To piggyback off Dave Cameron’s earlier post.

Jason Heyward and Elvis Andrus are two of the game’s youngest everyday players, known for their upside more than anything. Perhaps the most underrated aspect about either’s game is their affinity for the walk. Heyward (20-years-old) is walking the sixth most amongst all major leaguers and Andrus ranks just outside of the top 30 walk rates. The updated ZiPS projections have both finishing with 63 walks.

Surprisingly – or perhaps not – that total wouldn’t rank within the top 35 for most walks in a season by a player younger than 22-years-old.

Here’s a quick rundown of the top five:

T5. 103 BB by Jimmie Foxx – 1929 Philadelphia, 21-years-old, 638 plate appearances (16.1%)
T5. 103 BB by Mel Ott – 1930 New York, 21-years-old, 646 plate appearances (15.9 %)
3. 107 BB by Ted Williams – 1939 Boston, 20-years-old, 677 plate appearances (15.8%)
2. 113 BB by Mel Ott – 1929 New York, 20-years-old, 674 plate appearances (16.8%)
1. 117 BB by Rickey Henderson – 1980 Oakland, 21-years-old, 722 plate appearances (16.2%)

Two things noticeable: 1) Each of those players are in the Hall of Fame and 2) only one of those seasons came within the last 30 years, while three of them were within a span of two seasons. If the year range is shortened from the turn of the 20th century until 1950, then only one season with 100+ walks remains – that being Henderson’s, of course – with the only other players topping 90 walks being Eddie Matthews and Joe Morgan – two hall of famers as well.

If the scope is narrowed to view history from 1990 onwards, this is what the top 10 looks like:

1. Ken Griffey Jr. 71
2. Albert Pujols 69
3. Miguel Cabrera 68
4. Delino DeShields 66
5. Ken Griffey Jr. 63
6. Ryan Zimmerman 61
7. Adrian Beltre 61
8. Alex Rodriguez 59
9. Melky Cabrera 56
10. Adrian Beltre 56

Notice the quantity of walks dropping, but not only that, only 28 players aged 21 or younger had enough plate appearances to qualify. A smaller time frame between 1920 and 1930 registers 22 players. This should not be a shock, given the development and expansion of farm systems and free agency. Teams simply aren’t fielding that many 20- or 21-year-olds because they don’t have to and because disincentives exist for rushing a potentially elite player to the majors. At least if the plan is to keep that player through the years presumed to be his statistical prime.

Back to Heyward and Andrus though. If either (or both) can simply add, say, 10 walks to their projections, then whichever accomplishes that will be the new leader in the post-1990 clubhouse. That doesn’t necessarily guarantee a bust in Cooperstown, but it will ensure them a place in modern history.

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As an aside, you can read more about Heyward (from me) at Wired’s Playbook blog. It’s mostly talk about his usage of Twitter, but there’s some quotes from smart people too.

The San Francisco Giants and Brian Sabean are quickly running out of excuses to keep former fifth overall pick Buster Posey off their 25-man roster. Improbably, the Giants are 22-21 and right in the thick of the NL West race, only 3.5 games behind the Padres. Buster Posey is 23 and has a .960 OPS at AAA after putting up a .902 OPS at the same level in 2009. Meanwhile, the Giants offense has a wOBA of .316, sitting 14 runs below the league average.

The strong performance of Eli Whiteside has been a decent enough reason to keep Posey in AAA so far. His .383 wOBA currently leads the Giants, but that’s completely unsustainable given his paltry walk rate of 3.8%, a BABIP of .364, and a HR/FB of 14.9% that suggests above average power when he has hit only 15 home runs in the minor leagues in just over 500 PAs since 2007. Even considering his solid start, ZiPS only projects Whiteside to post a .296 wOBA the rest of the season.

