Archive for ESPN Insider 2010

Although the National League West might not be the home of offensive behemoths, at least one of the run-starved trio of the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants and Colorado Rockies will reach the playoffs. It might be tempting to write all those teams off because of their lack of punch, but history shows that you don’t have to be an offensive machine to have a parade in November.

As you can see in the graphic below, five of the 19 teams that have won the World Series in the past 20 years — there was no postseason in 1994 thanks to the strike — had offenses that were below the league average in that given year. The 1995 Atlanta Braves were a whopping 45 runs below average yet won it all thanks to some guys named Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz on the mound.

This is good news for the Giants especially; they’ve posted the worst offensive numbers of any contending club this season. (See the second chart, below this paragraph.) Their problems at the plate have kept them looking up at the Padres for most of the season and have inspired general manager Brian Sabean to make several moves to bolster the offense, including acquisitions of outfielders Pat Burrell, Jose Guillen and Cody Ross.

The Giants don’t have the Hall of Fame pitching trio that the Braves had, but their pitching has been strong enough to keep them in the race. Their team strikeout rate of 8.11 K/9 is second-best in baseball. Although they don’t have a balanced team, they may be able to make it work in October. To get there, however, they’ll have to jump over a team with a similar pedigree.

The Padres have scored just 589 runs — only three more than the Washington Nationals — and are certainly not an offensive juggernaut. They, too, have been carried by their pitching staff; they are the only team that has a higher strikeout rate than the Giants. However, their home park plays a large role in driving runs down, and given the environment in which they play half their games, their overall offensive performance is not so bad. They are comparable to the Florida Marlins of 1997 and 2003 as well as the 2005 Chicago White Sox and 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, each of which ended up winning it all.

There are enough examples of mediocre offenses being carried to world championships by their teammates to know that each of the eight teams that make it to October has a legitimate chance. However, being able to score runs in bunches certainly helps.

The New York Yankees have won five championships since 1996 on the backs of some big hitters. Last year’s New York offense wasn’t just the best in baseball — it was one of the best in baseball history, putting up a whopping plus-198 weighted runs above average that is easily the best of the championship clubs from the past 20 years. Both times that the Boston Red Sox won it all, they did so with strong offensive clubs, and the Toronto Blue Jays won back-to-back titles in 1992 and 1993 with a lineup full of good hitters.

The ability to score runs is why the Yankees are again looked at as one of the favorites, as they have the best offense in baseball yet again.

However, don’t overlook the Minnesota Twins, who have hit better than any team other than the Yankees and have done so without Justin Morneau in the second half of the season. Jim Thome has filled the gap better than anyone could have anticipated, and his .278/.407/.635 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) mark is nearly the equal of Morneau’s numbers before he landed on the disabled list. With Thome and Mauer in the middle of the lineup and a deep lineup that doesn’t have any holes, the Twins can hit with the big boys and shouldn’t be underestimated come playoff time.

Over in the National League, the upstart Cincinnati Reds have mashed their way to the NL Central lead. MVP candidate Joey Votto gets most of the credit, but underrated performances from guys at key positions, such as Ryan Hanigan and Paul Janish, make the Reds a hard team to pitch around. The Reds are the team to back in the Senior Circuit if you want a club that can put up crooked numbers on the scoreboard.

The lesson from recent history, however, is that big-time scoring isn’t the only way to the promised land. It helps, certainly, but all these teams can point to at least one World Series champion with a similar offense and attempt to follow in its footsteps.

In case you haven’t heard, some folks are calling this the year of the pitcher. And the National League playoff will feature some of the best arms in the game, including Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum, Tim Hudson, Aroldis Chapman and others.

Using Pitch f/x data — you can find out more about that here — we decided to take a look at these four hurlers and break down what makes them so nasty.

Halladay’s cutter

Halladay mixes and matches three effective pitches with movement: a mid-90s sinking two-seam fastball, a high-70s curveball and a low-90s cutter; he recently added a mid-80s changeup. Almost everything Halladay throws is a good pitch, but the cutter is his “out” pitch. He threw it more than 32 percent of the time this year — and got it for a strike more than 70 percent of the time.

To understand these graphs, think of them as a heat map. The “warmer” the color, the more often that’s where the ball is. It’s on a blue-red scale, where blue is “never” and red is “all the time.” So a yellow part of the plot would be a cluster of pitches in that specific area, while green is a smaller cluster.

Halladay’s cutter has a late, sharp sink to it, moving toward left-handed hitters and in the opposite direction of his sinker. With this type of movement, he uses the cutter more often against left-handed hitters, as the pitch gets in on their hands and is hard to drive. His new changeup gets batters to whiff more often, but the cutter puts the ball in play for easy groundouts.

