Florida Marlins OF prospect Mike Stanton leads all the minor leagues with 13 home runs in 25 games. He’s playing in a league that typically depresses run scoring, in a home park that (as recently as two years ago) doesn’t make home runs easy (.94 HR Park Factor). If Stanton continues at this torrid pace, he will almost surely bypass AAA and move straight to Miami. Until then, he’ll have to make do as the Minors Top Hitting Prospect.

When he does get the call, teams will scramble for scouting reports to look for an edge over the Marlins newest toy. Talents like Stanton are the types that can swing a race in the second half, so you can bet NL East teams are hot after the big slugger’s weaknesses. He hasn’t shown many this year, but I thought going over a spray chart of his balls in play might tell us something. It does.

The 13 Home Runs

In all, we have six home runs to left, two to left-center, three to center field, and two home runs hit the opposite way. Six were off pitchers that have, at one time or another, been praised as legit big league prospects: Erik Cordier, Jake Thompson, Sean Watson, Dallas Buck, Justin Cassel and Nick Hill. Three home runs were against left-handed pitchers, and just two were on the road, but this is more a product of opportunity than an indictment of weakness.

The Ball-in-Play Hits

Culled from the play-by-play logs at MiLB.com, these certainly bear out some interesting results. Stanton has 18 hits this season that didn’t clear the fence: 12 singles and six doubles. Of those hits, six were classified as line drives, two as fly balls, and 10 as ground balls.

But most interesting is this; only 1 of the 18 hits was collected by a fielder on the right side; a line drive double on April 28. Of the other 17 hits, four were collected by the center fielder, four by an infielder on the left side, and the remaining nine went to left field. This means that throwing in the home runs, of Stanton’s 31 hits this season, just three have been hit the opposite way.

The Ball-in-Play Ground Outs

In total, Stanton has made 32 ball-in-play outs this season, and 14 of them have been ground balls. Again, we see a pull-heavy approach from the slugger. Half of his ground outs this season have been to the shortstop, and three more to the third baseman. Given that one ground out was to the pitcher, Stanton has grounded out to the right side just three times.

The Ball-in-Play Air Outs

First of all, I should note, Stanton has popped out to an infielder seven times this season. I don’t know how telling this is for the purposes of creating a spray chart, as an infield fly is just a ball that comes off the bat wrong. But it also represents Stanton’s most consistent opposite field approach: four of his seven infield flies when to the 1B or 2B.

This leaves us with 11 fly outs, which actually are a little more proportionate than the rest of his balls in play. Stanton has recorded an out to the left fielder five times, to the center fielder three times, and to the right fielder three times. That includes his lone sacrifice fly on the season, which went to right.

Note on the Danger of Minor League Batted Ball Conclusions

Not once this season has Mike Stanton recorded an out, and it noted in the play by play logs as a line drive. This classification seems to be very after-the-fact, so this should serve as a cautionary tale of drawing conclusions in a minor league prospect’s LD% or FB%. I can say however, with some confidence, that Stanton has a 11.1 IFFB% this season. But I just can’t believe he’s really hitting 1.000/1.000/2.375 on line drives this season. Whether his actual GB% is 38.1%, or his HR/FB% is actually 40.6%, as the play-by-play logs suggest, I leave that up to you.

Conclusions

Of course, sample size warnings apply here quite a bit, especially because Stanton only has 63 balls in play this season. Fans of True Three Outcomes players will be thrilled that one of their own is baseball’s top hitting prospect, as Stanton’s TTO% is 56.8% through 25 games.

If the Marlins do summon Stanton to Miami this season, you can bet that teams will know just how pull-heavy he really is. Of those 63 balls in play, just 13 (20.6%) have been hit the opposite way. If we remove infield flies from that number, we get 9 out of 56 (16.1%). While we don’t yet have the data to know Stanton’s preferences against different pitch types, his pull-happy nature should suggest that teams pitch him outside early and often when he debuts.

