Between 2005 and 2007 Austin Kearns posted wRC+ of 107, 118, and 107 with the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals. Then something happened – namely his batting average on balls in play bottoming out – and Kearns’ wRC+ in 2008 and 2009 topped out in the 70s. Such struggles were exacerbated by declining playing time in an overstocked outfield. Kearns’ stock plummeted and the first-time free agent found himself with little in the way of options.

Kearns wound up accepting a minor league deal offer from the Cleveland Indians. The possibility of a spot on the major league roster was evident through and through. Sure enough, Kearns showed up in shape and passed the Indians’ gumshoe inspection. A month and some into the season, and the low-risk maneuver is paying dividends in real life, much like it has in fantasy leagues across the land. Just look at this comparison:

2010 – 112 PA, 32 H, 3 HR, 18 R
2009 – 211 PA, 34 H, 3 HR, 20 R

Kearns’ numerical renaissance extends into the land of sabermetrics too. A .411 wOBA places him amongst one the game’s best hitters to date. Clearly a .439 BABIP is unsustainable given what we know about Kearns, but those plate appearances are in the bank. Kearns’ early success and phoenix-like return from his ashes is reminiscent of the Carl Pavano situation from last season. With Michael Brantley and Trevor Crowe around, it might not be outlandish to expect Kearns’ names to raise in trade rumors as the deadline approaches either.

Back when Kearns signed with Cleveland, Matt Klaassen drew a comparison between his career arc and that of Indians’ general manager Mark Shapiro. Klaassen even went as far as to call the pairing serendipitous. That works. The direct relationship between general manager and player is illustrated nicely on the margins. When a high priced player busts or when a lowly spring training invite, like Mr. Kearns, recaptures shine and illuminates his front office’s aptitude with every stroke.

Shapiro’s reputation has experienced dimming with Travis Hafner’s and Kerry Wood’s contracts, but he’s certainly looking bright with Kearns.

If you’ve ever listened to a broadcast when a struggling power pitcher is on the mound, you’ve inevitably heard the sermon on why good stuff isn’t enough to succeed in the big leagues, but that you have to know how to pitch, which only comes through years of experience and learning.

Sergio Santos would beg to differ. The former shortstop, drafted in the first round by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2002, gave up on hitting last year after an eight year minor league career. The White Sox turned him into a relief pitcher, hoping that his strong arm would translate into success on the mound, but it was a rough transition to say the least. He threw 28 2/3 innings, gave up 37 hits, walked 20, struck out 30, and posted an 8.16 ERA. The velocity was there, but the results were not.

It was just the first year of the experiment, however. He came to camp showing significantly better command and, mostly because he was out of options, made the White Sox bullpen. His performance to date has been nothing short of shocking.

His season line, including today’s performance: 14 1/3 IP, 8 H, 1 ER, 7 BB, 18 K.

This is a guy who entered the year with less than 30 professional innings under his belt. He was nothing short of terrible in his first exposure to pitching, and yet, here he is in the big leagues, blowing hitters away.

He’s mixing three pitches – a mid 90s fastball, a hard biting slider, and a surprisingly good change-up. He’s been good against both left-handed and right-handed hitters. He’s throwing strikes, getting ahead in counts, and forcing hitters to chase nasty breaking balls in the dirt.

Yes, it’s 14 innings, but so far, Sergio Santos is out-pitching almost every big name reliever in baseball. It’s a testament to how much improvement he made in spring training, the skills of White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper, and, truthfully, how very easy it is to be a relief pitcher if you have a good arm. And Sergio Santos has a very, very good arm.

Last night, Mike Pelfrey picked up his fifth win of the season, throwing seven and two thirds innings of two-run ball against Atlanta. Although Pelfrey is not as good as his traditional numbers suggest — those five wins and a 3.02 ERA — he has pitched slightly better this year than previously. His xFIP is 4.09 this year compared to a 4.60 career average. That change is largely the result of his increased strikeout rate: 6 K/9 this year, almost a full strikeout per nine more than his career average.

