It must be summertime in Chicago, because the ball is buzzing around Wrigley. Entering the 4th inning the Cubs had a 14-0 lead. As if that wasn’t enough to make the manual scoreboard operator earn his check, all nine of their starters, including starting pitcher Randy Wells, had at least one hit and one run scored. Seriously:

The silliness factor increases when you note that only three of the Cubs runs came via the home run, and that was only on Kosuke Fukudome’s three-run first inning shot. Pirates starter Charlie Morton has experienced better days, but he’ll be long-pressed to have worse moving forward. His second inning of work – and I say this loosely, since he only recorded three outs – went as such:

Hill triple
Wells walk
Theriot single
Fuld single
Lee walk
Fox double

He was then lifted for reliever Chris Bootcheck, who morphed into a river of gasoline:

Fukudome walk
Soriano single
Baker single
Hill strikeout
Wells single
Theriot pop out
Fuld hit by pitch
Lee double
Fox strikeout

After a 1-2-3 third, Bootcheck imploded again in the fourth, giving up three runs on a Derrek Lee bases-clearing double, making it 17-2. How hopeless is this game for the Pirates? Their fourth inning “rally” – which included three hits and a walk – didn’t even register as a blip on the WE graph:

This is already the most runs scored in a game this year for the Cubs. With four more runs, they would set the high-water mark since 2000. With 12 outs remaining – barring an unforeseen meltdown by the pitching staff – I wouldn’t bet against them.

The Favorites:
1. Randy Wells, RHP, Chicago
Wells is ninth in the league in lowest BB/9 at 2.09 BB/9 and second amongst rookies behind Josh Geer. Wells is also 20th in K/BB at 2.72, although he’s eight spots below Zimmermann. The Chicago righty is comfortably in the lead amongst rookies and 16th overall in lowest HR/9 at 0.75. Wells has the 17th lowest FIP in the NL at 3.72, while Happ is at 34th (with an ERA/FIP difference of -1.32).

2. J.A. Happ, LHP, Philadelphia
Happ is tops amongst (healthy) rookies in K/9 at 6.52 (minimum 90 IPs), but that is good for just 35th in the NL. Zimmermann (on his way to Tommy John surgery) was tops amongst rookies and ninth overall at 9.07 K/9. Happ is 10th in the league in lowest-average-allowed at .233, 12 spots ahead of Wells and 13 spots ahead of Kawakami. Happ is 10th in the NL in WHIP, followed directly by Wells in the 11th hole. Happ also has the fourth lowest BABIP allowed at .262 (Wells is at 15th).

3. Dexter Fowler, CF, Colorado
Fowler is 21st in the league with a BB% rate at 13.6 (minimum 200 plate appearances), 10 spots ahead of Ryan Hanigan (who also has the 12th lowest K% at 10.9%, and the fifth best BB/K). Fowler has the seventh highest BABIP in the NL at .365, while rookies Chris Dickerson and Parra come in next at 16th and 17th, respectively. Fowler has 10 stolen bases more than any other rookie with 26 total. He performs terribly in center field according to UZR, and is rated last in the league in that category.

4. Andrew McCutchen, CH, Pittsburgh
McCutchen is second in rookies in OPS at .834. He’s also second in slugging and third in batting average. He doesn’t stand out in any one offensive category right now, but he has good all-around numbers. McCutchen has shown the best range in center field amongst the rookies, although he has not fared well in UZR. Colby Rasmus leads rookie center fielders in that category by a wide margin.

5. Casey McGehee, UTL, Milwaukee
McGehee has the slight edge on batting average over Parra, but he also has about 100 fewer plate appearances. None of the rookies are amongst the leaders in average in the National League. McGehee is the only rookie with an ISO above .200 at .203. good for 32nd in the league. He is also first in rookies with an OPS of .864. Defensively, he’s been average-at-best at second base and quite below-average at third base.

Watch Out For:
Tommy Hanson, RHP, Atlanta
Hanson is hurt by his lack of innings, but he could make a run at the top spot with a solid month of September.

