If you remember back to the stone age, before FanGraphs existed and we had a veritable cornucopia of batted ball stats at our disposal, you may recall a time when pitchers were judged by their ratio of ground balls to fly balls. G/F rate was often used as a tool to describe a pitcher’s type of batted balls allowed. In general, it works fairly well. At some extremes, however, it breaks down.

Take Lenny DiNardo, for instance. He returned to the majors last week, being called up by Kansas City to fill a hole in their rotation down the stretch. DiNardo’s primary skill has always been an ability to rack up groundballs, and his first start of 2009 was no exception. In fact, if we looked at his 8.0 G/F rate, we would think that hitters were pounding the ball into the ground all day.

They weren’t, however. There’s an additional batted ball type – line drives, and DiNardo gave up six of them. When you include those in the balls in play denominator, his GB% is 53.3%, which highlights the fact that he got a majority of groundballs but doesn’t suggest the same crazy performance than an 8.0 G/F rate implies.

Now, this is obviously a tiny sample, and the correlation between G/F rate and GB% is very high. 95% of the time, either one will give you the same answer. But it’s that 5% that G/F rate may lead you astray. Let’s use a slightly more realistic scenario, also from this year.

Who has been more of a groundball pitcher this year – Jason Hammel or Brett Anderson? Hammel has the higher G/F rate, 1.46 to 1.36, though the difference is small enough that you might just conclude that they’ve been basically the same. However, when looking at their overall batted ball profile, Anderson has a 48.8% GB% and Hammel has a 45.5% GB%, which is a big enough gap to say that Anderson has clearly been better at getting ground balls.

Their line drive rates (23.4% for Hammel and 15.4% for Anderson), not included in the G/F measurement, hide the fact that Anderson has been more of a groundball guy than Hammel. In fact, by ignoring the line drives that Hammel is giving up, it actually gives an incorrect answer to the question.

In practical terms, this is more of a current issue with minor leaguers, where we don’t have the same quality of batted ball data, and a pitcher’s G/F rate is still quoted with some regularity. Just think of this as a word of caution – while G/F rates work when line drive rates are equal, line drives are not always equal.

Illustrated edition.

Yesterday I talked about San Francisco’s closer Brian Wilson and his breakthrough season. I mostly attributed his recent success to an increase in horizontal movement on his fastball. Since I don’t have my own Pitch F/x database and am to lazy to learn MySQL, I asked our own Dave Allen if he could give me a hand with some Pitch F/x graphs. Dave was suffering with some internet issues and wasn’t able to oblige me until the post had already published, but I thought it would be a shame to not put the graphs to good use. They really bring out the dramatic change in the movement of Wilson’s fastball, and more.

Wilson’s 2008 fastball had the speed of a normal 4-seam fastball, but almost cutter-like movement. This year’s edition is much more 4-seamer’ish. What also stands out his his breaking pitches are a little ‘sharper’, for a lack of a better term.

According to the Pitch F/x data available here at FanGraphs, Wilson’s slider had five and a half inches of horizontal movement last season, and .8 inches of vertical movement. This year’s slider averages 3 inches of horizontal movement and 1.2 inches of vertical movement. I take it that Dave has his own smarter pitch categorization system that differs from straight Pitch F/x, which is why you see more cutters than sliders in Wilson’s 2009 graph.

Whether you want to classify the pitch as a hard slider, cutter or ‘slutter’ or what have you, it’s plain to see Wilson is a bit of a different animal this season.

Thank you Dave.

Mired in off the field issues, Elijah Dukes’ arrival in D.C. allowed him to focus on baseball instead of the latest police blotter. Last year he was remarkably solid, hitting 13 home runs in a little under 350 plate appearances and posting a .382 wOBA. Even his defense was decent enough to nearly earn Dukes a three win season.

This year, everything has fallen apart.

