What follows represents some assorted observations from the first four days of our new season. Note that this effort, in no way, represents an attempt on my part to summarize or encapsulate the action thus far. Rather, my intention is merely to — from one curious fan to another — to report those findings as might be of some interest.

Monday, April 05
Turns out, moderating a sweet live chat — while clearly the thrill of a lifetime — doesn’t allow so much for the ol’ baseball-watching. Fortunately, I got my head out of the netbook long enough to behold Sergio Romo’s majestic slidepiece in his appearance versus Houston. It’s an incredible pitch, featuring close to 10 inches of glove-side movement, relative to a league-average mark of about 2.5 inches. Nor is this merely a product of an unusual release point, as Romo induces about 2 more inches of arm-side movement on his four-seamer (8 inches versus 6) than league average. All in all, with Romo, you’re getting close to 20 inches of horizontal differential between the fastball and slider. His whiff rate of 13.4% isn’t exactly Wuertzian (26.2% last season on the slider), but it doesn’t prevent Romo’s out-pitch from representing something of a spectacle.

Also of note is how Kyle Blanks jacked a terrific donger into the friscalating dusklight of an Arizona sky. During Triple-A Portland Beavers Media Day last year, I shook his (i.e. Blanks’s) hand. It was kinda like meeting Paul Bunyan. If Paul Bunyan had an afro, I mean.

Tuesday, April 06
This episode of I, Claudia’s took place less amidst the drunken revelry of my area sports bar and more in the confines of a local community college, where I watched games during a pastime commonly referred to as “office hours.” Utilizing the “mosaic” feature on MLB.TV, I was able to do something kinda smart — namely, to watch three games simultaneously while listening to a fourth, Colorado at Milwaukee, via the Brewers flagship station, WTMJ.

In case you didn’t know, Bob Uecker is officially the Voice of the Brewers, and he’s the sort of person you might refer to as a “wise guy.” Here, for example, are three notable quotables from the first two innings of the game:

1. “I was there just in case Mark dropped any loose change.” (On why he attended a fundraiser at an area YMCA with Brewers owner Mark Attanasio.)

2. “One time I grounded into an unassisted double play to the shortstop. He tagged second base, then ran to first and got me, too.” (On his running ability as a player.)

3. “When you listen to Brewers baseball, you hear a lot of stuff that’s not talked about, or even thought of yet.” (From a rather protracted, and largely fictional, account of how Tommy John Surgery got its name.)

In other news, would you care to guess who was manning right field for San Francisco today? I’ll tell you: Andres Torres. Here’s something you may not know about Torres: CHONE projects him for 2.0 WAR in only 87 games and 321 plate appearances this season, largely on the strength of a 7.8 UZR in center. Actual starting center fielder Aaron Rowand is projected at 1.4 WAR in 137/549. The latter is owed more than $36MM through 2012. The former? He doesn’t even have three years of service time yet. To be fair, Torres’s recent success represents something of a renaissance for the journeyman. Of the 32-year-old, our own Dave Cameron says: “He was terrible most of his career. Being good is a recent development that everyone is still trying to figure out.” Still, it’ll be nice to see what sort of production he, uh, produces this year.

Wednesday, April 07
Here’s an interesting sequence in Cincinnati. It’s the top of the third, and, with one out, Johnny Cueto strikes out Albert Pujols exclusively on called strikes. The next batter, Matt Holliday, fists — yes, I said “fists” — he fists a ball that dribbles just to Cueto’s left. First baseman Joey Votto fields it and flips to Cueto, but the latter has some trouble with his footwork, whiffs on Votto’s toss, and is unable to record the out. During the next plate appearance, Cueto appears unsettled, perhaps even as though he’s tweaked a hammy — a fact about which the Cardinals broadcast team makes note. A quick pan to Dusty Baker and pitching coach Bryan Price reveals the two discussing how much they like toothpicks — whether it’s a lot, or super a lot.. Holliday steals second and Rasmus walks. After whiffing at a slider, the next better, Ryan Ludwick, hits a grounder between third baseman Scott Rolen and shortstop Orlando Cabrera. I’d be tempted to call it a “seeing-eye single,” but I feel like that might do a grave injustice to the abstract concept of sight. After the ball gets by Rolen and ricochets off Cabrera’s glove, Holliday scores.

A quick shot of Johnny Cueto appears to catch the young pitcher mouthing the phrase “There’s no place like home.” Only, you know, in Spanish.