Kenshin Kawakami, RHP, Atlanta
This Japanese veteran is reliable and plugs along, but he doesn’t really deserve consideration for the award given his professional experience.

Jordan Zimmermann, RHP, Washington
If not for his injury, Zimmermann would be a favorite for the award given how well he’s pitched, based on numerous categories.

Chris Coghlan, LF, Florida
Like McCutchen, Coghlan has solid overall numbers, but does not stand out in any one area. Defensively, he has not performed well according to UZR.

Gerardo Parra, CF, Arizona
Parra leads rookies with eight triples, but has stolen just five bases in 10 attempts. His defensive play has been pretty average.

The Favorites:
1. Brett Anderson, LHP, Oakland
Anderson holds the narrow edge over Romero is K/9 with 7.25, good for 18th in the league for pitchers with more than 90 innings pitched. Anderson has the 12th lowest FIP in the AL at 3.91, six spots ahead of Bergesen. The southpaw also has the second lowest line-drive rate in the AL, four spots head of Porcello.

2. Elvis Andrus, SS, Texas
Andrus and Brett Gardner are tied for 12th in the league in steals with 20. Among AL shortstops, Andrus leads in UZR and range factor.

3. Brad Bergesen, RHP, Baltimore
Bergesen is 12th in the league in BB/9 (90 IP+), five spots ahead of Anderson. He’s also 12th in the league in HR/9 at 0.80, five spots ahead of Niemann.

4. Gordon Beckham, 3B, Chicago
Beckham leads rookies in batting average (200 PA minimum) but is just 35th in the league. He also has the highest BABIP for rookies at .331, 26th in the league. Defensively, UZR doesn’t like Beckham, but he has shown good range.

5. Andrew Bailey, RHP, Oakland
Bailey is seventh in the AL in saves with 17 (40 IP+). He’s also eighth amongst all AL relievers in K/9 with a rate of 10.13. The right-hander is helped by a low .249 BABIP.

Watch Out For:
Matt Wieters, C, Baltimore
He had a slow start to his MLB career, but this promising catcher is really playing well now… It remains to be seen, though, if he can catch up to all of the rookies above.

Nolan Reimold, LF, Baltimore
Reimold is tops in BB% at 11.5%, but that is good for just 34th in the league. No rookie is amongst the top 35 hitters in OPS, ISO or wOBA. Defensively, he’s one of the worst left fielders in the AL.

Ricky Romero, LHP, Toronto
Romero is often the second or third best rookie pitcher in any one of the categories, including K/9 and GB%.

Rick Porcello, RHP, Detroit
Porcello has the highest ground-ball rate in the American League at 56%, two spots ahead of Romero, five spots ahead of Bergesen and seven spots ahead of Anderson.

Jeff Niemann, RHP, Tampa Bay
Niemann has the 14th lowest batting-average-allowed in the league, four spots ahead of Romero.

Over the past seven days the Yankees have played seven games and won six of them. Their hitting was good and there starting pitching very good, but I wanted to highlight the contribution of their bullpen. Seven games in seven days including two extra innings games can put a strain on a bullpen, they were no doubt aided by some fine starting pitching going deep into games, but the pen held up. Here is their line from the week.

23.2 IP, 22 K, 5 BB, 18 H, 3 R

Very good and they did it in some very high leverage innings:

August 7th–They give the ball to Phil Hughes in the middle 8th in a tied 0-0 game. The pen pitches 7.1 innings of scoreless ball and the Yankees win in the 15h.

August 9th–The Yankees have a one run lead going into the 8th when they turn the ball over to the pen. Phil Coke gives up two runs, but the offense gets him off the hook scoring 4 in the bottom of the eighth.

August 10th–The Yankees only loss of the week. After the 5th the Yankees are down by one and turn the ball over to Alfredo Aceves, who pitches 4 innings of shut out ball. The offense could not come up with anything over those 4 innings, but Aceves gave them a chance to win it.

August 11th–They go to the pen to start the 7th down up one. The offense scores 4 in the bottom of the 8th, so Mariano Rivera’s run in the 9th is harmless.

August 12th–The bullpen gives five scoreless innings in a tied game and the Yankees win it in the 11th.

