As Eric mentioned this morning, a few of our Monday posts are going to become weekly staples. He’s doing Game Of The Week, while R.J. pulls some nuggets from the past week’s UZR update. I’ll be looking back at the main stories from the past seven days and what we can glean from what happened. So, What Did We Learn in Week 2?

The Marlins are better than the Nationals.

Florida has the best record in baseball, racing off to a 11-1 start. Normally, winning 11 of 12 would open a lot of eyes around the game, but this hot streak has one problem – it was built on playing half of their games against the hapless Washington Nationals. The Nationals are a train wreck, and are clearly the worst team in baseball at this point. It’s good for Florida to take advantage of advantageous scheduling and rack up wins against an inferior opponent, but they don’t get play Washington every week.

The Marlins are a nice early story, but don’t expect it to continue. They lead the National League in runs per game at 6.42, but that is mostly due to clutch hitting. They have a good but not great .350 wOBA, so even if they were able to sustain this level of offensive performance, they’d still see a reduction in run scoring the rest of the year.

Florida might have the best record in baseball, but it’s the Dodgers who have played better than any other team so far. LA has racked up 6.1 value wins compared to the 4.2 wins that the Marlins have accumulated. Win-Loss records don’t always tell the story. If you want to be impressed with a National League team that is playing better than any other, look west.

There’s something wrong with Chien-Ming Wang.

Wang has made three starts so far in 2009.

April 8th @ Baltimore: 3 2/3 IP, 9 H, 7 R, 3 BB, 0 K, 1 HR, 8 GB, 10 FB
April 13th @ Tampa: 1 IP, 6 H, 8 R, 3 BB, 1 K, 0 HR, 3 GB, 4 FB
April 18th @ Cleveland: 1 1/3 IP, 8 H, 8 R, 0 BB, 1 K, 1 HR, 2 GB, 9 FB

Wang has been one of the most extreme groundball pitchers in baseball since his arrival in New York. His career GB% is 60.0%. Through his first three starts, it’s 28.6%. Only seven other starting pitchers in baseball have a lower GB%. His sinker isn’t sinking, and opposing hitters are teeing off on what is essentially a batting practice pitch right now.

Whether it’s mechanical issues or an injury, Wang isn’t himself right now. The Yankees would do well to skip his start this week in an effort to get him back to the pitcher he used to be, because this incarnation isn’t major league quality.

The Angels are facing a decade’s worth of adversity.

Most everyone had the Angels as contenders, if not favorites, for the AL West this year. However, I can’t recall an organization that has had more things go wrong in such a short period of time. They went into spring training with Kelvim Escobar rehabbing, so they knew that he wouldn’t be ready for the start of the season. But then John Lackey and Ervin Santana joined him on the disabled list with arm problems, knocking out the front of the Angels rotation.

This was followed by the tragic death of Nick Adenhart. As if they weren’t already dealing with enough, news came out this week that Vladimir Guerrero had a pectoral injury that would sideline him for at least a month and likely longer. As icing on the cake, Dustin Moseley left his start on Friday after three innings with elbow pain and landed on the disabled list.

That’s four starting pitchers and their franchise hitter on the DL, plus a horrible death in the family to have to deal with. It might just be too much for any team to overcome.

When Seattle and Tampa Bay open their three-game series on Tuesday night, it will mark a match-up of the two best defensive teams in the majors. At least when measured by team UZR. Some would say the Mariners are following a similar path to the Rays of 2007 and 2008; going from a poor team defensive to one of the best in the league within one off-season.

Seattle’s surge has been lead by your current UZR king, Franklin Gutierrez, Endy Chavez, and Adrian Beltre. Meanwhile another newcomer, Ronny Cedeno, has taken kindly to an all encompassing utility role, producing positive UZR in left and at second base in about 30 innings of work.