Thursday, April 08
I’m telling the truth and nothing but the truth when I say that FanGraphs contributor and known math snob Jack Moore is posting about C.J. Wilson’s dominant Thursday start exactly one hour from now. I’m telling a lie when I say it’s because I ordered him to do it at knifepoint.

Win some, lose some, America. Win some, lose some.

Randy Wells did something that Cubs’ pitchers had previously found difficult last night. He locked down the Atlanta Braves in rather generic fashion.

Wells’ line is anything but spectacular. He struck out one batter and walked two, but he didn’t allow a home run (or a run of any kind) in large part because very few balls were hit into the air. Of the 21 balls put into play against him, 13 – or over 60% — were hit on the ground. Combine that with 60% strikes and it’s pretty clear that Wells’ game plan was simply to pound the zone with his sinker and let his infielders do the rest.

Pitchfx has 35 of Wells’ 97 pitches classified as sinkers, an additional 20 as four-seam fastballs, 23 more as change-ups, and the final 19 as sliders. Roughly three-fourths of his sinkers went for strikes of the called variety, since only one was swung at and missed. In fact, the only pitch that Braves’ batters had a hard time connecting with was his change-up, which generated an impressive five empty swings.

The Braves only managed six hits, with a Martin Prado double being the only of extra base variety. They definitely had some chances though. In the second, with runners on first and third, the Braves had the unfortunate coincidence of pitcher Tommy Hanson going to the plate. He would fly out, but the Bravos would threaten again the very next inning, as the bases would be loaded for Troy Glaus. On a 1-1 pitch, Glaus rolled to third and became the victim of a double play.

The Braves’ run expectancy at the time was a game high 1.5, they wouldn’t top 1.0 for the remainder of the game, as Sean Marshall, Esmailin Caridad, John Grabow, and Carlos Marmol would combine to shut the door and Wells earned the first victory of the year for the Cubbies.

There are going to be some nights where Wells doesn’t have passable command or movement on his pitches, and that’s fine, because there are also going to be nights like this, when the opposing team pounds the ball into the dirt, only to become one easy out after the next.

I made mention yesterday of the five worst pitches at inducing ground balls once contact is made. All five happened to be fastballs. Before I get to the five best pitches, unsurprisingly dominated by breaking pitches, I wanted to highlight four pitchers who happened to have fastballs that were actually competitive with the league’s best breaking balls at garnering ground balls.

While Russ Springer and company were chucking up straight four-seamers that hovered around 17% on the ground ball rate, these four were so far on the other end as to need a galactic wormhole to see each other. Randy Choate topped all in the land with his fastball recording a ground ball a remarkable 69% of the time it was put in play. Cla Meredith and Sean Green equaled that mark though were a few fraction points below. And Jeremy Affeldt was at 67%. Together, those four were above and beyond what other fastball throwers managed, the average remember being around 39%.

Of course, there’s a catch. Cla Meredith, Sean Green and Randy Choate are all extreme side arm throwers. While their offerings are technically not two-seamers, the angles they create make them act just like sinkers nonetheless. Though they may not belong in the same comparison as the fastball pitchers mentioned before, they still deserve attention for racking up such high ground ball rates off any type of fastball-like pitch.

Just like those with the fly-ball-prone fastballs had overall fly ball batted ball profiles, the pitchers listed here have some of the most ground ball heavy profiles in the Majors. However, given that three of the four are sidearmers, I decree that the true title for having the best worm-burning fastball in baseball last season goes to Jeremy Affeldt.

The Pirates and Dodgers played a matinee inside of a mostly barren, occasionally damp, but always beautiful PNC Park today.

Paul Maholm started for the Pirates. He’s a nice enough pitcher. His FIP last season was sub-4 for the first time in his career. He’s not an ace by any means and his game is all about groundballs. His fastball averages a little under 90 miles per hour. I was talking with Marc Normandin during the game and raised this question: Has any team been more stuff averse than the Pirates over the last few seasons? The only mainstay Pirates’ arm since Oliver Perez left that had good stuff is Ian Snell.

Curious and having plenty of time to do some SQL fiddling, I punched a query into the Baseball Databank and found that, since 2000, the Pirates have had three seasons where a pitcher topped 100 innings and also had a K/9 over 8. The top non-Perez and Snell entrees on the query were Kris Benson (in the year 2000) and Kip Wells. That’s just no good for Pirates fans who double as tools whores.