Baseball has no shortage of cliches. One of my favorites is when a manager or coach says that the starting pitcher gave his team a chance to win. Not that keeping your team in the game is a bad thing. Far from it. My amusement comes from how mutable the phrase has become. How good is good enough to give your team a chance? Does it depend on how many runs the offense scores? Or does the pitcher have to limit the other team to three runs? Or it is some other arbitrary number?

White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper has an interesting definition of a pitcher giving his team a chance to win. Speaking to the media after a 12-3 loss to the Yankees on Sunday, Cooper discussed his struggling starting staff. He didn’t put an exact number on it, but instead used a vague metaphor. “But it’s time to get people out and try to figure out a way to help us win games by fighting and clawing.” He then described John Danks’s effort the previous day, in which he allowed two runs through five innings, needing 118 pitches to accomplish the task.

Did Danks fight and claw through this start? It would appear so. His control wasn’t there, as he walked three batters in those five innings. He also threw just 55 percent of his pitches for strikes, so he found himself in a number of unfavorable counts. Yet he stranded six of nine base runners, escaping with just two runs to his name. He even left the game with a lead, thanks to yet another poor start by Javier Vazquez. That, to me, seems like fighting and clawing.

But did he pitch well enough to give his team a chance to win? I suppose you could say that, since he left with a 5-2 lead, that he did his job. Is five innings enough to earn that kind of praise, though? That leaves four innings to the bullpen, and we know how quickly bullpens can blow games. To that end, Scott Linebrink promptly blew Danks’s lead in the sixth, allowing three straight singles before Nick Swisher hit a three-run shot to right-center. That put the Yanks up 6-5.

Of course, the Yankees bullpen pulled the same act the very next half inning and the White Sox ended up winning the game. Despite the result, though, Danks’s effort was not enough. He might have fought, and he might have clawed, but I wouldn’t say that he pitched well enough to give his team a chance — a good chance, at least — to win the game. He left 4/9 of the game to the bullpen, which features, for the most part, pitchers not as good as himself. If he had turned in this type of performance against, say, the Mariners, maybe it would have been good enough. But leaving almost half the game in the hands of the bullpen against the Yankees offense? That doesn’t say “good enough” to me at all.

The Chicago bullpen hasn’t been all that bad this year. While its 4.07 ERA is a bit below average, its 3.54 FIP looks a bit better. As a unit it walks a few too many batters, but it also strikes out a ton. By most measures, it has performed better than the starting staff. But any bullpen, no matter how solid, becomes vulnerable when it has to cover four innings. That effect only becomes worse with the better offenses. It came as no surprise that the Yankees took the lead soon after Danks’s exit.

This isn’t to say that Danks didn’t pitch well. He held a tough offense to just two runs. But when that covers only five innings, is that enough to give his team a good chance to win? Considering the inherent volatility of bullpens, I’d say no. Then again, a quality start denotes six innings and three runs, and is generally categorized as an effort that gives a team a chance to win. So is a run and an inning difference that much? I guess that depends on the opposing team.

Now Jake Peavy. He gave his team a good chance to win on Monday. Jon Danks in his previous start? Yep. Great chance to win. Danks on Saturday, though? Not so much. The results appear favorable, but five innings and two runs against at top-two offense just isn’t necessarily giving your team a good chance to win.

Though it certainly was a well-fought and well-clawed act.

Nothing says Cinco De Mayo like a little chat de beisbol.

The Padres improved to 17-10 last night and are, in my mind, undoubtedly the biggest surprise story of the 2010 season thus far. This fast start is largely in part of fantastic pitching. The Padres pitching staff carried a 2.92 ERA and a higher but still stellar 3.74 FIP into their contest against the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night.

Tuesday’s starter Wade LeBlanc has been a large part of the tremendous performance. He held the Rockies to two runs on seven hits in six innings, striking out four and walking two, not allowing a home run. Remarkably enough, this was quite easily LeBlanc’s worst start – it was the first one in which he had allowed more than one run or had a negative WPA.