Meanwhile, defense is apparently unwelcome in the general Washington D.C. area. The nationals and Orioles make up the two worst defenses to date. That seems a bit surprising in Baltimore’s case, given an extremely athletic outfield and shortstop Cesar Izturis. Bizarrely all four register as negatives thus far, but we’ll see how long that lasts.

Speaking of improved defenses, let’s hear it for the Texas Rangers and Jon Daniels. Nelson Cruz, Chris Davis, Ian Kinsler, Josh Hamilton, Omar Vizquel, and Hank Blalock are all rated as average or slightly above, with Cruz tying Gutierrez for the overall UZR lead. The Rangers worst defender has been Michael Young, who isn’t taking to third base as quickly as the Rangers would’ve hoped.

The Padres haven’t showcased much range (-4 RngR) yet when they have fielded balls, they’ve converted them into outs, as showcased by a positive ErrR.

Minnesota’s outfield boasts one Delmon Young, who has gunned down plenty a baserunner in his day, but still they have the lowest combined ARM rating in the league. Atlanta leads the league in ARM.

Not much has went right for the Yankees thus far, but their infield has been silky smooth at flipping double plays, a far cry from the Phillies, who, along with the Cardinals and Royals, have fewer than -1 run earned through DPs.

In addition to our regularly scheduled commentary, us writers here at Fangraphs will be implementing a few different weekly specialty posts. The others should debut this week, if not today, but we will kickstart my Monday morning series right now, revisiting a really interesting game from the previous week of action. For the inaugural post, join me in a trip back to Saturday, to the new Yankees Stadium, where things, well, didn’t go as planned for the Bronx Bombers. The game graph says it all:

The Yankees actually had a decent shot at winning this game… in the first inning. Then everything fell by the wayside as the Indians absolutely torched Chien-Ming Wang and Anthony Claggett in the second inning. After a Mark Teixiera jimmy-jack (that term needs to be used much more!), the Yankees boasted a 65.9% win expectancy. One grueling half-inning later, the Yankees had but a 1.5% chance at winning the game.

The plummeting slope in the game graph represents the Indians scoring 14 runs in the top of the second frame. Travis Hafner singled and promptly moved up to second base when Jhonny Peralta followed with a single of his own. Shin-Soo Choo then knocked the ball out of the park, giving the Indians a 3-2 lead.

After Ryan Garko fouled out, Ben Francisco doubled and came around to score on an Asdrubal Cabrera single. Grady Sizemore doubled, advancing Cabrera to third, but neither would stay put very long as Mark DeRosa continued to showcase power, knocking both runners in with a double. At this point, the Yankees had retired just one hitter and now trailed 6-2.

Wang uncorked a wild pitch allowing DeRosa to move up ninety feet. Victor Martinez then singled DeRosa in, increasing the lead to 7-2, and ending Wang’s abysmal outing. Hafner then stepped in for his second plate appearance of the inning and smashed a double. Martinez held at third but both he and Hafner soon scored on a Peralta 2-run double. The Indians now led 9-2, and the Yankees had a win expectancy of just 4.6%.

With Peralta on second, Claggett walked Choo and surrendered a single to Garko to load the bases. Francisco finally provided that second out by striking out, but Claggett could not parlay that into further success as Asdrubal Cabrera hit a grand slam. With the bases empty and the Tribe up 13-2 the heels of a salami, Grady Sizemore just added insult to injury by launching a solo homer. Claggett fanned DeRosa to end the inning, but the proverbial damage had been done, with the Indians turning a 2-0 deficit into a 14-2 lead.

Though they would eventually win the game by a score of 22-4, the second inning is what made this particular game earn the weekly honor. The Indians plated 17 batters in the top of the second, scoring 14 runs in the process. I checked my Retrosheet database to see how rare it was for this many batters to come up in a specific half-inning.

From 1954-2008, there have been 4,466 half-innings with 10+ batters. Just 17 of those innings featured 17+ batters. Just 8 of those 17 saw 18+ batters come to the plate. The top of the second inning in this Indians-Yankees affair became just the eighteenth half-inning since 1954 to feature 17 or more plate appearances. The most plate appearances in this returned resultset was 20, belonging to the Reds on 8/3/1989.