That could just be noise, but Pelfrey is doing things much differently this year. Previously he threw almost 80% fastballs (relying heavily on his sinker) and 13% sliders along with the occasional curve or change. This season he has dropped his fastball percentage down below 70% and has started throwing a splitter, doing so 17% of the time.

This shift is seen dramatically when he gets to two strikes. Before this year he still threw lots of fastballs in these counts, 76% of the time. Fastballs have, on average, the lowest whiff rate, so going with a fastball in a two-strike count is not the best way to get a strikeout. As a result most pitchers throw fewer fastballs in two-strike counts and instead go with breaking or off-speed pitches. Pelfrey’s two-strike fastball rate was quite high compared to average. This year in two-strike counts he has thrown just 62% fastballs, and goes with his new splitter 24% of the time. I think these two-strike splitters, which should lead to more whiffs than his fastballs, play a big role in his increased strikeout rate.

These splitters could also help Pelfrey against LHBs (against whom his career xFIP is an ugly 5.22). Sliders, previously Pelfrey’s main non-fastball pitch, generally have a large platoon split and are ineffective against opposite-handed batters. Splitters, like changeups, have little to no platoon splits, so the pitch could be an important tool for Pelfrey against LHBs.

At this point it is too soon to say that Pelfrey’s splitter will lead to an increased strikeout rate, smaller platoon split or, generally, make him a better pitcher. But the early indications are promising.

Prior to and then during the 2010 season, the Mets made a number of questionable calls. It began during the off-season, when the organization did little to address its thin pitching staff, and extended into the season, when manager Jerry Manuel decided to employ Mike Jacobs, who has little use on a major league roster, as his cleanup hitter. In the past few weeks the team has made an effort to correct a number of these errors. We learned of the latest move in the early hours of the morning, when ESPN New York’s Adam Rubin reported that 20-year-old Jenrry Mejia will depart for the minors, where he’ll resume his career as a starting pitcher.

Mejia opened eyes with his performance last season, when he blew through advanced-A ball before striking out more than a batter per inning at AA at age 19. Manuel was so impressed that he personally scouted Mejia during his stint in the Arizona Fall League. Despite Mejia’s poor results — he allowed 20 earned runs in 14.1 innings innings and walked 13 — Manuel came away impressed enough to consider Mejia for his major league bullpen. Debate and speculation abounded during spring training, but by the end Manuel decided to bring Mejia to Queens, where he’d serve as a bullpen weapon.

In terms of performance, Mejia fared well during his 18 appearances. He pitched 17.1 innings, facing 77 batters, striking out 14 and walking 8. A home run or two hurt his overall numbers, though he had three meltdowns while shutting down opponents five times. The problem, though, is that Manuel often called on him in low leverage situations. He pLI was just 0.84, hardly the stuff of a go-to setup man. Even though he did his job well, his impact on the team was limited. The decision to restart his career as a starter, then, makes sense.

His stuff, of course, will need honing. He threw 80.8 percent fastballs in the majors, and cannot lean on that pitch as frequently when starting. He’ll have to continue honing all of his secondary pitches, including his curveball, which he threw 10.1 percent of the time, and his changeup, which he threw 9.1percent. He also has a slider, which he didn’t use in the pen. The Mets will also have to see how his velocity and stuff plays as he stretches out. Pitchers typically add a few miles per hour while in the bullpen, so Mejia will have to survive with a little less zip on his fastball. The inclusion of his secondary pitches should help him adjust, but he’ll have to throw them effectively, which is no guarantee at this stage of his career.

Problems could arise if the Mets believe, as Rubin implies in his lead, that they can recall Mejia in just a few weeks. Long-term this is the correct call, but it also requires patience that the Mets might not have right now. In the majors he might prove ineffective as a starter. He has only 161.1 minor league innings, and probably needs more experience before the Mets can reasonably rely on him in the rotation. In the past 10 years only 18 pitchers have started a game at age 20. Eleven of those posted an ERA+ around or above league average, and even of those three pitched under 100 innings.

