The Boston Red Sox won their first game of the season 9-7 against the New York Yankees. As a result, their 1-0 record had them in first place in the American League East. They haven’t been in first place since.

They’ve been close — they were a half-game off the pace as recently as July 3 — but right now they are six games behind the Yankees and also looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays.

The latest playoff odds have them with a 23 percent chance of playing meaningful games in October.

So — can they get back into this race, even with all the injuries they’ve suffered?

There is still a remote chance that a team in the AL Central or West could capture the wild-card berth into the playoffs. Realistically though, it will come down to Boston, New York and Tampa to decide the AL East crown and wild-card winner.

The problem is, Boston is in the most perilous position of the division’s three top teams. It’s a position made all the tougher with the recent news that Kevin Youkilis will miss the remainder of the season after having surgery on his injured thumb.

The Red Sox entered the season with a different approach from previous years. Highlighted by the departure of Jason Bay, the front office made several moves designed to maximize the defensive assets of the club, which drew some criticism; the belief was that if you have money, why spend it on defense?

Playoffs or not, hopefully the success of the Red Sox and the San Diego Padres outweigh the failure of the Seattle Mariners and help put to rest the stereotype that teams must build through offense. Ironically, though, Boston’s offense has been really good this year, highlighted by turnaround campaigns from David Ortiz and Adrian Beltre (Beltre smacked a grand slam just last night). Youkilis’ second straight .300/.410/.550 campaign certainly helped, as well. In fact, according to park-adjusted wOBA, the Red Sox have had baseball’s best offense, although that will likely change with Youkilis out.

The defense, as advertised, has been solid.

The problem in Beantown has been that the pitching, which should be elite, has been merely above average. Josh Beckett has faced injury problems and general ineffectiveness while John Lackey has been far less than the Red Sox paid for. Daisuke Matsuzaka continues to post his frustratingly high walk totals and pitch at his agonizingly slow pace. If it weren’t for Jon Lester’s great season and Clay Buchholz slashing his home run rate enough to soak up innings, the Boston rotation would be a problem.

As it stands, the starters have been adequate while the bullpen has let them down with one of baseball’s worst FIPs. Make no mistake about Daniel Bard, who is proving that his 2009 was no fluke. While Bard appears ready to assume the closer’s role, the rest of the unit has slid backward. Jonathan Papelbon looks even more on his way out with a decidedly average season. His strikeout rate has dropped five points and his home runs (six allowed) already exceed his 2009 total (five).

Manny Delcarmen, who seemed so promising just two years ago, has lost all ability to record strikeouts and has just 25 this season compared to 22 walks. Hideki Okajima has gone from striking out a quarter of all the hitters he faced in 2007 and 2008 to striking out just 16 percent this year. When you’re the Red Sox and your second-best relief pitcher has been Scott Atchison (no offense to Scott), something has gone wrong.

Not all is lost, though. One thing the Sox have going for them is simple: They play their divisional superiors a lot more this season — including six games against the Rays and 10 against the Yankees, starting tonight. They have the ability to take games from the teams above them.

That might be a tall order, though: Boston is sub-.500 against both teams this season (4-8 versus the Rays, 3-5 versus the Yankees).

What has to worry Boston is how 2011 looks. Obviously the Yankees are not going anywhere, and while the Rays seem destined to lose Carl Crawford there remains a figurative battalion of young prospects behind him ready to contribute. The Red Sox are not going to be able to count on another fluke season from Beltre, either. He’s nearly certain to decline his player option given the performance he’s put up. Ortiz is a free agent as well and Papelbon heads to his final arbitration year. Boston allocated a team-record $168 million in payroll in 2010 and has more than $100 million already guaranteed for next season while several significant holes remain.

Baseball games that actually count resume today; so upon starting the second half, it seemed prudent to look at some players with pivotal roles in the American League playoff race. Almost all top-10 lists will be ripe for subjective arguments and this one should be no exception.

That said, here are 10 players, in no particular order, who could make or break the AL playoff races.

