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The Orioles called up Mark Worrell for their bullpen the other day. He didn't fare very well in his first game, versus the Red Sox, allowing two hits and a walk, without retiring a batter. I hope he gets another chance soon, as no-one likes to wake up the morning sporting an infinity ERA.

At least he has a cool, funky delivery that we will gladly celebrate here. I don't remember seeing Worrell pitch during his other time in the big leagues, a cup of coffee with the 2008 Cardinals.

The video is after the jump, and while his setup is nowhere near as remarkable as that of Mike Fetters or Sammy Gervacio, his actual delivery is quite different. Enjoy:

He shut down the Yankees

We've been fans since he was a prospect in the Mariners organization. A flame throwing right-hander who threw strikes with a plus slider? Sure, let's go check him out. He had some arm trouble, as seems to be the norm, gained valuable experience closing out games at the Major League level, and was traded to Toronto. As a Blue Jay, Brandon Morrow was given the chance to return to the rotation and refine his craft every five days.

What does it mean to be elite? Is he a #1 starter? To be a number one starter, you'd have to be a Top 30 pitcher, right? Something feels like elite should be a bit better than Top 30. What is elite? Top 12? Top 5, like the best 5-man rotation would have these 5 guys? I guess it doesn't matter for now. Let's just see how well Brandon Morrow is doing this year, compared with others who have pitched at least 90 innings this season.

He has rather unimpressive traditional statistics: a 6-4 record and 4.36 ERA.

Rejoice that Fangraphs now posts SIERA statistics for pitchers. To be brief, allow Baseball Prospectus to explain:

Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average estimates ERA through walk rate, strikeout rate and ground ball rate, eliminating the effects of park, defense and luck.

Going into action on July 17th, Brandon Morrow is ranked 4th in the American League, and 10th in all of baseball in SIERA.

MLB SIERA Leaders (min 90ip):

Oh look, Roy Halladay leads in another pitching stat.

Roy Halladay 2.45
Clayton Kershaw 2.64
Cliff Lee 2.79
Justin Verlander 2.84
Cole Hamels 2.86
David Price 2.87
James Shields 2.89
Tommy Hanson 3.00
Tim Lincecum 3.02
Brandon Morrow 3.07
Felix Hernandez 3.07
Anibal Sanchez 3.07

That is just a peek through what may be the most advanced neutralized pitching stat available. I'm interested to see if Brandon Morrow has #1 stuff. As far as I understand it, looking at his Pitch F/X page, his fastball and slider move vertically and horizontally at about league average levels. Besides the overall very good results he has shown this year, let's see how well his fastball, slider, and other offerings relate to the positive results.

Among pitchers with at least 90 ip this season, Brandon Morrow's success off his fastball has been the 17th most success in the American League and 30th most in the Majors. He has been the 7th best pitcher in the AL and 17th across all of baseball with his slider this year. His fastball and curveball have been below average offerings, but he currently throws his two "good" pitches over 90% of the time.

Romero's Very Good

For more of an apples-to-apples comparison, we can also compare the value of pitcher's offerings based on 100 pitches, instead of the inconsistent times one player throws his fastball over another. Brandon Morrow's wFB/C is ranked 15th in the AL and 31st in MLB. His wSL/C so far this season has been 11th in the AL and 24th in MLB.

In spite of his back-of-the-rotation traditional stats, Brandon Morrow appears on the cusp of stardom. The Blue Jays should feel pretty excited for their future, with Ricky Romero and Brandon Morrow starting 40% of their games.

If Brandon Morrow has success, he will be Exhibit A for people arguing for Neftali Feliz to move into the Rangers' rotation.

Neftali may be next to get bumped up.

Get Well Soon, Brett Anderson. He's one of our favorites, as is the awesome Susan Slusser. From her SF Chronicle piece:

Genevieve Ross / AP

Brett Anderson's left elbow didn't respond to rest, rehab and platelet-rich plasma injections so the A's No. 2 starter had Tommy John surgery.
-- snip --
"He knew it was going to come," A's starter Trevor Cahill said. "It's best to get it out of the way."
-- snip --
Recovery time is 12 to 18 months, and Beane mentioned that Tim Hudson needed only 11 months. A's pitchers Joey Devine and Josh Outman, however, needed nearly two years to regain their previous form. Still, the procedure is so standard that almost everyone who undergoes it regains full ability. Five members of Oakland's current staff - Devine, Outman, Bailey, Grant Balfour and Fautino De Los Santos - have had the surgery, as has top pitching prospect Michael Ynoa.
-- snip --
Dr. James Andrews operated on both Bailey and Anderson. Andrews used the gracilis tendon from Anderson's hamstring to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in Anderson's elbow, according to A's trainer Nick Paparesta.

