over where they rated him before.

In either case, the bottom line is that he is improving his defense and either he is as good as Braves' fans suggest, or he is on his way to getting there. That much is sure at least. The bottom line on his fielding is that along with his hitting, Freddie Freeman has improved his net worth to the Braves and looks to continue doing so.

My only real worry about Freddie Freeman is the offense around him. In successive years, the Braves have lost Chipper Jones and now Brian McCann. The lineup does not look improved thus far in this off season and unless guys like Heyward, Uggla and the two Upton brothers get over their funks of recent years, Freeman might struggle to get pitches to hit. That combined with his relative impatience at the plate (he swung at 35% of pitches out of the strike zone in 2013) might hurt him.

But overall, I am bullish on Freddie Freeman. I think he has arrived as a star in the league and will continue to improve in the coming three or four years. I am falling on the Fabulous Freddie Freeman category and am calling his 2012 the fluke. We shall see in the coming years how correct I am...or not.

Cannot give Terry Pendleton a pass on dust up with Johnson

I happened to be flipping through some links this morning and came upon this report of a dust up between Braves' coach, Terry Pendleton, and Chris Johnson. I found the replay to be quite disturbing.

The problem for me here is that I have no idea of the history that preceded the incident. I do not know if Chris Johnson is a jerk or not. I do not know if he did throw his helmet that supposedly hit Pendleton. All I know is what I see and what I see is a highly physical and aggressive move on the part of Pendleton that was not answered back by Johnson.

How is this different than what happened with Tino Martinez? Pendleton's actions were in full view of the entire team, a face-losing thing for Johnson. Not only did Pendleton grab Johnson's jersey, but he pushed him aggressively and I can tell you from experience such a push hurts.

Pendleton is Johnson's superior. As a superior, you have to restrain yourself. You should never show up an subordinate in front of his peers--or in front of America for that matter.

No matter what kind of guy Johnson is, no matter what happened, Pendleton has to be better than that and he was not. I do not see how Pendleton's actions go without discipline. As someone who has been in "management" for decades, I found what happened here totally inappropriate and even more than that, wrong.

Simmons and Machado having historic fielding seasons

Andrelton Simmons of the Atlanta Braves and Manny Machado of the Baltimore Orioles are both in their second seasons and first full seasons. Simmons is 23 and Machado is 21. And both are already the best fielders at their positions in baseball. In fact, the seasons they are having in the field are downright historic.

We all know that fielding statistics are not yet perfect. As such, it is really impossible to definitively state where the fielding seasons Machado and Simmons are having fit into the all time lexicon at their positions. But these statistics are all we have at the moment and if what we have is anywhere close to being accurate, then these two young players are sizzling at what they do.

And their seasons pass the eye test too. Watching them play is a treat day in and day out and they make the difficult seem routine and the impossible happen on a weekly basis. But flashy is one thing. To remain consistently awesome in the field is another and both have done that.

In recent years, the defensive runs saved has become just as big of the winning equation as pitching and hitting. Winning games is about scoring more runs than your opponent. In order to do so, the team has to hit to score runs and it has to pitch to prevent them plus field the ball well to prevent runs on balls in play. As such it is the runs prevented that is the focus on looking at Simmons and Machado.

And that is where the history comes in. Again, knowing the statistic is not perfect, Baseball-reference.com lists the greatest seasons in a statistic they call Total Zone Total Fielding Runs Above Average. I know that is a mouthful. But bear with me. Andrelton Simmons is currently listed at 25 Total Zone Runs according to that statistic. Without playing another game, Simmons' season already ranks tied for twelfth all-time according to Baseball-reference.com.

Those ahead of him include four seasons for Mark Belanger, two by Ron Hanson, and one each by Rey Sanchez, Rey Ordonez, Ozzie Smith, Ozzie Guillen and Adam Everett. Everett's 2006 season at 40 runs saved above average is the all-time leader.

Simmons has played 114 of the Braves 119 games. The same site projects Simmons to finish at 30 Total Zone Runs for the season. That seems modest and would mean Simmons' season would rank fifth all time. Fifth! But if you divide Simmons 25 Total Zone Runs by his 114 games and then multiplied that by the perhaps 40 games he has left, he could conceivably reach 33 Total Zone Runs and that would rank his season third all time and tied with Rey Ordonez's season in 1999.