Employing a starting pitcher in the bullpen can be an effective teaching method. Earl Weaver broke in his pitchers this way. Instead of receiving feedback every five or six days and then anxiously awaiting atonement for a poor performance, pitchers can gain more frequent feedback in the bullpen. Said feedback can help them make adjustments more rapidly. That method, however, seems like a better idea for a pitcher who has already developed his secondary pitches to a reasonable degree. While the feedback might have helped Mejia’s development, the dormancy of his secondary pitches might have equally hurt it.

As Dave noted in the Mets organizational report, their management hasn’t demonstrated the ability to make sound, long-term decisions. Two straight collapses from the playoffs followed by an injury riddled disaster of the season can have that effect on a club, especially one as prolific as the Mets. There comes a point when management will make short-term moves in order to stay in place. Recalling Mejia this season would appear to be one of those decisions. The best thing for the long-term health of the organization might be for Mejia to take his lumps in the minors. That might be the only way he can buy enough time to more fully develop his repertoire and become a top of the rotation weapon for the Mets in the future.

Before the season began, some people (such as myself) expected the Milwaukee Brewers to at least give the St. Louis Cardinals a fight for the National League Central title. It wasn’t hard to look at an offense that featured Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, and Rickie Weeks as one that could put runs on the board, and there were enough arms on the pitching staff that I liked to think that they could outscore the opponents on most nights.

It hasn’t happened. After losing last night, their seventh consecutive defeat, the Brewers stand at 15-23, seven games behind the first place Reds and six and a half games behind the Cardinals. They are one of only five teams in baseball with a winning percentage below .400. They are certainly better than they’ve played, but, at this point, the hole may be too large for them to climb out of.

With 124 games to play, assuming that they’ll need to win 92 games to give themselves a good chance of winning the NL Central or the Wild Card, they would have to play .621 baseball the rest of the way to make that happen. As much as I like some of the players on this roster, I don’t think anyone can realistically expect the Brewers to win 62 percent of their remaining games.

There’s also the problem of the Reds. It’s one thing to be trying to run down just the Cardinals, but when you add a second team to the mix, you limit the chance that you’ll win by default, as your competitors fall by the wayside. With just one team to overcome, there’s a chance that they could face serious injury issues or have a prolonged slump of their own, but that is far less likely to occur to both St. Louis and Cincinnati simultaneously.

Realistically, the playoff chances for the Brewers appear slim for 2010, and with that reality staring them in the face, it’s probably time for them to put Prince Fielder on the trading block. Ryan Howard’s crazy extension only served to make it even less appealing for the Brewers to attempt to re-sign their slugging first baseman, and with his 2010 value being diluted by his teammates’ poor play, it makes the most sense to deal him this summer.

It’s not the outcome that Milwaukee had in mind when they put this roster together, and they do have enough talent to right the ship and get back to a winning record, but they are far enough back in the NL Central where its getting to be time to change directions. Six weeks of bad baseball can sink a season, and in the case of the Brewers, it probably has.

Yesterday, Erik Manning penned a really nice reminder piece about the lackluster history of first round draft picks. I have seen the traffic jumps at enough websites to know that fans are becoming really interested in their respective organization’s bonus babies, but it’s important that pieces like Erik remind us what we’re getting into. With his permission, I’m kicking off a series in which I look at this position by position, with 3 elements: 15 years of history at a given position (in a similar manner to Erik’s), then a look at current minor leaguers at that position, and finally, a look at the prospective first round draftees. We’ll see how it goes, but we begin today with the backstops.

From 1988-2002, thirty-one catchers were drafted in the first round of the June Amateur Draft. Ten draftees would never play in the Major Leagues, a group that includes six high school picks, the one junior college player, and three college guys. Another eight picks can safely be called busts, having produced between -2.4 and 0.1 WAR at the big league level. This group consists of five college players and three high school busts. This leaves 13 players that have produced 2 WAR or greater in the Majors. Here they are, ranked by their pre-2010 career WAR, according to Rally’s historical database:

