Over the last couple of days, we have talked about how a player’s skill set can affect his ability to take advantage of his home ballpark. Yesterday’s discussion on Adrian Gonzalez noted that his opposite-field power made him a candidate for teams that have inviting left field areas. And while it’s likely he’ll be playing in a new park in the near future, there’s another elite left-handed hitter who we know will playing in a new park starting next month: Joe Mauer.

With the Minnesota Twins ditching the Metrodome for Target Field, everyone’s wondering how it’s going to affect the 2009 MVP. Mauer has hit 72 home runs in six years in the big leagues, including a career-high 28 a season ago. Of those 72, a staggering 46 percent have been hit to left field, and that number jumped to 58 percent a year ago. Since most of Mauer’s power is to the opposite field, the dimensions that really matter to him in Target Field are the ones to left and left center.

According to Hit Tracker Online, each of Mauer’s 2009 shots to left field went further than 350 feet. If Mauer continues to hit opposite-field home runs at this length, he’ll rack up even more round-trippers, since the dimensions of Target Field suggest that left field may actually be more welcoming to hitters than the Metrodome. At the new park, left field measures in at 328 feet, and left-center at 371 feet; the Metrodome checked in at 343 feet to left and 385 feet to left-center.

We’ll have to wait and see how the weather factors into the hitting environment, but based on the dimensions of the park, Mauer will love his new home more than his old one. And if the reports of him signing a long-term extension are true, he should be very happy in Target Field for years to come.

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.

When Seattle traded for Casey Kotchman on Jan. 7, the general reaction was a shrug of the shoulders. Of course the Mariners acquired a guy who is considered one of the best defensive first basemen in the league; Jack Zduriencik has shown almost as much affection for quality glove guys as he has for his wife and kids.

However, the M’s don’t just expect Kotchman to play a nice first base in his age-27 season. The coaching staff also believes it can tap into some of the offensive potential he showed earlier in his career, and as a left-handed hitter, they believe that the friendly right-field porch in Safeco Field should help him finally deliver on some of his potential power.

The park is much friendlier to left-handed bats than right-handed hitters, who suffer the most from its asymmetrical alignment. However, there’s one problem in hoping that Kotchman takes advantage of the proximity of the right field wall -– he prefers to pound the ball into the ground.

For his career, 52.7 percent of all of his balls in play have been hit on the ground. Last year, Kotchman hit the ball in the air at the same rate as guys like Scott Podsednik and Melky Cabrera. In fact, among first basemen with at least 400 plate appearances in 2009, Kotchman hit the fewest fly balls by far –- his 29.5 percent mark was nearly five percent behind Nick Johnson, the next runner-up.

If the Mariners are going to contend in 2010, they’re going to have to get offensive production from Kotchman, and he won’t be able to take advantage of how Safeco Field is configured by driving the ball into the ground. Hitting coach Ty Van Burkleo’s biggest job this spring may just be to convince Kotchman to get under the ball once in a while.

The Setup

On June 2 of last season, heading into the top of the ninth inning with the Toronto Blue Jays up 6-4 over the visiting Los Angeles Angels, Toronto manager Cito Gaston sent Roy Halladay back to the mound. Halladay already had thrown 116 pitches in the game.

Modern pitch-count orthodoxy would have had Halladay out of this midseason game at least 10 pitches earlier. So the question stands: Why would Gaston send him back out?

Obviously, Halladay is not some young pitcher who needs to be babied, but even so, 116 pitches is a lot. Why tempt fate with one of the game’s best pitchers and potential trade bait (with the trade deadline less than two months away) for a team that almost certainly would not be making the postseason?

In the end, Halladay closed out the game with 133 pitches, giving his team the victory. Did Gaston put Halladay’s arm at risk, or did he realize that not all pitchers are the same?

Those questions are relevant, but we’re here to demonstrate something else: Not all pitches are created equal.

The Proof

There is a growing belief that high-stress at-bats are more taxing than those in relatively low-pressure situations — and therefore that pitch counts from the two scenarios should not be treated the same. If a pitcher can breeze through easy innings in one gear and then kick it up to another gear when needed, raw pitch counts might not be the best tool to assess workload, either in an individual game or over the course of a season.

