Kuzul

Boy, this season went by fast.

Seems like just yesterday that the Mariners were gearing up to take the league by storm with lights-out pitching and defense, and the Padres were preparing to field offers for Adrian Gonzalez. Those were the days.

Now, just three weeks away from game No. 162, much of the playoff picture looks clear. The Rays, Yankees, and Rangers all seem safe bets to play into October. The Twins’ lead, while far from secure, would likely withstand a White Sox winning streak, and barring collapse, the Reds should be able to maintain their edge over the scuffling Cardinals.

But there are still questions. The Giants and Padres are tied in the NL West with the Rockies just 1.5 games back. The Phillies have a game on the Braves in the NL East, and Atlanta, in turn, has a single-game lead over San Francisco and San Diego for the Wild Card—at most three of those teams can make the playoffs.

In this slideshow are this week’s top 10 series to watch, based on intrigue and potential magnitude of impact.

Here’s to another week of great baseball!

Begin Slideshow

If you were to build a Major League pitcher, where would you start?

No, I’m not talking about Elmer’s glue and popsicle sticks. I mean the best pitchers’ control, velocity, and mental makeup. Look around the league—what would you take from who?

In this slideshow are the 10 body parts and attributes I would take from around the game, from arm and command to glove and pickoff move.

In the interest of diversity, I limited myself to taking only one part per pitcher. Otherwise, the final product would have probably just looked like a combination of Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay.

Here’s hoping my monstrosity sticks to terrorizing opposing hitters, instead of 19th-century villagers.

In this slideshow are the 10 body parts and attributes I would take from around the game, from arm and command to glove and pickoff move.

Begin Slideshow

In today’s game of free agency and rebuilding sell-offs, it’s extremely rare for a player to stick with a team for much more than about a decade. Stars come and go, and the team’s is the only name that lasts through a fan’s lifetime.

But some players leave behind legacies that continue to capture the hearts of their fans long after they hang up their cleats.

Last week, Bleacher Report’s MLB Featured Columnists completed our hardest poll yet: picking the top players in the history of each NL franchise (for the AL results, click here).

Each voter was asked to name the top three players for each team, scored on a 3-2-1 basis. The greats were then ranked by points, with the number of first-place votes (in parentheses next to the vote totals) as a tiebreaker.

Some of the results were pretty predictable—I don’t think saying Hank Aaron and Willie Mays won for the Braves and Giants is much of a spoiler. But some of the winners were harder to see coming, and how the rest of the lists filled out was fascinating.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Note: I sent this survey only to the Featured Columnists who have been active in previous polls. If you are a new FC or you have changed your mind about wanting to participate, send me a message and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop for next time!

Begin Slideshow

If you’re a real baseball fan, you’ve seen Major League. If you’re a real Indians fan, you own the DVD, quote it excessively, and own a pair of Rick Vaughn-esque glasses.

It’s an absolute classic full of whacky characters, great one-liners, and some of the best baseball action sequences Hollywood has ever staged. But one of the coolest things about it (and one of the reasons why it holds up so well more than 20 years later) is that life truly has imitated art.

It’s not just that Cubs closer Mitch Williams changed his number to 99 and gained the nickname “Wild Thing” midway through the 1989 season, or that the Indians had become one of the best teams in the game within five years of the film’s release.

Exaggerated and caricatured though they may be, the oddball protagonists in Major League are a lot like some of today’s players.

In this slideshow are 12 current and recent baseball players and personalities who match up well with characters in the movie. The names on this list aren’t all Indians, but some players from Cleveland won out over otherwise more deserving people from other franchises because of their team affiliations.

If you’ve never seen Major League, don’t read any further—not just because there are spoilers, but because you are missing out. Run out to Blockbuster or download it from iTunes or something—just watch it, immediately. Seriously. Now.

Begin Slideshow

In today’s game of free agency and rebuilding sell-offs, it’s extremely rare for a player to stick with a team for much more than about a decade. Stars come and go, and the team’s is the only name that lasts through a fan’s lifetime.

But some players leave behind legacies that continue to capture the hearts of their fans long after they hang up their cleats.

