Before the season started, most people had the San Diego Padres finishing somewhere near the bottom of the standings. Trade rumors swirled about star pitcher Jake Peavy all winter, and as the team went through a change in ownership, the organization seemed to be drifting about without a clear direction.

However, they’ve started the season strong, winning nine of their first 13 games. That, in and of itself, is pretty remarkable. What is really crazy about San Diego’s early season push, however, has been how they’ve done it with the worst hitter in baseball in the middle of their line-up.

Brian Giles is hitting .151/.211/.189 through his first 57 plate appearances. That’s a staggeringly bad .189 wOBA. Even taking Petco Park into account, Giles has been worth -6.5 runs with his bat so far this season.

You name it, Giles is failing at it. He’s generally a very good contact hitter – his K% is 15.1% this year. He usually can be counted on for some walks, even when the hits aren’t falling – he has a 7.0% BB%. He has solid gap power – his ISO is .038. Through the season’s first two weeks, he’s essentially hit like a pitcher, pounding balls into the ground when he does make contact and ending rallies with bad at-bats.

Giles is, of course, better than this. There’s no way his skills have declined so fast that he went from a +4.7 win player in 2008 to the worst player in baseball in 2009. He’s going to start hitting, with the only real question being when. That the Padres were able to go 9-4 while Giles was flailing around like a fish out of water bodes quite well for them.

I still don’t think they’re going to the playoffs, but in the face of a total flop from their best player, they’ve picked up the slack and gotten off to a strong start. Given the results of the first 13 games, they’re almost certainly better than most of us thought.

The New York Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is currently 11-0 on the young season thanks to some strong pitching (unlike the big league team) and timely hitting.

The Scranton club has a rotation that might give the Washington Nationals club a run for its money. Included in the rotation are five pitchers with MLB experience: Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Kei Igawa, Jason Johnson and Alfredo Aceves. Johnson is the old man of the group at the age of 35 and he has more than 1,300 MLB innings to his credit (as well as a 4.83 career FIP). He has a tidy ERA in three starts in 2009 but he’s also allowed 19 hits and six walks in 16 innings of work.

The enigma that is Igawa has made two minor league starts and has allowed just seven hits in 12 innings, but opponents have gone yard against him four times. Aceves, perhaps the biggest surprise contributor to the Yankees last season, is having the toughest time of any starter on the Triple-A squad with a 7.20 FIP (10.00 ERA) with 11 hits and three homers allowed in nine innings of work.

The two big names knocking on the door in New York (or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say, “Showcasing themselves for other teams”) are obviously Kennedy and Hughes. Kennedy will be only 24 years old for the duration of the 2009 season, so he’s still young. A trade to the National League might be the best thing for his career, as there are a lot of No. 3 starters in that league having success with worst stuff and much less pitchability. Kennedy has allowed just nine hits and two walks (with 16 Ks) in 12 innings.

Hughes is still not as polished as his teammate, but his stuff can be dominating when he’s on – and the right-hander is still just 22 years of age. He’s shown improved command and control so far on the young season with just two walks in 11.2 innings of work. The most important thing for Hughes at this point, though, is to prove he’s healthy.

In the bullpen, three relievers have yet to allow earned runs on the year: veteran Brett Tomko, Mark Melancon, and David Robertson (who was called up briefly to the Majors and provided two shutout innings for the big club). Combined, those three relievers have provided 22.2 innings of scoreless relief with just nine hits, four walks and 34 strikeouts. Of the four other relievers, no one has an ERA above 3.38 – and that’s Anthony Claggett, whom New York fans will not forget anytime soon.

On the offensive side of things, the now-injured Austin Jackson (day-to-day with a bruised elbow) is leading the regulars with a .480 average. He has just one extra base hit, but he’s stolen three bases and is showing improved patience at the plate with five walks in seven games, which bodes well for his future as a lead-off hitter.