To test this theory, we need some measure of what we mean by pressure. We use a metric called Leverage Index, developed by statistician Tom Tango. Leverage Index (LI for short) quantifies the impact of every situation based on how the outcome will affect a team’s odds of winning a particular game. It is scaled so the average situation is always 1.00.

For example: An at-bat in the bottom of the ninth with two runners on and one run separating the teams will have a huge LI; the outcome of the at-bat will greatly affect the likelihood of either team winning the game. On the other hand, an at-bat in the middle of a 10-0 game with two outs and no runners on has a minuscule LI.

Let’s return to Halladay’s game against the Angels. Heading into the seventh, the Jays were up 6-0. Through those first six innings, because of the big lead and a dearth of Angels baserunners, Halladay faced just two at-bats with an LI of more than 1 and many with LIs less than 0.5. The 75 pitches Halladay threw through those six innings overwhelmingly occurred during low-leverage at-bats.

That all changed in the seventh inning, when the Angels managed four runs off him; as a result, his pitching changed drastically. He started throwing his curveball much more (19 times in 58 pitches in the seventh through ninth innings, compared to just 14 times in 75 pitches through the first six frames). It worked, as the contact rate on his pitches dropped from 72 percent to 60 percent and he struck out five batters in the final two innings, slamming the door and preserving the victory.

Those last 58 pitches likely were more taxing on Halladay than the first 75. With the game close in the late innings, Halladay shifted from pounding the zone with sinkers and cutters to get weak contact to throwing his breaking ball and trying to hit the edges of the zone to get strikeouts.

Halladay is not alone in shifting his strategy in high-leverage situations, although most pitchers respond by increasing the speed on their fastballs. In 2009, the average starter threw his fastball half a mile per hour faster in high-leverage situations. This might not seem like much — but most of these higher-leverage pitches come in late innings when most pitchers have lost a couple mph off the fastball. Somehow they are able to dial it up and get that speed back and then some. Justin Verlander threw his fastball more than 2 mph faster in high-leverage at-bats than when the game was not on the line. Ted Lilly, Aaron Harang and Pedro Martinez, among others, threw it more than a full 1 mph faster.

It makes perfect sense: When the game is not close or there are no runners on, a pitcher’s best stuff is not necessary, but when the game is close, it’s time to shift to another gear. These higher-leverage pitches almost certainly take more out of a pitcher than when he is cruising.

The Conclusion

Raw pitch counts do not account for the stress a pitcher has experienced over the course of either a game or a season. It is important to track high-leverage pitches separately since pitches in those at-bats require more effort. Here are the 2009 leaders for the number of pitches thrown in high-leverage at-bats:

These guys threw the most stressful pitches in the game in 2009.

Pitcher		Total Pitches	Total High-Stress Pitches
Justin Verlander	3,937	408
Chad Billingsley	3,203	385
Felix Hernandez		3,632	337
Ubaldo Jimenez		3,570	331
Adam Wainwright		3,614	331
Javier Vazquez		3,315	296
Carlos Zambrano		2,843	276
Jon Garland		3,255	271
Barry Zito		3,204	268
Matt Garza		3,421	261

Verlander threw more pitches in 2009 than any other pitcher — and threw the most high-stress pitches. Interestingly, he also was the pitcher with the greatest increase in fastball velocity when the game got tight, which suggests he really worked hard to get out of those situations. A bit worrisome is Chad Billingsley, who ranked only 33rd in total pitches in 2009, yet threw more high-leverage pitches than any pitcher besides Verlander. He might have very well put more strain on his arm than his raw pitch count would suggest.

On the other end of the spectrum are workhorses Cliff Lee and Zack Greinke, ranked sixth and seventh in pitches thrown, respectively, but just 42nd and 35th on the high-stress leaderboard. They likely put less strain on their arms than you might conclude by just looking at their total pitch counts.