Relative to runs scored, only three games since 1954 have featured teams scoring 14+ runs in a single inning: the Red Sox scored 14 in the bottom of the first against the Marlins on 6/27/03; the Reds scored 14 in the bottom of the first against the Astros on 8/3/1989; and the Rangers scored 16 in the bottom of the eighth against the Orioles on 4/19/96. The second inning for the Indians marks just the fourth time this occurred.

This self-appointed game of the week might not have seemed all that great for the Yankees faithful, but for historical purposes and sheer rarity of the events involved, this GOTW honor is bestowed upon the 4/18 Indians-Yankees matchup.

On Thursday we discussed the odd accomplishment from Rich Harden in his last start against the Rockies: Harden became the first pitcher since at least 1954 (as far back as my database goes) to pitch 3+ innings in a single game and not retire anyone via a traditional ball in play. Harden pitched three frames, requiring nine outs. He fanned eight hitters and recorded the other out when Chris Iannetta was thrown out attempting to take an extra base. No groundouts, no flyouts, no lineouts… not even any popups or foulouts.

The ELIAS Sports Bureau provided ESPN with an interesting stat similar yet different to the aforementioned bit of trivia. According to ELIAS, Harden faced 17 hitters, struck out eight, walked four, and gave up five hits. Add together the hits, walks, and punchouts and the sum equals the exact number of batters he faced. Apparently, over the last 80 or so years, nobody has had their PA = (H+BB+K) while facing as many hitters as Harden did against the Rockies.

I ran a query in Retrosheet to doublecheck this info and found that there have been 33,185 instances of PA=(H+BB+K+HBP) from 1954-2008. Of the 33,185, just 29 such games involved the pitcher facing 10+ hitters. That percentage is so low that my calculator actually provides the answer in scientific notation: 8.738 x 10^-4, or 0.0008738.

The highest tally of batters faced in this query belongs to former Cubs great Kevin Foster, who, on May 11, 1997, faced 14 hitters in two innings of work. Foster issued three free passes, hit a batter, struck out six, and surrendered four hits. He struck out the side in both of his innings and allowed four balls in play, all of which resulted in hits.

The next three pitchers accomplished the same feat while facing 12 hitters each: Chan Ho Park, Joe Coleman, and John Hudek.

Park faced 12 Giants hitters in two innings on April 17, 1996. One hit, five walks, and six punchouts later, his batters faced perfectly equaled the sum of these three parts. Joe Coleman of the Tigers faced 12 hitters in 1.1 innings on September 27, 1972, allowing three hits, walking five, and fanning four. Lastly, John Hudek of the Reds faced 12 hitters in two innings on September 13, 1998, walking two, striking out six, and allowing four hits.

Harden faced 17 hitters in three innings of work, but has anyone else been seen their batters faced equal the sum of hits, walks, and strikeouts in greater than two innings? Four pitchers met this criteria: Tom Niedenfuer on 5/18/85, Clint Sodowsky on 5/17/97, Tim Stoddard on 4/30/79, and Francisco Rodriguez on 9/27/02. All four went exactly 2.1 innings, making it abundantly clear that Harden’s outing last Wednesday was truly remarkable even if his overall performance was underwhelming.

Our six part Top 10 Prospects series ends today with the American League East division, which is loaded with some intriguing names. Even with the recent improvements to the big league team, the Rays organization has solid pitching depth in the minors – especially with top prospect David Price still in the minors. The club will also have to find room in the starting rotation for Wade Davis.

The Baltimore Orioles organization has enviable names amongst its Top 4 prospects. I am also a big fan of David Hernandez, who is an underrated pitcher. Boston has an interesting system, although a lot of its prospects are still quite raw. Pitcher Junichi Tazawa could turn out to be a valuable addition to the system.