Perhaps starter Bengie Molina’s roughly league average performance (.332 wOBA) is keeping Posey off the roster? Molina is posting a career high walk rate of 8%, but his power has all but disappeared. His ISO is down from .177 to .084, and as a 35 year old catcher, Molina is certainly at the age where a drop in HR/FB rate could just as easily be decline as random variation. Even if Molina continues to produce at this clip, his hitting is his only asset. Last season, Bengie Molina was 4.5 runs below average on the bases according to Baseball Prospectus’s EQBRR. According to our own Matt Klaasen’s catcher defense rankings, Molina has already been 3 runs below average, and was another 3.4 runs below average last season.

Supposedly, defense is the reason that the Giants are keeping Posey down in the minor leagues. Posey has excelled with the arm this year; he’s thrown out 44% of basestealers so far this season. That reason, however, breaks down when we see Buster Posey spending time at first base as he is in today’s lineup for the Fresno Grizzlies.

Posey’s MLE for his current line at AAA is a .293/.366/.437 triple slash line. Prior to the season, both CHONE and ZiPS projected Posey as a roughly average major league hitter, just above what they projected Bengie Molina. Taking into account defense, baserunning, and upside, and Posey was surely the correct choice for a team wanting to make a run at the postseason. Posey is producing at an even higher level in AAA this season, suggesting that he’s even better than these pre-season projections.

Especially with the position that the Giants are in right now, there is no excuse for Posey to remain in AAA. He has nothing left to learn there. The Giants need has bat in the lineup, and they need it before they lose any more ground to San Diego and Los Angeles.

A list:

Mel Ott, 1929: .328/.449/.635, 172 wRC+
Alex Rodriguez, 1996: .358/.414/.631, 169 wRC+
Ted Williams, 1939: .327/.436/.609, 168 wRC+
Al Kaline, 1955: .340/.421/.546, 160 wRC+
Frank Robinson, 1956: .290/.379/.558, 149 wRC+
Mickey Mantle, 1952: .311/.394/.530, 166 wRC+

In the history of baseball, those are the six seasons where a player has posted an OPS over .900 as a 20-year-old. Of those six players, five are in the hall of fame, and the other guy will be when he’s done playing.

To say that Jason Heyward is putting himself in some pretty impressive company might be the understatement of the year. And yet, here he is, a 20-year-old rookie putting up a .290/.409/.580 line for the season (166 wRC+), and showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.

In April, Heyward flashed some greatness but also looked young and inexperienced. He struck out 26 times in 89 trips to the plate, and while the walks and home runs still made him a valuable player, there was a pretty easy path to getting him out.

In May, he has 70 plate appearances and just five strikeouts. He hasn’t lost any aggressiveness, as he’s still drawn 12 walks, and his power is still there, as 10 of his 20 hits have gone for extra bases. In his second month in the big leagues, he’s hitting .357/.471/.661, good for a .481 wOBA.

Again, he’s 20 years old. Even the greatest players of all time have struggled to be impact players at age 20. Ken Griffey Jr hit .300/.366/.481. Willie Mays hit .274/.356/.472. Hank Aaron hit .280/.322/.447.

This is an astounding performance from a rookie, the best we’ve seen since Albert Pujols took baseball by storm in 2001. He hit .329/.403/.610 as a 21-year-old. Heyward is matching that performance, only doing it a year earlier in his career. He still has to keep it up for another four months, of course, but if anything, he’s gotten better as the season has gone along.

The hype surrounding Heyward was intense, but it apparently wasn’t intense enough. We’re in the midst of watching one of the great rookie seasons of all time from a player whose peers are still working out the kinks in A-ball.

June is just around the corner and Super-2 arbitration eligibility is going to expire shortly for a number of top prospects. As a result, you could see a few big names in the Majors within the first two weeks of the month. Let’s see how they’re currently doing in the minors.