That is pretty amazing. Simmons also has a chance to reach 500 assists this season. Now if only his bat would come alive, it would match the great defensive season Simmons is having. Just for comparison, Fangraphs.com has him at 20.6 runs above average. No other shortstop in the game has more than 9.2. Amazing.

Then there is Machado. If Machado's season were to end right now, his 24 Total Zone Runs Above Average would place his season as tied for the fifteenth best season ever. Brooks Robinson's 33 is the top number ever. Names in front of Machado read like the Who's Who among the great third basemen of history: Graig Nettles, Buddy Bell, Adrian Beltre, Robin Ventura, Clete Boyer, Aurelio Rodriguez and Scott Rolen. That is some heady company.

B-R projects that Machado will finish at 28 Total Zone Runs which would tie him at eighth all time. Again, that seems conservative. Again, if you do the math of 24 divided by his 118 games played and then multiply that result times the 43 games he has left (he plays every day), then Brooks Robinson at the top two spots is within reach. Remarkable.

Fangraphs also has Machado on top for third basemen this season at a more conservative 21.3. The spread between he and the second and third place peers is not as dramatic as Simmons'. Nolan Arenado is listed at 16.3 and Evan Longoria at 13.8.

Fielding statistics are not as highly regarded for accurately as what we have for batters and pitchers. But based on what we see and what we do have for statistics, Manny Machado and Adrelton Simmons are having historic fielding seasons and a big reason for their respective team success.

Allen Craig, Dan Uggla and fWAR

I want to be accepted as a modern baseball writer. As such, I have made a conscious decision years ago to be as much of a student of modern baseball statistics as possible with an unfortunately limited brain. It is not in me to create calculations and amazing charts and do all those things possible to build a case. But, at least I have made an effort not to stick in the past and accept the old batting average and runs batted in way of valuing players. All that said, when it comes to valuations of players, I still struggle. Allen Craig of the Cardinals and Dan Uggla of the Braves are one crystallization of that dilemma.

According to Fangraphs.com, so far this season, Dan Uggla has been worth $6.4 million with his play considering all facets of his game. Allen Craig has been valued by that same site as worth $10.4 million with his. That means that Allen Craig has been valued over Dan Uggla by a factor of 1.625. Or to look at it another way, Uggla has been worth about 61.5 percent of what Allen Craig is worth.

On the short side of things, this seems correct as Craig is having a better year (obviously). But when thinking about it more deeply, it seems that Craig is worth three times what Uggla is worth. I see this reflected better at baseball-reference.com which has Craig at 1.8 rWAR and Uggla at only 0.1. That seems to be a much more accurate assessment.

Let's compare the two with some statistics:

• Uggla:  .193/.310/.409 for a .719 OPS, a .319 wOBA and a 2.4 UZR in the field and a minus 2.4 on the bases.
• Craig:  .321/.369/.472 for a .841 OPS, a .366 wOBA and a 0.0 UZR in the field and a minus 5.5 on the bases.

That does not seem close does it? Well, yes, Craig is a snail on the base paths (although Jeff Sullivan has some thoughts about this as well). We will not get into some of the ephemeral data such as Craig's average with men in scoring position, etc. But by just looking at the numbers above, you get the idea that Dan Uggla is pretty bad this season as a baseball player and Allen Craig is pretty darned good.

And here is where I begin to have a few problems with the entire thing. Dan Uggla "plays" second base. Craig plays first or left field or right field. Craig's positions are considered of little value in the grand scheme of valuations. In fact, first base is given a negative value as a positional adjustment. So Uggla's position has a lot to do with his positive valuation.

If you break down Fangraphs' valuation, they go like this for Uggla: 1.3 for his batting (Again, how when he is hitting so poorly? The answer, his walks and home runs), -2.4 for fielding, -2.4 for base running, a +12.4 replacement value and a +1.5 for the position he plays. The positives outweigh the negative and he has a fWAR in the positive numbers.