I've known what ulnar collateral replacement surgery is for a long time,* and it still amazes me. How there can be a ligament we don't need somewhere in our leg just astounds me. The gracilis tendon is even being used in some cases for ACL surgery, ligament replacement on the knee, which makes me feel it should be sturdy enough for an elbow.

What did you do after school?

*Not when Tommy John had it, there are still some things I'm too young for, gratefully. I wonder who the first person I remember having Tommy John surgery, when I was growing up and learned about it from Steve Stone. Did Oil Can Boyd ever have it? Someone in the late 80's?

It's great that Brett Anderson is still only 23 years old, not to mention left-handed.

This isn't the devastating news it used to be 25 years ago. It's more like living being a girl from Long Island and getting a nose job. In fact, Brett Anderson very well should come back from a year of rehab, working out, getting in shape and pitch even better.

In the meantime, it's nice to see him having fun at his own expense on his twitter account. He posted this about an hour ago with a big laugh, early Sunday morning:

Jose Reyes shows a different side here.

Hey, it's a contract year. He's gotta show every tool, if he's going to take his talents somewhere to get more than $140 mill.

Have you heard Jose Reyes drop Reggaeton rhymes?




Big ups to Ben Badler, and his must-follow twitter feed.

Last week, Adam Bernacchio of Ghost of Moonlight Graham fame penned a piece titled "The Five Best Free Agent Bargains From This Offseason" on MLB Daily Dish.

Casey Kotchman was a good catch for the Tampa Bay Rays

It's a fun, quick read; take a look. What I found interesting was that the Top 5 were all pitchers, which makes sense because pitchers are usually the highest risk/reward players to acquire.

The first comment on the piece, by Beyond the Box Score's Satchel Price, made the point and also said it would be interesting to see this done exclusively for position players.

Challenge accepted. We will only look at unrestricted free agents signed before this season to find the best position player bargains. In other words, we are excluding people who had their team options picked up, signed to avoid arbitration, etc.

Say no more. Here we go...

As usual, we are using the average between Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference WAR calculations, as well as Cot's Contracts for the salary data. I've never tried inserting a spreadsheet, let's hope this works!

Patterson is having his best season since 2006

As we got into this exercise, there were a few free agent signings we didn't list because they were obviously not huge bargains. Carl Crawford, for example has a negative WAR, so we couldn't really do the math. There are a few obvious non-bargains at the bottom as a frame of reference, more on them in a minute.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty surprised to see Aaron Miles near the top of any leader board. It's interesting because the guys people get off the scrapheap have the most potential to be great bargains, but it doesn't mean they were the best Free Agent signings. For example, Lance Berkman, Jhonny Peralta, and Ramón Hernández aren't at the top of this list, but they are bringing very good value to their clubs, while cashing decent sizes paychecks. Corey Patterson has also been doing good things for the Blue Jays, which is just one more nugget to pile on the list of things that make the Cubs look really lame.

Keep in mind, of course, these are simply first-half numbers. Much can change in the months ahead. We'd expect Jayson Werth, at the very least, to improve. The rest of his contract would be unconscionable if he cannot improve, as the team owes him another $114,000,000 after this season.

We did this a couple of weeks into the season, and hope to have more meaningful data to share when looking at pitchers from the entire first half of the 2011 season. We're looking at pitchers with a minimum of 50 innings pitched this season. We have no dillusions of this being groundbreaking or difficult, it's just something we don't hear or read about much.

Please feel to add to the conversation in our usual channels.

Normal disclaimer: As we've discussed in the past, in an ideal world, it's best to get pitchers who strike out a lot of batters and walk very few. In addition, pitchers who induce ground balls and popups are preferred to fly ball pitchers.

2011 GB%+IFFB% Leaders
Jonny Venters, Braves 82.50%
Charlie Morton, Pirates 70.40%
Brett Anderson, Athletics 68.60%
Roy Halladay, Phillies 68.20%
Jake Westbrook, Cardinals 67.60%
Tim Hudson, Braves 66.80%
Roy Oswalt, Phillies 66.40%
Fausto Carmona, Indians 66.20%
Ivan Nova, Yankees 66.00%
Johnny Cueto, Reds 65.80%

DANGER: Venters has already thrown 55 innings this year.