Stephen Strasburg | RHP | Washington: You know you’re good when people start off a sentence with: “Strasburg actually allowed a run in triple-A…” In nine starts this season split between double-A and triple-A, the right-hander has allowed 22 hits and 10 walks in 45.1 innings of work. He has a 10.42 K/9 rate, as well as a 69% ground-ball rate, which gives a pretty good idea of why he’s been so dominant. The club could definitely use his help, as its best starter (Scott Olsen) is on the DL and Livan Hernandez is not going to keep pitching with a golden horseshoe shoved up his…

Jeremy Hellickson | RHP | Tampa Bay: Brian Joura is looking at the Hellickson situation in a little more depth over at RotoGraphs today. The 23-year-old right-hander has been dealing in triple-A all season long. He’s given up 53 hits and just 12 walks in 58.0 innings. He also has a strikeout rate of 9.64 K/9. A fly-ball pitcher with a 31.5% ground-ball rate, Hellickson has done a nice job avoiding the home-run ball (Just two have left the yard all season). The problem for Hellickson – which is great news for Rays fans – is that there is nowhere to pitch him. The starting rotation is probably the deepest and most talented in Major League Baseball.

Buster Posey | C | San Francisco: The Giants organization and General Manager Brian Sabean clearly don’t think a catcher can improve his defense while playing in the Major Leagues. Either that or it really is about Super-2. This line of thought just might cost the club a playoff berth. Posey’s defense definitely still needs some work behind the plate but he’s not useless back there and he’s hitting .344/.435/.525 with a in 160 at-bats. He’s also creaming lefties to the tune of a 1.222 OPS. Veteran MLB catcher Bengie Molina currently has a wOBA of .332 on the year, which is 14th in the Majors amongst catchers with 100 or more plate appearances (Or in other words, he’s been OK but not great). Why not let Molina catch 60% of the games with Posey handling the other 40%, while also seeing time at first base and/or third base?

Carlos Santana | C | Cleveland: Santana continues to challenge Posey for the title of Best Offensive Catcher in the minors. The Indians prospect is currently hitting .306/.440/.551 with nine homers and five steals in 147 at-bats. He also has 34 walks compared to 28 strikeouts. The switch-hitter swings well from the left side and has a .324 average against right-handed pitching. Santana has also been excellent with runners in scoring position, as his OPS jumps from .875 with the bases empty to 1.269 with men on second and/or third base. Current MLB catcher (and fellow rookie) Lou Marson has a wOBA of .255. Enough said.

Pedro Alvarez | 3B | Pittsburgh: The third baseman caught everyone’s attention early in the season with a power burst but he’s been pretty quiet since that time. Overall, he’s hitting just .248/.333/.497 with 10 homers in 165 at-bats. The left-handed hitter has struggled against southpaws with a .205 average (compared to .264 versus RHPs). Currently third baseman Andy LaRoche hasn’t exactly been an offensive juggernaut. His wOBA is just .311 through 35 games, which is one of the worst rates in the Majors at his position. However, Alvarez’ struggles could keep him in the minors until September.

On the whole, last season represented another disappointment for former No. 1 prospect Delmon Young. He struck out more often than ever before in his career, and walked at a lesser rate. For the second straight year he produced negative WAR, largely because of his fielding components, but also in part because of negative batting components. It represented the second straight year in which the Twins regretted sending Matt Garza to the Rays.

Yet not all was lost for the young Delmon. It’s easy to forget, because he had been such a hyped prospect for so long, that he was just 23 years old for most of last year. He did show an improvement in his power, posting a .142 ISO, his highest mark since his brief 30-game appearance in 2006. He also showed improvement in the second half. Both his ISO and his K% improved. His batting average also shot up 34 points, despite a BABIP 44 points lower. Even more encouragingly, he capped his season with a monster September, .340/.364/.544.

As R.J. warned us late last year, we shouldn’t look too much into Delmon’s season splits. Plenty of players have posted excellent second half numbers only to revert to their disappointing selves the next year. This is even more true of September performances. The circumstances change that month — benches, especially bullpens, are much longer, and many teams have little left to play for. We’d be better off weighing a September performance in proportion to the player’s career, rather than taking it as a sign of turnaround.

