The bottom of the order in the National League is reserved for pitchers and usually the worst hitters. This season, the average 7-9 slot is occupied by a non-pitcher hitting .249/.320/.381 – the equivalent of Luis Castillo. For whatever reason, Joe Torre has decided to up the ante for those lower-hole hitters by placing Matt Kemp in the tier – the same Kemp with a higher OPS than Ryan Howard.

Kemp is the Dodgers second best hitter when sorted by wOBA or wRAA. Entering last night’s game his line was .305/.369/.474 and yet in 52 of his 81 appearances this season Kemp has batted 7th or lower, and only two of those appearances came as a pinch hitter. Most nights Torre is running out a lineup that goes in order as follows: Rafael Furcal, Orlando Hudson, Manny Ramirez, Andre Ethier, Casey Blake, James Loney, Russell Martin, Matt Kemp, and then the pitcher.

Kemp might not even be the biggest issue with this current lineup since Furcal is receiving the most plate appearances while boasting a .297 wOBA. Furcal is better than that, but if hitting poorly (or really well in Kemp’s case) has no affect on Joe Torre’s lineup plans, then why have Casey Blake, Russell Martin, and Juan Pierre been able to slip and slide batting slots based on their performances?

Torre’s been blessed with a large lead in the standings so early in the season that the Dodgers’ playoff chances are sealed. Batting Kemp 8th isn’t going to cost the Dodgers the division and probably not even the top seed, but what message is Torre sending to Kemp and to opposing managers by keeping a stellar hitter in front of the pitcher? Kemp’s placement seems to extend beyond performance, and that’s too bad, after all Torre is supposed to be the master of managing egos and personalities, and here he is hurting his team by flexing his own.

Zack Greinke is about half way through the 2009 MLB season and to date he has been worth 5.5 wins. He is roughly on pace to accumulate 11 wins. As a pitcher. In the last four years, no pitcher has broken past the eight win mark. Since 2002, the first year our win values start, the highest recorded mark is Randy Johnson’s 9.9 wins in 2004.

In fact, aside from Grienke’s fabulous season, Tim Lincecum is also on pace to better Johnson’s mark. With 5.1 wins so far, he is set up to squeak by with 10.2 wins in total, but that is another time and post. From 2004-7, Greinke averaged about a 7.2% swinging strike rate. He improved that to 9.0% last year and is at 10.1% so far in 2009. Those extra missed bats have allowed Greinke to significantly raise his strikeout rate, up above 25% of all batters faced this year.

Amazingly, despite batters swinging less often than ever recorded before against Greinke and Greinke missing the strike zone significantly more often than ever recorded before, Greinke’s walk rate is down to a minuscule 4%. That gives Zack a tremendous 6.3 strikeout to walk ratio.

Greinke’s batted balls are not significantly different from past years, but his home run rate has unsustainably dipped to just 3.3%. All in all, Greinke is missing more bats this year, but he is also throwing fewer strikes overall. Somehow he has reduced both his walks and his home runs allowed to depress his FIP to 1.98, but going forward you would expect that to be a lot closer to his 3.56 from last season. Still, with half a season banked, Greinke has a serious shot at being FanGraphs’ first 10 win pitcher.

Rough night for Johnny Cueto:

0.2 IP, 5 H, 2 HR, 1 SO, 3 BB, 9 ER, 25 strikes, 49 pitches

Let’s take a look over his start using Pitchfx. Cueto threw over 50% strikes thanks to the home plate umpire who extended the zone a few times and forced the Phillies batters to swing at some pitchers they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. One glance at Cueto’s strike zone plot reveals that he’s not M.C. Escher when it comes to painting the corners. Cueto really wanted to stay away from lefties and he certainly accomplished that by avoiding the plate entirely.