Lincecum’s change

The Giants’ star is often complimented for the speed of his two-seam fastball given his height and weight — but Lincecum’s most deadly pitch is clearly the mid-80s changeup he throws 16.5 percent of the time against right-handed hitters and 25.8 percent of the time against left-handed hitters. Lincecum also has a high-70s curveball and a mid-80s slider that he mixes into his arsenal.

Lincecum gets right-handed hitters to whiff 25.4 percent of the time with his changeup, while left-handed hitters whiff 27.7 percent of the time on the same pitch both in and out of the strike zone. With both horizontal and vertical off-speed movement, Lincecum’s changeup is located slightly more inside to right-handed hitters than it is to left-handed hitters. It’s flat-out filthy.

Hudson’s sinker

Hudson throws two fastballs almost 70 percent of the time: a low-90s four-seam fastball and a high-80s, sinking two-seam fastball. On the other 30 percent of his pitches, Hudson mixes a variety of above-average off-speed pitches: a mid-70s curveball, a low-80s changeup and a mid-80s slider — and just for good measure, Hudson occasionally throws a mid-80s splitter and a high-80s cutter, allowing him to throw different pitches at different speeds that move in different directions. Hudson uses the slider against right-handed hitters and the splitter against left-handed hitters to induce swinging strikes. Nevertheless, the sinker is Hudson’s most used and most valuable pitch. He throws it more than 34 percent of the time to both righties and lefties.

Of the 472 outs by balls put in play Hudson recorded, 43.4 percent of them were due to the sinker. Hudson’s sinker moves toward right-handed hitters and away from left-handed hitters. It has the opposite effect of Halladay’s cutter, and he uses it more against righties to get in on their hands.

Chapman’s fastball

Chapman has thrown just 185 pitches this season, but the excitement is palpable whenever he shows up. His fastball was clocked at 105.1 mph earlier this year. That’s an insane speed for a ball to travel from a pitcher’s hand to a catcher’s mitt.

Because the above graph is harder to see at ESPN.com horizontal image widths, you can also open it at a bigger size, and in a new window, by clicking here.

Looking at the scatter plots above, we can see each fastball that Chapman threw, each of which is labeled by its speed and color-coded by pitch outcome. The 105.1 MPH fastball recorded on September 24 against Tony Gwynn Jr. is circled in red. In that particular at-bat (in which Gwynn struck out), he threw pitches at the following speeds: 102.6, 103.7, 102.5, 104.1, 105.1, 103.1, and 101.5 miles per hour. The plot on the right is a closer look at just the strike zone, showing numerous called strikes right down the middle of the plate. Bottom line: the guy throws straight gas. And it’s fun to watch.

We are nearing the end of the MLB season, and the discussion frequently turns to who should win the postseason awards. There are many debates about criteria should be taken into account for winning each award, especially the Most Valuable Player trophy. Should pitchers earn votes even though they could win the Cy Young Award? Does the award go to the best player in the league or to the player who is most valuable to his team’s success? Should only players on playoff teams be considered?

Besides these criteria, the voters often voice a preference for players who perform better during the last few months of the season, arguing that those who step up their game down the stretch deserve bonus points.

To see whether voters actually follow through on this stated preference for MVP winners, all the winners since 2002 will be examined to see whether their performance at the end of the season helped them toward winning. To do this study, I compared the players’ final wOBA to each month’s total. Here is the average monthly difference in wOBA for the 16 winners when compared to their season total.

From these numbers, it can be seen that the winners’ best months were at the beginning and end of the season. The MVPs’ best performing month was August and worst was May.

One issue with this approach is that in some seasons the MVP was so much better than the rest of the league that even if his performance slacked at the end of the season, he was still much better than everyone else being considered. This scenario was definitely the case when Barry Bonds was putting up wOBAs of over .500 for multiple seasons.

But if you want to get a feel for this with an easy-to-understand graph, check out the average month-by-month performances of every MVP from 2002 to 2009 based on wOBA. As you can see, there is a tremendous surge in August, and September is the next-best month.

Besides the winners turning it on toward the end of the season to help their cause, did the second-place finishers hurt their cause by not performing better during the same time? Here are the differences in the monthly wOBAs when compared with the yearly final:

The runners-up definitely don’t perform as well as the winners in the last couple of months. Voters may have a couple of candidates in mind, and the one who finishes better could get the voter’s final vote. This happened in 2006, when MVP runner-up Albert Pujols ended the season with a wOBA of .448 and MVP Ryan Howard had a wOBA of .436. Pujols had wOBAs of .394 and .475 in August and September, while Howard put up .481 and .516 numbers to take home the hardware. His team didn’t make the postseason, but Pujols’ did.