That appears to be the case for Delmon this year upon first glance. Even though he’s producing at a slightly above league average level, a 102 wRC+, he’s still not coming close to his potential. That’s just a look at the results, though. In terms of process, Delmon has showed signs of life. What stands out the most: his walk rate currently sits at a career high level, while his strikeout rate falls far below his career norm. His ISO, .176, also sits comfortably above his career mark. The next stat to the right on his Dashboard also tells a story. His BABIP, .266, is not only generally low, but low for Delmon, who has had a .338 BABIP in each of the past three seasons.

Part of this drop is his balls in play rate. Strikeouts, fly outs, and ground outs are just forms of outs. The only difference is that the latter two count against a player’s BABIP, while the strikeouts do not. It is therefore not very surprising that Delmon’s BABIP has dropped. That drop, however, seems to be a bit disproportionate. If he were merely, say, grounding out where he formerly struck out, his batting average would hardly see an effect. In those terms, an out is an out regardless of how a player makes it. Yet Delmon’s .264 batting average is the lowest of his career.

According to the xBABIP calculator, Delmon should be at around a .314 mark for the season. That’s lower than his normal, but again that’s expected considering his lower strikeout total. At that BABIP, even if all the additional hits were singles, Delmon would be hitting .304/.355/.472. That offensive production, combined with his much improved defense, would provide the Twins with some semblance of the value they thought they were getting in the winter of 2007-2008.

Even as it stands, Delmon has produced positive WAR, 0.5. That includes positive batting and fielding components, the first time Delmon has accomplished that since 2006. If he continues what he’s doing right now — displaying more patience and hitting for power — he might even out some of his early season poor luck and start to approach his potential. The Twins have been patient. It just might pay off with Delmon.

One of the things I remember loving about baseball as I grew up, learning the intricacies of the game, was that a batter who struck out four times in a game was referred to as wearing The Golden Sombrero. It’s exactly the kind of thing that convinced me that this wasn’t just a game, but a different world entirely.

This year, 30 golden sombreros have been handed out, the most recent going to Ryan Ludwick of the Cardinals. Rather than being embarrassed, the list of players who have whiffed four times in a night this season is actually quite impressive – Nelson Cruz, Justin Morneau, David Wright, Justin Upton, and even the mythical creature Jason Heyward have all performed the feat.

Besides being gifted with a free hat, these guys all have something else in common; in one night, they matched the season strikeout total of one David Eckstein.

The unsung hero of the 2010 Padres, Eckstein is having a season that is as bewildering as it is valuable. At age 35, he’s hitting .310/.370/.405, each of which would represent a career high if he was able to sustain this pace all season. And he’s doing it by hitting everything he swings at.

Always a high contact hitter, Eckstein has upped his game in the first two months of 2010. His rate of contact on pitches in the zone is 97.2 percent, but where he really shines is on pitches out of the zone, where he’s making contact 90 percent of the time. Even when pitchers get him to chase a ball out of the zone, Eckstein is putting the bat on it, either fouling it off or putting it in play. He’s swung and missed just 2.1 percent of the time, making it nearly impossible for pitchers to put him away.

Eckstein is on pace to strike out just 14 times all season long, and his offensive approach is invoking that of another San Diego legend. Perhaps most remarkably, he hasn’t even had to sacrifice the bit of power he does have, as his 13 extra base hits are nearly half of what he had in all of 2009.

When listing reasons why the Padres are surprising everyone by hanging around in the NL West, don’t forget to spread the credit Eckstein’s way. His success at slap hitting has given the Padres a valuable second baseman for the first two months of the season, even if its coming through highly unconventional means.

One constant in minor league analysis is the term “Age Relative to League,” which is another contextual barrier that must be considered in any prospect report. This season, four players have been regulars in High-A while still in a teenage season: Jay Austin (Astros), Anthony Gose (Phillies), Daniel Fields (Tigers) and Wilfredo Tovar (Mets). Austin and Gose are in their second full professional seasons, while Fields garnered a surprise assignment to Lakeland, and Tovar seems to be in High-A only because Wilmer Flores has the shortstop position locked down in Low-A. So while I could tell you that Gose and Tovar have hit 2.5% above the Florida Sate League OPS average of .686, Fields at 2% better, and Austin 0.5% worse than the California League .743 average, it wouldn’t be worth much without knowing their ages.