In those 5 games the Yankees went 4-1, and based on the scores when they turned to the bullpen (two tied, two down by one, one up by one) that could very easily have been 2-3. So the pen played a huge roll in those wins. Over just those seven games the bullpen racked up +1.64 WPA, a reflection of their performance in those high leverage situtations. This was the week when the Yankees really pulled away in the AL East, and they did it with a big contribution from what has not been, at times this year, the most confidence inspiring bullpen.

Dallas Braden is like the baseball equivalent of a bumblebee. Everyone, excluding the bumblebee itself, knows that a bumblebee can’t fly. Its body is too large for such tiny wings, it’s not sleek like the wasp. Likewise, everybody, except Braden himself, knows that his stuff won’t hold up in the majors.

Braden is a classic junkballer. His calling card is a fastball that averages just 88 MPH along with a “Bugs Bunny” change up that comes in 15 MPH slower than his fastball. He also throws a slurvy offering that averages 75 MPH, a cutter at 82 MPH and will even mix in an occasional screwball. In 69 minor league games, Braden posted an ERA of 3.30, averaged a K/9 rate of 10 and a walk rate of 2.4. Despite the sexy numbers, scouts weren’t buying Braden because of the aforesaid quirky repertoire. See for yourself in Pitch F/x. The game chart is from his start on 6/5/09, when he struck out 7 Orioles over 7 innings pitched, having allowed just a run on 5 hits. I’m pretty sure those four little dots on the middle right are screwballs.

Right now in the A’s rebuilt rotation that features stud arms like Brett Anderson, Trevor Cahill and Vince Mazzaro, this former 24th round pick is leading the way for Oakland with a 4.39 tRA and a FIP of 3.72. He has 2.9 wins above replacement over 22 starts, and over his last 190 innings Braden has 3.5 WAR. That’s not too shabby for someone who was regarded as organizational roster filler coming up through the minors. Unfortunately, Braden’s season recently has been interrupted by an infection in his foot.

Braden is not getting the whiffs he was getting in the minors (5.7 K/9) and that’s a concern, but at least for now he’s proving to be an above average major league starter. Braden ought to give hope to young soft-tossers across the globe to remain undeterred when scouts tell them that their stuff won’t play in the big leagues.

When a starting pitcher tops 99 miles per hour on a pitch, people tend to take notice. When that pitcher does it five times to end his outing after more than 115 pitches prior, well, people really take notice. Justin Verlander added another notch to his fantastic season yesterday when he held the Boston Red Sox scoreless in eight innings at Fenway, helping the Tigers avoid a four-game sweep.

Verlander’s velocity deserves some attention. Not often do starters throw for an average fastball velocity of roughly 97 MPH. Even Verlander’s average fastball velocity on the season is 95 MPH. Not that I doubt Verlander’s ability to throw bullets, but I went through and compared yesterday’s average fastball velocities to the seasonal averages. Here’s what I found:

That seems to lend credence to the numbers, but if you assume the pitchfx machine recorded speeds 0.3 MPH faster than reality, then Verlander’s 100.1 reading loses some grander and becomes 99.8 MPH – typical batting practice speed – a less round, but just as impressive figure.

Verlander’s fastball was simply ethereal yesterday no matter how fast it went. 14 of 85 fastballs generated swings and misses. That’s 16.5% and simply ludicrous. When nearly one-fifth of the fastballs you throw result in the batter whiffing, then just might have a pretty special pitch at your disposal. Unsurprisingly, our pitch value numbers back the suggestion. Heading into yesterday’s start Verlander’s fastball was worth nearly two wins at 17.4 runs and that figure should increase after turning Fenway into his personal slaughterhouse.

Good news everyone. tRA has made its way to FanGraphs thanks to Graham MacAree of Lookout Landing and statcorner.com. tRA is currently located in the player pages under the batted ball section of stats.

Directly from the StatCorner glossary:

tRA involves assigning run and out values to all events under a pitcher’s control and coming up with an expected number of runs allowed and outs generated in a defense and park neutral environment. tRA is on a R/9 scale and does not involve any regression of the rates.