So what does that now tell us about this season? Let’s take a look at the month-by-month wOBAs of some of this season’s leading candidates.

Although the MVP award should be judged on an entire season’s worth of work, there is some evidence that players who heat up in August and September may sway a few voters their way compared with players who struggle during that same time period. That could doom Cano, who had by far his best month back in April. Hamilton would seem to be the runaway choice for AL MVP and Pujols the pick in the NL right now. However, the Cardinals’ recent slide could change the narrative and put Votto in great shape to take home the National League hardware. Remember, a lot can change in the season’s final month.

Being the manager of a major league baseball club is an interesting job, because while the general manager selects the players, there are only a few moments when a major league manager can show his stuff. When he fills out the lineup card, a manager makes his most indelible stamp on the game. In a similar vein, his bullpen usage also provides a record that we can follow. In these moments, we are provided a window into the manager’s way of thinking. We know which players he thinks are currently his best options. With these facts in mind, and inspired by Jerry Crasnick’s look at managers on the hot seat, let’s look at the five worst managerial decisions this year.

5) Mike Scioscia shuns Mike Napoli
Some managers make poor decisions but slide by, perhaps by the grace of their resume. Angels manager Mike Scioscia has consistently run out Jeff Mathis at catcher over Mike Napoli to the frustration of fantasy baseball players alone it seems. This was a curious decision given Napoli’s eminently useful batting line (.249/.317/.478) versus the one Mathis has been showing (.196/.218/.294), but catcher defense is notoriously hard to put a number on, so the decision could be justified to a degree. The situation got a little more ridiculous, though, when Kendry Morales went down for the season and Scioscia cited Napoli’s performance with runners on base — which came in an extremely small sample size — as the reason he wasn’t getting regular at-bats at first base. Now even Juan Rivera, who has never played first base in his life and has a .249/.301/.403 line that doesn’t stand up to Napoli’s, is getting time at the position.

4) Tony La Russa buries Colby Rasmus
In St. Louis, manager emeritus Tony La Russa has made some interesting decisions over the years, and many have been lauded by the statistical community. Hitting pitchers eighth can actually benefit a team in a very small way. But playing inferior players over young stud Colby Rasmus — that decision seems borderline petty. By his comments to the media, La Russa seems to be trying to get Rasmus to hit the ball the other way, when Rasmus is showing great pull power as it is. Just look at Cito Gaston — who hasn’t complained that every single one of Jose Bautista’s 43 home runs has been pulled — for comparison. La Russa has consistently shown an aversion to playing Rasmus, who has started only 93 of the club’s 138 games, but the outfielder has turned in an impressive .268/.352/.501 line with great defense, despite the lack of confidence from his manager.

3) Don Wakamatsu goes gaga for Griffey
More often, when the manager gets it wrong, he’s sure to hear about it. Mariners fans were in disbelief when Ken Griffey, Jr. was penciled in as the starting DH most of the year when Michael Saunders could easily have pushed Milton Bradley to DH and provided excellent defense and more offense than the aging star. Here we are, three months later, and Griffey is no longer on the team, Bradley has undergone knee surgery after one of his worst years, and the Mariners’ DH position has put up the worst batting line in the American League (.187/.261/.328). In fact, that’s not far off of the combined line for pitchers in the National League (.105/.134/.120). Hyperbole aside, this was the kind of move that could get a manager fired, and Don Wakamatsu was indeed axed.

2) and 1) Jerry Manuel embraces Frenchy and Fernando
Finally, we come to one manager that may have achieved the double-whammy. Jerry Manuel is beginning to feel the heat in New York, and for good reason. For a good portion of the season, Manuel used Fernando Nieve as his setup man. He really liked Nieve, using him so often he was once on pace for close to 80 innings. It wasn’t until Nieve had made 40 appearances and his ERA reached 6.00 that he was banished to the minors. Young fireballer Bobby Parnell would have been a better option — but perhaps we can blame Omar Minaya for leaving Parnell in the minor leagues for so long.

On the other hand, Manuel squarely gets the blame for one of his lineup decisions. Jeff Francoeur has his uses — against left-handers he’s a decent option, which is apparently why the Rangers traded for him last night, and of course he owns that golden arm. But Manuel ran him out there for over 440 plate appearances, in which Frenchy racked up exactly zero WAR by hacking away at any pitch that didn’t hit the dirt. In about 300 fewer plate appearances, Francoeur’s backup, Chris Carter, has managed to rack up 0.2 WAR by walking more, striking out less and showing just about as much power. If Manuel leaves New York, it won’t all be Omar Minaya’s fault.