Name               WAR    From
Jason Kendall      37.1    HS
Joe Mauer          33.1    HS
Jason Varitek      22.6     U
Charles Johnson    21.9     U
Paul Konerko       17.2    HS
Mike Lieberthal    15.4    HS
Dan Wilson         13.7     U
Jayson Werth       13.4    HS
Scott Hatteberg     8.5     U
Brent Mayne         4.2     U
Ramon Castro        3.0    PR
Ben Davis           3.0    HS
Mark Johnson        2.0    HS

So, we have certainly established that the “boom or bust” perception of high school draftees holds water with the catcher position, which had a higher percentage of busts, but also the better production of WAR in the Majors. You can see that three players that were drafted as catchers — Paul Konerko, Jayson Werth, Scott Hatteberg — would have varying degrees of success in the Majors at a different position. My next step was to look at their minor league performances to try and identify some common theme. This began with looking at their builds on the minor league pages at Baseball-Reference.

Builds

I see three subsets of builds that are common among the 13 players. First, we have the smallish catchers, between 6-0 and 6-1, from 170 to 190 pounds. This consisted of these five catchers: Kendall, Lieberthal, Hatteberg, Mayne, and Johnson. Then, you have the guys that are 6-2 and 6-3, with their weight usually in the 200’s: Varitek, Johnson, Konerko, Wilson, Castro. And then the odd ducks are the tall guys: Joe Mauer, Jayson Werth and Ben Davis. While there is some variance within each subset, I think these work as solid outlines.

Low-A Production

Eight of the 13 players spent time in Low-A, with University of Miami product Charles Johnson producing the best (.827 OPS) batting line, and high school draftee Mark Johnson (.624 OPS) as the worst. The other six were all between .677 and .785 in the OPS column. And those numbers, I should mention, are what the top two catchers in this study, Jason Kendall and Joe Mauer, respectively produced at the level.

High-A Production

This is definitely where you can begin to separate the men from the boys. Five players had an OPS above .780, from highest to lowest in this order: Kendall, Mauer, Paul Konerko, Mark Johnson and Jayson Werth. This group is still in the process of completing very solid big league careers. Then, you have the three that were below .720 in OPS: Ramon Castro, Ben Davis and Scott Hatteberg. Not as solid.

Double-A Production

A wide variance again, but again, it’s Kendall, Mauer, Konerko leading the way, accompanied by Mark and Charles Johnson. For what it’s worth, first round catchers seem to speak well for using MLE’s in long-term projections: the best players performed the best at High-A and above. Only Jason Varitek (.733 OPS) seems to buck the trend.

Triple-A Production

I tend not to look at these numbers much, because there is a lot of noise. But Paul Konerko dominated AAA (1.030 OPS), while guys like Davis, Liberthal and Dan Wilson really struggled. Mark Johnson and Ramon Castro have been AAA lifers, and have proven themselves as full-fledged Quad-A players. Not a lot to look at here.

Bust Production

Of course, none of the above helps us identify busts if we don’t compare it with the 58% of first round catchers that were not successful in the Majors. It would be nice if all the busts were like Scott Heard or Jim Gonzalez, guys that were bad out of the gate and never teased prospect analysts. But how do we explain guys like Jeff Mathis?

What I’ve found from a lot of these players that separates them from the ones that would reach the Majors is a significant drop in production upon the move to Double-A. Mathis was deservedly a great prospect after a .884 OPS in High-A at a young age, but when he went down to .726 the next season, more warning signs should have gone off than actually did. Same holds true for marginal prospects like Ryan Christianson, and for a bad defensive player like Jeremy Brown. Finding a way to continue improving, and slight improvements from year to year might hold more weight than the numbers themselves.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back looking at the minor league players that were once first-round catchers, and see if they are on their way to becoming busts or big league success stories.

This past Saturday, the city of Portland, Oregon, USA, was treated to the most absolutely fantastic weather conditions that either God or resident billionaire/computer nerd Paul Allen — either one of them — could possibly produce. I mean, I can’t say for sure what it was like in the Garden before Eve partook of the fruit, but I’m guessing it couldn’t have been much nicer than the Rose City was on the most recent of Sabbaths.

Also, Portland has way more breweries than Eden seem to’ve had, so we’ve got that going for us, too.

