If not Tanaka, who?

The Yankees' battered rotation took the biggest hit of all Wednesday when RHP Masahiro Tanaka went on the 15-day disabled list because of a sore elbow.
Tanaka leads the majors with 12 wins. He has a 2.51 ERA. He didn't give up more than three earnies in any of his first 16 starts, but surrendered four July 3 and five more Tuesday night. That performance led to a trip back to New York for an MRI exam.
The first question is how long he might be out? With a 4-day All-Star break coming up, he would likely miss just two starts before the minimum 15 days when he could return.
But if the injury is more serious than a 15-day ailment, the Yankees could be in an awful place with their rotation.
Without the ace, could New York count on RHP Brandon McCarthy, who brought a 3-10 record with him when he was traded from Arizona, to head the rotation? Or Hiroki Kuroda, whose second half last season was a train wreck? David Phelps? Rookie Chase Whitley?
Early candidates for the rotation -- LHP C.C. Sabathia and RHPs Ivan Nova and Michael Pineda -- are all on the 60-day DL.
The trouble isn't just at the top of the rotation, but all the way down to who would fill the No. 5 slot.
Could they move someone from the bullpen, such as LHP David Huff? Or RHP Bruce Billings, just brought up from Triple-A Scranton, where he was in the rotation? Other possibilities from Scranton could be Shane Greene or 35-year-old former outfielder Brian Gordon.
Among them, Billings, Greene and Gordon have a .500 record (13-13). In Triple-A.
The Yankees have been barely a .500 team even with Tanaka. Without him, .500 would look pretty good.

Open tryout camp in Arlington

During the past two days, OF Jake Smolinski and RHPs Phil Irwin and Roman Mendez became the 999th, 1,000th and 1,001st players to perform for the Washington Senators II/Texas Rangers.
The count won't stop there.
Even with the influx of new talent?, Rangers pitchers gave up 20 runs and 29 hits in two losses against the Astros. Another defeat Wednesday night could drop Texas to the worst winning percentage in the major leagues.
The Rangers were at .500 until their current 3-17 superslump. Injuries finally caught up to them.
They have 15 players on the disabled list, five of whom -- starters Matt Harrison and Martin Perez, reliever Pedro Figueroa, 1B Prince Fielder and 1B/DH Mitch Moreland -- will not play again this season.
Those absences have led to 15 players who otherwise wouldn't be in the majors making up 60% of the active roster. That necessarily has meant a decline in the talent level. For example, the bottom three hitters in Tuesday's lineup were 1B Carlos Pena, who was out of baseball early this season, and Smolinski and 2B Rougned Odor, who both began the season at Double-A Frisco.
With some questionable talent already on the roster and pretty obviously nowhere to go over the final 70 or so games of the season, there's plenty of flexibility to move players on and off the 40-man roster.
For example, Smolinski was a minor league free agent who already had spent six seasons in the Nationals and Marlins organization. Mendez is on the 40-man roster, and would be out of options next season.
And it's actually a 45-man roster, because there are also five players on the 60-day DL that don't count against the limit.
So what we'll see from the Rangers from now until September will be essentially an open tryout camp. Texas can answer questions about potential players to keep on the 40-man off-season roster. Can this guy make it in the majors? I don't know, let's put him on the 40-man and bring him up from Round Rock or Frisco.
And once this guy shows what he might be lacking, the organization can do the same thing with that guy -- until they eventually run out of guys. If the Rangers find even one keeper that way, it would be worth the mounting losses in a lost season.
* * *
The Red Sox aren't in quite such a precarious position in the standings, but they too are throwing open to rookies the doors of their lineup.
In addition to giving 3B Xander Bogaerts and OF Jackie Bradley futile major league at-bats when they still should be refining their batting skills in the minors, the Red Sox have designated 37-year-old C A.J. Pierzynski for assignment and elevated rookie C Christian Vazquez to the big leagues.
Expect more rookies, especially pitchers, during what's left of a lost season in Boston.

I received Bill Gilbert's mid-season report on major league candidates for triple milestones -- 30 homers, 100 RBI and a .300 batting average for batters, and 20 wins, a sub-3.00 ERA and 200 strikeouts for pitchers.
He noted that the toughest milestone to reach now is 20 wins. That gave me an opportunity to rant, through an Email, to him with my thoughts. With minor modifications, that rant follows:

The lack of pitching wins seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

I'm a firm believer in sabremetrics, but I believe the sabermetricians, or perhaps the application of their teaching, have steered us wrong in the thinking that pitchers' wins aren't important. 

Evidence for "wins aren't important": 

1. Relief pitchers who enter with a lead, pitch an inning and give up a run to tie the game and receive a win when their team regains the lead.
2. Starters who pitch well for their six or seven innings, leave with the lead and watch the bullpen blow the lead. 