The Setup

There are a lot of things to like about Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw. His fastball averages 94 miles per hour, yet he also can make hitters look foolish with a knockout breaking ball. He struck out 185 batters in just 171 innings a year ago, posting a K/9 that was the seventh-highest of any starter in baseball. He’s left-handed in a sport that covets southpaws. Oh, and he doesn’t turn 22 years old until halfway through spring training.

Even though Kershaw still struggles with his command and lacks experience, his ERA last season was even with Roy Halladay’s, and better than Johan Santana’s and Cliff Lee’s. When a pitcher is this good and this young, it is easy to dream about what the future may hold. If he’s already one of the best pitchers in the game (in this case, he is), what will happen when you give him some time to mature, learn how to pound the strike zone, mix his pitches and study hitters’ tendencies?

Unfortunately for Kershaw and Dodgers fans, history suggests that this may be as good as it will ever get for the young lefty. In fact, given the success he has had in the majors at such a young age, he may have already peaked.

The Proof

Hitters are fairly predictable, as a group. They will show flashes of potential in their early 20s, add strength and hit a physical prime in their late 20s, and then decline in their 30s. The peak age of a position player has been shown to be around 27, with most offensive players following in this same general pattern. When you find a 21-year-old who is already a good hitter, there is a good chance greatness is in store when he gets older.

The same is not true of hurlers. They do not follow an arc-shaped career path; instead, the normal career trajectory for a starting pitcher heads downward.

There are various reasons for this observed phenomenon, the most obvious one being injury. It doesn’t take a baseball historian to rattle off the names: Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Rich Harden are just this decade’s reminders of greatness at a young age cut short by surgery. Every pitcher, no matter how talented, is just one pitch away from the office of Dr. James Andrews on any given day.

Even putting aside the possibility of attrition, pitchers still defy conventional growth curves. While improvements are made in throwing strikes and pitching more intelligently, these marginal gains are more than offset by a bigger problem — a loss of velocity.

Scott Kazmir was the last version of Kershaw when he made his debut in the majors in 2004, throwing 94 mph at the age of 20 and racking up the strikeouts. He would develop into one of the better pitchers in the American League by age 22, but his fastball and slider began to slow down. Last year, his fastball averaged just 91.1 mph, and the Tampa Bay Rays dumped their once untouchable ace on the Los Angeles Angels in order to escape his long-term contract.

Before Kazmir, there was Oliver Perez in 2004, who broke through as a 22-year-old for the Pittsburgh Pirates. His 93-mph fastball allowed him to pile up the K’s and give Pittsburgh hope that it had an ace in the making. Two years later, with his fastball down to 91, the Pirates admitted that he wasn’t fixable and shipped him to the New York Mets.

Even the best young pitchers in the game, Felix Hernandez and Tim Lincecum, have lost 2 mph off their fastballs since arriving in the big leagues. Throwing hard is a young man’s game, and one that is very hard to sustain as the workload piles up. As young pitchers learn that they have to pace themselves to get through a six-month season, they find their radar readings less impressive than they used to be.

Unlike hitters, who tend to gain power as they age, pitchers lose it. In the past 30 years, 11 pitchers have rang up at least 180 strikeouts in a single season when they were 22 or younger. The list is not full of guys on their way to Cooperstown. Instead, it stands as a sobering reminder of just how great starts to a career can go very, very wrong. Other than Fernando Valenzuela, whose age has been the subject of much speculation, the most successful pitchers of the group: Sid Fernandez, who only three times managed to throw 200 innings in a season, and Dwight Gooden, who should have been so much more than he turned out to be. Beyond those guys, there are names such as Edwin Correa and Floyd Youmans, who were out of baseball before they could even rent a car.

The Conclusion

Some pitchers can make the necessary adjustments and have long, great careers — but most don’t. More often, the next big thing on the mound becomes a sad story of what could have been. For every Lincecum or Hernandez, there’s a Rick Ankiel, a Dontrelle Willis, a Prior or a Kazmir. Whether it’s injury, pressure, or more often a fastball that decides not to show up to spring training one year, young pitchers are often the biggest disappointments.