Joaquin Benoit, Tampa Bay Rays
The Rays’ bullpen is a big reason why they’re ahead of the Red Sox for the Wild Card and maintaining that advantage will be essential down the stretch. Joaquin Benoit has been nothing short of amazing for Tampa Bay and is one of the season’s best free-agent signings. Tampa inked him to a minor league contract back in February, and Benoit has delivered a career-high in strikeout and ground ball rates along with a career-low walk rate. His 1.99 xFIP, a measure of fielding-independent ERA calculated by strikeouts, walks and normalized home-run-to-fly-ball rate, is the second-best mark in baseball behind Jonathan Broxton. This level of success is unprecedented for Benoit, and the Rays need it to continue.

Adrian Beltre, Boston Red Sox
Boston currently sits three games outside of a playoff spot. They are going to need some improvement, especially in the rotation, to catch up. But they can’t afford any player falling back from his first-half performance. The player this might be most important for is Adrian Beltre. Now, anyone who watched Beltre play with the Seattle Mariners could have foreseen that Beltre would do well once removed from Safeco, but Fenway Park has not been the end-all, be-all catalyst for Beltre’s offensive resurgence. Beltre has .841 OPS at home compared to a remarkable .979 mark on the road. Beltre is hitting at an offensive level that he has not even sniffed since his monster 2004 season. Can he keep it going through the second half?

Colby Lewis, Texas Rangers
Yes, the Rangers are in first and they now have Cliff Lee, but their lead in the AL West (4 1/2 games) isn’t huge. Colby Lewis (3.33 ERA in 17 starts) was about as unknown as you could get entering this season. After spending some unremarkable time coming up through the minors, Lewis ended up in Japan from 2008-09 and underwent a complete transformation. His success in Japan still presented difficulties when figuring out how he might do stateside — difficulties that Lewis has mitigated but not fully assuaged in this first half. Lewis has been nothing short of — pardon the expression — a home run for the Rangers. What is important for Texas is that he stay somewhere in the vicinity of this new Colby Lewis and not revert, as Major League hitters get to see him for the third or fourth time, back to pre-2008 Colby Lewis.

Scott Kazmir, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
The Angels are yet again trying to beat projections and over-perform. They are in a tough position this season, already trailing in the AL West standings by a sizable margin that could get larger after the Rangers traded for Lee. The Angels need some serious improvement in their overall talent level to catch the Rangers and for that they need Scott Kazmir (6.92 ERA) to rediscover his talent.

Kazmir has been a fickle performer for Anaheim. While he was superb down the stretch for them last season, his strikeout rates continued to fall and he eventually bombed in the postseason. He straightened out that inconsistency in 2010 but in a negative way. His average fastball velocity, 90.5 mph, is at the lowest point of his career, but that, by itself, does not mean he is injured. If Kazmir is actually healthy, there might still be a chance for Kazmir to pitch as he once did. If he could find that form again, that would represent a huge upgrade for the Angels, arguably one of similar magnitude as the Rangers’ addition of Lee.

J.J. Putz, Chicago White Sox
The AL Central houses the real dogfight in the American League. Two teams are within 3 1/2 games of Chicago but, as division leaders, the White Sox still have two key questions facing their pitching. The bullpen has been an asset for Chicago but almost totally because of Matt Thornton and J.J. Putz. Thornton has been performing well for several years now, but Putz was a disaster for the Mets last season. This year, Putz is back to his old glory. Thanks to an increased use of his splitter, Putz has his strikeouts back above one per inning and his 2.41 xFIP is his best mark since 2006. Can he keep it up? Putz is certainly an injury risk and if he slips, then the White Sox bullpen gets a lot weaker.

Daniel Hudson, Chicago White Sox
Other than Putz, the biggest key to the Sox’s second half is Hudson. With Jake Peavy out for the season, Hudson will fill his spot in the rotation. Hudson’s meteoric rise in 2009 saw him climb from Class-A to the majors and he hasn’t cooled off yet. He began this season back in the Triple-A rotation and excelled with 108 strikeouts and just 31 walks in 93 1/3 innings. Hudson’s performance in Chicago is critical to the White Sox’s success; solid performances from him directly helps their postseason chances and takes the pressure off the White Sox’s front office to go shopping for a starting pitcher.

Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins
The Twins were the early-season favorite for the AL Central and still remain in the hunt, but so far have disappointed. One of the causes of that disappointment is the less-than-expected production of Joe Mauer. Few expected Mauer to repeat his 2009 numbers, but a repeat of his 2008 numbers was certainly achievable; instead, Mauer has skipped another year back to his 2007 self. (His .293 average is the same as it was in ’07.) He’s still a valuable asset, but Minnesota is relying on more out of him. Mauer is suffering from a batting average on balls in play (.315) that is much lower than his career average (.341), so a resurgence in the second half seems more likely than not.

Justin Morneau, Minnesota Twins
For the Twins to have success, any improvement from Joe Mauer must be met with zero diminishing production from anyone else, and that’s where Justin Morneau factors in. Morneau has been an absolute beast at the plate this year, upping his line-drive rate and spiking his batting average to a level unusual even for him. In fact, Morneau leads all hitters in WAR with a 5.0 mark at the break. While his power is at a career-high level as well, the real outlier is in his batting average. Morneau’s previous career best was a .300 average in 2008 — he is hitting .345 this year. That is just a point behind the major league lead, and a figure that’s a fantastic bet to return to Earth. His contributions thus far have been terrific, but they might go for naught if he does not manage to sustain them.

Jose Valverde, Detroit Tigers
A half game behind Chicago for the division lead, the Tigers have serious questions too. Namely, can Jose Valverde keep up the career year? Valverde’s ERA stands at 0.92 coming into the second half but his FIP and xFIP (projected FIP) indicate that he’s been very fortunate to keep it that low. Valverde, remarkably, has gone from a high-strikeout, fly ball-heavy pitcher to one getting an extreme number of ground balls without losing too many of the strikeouts. Valverde has been a big success for the Tigers, but with Joel Zumaya now out for the rest of the year, the Tigers will be leaning on Valverde even more. If he falters it would represent a big blow to the bullpen’s overall effectiveness due to the high leverage of innings that Valverde has been spitting out with great success.

Brennan Boesch, Detroit Tigers
The bullpen isn’t the only unit sitting on a precarious edge for Detroit. The Tigers have featured just four serious hitters. Magglio Ordonez, Johnny Damon and Miguel Cabrera come as no surprise, but the fourth, Brennan Boesch, should. Boesch’s .990 OPS is surprising because his minor league development didn’t hint at such an output.

After just 66 trips to the plate with Triple-A Toledo this year, Boesch’s 1.076 OPS got him noticed and subsequently promoted. What drove that improvement, however, was a ridiculous .500 average on batted balls, a figure not even Ted Williams could dream of maintaining. Boesch has adjusted to the Majors well, but once again he is benefitting from an inflated (.381) BABIP that should fall. That would create a hole in the middle of Detroit’s lineup and could sink the Tigers’ playoff chances.

Despite the generally accepted wisdom, a team’s win-loss record is not always the best measurement for how well it has been performing during a season, especially early on. Statisticians prefer to do whatever they can to increase the sample sizes of their measurements, and while each game yields just one win and loss, it involves roughly 75 plate appearances and hundreds of pitches. Therefore, a team’s record is more prone to fluctuation than its overall hitting and pitching stats are. Evaluating teams based on the more numerous plate appearances provides a more sound measure of a team’s performance to date.

One such method of evaluation along those lines is BaseRuns, which is a formula used to predict how many runs scored and allowed a team should incur based on the number of hits, walks, home runs, stolen bases and total bases. Those predicted run totals can then be put into another well-tested equation, called Pythagorean Record, to produce how may wins and losses a team should have based on those more stable predictors.