Image courtesy of Brooksbaseball.net

Cueto could control neither his fastball nor change-up, but did seem to have a decent grip on his slider. Anytime a pitcher lacks fastball control he’s going to struggle; having the inability to control his off-speed stuff just put the nail in the coffin. More concerning for the Reds is that this is becoming a trend rather than an isolated incident. 51% of Cueto’s pitches in April and May were inside of the strike zone. Only 42% found the zone in June, and through two July starts that number is down to 40%. Cueto’s velocity is lacking any telltale signs of potential injury, and his velocity chart looks pretty normal:

Although the improved walk rate doesn’t reflect this, Cueto is actually throwing more balls this season, in part because his amount of whiffs has decreased. At the same time, Cueto’s run values have increased thanks to the Reds upgraded defense. If we were discussing the defensive independent version, I’m not so sure that would be the case.

The Cleveland Indians’ 2009 playoff hopes are all but dead with the club 11.5 games out of first place in the American League Central division. The club’s pitching has been disappointing. Fausto Carmona has started 12 games and has a 7.42 ERA (5.96 FIP), while David Huff has a 6.06 ERA (4.87 FIP) in 10 appearances. Jeremy Sowers has made nine starts while posting a 5.68 ERA (4.91 FIP). The club is last in the American League (14th overall) with a 5.28 team ERA and only the Orioles’ pitching staff has allowed more hits this season.

Help is on the way for the pitching staff. And that aid is coming in the form of two breakout Venezuelan pitching stars: Hector Rondon and Jeanmar Gomez. Rondon, a right-hander, was quietly signed out of Venezuela in 2004 as an international free agent. He came to North America in 2006 and enjoyed two good, but not great, seasons in the low minors. It was in 2008 at high-A ball that Rondon broke out and people began talking about him.

He allowed 130 hits in 145 innings of work, while posting a walk rate of just 2.61 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 9.00 K/9. His 145 strikeout total was tops in the organization. Rondon also had a 3.60 ERA and posted a FIP of 3.35.

Rondon has always shown good control as a professional pitcher and he commands his 89-94 mph fastball very well for such a young pitcher. It was the improvements on the 21-year-old’s secondary pitches that helped vault him up the prospect ladder. He began to command his plus changeup more often and he also tightened up the break on his slider.

With a good fastball, solid control and reliable secondary pitches, Rondon now has the ceiling of a No. 2 or 3 MLB starter. It shouldn’t be long before he gets his first taste of the big leagues; Rondon was promoted to triple-A yesterday.

Gomez, 20, is enjoying his breakout season in 2009. He began the year in high-A ball and posted a 2.63 ERA in four starts, while allowing just 17 hits and five walks in 24 innings of work. He also struck out 15 batters. Promoted to double-A with Rondon, Gomez has now allowed 65 hits in 70.2 innings. The right-hander has posted rates of 2.29 BB/9 and 7.39 K/9. He’s allowed just four home runs in double-A.

Prospect watchers really began to take notice of Gomez after he threw a nine-inning perfect game on May 21 of this year. The game took a bit out of him, though, as he then allowed 15 runs over his next three starts. He’s gotten back on track after allowing a total of just nine runs in five June starts.

Gomez’ stuff is not quite as sharp as Rondon’s, at this point. The younger right-hander has a low-90s fastball that tops out around 93 mph. His breaking ball is still more slurve than slider or curve, and his changeup is still developing. Gomez’ control is almost on par.

If both pitchers can continue to develop and show improvements for the rest of the 2009 season, Rondon could be ready to break camp with the big-league club in 2010, while Gomez should be ready by mid-2010. Both pitchers appear to have bright futures, which is great news for Cleveland fans.

On Sunday the Rangers sent Chris Davis down to AAA. After a good rookie season last year Davis’ performance took a step back this year. His power is still there (23% HR/FB), but his already poor strikeout rate has ballooned up to an unacceptable 44.2% K/AB. At the same time his walk rate is still below average. It is very hard any player to succeed with that many strikeouts, and impossible if he doesn’t walk a ton. His wOBA is a paltry 0.288, not acceptable for a 1st baseman (although he was probably due for a bump with his BABIP of .287).

The main cause of the all those strikeouts was his historically bad contact rate. Here is a histogram of the contact rates of all major league regulars from 2008 to 2003, with Davis’ 2009 58% contact rate indicated.