For both leagues, the average age is 22.9 years. Austin and Gose have the same August birthday, and are 19.8 years old, Fields is a half-year younger at 19.3 years, and Tovar another half-year younger at 18.8 years old. To be even around the league averages at ages 3-4 years younger than their competition would seem impressive even to those unfamiliar with baseball. However, I think we can even look at this a little more in depth. While we always quote “age relative to league,” I don’t think that properly gets at the heart of what we’re trying to say. I’m not impressed by Gose because he has similar numbers to 24-year-old teammate Korby Mintken, but instead because he’s keeping his head above water while facing pitchers like Andrew Brackman (age 24), Charlie Furbush (24) and Andrew Liebel (24). Where we’ve previously quoted “age relative to league,” I have begun to wonder if the more poignant phrase might be “Age Relative to Competition.”

As a broad introduction to this altered bit of semantics, I used the 2010 High-A teenagers as my guinea pigs. With just a little bit of legwork, I was quickly able to record the age of every starting pitcher that each hitter has started against this season. Though this analysis isn’t lock-tight without accounting for the number of PAs the players had against each pitcher, or without even considering the relief pitchers they faced, I do think it will give us a macro view at how we can better quantify “Age Relative to Competition” going forward. I have put together histograms for each player (based on the age of every SP they have started against), and present them below ranked by average age of opposing starting pitchers, from oldest to youngest.

Note: I used whole integers for the pitchers’ ages, rather than decimal points like I listed for the hitters above.

Anthony Gose – 22.7 years (2.9 year difference)

On April 27, Gose led off for Clearwater against Chris Capuano, the 31-year-old making a rehab start. Against the lefty, Gose went 0-for-3, striking out in his first plate appearance. While Capuano represents the oldest player that Gose has seen by far, he also went 1-for-4 (with 3 Ks) against Andrew Miller in his rehab start on May 11. It’s been a lot of pitchers 4-5 years older against him for the most part, and Gose has succeeded none the less, mostly thanks to a .343 BABIP (.422 in SSS vs. LHP’s) and the ability to turn 9 doubles into triples.

Jay Austin – 22.3 years (2.5 year difference)

The one teenager outside of Florida, the Astros were aggressive with Austin after his .680 OPS in the Sally League (average pitcher age: 21.6; league average OPS: .692) last season. After all, Lancaster is a much easier place to hit than Lexington in a vacuum — about 17% if we’re still to trust Dan Szymborski’s 2008 Minor League Park Multipliers.

In addition to the average age of pitchers he’s faced, we must also consider the quality of stuff. And just by eyeballing, I can say that Austin seems to have faced a touger group of pitchers: Wil Boscan, Mike Main, Nick Schmidt (3 times), Tyler Chatwood (twice) and Ethan Martin. And those are the “young opponents.”

Wilfredo Tovar – 22.2 years (3.4 year difference)

While I admittedly do not know a lot about Tovar, you have to be impressed what he’s been able to do through 18 games in St. Lucie. His one vicious stretch was four games from May 18-21, when he went 1-for-16 with 8 strikeouts. The starters on those days included one 21-year-old solid prospect (Chris Archer), and three accomplished college pitchers: Chris Rusin, Charlie Furbush and Luke Putknonen. In his other 14 games, the 18-year-old is hitting .358.

Daniel Fields – 21.9 years (2.6 year difference)

The Tigers pulled a fast one last August by signing Fields, a sixth-round draft pick, for $1.6 million to give up his scholarship to the hometown University of Michigan. They pulled another this spring by proactively moving Fields from shortstop to center field, and assigning him to Spring Training site Lakeland rather than close-to-home West Michigan. (Again, quoting the old Park Factors, Lakeland plays average, while West Michigan is very pitcher-friendly.) Fields has both a better walk rate (13.3 BB%) and ISO (.128) than league average (7.6% and .110), but until his strikeout rate comes down (30%), he’ll still look overmatched, even against the steady stream of 21-year-old pitchers he has faced.