Sometimes a manager gets it right and usually receives little fanfare. For instance, Joe Girardi has run Brett Gardner out there in left field despite an up-and-down major league resume before this season. All Gardner has done is shown himself to be the second-most valuable Yankee by wins above replacement (WAR). He’s done this by providing a spark plug on top of the lineup — stealing 37 bases efficiently and walking over 13 percent of the time — and also by playing great defense in center and left.

Clearly, the Houston Astros believe it’s time to start over. This summer, they dealt arguably their two most important players, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, and they’re currently 15 games out of first place in the National League Central. They have a less than 1 percent chance of making the playoffs this season.

There’s a small problem with the rebuilding plan, though: their farm system isn’t exactly loaded. Keith Law had them ranked in the bottom three organizations in baseball in that regard last winter.

There’s a good chance that, in the next two seasons, Wandy Rodriguez, Carlos Lee, Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn will join Oswalt and Berkman on their way out to make room for new blood — and Houston will have pick other players to build the franchise around. Can the core the Astros have already assembled lead them to the playoffs, or possibly a championship? It appears unlikely.

Jason Castro, C

Castro has advanced quickly through the Astros’ system, spending less than two years in the minor leagues; he’s known for his defensive abilities behind the plate, but his offensive potential is underwhelming. He batted .265 with four homers this year at Triple-A, and since being called up he’s posted a .568 OPS with an isolated power of .090. That’s weak. He’s only 23, but his glaring lack of pop makes it unlikely he’ll be more than a solid-average big leaguer.

Getty ImagesThe Astros need J.A. Happ to replicate his 2009 in Philly.

J.A. Happ, SP

The prized pig in the Roy Oswalt trade, Happ is hoping to right the ship that is his early career. After being an extreme control pitcher in prior years, Happ has struggled with getting the ball over the plate recently. (His BB/9 innings this year is 5.94, and that’s alarming.) Without any pitches that really fool batters, Happ won’t have a chance in the world if he can’t find his location again.

With his performance in 2009, Happ helped the Phillies get to the World Series, even if his season looked much better than it really was — his 2.93 ERA last year was fueled largely by an absurd .181 BABIP with runners in scoring position. The Astros are counting on Happ to replicate those 2009 numbers, and he probably never will.

Chris Johnson, 3B

Picked by Houston in the fourth round of the 2006 draft, Johnson has Astros fans drooling after his late-June call-up. Johnson has hit well over .300 since his promotion, but most of his success is built on a shaky foundation of a .411 BABIP. While in the majors, Johnson has been striking out more than the league average hitter (23.3 percent), while walking at a clip that is well below league average (4.2 percent). Without big-time power (career .429 slugging percentage in the minors), it is hard to make that skill set work.

Tommy Manzella, SS

Ever since he was selected in the third round by Houston in the 2005 draft, Manzella has had the reputation of being a slick fielder without much of a bat. He’s always flirted with hitting .300 in the minors, but overall wasn’t much with the bat due to a lack of power and a below-average walk rate. To his credit, Manzella kept a respectable strikeout rate throughout the minors, and even hit line drives at a decent rate.

During his brief big league stint this year, Manzella proved the scouts right when it came to the bat, putting up a wOBA of only .229. Manzella’s already 27, and he’s a utility infielder, at best.

Bud Norris, SP

Houston’s sixth-round pick in 2006, Norris has been impressive in the big leagues. Working with a mid-90s fastball and hard-breaking slider, Norris has struck out more than a batter an inning in just under 170 big league frames.

His control needs to improve a bit over the next few years, because 3.83 BB/9 is a tad high, but his ability to miss bats makes him a possible front-of-the-rotation starter.

Brett Wallace, 1B

Acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays at the deadline, Wallace has been a highly touted hitting prospect since his days at Arizona State. Wallace started out as a power-hitting third baseman, but had to be moved to the other corner due to defensive concerns.

No one ever expected Wallace to be a defensive whiz, but he was supposed to hit. Wallace, who’s 24, posted an .868 OPS at Triple-A Las Vegas this year, and while that looks good on the surface, Vegas is one of the most hitter-friendly parks in the minors, and that number isn’t that impressive for a prospect whose only skill is hitting. Since being promoted to Houston, Wallace has a .471 OPS and is striking out in a third of his plate appearances. If he doesn’t figure things out next year, he doesn’t have much value to a big league team.

The bottom line

You build championship teams through a combination of stars and role players — look at any recent World Series winner for documentation of this — and the Astros currently have the role players, but not the stars. GM Ed Wade is going to have to draft carefully for the next few years, or this rebuild will take a long time. He needs to develop a few star-caliber, quickly-rising-through-the-minors guys out of the draft to complement the players above.

