Blue Jays righty Roy Halladay has earned his reputation as being a top-tier pitcher, one of the best this decade. Predominantly utilizing a combo of fastballs, cutters, and curveballs, Halladay keeps the ball on the ground, generating grounders just about 60% of the time. Though he has suffered some injuries in the last few years, when healthy, going late into games is not an issue; he has pitched 220+ innings in four of the last six years. This durability has led to 32 complete games since 2002, seven more than closest competitor Livan Hernandez. The entire AL had 64 complete games last year and Halladay accounted for seven of them.

There have been 16 complete games this year and Halladay currently has four of them. Additionally, his other two starts have seen him go for seven and eight innings respectively. Oddly enough, despite pitching a complete in each of his last four starts, his W-L in that span is 1-3. His three consecutive complete game losses ties a Blue Jays record set in 1980 by Jim Clancy. The last pitcher to lose consecutive complete games is another Roy: Roy Oswalt, who did so in 2006.

The last major league pitcher to throw four consecutive complete games? Well, that would be Halladay back in 2003. The all time record for consecutive complete games belongs to Jack Lynch, with 198; his record was compiled between 1881 and 1887. Halladay would need an average of 33 starts in each of his next seasons just to make 198 starts, let alone go the distance.

Very interesting about his complete games is that he is not overextending himself by throwing a ton of pitches. Through 49.2 innings he has thrown 648 pitches, which amounts to an average of 13 per inning. His complete games have consisted of the following pitch counts: 110, 117, 107, 112. The Blue Jays have scored 115 runs this year, just 17 of which have come in Halladay’s six starts. The team has provided an average of 4.67 runs/gm in non-Halladay games and just 2.83 runs/gm for their ace. Hopefully the team can start scoring runs or else this former Cy Young Award winner may find himself qualifying for next month’s edition of unluckiest pitchers.

If there is one area in the minor league system that the Boston Red Sox have depth it is at first base. And a lot of it has to do with the over-sized wallet that the club has, probably as much so as its solid scouting department.

Lars Anderson was drafted in the 18th round of the 2006 amateur draft, but he was not an 18th rounder in terms of talent. The prep first baseman also was not a consensus first or second round pick so teams knew he would be a difficult sign; more often then not those players end up in college in hopes of improving their draft stock (and the subsequent paycheck).

He was given $825,000 to sign, more money than Boston’s supplemental first round pick Caleb Clay received. After sitting out the 2006 season thanks to the ongoing contract negotiations, Anderson began his career in 2007 as a 19-year-old in full-season A-ball. He batted a respectable .288/.385/.443. This season, at the hitter’s haven known as Lancaster, Anderson is hitting .300/.400/.544 with five homers in 90 at-bats.

Michael Jones, 22, was drafted out of junior college in 2004 in the 25th round and has moved slowly through the system despite a career line of .309/.387/.466. This season in Greenville, Jones is hitting a robust .419/.480/.628 in 86 at-bats.

His teammates, as well as fellow first basemen, Anthony Rizzo and David Mailman are significantly younger. Rizzo is in full-season ball despite being only 18. He was drafted in 2007 in the sixth round and received about $200,000 more to sign than the average player in that round. This season, Rizzo is hitting .373/.402/.446 in 83 at-bats, but he has yet to hit a homer.

Mailman, was drafted a round later in 2007 but received even more money to sign – $550,000 because he was strongly committed to Wake Forest University – which was almost $400,000 more than any other player received in that round. Mailman, 19, has struggled with the batter this season with a line of .203/.298/.257 but has stolen six bases in nine attempts (despite having below average speed). He has also been spending time playing left field for Greenville.

Aaron Bates, 24, was a senior draft pick in the third round of the 2006 draft after he turned down Florida in 2005 in the eighth round as a junior. Now in his third season, Bates is hitting .264/.361/.292 in 72 at-bats. He is struggling to hit for power after slugging 29 homers and driving in 101 runs last season while splitting time between Lancaster and Portland.

Chris Carter is a former 17th round pick of Arizona’s out of Stanford University, who has done nothing but hit as a pro. He has a career line of .310/.390/.519 and is in his third season at Triple-A. Carter, 25, is currently batting .302/.368/.417 but has yet to hit a homer this season with 96 at-bats to his credit.

The Milwaukee Brewers optioned Dave Bush to their AAA Nashville club this week following an 0-3 start with a 6.75 ERA. This irked many in the statistical community, especially MGL, because not only is Bush pitching better than the barometric numbers indicate, he is pitching right on par with normal #3 or #4 starters.