Kershaw is a remarkably talented pitcher, having already accomplished quite a bit in his first two years in the major leagues. His arm is golden, his upside seemingly unlimited. But the reality of history shows that he’s more likely to get worse than to get better, and fans counting on Kershaw to win a Cy Young or two are likely to be disappointed.

Put your faith in young hitters like Justin Upton or Matt Wieters, who are on a career path that should lead them to better things in the future. Pitchers like Kershaw will break your heart.

The Setup

It took Nyjer Morgan just three games with the Washington Nationals to confirm to his new fans that the organization had made the right move in acquiring him. Although he recorded his first three hits as a National that day, the real attention would be paid toward his defensive efforts against the Braves.

It was July 5, to be exact, and young Washington starter Scott Olsen was struggling with his command. Nerves were high as Chipper Jones strode to the plate, following a lead-off walk to Martin Prado. Olsen made his first pitch to Jones and watched in horror as it caught far too much of the plate. Jones reacted swiftly and, just like that, a bullet was heading deep into straightaway center field.

On an ordinary day, Jones reaches second base easily, Prado scores, and the Braves have the tying run in scoring position with nobody out. However, this was no ordinary day, and Morgan is no ordinary centerfielder. Upon launch, a blaze of red set into motion, stampeding towards the wall and then suddenly extending a lone arm. The ball tucked firmly into his glove, Morgan twirled and fired it back into the infield.

Two groundouts later, the threat was over. Prado was stranded on the bases, the Nationals’ lead was secure, and Washington would hold on for a 5-3 win. It was then that fans in the nation’s capital realized that their new centerfielder might just be the best defensive player in the game.

The Proof

It isn’t just Nationals fans who think highly of his abilities. Ultimate Zone Rating, one of the most accessible advanced defensive metrics that baseball has today, is in love with the man who calls himself “Tony Plush”. Developed by Mitchel Lichtman, a statistical analyst who once served as a consultant for the Cardinals, UZR produces an above- or below-average rating, measured in runs saved, for each player drawn from multiple defensive aspects — including range, throwing arm, and errors. By this metric, the 29-year-old Morgan is off the charts.

Morgan started last season with Pittsburgh (where he played left field), but was traded to Washington (where he played center) on July 1. Over the course of the season, his total UZR was an absurd +27.8 runs above average. Many analysts agree that Franklin Gutierrez was the best full-time defensive centerfielder in baseball last season, with good reason: his centerfield UZR was +29.1, but in nearly 400 more innings than Morgan played in center. For cases like these, we can use UZR/150, a playing time-adjusted figure which calculates the player’s defensive contributions pro-rated to 150 games, and therefore gives a fairer outlook to players with disparities. Gutierrez’s UZR/150 of +27.1 is just fantastic, but doesn’t look quite as impressive when compared to Morgan’s absurd +40.5 UZR/150 in his half-season in center. A half-season’s worth of data is not enough to definitively judge a player, but Morgan’s career numbers tell a similar story. For his career, Morgan’s UZR/150 in center is 39 runs better than average.

Don’t trust UZR? No problem. Baseball analyst Tom Tango organizes the Fans Scouting Report on a yearly basis, getting input from those who watch the players on a daily basis. In 2009, fans voted Morgan as the best defensive left fielder in the game by a fair margin, and he earned an even higher rating than Gutierrez did in center. And in case you think that this was the result of playing for teams with rabid fan bases, remember that Morgan suited up for the Nats and Bucs.

Need more proof? Morgan made a substantial impact on both his current and former teams. Through the time he was traded, the Pirates had allowed 16 unearned runs and had a 4.24 ERA against. In the 82 games thereafter, they allowed 29 unearned runs scored and the team ERA bloated to 4.92. Conversely, Washington allowed 43 unearned runs and held a 5.21 ERA through its first 77 games. Those numbers shifted to 40 unearned runs and a 4.80 ERA after Morgan’s arrival.

If his UZR is to be believed, and Morgan is the best defensive player in the game, then he should be expected to take between 15 and 25 runs off the scoreboard per season compared to an average centerfielder. On the high end, that would be the pitching equivalent of going from Braden Looper’s 5.22 ERA down to Chad Billingsley’s 4.03 ERA.