The reality of the injury to Stephen Strasburg is obviously terrible news for the Washington Nationals — and will be felt at multiple levels of the organization.

It’s not often that a single player can be attributed to a surge in revenues for a club, but Strasburg was different; he was a player who had the collective focus of baseball fans before he ever set foot in the big leagues. What’s important here is that he wasn’t playing for the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox — he was playing for the Nationals, a team that was the Montreal Expos a little more than a half-decade ago.

His first two starts at Nationals Park were sellouts and attendance for his third home start — on June 23 against the Kansas City Royals (31,913) — was 39 percent higher than what the Nats had been drawing on average prior to his arrival. He immediately started paying dividends for a club in dire need of excitement; his debut alone apparently netted the Nationals $1.5 million in additional revenue.

His debut was also a ratings boon for MASN, the regional sports network of the Nationals; they set a viewership record for his debut by earning a 7.1 household rating — more than 165,000 households in the Washington region tuned in.

His economic value this season was also felt beyond the confines of Nationals Park. On the Thursday after Strasburg’s debut, TBS altered its programming for “Sunday MLB on TBS” to air Strasburg’s second start, at Progressive Field during interleague against the Cleveland Indians. As of Saturday June 12, the day before Strasburg’s scheduled second start, the Indians sold an additional 8,000 tickets to what the Indians were calling “Strasburg Sunday.” There was a merchandise stand, in Cleveland, dedicated entirely to a player on the Nats.

The loss of revenues this season will pale in comparison to 2011 — and perhaps even beyond. We can’t project exactly how much Strasburg was worth to baseball in D.C. — but when taking everything (merchandise, concessions, tickets, etc.) into account, it’s likely in the low tens of millions. And in addition to the loss of potential ticket and TV revenue, the Nats will be paying Strasburg $5 million next year (his salary plus a portion of his signing bonus) to rehab.

The feel-good announcement just 10 days ago that the Nats signed Bryce Harper to a $9.9 million, five-year contract will be tempered with the knowledge that the four-year, $15.1 million deal for Strasburg has the capacity to go from boon to bust. After all, who knows whether he will be the Strasburg that showed electric stuff or a watered down version of his former self when he comes back.

The financial implications of Strasburg’s injury are likely to be felt well beyond the reaches of the Nationals. Shortly after the World Series is completed, collective bargaining sessions will begin, as the current CBA is set to expire in mid-December of 2011. A hard slotting system for amateur draft bonuses has been mentioned as something the league would like to see, and the Strasburg contract, and now injury, play into management’s hands. It’s a tough pill to swallow when you give an unproven prospect $15 million and he misses an entire season, which is surely an argument that owners will make. And remember, the 2011 season will count as service time for Strasburg, so even if he returns to form in 2012, the Nationals are losing one of his cost-controlled seasons.

Overall, 1,971 days after the first batter in Nationals history (Brad Wilkerson), it’s a dark day for baseball in Washington — and many more may be coming.

When you watch the White Sox play, you are apt to see things like Juan Pierre leading off, Mark Kotsay at DH and Omar Vizquel at third base, and yet Chicago has continued to play winning baseball despite some curious lineup changes and some offensive black holes and sits 4½ games behind the Twins in the AL Central. The Sox’s secret weapon? Don Cooper, perhaps the most underrated pitching coach in the game.

Everyone has heard about Dave Duncan’s prowess for fixing pitchers in St. Louis, and Leo Mazzone got a lot of credit for the Braves’ epic run during the 1990s, but Cooper has flown under the radar as a pitching guru. However, he’s been instrumental in helping the White Sox get top-notch performances out of guys who were deemed not good enough for another major league organization. In fact, the cast-off label could be applied to nearly every member of the White Sox’s bullpen.

Bobby Jenks was claimed off waivers after the 2004 season, in which he had posted a 10.24 ERA in the minor leagues. In 2005, with some mechanical adjustments from Cooper, Jenks was throwing strikes and blowing away major league hitters. He took over as the White Sox closer in 2006 and has been one of the game’s best ninth-inning stoppers since, posting 8.5 wins above replacement in his career.

He isn’t even Cooper’s biggest success story, however. That would be Matt Thornton, the game’s premier left-handed reliever. The White Sox picked him up in the spring of 2006, sending busted prospect Joe Borchard to Seattle to acquire him. Thornton threw hard, but that was the only thing he could do. His command was dreadful, he didn’t have any good off-speed stuff and hitters would just wait for Thornton to fall behind in the count before sitting on his fastball.

Another mechanical tweak from Cooper and Thornton immediately cut his walk rate nearly in half in 2006, going from 6.6 BB/9 to 3.5 BB/9. He’s continued to improve his command while in Chicago and has actually seen his strikeout rate increase every year since joining the White Sox. Over the last three years, Thornton has an xFIP of 2.75, just behind some guy named Mariano Rivera for the best mark of any AL reliever.