I am surprised by the Fausto Carmona sighting, but this is a very focused search. The problems pitchers may have with walks, lack of strikeouts, or poor defense could make for subpar results even with these two strong peripherals. What are some of the better ways to consider and evaluate batted ball data for pitchers?

After all, this space is for you, and like any good host, we will gladly take requests.

It's been over two months since we gave out any hardware, so we're overdue for another edition of Player of the Fortnight. For the uninitiated, here is a link to our last entry, where the winners were Lance Berkman, Josh Johnson, Alex Rodriguez, and Jered Weaver. Who's been best the past 2 weeks? Player agents teeter on the edge of their seats. Nervous anticipation paralyzes their plans. Their thoughts race through scenarios in future contract negotiations, where riches may be earned by mentioning their client's awards from BAseball Reality Tour.

AL Batter of the Fortnight
Jose Bautista, Blue Jays

It's Joey Bats's world.

Who else would it be, but Joey Bats? His .443 OBP over the past fortnight is 2nd in the league to Ben Zobrist's .460, but his slugging percentage dwarfs the competition. His .882 SLG is over 150 points higher the the next best score, (Ian Kinsler's .725 SLG). Time will tell if Bautista's 2nd half will show he's human, or if he'll cruise towards an MVP award this season. Looking at his bat speed and balance at the plate leads me to believe that he'll continue to be wildly successful for a few more seasons.

Honorable mention: Ian Kinsler, Jacoby Ellsbury, Jhonny Peralta, Melky Cabrera, and Ben Zobrist

AL Pitcher of the Fortnight
CC Sabathia, Yankees
This really wasn't very close. Jered Weaver got a second look, as he has pitched extremely well over 3 starts & 24 innings the past two weeks. Looking again at the numbers, though, no-one was as lights out as CC. He lead the league with a 0.00 ERA, 0.50 FIP, 1.14 xFIP, and 14.7 K/9. Sabathia even had to overcome subpar defense, as his .367 BABIP allowed suggests. More importantly, no-one came close to matching his most recent back-to-back performances.

Honorable mention: Dan Haren, Jered Weaver, Jason Vargas, Doug Fister, and Brandon Morrow

NL Batter of the Fortnight
Aramis Ramirez, Cubs
The one hitter in baseball who has been more productive than All World Jose Buatista over the past two weeks has been the Cubs' third baseman. He leads all of baseball in this time span, with 9 HR's, a .909 SLG, and 260 wRC+. This, sadly, should be zenith for the Cubs' season.

Honorable mention: Hanley Ramirez, Lance Berkman, Clint Barmes, Kelly Johnson, Pablo Sandoval, Carlos Beltran, Alex Presley (!), and Freddie Freeman

NL Pitcher of the Fortnight
Madison Bumgarner, Marlins

Madison "puts it on a shelf"

The usual suspects for this honor invited quite a few newbies to the party. Jonathan Niese was second in the National League with a 1.65 FIP. Matt Cain was third, and Cory Luebke's 1.78 FIP placed fourth, directly ahead of Tim Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Jordan Zimmermann, Clayton Kershaw, Jair Jurrjens, Vance Worley (?), and Ubaldo Jimenez, rounding out the top 11. Madison Bumgarner only earned one Win over the past two weeks, but being the only pitcher with a sub-1.00 FIP and placing 2nd in the league with an 11.51 K/9 ratio sets him apart.

Honorable mention: Cory Luebke, Jonathan Niese, Clayton Kershaw, and Vance Worley

Looking ahead at today's pitching matchups, I'd be extra excited to see James Shields and Sabathia at Yankee Stadium. Dontrelle Willis will be making his Major League return for the Reds, facing Randy Wolf in Milwaukee. The crème de la crème will be in Orange County, as King Felix Hernandez and Dan Haren toe the rubber for the Mariners and Angels.

This could get personal and may ramble on, but in the meantime, I'll try to be concise while struggling through the mixed emotions of joy, pain, sadness, sorrow, hope, and something extra.

Joy

Livan is getting larger...