His nose is shiny clean to his credit, but the baseball side of things has gone sour. Coming through the Rays system Dukes had a few major claims to fame: 1) he had the power of a bull, 2) the discipline of a monk, 3) the build of Ray Lewis, 4) Matt Kemp’s abilities mixed with Shawn Kemp’s sperm. These attributes accumulated into a corner outfielder with solid on-base and slugging percentage capabilities. So when you look at Dukes’ .258/.338/.416 line, you wonder what’s going on.

His walk rate is 10.4% which is above league average, but below what Dukes showed in the prior 500 plate appearances in the majors (~15.2%). He is striking out less, expanding his strike zone more often, and making more contact but not hitting for any power in doing so. His .158 ISO is easily a career low, and barely above league average.

Dukes is seeing an average of 3.7 pitches per plate appearance or 1,305 pitches in 352 plate appearances Prior to this season Dukes’ P/PA was 3.8. Not quite a radical shift in approach. What is a radical shift for Dukes is the amount that he’s swinging, 52.2% at this point; his career average is 46.3% including this year.

A passive hitter upon arrival, Dukes would look for a pitch to drive and if he had to take a walk, he would. He’s still taking some walks, but he’s no longer driving anything for extra bases. To be a successful major league hitter Dukes is going to have to get back to what got him here, and I don’t mean tomfoolery and hijinks.

When Dan Haren was traded from Oakland, some questioned whether his abilities would transfer as well in a non-crater ballpark. A shift to the National League probably helped and Haren’s home run per fly ball rate was never unspeakably low, but those questions have been put to sleep with back-to-back golden seasons. Haren recently topped the 200 innings mark for the fifth consecutive season and he’s got a nice little trend occurring with his strikeout per nine ratios:

His overall strikeout percentage has increased right alongside his per nine ratio and right now he’s striking out about a quarter of all batters faced. Combined that with a career low walk ratio and it’s no surprise that his FIP is the second best of his career; an uptick in fly balls and downed infield fly ball percentage has his tRA at the third best.

Sky Kalkman detailed the usage and recent fascination of the cutter in baseball here. Go ahead and add Haren to the list of users. Baseball Info Solutions has a career high 22.4% of Haren’s pitches being thrown as cutters. This pitch – sitting 86-87 – has enough velocity separation from his fastball and slider that I would guess it’s not a case where a pitch is being misclassified. Haren’s cutter represents his best pitch on an overall run value and per 100 basis:

wFB: 11.4 (0.83 per 100)
wCT: 18.0 (2.66 per 100)
wCB: 0.2 (0.03 per 100)
wSF: 9.1 (2.28 per 100)

Gameday is identifying a sect of Haren pitches as a cutter as well. The difference is the usage. Gameday says 6% which is a pretty drastic differential. Just eyeballing his slider velocity (GD: ~83-84, BIS: 80-81) it seems one or the other is mixing up the sliders and cutters. I’d guess the algorithm is the one mixing things up here, but the pitches do look pretty similar minus velocity, so maybe his true usage lays somewhere in the middle of the two percentages.

Whether the success is fully wedged on the implementation of a cutter or not, Haren is certainly doing something right.

At the risk of digging up the carcass of a dead horse just to kick it again, I want to take a second and point out something Joe Morgan said about the A’s in his his most recent chat on ESPN.com. Yes, I know, highlighting things from a Joe Morgan chat isn’t exactly a new idea, but my aim is not to ridicule Morgan, so hopefully you’ll travel down this well worn path with me.

Morgan’s comment:

Otto (CA)

Hello Joe. What do the Oakland A’s need to do be competitive again? Maybe Billy Beane should quit writing books and start acquiring some athletes.
Joe Morgan (11:07 AM)

Become more athletic. Sometimes, when I look at the A’s players, I think they’re playing softball. They have some big guys who try to hit the ball out of the ballpark. They strike out a lot. They just are not in position to make things happen on the basepaths. They’ve never really been a team to run or steal bases, bunt guys over or hit and run. They’ve always tried to hit the big home run. Now they have one guy in Davis. Their philosophy was working for a while, but now that philosophy doesn’t work any more. You have to be more athletic, steal some bases in order to be a well rounded team. You don’t have to steal a lot of bases, but you have to have the threat there.