Cooper has continued to work his magic this season, helping get J.J. Putz back on track after a disastrous stint with the Mets, as well as getting high-quality performances out of rookie Sergio Santos, a converted infielder who began the season with just 29 innings pitched in his professional career. Even though it is a collection of guys that no one wanted, the White Sox once again have the best bullpen in the AL.

Cooper doesn’t just specialize in relievers. The White Sox’s rotation also shows just how much the organization has benefited from their pitching coach.

When the White Sox acquired Gavin Floyd from the Phillies before the 2007 season, he had a 6.96 ERA in the big leagues and had shown little of the stuff that had made him a good minor league prospect. His K/BB ratio was a terrible 75/64 in 108 major league innings and he’d given up an alarming 20 home runs. He was basically a two-pitch guy, relying mainly on his fastball/curveball combination, and hitters had no problem teeing off on both.

Once arriving in Chicago, Cooper persuaded Floyd to start throwing a slider, which has become his more frequently used breaking ball and has allowed him to significantly cut back on fastballs. His ability to mix pitches and keep hitters off balance paid off immediately, as he also cut his walk rate dramatically upon joining the White Sox, and he has continued to improve each year he’s been a member of the staff. This year, he’s even added more groundballs to the mix while maintaining his excellent K/BB ratio.

Cooper’s influence can also be seen in Freddy Garcia, whom the team picked up off the scrap heap after years of injuries and has given the team effective innings at the back of the rotation. And, while it’s only a handful of starts, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Edwin Jackson is throwing his best baseball of the season since being traded to Chicago. Cooper has spent years fixing pitchers like Jackson.

Since Cooper took over as Chicago’s pitching coach midway through the 2002 season, the team has consistently had one of the best pitching staffs in the league in spite of playing in a park that is one of the best places for hitters in all of baseball. By rehabilitating arms that were discarded by other organizations, the White Sox have been able to build quality pitching staffs without expending a lot of resources. The work Cooper has done in Chicago should not go unnoticed.

After Justin Morneau went down on July 7, the Minnesota Twins immediately dropped four of five games. They were 1½ games back in the AL Central on that date and were struggling against the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers.

More than a month later, things have changed. The Twins have surged of late — even taking it to the White Sox in a head-to-head series — and now have an 83 percent chance of making the playoffs.

How will the “dog days” play out for the Twins? Let’s take a look.

Scoring runs consistently without Morneau had seemed nearly impossible just two months ago. The Canadian first baseman has put up 5.2 WAR in just 81 games in 2010 thanks to a fantastic .447 wOBA, the best of any hitter in baseball. Without Morneau in the lineup, a big issue was protection: Wouldn’t the other hitters falter if pitchers knew the first baseman wasn’t there?

Actually, the biggest contributor to the Twins’ lineup in Morneau’s absence has been the guy who most thought would suffer greatest: Joe Mauer. The catcher, who got off to a slow start relative to his 2009 MVP season, hit .344/.392/.570 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) in July, good for a .411 wOBA. He didn’t let up in August and has even outperformed his July pace; he’s hitting .422/.530/.594 for the month, numbers that make even his 2009 campaign look mundane in comparison. Although he doesn’t have the same protection, he’s hitting for more power than when Morneau was intimidating the pitcher from the on-deck circle. Mauer’s success in the Morneau’s absence should further dent the idea of lineup protection. Many studies have shown the phenomenon does not exist, and the anecdotal evidence here suggests the same.

We can’t overlook the production of Jim Thome, either. The slugger ravaged the AL Central while with the Indians early in his career and the White Sox as recently as last season, and he has been flat-out incredible for the Twins as of late. The designated hitter is batting a Ruthian .333/.426/.769 (.490 wOBA) in August with a homer/fly-ball rate of 40 percent.

Also picking up the slack is shortstop J.J. Hardy. Coming into 2010, Hardy really could have used a bounce-back season. After putting up WARs of 4.4 and 4.9, respectively, in 2007 and 2008, Hardy struggled with a measly 1.4 WAR in 2009 and was promptly traded from the Brewers to the Twins. After starting this season looking no different than last year, Hardy has finally turned it up during the past two months. The shortstop hit .351/.377/.486 in 21 July games and for August has a respectable .321 wOBA.

Orlando Hudson has been another major part of the team’s offensive success during the past month. Although he hit a rather pedestrian .276/.353/.368 in July, the smooth-handed switch-hitter has hit .298/.382/.532 in August.