Craig, on the other hand, gets a +12.9 replacement value but a -6.7 positional value. Craig plays positions that are considered a negative in value. I do not get that. Some day, somebody is going to prove my theory that a good first baseman is worth much more to this team than a bad one. And yet they all get the same negative positional value. I do not know Allen Craig's scoop value, which is a new statistic. But I do know he has only made one error all season no matter where he has played. That's right. One.

Uggla is one ugly second baseman. I have maintained that for years and his fielding numbers bear that out. But he still gets a higher overall fielding score (fielding plus positional) than Craig and it is not even close. Uggla has a Fld + Pos of -0.9. Craig's same number for that stat is, -6.8. That is more than a half a win difference. I do not get it.

Uggla does hit more homers and he has much better plate discipline. I get that. But Uggla has been on base near 30 times less than Craig and Craig has 42 more total bases.

I want to be a hip writer. I really do. I want to be considered knowledgeable and credible. But these things baffle me. And the fact that Uggla is valued so close to Craig will defeat my street cred every time. To me, to the bedeviling of my writing credibility, Dan Uggla does not add anything of value to the Braves and Craig is a major cog in the Cardinals rolling machine.

The Braves' hidden star

A guy named Chris is really tearing the cover off the baseball after being traded from a team in Texas to a contender. If you wrote that sentence and showed it to most fans, they would immediately think of the Chris named Davis. But there is another one that is doing very good things for the Atlanta Braves and this one is named Chris Johnson.

Chris Johnson is currently leading the National League in batting. Surprised? Yes, me too. He is currently batting .344 with an on-base percentage of .385. His wOBA of .371 is eighteenth among all Major League regulars and just behind his teammate, Freddie Freeman, who is also having a very good season and is getting more ink about it than Johnson.

Those two corner infielders have become the cornerstones of the Braves' offense and there is no way anyone would have seen that coming. Both have on-base percentages over .380. While neither is very good on defense and on the base paths, they sure have been good at the plate.

Is this year's success of Chris Johnson a fluke? Is it an outlier? It could be. For a big guy and a corner infielder, you would like to see more power. His .479 slugging percentage is more based on his high hit totals and doubles (24) and not on his power (7 homers).

But what stands out about Johnson's great season is his BABIP. His current BABIP sits at .427. Holy smokes, that is high. But then again, his career BABIP is .365, so it is not like he has never been good at hitting balls where the fielders are not. The key to his high BABIP is his line drive percentage.

And from Johnson's career, the line drive percentage has always been high. His career 25.1% line drive percentage is up there with guys like Votto and Mauer. The difference between those guys and Johnson was that they did not strike out often so more balls in play led to more consistent production.

But Johnson has cut down on his strikeouts. His current rate of 20.9% is three percentage points lower than his career average. Combine that with his amazing 29.1% line drive percentage this season and you have more balls in play that are hit on a line and the batting average and the BABIP reflect the change. That line drive percentage is second in baseball to only Loney of the Rays. A higher line drive percentage than Votto and Mauer? Wow.

Chris Johnson is not without some negative offensive statistics. His walk rate is not good at 6.1% and is only one percentage point above his lifetime walk rate. He has a little better plate discipline than his earlier years with the Astros, but not by much. He still swings at 37 to 38 percent of pitches out of the zone (depending on the source you use). That is a free swinger by definition.

His swing and miss rate is in the double-digits, never a great thing. But we are quibbling here. The fact is that Chris Johnson is having a very, very good season. He has more than replaced Chipper over there at third and his defense there--not great--is about par to what Chipper was in his later years.

Chris Johnson has been quietly effective at the plate all season. He has not had a negative month at the plate. He is ringing line drives. Would you like to see more homers, less strikeouts and more plate discipline? Yes. But the bottom line is  that Chris Johnson, along with Freeman, has become a key component of the Braves offense and one that will ride straight into the playoffs.

A Tim Hudson retrospective

Tim Hudson has not died or anything. And there is no telling how his broken ankle will affect the rest of his career. But it was a sad and awful moment when he went down after inexplicably not getting his foot out of the way on that play at first. Tim Hudson has been one of the best pitchers of his generation. He has also been a lot of fun to watch over the years.

While this is not meant as a requiem for his career, I wanted to reprint an article I wrote back in February where I compared the careers of Roy Halladay and Tim Hudson. Halladay has long been considered the pitcher of his generation. And while Tim Hudson has not been as good, the difference is closer than you think. Now both are out with devastating injuries and you have to wonder what the future holds.