The problem, after looking into it more, is not necessarily that Bush’s optioning stems from his slow start but that it may have to do with his Jekyll-like transformation once runners get on base. In 1649 career PA, batters are posting a .253/.307/.420 clip against Bush while the bases are empty. When occupied, though, this jumps to .314/.355/.546 in 1121 PA. Despite these numbers, if the decision to option Bush stemmed from a kneejerk reaction to a small sample size, this argument does not even hold water.

This year, with 57 PA, opponents are hitting .320/.404/.560 with the bases empty. In 47 PA, they are hitting just .263/.340/.368 with runners on base. In the early going he has allowed a higher percentage of runners to reach base but has actually reduced his slash line once they get to their respective bases.

Ned Yost attributed the move to control issues. In his four 2008 starts, Bush has thrown 57.6% of his pitches for strikes. In 2007 he threw 65.6% strikes out of 2972 pitches. In 2006 he threw 66.4% strikes out of 3021 pitches. He has thrown a lower percentage of strikes, putting himself into more “Hafta’ Counts” and forcing himself to pitch from behind. The Brewers had a pitching surplus entering the season, often fostering rumors of trading Bush and/or Claudio Vargas.

Seemingly happy with the production from Ben Sheets, Yovani Gallardo, Jeff Suppan, Carlos Villanueva, and Manny Parra, the team felt they could handle letting Bush get his control back in a few minor league starts. The decision was definitely based off of a small sample size and, in that regard, makes little sense, but I hope they realize it is way too early to sell their stock on Bush.

Adrian Beltre signed a 5 year, $64 million contract with the Mariners after his amazing 2004 season. Anyone expecting a repeat of that kind of performance was in for an instant disappointment, and Beltre failed to live up to even more modest expectations during his first year in Seattle, posting a .255/.303/.414 and being proclaimed a free agent bust. That label has stuck, and it’s still fairly common to see Beltre written about as an overpaid, under performing disappointment.

It’s just not true.

Beltre has been one of the better third baseman in the American League for the better part for the last two years, and he’s putting the finishing touches on an April that is one of his best months since coming over from the Dodgers. In last night’s game against Cleveland, he went 2-2 with a single, a three run home run that broke a 2-2 tie in the 9th inning, and three walks to reach base in all five of his trips to the plate. His 2008 line now stands at .309/.409/.553, or basically indistinguishable from what David Wright is giving the Mets and Aramis Ramirez is putting up for the Cubs. There isn’t a third baseman in the American League off to a better start to the season than Beltre.

He doesn’t have to keep hitting like this to justify his contract, however. In 2006 and 2007, Beltre put up two seasons of similar quality to each other, establishing himself as a slightly better than league average hitter while playing a quality defensive third base. Among American League third baseman, the only guys with an argument as superior players are Alex Rodriguez and Mike Lowell. While he’s obviously not in A-Rod’s class, you have to wonder how much their respective home parks are influencing the opinions of Lowell and Beltre. Put Lowell in Safeco and Beltre in Fenway and I’m not sure this is still a conversation we’re having.

Even if Beltre doesn’t sustain his April performance (and he probably won’t – he’s a very streaky hitter who always has good months and lousy ones), he’s still an above average major league player, 2-3 wins better than a replacement level third baseman, and in the American League, that makes him a borderline All-Star. The Mariners didn’t sign him to recreate his 2004 season in perpetuity – they signed him to be a quality player at the hot corner, and that’s exactly what he is.

When discussing the early season productivity of a player it is important to remember that the barometric statistics analyzed by those on television often have better evaluative indicators beneath the surface. Many of these indicators deal with luck, or a lack of luck, and provide a more telling window into what should be expected from the player in the coming weeks and months. Dave Cameron wrote earlier today about Nick Johnson and how, based on his high percentage of line drives but low BABIP, Johnson has experienced an unlucky streak this month. Using a slightly expanded method to the ones currently used to determine luck (relative to GB/FB/LD and BABIP) I decided to figure out the unluckiest pitchers of the month.

Initially the method consisted solely of BABIP and the difference between FIP and ERA (FIP-ERA) but I then extended it to include their current W-L records. Though anyone at least casually versed in statistical analysis will explain the faults of a W-L record, fans that simply love the game without analyzing anything equate W-L records to quality.