LeBlanc’s ERA skyrocketed up to 1.15 from 0.52 as a result of this start. His FIP is also no longer sub-2.00. LeBlanc has mainly succeeded to due a ridiculous 95.5% LOB% in his first three starts – only one of the 24 runners that have reached base off him have scored. Still, we’ve seen some very encouraging things in LeBlanc’s peripherals that suggest that he can be a successful pitcher in the major leagues.

LeBlanc’s strikeout rates in the major leagues in 2008 and 2009 were a very low 5.91 and 5.83 respectively. Given that LeBlanc is not an extreme control pitcher, these rates simply weren’t high enough for LeBlanc to produce at the major league level, and he compiled -0.8 WAR in those two seasons and 67.2 IP with the Padres. That rate is way up this year, up to 7.71 K/9, even after last night’s slightly lacking four strikeout night. That’s not a terribly surprising increase, as LeBlanc is still young, at age 25, and had a strikeout rate above 8.00 in two stints in AAA, as well as in A+ and AA. This increase is supported by an increase in swinging strikes, up to 8.8% from 8.2% in 2009 and 7.7% in 2008. LeBlanc is also walking fewer batters, at 2.31 BB/9, down from a 4.02 career rate.

Obviously, LeBlanc isn’t this good. He’s not going to be able to constantly strand runners. His stuff – an 86.7 MPH fastball, a cutter, a changeup, and a slider – likely isn’t good enough to strike out 7.7 batters per nine innings. He’s been a fly ball pitcher his whole career – 42.8% rate – and that hasn’t changed at all in 2010. However, the improvements we’ve seen so far suggest that LeBlanc has the potential to become a league average pitcher, and likely is no longer the below-replacement level pitcher that has been forced to bounce between the majors and the minors. For now, though, he’s getting the job done in a big way for the 1st Place San Diego Padres.

Cinco de Mayo is Spanish for “the Fifth of Mayo.”

Feel free to use that tidbit of information early and often.

Texas at Oakland | Wednesday, May 05 | 3:35 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Rangers: Colby Lewis (R)
32.2 IP, 10.47 K/9, 3.58 BB/9, .280 BABIP, 38.8% GB, 5.7% HR/FB, 3.61 xFIP
Projected FIP: N/A (FAN) 3.99 (CHONE) 4.39 (ZiPS)

A’s: Trevor Cahill (R)
178.2 IP, 4.53 K/9, 3.63 BB/9, .276 BABIP, 47.8% GB, 13.2% HR/FB, 4.92 xFIP (2009)
Projected FIP: 4.56 (FAN) 5.08 (CHONE) 5.05 (ZiPS)

This Is Not About Colby Lewis
Even though it’ll probably seem like it most of the time, Colby Lewis will not, in fact, be the only guy on the field this afternoon in Oakland. In fact, there are a couple-few players who — despite lacking Lewis’s direct connection to the godhead — have actually managed to distinguish themselves as worthy of the baseballing enthusiast’s attention.

Not the least of these players is Oakland starter Trevor Cahill. Cahill — along with other young Oaklanders Brett Anderson and Andrew Bailey — made his debut last year, and was actually rated as the organization’s number-two prospect (behind Anderson) in Baseball America’s 2009 Prospect Handbook. Despite having thrown only 37 innings of ball above Double-A before 2009, Cahill’s excellent K rate (9.96 K/9) over that time — combined with Oakland’s youth movement — created a space for him in Oakland’s rotation. Back in December, our man Dave Goleblahblah justified the confidence the A’s would’ve had in his success:

Sure, Cahill’s command sometimes abandoned him. But he drew as much praise as any pitching prospect in the game. And why not? In addition to all of those Ks, Cahill was a groundball machine. He burned worms at a 56.4% clip in 2007 and kept the ball on the ground 61.5% of the time in 2008. Generally, strikeouts and groundballs have an inverse relationship: one comes at the expense of the other. It’s rare to find a young pitcher so adept at making batters whiff or chop the ball into the dirt when they do manage to make contact.