There are a couple things which are different between the StatCorner version of tRA and the version implemented on FanGraphs. The main difference is we’re using Baseball Info Solutions batted ball stats instead of Gameday batted ball stats. The other difference, though probably not as major is we’re using different park factors.

tRA will not be available in the leaderboards or team pages until this winter most likely because it’s going to take a minor overhaul to the code in order to handle the park adjustments.

Graham will be stopping by later to give a better overview of the stat.

Tommy Bennett is one of my favorite new writers around. He’s not the most mathematically skilled teacher or the greatest composer of fluid prose, but on a daily basis he’s above average, entertaining, and informative. With that in mind, I’m going to borrow one of his talking points today. The Book taught us that relievers are often underused thanks to the restrictive workloads imposed by today’s managers. Bennett focused on streaks by relievers in which they recorded one or fewer days of rest and found multiple Braves near the top of the list.

Shockingly Pedro Feliciano – whom Amazin’ Avenue has illustrated almost never has a day off – wasn’t in the top 10. In fact, Feliciano’s longest streak is seven, but he also had a chain of six and five games. He’s pitched in 25 games without a day of rest; 19 with one; 10 with two; and 8 with three or more. To put it simply: Jerry Manuel works Feliciano really, really hard.

Feliciano is a lefty and a tad more than 60% of his batters faced have been southpaws too, so it’s fair to assume he’s brought in for match-ups quite a bit, but he still averages nearly three batters faced per appearance and only about 15 pitches per inning. A solid point that Bennett touched on is that nobody criticizes a manager for overtaxing his reliever until the reliever shows sign of distress. It’s true, when was the last time you read about Manager Y overworking Reliever X unless it came after a bombing?

During a five game streak in which he had zero off-days, Feliciano was horrible; 53 pitches, 2.2 innings, a walk, two strikeouts, and a home run. The kicker? Most of that damage came in the first four games: 30 pitches, 1.2 innings, the homer, all of the hits, none of the strikeouts or walks though.

A managerial staff not known for its astute sense in numbers had the foresight to ignore the previous four days, where it looked like Feliciano was tapped out, and called upon him once more as if his last name were Martinez and Jerry Manuel just knew that Pedro Martinez throwing left-handed on no rest was still better than whatever else they had in their pen.

Or maybe Manuel and company are just foolish. I ran Feliciano’s OPS numbers since 2006 based on days of rest. With none, his OPS against is .730; one day is .580; two days is .810. We’re dealing with some small sample sizes here (zero: 333 PA, one: 276 PA, two: 142 PA) but it looks like Feliciano is more than capable of pitching decently on short rest and the Mets are using him appropriately.

This week we’re taking a look at some of the top rookies in Major League Baseball in an attempt to ascertain who is the most deserving candidate for Rookie of the Year in both the American and National Leagues. Today, we’ll take a look at three rookie pitchers in the National League who have performed fairly well in their first seasons as they chase the Rookie of the Year award. On Monday we looked at the top rookie hitters in the AL, on Tuesday we looked at the top rookie pitchers in the AL, and yesterday we looked at the top hitters in the NL.

J.A. Happ, LHP, Philadelphia Phillies

The 26-year-old Happ has truly made a name for himself this season, so much so that the Toronto Blue Jays insisted that he be included in any deal for former Cy Young winner Roy Halladay. The southpaw is pitching well in the heat of a pennant race with just 99 hits allowed in 121 innings of work. His rates are solid too at 3.05 BB/9 and 6.62 K/9. A word of caution, though, as Happ is being aided by a low BABIP allowed of .256 and he is a fly-ball pitcher. His repertoire includes a fastball that averages out around 90 mph, as well as a cutter, changeup and occasional breaking ball.

Kenshin Kawakami, RHP, Atlanta Braves

Kawakami has arguably been the second most reliable rookie starter in the National League in 2009, although in fairness he’s a 34-year-old Japanese veteran. The right-hander has allowed 112 hits in 118 innings of work, while posting a walk rate of 3.74 BB/9 and a strikeout rate of 6.41 K/9. He’s had a little trouble with the long ball and he gives up his fair share of fly balls. Kawakami averages out at 90 mph on the fastball and his repertoire includes a number of pitches, including a curveball and splitter. The Japanese native pitches better at home (3.28 ERA) than on the road (4.92 ERA). Kawakami has been battling through some minor ailments as of late.