The Conclusion

Whether you’re a fan of numbers, a casual observer or both, there’s no doubt Morgan is magnificent with the leather. After some brutally tough seasons, Nationals fans have found hope in phenom pitching prospect Stephen Strasburg, but they should not overlook another terrific player who has arrived in their town.

Nyjer Morgan, Tony Plush, no matter what you call him, he’s a defensive wizard beyond compare.

The Setup

It’s generally pretty easy to tell who is good at baseball. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that Joe Mauer’s .365 batting average last year was tremendous, especially for a catcher. Likewise, pretty much anyone can recognize greatness in Prince Fielder’s 46 home runs, Zack Greinke’s 2.16 ERA or Tim Lincecum’s 261 strikeouts.

However, as baseball fans, we were born with the desire to argue over whether one player is better than another, and these numbers do not lend themselves to easy comparison. Mauer doesn’t have an ERA, because he’s not a pitcher. The Giants don’t care that Lincecum failed to hit a home run last year. Even comparing offensive players to other hitters can be a problem; Fielder would be a disaster at shortstop, so stacking his numbers up against Troy Tulowitzki’s is comparing a massively large apple to oranges.

Thankfully, we now have a metric that allows for comparison among players across positions, and even between pitchers and hitters, totaling up all the things each does to help a team win, no matter what his particular skill is. Hitters, defenders, pitchers — everyone is graded on the same scale. This is why we love Wins Above Replacement.

The Proof

WAR, as it is often abbreviated, is fairly simple in theory. The idea is to take a player’s total contribution in creating runs (hitting and baserunning), as well as preventing them (pitching and defense), and then compare those totals to what a team would have expected to get if they had spent the league minimum on some randomly available Triple-A player (the so-called “replacement player”).

By measuring all contributions by the run value they create (or save), we can measure widely different things, such as strikeouts and home runs. For example, a single is worth, on average, about half a run, a stolen base is worth about 0.2 runs, and a strikeout takes away approximately 0.3 runs. So, if Derek Jeter is 2-for-4 with two singles, a stolen base and two strikeouts in a particular game, he has created approximately 0.6 runs on offense.

Because every action on the field affects run-scoring to one degree or another, we can then compare that total to other players’ performances, even if they didn’t have any singles, stolen bases or strikeouts. For example, if Mark Teixeira went 1-for-4 with a home run in that same game, he would create a very similar offensive value to Jeter’s, even though he had one fewer hit and made an extra out. His long ball was more impactful than any one thing that his speedier teammate did, and the trade-off between quantity and quality essentially cancels out.

We can apply this concept to all aspects of the game, not just offense. Each out created by a pitcher or defender also saves runs, and once we translate their numbers into a total of runs saved, we can then compare those numbers across positions. (Due to the particular challenges of quantifying a catcher’s defensive value, all catchers are assumed to be equally average behind the plate, so your favorite good defensive catcher will be underrated by WAR. This is the stat’s biggest flaw.)

Without getting into all the of the calculations — you can find a 14-part, in-depth series on how WAR is calculated in the glossary at FanGraphs if you’re curious — WAR then takes those total values of runs saved and created, adjusts for relative scarcity between different positions, and converts runs into wins over what a team would expect to lose if that player got hurt and had to be replaced by some veteran minor leaguer or journeyman bench guy.

That guy is the baseline because he represents the expected value that could be had for no real cost. For instance, a year ago, the Mariners signed Mike Sweeney to a minor league contract and gave him a part-time job as their designated hitter against left-handers. He made no real money, produced just a fraction of a Win Above Replacement, and is now looking for work again. At this point in his career, Sweeney is the epitome of a replacement-level player. He costs nothing, produces at a level good enough to hang around without being overly useful, and bounces from one club to another looking for work each year.

In reality, WAR could be named “Wins Above Mike Sweeney,” because players just like him are the baseline against which all players are compared.

