Reveille 9/22/14

Good morning.

Here are several links from the past week that will make your Monday at the office a bit more bearable:

• Once a joke of a franchise, the Nationals recently clinched their second division title in three years. Grantland’s Jonah Keri explains what has gone so right inside the Beltway.
• On a related subject, Mark Simon of ESPN’s SweetSpot​ warns, “Don’t bunt on Anthony Rendon“:

But there’s something he’s currently doing that no one else has managed to replicate. In making the move from second base back to third base, where he played in college at Rice, Rendon has made significant statistical improvements defensively. He has nine defensive runs saved (DRS), which ranks eighth among third basemen (he also has four DRS at second base in the games he’s played there).

For a third baseman, DRS is based on the ability to turn batted balls into outs, convert double plays and defend bunts. The majority of Rendon’s defensive rating comes from his defending bunts like no one else in the 12 years that the stat has been tracked. Rendon has six defensive runs saved specifically from fielding bunts. No one else in the majors has more than two. In fact, no player has recorded as many as six runs saved in the 12 seasons in which this stat has been tracked.

One of the reasons for this is volume: The Elias Sports Bureau tells us that Rendon leads the majors with 22 assists on bunts this season. Rendon has nailed the lead runner on bunts three times and recorded a double play once (those four plays provide a nice spike to his numbers). He’s also recorded at least one out on each of the sacrifice attempts against him this season. In all, he’s fielded 26 bunts, and they’ve resulted in at least one out 23 times. That’s a success rate that hasn’t been matched.

• With the Giants on the cusp of a postseason berth, will Tim Lincecum be on the roster? Dave Tobener of West Coast Bias thinks his exclusion unlikely but seems pretty certain that San Francisco is better off without him.
• Alec Dopp of Gammons Daily profiles Pirates castoff Steve Pearce, whose rise to stardom has made him the Orioles’ most valuable player this season.
• High Heat Stats’ Doug has the skinny on Orioles castoff and now Cubs ace Jake Arrieta, whose career was in serious jeopardy after posting an 80 ERA+ in more than 400 innings through 2013.
• With one scheduled start left, Yankees castoff Phil Hughes may finish 2014 with the MLB record for the best single-season strikeout-to-walk ratio. Hardball Talk’s D. J. Short has the details on the Twins hurler.

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• Cliff Corcoran breaks down the pivotal play in Saturday’s Tigers–Royals game, in which the Sports Illustrated writer contends that Salvador Perez’s baserunning folly was superceded by MLB’s silly replay rules.

That’s it. Have a walk-off week!