We can compare that predicted record to a team’s actual record to find out which teams have been especially lucky or unlucky. Three teams stick out from these results as being especially lucky, Pittsburgh being one. It probably is surprising to hear Pittsburgh regarded as lucky, given its 23-40 record, but consider that the Pirates’ run differential is minus-140 runs, by far the worst in baseball. The Pirates should hold MLB’s worst overall record, but instead, they sit six games ahead of the Orioles. The Astros have similar benefits, having MLB’s third worst run differential but a record about six games better than expected. Trumping all teams, however, the Los Angeles Angels sit as baseball’s luckiest team by this measure.

It is not atypical to find the Angels considered a “lucky” team by analysts. Quite often, their difference in actual wins over predicted wins is chalked up to savvy baserunning, a reliable bullpen and steady guidance from manager Mike Scioscia. Skeptics of these write-offs have extra reason to scoff this season, as the Angels have been successful on just 40 of 61 stolen base attempts (66 percent) and their bullpen has a 4.79 ERA, which is third worst in the AL.

Projected over a full 162-game season, the Angels are on pace to win a whopping 16 more games than BaseRuns indicates they deserve. As it stands now, they are 36-30 and own a .545 winning percentage, which would be good for about 88 wins. Yet they’ve scored exactly as many runs as they’ve allowed, and based on their overall profile, BaseRuns says the Angels would be lucky to even be .500 and that their record should be 29-37, which would give them 72 wins over a full season. Angels fans might be flying high right now with their team’s recent success, but they would do well to exercise cautious optimism for the rest of 2010.

Raise your hand if you know who Matt Wieters is. I hope a lot of you out there have your virtual hand up. Now raise your hand if you know who John Jaso is. Ryan Hanigan? Carlos Ruiz? Now, there is probably a lot fewer of you with hands up.

Minor League hype is a fickle beast. For every Jason Heyward, there are five Brandon Woods. Many regarded Wieters as the savior of the Baltimore Orioles on his way through the minors. His numbers certainly supported that belief, but they have yet to show up where it counts. This isn’t writing Matt Wieters off as a future Major League star. He just turned 24 so he has plenty of time to adjust to the bigs and begin posting the numbers people dreamed out of him. While we wait to see if that will occur, some catchers that got nowhere near the hype of Wieters have nonetheless turned in some valuable seasons for their big league clubs.

Ryan Hanigan isn’t a sexy prospect but he does one thing particularly well and that’s draw walks. His 31 walks in just 293 plate appearances helped him to a .361 OBP with the Reds. Hanigan, whom the Reds signed as an undrafted free agent back in 2002, has had an even bigger success story this year with a .338/.449/.486 triple slash line while splitting time with Ramon Hernandez. It is a small sample, but Hanigan’s .409 wOBA has made him the seventh most valuable hitting catcher in the majors, despite being a part-time player. Hanigan is almost certainly not going to maintain numbers that lofty, but ZiPS projects him to post a .334 wOBA going forward, which almost exactly matches ZiPS’ .336 wOBA projection for Wieters. Maybe someone should start a Ryan Hanigan Facts website.

John Jaso also flew under the hype radar when he failed to show much power in the minors. What he did show though was good plate discipline and low strikeout rates, which helped to maintain a high average and impressive OBP. Getting an extended look in Tampa due to an injury to Dioner Navarro, Jaso has made his case for keeping the starting job with a .324/.449/.493 line.Jaso’s 8.5 percent strikeout rate is just behind Hanigan’s 8.1 percent and, among catchers with at least 50 trips to plate this year, they rank second and third respectively, with only A.J. Pierzynski bettering the unheralded pair.

Hype of minor league players is generally well founded. It comes from quality scouting reports and/or fabulous numbers. Hype doesn’t always equate to Major League results though, and certainly does not guarantee instant success. Sometimes it takes awhile and sometimes, solid Major League catchers appear out of seemingly nowhere.

Today on ESPN.com, Jerry Crasnick writes about players who are carrying their teams in a variety of ways. And while we can’t put a number on any emotional or intangible lift a player gives his squad, we do have some cold, hard numbers that tell us which guys are really carrying their squads. To start, let’s look at which players have the highest percentage of their team’s wins above replacement.