Of course, as I write this on Monday evening, we in Portland and Vicinity are no longer basking in the sunshine. No, instead it’s showering lightly and about 15-20 degrees cooler. Nor should such weather come as a surprise: summer doesn’t truly descend upon the Pacific Northwest until after July Fourth. The change in weather isn’t ideal, but it has presented the raw material for a sweet analogy I’m about to make in re a kinda anonymous back-of-the-rotation starter.

Allow me to explain.

Last week, I was cordially invited to join the thoughtful gentlemen of Pitchers and Poets on their eponymous podcast. Among other sundry topics, we discussed Seattle Mariner Doug Fister and his season to date. Messrs Walker and Nusbaum — who, against all odds, are not the owners of a New York-style delicatessen — had a question about Fister’s place in the hearts and minds of Seattleites. They wondered, in concert, “Why is it that the more sabermetrically oriented of Mariner fans — why is it that rather than enjoying the run of success that Fister has experienced to date, that they must instead quickly remind any- and everyone who’ll listen that Fister is unlikely to continue such success.”

For those readers who aren’t hanging on every single one of Doug Fister’s sweet changepieces, here’s what you need to know about him: he doesn’t have overpowering stuff, but he’s got an excellent ERA (1.72), but he’s got a less excellent xFIP (4.25), but he’s also young enough (26) to be an interesting piece in Seattle’s rotation.

As to why certain Mariner fans might hasten to express reservations about Fister’s future, I think I might know why. And I think the recent brush with paradise here in Portland can help us understand.

Under the influence of such meteorological perfection as we here in Portland experienced this past Saturday — and with full knowledge that such weather is unlikely to last more than a day or two — a man has two choices: he can either (a) just enjoy the sunshine for what it is, or (b) eye the nice weather suspiciously, fully aware that it’ll be gone just as quickly as it came.

The first reaction is one native to a sort of person whom, for the purposes of the present work, we’ll call a Good Times Charlie (GTC). The GTC is the kind of man, woman, and/or child who, as Thich Nhat Hanh might say, is fully present in the moment. The latter behavior is typical of another sort, one we’ll call a Nervous Ned (NN). The NN, for better or worse, is unable to enjoy present conditions unless he’s pretty sure they’ll continue into the future.

Neither type — the Charlie or the Ned — is inherently good/bad. But recognizing such types can help us understand why certain fans might have reservations about Fister, irrespective of his success to date.

My guess is that the majority of real-live sabermetricians are of the Nervous Ned variety. This isn’t to say that sabermetricians can’t have a good time, but inasmuch as sabermetrics is the scientific method applied to baseball, those who practice it have trained themselves to possess a healthy skepticism. On account of Fister possesses such a considerable split between his ERA and xFIP, on account of he’s got a 2.1% HR/FB, on account of he sports an 88 mph fastball, and on account of said fastball features a pretty bogus 2.2% whiff rate (= not so good) — well, there’re reasons for skepticism.

In his defense, a true Nervous Ned is also a friend of those players — your Jay Bruces, your Derek Hollands — who’ve been disastrously unlucky. While the Charlie might only see Bruce’s .223 batting average from last year or Holland’s 6.12 ERA, the Ned recognizes the role of (bad) luck in those numbers.

The only real problem type is the heretofore unmentioned Jerky Jed. The Jerky Jed is the sort of fan who’ll sing the praises neither of Fister nor Bruce/Holland. The Jerky Jed is — not for nothing — a jerk. Don’t hang out with that guy.

Reputations and public conceptions are hard to shake, even in the light of contradictory evidence. The Red Sox through the 2000s were known as heavy hitting team thanks in part to the exploits of Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and a good supporting cast. With Ramirez gone and David Ortiz visibly declining last season, the Red Sox changed course over the winter and tacked toward a pitching and defense-oriented ball club.

Despite a recent spate of acceptance of the value of good defense can bring amongst mainstream fans and pundits, the praising of it still tends to be limited to teams with good overall records. After all, defense first is a strategy whose fruits are hard to see. People can easily digest the value of a home run. Excellent outfield range is a lot harder. So if the team is doing poorly after deemphasizing offense, then said plan comes under easy attack.