Three hitters on the team have been hitting for power, with Shelley Duncan leading the way with four dingers and is second in RBI with 13 in 37 at-bats. Other players providing home runs and driving in runs include Juan Miranda (3 HR/15 RBI), Todd Linden (3/12), and Angel Berroa (2/11).

Of the lesser-known players on the roster, second baseman Kevin Russo is having the most impressive overall start to the season. The former Baylor University infielder is hitting .382/.417/.471 with 13 hits and three stolen bases in seven games. The 24-year-old New York native hit .307/.363/.416 for Double-A in 2008 and may yet carve out a MLB career as a utility player. One neat (small-sample-size) stat has Russo hitting .714 against southpaws (5-for-7) in the early going.

If things don’t improve in New York in a hurry, management might be tempted to swap the entire Triple-A roster for the Major League roster. OK, maybe not… but you know the Steinbrenners were not happy after (or during) that 22-run loss in new Yankee stadium.

The San Diego Padres’ low A-ball affiliate in Fort Wayne earns runner-up honors as the second hottest team in the minors with a 10-0 record. Eight pitchers in Fort Wayne have an ERA below 1.00. Eight. And the highest ERA on the team is 4.50 from starter Rob Musgrave. Yes, it’s early but it’s still a neat feat. Key names on the team include pitchers Nick Schmidt, and Simon Castro, as well as hitters Andrew Cumberland, James Darnell, and Allan Dykstra.

The Colorado Rockies have a crowded outfield. Even after trading away Matt Holliday, they are trying to find playing time for five outfielders, plus using Ian Stewart in the OF on occasion. So, it’s not a surprise that Matt Murton wasn’t able to crack their opening day roster, but he’s doing everything in his power to hit himself out of Triple-A.

In his first 50 PAs for Colorado Springs, Murton is hitting .409/.480/.636 with six extra base hits, five walks, and just one strikeout. He’s running a .510 wOBA and hitting like Nelson Cruz did last year when he was trying to shake the AAAA player label. Unlike Cruz, though, Murton has already shown that he can hit major league pitching.

Murton is 27-year-old. He has 1,002 major league plate appearances in his career, and he’s hit .288/.354/.438 over that span. That’s a .345 wOBA, which makes him an above average hitter. We shouldn’t be terribly surprised when an above average major league hitter gets sent to the PCL in his prime and promptly destroys the league.

The question, then, is why is Murton still in Triple-A? Even coming off a bad 2007 season, CHONE projects him to be exactly league average as a hitter and +7 as a corner outfielder. That combination would make him approximately a +1.5 win player if given regular playing time.

At the least, Murton should be a right-handed platoon caddy for a team that has a LH hitting OF that struggles against same handed pitchers. Or a defensive replacement/pinch hitter in the NL. There’s no way that there are 750 better baseball players on the planet that Murton.

He’s going to get another shot in the majors. He’s too good to be written off prematurely like this. Bet on a smart organization reaping the rewards when they bring Murton back to the majors.

Zack Greinke last allowed an earned run on September 13th. Since then he’s made five starts, 34 innings, and allowed zip. During that time Greinke has posted some impressive lines:

9/18 Mariners 7 IP 7 K 1 BB 2 LD
9/23 Tigers 7 IP 4 K 2 BB 5 LD
4/8 White Sox 6 IP 7 K 3 BB 2 LD
4/13 Indians 5 IP 9 K 2 BB 5 LD
4/18 Rangers 9 IP 10 K 0 BB 6 LD

Quite a few things have been different for Greinke. Greinke is hardly walking anyone, yet only 42% of his pitches are being registered as in the strike zone. Part of the reason he is avoiding the free pass is thanks to an impressive 64% first pitch strike rate. Throw in a decreased contact rate, and it’s pretty clear that Greinke has good stuff.

The most notable change in pitch usage has been the increased presence of Greinke’s curveball. Since 2007, his curve has went from 8% usage to 14% to 18%. Along with a slider and change-up, Greinke has scaled down his fastball usage. Intriguingly, his fastball has seen an improvement in horizontal movement since doing so, gaining almost an entire inch of movement inwards to righties. Greinke’s curve has a violent break and his ability to control the speed of it is quite impressive. It’s been measured as low as 60 MPH and as high as 85.