Although some may look to give outfielder Delmon Young the lion’s share of the credit for the Twins’ offensive success, even mentioning him as a possible MVP candidate, the reality is that he hasn’t been all that great since Morneau went down and the Twins’ offense took off. His .319/.345/.500 line isn’t bad, but he hasn’t been the one driving this offense forward. For example, rookie third baseman Danny Valencia has been just about as productive. Don’t buy into the Young-for-MVP hype; it’s been a total team effort, with several other players taking a more prominent role in the second-half surge.

Minnesota’s offensive performance also serves as a reminder not to overstate the importance of any one player; no one had played better in the first half than the Twins’ first baseman, yet removing him from the lineup has not affected them in the slightest. You’ll hear frequent clichés about one player carrying a team down the stretch, but nobody can do much on his own, and no team will have its season decided by the influence of just one man.

With the trade deadline long passed and the waiver process being complicated, and occasionally inaccessible, due to overzealous rivals, teams must look for alternative avenues of upgrading their roster for the stretch run. Sometimes those improvements come in the way of a farm system producing talent and other times an upgrade is as simple as getting an injured player back. This week in particular is full of the latter for four teams battling for playoff positioning. And in some cases, it’s remarkable that these clubs were able to survive without their stars.

Carlos Pena returned to the Tampa Bay Rays’ lineup Monday night and played a pivotal role in their comeback against Cliff Lee. Pena had missed 15 games thanks to a plantar fascia sprain in his foot. In his stead, the Rays used a combination of players at first base, but mostly relied on Dan Johnson. The former Oakland Athletics first baseman hit 30 home runs in 98 Triple-A games this season before earning a long-awaited promotion. Johnson didn’t record too many hits during Pena’s absence — as a .111 batting average reflects — but he got on base 39 percent of the time and showed some defensive skills, as well; the power he showed in Triple-A did not translate over, though, and that might be the biggest upgrade Pena offers.

The Rays don’t hit many home runs, but when they do, Pena is usually one of the few hitting them. ZiPS has him pegged for nine more over the stretch of the season, which would give him his fourth consecutive season with 30 or more homers and set him up well heading into free agency. Assuming that Pena and Johnson are about equal with the glove and on the basepaths, the man they call “Los” should be worth at least a half-win more to the Rays than Johnson would be over the remainder of the season. That does not mean Johnson will ride the bench with Pena’s return; he’s slated to become the Rays’ designated hitter against right-handed pitching.

Dustin Pedroia and Chase Utley returned Tuesday night. These two could pass as the best second basemen in the league in any given year, so you can only imagine how much their teams missed them.

Given Pedroia’s small stature, it’s pretty tough for human beings of normal height to stand in his shoes comfortably. Unfortunately for Boston, nobody the Red Sox ran out at second base could fill his metaphorical batting shoes, either. Boston’s fill-ins combined to hit .255/.328/.466, which isn’t half bad, but comes up short when compared to Pedroia’s career .305/.370/.461 mark, or even his 2010 season line of .292/.370/.502. Factor in Pedroia’s usually outstanding defense, and he’s likely worth a little more than a win upgrade over the final part of the season. That might keep Boston’s playoff hopes alive a week longer into the season, but make no mistake, they are heavy underdogs without the services of Kevin Youkilis and Jacoby Ellsbury.

As for Utley, who tore a thumb ligament in late June, his return came weeks earlier than previously expected. The word around the Phillies had been September all along, but few complained when Utley took the field ahead of schedule. The back-to-back National League champions made due with Wilson Valdez playing second. Valdez’s hitting left something to be desired, as his on-base percentage failed to top .300 and his slugging sat below .350. While not quite the infamous Mario Mendoza, Wilson was pretty close to replacement level, meaning Utley on a torrid streak could produce a two-win upgrade. That could easily swing the balance in the NL East and wild-card races.

Utley and Pedroia weren’t the only fantastic second basemen to make their return this week either, as Martin Prado reappeared for the Braves. Prado’s pinkie injury kept him out for more than two weeks and came days after Chipper Jones suffered a season-ending injury of his own. With All-Star Omar Infante playing second base, Prado could shift to third base for the remainder of the season, where he played during part of his rehab assignment. Brooks Conrad has probably the most memorable hit of the season for Atlanta, but Prado should be worth at least a win over him.

However, that is not the only equation that needs consideration. Jones hit .265/.381/.426 this season while Prado hit .315/.357/.484 before heading to the disabled list. That isn’t the real question, though, as it’s Infante, not Prado, who now becomes a regular. Infante is hitting .339/.368/.416 and his ZiPS projection calls for a .310/.353/.393 line. Even if he continues hitting at a career-best rate like he has to date, Infante is a downgrade from Jones offensively. That’s without attempting to analyze whether Prado will be a defensive downgrade. The Braves are losing about a half a win with the bats and maybe a little more with the gloves. Atlanta is obviously conscious of this, and the Braves traded for Derrek Lee yesterday to try and compensate. He’ll be an upgrade over the slumping Troy Glaus.