The Yankees system is definitely less impressive than it has been in recent years – due mostly to lackluster drafts, as well as some trades – but there are still interesting names to be found. In Toronto’s system, many of the prospects appear to be one step away from a breakout… or, depending on how you look at it, ready to take one step back to being a disappointment. Rookie outfielder Travis Snider, though, looks really, really impressive.

The Tampa Bay Rays:
1. David Price, LHP, Durham (AAA)
2. Tim Beckham, SS, Bowling Green (A)
3. Wade Davis, RHP, Durham (AAA)
4. Jeff Niemann, RHP, Tampa Bay
5. Jacob McGee, LHP, Durham (AAA)
6. Reid Brignac, SS, Durham (AAA)
7. Nick Barnese, RHP, Extended Spring Training
8. Desmond Jennings, OF, Montgomery (AA)
9. Jeremy Hellickson, RHP, Montgomery (AA)
10. Matt Moore, LHP, Bowling Green (A)

Other Prospects of Note: Aneury Rodriguez, Eduardo Morlan, Kyle Lobstein, Albert Suarez, Mitch Talbot, Jake Jefferies, John Jaso, Mike Sheridan, Ty Morrison

The Baltimore Orioles
1. Matt Wieters, C, Norfolk (AAA)
2. Brian Matusz, LHP, Frederick (A+)
3. Chris Tillman, RHP, Norfolk (AAA)
4. Jake Arrieta, RHP, Bowie (AA)
5. Brandon Erbe, RHP, Bowie (AA)
6. Nolan Reimold, OF, Norfolk (AAA)
7. Billy Rowell, 3B, Frederick (A+)
8. Zach Britton, LHP, Frederick (A+)
9. L.J. Hoes, 2B, Delmarva (A)
10. David Hernandez, RHP, Norfolk (AAA)

Other Prospects of Note: Troy Patton, Kam Mikolio, Bobby Bundy, Brad Bergesen, Matt Angle, Tyler Henson, Xavier Avery, Brandon Snyder

The Boston Red Sox
1. Lars Anderson, 1B, Portland (AA)
2. Daniel Bard, RHP, Pawtucket (AAA)
3. Michael Bowden, RHP, Pawtucket (AAA)
4. Junichi Tazawa, RHP, Portland (AA)
5. Casey Kelly, RHP/SS, Greeneville (A)
6. Nick Hagadone, LHP, Injured
7. Josh Reddick, OF, Portland (AA)
8. Michael Almanzar, 3B, Greeneville (A)
9. Yamaico Navarro, SS, Salem (A+)
10. Stolmy Pimentel, RHP, Greeneville (A)

Other Prospects of Note: Kris Johnson, Kyle Weiland, Bryan Price, Ryan Westmoreland, Oscar Tejeda, Ryan Kalish, Argenis Diaz, Pete Hissey, Will Middlebrooks, Derrik Gibson

The New York Yankees
1. Jesus Montero, C, Tampa (A+)
2. Austin Jackson, OF, Scranton (AAA)
3. Dellin Betances, RHP, Tampa (A+)
4. Mark Melancon, RHP, Scranton (AAA)
5. Austin Romine, C, Tampa (A+)
6. Andrew Brackman, RHP, Charleston (A)
7. Zach McAllister, RHP, Trenton (AA)
8. Phil Coke, LHP, New York
9. Arodys Vizcaino, RHP, Extended Spring Training
10. Jeremy Bleich, LHP, Tampa (A+)

Other Prospects of Note:Alfredo Aceves, Jairo Heredia, Manny Banuelos, David Robertson, Mike Dunn, Ramiro Pena, Brad Suttle, Brett Gardner, Francisco Cervelli