Give Dayton Moore some points for getting Greinke signed to an extension last off-season.

Yesterday, we took a morning trip back to Saturday’s action, revisiting the 22-4 throttling of the Yankees at the hands of the Cleveland Indians. The Tribe scored 14 runs in the second inning, plating 17 batters in the process. Their scoring spree marked just the fourth instance of 14+ runs in a half-inning since 1954, the most recent of which occurred in 2003 when the Red Sox scored 14 in the bottom of the first against Carl Pavano and the Marlins.

One of our commenters, Shane, pointed out that the Indians had six different hitters loft longballs and questioned the rarity of such a feat. Curious myself, I turned to Retrosheet, created a table of home runs, counted the number of distinct batter identifications on these home runs, and grouped by the game code and batting team identification. The end result offered 35 different team games since 1954 that featured 6+ unique batter identifications to go yard. Again, this is not the total of home runs hit in a single game for a team but rather the number of different hitters to hit jimmy-jacks.

The highest tally was 8, belonging to the Cincinnati Reds on 9/4/1999 when just about every batter hit a home run against the Philadelpia Phillies. The home run club members that day: Eddie Taubensee (2), Jeffrey Hammonds, Pokey Reese, Greg Vaughn, Mark Lewis, Aaron Boone, Brian Johnson, and Dmitri Young. Of the hitters in the starting lineup that day, only Barry Larkin and Sean Casey failed to go deep.

Six other games involved 7 different hitters doing yard work, with the most recent coming on July 31, 2007, when the Yankees beat the White Sox 16-3. Bobby Abreu, Hideki Matsui (2), Jorge Posada, Shelley Duncan, Johnny Damon, Melky Cabrera, and Robinson Cano all knocked the ball out of the park off of Jose Contreras, Charlie Haeger, and Gavin Floyd.

The remaining 28 games on the list saw 6 different hitters rack up four total bases in a plate appearance at least once. The most recent of these games occurred on September 15 of last season, when the Red Sox accomplished the feat against the Tampa Bay Rays, in Tampa. In fact, prior to this Red Sox-Rays matchup, the same feat was accomplished just two months earlier when, again, the Reds did so, this time at the expense of the Cubs.

The oldest of these 35 games took place on June 1, 1957, when… you guessed it… the Reds had six different hitters add to their home runs total. The Indians became the 36th team since 1954 to see 6+ different batters hit at least one gopherball in the same game, certainly a rare feat but not nearly as rare as scoring 14 or plating 17 in the same inning.

Ryan Zimmerman and the Washington Nationals agreed to a contract yesterday that fits Zimmerman in a Nationals (or Natinals) jersey for the next half-decade at a minimum. The five-year, $45-million contract buys out all three of Zimmerman’s arbitration years plus two seasons that were to be under market control. Because of our 40/60/80 rubric for arbitration value, that gives us 3.8 equivalent free agent years covered under this contract.

At $45 million over 3.8 years, the Nationals are paying Zimmerman the equivalent of just under $12 million per market year. Using current market rates per win (around $4.25 to $4.5 million per win), the Nationals are paying for about a 2.75-win player. Does Zimmerman project to live up to or exceed that mark?

Zimmerman has seen his offense decline over the past three seasons, but only be slight amounts and given that offense as a whole dove last year and was down in 2007 compared to 2006 as well, he still looks fine. In fact, Ryan Zimmerman has actually maintained a relatively stable wOBA compared to the league, around 5% above average. Interestingly enough, a majority of the projection systems predict a substantial rise in Zim’s wOBA this year, with an average coming in around the .360 mark which would be a full season career high and put Zimmerman around the 15 run above average mark.