Name                 WAR          %
Shin-Soo Choo        1.5        14%        
Nelson Cruz          1.9        13%       
Chase Utley          2.5        13%        
Alex Rios            1.7        12%       
Andrew McCutchen     1.1        12%
Michael Bourn        1.2        12%
Vernon Wells         2.0        11%
Jered Weaver         1.1        11%
Franklin Gutierrez   1.4        11%      
Justin Morneau       2.2        10%

Based on the numbers, no one is carrying his team quite like Choo, but that’s a byproduct of being an excellent player on a bad team. The same can be said for McCutchen and Bourn. But I think the spirit of carrying a team implies something more. To make it relevant, you have to be able to carry a team that wins.

Therefore, let’s give extra credit to Chase Utley and Roy Halladay of the Phillies. The pair has the most WAR of any batter (2.5) and pitcher (2.2) respectively this season and account for 23 percent of a first-place team’s WAR.

Moving to the American League, Nelson Cruz and Justin Morneau are both are off to scorching starts for division-leading clubs. Morneau’s 2.2 wins above replacement is already more than half as many wins as he has in any season of his career, including his 2006 MVP season and accounts for 10 percent of the Twins’ total WAR. Cruz’s 1.9 wins above replacement is possibly more impressive given that he did that in only 19 games before hitting the disabled list with a hamstring issue. He’s been a force in a lineup that has so far disappointed in offensive production. His production has accounted for 13 percent of the Rangers’ total WAR.

On the other end of the spectrum are some players that teams were counting on to perform and have faltered so far. Chief among those would be Aramis Ramirez (-0.9 WAR) of the Cubs, who has been well below replacement level.

Howie Kendrick (-0.5 WAR) and Erick Aybar (-0.2 WAR) of the Angels have seen bigger than expected regressions from their highs in 2009. Both are under replacement level and are a big reason why the Angels have been so disappointing. Over in Boston, a team that Theo Epstein built on pitching and defense has seen good hitting and the expected solid defensive play, but has been completely let down by its vaunted pitching staff. Josh Beckett’s struggles are highly visible (0.5 WAR), but the entire staff has been less than dominating, and excluding Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon, the bullpen has combined for -0.6 WAR. Defenders can only do so much when the ball is being lined all over the park.

What do Jeffrey Leonard, Greg Briley, Kevin Mitchell, Mike Felder, Eric Anthony, Vince Coleman, Rich Amaral, Jose Cruz Jr., Glenallen Hill, Brian Hunter, Rickey Henderson, Al Martin, Mark McLemore, Randy Winn and Raul Ibanez have in common? From 1990 through 2004, each player in turn was the regular starter in left field for the Seattle Mariners. Not a single player repeated during that entire span. When Raul Ibanez occupied the primary starting role from 2004 through 2008, it marked the first time that the same person played left field regularly in consecutive years since Phil Bradley did in 1986 and 1987.

With Ibanez in Philadelphia, however, the Mariners left field carousel is back. Last year, the position was manned by Endy Chavez, Ryan Langerhans, Wladimir Balentien, Michael Saunders and Bill Hall. Saunders and Langerhans are in Triple-A Tacoma, while the other three are with other organizations.

For now, the de facto starter is Milton Bradley, but there are problems with that arrangement even without discussing Bradley’s off-field baggage. He has had surgery on both knees in the past, and in 2009 he he missed games with minor pains in his left quad, groin, right calf, right hip, both hamstrings, left knee and right quad. Safeco Field holds a vast expanse of real estate to cover in left field, and Milton Bradley attempting to cover that much ground is bad for the team’s defense and bad for Bradley’s future health.