The Conclusion

Bill James once said that if a metric always gives surprising results, it is probably wrong, and if it never gives surprising results, it’s useless. WAR succeeds marvelously on this account. In 2009, for example, it matches quite well with the players we would expect to have been the best (Zack Greinke, Albert Pujols, Tim Lincecum, Joe Mauer) and worst (Yuniesky Betancourt, Jose Guillen, Aubrey Huff), while surprising us enough to be useful (Ben Zobrist’s outstanding season, Jermaine Dye’s decline). Of course, given the small difference in WAR between Zobrist, Pujols and Mauer, along with the catcher-defense flaw in the stat, it is reasonable to conclude that Mauer was the most valuable every-day player.

WAR is not perfect, but it does a very good job of grading an individual player’s contribution, crediting him for what he produces on the field. Replacement level is a good baseline that accounts for how the baseball market actually works, and it enables teams and fans to better evaluate contracts and trades. It takes into account all aspects of a position player’s game rather than just his obvious strength or weakness. And finally, it is measured on the scale of wins, which every fan can understand is the whole point of playing the game in the first place.

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.

The Setup

Since Michael Lewis penned “Moneyball” in 2003, franchises have been branded either by their support or disdain for the philosophies that the book espouses. The Oakland Athletics were held up as the model organization, the team that won by ignoring the traditions of baseball and finding value in underappreciated assets — the most prominent of those at the time being slow, unathletic, career minor leaguers who draw walks to avoid making outs.

A’s GM Billy Beane was winning with teams full of players that old-school scouts had hated. From John Jaha to Matt Stairs, the A’s were the destination of choice for guys who could run about as well as the average fan in the seats. Where other teams saw a lack of bat speed, an inability to play defense and a body that would break down by age 30, Beane saw the ability to construct an offense that would score runs by stringing together a few walks and a home run.

This particular brand of baseball, dubbed the “Moneyball” style, was despised by those who had been taught that the game should be played by fielding your position well, bunting runners over and doing the little things that help your team win. But now, in an attempt to chase the current undervalued assets, the tables have turned. Teams that are using the nerd-stats approach that the A’s made popular have abandoned power-hitting oafs in favor of athletic defenders who can run like the wind.

The “Moneyball” teams are now building rosters that would fit perfectly into pre-spreadsheet baseball. Perhaps no team exemplifies this shift as well as the Boston Red Sox.

The Proof

With an Ivy League-educated general manager who hired stat maven Bill James as a consultant, the Red Sox have been one of the most visible sabermetric teams in baseball recently. They built teams around David Ortiz, J.D. Drew and Kevin Youkilis, showing that they valued the same traits the Athletics had earlier in the decade. When the Sox finally tired of Manny Ramirez’s antics, they devised a three-way trade to bring them Jason Bay, another player who fits that particular mold.

However, when GM Theo Epstein evaluated how to improve a roster that finished in second place in the AL East and lost in the first round of the playoffs in 2009, he did not conclude that the team needed more power hitters to supercharge the offense. Instead, he let Bay sign with the New York Mets and then reallocated the money to Mike Cameron and Adrian Beltre — despite the fact that the duo hit fewer home runs combined than Bay hit a year ago.

Neither Cameron nor Beltre can match Bay’s production at the plate, but they can run circles around him in the field. Defense is where Epstein saw an opportunity to improve in the most cost-efficient way, so out went the burly slugger with bad range and in came a couple of average hitters whose stardom is measured in Web Gems.

Epstein and James have traded on-base percentage for ultimate zone ratings, believing that the market has over-corrected and is now undervaluing a player’s ability to save runs in the field. They aren’t the only ones — the Tampa Bay Rays, Seattle Mariners, and yes, even Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics are also on the bandwagon.

The results of this shift toward run prevention? The “Moneyball” teams are targeting the type of fast, athletic, fundamentally sound players that scouts have been drooling over for years. Tampa Bay, Oakland and Boston were all in the top five in stolen bases among American League clubs in 2009. Seattle finished eighth and then outbid everyone else in the league for speed-and-defense specialist Chone Figgins this winter. The Mariners also led the league in sacrifice bunts, and that doesn’t figure to change now that Figgins has joined the club and the team replaced power-hitting first baseman Russell Branyan with glove-man Casey Kotchman.