Last week, Bleacher Report’s MLB Featured Columnists completed our hardest poll yet: picking the top players in the history of each AL franchise (NL results will be up next week).

Each voter was asked to name the top three players for each team, scored on a 3-2-1 basis. The greats were then ranked by points, with the number of first-place votes (in parentheses next to the vote totals) as a tiebreaker (one of the winners was actually decided this way).

Some of the results were pretty predictable—I don’t think saying Babe Ruth and Ted Williams won for the Yankees and Red Sox is much of a spoiler.

But some of the winners were harder to see coming, and how the rest of the lists filled out was fascinating.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Note: I sent this survey only to the Featured Columnists who have been active in previous polls. If you are a new FC or you have changed your mind about wanting to participate, send me a message and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop for next time!

Begin Slideshow

A few weeks ago, Bleacher Report’s MLB Featured Columnists celebrated the 2010 Hall of Fame inductions with a mock vote of our own to see who really belonged in Cooperstown. It became one of our most popular polls to date and was far and away the most hotly debated.

Last week, we did something similar, but with a twist: Instead of voting on players who are already retired, I took 10 current players who are nearing the ends of their careers and asked who among them would be worthy of Cooperstown if they all hung up their cleats tomorrow.

These aren’t sure-thing players like Chipper Jones or Derek Jeter, or guys like Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez whose main obstacles to induction would be PEDs. They’re stars, but not legends—Jim Edmonds, Vladimir Guerrero, Todd Helton, Trevor Hoffman, Andruw Jones, Andy Pettitte, Scott Rolen, Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel, and Billy Wagner.

Included in each slide are the players’ vote totals (75 percent is required for induction, which means 18 votes here), and explanations from two different writers: one who voted for him and one who did not.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated! I hope this poll inspires as much debate as the last one did.

Note: I sent this survey only to the Featured Columnists who have been active in previous polls. If you are a new FC or you have changed your mind about wanting to participate, send me a message and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop for next time!

Begin Slideshow

It’s safe to say that Andruw Jones has been one of the most disappointing baseball players in recent memory.

Just five years ago, Jones was in the middle of a fantastic season wherein he hit 51 homers with a .922 OPS (despite a .240 BABIP) and was worth 8.3 WAR. As recently as 2007, he slammed 26 long balls while driving in 94 and accumulating 3.8 WAR.

Then disaster struck.

In 2008, after signing a two-year, $36 million with the Dodgers, Jones absolutely tanked, hitting just .158 with three homers and a .505 OPS; he struck out in more than a third of his at-bats and his once prodigious power disappeared, as evidenced by his Michael Bourn-esque .091 ISO.

In the 160 games Jones has played with the Rangers and White Sox in 2009-10, he’s regained some of his lost power, bashing 32 homers with a .244 ISO in just under 600 plate appearances. However, those numbers don’t seem particularly special for a guy who’s spent the majority of his time at first base and DH, especially when combined with a putrid .209 batting average. No one’s mistaking him for an All-Star.

And yet, there is no doubt that Andruw Jones belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Wait, what?

For starters, let’s not be too hasty and dismiss his earlier offensive accomplishments. In 12 years with the Braves, he averaged 33 homers and 98 RBI per 162 games with an .824 OPS. He hit the 20/20 club three times, including his 31/27 season in 1998.

His 403 career homers put him 46th all-time, ahead of current Cooperstown residents Al Kaline (399), Jim Rice (382), Ralph Kiner (369), and Albert Pujols (okay, so he’s not in the Hall of Fame yet, but I’m sure they’re already molding his bust). And while 31 was a tad on the young side for a complete collapse, don’t forget that he had established himself as a key part of the Braves outfield before he was old enough to drink.

But all of that is just icing on the cake.

Forget everything he did at the plate, on the base paths, or in the dugout; if for no other reason, Andruw Jones deserves to be enshrined because of what he did in center field.

Jones isn’t just one of the best defensive outfielders of his generation—he’s arguably the best-fielding outfielder of all time, and surely ranks among the top glovesmen in baseball history at any position.

Jones won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves from 1998-2007. Even opening it up to players who were honored in multiple, nonconsecutive years, that beats Ichiro (nine), Torii Hunter (nine), Andre Dawson (eight), Jim Edmonds (eight), Larry Walker (seven), and Kenny Lofton (four).