So anyway, apologies if you remember this. But I thought it was fitting to rerun this piece today. Remember that the statistics were from before this season started:

Roy Halladay has been a much more valuable pitcher over his career than Tim Hudson. Roy Halladay has won two Cy Young Awards and probably should have won another. Tim Hudson has never won a Cy Young Award and probably never will. Roy Halladay has accumulated ten more wins above replacement in his career according to Baseball-reference.com and twenty more according to Fangraphs. But all that being said, a lot of the same end results are remarkably similar.

Let's start with some basic (and now mostly discredited statistics):

Roy Halladay: 199-100 .666 winning percentage,  3.31 career ERA

Tim Hudson:  197-103  .654 winning percentage, 3.42 career ERA

That's pretty darned close, isn't it? Halladay has pitched 403 times and compiled 2,687.1 innings. Hudson has pitched 406 times with 2,682.1 innings. Those numbers are virtually identical.

Tim Hudson has given up 2,504 hits and 210 homers. Roy Halladay has given up 2,594 hits and 224 homers. Those numbers are pretty darned close too.

For his career, Roy Halladay has allowed a .666 OPS against with 3,811 total bases allowed. Tim Hudson has allowed a .674 OPS against with 3,675 total bases allowed.

Roy Halladay has allowed 987 earned runs. Tim Hudson has allowed 1,019. That is a total difference of 32 runs for virtually the same amount of innings pitched.

Roy Halladay has faced 11,005 batters in his career. Tim Hudson has faced 11,157. Roy Halladay has induced batters to hit into 248 double plays. Tim Hudson has turned 282 ground balls into double plays. Tim Hudson has allowed 55 sacrifice flies, Roy Halladay, 59.

Roy Halladay has a .625 winning percentage on the road. Tim Hudson has a .620 winning percentage on the road. Roy Halladay has won 90 games on the road. Tim Hudson has won 93.

Roy Halladay has pitched 94 times when his own team scored two runs or less and has won 19 of those games. Tim Hudson has pitched 91 times when his own team scored two runs or less and has won 19 of those games.

A batter leading off an inning against Roy Halladay has hit a home run 69 times against Roy Halladay in 2,737 chances. A batter leading off an inning against Tim Hudson has hit a home run 67 times in 2,764 chances.

Roy Halladay has a combined OPS against of .672 against non-pitchers. Tim Hudson has a combined OPS against of .688 against non-pitchers.

Tim Hudson has only loaded the bases with no outs 28 times in his career. Roy Halladay has only put himself in that position 32 times. Roy Halladay has an OPS against of .661 in high leverage situations. Tim Hudson has an OPS against of .657 in high leverage situations.

Are a lot of these statistics cherry-picked? Well, yes, sure. And in the final analysis, Roy Halladay has been the better pitcher. His K/BB ratio is much better, his xFIP is much better and so forth. The purpose of this post was not to build a case that Tim Hudson has been as good as Roy Halladay. But perhaps the purpose has been to show the final results have been much more similar than you might have thought.

Mike Minor has been major

While completing my daily Game Picks post, I took a look at Mike Minor's statistics and was really surprised at what I found. He has really been pitching well this season. He has had one sub-par outing against the Tigers as the only blight in his nine starts this season. And then I went back to last season and the numbers really did not do much for me until I looked at his splits and saw that he has really pitched this well since the start of the second half last season. Over the course of his last 23 starts, he has been terrific.

Here are the numbers since the start of Minor's second half last season:

• Starts: 23
• Record: 11-6
• WHIP: 0.9091
• ERA: 2.40
• BB/9: 1.73
• K/9: 7.29
• K/BB: 4.21
• HR/9: 0.86

Does that surprise you as much as it does me? The WHIP, walk percentage and strikeout to walk ratio really stand out the most for me. Fangraphs.com is not as impressed as I am. While Minor's ERA in the second half of last season was 2.16, Fangraphs assigned him a FIP of 3.25 and an xFIP of 3.48. Similarly, his ERA is 2.78 so far this season, but his FIP is 3.48 and his xFIP is 3.81. That is quite a spread between the statistical ERA and the actualized numbers.