Randy Wells, RHP, Chicago Cubs

Wells has been a godsend for the Cubs in 2009 and the organization almost lost him in 2007/08 when the Toronto Blue Jays organization nabbed him in the Rule 5 draft. After just one MLB appearance, though, the Jays cut Wells loose and Chicago gladly took him back. The converted catcher is 26 years old, but he is big, strong and has a fresh arm. So far this season, Wells has allowed 102 hits in 107.2 innings of work. He has an excellent walk rate at 2.02 BB/9 and a respectable (but low-ish) strikeout rate at 5.68 K/9. Right-handed batters are having a much more difficult time hitting for average against Wells (.228) than left-handers (.288). He’s approaching his career high in innings pitched.

Quick Hits: Jordan Zimmermann (Washington) was on pace to be a legitimate Rookie of the Year candidate before blowing out his elbow. Now it looks like the pitcher – who was leading rookie starters in K/9 – will undergo Tommy John surgery and miss all of 2010. Tommy Hanson (Atlanta Braves) has pitched just 73.2 innings so he falls short of qualifying for consideration this week. With a great final month and a half, though, he could vault himself into the race.

Tomorrow, we’ll wrap things up.

Ok you probably didn’t need me to tell you that. And it probably could have been said weeks ago, but coming off his 10 strikeout, no walk, 13 GBs on 19 balls in play performance I thought it would be a good time to mention it.

Chris Carpenter effectively lost the last two years to injury, so coming into this year it was a question if he could stay healthy, and, if so, how effective he would be. Well yes he has stayed healthy and he has been very effective, with a K:BB ratio north of 5 and over 52% grounders per balls in play.

He throws a two-seam fastball, a slider and curve. All three are solidly above average, each worth about 2 runs per 100 pitches.

+----------+-------+-------+
|          |  vRHB |  vLHB |
+----------+-------+-------+
| Fastball |  0.44 |  0.48 | 
| Slider   |  0.35 |  0.23 |
| Curve    |  0.21 |  0.29 |
+----------+-------+-------+

Roughly speaking he throws the fastball half the time and the slider and curve each a quarter of the time. This is a relatively small fraction of fastballs, a testament to the strength of his breaking pitches. He throws his slider a little bit more to RHBs and his curve a little more to LHBs, as is to be expected. But the difference is small compared to most pitchers who rarely throw a slider to opposite handed batters.

His fastball has standard two-seam movement, lots of tail into RHBs and not as much ‘rise’ as a four-seam fastball. Because of this movement, and the fact that it is often low in the zone, 61% of balls in play off of it are grounders. He gets it in the pitchf/x strikezone over 60% of the time. It is the prototypical strike/grounder pitch.

His curve has huge vertical movement; its spin causing it to drop ten inches more than it would just due to gravity. It gets 32% misses per swing, not up there with the top curves, but solidly above average. It also induces a fair number of grounders (55% per ball in play).

The location of his slider to LHBs and RHBs is interesting.

First off, these pitch locations are very ‘tight’ compared to other pitchers, displaying Carpenter’s good command of the pitch. Against lefties he uses it to pound the inner half the zone, almost like Rivera does with his cutter. Nothing is outside, and a fair number are right along the inside edge, rather than out over the middle of the plate. I think it is this ability to locate the pitch so well that allows him to throw it more often than most righties throw their slider to LHBs.

Against righties, he throws more of them out of the zone down-and-away. These induce a very high percentage of out-of-zone swings, resulting in whiffs and weak contact.

St Louis’s rotation has really fallen into place. Carpenter has come back strong from injury, Adam Wainwright is pitching excellently as expected, Joel Pineiro has reinvented himself as a control/groundball specalist and Kyle Lohse provides a serviceable fourth starter in a potential playoff rotation.