The whole emphasis on pitch counts and inning counts has led to the belief that pitchers' workloads should be protected at all costs. Pitchers -- and their agents -- have bought in, figuring that a couple of extra years at the end of their career could lead to a few million more dollars. 

Evidence against "wins aren't important":

1. If limiting pitch counts can prevent injuries and lengthen careers, why do there seem to be more injuries now? (There probably are more injuries/pitcher, but I don't have empirical evidence.)

2. If limiting workloads for pitchers is beneficial, why don't teams do more to limit plate appearances and innings in the field for position players? Sure, you see hitting stars come out in the last couple of innings of blowouts or for defensive replacements in close games. But when was the last time you heard "Ausmus is taking Cabrera out because he already has 4 plate appearances" in a tie game? Or "Jeter has eight chances already, so Girardi is putting in Dean Anna" in the seventh inning of a tie game? (That was before the Pirates claimed Anna on waivers.)

There are reasons why pitchers like Greg Maddux, Steve Carlton and Nolan Ryan won a lot of games. 

1. They were good pitchers.

2. They pitched a lot of games, and innings.

3. They often finished what they started, so there was no worry about having a bad bullpen take away wins. You noted that Felix Hernandez hasn't won 20 games. He has, however, had a lot of wins snatched away by bad bullpens after he's left a game early.

4. Those pitchers of old also knew when to coast. "I have an 6-1 lead? Why not throw a fastball down the middle to this No. 9 hitter? He can't hurt me much anyway." (David Price did that very thing Sunday. He led 7-1, gave up two solo homers and didn't leave the game until he had walked two in a row with two out in the ninth.)

5. They knew part of their job was to win games, not "to give the team a chance to win." Hey, I can give the team a chance to win by showing up and cheering loudly, but I don't think that's as important as getting a win.

I see the problem, if it is one (and I think it is), of not having many 20-game winners getting even worse. I see highly touted prospects in the Texas League leaving start after start after 3-4-5 innings, and maybe 60-70 pitches thrown, "to keep down their innings count." Some of those starts are in the insidious practice of piggybacking two guys for 4 or 5 innings each.

Soon these pampered, overhyped and soon-to-be-overpaid pitchers will arrive in the majors, and won't even be capable of going 6-7 innings.

It makes sense that the starters are the most talented pitchers on a staff. Limiting their innings and turning those over to less-talented relievers -- and increasing numbers of relievers, because the starters will be working fewer innings -- can only reduce the number of wins for those starters.

It's likely that it will be just a few years before 20-game winners go the way of 30-game winners. When some middle reliever leads the league with 15 wins, that will be further "evidence" that wins aren't important. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

The first sign of the baseball apocalypse will be when MLB changes the scoring rules to declare that a starter needs just 4 innings, or maybe even 3, to qualify for a win.

A's keep getting better

In recent years, didn't ESPN have a lot more than Friday's two telecasts on their Fourth of July schedule?
No matter. I still got to watch parts of ESP's pair, plus two others -- Cubs-Nationals and Rangers-Mets. While out running errands, I also had a chance to hear a couple of innings of Phillies-Pirates on the car's satellite radio.
Cubs RHP Jason Hammel looked very good in beating Washington. Who knew then that by the end of the day he'd be Athletics RHP Jason Hammel?
Bigger news than victories by the Yankees over the Twins, or the Pirates over the Phillies, or the Mets over the Rangers, was Oakland's trade that picked up Hammel and RHP Jeff Samardzija for the low current price of RHP Dan Straily, prospects SS Addison Russell and OF Billy McKinney and a player to be named.
The Athletics already were the best team in the American League. By turning not enough able-bodied starters into what could be a surplus, they also have a chance to trade to improve themselves in other areas such as the outfield and middle infield.
The Cubs? Well, they'll muddle through another season. In the off-season, they'll hope their minor league prospects aren't overhyped in the way virtually all of the prospects have been in their recent history. And that at least two prospects from the Athletics organization haven't been oversold.
A couple of today's starters left their game early because of injury. Mets LHP Jonathan Niese went out in the first inning because of a back injury that is being considered minor. Pirates RHP Gerrit Cole left because of a strained latissimus muscle that could be more problematic.
Cole pitched five scoreless innings for the win over Philadelphia. That shouldn't be a surprise. I found out from the Phils' broadcast that it was the 25th time in their first 86 games that they've been held scoreless for at least the first five innings.
Another interesting tidbit from the Yankees-Twins game: Minnesota C Kurt Suzuki, a patient hitter, went more than 140 plate appearances last season without swinging at a first pitch. He apparently learned that patience while with the Athletics.

The defensive All-Stars

The All-Star ballot I outlined in an earlier post took only batting into account.