There is more work to be done on this issue, and certainly more in-depth analysis available at our fingertips. But I do think that considering a player’s specific competition, rather than using blanket statements like “Player X is young for his league,” is a big step in the right direction.

Expected to finish no better than fourth place in the ultra-competitive American League East, the Toronto Blue Jays currently boast a 27-20 record, just a half-game behind the New York Yankees for second place in the division.

The Jays have gotten quality performances from both the rotation (4.15 xFIP, third in the AL) and the bullpen (4.00 xFIP, also third in the AL). But perhaps most surprisingly, Toronto leads the Junior circuit in runs scored, with 247. That total is due in part to timely hitting that almost certainly won’t persist — the Jays are batting .232/.289/.422 as a team with the bases empty, but have crushed to the tune of .268/.347/.537 with ducks on the pond. Based on the club’s .339 team weighted on-base average, Toronto’s offense should have churned out 228 runs so far — fourth in the AL.

So, the offense has been good, but fortunate to tally so many hits with runners on base. There’s another bizarre aspect to the Jays’ offensive attack this season, though — they’re swinging from the heels and making hard, loud contact.

As a whole, Toronto’s hitters have chased 31.1 percent of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone. That’s the highest mark in the AL and is well north of the 27.6 percent major league average in 2010. The Jays also lead the league in cuts taken on in-zone pitches, letting it rip 68.5 percent of the time a pitcher puts one over the plate (63.6 percent MLB average this season).

Taking such an aggressive approach, the Jays have the highest first pitch strike percentage in the AL — they have put the ball in play on the first pitch or gotten behind in the count 0-and-1 60.7 percent of the time (58.1 percent MLB average).

Not surprisingly, Toronto’s batters haven’t drawn many walks, with an 8.3 BB% that ranks 10th in the AL. But the team is outslugging the competition with a .221 Isolated Power. The Red Sox rank a distant second, at .183.

Hard-hitting hackers include SS Alex Gonzalez, C John Buck and CF Vernon Wells. Take a look at their respective career averages in O-Swing and Z-Swing (since 2002), compared to their swing percentages in 2010. Also included: their 2010 ISO figures, compared to their pre-season CHONE and ZiPS projections:

The MLB average for O-Swing percentage has increased in recent years, but even as a percentage of the big league average, 2010 ranks as the most hack-tastic season for Buck and Wells. Gonzalez chased an even higher proportion of pitches out of the zone (compared to the MLB average) during his Marlins days.

Though not to the same extent as the three guys above, Jose Bautista is chasing more pitches than usual (23.4 O-Swing percentage, 18.2 career average). And, as Dave Cameron noted, he’s hitting for unprecedented power — Bautista has a .325 ISO. Prior to 2010, CHONE forecasted a .163 ISO and ZiPS projected a .162 ISO. New Jay Fred Lewis has gotten into the act as well, with a 28.7 O-Swing (20.5 career average) and a .186 ISO (.142 pre-season ISO from CHONE, .153 from ZiPS).

Of course, not every Toronto hitter with a more aggressive approach is thriving in the power department. 2B Aaron Hill has a 32 O-Swing percentage (22.2 career average), but a .156 ISO (.171 pre-season CHONE, .172 ZiPS). Adam Lind showed improved plate discipline in 2009, but his O-Swing is back up to 30 and his .169 ISO falls short of his pre-season CHONE (.209) and ZiPS (.211) marks. Lyle Overbay has swung at 23.3 percent of out-of-zone pitches (18 percent career average), with a .143 ISO (.153 pre-season CHONE, .165 ZiPS).