In light of those expectations, it’s fair to qualify last year as a bit of a disappointment. After having missed a lot of bats at lower levels, Cahill posted a mark of only 4.53 K/9 in 2009. Nor was his walk rate of 3.63 BB/9 anywhere near low enough to let him be effective in the mold of Carlos Silva circa 2004-2008, or even Rick Porcello of last year.

The question for this start — for Cahill, in general — is whether he’s able to get some breathing room between his strikeout and walk numbers. Perhaps the answer is in altering his repertoire. As resident cyborg Dave Allen wrote last year:

Like many ground ball pitchers Cahill throws a lot of fastballs (almost 70% of the time), and the problem is he has not been very good at getting them in the zone. His fastballs are in the permissive pfx zone 50% of the time, compared to the 55% for the average fastball. This is one of those things that seems like a small difference but is not. The variation is fastball zone percentage is narrow, so 50% is quite low, and over the course of the whole year those extra balls really pile up.

A little snooping over at Texas Leaguers reveals that, last year, Cahill got swing-and-misses on 5.5% of his two-seam and only 3.3% of his four-seam fastballs. Though his changepiece generated whiffs 13.5% of the time, he threw it too rarely to bring his overall whiff rate to league average.

What’s peculiar is the almost complete absence of Cahill’s knuckle-curve, a pitch Baseball America described in 2009 as “nasty… a swing-and-miss pitch with hard downward movement.” Texas Leaguers shows a curve, but the whiff rates are modest, and the drop, though fine, isn’t otherworldly.

Okay, It’s a Little Bit About Colby lewis
The reader might not have access to ESPN Insider, which means the reader might not know that ESPN’s Jason Grey — while less immodest in his prose stylings on the matter — is also smitten with Mr. Colby Lewis. Gray has been riding the CPL train since at least March 9th, when, after attending an Angels/Rangers spring training game, he wrote of Lewis:

He worked two innings Monday. He did allow a solo homer to Mike Napoli (a big bomb to center field on a hanging curve), but was otherwise impressive, throwing 20 of his 26 pitches for strikes, working very quickly and efficiently, and being aggressive. He reached 92 mph a few times and had very good cutting action, and also showed he could throw his fastball to both sides of the plate. He mixed in a curveball that ranged from 74-79 mph that was sharp at times, but a bit inconsistent. He also mixed in some good 82-83 mph sliders, and even ran it in the back door against a few lefty hitters. There was a lot to like, and it was hard to believe I was looking at the same pitcher I saw a few years ago. I snagged him for $4 in the AL LABR (League of Alternative Baseball Reality) auction Saturday, and was happy then to do so. I’m even happier after seeing him Monday.

One of us! One of us!

All-Joy Alert
Three All-Joyers are likely to appear in this evening’s game: Mr. Lewis, Adam Rosales, Ryan Sweeney. Other All-Joyer Kurt Suzuki, unfortunately, is injuricated.

If I Had My Druthers
• Rosales, Suzuki, and Sweeney would all somehow turn a triple play together.
• Colby Lewis would somehow turn a triple play all by himself.
• He’d also turn the beat around.

In the 2005 amateur draft the Rockies popped Long Beach State shortstop Troy Tulowitzki at seventh overall. In retrospect, this draft is absolutely loaded with talent upfront. Four of the top 10 selections are all-star level players, three others are above average contributors right now, and only Wade Townsend has no chance of being a useful major leaguer.

Tulowitzki is one of those all-star quality players. He’s posted at least five wins in the two seasons he’s stayed healthy throughout and Colorado was fortuitous enough to sign him to a team-friendly extension. It’s fair to say Colorado has to be happy with their choice and it also seems safe to call Tulowitzki the best player taken outside of the top five. Plain and simple: The Rockies nailed it.