The average contact rate is just under 82%, out of over 900 regulars over six years only 17 finished with a contact rate below 70% and none under 60%. Davis’ rate over a full year would have been a major outlier. Major League players just don’t keep full time jobs missing the ball that much, no matter how much power they have.

I was additionally interested in where in the strike zone and which pitches Davis was missing. Here I plot how many times higher Davis’ whiff rate (missed pitches divided by swings) is than the average lefty by pitch location.

Davis has the biggest problem up and in, whiffing four times the lefty average. Additionally, through most of the zone he whiffs at least twice as much as the average lefty. Here is the whiff rate by pitch type for Davis in 2009 and for all lefties averaged.

+------------+-------+-------+
| Whiff Rate | Davis |   LHB |
+------------+-------+-------+
| Fastball   |  0.44 |  0.13 |
| Cutter     |  0.40 |  0.15 |
| Changeup   |  0.44 |  0.26 |
| Curveball  |  0.50 |  0.28 |
| Slider     |  0.37 |  0.27 |
+------------+-------+-------+

Davis is getting eaten alive by fastballs (against changeups, curveballs and sliders he is worse than average but probably in line with other power hitters). Hopefully he can work things out in the minors and get his contact rate, and as a result strike out rate, back to his 2008 level.

Headed into spring training, Ryan Franklin was considered to be the back-up plan to the back-up plan for the closer’s job in St. Louis. Coming off of a middling season in what has been a mostly middling career; Ryan Franklin is hardly anyone’s idea of a typical closer. No, Franklin’s job more or less was to mentor and set-up for rookie flame-throwers Chris Perez and Jason Motte. Instead, Perez became expendable, and Motte gave up a four-spot against the Pirates on Opening Day. Mr. Awesome Chin-Hair has been the de facto closer ever since. And now, he’s an All-Star.

Franklin has all the nifty baseball-card stats – he’s leading all qualified major league relievers in ERA (0.84). He has 20 saves in 21 tries. He is just one-tenth of a point behind the NL leader (Jonathan Broxton) in a non-baseball card stat — Situational Wins (WPA/LI) – at 1.30. So from that standpoint at least, one can make an argument for Franklin being all-star worthy. (I’m not saying I agree with it. You’d be hard-pressed to argue Franklin over Vazquez, Gallardo, Ubaldo…) So what gives? Can Franklin keep this up?

Looking at his pitch selection, he’s a cutter convert. He’s seldom thrown one before. Franklin has never been afraid to experiment with different pitches, he is even known to occasionally throw a knuckleball. With the cutter he seems to be enjoying some success. Franklin has gone from throwing a slider 23% of the time last year to a cutter 27% of the time this year. Now before you cry “screwy pitch classification”, it is a true-blue cutter. Firstly, his slider last year was an 85 MPH pitch on average last year. This pitch is 89 MPH. The pitch also has 3 inches of higher vertical movement than his slider. To clench the nail, we also have Ryan Franklin himself saying he’s ditched the slider in favor of the cutter.

(Referring to his cutter) “It’s become a real weapon for me. I have a lot more consistency with it, which means I’m more confident. A lot of times when I got hurt last season it was with the slider…”

In terms of effectiveness, it doesn’t quite explain Franklin’s breakout. Really, it’s his curveball that’s been his most effective pitch, and it’s basically the same curve he’s always thrown, he’s just throwing it a lot more — 20%, or twice as much as he threw it last year. Both may have led to an increase in whiffs, as he’s striking out more batters than ever before at 6.75 K/9. That’s hardly a dominant rate for a closer, but for Franklin I suppose that’s pretty darn good. Where Franklin has really shined is demonstrated by his walk rate; he’s giving up just under two free passes per nine innings.

There is however one underlying factor that overrides all, and that’s lots of lucky goatee grease:

Given Franklin’s history, lucky hit rate and strand rate, his projections call for him to come back to earth and post a 4.10 FIP the rest of the season. He’s been good, and some of that may have to do with pitch selection, but there is no way he’s this good. The Cardinals are somehow hoping Franklin can keep the lucky fuzz keeps working, because there’s no one ready to claim the role of relief ace in that bullpen.