Among American League teams, the A’s rank last in home runs and fourth in stolen bases. They are eighth in the league in strikeouts, in a virtual tie with the Minnesota Twins, one of the most athletic teams in baseball.

Joe is wrong about the A’s, of course. For whatever reason, he still believes the A’s are built around players like Matt Stairs and Erubiel Durazo, but that hasn’t been the type of player Oakland has been putting on the field for several years now. The A’s are a very athletic team.

Rajai Davis, as Morgan notes, is exactly the kind of player he’s pushing for. But so are Matt Holliday, Ryan Sweeney, Orlando Cabrera, Adam Kennedy, Mark Ellis, and Kurt Suzuki. The A’s built their 2009 team as a club that they expected to be excellent defensively with enough offense to get by. The failure of Jason Giambi and Jack Cust to carry their part of the load doomed the offense, but there certainly wasn’t a lack of athleticism or base stealing in Oakland this year.

The A’s haven’t been the slow, methodical, base-clogging mashers for quite some time. Despite the public perception of that being the “philosophy” of Beane and statistical analysts everywhere, Morgan has actually missed the bigger picture that most numbers crunching teams have begun to play his style of baseball. As smart teams realized that defense was being undervalued, they began to shift towards quality athletes who could create runs in the field as well as at the plate.

The humorous thing about Morgan’s comments is that, by and large, we’re fans of the same kinds of players that he is. And so is Billy Beane. Can’t we all just get along?

Last week, as part of my purposeful attempt to single-handedly destroy FanGraphs, I submitted a question for the reader’s consideration: “Knowing what we know about the brain, is it possible that we might start to measure how happy certain baseball events make us?” The question, I suggested, got at what Bill James regards as the raison d’etre of baseball: as a thing to be enjoyed.

A number of the commentariat said, “No, and you’re a jerk.” Some others were more forgiving, but also suggested that it was, at best, a fool’s errand. Two or three guys sent me disgusting photos of themselves in various Manet-inspired poses. (Please stop doing that.) And finally one guy, Ken Arneson, said that, while it might be impossible, he was trying real hard to do it and that the field of neuroesthetics was helping.

If the name Ken Arneson is familiar, it’s because he was the owner-operator of both Humbug Journal and Catfish Stew, both of which (a) the author discontinued earlier this year, and (b) ought to be required reading for this nation’s children. It’s on those sites that Arneson explores the “Why we watch” question — sometimes explicitly, sometimes not as much.

Arneson consented to be interviewed last Friday by means of EtherPad, a program that allows multiple users to create and edit a document. Hence, the “etherview.”

Finally, I should note that, in what follows, Arneson and I use some discipline-specific terminology. All of these terms are explained in a six-part post that Arneson wrote at Humbug called “Keeping Score in the Arts”, a sort of primer on the subject of neuroesthetics. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you take a gander at said piece.

***

Carson: Because I’m from New England — a.k.a. Land of the Bucklehat — and because we have rules about this in New England, I’d like to start off by exchanging pleasantries. By which, I mean to say, “Hello. How are you?”

Ken: I have a two-year-old who is currently refusing to exchange pleasantries, so I need to set a good example. So: Hi, I’m fine, thanks!

Carson: Well, actually, your two-year-old might serve as a good entree to our discussion. We’re here because — well, I’m here because I write for FanGraphs. The reason you’re here is because your work on Catfish Stew and Humbug Journal is very literally the work of genius.

As for the two-year-old, in one of your posts on Humbug you get into a discussion about habituation. Habituation, or lack of it, is the thing that makes peekaboo funny for a young person* — because he/she hasn’t figured out that, merely because your face is gone, that it’s not actually gone-gone…

What I mean to say is: Does your two-year-old still like peekaboo?

*Ken writes about the art of peekaboo here.

Ken: No, she’s mostly past peekaboo now. You have to play a pretty sophisticated form of peekaboo now for her to have much interest. But it’s a good place to start the study of why we like what we like.