Our beloved Chicago Cubs, yesterday, overcame an 8-run deficit to defeat the contstantly improving Washington Nationals. It was 8-0 in the 6th inning before Livan Hernandez fell apart, giving up an RBI single to Alfonso Soriano, a 2-run double to Darwin Barney, and a 3-run homerun to Blake DeWitt. Livan left the game with an 8-6 lead, but Todd Coffey, Sean Burnett, and Henry Rodriguez failed to preserve the Win. In regards to Cubs pitching, the bullpen deserves a steak dinner or sturdy pat on the back for giving up just 2 runs (1 earned) in 7 innings of relief for Matt Garza. Jeff Samardzija, James Russell, John Grabow, Sean Marshall, and Carlos Mármol haven't been heaped very much praise this season, so please forgive the list.

Pain, Sadness, and Sorrow
It has been a sad few weeks around baseball, with the recent passing of Nick Charles, Dick Williams, George Kimball, and yesterday's sickening death of the Rangers' fan who died in front of his young son, trying to catch a foul ball and falling out of the upper deck.

If you haven't seen the video of the man falling out of the first row, in fron of his son, don't. Repeat: DO NOT WATCH the VIDEO. I saw it this early this morning, at the gym, on a "highlight" show from the Worldwide Leader and promptly wanted to vomit. Keith Law expressed my shared feelings perfectly right here: "I'm sick over this Rangers fan death. That poor kid." MLB Advanced Media invariably will remove videos of beautiful highlights from the Internet, yet are allowing major media outlets to show the video straight out of Faces of Death. I just don't get it; there should be different, I don't know, just different.

Going backwards, remembering these remarkable men, and learning something about ourselves and each other along the way, Charles Pierce wrote an outstanding, brief, and personal piece on his friend and colleague George Kimball:

"On the day he quit, I was the only person in the office. He dragooned me to the Park Plaza at nine in the morning, bribed the guy to open the bar, and we stayed there until 3, when he walked down the hall, bought a ticket to Palm Beach, and went directly to the airport without telling me he was gone."

The stories we hear about Dick Williams grow more and more legendary with time:

"In Oakland, he stunned Charlie Finley by quitting on the spot, telling the owner to stick it, after winning a second consecutive World Series title in 1973. He was unhappy with Finley's interference, and with the way the owner publicly humiliated infielder Mike Andrews after Andrews' untimely fielding gaffes in the Series.

In 1976, he was fired by the Angels after a brief tenure that included Williams ordering his players to take batting practice in a hotel lobby using Wiffle bats and balls, driving home his point that the hitters couldn't break anything."

There are countless more Dick Williams stories that go on from there, stretching to the corners of the US. Not that anyone has asked for this, but the saddest, most heartfelt, of all of these obituaries has to be the one Posnanski wrote about his friend, Nick Charles. It's getting pretty dusty in here right now, as a reread it. Apologies, this is too much to copy and paste, but I can't help it. I just got through the 2nd half of the post, and yes, the crying has recommenced:

"We stood in his driveway in the fading New Mexico light, exchanging goodbyes, when Nick Charles said something I will never forget. He said: "I wish I knew you before." His eyes glassed over then, rain on a window pane, and that was the moment when I came closest to crying. There were numerous other moments of crying and near-crying throughout that day because we both knew exactly why I had come. Nick was dying. And I had come to write his obituary.
--snip--
He wanted to give me a story to write. Nick was generous that way. "You came so far to see me," he kept saying. "You have so many other things you could be doing," he kept saying.
--snip--
He knew then, knew as few of us ever know, that he was going to die in the next few days or weeks or months, but soon, too soon. He was not going to see his beautiful 5-year-old daughter Giovanna grow up. He was not going to grow old with his beautiful wife Cory. He was not going to see Paris again.

"But, no regrets," he said, the words just coming to him. "I've seen Paris."
--snip--
He talked about being in bed and feeling like the blood had been drained from his body and knives stabbed at his brain and almost everything in him wished to be dead. But there was always something, a tiny something -- a light, he called it, or a splash of faith -- that pushed on. He wanted to see his daughter's smile again. He wanted to hear his wife's voice again. He wanted to listen to a song again. What song? That changed from time to time. But he wanted to hear it.

Nick: "Why did you become a writer?"
Me: "I'm not entirely sure how it happened."
Nick: "I know what you mean. I sometimes wonder how any of it happened."

We had not prepared a goodbye. There seemed no reason to prepare one -- I did not know Nick Charles before that day we spent together, and he did not know me. I had exchanged an email or two with him. We had talked on the phone twice. But we were not friends, not even acquaintances. I wanted to write about him because his story touched me. He allowed me to come because he was touched I cared enough to call. This business of storytelling is a curious one. The relationship between a writer and subject can be intense and involved. And then, generally, it ends.