It’s no surprise that Boston’s 19-19 record and current fourth place standing in the AL East has them facing some of these criticisms. The problem is that Boston’s offense is not the unit that is letting down the team, far from it in fact. Even with the continued demise of David Ortiz the Boston offense remains strong. So strong that by batting runs alone, they rank fifth in the Major Leagues. They are well ahead of the sixth-ranked Tigers and within easy striking distance of third-place Minnesota.

What’s actually been felling the Red Sox involves more shades of gray than a simple black hole on offense. The bullpen has been mediocre to downright bad with high walk totals and only average strikeout figures. The defense has also been merely average when it was hoped they would be well above that. On top of that is a slight dose of bad luck in their expected wins and losses and the bad luck to be playing in a division with the Yankees and Rays, two teams everyone expected to be great, and the Blue Jays, who have legitimately played like one of the best teams in baseball.

The Red Sox current record is a result of many things, but most of those 19 losses are not the hitter’s fault and a fair share of the 19 victories are.

Many of you have submitted articles to FanGraphs that we’ve been unable to publish because there just hasn’t been a place for unsolicited article submissions. With the FanGraphs Community Blog, we now have a place where we can accept your original work.

Anyone with a FanGraphs account can now submit an article using our standard WordPress interface. Here are the basic rules:

– Each article is subject to approval. We have no idea what kind of volume we will get on article submissions, but we will do our very best to get to every single article within 24 hours.

– Your submission must be your original work. Do not submit articles you have not written yourself or that have a large amount of material that is not of your own creation.

– Your submission does not need to be unique to FanGraphs. If you have written a piece for your own blog and think it would work particularly well on FanGraphs then you may submit it for approval.

– You may submit a maximum of 2 articles per week. Submitting an unreasonable number of articles will result in having your posting privileges revoked.

Other than that, we’ll see how it goes and adjust the rules accordingly. Once the blog gets some posts in it, we’ll start to further integrating those posts into FanGraphs and give it some additional publicity.

If you already have an account, click here to submit an article: New Post

If you don’t have an account, you’ll need to register for one here: Register

If you have any questions, or issues submitting your posts, please fill out a contact form.

The Major League leader in strikeouts per nine among starting pitchers, with 11.9, is Brandon Morrow. He is second among starting pitchers in BB/9 with 5.9. If you put that together, and add in his three hit batters, 84 of the 187 batters Morrow has faced have struck out, walked or been hit by a pitch: a hair under 45%. That is tops among qualified starting pitchers, Clayton Kershaw is next with 43%, then Rich Harden with 41%, and those are the only three pitchers above 40%. So Morrow is something of an outlier in terms of keeping the ball out of play on a per plate appearance basis.

Morrow’s strikeouts are a product of his second-lowest 70.9% contact rate (only Tim Lincecum’s is lower). His fastball is electric and the key to that tiny contact rate. Thanks to Harry Pavlidis we know the average fastball generates 16% whiffs (misses/swing not misses/pitch), but Morrow’s has a 23% whiff rate. Since fastballs are thrown about 65% of the time, those extra whiffs add up quickly over the course of a game.

As you would expect for whiff-generating fastball from a fly-ball pitcher, the fastball is generally found up in the zone. Here I plot how much more (red) or less (blue) often you find Morrow’s fastballs in each bin compared to the average RHP’s four-seamer.

You can see they tend to be up in the zone. Against RHBs they are more often inside compared to the average RHP, and against LHBs more often outside. High fastballs tend to be whiffed more often, but also give up more fly balls.

All those extra fastballs up-and-in to RHBs and up-and-away to LHBs are also a big reason for Morrow’s big walk rate. The secondary effect of all those walks is that Morrow has not been able to go deep into games for the Jays, getting to the 7th inning in just one of his eight games. Morrow’s huge strikeout rate makes him an exciting, flashy pitcher, but until he gets his walk rate down that excitement has to be tempered.