Saving the biggest for last, Utley’s teammate Ryan Howard will return this weekend. To say Philly has missed the big man is an understatement. Mike Sweeney might be the nicest man in baseball, but he hit .261/.320/.261 while his platoon partner Ross Gload carried the pair with an OPS over 1.000 and two home runs. The pair split playing time nearly 50-50, meaning the result was an average hitting first baseman. Much like Pena, Howard should represent about a one-win upgrade over what those two were producing heading forward. Maybe more if he goes on one of his patented second-half hot streaks.

The Braves entered Tuesday night with a 2½ game lead over the Phillies. These comings and goings shake out to the Phillies roughly making up two to three games on the Braves if all else holds equal, meaning they should be extremely close down to the wire. So close that the deciding factor very well could present itself as the victor of the remaining six head-to-head games, which includes a three-game series to end the season in Atlanta.

At the end of April, the situation for the Atlanta Braves looked bleak. After defeating the Philadelphia Phillies on April 20, the Braves were tied atop the NL East, but they promptly lost nine games in a row to fall five back in a division occupied by the two-time defending NL champs.

By the end of May, though, the Braves came back to lead the division, and they still do. They have a roughly 88 percent chance of making the playoffs. Even if the Phillies overtake them, they would lead the wild-card race, and at this point, with injured third baseman Chipper Jones out for the season, they’d take a bid any way they can get it.

The Braves’ remaining schedule certainly helps their outlook. Only 12 of their remaining 44 games are against teams with a .500-or-better record; six of those come against the Phillies, including the final series of the season. The St. Louis Cardinals and Colorado Rockies are their only other opponents with winning records; the rest of their schedule includes nine each against the Florida Marlins and Washington Nationals and six against the New York Mets.

Since July 31, the Braves have been without Martin Prado, their breakout star; he ranks fifth among MLB second basemen in wOBA. The Braves have gone 9-6 in his absence, but four of those losses have been by one run, and Prado could have made a difference. He could be back soon, which will help the Braves cover for the loss of Jones. Although Jones was having a poor season by his standards, he still has the fourth-highest wOBA among Braves regulars. They will have to rely more on Omar Infante, who, All-Star or not, likely won’t sustain his current .344 wOBA when pressed into regular action.

Beyond injures, the Braves have plenty of offensive voids. In May and June it looked as though they had won their gamble on Troy Glaus, as he was back to producing at elite levels. But since then, his numbers have fallen hard (a .260 wOBA in July and just .306 so far in August). The outfield has had plenty of issues, too. Nate McLouth is currently in the minors trying to figure things out, leaving Melky Cabrera, who has a .310 wOBA, and Rick Ankiel, who has a .242 wOBA since being traded July 31 and a .309 wOBA this season. Even Jason Heyward has had his low points, including a .278 wOBA in August.

Although the pitching staff has stayed mostly healthy, the Braves lost a piece of their rotation when Kris Medlen left during the fifth inning of his Aug. 4 start with an elbow injury. He will undergo Tommy John surgery. The Braves will use Mike Minor, the team’s No. 4 preseason prospect, and Kenshin Kawakami could return to the majors if Minor doesn’t adjust well to big league life. Thankfully for the Braves, their top four starters are good enough to carry the team.

With the Phillies surging of late (and with Chase Utley and Ryan Howard about to come off the disabled list), the Braves’ outlook is a bit dim. Still, that shouldn’t discourage them very much. They have thrived on their pitching all season, and that unit remains largely intact.

The Braves have offensive options, too. They could look to the trade market for a first baseman; Lyle Overbay is one name that stands out. His season stats don’t look pretty, but he has been hitting better lately (.280 batting average/.363 on-base percentage/.517 slugging percentage since July 4). Or they could turn to Freddie Freeman, their No. 2 preseason prospect, who is hitting .311/.371/.516 in Triple-A at age 20. If the Braves wanted to make a serious gambit, they could put in a claim on Manny Ramirez once the Dodgers place him on waivers. That could give their offense a little extra punch.

Despite the injuries and offensive black holes, the Braves not only are in this thing but even have to be considered the favorites in the NL East because of their 2½-game lead. Even if they can’t hold off Philly, the wild card is still very much in play. If a roster move that can help the team presents itself, the front office should jump on it. The Braves aren’t locks to make the postseason, especially with a few Phillies returning from injuries, but it’s tough to write off a team that has been in first place for almost three months.