A pre-requisite also found its way into the criteria in that the FIP could not be above 4.30, a cutoff I usually look for when determining the difference between good and average. This way players like CC Sabathia and Barry Zito could be avoided; players who, despite having large FIP and ERA discrepancies, still had very high FIP and ERA counts. In summation, the players I considered to be the unluckiest were those with high FIP and ERA discrepancies, a high BABIP against, and a W-L record that does not do a good job of representing the quality of games pitched. This left me with the following four candidates:

Nate Robertson: 6.91 ERA, 4.18 FIP, -2.73 FIP-ERA, .333 BABIP, 0-3 W-L
Nick Blackburn: 3.45 ERA, 2.72 FIP, -0.73 FIP-ERA, .347 BABIP, 1-1 W-L
Ian Snell: 4.45 ERA, 3.03 FIP, -1.42 FIP-ERA, .358 BABIP, 2-1 W-L
Zach Duke: 5.34 ERA, 3.97 FIP, -1.36 FIP-ERA, .369 BABIP, 0-2 W-L

So, of these guys, whom do you consider to be the unluckiest this month?

Deciding to take a short break from the NBA playoffs I tuned into ESPN last night and took in the Yankees/Indians game. Hoping to see a strong performance from a longtime favorite of mine, Mike Mussina, I was instead treated to a great performance from a young Indians lefty named Aaron Laffey. One of those recently recalled to fill the void left by Jake Westbrook’s DL stint, Laffey, a guy just eight months and one day older than me, pitched admirably through his 5.2 innings of work. His end line of 5.2 IP, 3 H, 4 ER really did not do him any justice as the runs scored primarily as a result of bad luck and a lack of aggressive defense.

For five innings, Laffey had a no-hitter going, throwing just 63 pitches. He mixed his fastball, slider, and changeup well, in turn keeping many of the Yankee hitters off-balance; he also induced four popups/foulouts. Nobody hit the ball hard off of him all night except for Bobby Abreu, who flied out to deep centerfield in his first at-bat, and roped a single to leftfield in the sixth inning. All but two of the balls put on the ground by the Yankee bats were weakly hit. Through the fifth inning these were easy outs, but during the sixth inning they proved to be a major factor in bad luck joining him on the mound.

The sixth inning started off with a weak grounder in between shortstop and third base from Melky Cabrera. Jhonny Peralta got his glove on it but the weakly hit ball, combined with the speed of Melky, ultimately resulted in an infield single. Derek Jeter followed with an even weaker groundball to third base. Casey Blake charged but stumbled while attempting to get the ball of his glove. With first and second, Abreu hit the aforementioned single, loading the bases in the process. Laffey then hit Alex Rodriguez in the ribs causing Cabrera to score. In terms of WPA (-.130) and Leverage Index (3.45), this was the biggest play of the game. Check out the big spike in the game graph below:

Still holding onto a 2-1 lead, Laffey went right after Jason Giambi and Hideki Matsui, inducing two more weak groundballs; this time they went to first baseman Ryan Garko. Garko’s lack of aggressiveness in charging these grounders led to Jeter and Abreu scoring. A fourth charged run to Laffey’s line scored when Morgan Ensberg singled Rodriguez home off of reliever Jensen Lewis.

Overall, Laffey looked extremely sharp and his pitch usage made the Yankees look a bit foolish at the plate. Though his numbers did not necessarily paint a descriptive picture of his performance last night, Indians fans should be very encouraged at what this kid may be capable of.

All the stats made available yesterday in the player pages are now on the leaderboards.

Interesting to see the afore mentioned Nick Johnson with the second best O-Swing% (percent of pitches swung at outside the strike zone) this season. He truly does have great plate discipline.

Nick Johnson is having one of the more remarkable Aprils in recent memory, and not just because he’s managed to stay healthy for an entire month. No, instead, Nick Johnson is becoming the new poster child for why looking at results, and not the underlying skills, can lead to problems.

Johnson is posting a .216 batting average, so the easy narrative here is that he’s still getting his legs back under him after missing all of the 2007 season after a violent leg fracture in 2006. Perhaps the injury robbed him of some of his power, or he’s adjusting to a new swing that doesn’t allow him to drive the ball as far?

Or maybe he’s just hitting the ball on the screws, but it’s still finding it’s way into the defenders gloves? This is what his batted ball statistics certainly suggest. Johnson’s currently posting a 28.1% line drive percentage, fifth highest in the National League. Line drives go for hits 74% of the time, so if you’re smoking liners all over the field, you generally get a lot of base hits out of it. Not surprisingly, LD% correlates very well with batting average on balls in play, and as Dave Studeman showed four years ago, you can generally estimate a hitters BABIP by adding .11 or .12 to his LD%. Following this, and looking at Johnson’s line drive rate, we’d expect him to be posting a BABIP in the high .300s.

It’s actually .241, or about what we’d expect if he had a line drive rate of 12-13% – half of his actual line drive rate. Johnson is currently among the league leaders in LD% and simultaneously has one of the lowest BABIPs in the league. That’s pretty remarkable.