Over the weekend I watched the middle game of the Cubs/Brewers series. The Brewers bludgeoned Rich Harden behind Casey McGehee’s four hit, five RBI afternoon against his former team. In the wake of McGehee’s performance, I scoped his player page and subsequently raised my brows, for this is perhaps the quietest .343/.396/.567 line in the land. It’s only 150 plate appearances though, and there isn’t much reason to believe McGehee will continue to hit like this.

With the Cubs McGehee spent three seasons in Triple-A Iowa, hitting .282/.335/.410. His career best OPS in the minors came in Double-A when he hit for a .776 figure. Consider that McGehee’s current slugging percentage nearly tops that on its own and you can understand why most Cub fans are scratching their heads at the idea of McGehee becoming the Brewers version of Jake Fox.

An ISO resting comfortably around .220 is a power surge unlike any we’ve seen from McGehee before. A .385 BABIP suggests he’s finding every hole and gust on the field, and he’s even walking more than usual while striking out less. McGehee’s defense at second base has been average, and in the past Baseball America named him the best third base defender in the Southern League, so there’s a chance his glove work is legitimate.

McGehee is 26-years-old, making some improved performance likely, just not this extent. Not many players can rebound from three straight below average offensive seasons in Triple-A to suddenly hit better than any other time in their professional careers. What McGehee has accomplished by simply reaching the majors is impressive, but this hot streak serves little predictive power. Fortunately for McGehee, there are a few GMs more than willing extend opportunities based on it.

What is up with Jonathan Papelbon? Granted relief pitchers are volatile, but a lot of that has to do with the smaller sample sizes they have compared to starters each year. Even looking at stats that are not as affected by the sample limits however, show a much different Papelbon in 2009.

In terms of pitch selection, Papelbon is throwing his slider more than he ever has and although it has improved in isolated results, the increase in usage might be in part because, and by no means offsets, the big drop in fastball effectiveness. From 2006 through 2008, Papelbon’s fastball was worth about three runs more than average per 100 fastballs. This year it is down to just 0.76. His velocity has not diminished though as far as obvious answers go.

In terms of location, Papelbon is hitting the strike zone at the worst rate of his career, down below 50% compared to the previous three year average of around 55%. Hitters are laying off pitches more than ever before as well, which is hurting both Papelbon’s strikeout and walk rates.

In terms of results, Papelbon is missing bats at almost half the rate that he did in his amazing 2007, and his 9.8% figure in 2009 is down from his three year average of 14.4%.

All in all, Papelbon has a 4.12 FIP and a 4.40 tRA, leaving him on pace to be worth just one win over replacement, a marked departure. His runs per inning pitched this year in just 30% what his 2006-8 value was.

Entering Tuesday’s game, the Red Sox lead the Orioles by 12 games. With John Smoltz on the mound opposing Rich Hill, the challenge appeared to resemble little more than a lay-up for the best team in the American League. Early on, that was exactly the case. Julio Lugo singled to open the game, and after stealing second, jogged home thanks to a Kevin Youkilis homerun. David Ortiz would add a double and Jason Varitek would walk before the inning ended on a groundout.

The Sox would add another two runs in the second, and entering the third lead 4-0 with Smoltz facing one more than the minimum amount. A Felix Pie triple in the third pushed the first Oriole run across, but Boston wasted little time responding, Jacoby Ellsbury homered on the third pitch of the 4th and scored the first of five Boston runs.

Smoltz took a 9-1 lead and pitched a perfect inning before giving way to Justin Masterson who promptly retired six straight batters. When the Orioles came to bat in the 7th, Boston had added another run, making it 10-1, and placing the Orioles win expectancy at a firm 1%. Aubrey Huff singled on the first pitch, then Nolan Reimold shot one through the right side of the infield. With two on and nobody out, Luke Scott hit a deep fly ball to right field, plating Huff and placing two on in scoring position. Oscar Salazar checked in for Melvin Mora, and two pitches later, hammer a ball to left field that cleared the fences.