Moving forward, Gonzalez, Buck and Wells figure to come back down to Earth. Bautista probably hasn’t suddenly become a gargantuan power hitter, but his 2010 start can’t be ignored. With better luck on balls put in play and perhaps a few less cuts at junk pitches, Hill, Lind and Overbay should rebound:

With the Rays sitting at 32-13, obviously the Rays pitchers have been accruing wins – 32 of them, in fact. The Rays also have been the benefactors of both good defense and good luck. Entering tonight’s game against Boston, Rays pitchers had allowed only a 2.87 ERA against a 3.78 FIP and a 4.06 xFIP. They’ve benefited from a league best .272 BABIP. much of which can be attributed to defensive wizards such as B.J. Upton, Evan Longoria, Carl Crawford, and Jason Bartlett – and a HR/FB rate of only 8.6%, about 1% below the league average.

Still, even though it might not hold up for the whole season, there’s no arguing with the results so far. The Rays pitching staff has been by far the best in the MLB in terms of win probability, both in terms of straight WPA and context adjusted WPA/LI. The Rays 8.31 pitcher WPA leads the second place Padres by over 2.5 wins and the Twins, the second best AL team, by over four wins. Although they’ve performed over two wins worse by WPA/LI at 5.98, that’s still easily best in the majors. The Twins, again, are the next best team, and they come in at only 3.93.

It’s hard for a team to win 71.1% of their games for a 45 game stretch, even with good luck. It’s even harder for a team to actually play at the level of a 115 win team for 45 games, which, according to Pythagorean record, the Rays have. The pitching staff and defense are, naturally, the biggest part of that. The Rays 144 runs allowed are the lowest in the AL by a whopping 37 runs, despite the run prevention techniques employed by some richer teams this offseason.

The scariest part of all this is that the Rays hitters haven’t joined the party yet. Their .337 wOBA is certainly respectable. It works out to about 15 runs above average, right around what their +1.69 WPA suggests. If the hitters were merely producing at an average level, WPA suggests that the Rays would still be about 16 games over .500, at a 31-14 or 30-15 mark. That would still the best record in baseball by four or five games.

So even though Rays pitchers are potentially due for negative regression, depending on how much of their low BABIP is defense related and how much is luck related, the offense may be due for positive regression. Carlos Pena, B.J. Upton, and Jason Bartlett are all yet to find their stroke, and the loss of Kelly Shoppach to injury has damaged the Rays at catcher, despite the recent surge from John Jaso. The Rays have played about as well as possible for 45 games, and there’s no reason to expect them to stop now.

Last night, we looked at Franklin Gutierrez and his metamorphosis at the plate. Dustin Pedroia was mentioned on the chart of first pitch takers and it made me wonder aloud: is Pedroia simply selective or passive? Now that question could be phrased about just about anyone – well, okay, not Vladimir Guerrero or Delmon Young – but Pedroia is interesting. He makes contact more than 90% of the time he swings, yet he actually has the ability to drive the ball, unlike the aforementioned slap-hitting mafia.

Pedroia is taking about 90% of the first pitches he sees this year, which is less than last year (93%) but more than 2008 (85%). He’s swinging 9% of the time, as opposed to 7% and 15%, but he’s making contact more than in those seasons. In fact, in 18 swings this season, he only has one whiff. That’s a 94% rate, higher than the 87% and 94% from the previous two years. What’s interesting, though, is that Pedroia has only seen 39% 1-0 counts this year, significantly lower than the 47% of last year and a touch below 42% of 2008.

That is to say, pitchers seem to be throwing him strikes more often this season than in the past. They’re also throwing more fastballs than usual, albeit barely (74% compared to 72% and 70%) and a quick glance at the called strike location for all pitches shows that the most common placement is down and away. Not a surprise, given that’s where conventional wisdom seems to suggest is the ideal location for pitchers to attack.

The most interesting thought to come from those numbers is guessing when Pedroia will begin to swing more often since he’s (probably) noticing that pitchers are attacking the zone more often than before. Nobody knows the exact percentage of the time that a hitter will watch a strike on the first pitch before becoming aggressive — to claim otherwise is to be that batter himself — so all we can do is assume at some point the coaching staff will notify Pedroia that he should probably start being more aggressive early on. At the same time, teams can’t just sit outside of the zone; otherwise he’ll swing even less often.

Given a career-low BABIP and a wOBA in line with what we’d expect, it might not matter too much either way.