It would be a tougher decision if the Mariners were playing Bradley in left field in order to make room for a Vladimir Guerrero-type bat at DH, but they’re not. Most projection systems have the Mariners’ current DH platoon of Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Sweeney at replacement level, meaning that they are not any better than what you’d expect to get from a player claimed on waivers. (Last year, Griffey was worth 0.3 wins above replacement, and Sweeney was 0.4.) There is no one blocking Bradley from moving to designated hitter. Not to mention the fact that Bradley had the best year of his career in 2008, when he posted a 4.6 WAR as a full-time DH for the Rangers.

With Bradley at DH, left field is opened up for a platoon of Eric Byrnes and either Ryan Langerhans or Michael Saunders; either pairing would provide solid defense coupled with enough hitting to allow Bradley to move to DH with no overall loss in left field. The Mariners are costing themselves about two projected wins with their current arrangement and, needing to make up ground in the AL West, cannot settle for another sub-par left fielder, even if that is the norm for the organization.

I join many others in welcoming Bill Simmons to the statistical revolution in baseball. While statistics have always been an integral part of baseball, we have learned to tinker with them to more accurately reflect what happens on the field, and more importantly, what will happen. One of the more difficult puzzles to crack has been evaluating pitchers due to how entangled their performance is with that of their defenders. Accepting the move from ERA to Fielding Independent Pitching is probably the single biggest step one can take on the right path of separating the two, and Simmons has made that leap.

The Sports Guy made the case for FIP in his piece by referencing White Sox closer Bobby Jenks, who posted a decent 3.71 ERA last year, but whose secondary stats added up to a more mediocre 4.47 FIP. Given that Jenks’ ERA was significantly lower than his FIP, he concluded that Jenks wasn’t as good as his traditional numbers made him appear. While this is usually true, and the process he used to make his conclusion works most of the time, there is one more important number to check.

Home Runs allowed, an important input to the FIP formula, are not as skill-based as had been thought throughout history. Research has shown that pitchers have little control over how often a fly ball actually leaves the yard. In fact, if you want to predict how many home runs a pitcher will give up in 2010 you are better off looking at his 2009 ground ball ratio rather than his 2009 home run totals, the latter of which can occasionally include some good or bad luck due to wind, park, or random variation.

That is why xFIP exists, to correct those home run rates. It is simply the FIP formula with an expected home run rate based on fly ball totals, rather than actual home run rate. Substituting for the average amount of fly balls that turn into home runs leads to more accurate future projections than just looking at FIP by itself. Sticking with Simmons’ example of Bobby Jenks, he certainly did look like garbage at times last season, in large part because 17 percent of his fly balls went for home runs. That’s nearly double his career rate and well above the league average, which is around 11 percent. While Jenks’ ERA of 3.71 didn’t match up well with his 4.47 FIP, his xFIP of 3.63 shows that Jenks had some bad luck on fly balls clearing the wall.

Bobby Jenks rediscovered his strikeout touch in 2009 (8.3 K/9) and kept his walks low (2.7 BB/9). If his home runs hadn’t ballooned, he would have been seen as one of baseball’s best closers. While Bill was right to look at FIP to see whether Jenks’ ERA reflected how he really pitched, making that last small step to using xFIP to project his future performance will give him, and you, an even greater advantage.

With the San Diego Padres rebuilding and potentially strapped for cash, the rumor engine has been operating at full roar over the possibility of an Adrian Gonzalez trade for the past six months. The Boston Red Sox and Seattle Mariners have been most frequently linked as suitors, but given Gonzalez’s style of hitting and the respective parks those two teamsplay in, he should be rooting hard to be traded to Boston.

Gonzalez, like most batters, pulls more balls than he pushes the other way. A telling split is Gonzalez’s batted-ball-type ratios. He has a ground ball percentage of 61 percent when he pulls the ball, but when he goes the other way, it is a fly ball 64 percent of the time. Those are significant differences.

Gonzalez is a fantastic hitter to all fields, but he’s especially good when hitting to left field — he had more opposite-field home runs (21, more than anyone else in baseball) than homers to center and right field combined (19) in 2009. According to work published by Greg Rebarczyk in 2007, PETCO Park is about 4 percent harder than average to hit home runs toward left and left-center fields, but Seattle’s Safeco Field is even harder to get the ball out to that area — 10 percent tougher than average.