Just like that, the score was 5-10, and Matt Wieters was stepping to that plate. After getting ahead 0-1, Masterson yielded yet another hit and was quickly pulled for Manny Delcarmen. Robert Andino and Brian Roberts quickly grounded out to second base, giving Baltimore dim hope for scoring another run, yet Pie once again proved timely, and scored Andino on a liner up the middle. 6-10 Baltimore, with Hideki Okajima called upon to finish the inning.

In order to preserve any chance of an unlikely comeback, Mark Hendrickson would have to hold the Sox under command with the heart of the lineup due up. Jason Bay grounded out easy enough, and a walk was almost erased by a George Kottaras force play. Then Baldelli and Ellsbury singled on back-to-back plays, and it was up to that guy, Felix Pie, to throw the runner out at home.

Making Pie’s play all the more improbable is that he was filling in for the injured Adam Jones and that he actually finished with a negative WPA. Go figure.

With Okajima remaining in the game, the Orioles pounced. Reimold singled, Scott doubled, Salazar reached on an infield single, Wieters singled, Wigginton would hit a sac fly, and then Roberts would single, chasing Takashi Saito after only two batters. Jonathan Papelbon entered with one out, a one run lead, and a 70% win expectancy, he made quick work of Pie, and the outnumbered Baltimore fans were no doubt dubious about their already ridiculous comeback.

Nick Markakis stepped to the plate and on the very first pitch doubled to deep left, scoring two runs and giving Baltimore the lead against the best team in baseball. The O’s would fail to add any insurance, and the game would be left in the hands of George Sherrill.

A Jeff Bailey singled opened the 9th, but a strikeout and fly out seemed to kill any chance of another comeback on this night. Sherrill plunked Kevin Youkilis, then struck out Jason Bay on four pitches, ending the game, and capping a fine Baltimore victory.

We’re officially to the halfway point, with most teams having logged 81 games in the standings by now. The second half will certainly offer some new stories, but here are the last batch of things we learned during the first semester of 2009. Just for fun, let’s focus on the pitchers this week.

Ricky Nolasco is just fine, thanks.

After a rough start to the season (compounded by some bad luck), the Marlins shipped the ace of their 2008 team back to Triple-A for some tune-up work, and he’s now returned with a vengeance. In two starts last week, he threw 16 innings, gave up seven hits, walked two, and struck out 20. I think it’s safe to say he’s back. I feel sorry for teams that have to face him and Josh Johnson in the same series.

Joe Saunders, on the other hand…

Early in the season, Saunders helped carry the Angels pitching staff while they waited for John Lackey and Ervin Santana to return from the disabled list. Regression to the mean smacked him in the head with a pretty strong stick this week, though, as he allowed six home runs in nine innings of work over two starts. He also walked eight batters, and not surprisingly, the combination of bad command and home run problems adds up to losing. Saunders’ FIP now stands at 5.50, and while he’s better than this, he’s getting exposed as a back-end starter. The Angels have some real pitching problems.

Maybe they should have traded for Brad Penny.

Last week, four starting pitchers had an average fastball of 95+ MPH. Ubaldo Jimenez, Felix Herandez, Justin Verlander, and Penny. If you look at his velocity chart, there’s been a big spike over the last five starts compared to how hard he was throwing earlier in the year. Daisuke Matzusaka’s problems have given the Red Sox a reason to keep him around, and now Penny’s pitching like a guy who doesn’t want to go anywhere. If he keeps throwing the ball like this with any kind of consistency, he’s going to be in heavy demand this winter when he heads back out as a free agent.

You should look at Carlos Zambrano’s velocity chart too.

Speaking of recent trends in velocity, this one isn’t going to make Cubs fans happy. Zambrano’s average fastball in his last start was just 88.6 MPH, the first time all year it’s been under 90. He topped out at 92.1. Considering his career workload and some DL stints with shoulder inflammation last year, this bears watching closely.