Fielding wise, Ryan Zimmerman’s numbers outside of 2007 show that of a consistently slightly above average player. He flipped out according to UZR in 2007, but given the stability in each other year, that looks like a fluke. Still, it shows what he is capable of, and I am comfortable penciling him in as an average fielder at about five runs over average for the duration of this contract. Toss in the 3B positional adjustment and the replacement level bonus and Zimmerman projects out to a touch over four wins on average.

Given that he’s averaged 3.8 over the prior three seasons, this seems like no stretch at all. Really, this is a huge win for the Nats both on getting value on Zimmerman and in keeping him in DC where they can hopefully use him to help establish an identity for the franchise.

The outlook is bleak for the Houston Astros this season, but as with any potential non-contender in any given season, it is safe to expect some extremely impressive spurts of performance from both position players and pitchers. Cecil Cooper’s gang currently sits at 4-8, but entering Monday’s action their starting pitchers had thrown 21.2 straight scoreless innings. While this feat does not necessarily battle the dominance on display thus far from Zack Greinke, how can we not be impressed that a foursome consisting of Russ Ortiz, Felipe Paulino and Wandy Rodriguez have pieced together a streak like this?

It all started last Thursday, when Ortiz toed the rubber against Jeff Karstens and the Pirates. Ortiz surrendered three earned runs in the first two innings and left after just 4.2 frames due to throwing 99 pitches. He settled down a bit after the second inning and held the Pirates scoreless in the third and fourth as well as his action in the fifth. After clocking out of work, Ortiz had the rather pedestrian line of 4.2 IP-5 H-3 ER-2 BB-2 K and had accrued a WPA of just -0.062. The Astros went onto win, however, and the streak for the starting rotation began.

On Friday, ace Roy Oswalt got the call and delivered a solid performance, holding the Reds scoreless over six innings of work. He did issue three free passes in his outing, uncharacteristic of Oswalt, and the relief corps failed the stalwart righty as the Reds won 2-1. Despite the loss the scoreless innings streak for their starters had increased to 8.2 innings.

The very next day, Wandy Rodriguez bested Oswalt with a very dominant performance. Rodriguez scattered two hits and two walks over seven scoreless innings, fanning 10 batters in the process. His 0.369 WPA helped the Astros beat Aaron Harang and the Reds 7-0, increasing the streak to 15.2 scoreless innings.

When rookie Felipe Paulino extended the streak on Sunday, the Astros lost once again, which speaks volumes for something, be it the early effectiveness of the rotation or early ineffectiveness of the relievers. Paulino was opposed by Edinson Volquez, and added six scoreless frames to the streak, striking out six batters and walking two. Unfortunately, the Astros hitters could not capitalize on the wildness of Volquez and the triumvirate of Tim Byrdak, Chris Sampson, and Geoff Geary allowed four runs after Paulino’s departure.

Mike Hampton started tonight, and after retiring two batters to increase the streak to 22.1 scoreless innings, he surrendered a two-run single to Edwin Encarnacion in the top of the first inning. The streak is now over but their rotation sure stringed together some impressive performances over the last few days.

Last year at this time, I was writing articles about the disappearance of Justin Verlander’s fastball. He was averaging just 92 MPH with his best pitch and getting beaten around because of it. His velocity recovered a bit as the season went on, but he had his worst year as a pro and entered the 2009 season as something of a question mark.

Through his first three starts of 2009, his ERA is 7.88, and he’s only managed to get through 16 innings. With another season where he’s getting poor results in April, one might assume that Verlander’s just continuing his regression from last year.

One would be wrong.

Forget the results – Verlander is back to his ’06 form. His fastball is averaging 95.6 MPH, and he’s consistently hitting 97 when he’s throwing it by people. That’s showing up in his true outcome categories as well – he’s striking out 11.25 batters per nine innings through his first three starts. His ERA is skewed by a ridiculous 38.6% LOB%, essentially pointing to the fact that other teams have bunched their hits together against him, and that’s just not going to continue. He’s also had some brutal defense played behind him so far (Carlos Guillen defended like he had been drinking before taking his left field spot on Friday night), and a .389 BABIP won’t continue.