How much has it impacted his performance? Well, after seeing a similar thing happen to Chipper Jones during the 2004 season (LD% of 20.4%, BABIP of .251), JC Bradbury invented Projected OPS (PrOPS for short), which creates an expected BA/OBP/SLG line based on a player’s batted ball profile. It’s not perfect, but if you want to see a list of guys who are due for a regression to the mean, the extreme ends of the PrOPS leaderboard is a good place to start.

According to PrOPS, Nick Johnson’s batting line so far should be something like .336/.493/.549. It’s actually .216/.392/.432. The difference between his results and the expected results is 120 points of batting average, 100 points of on base percentage, and 130 points of slugging percentage. PrOPS thinks Johnson’s been something like the 5th best hitter in the National League in April, putting him just behind some guys named Burrell, Utley, Pujols, and the aforementioned Chipper Jones.

I’d say it’s safe to say that Nick Johnson is just fine. As always, the questions surrounding him should be about his health, not his abilities. If he avoids the disabled list, he looks poised for a big 2008 season.

Cust Cussing (Dave Cameron)
– Dave takes a look at Jack Cust’s off the charts performance.

Is Willingham Ready to Bust Out? (Eric Seidman)
– Will Willingham continue his terrific season for the first place Marlins?

Keeping a Rookie Pitcher Grounded (Marc Hulet)
– What’s so special about top Red Sox prospect Justin Masterson?

Maximizing Potential (Dave Cameron)
– It looks like Chien-Ming Wang has a new trick up his sleeve.

Plate Discipline Stats
– Go look at them in the player pages!

Pitching Trio of the Month (Eric Seidman)
– It’s probably not any three pitchers on the Pirates’ staff.

One of the hot topics during spring training revolved around the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and how this would be the year they experienced significant improvement. Photos surfaced of an interesting shirt Troy Percival donned on which he compared Scott Kazmir, James Shields, and Matt Garza to John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Steve Avery. Steve Phillips added fuel to this fire by repeatedly mentioning how the shirt compared the three Rays youngsters to Greg Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. With no disrespect towards Avery, he is not Greg Maddux, and any comparison to one of the best pitching trios in the history of the game is going to generate some buzz. As of right now, Kazmir is yet to pitch and Garza has not yet met expectations; Shields, however, has pitched quite well.

Great pitching trios are so valuable for the more obvious reason that, over the course of any given three game series, the team is likely assured of having at least one solid starter on the mound. Seeing as April is about to come to a close I decided to take a look at the WPA totals of starting pitchers from 2002 until now to generate a basic list of the best recent pitching trios. The only real “rule” stipulated that all three of the pitchers needed to have a positive WPA. For instance, last year, the combination of CC Sabathia, Fausto Carmona, and Paul Byrd accounted for a WPA of 7.13. This would normally qualify as second-best across the league, but the numbers broke down as follows: Carmona at 4.25, Sabathia at 3.49, Byrd at -0.61. Clearly the WPA total belonged to CC and Fausto; Byrd actually brought their total down. Here are the top trios from 2002 until now:

2002 – Athletics: Barry Zito (3.85), Tim Hudson (3.28), Mark Mulder (3.15)
2003 – Cubs: Mark Prior (4.37), Kerry Wood (4.05), Carlos Zambrano (2.46)
2004 – Twins: Johan Santana (5.52), Brad Radke (3.61), Carlos Silva (0.61)
2005 – Astros: Roger Clemens (5.77), Andy Pettitte (4.86), Roy Oswalt (3.91)
2006 – Tigers: N. Robertson (2.92), Justin Verlander (2.29), Kenny Rogers (2.21)
2007 – Padres: Jake Peavy (4.61), Chris Young (2.67), Greg Maddux (1.17)

A month into this 2008 season and there are three rotations very close to each other: the Cardinals (2.20), Mariners (2.11), and Angels (2.08). The Cardinals trio in question is Adam Wainwright, Kyle Lohse, and Braden Looper; the Mariners are Felix Hernandez, Carlos Silva, and Jarrod Washburn; the Angels are Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana, and Jered Weaver.

Update: The Indians can also be thrown into the mix, but not with Sabathia. The combo of Lee, Carmona, and Westbrook are currently at 2.35. Add them into your consideration. As I mentioned in the comments, though, for potential Mariners fans reading here, Bedard does not count because he does not qualify for inclusion yet. Clearly he is a better choice than Washburn, but the question pertains to the aforementioned threesomes.

Felix Hernandez is the best of the nine pitchers comprising these three teams but, overall, none of them appear to be on the same level as some of the aforementioned trios. Here’s the question: If you had to win a three-game series, which of these three 2008 trios would you pick, and which of the 2002-2007 trios would you pick?