I have a fascination with super-utility players, the guys who can play anywhere on the diamond. Players like Tony Phillips, Ben Zobrist, or even Denny Hocking. They're so handy to have around because a manager can fill out a lineup with a little more flexibility and know that he has someone to fill whatever hole is left. He's a wild card that gives a general manager more choices when putting together a roster. He's the type of player who adds a little extra value that the box score— and WARP—don't really capture.

Over the past week, baseball fans have been treated to some epic extended baseball games. This past Saturday, the Rangers and Blue Jays played 18 innings before they could decide the matter, and that wasn’t the longest game that day. The Mets and Marlins played 20 innings in their game. It made last Wednesday's White Sox-Mariners 16-inning game look like a quickie.

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We are now a week and a half into the (interim) reign of George Brett as Royals hitting coach. Brett took over the task of straightening out Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer when tandem hitting coaches Jack Maloof and Andre David were re-assigned within the organization. There are surely plenty of theories circulating around Kansas City as to why the Royals made the switch, but at the end of the day, they probably all boil down to "the kids aren't hitting."

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We here at Baseball Prospectus take democracy very seriously. We're proud of our longstanding tradition of using witchcraft... erm, math to talk about all sorts of issues in baseball. And now it's election season again. In a few short weeks, the annual Midsummer Classic will take place in New York City, and your votes will determine the starters. And because this must be said before every election, "This is the most important election of our lifetimes." I can't wait for the first debate between Dustin Pedroia and Robinson Cano before the next Yankees-Red Sox series.

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Smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. This is not a secret. Six-year-olds know that. And smoking is not just bad, it's really super-duper bad for you. Yet, tobacco companies aren't going out of business any time soon. There are millions of smokers in the United States and more start each day, even knowing all the risks. Why?

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On Monday’s edition of MLB Now, anchor Brian Kenny once again made the case against using wins as a measure of pitcher quality. Citing recent games such as Matt Harvey’s brilliant nine-inning, one-hit no-decision, he argued that the win is an overrated statistic that doesn’t do a good job of describing the pitcher’s performance. After Kenny’s presentation, former pitcher Al Leiter came out to give a rebuttal. Leiter had an interesting take on the issue. He said that Kenny wasn’t respecting the human element of the game, and he suggested that the win statistic might actually make starters perform a little better in some key situations.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article in which I suggested that teams might benefit from going to a model that gets rid of the traditional starting pitcher. Instead of having five men who are expected to go 6-7 innings over 100 pitches, I suggested a model in which three pairs of pitchers each throw 50 pitches, and on the third day, they would pitch again, in fulfillment… I should stop there. I argued that a team that committed to that model could leverage a group of (cheap!) pitchers who were good for a couple innings, but not for six. In this way, a team could get the same sort of results that they might expect from having a bunch of pretty good starters, but for a fraction of the (David) Price.

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A little more than a week ago, Jon Heyman of CBS sent out a tweet wondering why it was that Starling Marte and Bryce Harper had the same WAR. Heyman was quoting Baseball-Reference's version of WAR, which at that moment in time showed Marte and Harper tied at 1.7 wins. Harper had clearly been the superior hitter, but drilling down, it turned out that the fielding metric used by Baseball-Reference loved Marte's defense enough (and thought Harper's was average enough) to call them equals.

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Of course. He's a pitcher.

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Two weeks ago in this space, I asked what a good pitching coach—someone like noted magician Leo Mazzone—is worth to a major-league team. I came up with an estimate that Mazzone might have been worth four wins to the Braves (and Orioles) per year during his tenure.

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Earlier today, CBS baseball writer Jon Heyman asked a rather innocuous question on Twitter.

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Last week, in an article in Sports Illustrated, Tom Verducci put forth an argument that the modern game of baseball has a problem. Hitters, he claimed, have become too passive in their approach at the plate as they attempt to drive up the pitch counts of the opposing pitcher. He mixes together a couple of case examples (Joey Votto, Jayson Werth) with some data that appear to show that hitters have become more passive in their approach over time, and are paying for it in declining run production. Maybe Joey and Jayson, and by proxy the rest of the baseball players out there, should swing the bat a little more.

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