Any theory on measuring our enjoyment of entertainment, such as a Linear Weights of Joy or some such thing, has to account for how our tastes change throughout our lifetimes.

Carson: Right. Like you mention in one of your posts that a person, when coming into contact with art, is always sort of trying to find some place between cliche and unhabituation (your phrase). It’s hard for an adult to like Miley Cyrus or whatever because the hooks she uses and the lyrics (I love you, life is so complicated, blah blah blah) are roughly the same as all the pop music before it. The adult already gets it.

On the other side, if a work taps into absolutely nothing that’s familiar, then it (i.e. the work of art) is merely lost on its viewer, listener, whatevs.

Ken: Yes. My two year old won’t understand how cool Tim Lincecum’s pitching motion is. That goes right over her head. She does understand “throw” and “hit”. She’s got a lot of learning to go until she can understand that Lincecum’s pitching motion is unusual.

Carson: Restated: your child won’t understand how cool Lincecum’s pitching motion is, because she doesn’t know it from Adam (Wainwright’s pitching motion). There’s no point of reference there?

Ken: Right. To back up a bit, I started getting interested in the question of “Why do we like or dislike stuff” in college. I took a class in Comedy, thinking I’ll read some funny stories and have a good time. But my professor was obsessed with that question, and that class has stuck with me ever since.

The professor was convinced that the quality of the artwork was in the artwork itself. But I’ve since come to think that’s not quite right. Because the quality judgment depends on the audience. The two-year-old is going to think that Shakespeare sucks.

Carson: It’s true. Two-year-olds hate Shakespeare. They can barely even read!

Ken: My two-year-old thinks the greatest artwork in the world is an animated film with pandas who sing about potty training.

Carson: To be fair, that sounds kinda great.

Okay, to reiterate the “main point” of this. I wrote in my article that I’m surprised at how much time we spend answering the “how do you win” question as opposed to “why we watch” or “what we like” questions and b) that there is a lot of room to improve how we make the decision to watch one game versus another.

But, discussing children, I realize my 15-year-old brother, who plays all the sports in the world, can barely sit down long enough to watch a plate appearance of a baseball game. He’s a nice, smart kid, but we’re clearly watching two different things. At what point do our brains start develop a criteria for enjoying a game? Is it different for different people?

Ken: I think sports fans who visit sites like Fangraphs prefer to think about the “how do you win” question more than the average fan; that’s why they are there.

The great works of art work on multiple levels. They can work superficially on a first viewing, and keep giving you new and interesting things to see after multiple viewings. Mediocre works of art can be viewed maybe once or twice, but get boring after that. Bad works fail from the start.

Baseball is such a great sport because you can enjoy it at a 15-year-old level, but study it more and find brand new ways to enjoy it.

There comes a time, though, sometime in adulthood, where habituation (is this a novelty or not?) starts to take a back seat to classical conditioning (is this pleasurable or not?). You enjoy things now because you enjoyed them before.

My musical tastes froze when I had my first kid. I barely know any new music since 1997. I now mostly enjoy the music I listened to in my youth.

Carson: Benny Goodman? Patty Page?

Ken: My youth, not my father’s youth. I’m stuck in the 80s.

Carson: At Humbug you go into some depth describing the probable effect of art on the brain. You say that it’s a way for the Android Brain (which represents declarative memory) to talk with the Animal Brain (which represents nondeclarative memory). Now, I know you’re not wild about those terms now, necessarily, but the concept is interesting.

Essentially, art that doesn’t hit us on a gut level isn’t art at all.

Ken: Yes. At UC Berkeley, they’ve held an annual conference on neuroesthetics, of which I’ve attended a few. Neuroesthetics is a new science, which is basically the study of how the brain judges art. Attending the conferences kinda reminded me why I’m an engineer and not a scientist. They’re basically cataloging all the various components of art and brain science, but nobody seems to be in a hurry to theorize.