A year later they selected Stanford’s Greg Reynolds – a tree of a man – with the second overall pick. In 2007 the Rockies would once more hold a top 10 pick and would select another college arm in the form of Vanderbilt closer Casey Weathers. The assumption with college players is that they will generally be ready for major league action quicker than their high school counterparts. That assumption is usually true. Unfortunately for the Rockies, Reynolds and Weather have combined to pitch in 14 games for the big league team, and have a combined 5.61 xFIP.

Weathers is still recovering from a blown elbow that kept him out for the entire 2009 season. Meanwhile, Reynolds will begin a rehab assignment on Saturday after only pitching in one game during the 2009 season thanks to a shoulder injury. The pair has contributed more in the way of insurance payments than on the field achievements.

Writing “What if …” articles centered on draft selections is ultimately cliché and fruitless. The knowledge of who the Rockies would have drafted and how those players would have developed is either unavailable or just unknown. The one thing that can be said is that Colorado seems pretty apt at developing their guys – just take a yonder at their lineup, after all – and while they could not have projected injuries, one does wonder just how much better the Rockies would be if they had wound up selecting someone else instead of at least one of Reynolds and Weathers.

Dropped from Braves at the end of 2009, Kelly Johnson found little interest in his services and ended up in Arizona on a one year contract paying him just $2.3 million. Arizona gambled that Johnson would rebound from, among other things, a .247 BABIP in 2009 that severely depressed his offensive numbers. Rebound he has. Though his 2010 BABIP remains below his career rate, Johnson is hitting a superb .303/.394/.697, good enough for a .459 wOBA which is slightly above 2009’s .306 mark.

Johnson’s walk rate has returned to the level that he had the first few seasons of his career helped by a drop in out of zone pitches that he’s chasing. Despite a slight rise in how often he misses on his swings, Johnson’s strikeout rate has remained near his career level.

The real story for Johnson has been the power. Never much of a power hitter, Johnson is already at nine home runs and has another eight doubles to boot. Well over half of his hits (17 of his 27) have gone for extra bases and combined with his high average gives rise to that atmospheric slugging percentage.

The Diamondbacks will pay Kelly Johnson just $2.3 million this season. They’ve already received over twice that in value. Johnson is not going to continue posting a 1.100 OPS and hitting 30% of his fly balls over the wall, but even after he tails off he will have a good shot at being one of 2010’s best free agent bargains.

Certain proclamations and projections seem to follow players around. Take Robinson Cano. It seems futile to watch a national broadcast and expect to not hear the announcer talk about Cano is a future batting title winner. Where that sentiment came from is unknown, but it stuck to Cano. The oddest part of that assumption is that Cano’s minor league batting average is .278, and in Triple-A it was only .284. In fact, he never topped .300 throughout a full season until a shortened 2005 season.

Nevertheless, if the season ended today, Cano would finish second in the batting title race behind a guy the Yankees traded this off-season. Cano has been better than that though. He’s currently third in wOBA (behind Andre Ethier and Justin Morneau) and he’s been the Yankees’ best offensive player. He’s second in on-base percentage — Marcus Thames’ .552 on-base percentage looks more out of place than Johnny Gee – and first in slugging and ISO.

Cano has served as the tongue of the Yankees’ offense so far. He’s been in complete control while Nick Johnson and Mark Teixeira are struggling to find the .300 wOBA mark, Alex Rodriguez is doing his best impression of a league average batter, Curtis Granderson is on the disabled list, and Randy Winn is doing everything in his power to limit Michael Kay from making the worst pun possible about his last name on a routine basis.