If there’s one pitcher whose results haven’t matched his underlying performance so far, it’s Verlander. If he was a stock, I’d be yelling “Buy! Buy!” like the mad money guy on CNBC. If you play in a fantasy league and the guy who owns Verlander doesn’t read FanGraphs, make a phone call and see if you can buy low. If you’re a Tigers fan who is frustrated by Verlander, have some patience – your ace is back.

There are a few negative things that could be said about the Pittsburgh Pirates organization. However, perhaps surprisingly to some, there are also some good things happening for the club. The organization has improved its minor league system recently and is showing signs of life. One of the strongest areas in the organization is infield depth.

Indianapolis (AAA)
The big name in the Indianapolis infield is Neil Walker, the club’s former No. 1 draft pick from 2004. However, his ceiling light is dimming after hitting just .242/.280/.414 in Triple-A last season. He has begun 2009 at the same level by hitting just .214/.250/.429 in 10 games. Walker lost a lot of value when he relocated from behind the dish to the hot corner. Shortstop Brian Bixler’s name will sound familiar after the infielder appeared in 50 games for the big-league Pirates last season, but he hit just .157/.229/.194. So far this year, Bixler is hitting .325/.400/.525 in 10 games. He’s also tearing the cover off the ball against southpaws with a .444 average in 18 at-bats. Second baseman Shelby Ford is struggling with a line of .143/.200/.357 in just five games as he did not start his minor-league season until April 14.

Altoona (AA)
Shortstop Brian Friday is perhaps one of the fastest risers in the Pirates system, after being selected out of Rice University in the third round of the 2007 draft. Already in Double-A, the right-handed hitter is batting .500/.607/.864 in six games. He also has six walks and just three strikeouts so far, as well as a .588 batting average against right-handed pitchers. Second-baseman-turned-third-baseman Jim Negrych continues to produce with the bat after hitting .359 combined at two levels in 2008. The left-handed hitter is batting .289/.400/.421 in 10 games but he continues to show below-average power for a third baseman with no homers and an ISO below .100.

Lynchburg (A+)
The club’s 2008 third-round draft pick, Jordy Mercer has settled into High-A ball for his first full season and is hitting .256/.313/.419 in 11 games. He has at least one hit in his last six games. It can’t be the most comfortable feeling, as a third baseman, to look over your shoulder and see Pedro Alvarez walk into the clubhouse. But that’s what happened to Matt Hague, the club’s ninth round draft pick from 2008 as a senior from Oklahoma State University. Luckily, the Pirates simply shifted him across the diamond to first base (He was already considered a poor fielding third baseman). The move has not affected Hague, who is hitting .333/.370/.359 with 11 games, although he has just one extra base hit. Alvarez, meanwhile, is off to a slow start with a line of .250/.375/.528 with three homers in 11 games. He’s six for his last 15.

West Virginia (A)
Infielder Chase D’Arnaud, the older brother of Phillies’ catching prospect Travis, is off to a nice start by batting .407/.419/.519 with two stolen bases in eight games. He’s nine for his last 18 but oddly has yet to score a run this season. After injuring his knee last year in high school, which hurt his promising draft status, shortstop Jarek Cunningham, 19, will miss the season after undergoing surgery for a torn ACL.

We’ve put up some PitchFx data on the site under a special PitchFx section for each pitcher. This is FanGraphs first real foray into PitchFx, so we’ll definitely be taking suggestions on this section and we’ll do our best to implement the ones we think make sense. We’d really like to make our PitchFx section as useful as possible.

A couple things to make note of:

-The averages are based on handedness. This was necessary for the horizontal and vertical movement averages.
-“FA” or fastball includes both the FF pitch type classification and the FA classification to keep things relatively steady from year to year.
-“FT” or 2 seam fastball includes both the SI and FT classifications for the same reasons.