I didn’t project a better-rounded team because there aren’t established metrics that everyone can agree on for fielding or baserunning.

Fielding has Range Factor, a fairly simple metric that tells part of the story. By merely dividing total chances by games (or 9 innings), you can get a measure of how much ground a player covers. That way you can differentiate a player who can get to a lot of batted balls from another who makes plays on balls hit close to him.

What it can’t tell you is whether a player’s Range Factor is higher because he has more balls hit in his direction than other players at his position. For example, if he’s a third baseman on a team with three or four left-handed starting pitchers and a large number of ground-ball pitchers.

Other people will tell you about DWAR, Defensive Wins Above Replacement, even after your eyes glaze over from boredom and an aversion to math.

First basemen and catchers don’t have measurable range. For 1Bs, I’m using DWAR. Catchers do have a viable measure, catcher’s ERA, in addition to DWAR.

By combining the available metrics, I came up with this list of defensive All-Stars that I voted for on a ballot in addition to my "true" offensive All-Stars:

American League

C Salvador Perez, Royals

1B Mike Napoli, Red Sox

2B Dustin Pedroia, Red Sox

3B Josh Donaldson, Athletics

SS Alexei Ramirez, White Sox

LF Yoenis Cespedes, Athletics

CF Leonys Martin, Rangers

RF Nick Markakis, Orioles

National League

C Yadier Molina, Cardinals

1B Matt Adams, Cardinals

2B Brandon Phillips, Reds

3B Pablo Sandoval, Giants

SS Troy Tulowitzki, Rockies

LF Khris Davis, Brewers

CF Marcell Ozuna, Marlins

RF Jason Heyward, Braves

Three players are on both my offensive and defensive All-Star teams. I don't think you could come up with a good reason not to vote for Donaldson, Ramirez and Tulowitzki. OK, you're going to tell me Donaldson has more errors than anyone west of Pedro Alvarez, but at the time I checked the defensive metrics, Donaldson led major league third basemen in DWAR and the AL third sackers in Range Factor.

Rockies 3B Nolan Arenado and Athletics RF Josh Reddick would have been on my defensive ballot, but they're injured.

There were some ties. 

With only one metric, DWAR, at first base -- and precious little positive value, with just four 1B above 0.0 when I checked the numbers, there was little choice. Napoli tied with Kansas City's Eric Hosmer and Adams with San Diego's Yonder Alonso. I broke the tie the way Gold Glove voters seem to, by which is the better offensive player. In hindsight, I should have gone with Hosmer in the AL. He is a truly gifted defender. Don't talk to me about the Diamondbacks' Paul Goldschmidt. I haven't seen him in person very much, but when I have he has struck me as a good hitter but not a good fielder. At the time I looked at DWARs, Goldschmidt was at -0.5, or a greater negative value than any first baseman's positive value.

Speaking of defense, I just noticed that I made an error at second base in the NL. The Rockies' D.J. LeMahieu ranked ahead of Phillips in both RF and DWAR.

For the NL catcher, Molina and the Giants' Buster Posey had the same combined ranking. As a tiebreaker, I used DWAR, where Molina ranked higher, ahead of CERA, where Posey led the league.

Similarly, Ozuna's superior DWAR broke a tie with the Cardinals' Peter Bourjos and Heyward's major league-best DWAR in right field put him ahead of Marlins RF Giancarlo Stanton. By the way, lost among some pretty good offensive statistics, Miami has probably the majors' best outfield defense. LF Christian Yelich also ranked second in the NL in the combined metrics.

* * *

I also looked for individual base-running metrics that could help in establishing a list of well rounded All-Stars, but there didn't seem to be enough evidence (call it small sample size) to make an educated guess about one player over another. Baseball Prospectus' base-running metric (positive and negative runs) includes five different types of runs -- Ground Advancement, Stolen Base, Air Advancement, Hit Advancement and Other Advancement.

There could be some merit in the larger sampling of team base-running runs. At the time I researched this post, the Royals led the majors with almost 10 runs, 50% more than the runner-up Mariners. The Cubs led the NL. By far, the worst teams were the Red Sox and Athletics, with the old and infirm Phillies last in the National League. 

KC's base-running prowess could be a reason why the Royals stayed in contention despite some atrocious hitting. Base-running appeared to be just another problem for Boston, another aging team with injury issues. I was surprised to see the Rangers among the AL base-running leaders, because even during their recent contending days they have made miserable mistakes on the bases. Texas was slightly above 0. I'm guessing the positive ranking could have been built on Stolen Base Runs -- with a trio of base stealers in Martin, Elvis Andrus and Alex Rios. 

There didn't appear to be much correlation between good base-running teams and teams high in the standings. Four teams currently in playoff position ranked in the top third in base-running, but three "playoff teams" ranked in the bottom third.