Given that Fenway Park is roughly neutral when it comes to home runs toward left field, Gonzalez would fare much better in Beantown, where he could use his penchant for opposite-field fly balls to rain extra-base hits off the Green Monster, and home runs over it, escaping the potential death trap of Seattle’s left-center gap. Gonzalez’s agent would do well to try and kill any chance his client ends up in the rainy Northwest.

The Setup

Game Two of the American League Division Series between the Minnesota Twins and New York Yankees is remembered most for Mark Teixeira’s dramatic walk-off homer in the 11th inning. However, what happened in the top of that inning is more interesting.

After three consecutive singles loaded the bases with no outs, Minnesota manager Ron Gardenhire elected to let Delmon Young and Carlos Gomez try to drive in the go-ahead run — despite the fact that they were each among baseball’s worst hitters in 2009. Both failed, as did Brendan Harris, and the inning ended without the Twins putting any runs on the board. They would promptly lose before getting another chance to hit.

Gardenhire’s reluctance to pinch-hit in such a critical situation, especially for Gomez, drew the ire of the Minnesota fans. But based on years of researching historical performance of pinch-hitters, it turns out that they’re not much good either. In fact, pinch-hitting is quite often the wrong idea, and Gardenhire was likely correct to discern that Gomez was his best chance to get the run home in that situation.

The Discussion

In 2009, major league pinch-hitters hit a combined .225/.315/.353, significantly worse than their starting counterparts, who hit .264/.334/.421. That’s not a one-year fluke or a recent development, either. In 1990, guys coming off the bench hit .224/.302/.316. In 1970, they hit .226/.313/.323. Way back in 1954, their performance was a pitiful .220/.315/.323. It’s not just that the average pinch-hitter is worse than a starter, but instead, there is evidence that pinch-hitting is just really difficult. Matt Holliday has a career .552 OPS as a pinch hitter compared to a .933 mark when he starts. Joe Mauer has a .693 OPS off the bench. Even Derek Jeter is hitless in his five attempts.

Baseball consultant Tom Tango, now in the employ of the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays, went through historical pinch-hitting situations in his book (appropriately titled “The Book”) and found that, even after accounting for the average pinch-hitter being of lesser ability and facing tougher pitchers in more important situations, pinch-hitters performed at a level roughly 10 percent lower than expected. That’s huge; a 10 percent penalty turns a .300 hitter into a .270 one. That reduction in performance would turn Evan Longoria into Skip Schumaker.

Pinch-hitters don’t share this fate alone. Designated hitters, who also spend a significant amount of the game spectating, suffer at the plate as well. Studies have found that regular starters relegated to the DH role end up hitting at a level about 5 percent worse. That’s better than pinch-hitters, but it does indicate that not being out in the field hurts players when they step up to the plate. Jim Thome, Frank Thomas and Jason Giambi, for example, all had significantly worse numbers than expected while at DH rather than first base, even after adjusting for the age at which they played both positions.

What makes pinch-hitting so hard? Repetition and routine are common agents to help calm nerves. It’s why you’ll see some ridiculous things in the batter’s box, such as Nomar Garciaparra’s infamous batting glove routine. It’s why coaches in golf stress pre-shot routines, and for every disturbance to mean a complete do-over of that routine. It’s why any athlete anywhere spends countless hours practicing. They are attempting to train their muscle memory and to develop grooves in the brain that focus on the specific task at hand and let them forget about anything else.

Pinch-hitters do not get the benefit of routine. Unlike relievers who first get to warm up in the bullpen, then warm up on the mound, and who dictate the action in the first place, pinch-hitting opportunities tend to spring up with less warning. At best, a player on the bench might get a heads-up in time to go into the cage and take a few hacks, but for the most part, he gets thrust right onto center stage sans warm up. That’s not a recipe for success, and the evidence suggests that even the best hitters in the world struggle to succeed in that situation.