I wanted to test my claim a little more though, and began punching through other teams, using that arbitrary 8 K/9 number as the baseline and 2000-2008 (I don’t have the latest release of the Databank yet) as the timeframe. Here’s what I found:

Team Total
STL 1
SEA 1
TEX 1
ATL 2
COL 2
OAK 2
BAL 3
PIT 3
DET 4
LAA 4
TBA 4
TOR 4
CHA 5
WSN 5
CIN 6
MIL 6
CLE 7
HOU 7
MIN 7
PHI 7
NYN 8
NYA 9
SFG 9
SDP 10
FLA 11
LAD 11
ARI 12
BOS 13
CHN 18

Close, but not quite. Of course, you could argue that strikeouts per nine is not the best way to judge stuff, and you’d have a point. Still, it seems that a team like the Pirates under previous management would’ve surrounded flame-throwing starters like moths around … well, flamethrowers. Evidently not so.

Bill Simmons, ESPN’s Sports Guy, may be the most popular sports columnist on the internet, but until recently he was a saber denier, writing about how people like you and me were making baseball less fun for him. Until the day after April Fools, when the Sports Guy finally, proudly proclaimed himself a member of our ranks. He explained: “I stopped writing about baseball these past two years when the sabermetrics movement became too complicated for my liking… Fundamentally, it’s moronic.” So he decided to learn more about stats, and recommended all of his readers familiarize themselves with OPS, OPS+, UZR, VORP, WAR, BABIP, and FIP.

You’ve read Bill Simmons — pretty much everyone has at some point. He’s funny, he’s ubiquitous on ESPN, and he’s been prominent for more than a decade, basically a lifetime in internet terms. If you’re not from Boston, you may have gotten annoyed at how happy he was when every single one of his teams kept winning, but that’s who he was: he wrote like a fan, and just about every sports blogger to follow in his footsteps has consciously or unconsciously borrowed from his style. As Rany Jazayerli has written, “If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Simmons is the most flattered writer in America.”

But the most-imitated sports writer in the country barely wrote about baseball in the last two years, during which time we’ve seen nearly every team in baseball turn to sabermetrics either implicitly or explicitly (by hiring someone like Tom Tango or Josh Kalk), and we’ve even seen a few more beat writers willing to integrate sabermetrics into their dispatches, like Chico Harlan of the Washington Post and the sainted Joe Posnanski. Beginning this offseason, many Fangraphs writers have written for ESPN, first on the hot stove and now on a new baseball stat-oriented blog, TMI. And they’re bringing in their fans and readers, slowly but surely.

Still, few institutions have the readership of Bill Simmons. At this point, he’s about as mainstream as mainstream gets. Now that Simmons is one of us, his favorite stats are mainstream, too. If he keeps writing about FIP, UZR, and WAR, they will gain a much wider currency than ever before. Of course, that also means the nuances will be missed, the stats will be misused, and faulty conclusions will be drawn. Just days after the Sports Guy’s stat piece, in which he’d condemned Bobby Jenks on the basis of FIP, Matthew Carruth responded on the TMI blog to point out the drawbacks of FIP and merits of xFIP when evaluating relievers. Simmons’s conversion doesn’t mean that stats will be understood better, just more widely.

And that’s enough. As T.H. White wrote in The Once and Future King, the best way to spread an idea is simply to make it available. That’s what the Sports Guy did. (He also linked to me in the UZR section, which was — I’ll admit — a thrill.) Welcome to the mainstream, fellow freaks!

Last night — while I had the pleasure of chatting with not one but two Royals fans — Luke Hochevar pitched seven and two thirds shutout innings. One game’s worth of data is, of course, of limited interest and Hochevar only struck out two Tigers, but one very encouraging sign was the speed on Hochevar’s fastballs. In the first inning he was throwing gas: his four-seamer worked around 96 mph and topped 97 mph three times. He was clearly excited to start the season as the speed dropped down after that, but his four-seamer still averaged over 95 mph and his two-seamer averaged over 94 mph. Even his last pitch — a 94 mph two-seam fastball — was up there.

Last year his four-seam fastball averaged 92.5 mph and his two-seam, 91.5mph. So it looks like he was about 2.5 mph faster, not an insignificant difference. Last year his fastest four-seam fastball was 95.8 (compared to 97.2 last night) and fastest two-seamer was 94.8 (compared to 96.2 last night). Here is how last night’s four-seam fastball speed compared with his past starts:

The difference could be because of the pitchf/x system running hot, but the system is very good now with very slight day-to-day and park-to-park differences. Looking at the other pitchers in the game: Max Scherzer’s fastballs were right were they were last year; and most of the game’s relievers’ pitch speeds seemed in line with their past, the exceptions being Joakim Soria and Phil Coke who were just one mph faster. So it looks like Hochevar really was throwing that fast.