I’m not that patient, so I started taking what I had learned, and tried to theorize. Basically, my theory is this:

* We have two kinds of memory: declarative memory (which is conscious, and contains facts and events), and nondeclarative, or procedural memory (which is subconscious, and contains patterns and motor skills).

* Language is a tool for deliberately transferring declarative memories from one person to another.

* Art is a tool for deliberately transferring procedural memories form one person to another.

Carson: I want to connect that to baseball in a second. Before I do, though, I’m curious: What was the reaction to this stuff when you wrote it? This was March of 2004.

Ken: There wasn’t much reaction at all. “Oh, that’s interesting” was about it. But nobody engaged me on it. So I figure that either (a) I’m wrong, or (b) I’ll be like that guy who came up with plate tectonics and then was forgotten for 40 years or so.

Carson: Jerry Lewis?

Ken: Alfred Wegener.

Carson: Oh, right. I always get those guys mixed up.

Okay, so how this relates to baseball is… I mean, why is it that watching Roy Halladay’s two-seamer “completes me” in a way that almost nothing else does?

Ken: When you’re watching Halladay’s two-seamer (or for me it’s B.J. Upton’s swing) you’re using your procedural memory system. That’s the part of your brain that handles pattern recognition. That pattern is something that triggers a response that, at first, you view as highly interesting–that is, you’re not used to it, and it’s different enough each time that it still somehow surprises you each time you see it. Then as you see it more and more, you become classically conditioned to it–the initial pleasure begins to reinforce itself, and you want to see it again and again.

Carson: That idea of being surprised is interesting. The sociologist Barry Schawrtz discussed in his Ted Talk, “The Paradox of Choice” — he talks about how, on account of the there are so many of each product available now (chunky tomato sauce, old style tomato sauce, tex-mex tomato sauce) that it’s impossible to experience one of the most excellent feelings around — namely, the feeling of being pleasantly surprised. Instead, the consumer is always thinking, “Ah man, I would’ve probably been so much happier with the incredibly-similar-but-still-slightly-different tomato sauce.” The sense of regret is inevitable almost.

The poet Kenneth Koch championed surprise, as well. The poem “To You” is constantly surprising — and excellent for that reason.

Ken: Yes, but it’s not just surprise alone that makes us like something. It needs to both surprise AND fit the context. If I’m watching a game and the power goes out, that’s a surprise, but it usually won’t make me think the game has improved as a result. It kicks me out of the context instead of revealing something new about the context.

To create a new memory, you need two existing, unconnected neurons being fired by the same stimulus. A surprise that doesn’t match the context only fires the surprise neuron, not the context neuron. To put it another way, you need the stimulus to be simultaneously surprising AND not surprising, appropriate AND not appropriate.

That’s why peekaboo works. You’re there, but you’re not there.

Barry Bonds‘ home run feats are more surprising and impressive if you don’t have a clue that he took steroids, if you think what he did changes what you believe is actually humanly possible. Change the context, and the surprise goes away, and the pleasure with it.

Carson: What about Yuni Betancourt taking a walk? Because that would be really surprising.

Ken: Ha, yes. And if he did it to, say, win a pennant in a walk-off, it would be even more surprising. What a great story that would be.

Carson: Yes. Because it would also mean that the Royals had not only finished over .500 but made the playoffs…

Okay, well what I like about you, Mr. Arneson, is your willingness to produce some theories despite a lack of empirical evidence. I mean that honestly. It seems as though neuroscience and -esthetics is not prepared to say exactly what’s happening in the brain that allows us to enjoy this or that. Thing is, that doesn’t matter to me, Carson Cistulli, very much. What I need to know is: How does neuroesthetics help me right now (regardless of if the science is imperfect or not)?

So, to the matter at hand, my original concern: How do I know what game to watch tonight? What game is most likely to provide the certain experiences (plate discipline in batters, movement on pitches, etc) that I like? Is it possible to work towards a Linear Weights of Joy?

Ken: I can afford to theorize because I’m not a professor, and I have no career to damage by being dead wrong.