The Toronto Blue Jays
1. Travis Snider, OF, Toronto
2. J.P. Arencibia, C, Las Vegas (AAA)
3. Brett Cecil, LHP, Las Vegas (AAA)
4. David Cooper, 1B, New Hampshire (AA)
5. Brad Emaus, 2B, New Hampshire (AA)
6. Justin Jackson, SS, Dunedin (A+)
7. Brad Mills, LHP, Las Vegas (AAA)
8. Kevin Ahrens, 3B, Dunedin (A+)
9. Ricky Romero, LHP, Toronto
10. Scott Campbell, 3B/2B, Las Vegas (AAA)

Other Prospects of Note: Marc Rzepczynski, Alan Farina, Robert Ray, Luis Perez, Henderson Alvarez, Tim Collins, Brian Jeroloman, John Tolisano, Eric Eiland, Tyler Pastornicky, Balbino Fuenmayor, Moises Sierra

The Other Links:
National League West
National League Central
National League East
American League West
American League Central

One of the basic truisms of a baseball season is that offensive levels are lower at the start of the season than they will be in the middle. Cold weather in April is the most accepted reason for why it takes a few months for offensive levels to normalize, and you can look back at pretty much any season and find that pitchers have an early season advantage over hitters.

This year, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case. MLB is averaging 4.96 runs per game so far in 2009, up from a league average 4.65 runs per game in 2008. It’s pretty rare to see run scoring in April higher than the league average from the previous season.

The main culprit appears to be a rise in home run rate. Last April, there was ahome run hit every 43 plate appearances. That number ended the season at one per 38 PA, as the ball flew better in warmer weather. So far this year, we’re at one home run per 34 plate appearances, accounting for 311 total home runs to date. At last year’s pace, we’d only have 248 home runs.

According to Greg Rybarczyk, who runs Hit Tracker Online, it isn’t just the number of home runs being hit either – the home runs are flying further than they used to, by an average of 8.5 feet per home run. Even with a limited sample, the probability of a deviation of that kind of distance is extremely unlikely to be caused by random chance.

After seeing run scoring levels decrease the last few years, we might be in for a spike in 2009. It’s worth monitoring, at least.

The new Yankee Stadium will likely witness many a great moment over its lifeline, but yesterday was hardly how the boys in pinstripes hoped to christen the field. The Yankees trailed by one until the fifth when Jorge Posada homered, marking the first homerun in the new park and the first Yankee run, run batted in, and Yankee to touch all four bases in a game that counts.

Insane went the crowd.

Then the bullpen happened. Or, more specifically, this happened:

The crowd went insane.

Of course, this is a non-story that will be blown out of proportion until the Yankees win tomorrow or the next day, or whenever they finally win in the new park. The only reason I’m even contributing to the coverage is to highlight one specific incident; the chant of “We want Swisher!” by the Yankees faithful.

Out of curiosity this afternoon, I was browsing through our leader boards when I confirmed that we did have a player, a single one, who had already accumulated a full win of value in this young season. Thanks in no doubt large part to his massive day at the plate on Wednesday, Ian Kinsler ended up with 9.4 batting runs over average. The boost over replacement was more than enough to crack the one win threshold.

Kinser’s wOBA currently stands at .600 coming into play Thursday. Though there’s no chance that he would be able to sustain that level of play over a full season; it does put Kinsler on pace for just shy of 170 batting runs in 2009.

Kinsler’s batting line has certainly been buoyed by good luck and his home park, but he’s also been driving the ball extremely well so far. A full quarter (or more depending on your batted ball source) of his balls in play have been line drives. Still, with six of the nine games in question taking place in the launching pad of Arlington, and 10 of Kinsler’s 11 extra-base hits coming at home, there are some flags showing through Kinsler’s fast start.

One look that might be telling is to look at Kinsler’s plate discipline. Doing so expands our sample a bit and also reveals any fundamental changes in Kinsler’s approach at the plate. In fact, all the shows through in this early stage is that Kinsler’s swing rate is up and oddly enough, his contact rate is down. It’s a pair of signals that run counter to the improved outcomes. All in all, it’s obviously too early to tell if there’s anything new or improved in Ian Kinsler’s game. For now, he’ll just have to be content with being baseball’s first one win player of 2009.