The Conclusion

That’s not to say pinch-hitting is always a bad idea. Pitchers are notoriously terrible hitters — to the point where nearly any capable major league position player will still be more likely to get a hit, even accounting for the pinch-hitting penalty. Had Gardenhire carried even a league-average hitter to come off the bench in the ALDS, that guy would have been a better choice to hit than Gomez, as the gap in talent would have overcome the expected decline in performance from the pinch-hitter. But Gardenhire did not have that guy on his bench, so as frustrating as it may have been for Twins fans, he made the right call.

Pinch-hitting is one of the most difficult things to do well in all of sports. Even good hitters fail routinely when asked to come off the bench and get a big hit late in the game. It isn’t as simple as comparing the batting averages of the two available options and going with the higher number. While inaction is always tougher to watch — and easier to criticize — it is often for the best. Pinch-hitting for the pitcher? Good idea. Pinch-hitting for your starting shortstop? You’d better have a legitimately good hitter available, and it still might not be the right call.

Overall team outlook:The Seattle Mariners, at the time of publication, appear to be right up there with Texas and Anaheim heading into the 2010 season as a roughly mid-80 win team. It’s been a winter full of activity for the Mariner front office and they’ve done a remarkable job of patching holes with limited outlay in the free agent market.

The Starting Rotation:The starting rotation is going to get the lion’s share of attention in 2010. Fronted by the newly extended Felix Hernandez and newly traded-for Cliff Lee, there is probably no better 1-2 in baseball on paper. Both are legitimate Cy Young candidates on their own, but in Safeco Field and in front of another year of stellar defense, it would not surprise us if they ended up in an Adam Wainwright-Chris Carpenter type of situation by the end of the year. Behind those two the picture is less clear.

Ryan Rowland-Smith can be a solidly average starter, and Ian Snell could be anywhere from awful to good depending on which version shows up. There are numerous candidates for the fifth spot in Doug Fister, Luke French, Garrett Olson, Yusmeiro Petit, and Jason Vargas, and the ones left out will help provide some decent depth both in the bullpen and in Triple-A.

The Bullpen: The bullpen appeared good last year, for a time leading the league in ERA, but it was never actually all that successful, getting by with good luck. David Aardsma was legitimately good, though, as were Mark Lowe and Shawn Kelley. All three return this year and should be bolstered by the addition of Brandon League, a dynamite reliever and another flamethrower. Four above-average righties give the Mariners pen some much better potential this season. Leftovers from the fifth starter competition, along with a few other names like Nick Hill, should round out the back of the pen.

The Starting Lineup: It’s not a menacing lineup on paper, and offense is not likely to be a strong suit for the 2010 Mariners, but there’s some upside here. Mostly, it’s upside over the 2009 team, which scored a league-worst 640 runs. Using 2009 totals to estimate 2010 performance is always a bad idea, since people tend to forget to regress those 2009 totals beforehand. Starting from scratch and building up projections focused solely on 2010 is always the best way to go. Doing so for the offense this season gives us an unexpected conclusion. While seemingly unimproved from 2009, the group of players project to score in the range of about 730 runs, a massive improvement. The reasons for this are an improvement in OBP among hitters and general regression away from the totals received at shortstop, third base, and left field, which were universally black holes for the 2009 team.

In addition to improved discipline at the plate, the Mariners lineup in 2010 is much better suited to the confines of Safeco Field. Both newcomers Milton Bradley and Chone Figgins are switch-hitters, giving manager Don Wakamatsu more flexibility and allowing the team to put as many as five hitters in the left-handed batter’s box, where Safeco actually helps offense.

The Bench: Bench depth could be a weak point for the Mariners. Carrying Ken Griffey Jr., whose only role is basically as a backup DH, hurts the flexibility that the starting lineup provides. To that end, the Mariners might consider carrying an 11-man pitching staff in order to add another bench slot. One of Adam Moore or Josh Bard will be the backup catcher, and Jack Hannahan and probably a yet-unsigned right-handed outfield bat will be in place to cover the other seven positions in the field.