Although the relationship is not perfect, generally a faster fastball is a better fastball. Last night Hochevar didn’t have many strikeouts, but generally pitchers who throw faster fastballs strike out more batters and on a per-pitch basis faster fastballs are missed more often when they are swung at. If Hochevar works around 95 to 94 mph rather than 92.5 to 91.5 mph with his fastballs he might be in line for a breakout season.

When, earlier this morning, the Brewers announced a press conference my first reaction was, “Prince Fielder?” Alas, that was not to be. Instead, we learned shortly thereafter, they would announce the extension of RHP Yovani Gallardo. In the early afternoon Adam McCalvy noted that the deal will be for five years and $30.1 million, with up to $42.5 million possible if the Brewers exercise an option for a sixth season. At first glance this seems like a good deal for the Brewers, but let’s take a closer look at the deal.

Though the deal is for five years, that includes 2010, meaning that it replaces Gallardo’s current $450,000 salary. He’ll earn a $500,000 salary for the 2010 season, plus a $1.25 million signing bonus, broken down into three payments, the last of which he’ll see on November 15. That will increase to $3.25 million in 2011, $5.5 million in 2012, $7.75 million in 2013, and $11.25 million in 2014. That represents Gallardo’s seventh service year, so it replaces his first-year free agent salary. The 2015 option is for $13 million, with a $600,000 buyout, making it easy to decline in case of injury.

There is no questioning Gallardo’s talent. He has the stuff and the command to succeed in the majors, and at age-24 could have many quality years ahead of him. It took him just 77 innings at each of high-A, AA, and AAA before getting a call to the majors in 2007, where he pitched as well as could be expected of a 21-year-old. His ERA, FIP, and xFIP all fell below 4.00, his xFIP running the highest because of a 6.6 percent HR/FB ratio. Gallardo was also on a nice path of building up innings. After throwing 155 innings in 2006 he increased to 188 in 2007.

It was in 2008 that Gallardo faced issues. It started in camp when he had surgery to repair a torn lateral meniscus in his left knee. The Brewers placed him on the DL to start the season, but he was still able to make his first start on April 20. He pitched as well as the Brewers could have asked through his first two starts, allowing one run on 10 hits and five walks, striking out nine in 14 innings. He had a bit rougher go against the Cubs on May 1, but there were extenuating circumstances.

Leading off the fifth inning Reed Johnson laid a bunt down the first base line. Prince Fielder scooped it and applied the tag, but Gallardo had to leapfrog Johnson, who was sliding head first into the bag. He came down hard on his right knee and rolled on the ground writhing in pain. It appeared to be bad, but he rubbed some dirt on it, threw some warm-up pitches, and finished the inning by retiring the next two batters. And then he came out for the sixth, though he ran into some trouble there. It was only later that they discovered that he had torn his ACL.

That caused Gallardo to miss most of the season, returning only for a brief start on September 25. His full comeback happened last year, when he again kept his ERA, FIP, and xFIP below 4.00. This time his FIP ran the highest, as 12.3 percent of his fly balls allowed left the park. His strikeout rate, 9.89, rose more than one per nine innings over 2007, though his walk rate was a bit high, at 4.56. The sink on his fastball also allowed him to keep 45 percent of balls in play on the ground. If he improves that walk rate in 2010 he could fit the mold of a true ace.

His new contract represents good value for the Brewers while providing ample personal security. His injury history consists only of the minor knee surgery from spring 2008, plus the freak ACL tear from the same year. Other than that he’s been relatively healthy, so only the normal pitching concerns apply. It’s understandable, still, why Gallardo would want to secure a guaranteed $30 million. He probably left a bit of money on the table through his arbitration years, but that’s expected of these types of extensions.

The deal represents a near duplicate of the extension Jon Lester signed with the Red Sox before the 2009 season. Both Lester and Gallardo had a bit over two years’ service time at the time of extension, and the payout seems similar, as all figures are within $500,000. Boston negotiated a smaller buyout of the sixth year, $13 million option, just $250,000, but these are essentially identical. In addition to similar service time, they also pitched a similar number of innings upon signing, 354.2 for Lester and 327, including Monday’s seven-inning start, for Gallardo.

Even if the Brewers pick up the 2015 option, that would leave Gallardo a free agent at age 31. We’ve seen a number of pitchers cash in at that age. A.J. Burnett was 32 when he signed his five-year, $82.5 million contract, and John Lackey, who signed the same deal this off-season, is 31 himself. Josh Beckett, who just signed a four-year, $68 million extension, will be 31 in the first year of the deal. The market will likely be different by 2016, but if Gallardo stays healthy he’ll surely get one more big payday.