Part of that is a low BABIP. And while it is true that Minor's balls in play have resulted in a puny amount of safeties, he has sustained that over 23 starts now. His BABIP in the second half last season was .227 and his BABIP this season is .240. I can see how that seems unsustainable. But he has managed to carry that low a BABIP for 23 starts now. That cannot all be luck.

Minor is a fly ball pitcher. And he does seem to be beating the odds a little bit if you consider his splits on batted ball trajectories. For example, on fly balls this season, the Major League average is a .197 batting average and a .769 OPS. The batting average is offset by the number of homers to pump up the slugging percentage. Yet, Minor's splits show a batting average of just .134 on fly balls with an OPS of .578. And Minor's OPS when batters hit line drives against him are also much lower than the league average.

It has always been difficult for me to figure out that equation. Is Minor just lucky here? Or is he somehow inducing weak contact that gets him more outs? This is why I am not a sabermatrician as such things are beyond my grasp. Suffice it to say that Minor has a prolonged streak of way lower than normal BABIPs and way lower OPS figures against his fly balls than what is normal.

What else can we glean from Minor's numbers? Several things. His first pitch strike rate is the highest of his career at a very good 64.7% and tied for nineteenth best among all starters. His zone percentage, or the amount of his pitches in the strike zone are the highest of his career. His swinging strike percentage is his highest in the last three seasons and what I like best is that his pace is a full second and a half faster than last year. He is also inducing batters to swing at pitches outside the strikezone at a higher percentage than the last two seasons.

The pace and the first pitch strike percentage show me a pitcher who has gained confidence and is rocking back and firing. And it seems to be working out for him.

I do not know if Mike Minor's numbers can hold up. He is beating the odds on his fly balls and his homers per nine would seem to at some point regress back to previous numbers. But he has been doing this now for 23 starts and that seems to give pause to the regression aggression one would normally feel. What is known is that he is still only 25 years old and gives every indication that he is learning his craft and has a bright future.

Is the return of Brian McCann good news for the Braves?

The Atlanta Braves sit on top of the National League East with an impressive 18-12 record. They have a +30 run differential and are hitting the ball pretty well. Part of that hitting excellence has been the catching corp of Gerald Laird and Evan Gattis who have hit for a combined .864 OPS. But the Braves now have to make a tough decision because Brian McCann, their nearly forgotten former All Star catcher returns from the disabled list.

I would hate to lose either Laird or Gattis at this point. When Gattis plays, the Braves get good defense, good power with the bat and a 30% rate of throwing out potential base steal attempts. Gattis' one weakness is his lack of patience at the plate and has only walked six times.

Laird, on the other hand has not yet hit for power but has been an on-base machine for the Braves when he plays. Laird is not a great defensive catcher and has only thrown out one base steal attempt in ten tries.

So who should go to accommodate McCann? And should McCann automatically assume his starting duties? Those are good questions and it will be interesting to see what Atlanta does.

I think the answers are pretty obvious. McCann has been an elite catcher for seven seasons now and only had a sup-par last year. You have to give him a bye on that perhaps for injuries. McCann has it all with good power and patience at the plate. He is not a bad defensive catcher and while he is no Molina, he holds his own. You have to give McCann his starting role back.

Plus, McCann, though he has seemed to be around forever, is only 29 years old. That is young for a catcher these days.

After the decision is made to put McCann back to his usual #1 catcher place, the obvious choice after that is to keep Gattis and let Laird go. Yes, Gerald Laird is off to a very good start, but he should regress to his mean, which is no great shakes. Laird is a journeyman catcher who is not very good defensively. He is not a catcher you preserve for the future.

Evan Gattis is a catcher you preserve for the future. He is only 26 years old and has shown he belongs in the majors. He is a good fielding catcher and can learn a lot from McCann moving forward. I cannot see any point in sending Gattis to the minors despite the large jump he made getting from just 49 games in Double-A to the big leagues. Gattis should be kept when McCann returns tonight.

Will that happen? Today will tell us. Brian McCann returning to the Braves IS a good thing. Keeping Laird over Gattis would not be a good thing.