Only, this turned out to be something more. Because we both kept noticing how similarly we felt about things. Little things. Big things. There were recognizable words in each other's sentences. There were corresponding twists in each other's stories. Nick kept saying how he felt this connection to me and we should have been friends years earlier. That was there, unquestionably, but it was not something guys often say to each other.
--snip--
The day I had spent with Nick was not depressing -- I have had a hard time explaining that to people. There were moments of extreme sadness. Seeing his little girl, so much like my own little girl ... talking with Cory and seeing how strong she tried to be for him ... driving by a cemetery and hearing Nick talk about how he had considered being buried there ... yes, there were moments of overpowering heartache. But mostly, it was uplifting. It was inspiring. We laughed a lot. Nick Charles became my friend.

And then, before I left, he said those words: "I wish I knew you before."
--snip--
Nick Charles died on Saturday. He was 64 years old. We had exchanged emails since that day we said goodbye. The last words he ever wrote to me were: 'Get home to your family and squeeze them tight.'"

Woah, sorry again, have to compose myself.

Thank Goodness for Hope

I'm not very religious, but it's nice when the Angels provide hope.

Baseball people looking for optimism always talk about hope. Spring Training is all about hope. Hey, even the Pirates can contend in July someitmes! Every team has a chance in Spring Training. We hear and read things like "If only the bullpen comes together...", or "This new guy could swat 30 homeruns!" One of my favorite cliche in the Spring is "He's in the best shape of his career." That one almost never works out.

Today, baseball fans, particularly fans in Southern California, can enjoy the ride of looking forward to Baseball's #2 prospect, Mike Trout, making his debut tonight, at home against the Seattle Mariners. He's only 19-years old, and has been putting up MVP numbers in Double-A: .324/.415/.534, with 12 doubles, 11 triples (!), 9 Homeruns, and 28 stolen bases in 341 plate appearances.

Fantasy players, especially in keeper leagues, make your move.

The Curiosity of Random Thoughts
We all have our moments. Some of the most common places where people actually think include the shower, at red lights, in front of the mirror (shaving, styling hair, flossing, etc), or maybe when other people are talking and we zone out when we should be listening. Over the past few days, I've had a couple of doozies...

First, has anyone else noticed that there are only two more days to celebrate DD/MM/YY continuity for a while*? We have 11/11/11 this year, and 12/12/12 next.

*If we bend the rules, we can have a Deuces Wild party on 2/2/22 or 2/22/22, or a Three's Company part on 3/3/33. Really, though, that is in a long time.

So, for those of you that want to party like everyone else who got down on 2/2/02, 3/3/03, April 4, 2004, celebrated the Ultimate Cinco de Mayo on 5/5/05, went berserk over 6/6/06, had a Lucky 7's or CrAzY 8's party on 7/7/07 and 8/8/08, respectively, and so on... Yes, if you want to party like that, I'd suggest making plans right now for this November 11th (hey it's a Friday!), and next December 12th.

Here's another random thought, maybe it'll become its own post one day: Who is the best 'bad' pitcher in baseball? I have to figure out what 'best' and 'bad' mean to accurately answer the question, but I think that could be fun.

You don't look like Royce Clayton

Last thought I'll expand upon, remember when Bill James was going to be portrayed like a spirit or Kazoo from The Flintstones in the film version of Moneyball? That was Steven Soderbergh's idea, and I thought it was really bad. Looking now at the IMDB cast and credits page, though, it looks like Bill James isn't even going to be in the movie. How can that be, especially when Paul Giamatti is perfect for the role. Speaking of Moneyball, Chris Pratt is playing Scott Hatteberg. I think that's terrific. Royce Clayton is playing Miguel Tejada, but that seems like it could be problematic.

A few more in list form: Can one make a proper homage to 'Fans, what are we going to do about Wally Bunting?'? Is My Blue Heaven a better mafia comedy than The Freshman? (I think so.) Is this the worst Cubs team of the past 35 years? How can Cubs' fans make the best out of having Mike Quade and Mark Riggins in charge of the Major League team? I think I could win a Pulitzer Prize if by taking the photograph of Ralph Macchio, Hilary Swank, and Jaden Smith. The photo below is about as close as I could find online, darn you Jackie Chan!!


Okay, I have to get out of here. Thanks to the few of you that got this point. Please feel free to bring anything up in conversation form, either online or if we see each other in person. Have a great Friday, and let's try to keep things in perspective.