Likewise, the A’s should feature a mostly small-ball offense, especially with the addition of Coco Crisp to an outfield that already featured Rajai Davis and Ryan Sweeney. Beane now believes that having three center fielders tracking down every fly ball hit will make up for the fact that his three starting outfielders combined to hit 12 home runs in 2009.

The Conclusion

The age of the Giambi brothers is over. Sure, these teams would still love to have a middle-of-the-order thumper who can get on base and hit the ball 500 feet with regularity, but they aren’t going to pay the market price for power when similar value comes at a discount in another package. The value purchase now is to re-create the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals, a tremendous defensive team led by speed merchants who ran their way into the World Series despite a glaring lack of home run hitters.

Whitey Herzog, who managed that Cardinals team, would never be mistaken for a “Moneyball” disciple. But if Herzog were still putting together rosters in 2010, the teams that would most resemble what he would want are the teams that use statistical analysis to help inform their decisions. What was old is new again, and 2010 will be the year that the scouts and statheads finally come to an agreement on how a team should be built.

At 6-foot-10, Randy Johnson always has stood above the crowd. He doesn’t stand out just because of his height, though. When we line up all the left-handed pitchers the game has seen, Johnson is the first one we notice. His career is unmatched by that of any other left-hander, and he is the most dominant lefty ever to take the mound.

The career strikeout leaderboard for left-handed pitchers drives this point home. Johnson is the leader (and second among all pitchers behind right-hander Nolan Ryan) with 4,875 strikeouts. Steve Carlton is second, trailing Johnson by 739 punchouts despite pitching nearly 1,100 more innings than the Big Unit. In third place stands Mickey Lolich with 2,832 strikeouts, a mere 58 percent of Johnson’s career total.

There isn’t another MLB category in which one guy stands so far above his peers. Baseball has literally never seen anything like Johnson, a power left-hander who blew hitters away and single-handedly won games for his team. There had been some great left-handers before him, but none matched his dominance.

Carlton is within shouting distance of Johnson in career strikeouts only because of the number of innings he pitched. He never averaged more than a strikeout per inning in any season and led the league in K/9 only twice in his 24 seasons of big league action. Johnson, on the other hand, led the league in K/9 on nine different occasions and has the highest career strikeout rate per nine innings (10.61) of any starting pitcher in baseball history.

Sandy Koufax won’t show up on many career leaderboards because arthritis abbreviated his career, but he certainly had a great run of dominance from 1962 to 1966. In that five-year span, Koufax won 111 games, had an ERA 67 percent better than league average, struck out 9.4 batters per nine innings and won three Cy Young Awards.

If we are going to focus on Koufax’s best five years, though, we also must look at the best five-year run that Johnson had. From 1998 to 2002, the big man won 100 games, had an ERA 75 percent better than league average and struck out 12.3 batters per nine innings while winning four Cy Young Awards. Johnson’s peak was just as high as Koufax’s, but he had 22 years of longevity as well.

Warren Spahn, great as he was, was never the dominant force that Johnson was. He simply compiled tremendous career statistics through endurance, throwing 5,243 innings over 21 seasons. His career 3.09 ERA is nice, but only 18 percent better than the league average given the era in which he pitched. He had two legitimately tremendous seasons (1947 and 1953), but was more often just a good, healthy starting pitcher. Longevity is terrific, but it isn’t dominance. Spahn can’t hold a candle to Johnson’s peak.

Lefty Grove’s career is generally held up as the pinnacle by which all left-handers have been measured. With 300 wins and a career ERA that’s 48 percent better than league average, he’s certainly in the discussion for the best lefty of all time, but Grove got a lot of help from his defenders. He averaged just 5.2 strikeouts per nine innings for his career — above-average for the time, but not historically great.

Johnson dominated at a time when even flimsy middle infielders were driving balls out of the park with regularity, and he did it by sending them back to the dugout shaking their heads. The Big Unit stands alone as the best left-handed pitcher the game has seen.