**Update** The Braves have optioned Tyler Pastornicky, thus, for now, delaying having to make a two-catcher decision.

Justin Upton's latest homer prompts tweet of the week

The Arizona Diamondbacks wanted to get rid of Justin Upton in the worst way. He simply did not fit into Kirk Gibson and the front office's philosophy of gritty guys digging deep for wins. The Diamondbacks wanted gamers. They wanted guys with dirty uniforms and so on and so forth. We can all make fun of those ideals if we want. Most of us know that it is talent and performance that wins, not ideals or scrap or grit or whatever it is you want to call it.

The Atlanta Braves have to be thrilled about the Diamondbacks strategy. Upton has been a monster for them. He has helped make them now the team to beat in the NL East.

So that brings us to this tweet by Jonathan Bernhardt. It was truly an epic tweet and sums it up for most of us rational thinkers about baseball, but only in a dead-on, dripping with sarcasm way that most of us do not have enough grit or scrap or whatever to come up with something as perfect as this:

Justin Upton's hit 8 home runs? I'm not impressed. Martin Prado said the Right Things 8 times during BP today.
— Jonathan Bernhardt (@jonbernhardt) April 17, 2013

Beautiful. Simply beautiful. That tweet had some dirt on its uniform right there.

Dan Uggla and the WAR question

Every time you look at the statistics for Dan Uggla, they look bad. Except he has those eighty walks, which leads the National League. His homers are down and thus his slugging percentage. His batting average is sitting at .208. His OPS+ is 92. His OPS ranks him 121 among 150 qualifying batters and his wRC+ ranks 119 out of 150. For a guy making $13 million this season, he does not, on the face of things, seem like he is earning it. But a lot depends on which stat site you look at.

Fangraphs.com has his WAR computed to 2.3, which compares favorably to last year's 2.4 fWAR even though his wOBA was nineteen points higher last year. Baseball-reference.com, however, gives him an rWAR of 1.6 so far this season, the same as last season. 1.6 compared to 2.4 does not seem all that significant until you translate that to dollars. Each "win" in the WAR component is worth a little over $4.5 million. If Uggla's play has been worth 2.3 fWAR as Fangraphs calculates it, then, Uggla's play has been worth $10.4 million. Baseball-reference.com, however, would come to a valuation of $7.23 million.

That is a pretty significant difference. If you go by Fangraphs, then Uggla has been a disappointment, but not a huge one. If you go by B-R, Uggla is not going to come close to earning what he is being paid.

The other sticky part of the equation is the fielding component of those valuations. Uggla has had serious negative values placed on his fielding by both stat sites for the last three seasons. Both sites are fairly consistent here that Uggla cost his team about thirty runs in the the three seasons prior to this one. But suddenly, both sites have his fielding in the slightly positive territory this season. Such a turn of his fielding metrics evens out his valuation from last year to this year.

When it comes to Uggla's fielding, he has suddenly found some range. His range factor and range factor per nine innings have been below league average for several years before this one. Suddenly, his range and range per nine are above league average and the highest of his career. He must have done some nice off-season work to improve in that area. To his credit, Uggla has made the fewest errors in his career this season and has gotten a lot of chances with his ground ball inducing pitching staff.

The walks are impressive. They take a terrible batting average and move up his on-base percentage all the way up to .337. But what this observer will never understand is why any pitcher would walk a guy like Uggla? He is in the same category as Dunn of the White Sox and Pena of the Bay Rays. All three have very low batting averages, a ton of strikeouts and a ton of walks. Why walk a guy like that? With Uggla, you have a 28 percent chance of striking him out if you pitch to him. That is far greater than any chance he has to hit a homer. Dunn has three times as many homers as Uggla, but the feeling is the same. Dunn is four times more likely to strikeout than hit one out of the park. Why don't pitchers take those odds?

The WAR question raises a problem. Either Dan Uggla is having a season close to the value the Braves are paying him, or, he is having a bad season and won't come close to earning his salary. That is a large swing in realities. And it is just as improbable that his fielding has made such leaps and bounds that he has gone from well below standard to above league average.

From an objective look at Dan Uggla's season, he is not having a good one. At the age of 32, he is not playing nearly as well as he did just two seasons ago. Unfortunately, how poor a season he is having is a question that differs depending on who you ask.