Whenever someone has a career high batting average, the usual culprit is an increase in batting average on balls in play. True, nearly 35% of Cano’s in play balls are turning into hits, but the real suspect here is Cano’s increased home run rate. More than a quarter of the fly balls he’s hit have turned into home runs. His previous career high is 13% set last season. It’s not unbelievable that a 27-year-old with ferocious bat speed would begin to hit more jacks as he grew, but not at a Ryan Howard rate.

All of Cano’s homers have exited via stage right field and HitTracker has the average true distance at 391 feet. That’s almost identical to the 391.3 feet from 2009 and falls well shy of the 398.4 feet from 2008. This isn’t a Joe Mauer situation where Cano is suddenly going the other way. He’s just ripping the ball down the right field line. While it’s unrealistic to continue this power surge to continue, that should not stop this from being a special season for Cano and it probably won’t stop the talks of his surely inevitable assault on the league’s batting averages.

Adam LaRoche came into the off-season with a higher opinion of himself than what major league GM’s thought of him. After a prolonged time of sitting around and watching other players get signed, LaRoche ultimately settled for a one-year deal with the Diamondbacks at the bargain price of $5 million. So far, that deal is looking like an even better deal than projected, as LaRoche is off to a very good start, hitting for a .401 wOBA.

While we don’t want to get carried away with someone who is hitting in the dry air of Arizona this early, there is a solid reason to believe LaRoche’s step-up is the genuine article. Why is that you ask? Well, LaRoche has become a noticeably more disciplined hitter. His walk rate is up to 15.2%, and that’s backed by a league-low O-Swing% of 10.4%, a stunning 12.2% cut from his O-Swing% from the preceding season. This bodes extremely well for LaRoche. While we should rightfully be wary of sample size stats this early, a study by Russell Carlton shows that a player’s swing percentages become reliable much sooner than other numbers. For swing%, it’s as quickly as 50 plate appearances.

O-Swing% correlates well with walks for the obvious reason that if a player isn’t chasing balls out of the strike zone, naturally he’ll be reaching base more while also taking advantage of better pitches to hit. LaRoche has been doing just that, and now his updated ZiPS projection calls for a .390 wOBA on the season. That’s Ryan Howard production at a Scott Linebrink price.

LaRoche can undoubtedly parlay this type of success into some bigger bankroll if he can keep showing a discriminatory eye at the plate to complement his solid power.

Yesterday I read an interesting piece in the New York Daily News (via Hardball Talk) about Mets’ pitching coach Dan Warthen’s plan for Johan Santana this season. Some worry that the declining velocity on Santana’s fastballs could negatively impact his devastating changeup. So Warthen wanted Santana to throw more fastballs, and particularly inside fastballs, the first time through the lineup so that his changeup is more effective in subsequent passes through the lineup. Setting aside the question of why you would want to announce Santana’s plan to the media I was interested to see whether Santana is pitching this way.

Here is a look at Santana’s pitch breakdown (with percentage of fastballs that are inside indicated) broken up by first time through the order versus subsequent at-bats for before 2010 and in 2010.

 
pre-2010
              FA   (%inside)  CH     SL
first time    61.5 (10.4)     27.4   11.1           
after that    59.0 (13.9)     30.0   11.0

2010
              FA   (%inside)  CH     SL
first time    64.2 (12.1)     26.9    8.9        
after that    56.5 ( 6.4)     28.4   15.1 

It does look like Santana is throwing more fastballs the first time through the lineup compared to before and then fewer in subsequent at-bats. The inside fastball percentage also shows a trend in the direction indicated, although I don’t know how much of that is just noise. But instead of the reduced fastballs giving rise to more changeups in subsequent turns through the lineup it looks to me like it is giving rise to more sliders. At this point in the season I do not think we can attribute this change in usage to how he is performing, but it is interesting to note that the numbers bear out Warthen’s stated plan for Santana.

More generally the question of whether additional fastballs the first time through the order make off-speed pitches more effective the next time through is an interesting one, but — as with all issues of pitch sequencing — it is a pretty daunting question to address.