The only outfielders who have ever done better are Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente (12 each), but I’m sure you’ll join me in condoning Jones for not quite living up to their lofty standard.

Of course, you could argue that Gold Gloves are a popularity contest, and aren’t necessarily the best way to determine the game’s best defenders (see Matt Kemp and Derek Jeter last year).

It’s true, they don’t accurately describe Jones’ accomplishments—they don’t do them justice.

According to TotalZone (used for seasons from 1954-2001) and Ultimate Zone Rating (2002-now), statistics that use batted-ball type and location data to quantify a fielder’s contribution to his team, contribution to his team, Jones has saved 274.3 runs in his career with his glove—that’s about 28 wins worth of value for his career without taking into account anything he’s done with his bat.

If that number isn’t terribly impressive to you, perhaps you should consider the context—it’s the best score of any outfielder in baseball history, and a look at the Top 10 shows that it’s not particularly close:

These statistics are far from perfect, and there’s definitely an argument to be made that the older numbers are particularly flawed. But even if we can’t use it to compare players of different eras (could the margin of error really be more than 70 runs?), we can see just how amazing Jones has been by comparing him to his contemporaries.

If you noticed that the only other names of those 10 who played at the same time as Jones were Bonds (whose days as a serviceable fielder were numbered by the time Jones made his debut) and the woefully unappreciated Jordan, you can probably see where this is going.

Then there’s Darin Erstad’s 146.6. There’s Ichiro’s 120.2, Carl Crawford’s 119.8, Kenny Lofton’s 114.5, Mike Cameron’s 110.7, Larry Walker’s 86.0, and Jim Edmonds’ 57.5.

None of them even come close. In fact, Jones’ score is better than any two of those names’ combined.

It’s not just outfielders, either. Jones’ TZR/UZR is the second best of all-time, trailing only Brooks Robinson. Compare his 274.3 runs saved with Cal Ripken Jr.’s 181.0, Ivan Rodriguez’ 156.0, Luis Aparicio’s 149.0, and Omar Vizquel’s 136.4.

He even beats true defensive legends like Joe Tinker (180.0), Honus Wagner (85.0), and the amazing Ozzie Smith (239.0). If you can go toe-to-toe with the “Wizard of Oz” in the field, you barely need a pulse offensively to deserve a place in Cooperstown.

Jones hasn’t had time to slowly build up his score by being a consistently solid fielder; instead, he grabbed the bull by the horns and has enjoyed some of the best individual defensive seasons in baseball history.

In 1998, at age 21, he was worth 35 runs in the field, which at the time was tied for the second-best defensive performance since tracking began in 1950. In 1999, he promptly went out and beat that, earning 36 TZR.

All told, he appears on the Top 80 list for single-season TZR five times. And that’s not including UZR, which has been kinder to him than TZR since 2003.

Will the Baseball Writers Association of America vote him in when his time comes? Probably not. Even assuming the voters have learned how to use the newfangled defensive metrics by then (far from a sure thing, given that a majority of NL Cy Young voters implicitly declared wins to be the most important pitching statistic last year), there are too many reasons for them to doubt his candidacy.

While TZR and UZR make sense and are great tools for getting a general idea of a player’s defensive prowess, they’re too inconsistent for fans to take as the word of God (though, in my opinion, a 70-run lead is more than enough to cancel out the margin of error).

Aside from that, you’ve got a free-swinging, power-hitting outfielder (a dime a dozen over the last 20 years) who fell off a cliff right before his 32nd birthday. He’d have to return to his younger form and maintain it for at least a few more years in order to have a realistic shot at Cooperstown.

But, as the Beatles song goes, “All you need is glove,” unless I heard that wrong.

And that’s what Ozzie Smith proved when he got more than 90 percent of the vote for the Hall of Fame in 2002. Combine phenomenal defense with a solid bat (remember those 403 homers?), and there’s no question Andruw Jones deserves a spot in Cooperstown.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Something magical happened at Progressive Field on Saturday night.