Yeah, it’s only been one start, but I want to talk up Ian Kennedy… something I’ve actually been doing since he was traded from the New York Yankees to the Arizona Diamondbacks this past off-season.

The right-handed Kennedy made his National League debut on Wednesday night against the San Diego Padres in Arizona. He gave up three runs (all in the second inning on a three-run homer to Scott Hairston) and six hits but showed big-league stuff by striking out eight batters. The key for Kennedy is clear: command the fastball. With a fastball in the 86-91 mph range, it sat right around 87-89 mph on Wednesday night. The majority of his eight strikeouts came on change-ups (four), followed by fastballs (three) and a curveball (one). This is encouraging because it shows that Kennedy had two out-pitches going on the night, which will really help him given his average fastball velocity.

The bulk of his six hits allowed came on the fastball (four). Kennedy has thrown a slider in the past but I did not see much of one against the Padres; he utilized a fourth pitch, but it looked to be more of a cutter, which caused a number of lazy fly balls. In this game, his control looked better than his command and he was consistently around the strike zone.

There are certainly some things to work on for his next start, which will likely come against the Los Angeles Dodgers’ powerful, yet youthful, lineup. Along with improving his fastball command, it would be nice to see Kennedy induce some more ground balls, and also be more economical with his pitches; He had thrown 82 (68% for strikes) after just four innings and finished with 94 pitches thrown. Fittingly, his final out of the game came on a strikeout of another promising, young player in Kyle Blanks.

Kennedy was removed for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the fifth inning with the D-Backs trailing 3-1 in the game. It turned out to be a smart move, as pinch-hitter Rusty Ryal singled for Kennedy and later scored in the inning. The D-Backs tied the game up in the fifth and stormed back to win the game 5-3. FYI: Ryal hit was an opposite-field single, and the rookie had an impressive pinch-hit at-bat.

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One of the things that I don’t think I did all that well during the organizational rankings series is communicate how the three different sections (current talent, future talent, and management/ownership) were weighted. I should have been more clear about the relative importance of each, so, with that in mind, let’s talk about what makes a healthy organization.

To me, it starts at the top. Even if you have a talented team with a strong farm system, having executives in place who don’t value talent well or evaluate it well is a pretty significant hindrance. I don’t want to pick on the Mets too much, but let’s use them as an example.

A year ago, I rated them #5 in baseball on the strength of a roster that looked to be one of the best in the game. With Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, David Wright, and Johan Santana, they had four legitimate franchise players to build around, and they regularly run one of the highest payrolls in the game. I’ve never been much of an Omar Minaya fan, but that kind of talent and access to resources overwhelmed what I felt were shortcomings in the front office. I weighted the talent on the team more highly than the people putting the roster together. Whoops.

Players get hurt. Or, sometimes, they have bad years. A good management team can insulate a roster so that a couple of tough breaks don’t ruin a team, or at least make some solid moves to help the team recover when those bad breaks occur. The Mets didn’t do any of that. They threw a lot of money at bad baseball players, then stared in disbelief as the team fell apart. Their answer this winter? Throw a lot more money at a decent player who probably won’t age very well. And now, the Mets are a mess, despite the fact that they have some good players and some legitimate prospects.

Meanwhile, other teams without as much talent or money are building winning teams by finding value players and putting together rosters with depth to overcome injuries. They have front offices that understand where to find value in the market, and can put together a roster that can contend, even without four superstars or a $150 million payroll.

It isn’t just the current Mets; The Yankees didn’t win very often when they were poorly ran, even though they always had a lot of talent and a lot of money to spend. It’s easy to look around the game and find talented underachievers whose organizations are wallowing in the bottom of the standings because of poor management.

You don’t have to do things The FanGraphs Way, as I hope the respect we gave the Twins shows. But, it’s nearly impossible to win on a consistent basis without a front office that excels at creating value for their franchise. The teams that sustain success are the ones who are well run and have a process that leads to future development of players and the ability to acquire useful pieces to put together a roster. More than what you have on the field now, or in the farm system for later, it’s the people in the front office who determine how successful the organization will be.

In terms of how the three areas were weighted for the rankings series, it was roughly something like 45 percent management, 35 percent current talent, and 20 percent future talent. Having a roster full of good players, or a stocked farm system, only takes you so far. Without a front office that knows what they’re doing, it won’t last.