In his first start of the season on April 10, Rich Harden tossed six tremendous innings, issuing one free pass while racking up 10 punchouts at the expense of the Brewers. Yesterday, Harden performed less effectively against the Rockies in what amounted to a 5-2 loss. He only spent three innings on the mound due to an escalating pitch count that reached 92 thanks to four walks and four earned runs surrendered. Even so, Harden managed to rack up eight more strikeouts.

There are only nine outs to get in three innings of work meaning that Harden recorded strikeouts for all but one of the required outs. The other came on a hit by opposing pitcher Jason Marquis, when Chris Iannetta was thrown out while running to third base. Three innings… nine outs… eight strikeouts + one baserunning out. Combine these factors and it becomes clear that Harden did not retire anyone via a ball in play, which reeks of rarity.

I turned to my Retrosheet database to determine just how rare this event was, and not shockingly at all, it is incredibly rare. The number of similar games really depends on what constitutes a ball in play. If we look at groundouts, flyouts and lineouts only, there have been six games from 1954-2008 in which a pitcher logged at least three innings and recorded no BIP outs.

If we change the definition of balls in play to include foulouts as well as the aforementioned three, our sample of six games is halved to just three. Either replace foulouts with popouts or include both foulouts and popouts in conjunction with the groundouts, flyouts, and lineouts, and no games from 1954-2008 surface. That is, there has never been a game in this 50+ year span in which a pitcher tossed three or more innings and recorded no outs by any of these five forms of balls in play.

Rich Harden certainly didn’t record any lineouts, groundouts or flyouts yesterday but popouts and foulouts were also absent. Essentially, Harden’s game yesterday is the only such occurrence of the above feat since at least 1954, the start of my database.

With the major league season only ten days old, you’re bound to see some things that make you sit up and say “how is that possible?” Endy Chavex has more home runs than Manny Ramirez. Ian Kinsler got more hits last night than Brian Giles has in 39 plate appearances. The Mariners, Marlins, and Padres are in first place.

But nothing has surprised me more than looking at Mike Hampton’s pitching line so far – 11 innings pitched, 13 strikeouts. Thirteen strikeouts. For Mike Hampton. In 46 batters faced.

Hampton has a career K/9 of 5.50, which is inflated by his early career performances. In 2005, he struck out 3.5 batters per nine innings, then proceeded to miss two years with various problems. He returned last year to pitch half a season, striking our 4.38 batters per nine. Through his first two starts of ’09, he’s got a 10.64 K/9 – 10th highest in baseball, right behind Tim Lincecum.

Seriously, the major league K/9 leaderboard goes Lincecum-Hampton-Peavy. Which of these is not like the others?

Now, this isn’t to disparage Hampton. I liked the signing when it occurred, and when healthy, he’s a pretty decent pitcher. But he’s not a strikeout guy, by any means. So when he strikes out 28% of the batters he faces over two starts, it gets noticed.

Curious, I decided to look at the Pitch F/x numbers on Hampton’s start yesterday. Thanks to the remarkably awesome tool developed by Dan Brooks, I don’t even have to do any work. Take a look at these graphs.

Hampton throws five distinct pitches – a four seam fastball, a two seam fastball/cut fastball, a curve, a slider, and a change-up. He mixes them extremely well, alternating speeds and keeping hitters off balance. His two seam fastball and change-up have similar movements, adding to the deception. His curve and slider are distinctly different, and he’ll use the slider more against right-handed batters. The change-up is almost exclusively used against right-handed bats, and is the main reason that he’s actually been better against RH batters than LH batters throughout his career.

There’s not much velocity in there, but in terms of being able to vary his arsenal and keep hitters guessing, Hampton has a really good repertoire of pitches. He’s not going to keep striking hitters out at this rate, but for as long as he can avoid the Disabled List, he’s going to be a solid starting pitcher for the Astros.