In a beautiful, star-studded pregame ceremony, longtime Cleveland Indians leadoff hitter and center fielder Kenny Lofton was inducted into the Indians Hall of Fame.

For anyone who is too young to remember the 90’s, Lofton was the archetypal dynamic leadoff hitter—a latter-day Rickey Henderson. From 1992-1996, he hit .316 with an .820 OPS, averaging 78 steals and 129 runs per 162 games.

Then, of course, there was his extraordinary defense. Lofton won a quartet of Gold Gloves in his career. Total Zone estimates that his fielding was worth at least a full win in six different seasons, and gives him a career mark of 115 in center field (8.7 TZ/150).

But to Tribe fans, he was more than just the guy who racked up 975 runs, 1,512 hits, and 452 steals in an Indians uniform, or the dynamic athlete who regularly slammed into the Jacobs’ Field padding to make the play (“The Catch,” Lofton’s most famous play, was immortalized in a bobblehead doll that was given away at the game).

Great as Lofton was as a player (and probably still is—he was worth 2.8 WAR in 2007 before a lack of demand for his services forced him to retire and he appeared to still be perfectly in shape this weekend), Clevelanders adored him most as a symbol.

The Indians teams of the mid-to-late 90’s—especially the 1999 squad—featured some of the most intimidating lineups ever assembled outside my Nintendo. Lofton wasn’t just the face of the franchise or the guy who made the most highlight reels. As the leadoff man, he was literally the catalyst for one of the best offenses of all time.

To us, he epitomizes an era when it was fun to be a Cleveland sports fan (except during the playoffs). And so, while I was surprised at both the size and the enthusiasm of the crowd that showed up a half-hour early to see the Indians fall to the Twins, the shock wore off pretty quickly.

Lofton wasn’t the only star from the recent past to make an appearance at the ceremony. While the support they got didn’t quite match the ovation received by Bob Feller (“the greatest right-handed pitcher of all time,” emcee and Tribe radio announcer Tom Hamilton declared), Glory Days figures Charles Nagy, Sandy Alomar, and Mike Hargrove were greeted much more enthusiastically than old-timers Sam McDowell and Andre Thornton.

The momentous roar of the crowd as Lofton marched down the field was truly inspiring—it was the most energy I’d seen in the Prog since the Tribe last made the playoffs in 2007. Coincidentally, that was the last time Lofton suited up in an Indians uniform.

Before that, the last time I remember so much excitement surging through the stadium was 2001 when, on Opening Day, the team set a record by selling out for 455 consecutive games. They came to see one of the best teams in baseball—oh, and Lofton was there too.

It wasn’t the biggest crowd I’ve seen at the Prog this year—I estimated that attendance was lower than it was when Stephen Strasburg came to make his second career start in June, or when visiting Yankees fans flooded the stadium two weeks ago in hopes of witnessing Alex Rodriguez’ 600th home run.

But unlike those games, the seats were filled with fans who really cared about the Indians—even if they came for Kenny Lofton, they stayed for guys Jordan Brown (whose lack of athleticism in center field was particularly noticeable to fans holding bobbleheads of Lofton’s famous jumping catch).

We lost, yes, and it wasn’t a very good game. But in the Progressive Field bleachers, we were transported back to a time when we weren’t the Mistake on the Lake.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

There’s nothing wrong with making unquantifiable excuses when your favorite team isn’t playing well—it’s only human.

If the whole roster seems a little off, it must be residual jetlag from that last long road trip they were on. If it’s a certain player who’s mired in a slump, he probably hasn’t fully recovered from the paper cut he got three years ago. Here in Cleveland, we’ve been doing it for three years—it’s called “rebuilding.”

Sometimes the reasons are legitimate and they’re almost always benign; in most cases, there’s no reason to burst people’s bubbles (unless, of course, they root for your rival team).

But when a particularly idiotic excuse starts getting picked up and spewed out by the national media, someone has to put his foot down.

Indeed, cognitive dissonance has erupted over the last few days over the New York Yankees’ subpar play, and it must be put to an end.

Yankees fans were feeling restless Wednesday morning; the Bombers entered the day having dropped three and a row and six of their last 11 games—enough for the Rays to pass them in the AL East.