I think it is possible to works towards a Linear Weights of Joy, as long as you remember that where we’re taking the measurement isn’t on the field, it’s in your head. You have to measure Event X for Audience Y. And I’m not sure how you collect the measurement for Event X.

As for Audience Y, I suppose you could do a PECOTA-like method, where you cluster similar audience types, and then try to figure out which audience cluster you fall in, and then project which events you’d like from there. It would be like collaborative filtering technology, I guess, or the formula Malcolm Gladwell wrote about.

Carson: Do you think the appeal of certain baseball events varies that widely? It seems like certain things (i.e. Upton’s swing) are just inherently great.

Ken: It will vary quite a bit if you compare a two-year-old to a nine-year-old to a fifteen-year-old to an adult. But maybe not within the adult population, I don’t know. Perhaps, though, to keep things simple, you should start with a Marcel of Joy, and work your way up to PECOTA of Joy at a later date.

Boston Red Sox first base prospect Lars Anderson entered 2009 as the top overall prospect in the system, according to Kevin Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus. Anderson, 21, had originally been signed to an over-slot deal after being selected out of high school in the 18th round of the 2006 amateur draft.

In pre-2009 comments, Goldstein stated, “He projects for big numbers in all triple-slash categories, and should come lumbering into the middle of the Boston lineup by 2010.”

I was even more aggressive in my adoration of Anderson prior to 2009 and said, “Lars Anderson is the club’s top prospect and he could be knocking on the big-league door by mid-2009… He had an impressive walk rate of 17.9 BB%, but struck out at a rate of 32.3 K%.”

Interestingly, it wasn’t Anderson’s strikeout rate that doomed his 2009 season. It actually dropped from 32.3 K% in 133 double-A at-bats in 2008 to 25.5 K% this season. His walk rate was lower, but it remained more than respectable at 12.4 BB%. The most glaring drop was in the batting average. It dipped from .317 in high-A/double-A in 2008 to .233 in double-A in 2009. His BABIP played a huge part in the shift as it went from .367 (A+) and .435 (AA) to .293. His line-drive rate went from 19.9% (cumulative) last year to 13.0% in ’09.

It’s clear that Anderson’s small sample size numbers at double-A in ’08 (.316/.436/.526 in 133 at-bats) helped to gloss over the impact that the launching-pad-known-as-Lancaster had on his numbers (.921 OPS). That success may have very well buoyed his confidence for his late-season promotion. Even so, a .250 drop in OPS is shocking to the system. After slugging five homers in 133 double-A at-bats in 2008, Anderson hit just nine all year in ’09 in 447 at-bats. His ISO dropped from .200 to .112.

The good news is that Anderson’s plate rates held strong despite his struggles. His pre- and post-All-Star numbers are so different that it’s easy to speculate that a hidden injury may have been the root cause for the steep decline (.272/.366/.413 vs .154/.250/.208). The really good news is that Anderson played the season at the age of 21, so he has plenty of time to turn things around. Incumbent first baseman Kevin Youkilis or even Casey Kotchman can easily hold down the fort until the youngster is ready. He’ll just have to watch over his shoulder for Anthony Rizzo.

Not much has gone right for the Cubs this season, as a team that many thought would be among the league’s best has fallen on tough times. However, despite the disappointing season, there have been a few things that have gone right, including the continued success of Ryan Dempster.

Last year, Dempster surprised the world by moving from the bullpen to the rotation and improving significantly in the process. His breakthrough season was so unexpected that it wasn’t hard to find people who considered him to be a fluke, just the latest in a series of guys having great years before they are eligible for free agency. Dempster certainly did cash in on his success, signing a 4 year, $52 million contract with the Cubs after the season ended.

And he’s been worth every penny so far.

Dempster has retained almost all of the skill-based value he showed last year. His walk rate and strikeout rate are both down a bit in proportion, so his K/BB is basically unchanged from 2008 to 2009. His HR/9 is up, which accounts for the higher FIP and ERA that he’s posting this year, but that was to be expected – his 7.7% HR/FB rate from last year was unsustainable, and regression in that would have been expected even if Dempster had pitched exactly the same as the year prior.