Coincidentally, Alex Rodriguez spent that span of games searching for his 600th career home run. To many fans and analysts, this meant that the Bombers were distracted by the pressure of their teammate’s attempt to make history—a notion that seemed to be confirmed when Rodriguez hit the long-awaited dinger in a 5-1 Yankees victory.

New Yorkers, I have news for you: this whole story is ridiculous.

For starters, the notion that this publicity stunt could bring down the whole team is ridiculous. I buy that it affected A-Rod—it was a huge moment in his career, and he certainly struggled at the plate (.178/.240/.222 slashline in the 12 games between Nos. 599 and 600).

But could it really have affected the rest of the team? This is a sport where even the best players fail 70 percent of the time, with hundreds of thousands of people watching. If you can’t handle a little pressure, you don’t belong in the big leagues—especially when you’re playing for possibly the most recognizable franchise on the planet.

Of course, there is a clubhouse chemistry factor, and bad feelings can spread quickly. There was depression in the Indians’ dugout, for example, after de facto captain Victor Martinez was traded to the Red Sox last year, and the Angels weren’t terribly motivated to do their best after Nick Adenhart was killed. Does anyone really want to try and compare the tragic loss of a teammate to the two-week delay it took for an egomaniacal multimillionaire to reach an arbitrary number of home runs?

A believer in this preposterous theory might suggest that, while the pressure might not have actually spread to his teammates, a fully focused A-Rod would have made the difference in some of New York’s recent losses; this idea is even more preposterous than the last.

Let’s assume for a minute that Rodriguez normally provides a full run of value every game (meaning he would be worth 16.2 Wins Above Replacement over a full season—by the far the best in MLB history).  There was only one game during that stretch in which the Yankees lost by a one-run margin. You could have added a better hitter than Babe Ruth to the Bombers’ lineups for the last two weeks and it couldn’t have been expected to change more than one game.

Shall we humor the even more absurd idea that Alex Rodriguez changes the score by an average of two runs every single night? Fine—only twice in the last two weeks have the Yankees lost by fewer than three runs.

But, as the guys from Baseball Tonight would tell you, you’re forgetting the piece d’resistance: if A-Rod’s quest for glory had nothing to do with the losing streak, why did they win when he hit No. 600?

This is the part where you laugh in your opponent’s face.

Putting aside the ridiculousness of declaring that the team has turned a corner after one game (even the worst teams win a couple times a week), anyone who spouts this rhetoric has, ironically, done what he (in all likelihood) accuses sabermetricians of doing: getting too caught up in minutia to see what’s actually happening in the game.

Did the New York Yankees really win that game because they were relieved to have the pressure lifted off their backs? Or was it because the two runs that scored just from A-Rod’s homer were one more than the Blue Jays got all night?

Fifteen of Rodriguez’ 17 homers this year have come in games New York has won; the Bombers are 14-2 when he goes yard (.875) and just 47-38 (.540) when he plays but keeps the ball in the park. Over his career, a full 65 percent of his long balls have coincided with his team winning.

Across the league this year, teams are averaging more than twice as many dingers a game when they win (1.3) than when they lose (0.6). That’s not because of the psychological boost a team gets from watching the ball sail over the fence; it’s because of the extremely controversial theory that scoring runs improves a team’s chances of victory.

I have no idea what the Yankees’ problem has been for the last couple weeks. Could be bad luck, could be delayed grief over the death of George Steinbrenner—heck, maybe it really is jetlag.

But if you really believe that the anticipation surrounding an arbitrary milestone that effect on A-Rod’s place on the all-time list and had zero impact on 96 percent of the 25-man roster is enough to send the team down the toilet, I have to ask: how can you possibly expect them to win in October?

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

We’ve reached a milestone in the 2010 MLB season.

As of this morning, 16 of baseball’s 30 teams have played at least 108 games. That means the year is now two-thirds over.

To mark this momentous occasion, Bleacher Report’s MLB Featured Columnists are continuing a tradition we started at the beginning of the season and continued in early June: predicting how each division will end up from top to bottom.

With the first four months of the season behind us and the non-waiver trade deadline in the rearview mirror, let’s take a look at where things stand.

Begin Slideshow