His groundball rate is the same. His contact rate is the same. His percentage of strikes is the same. Dempster is basically repeating his 2008 season, just with a little less good fortune in HR/FB and BABIP. If you were concerned with 2008 being a fluke, 2009 should have eased your minds a bit. He’s now put together two very good seasons in a row and is establishing himself as one of the game’s better starting pitchers.

Between Dempster and Cliff Lee, we’ve seen two pretty compelling cases for the ability of pitchers to take big steps forward in the middle of their careers and sustain them thereafter. Not all out of nowhere seasons are unsustainable flukes. Sometimes, they just really did get better.

The Giant’s Brian Wilson is a fun player. He looks more rock star than ballplayer, what with his mop hair, tattoos and tight pants. He even brings his own brand pyrotechnics to the mound with a blazing fastball that at times has been clocked in the triple-digits. While Wilson accumulated 41 saves for the Giants last year, those saves came with a bloated 4.62 ERA. His 3.93 FIP indicates that he pitched a little better than his ERA, but that is not what you would by and large hope for from your closer.

This year, Wilson has emerged from being a .6 win player to a 2.3 win relief ace. 2+ wins represents the upper echelon for relievers. So why the improvement?

Wilson’s heater has long been his meal ticket. His average velocity has seen a nice bump from this year to last, from 95.7 to 96.5 MPH.

Not only has he been able to crank up the heat, but perhaps more importantly the pitch also has considerably more movement than before. Looking at his Pitch F/x numbers, Wilson’s fastball used to be straight as an arrow, averaging just less than half an inch of horizontal movement. This season, Wilson’s fastball has much more tail, with -3.5 inches of horizontal movement. It’s probably no coincidence that batters went from slugging .390 against Wilson in 2008 to just .301 this season.

What’s more, Wilson has improved upon his control. Last season he walked a little over 4 batters per nine innings, this season he’s down to about 3.4 per nine.

With an enhancement in ‘life’ to his fastball and increased control of the pitch, “B-Weez” has blossomed into one of the game’s best closers. Giant fans haven’t enjoyed this kind of “Smoke on the Water” in quite some time.

In three weeks, Andrew McCutchen will celebrate his 23rd birthday on the first Saturday of the post-season. The Pirates hold no hopes or prayers of continuing play on that Saturday – they’ll wrap the season up the Sunday prior – but you can’t place much of that blame on their young center fielder.

A .270/.347/.459 line is way solid from a righty who primarily plays in PNC Park. Throw in 11 home runs and 16 (of 20) steals and McCutchen is living up to his billing. His walk rate is an impressive 10.4%, but I wouldn’t expect that to be the floor moving forward. Throughout the minors McCutchen only topped 10% in walks once, that coming at Triple-A in 2008. His ISO is higher than we’ve come to expect from him as well. I suppose the encouraging sign on that front is that his Triple-A ISO is identical to his major league number, so he has at least flashed similar power, albeit at a lower level.

McCutchen doesn’t seem to be expanding his zone too often and when he swings, he usually makes contact. The interesting aspect is how much he’s struggled with non-fastball pitches. Right now he’s absolutely devouring any heater thrown at him (a 1.13 run value per 100) but check out the run values per 100 on other pitches:

SL: -1.66
CB: -1.38
CH: 2.68

Perhaps he has some issues in identifying sliders from fastballs which could make for something worth watching as the league adapts to him in future months.

Defensively the sample size is extremely small. UZR suggests he’s a hair above average in center field and the Fans Scouting Report seems to agree with this take; placing him ahead of centerfielders like Josh Hamilton and Rick Ankiel (also Brett Gardner, which is odd.)

After taking over for Nate McLouth and seeing Nyjer Morgan, Jack Wilson, and Adam LaRoche find new homes, McCutchen has solidified himself as the face of the Pirates. Mock all you want; he’s doing the crossbones and eye-patch proud.