There’s a mini-outrage going on down in Atlanta right now, as the Braves offense isn’t performing as well as expected, and the natives are getting restless with Fredi Gonzalez’s designated batting order. The main complaint revolves around the fact that Nate McLouth, he of the .228/.328/.373 mark as a Brave, is batting second, while Jason Heyward (.275/.393/.464 career) hits sixth. Heyward is unquestionably a better hitter than McLouth, and by having him lower in the order, Gonzalez is intentionally choosing to have McLouth receive more plate appearances. Generally, you want your worst hitters to get fewer chances – not more.

That said, the amount of virtual ink being spilled over this issue doesn’t commensurate to the outcome it’s having on the Braves chances of winning baseball games. Yes, hitting McLouth second and Heyward sixth is an inefficiency, but in reality, it just doesn’t matter all that much.

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Do take LeVar Burton’s word for it: there are baseball games today.

Note: the numbers you see for pitchers are the updated ZiPS projections for 2011, which take into account early season performance and which are available on every player card.

Philadelphia at Washington | 7:05pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Phillies: Cliff Lee
201.1 IP, 8.00 K/9, 1.25 BB/9, 2.73 FIP

Nationals: Jordan Zimmermann
98.1 IP, 7.41 K/9, 3.20 BB/9, 3.67 FIP

Notes
• Here’s a thing: Jordan Zimmermann’s original ZiPS projection was for 89.0 innings.
• Now it’s for 98.1 IP — as you can see.
• Here’s another thing: Zimmermann has a 2.79 FIP through (the very small sample of) 11.1 innings. His xFIP? 4.92.
• Which most represents his expected ERA?
• The suspense is terrific.

Notes: Cliff Lee Edition
• While, cosmetically, Lee’s performance to date looks poor (1-1, 7.48 ERA), he’s actually been The Real Cliff Lee.
• To wit: 10.1 IP, 12.19 K/9, 0.87 BB/9, 51.3 GB%, 2.17 xFIP.
• The two main conspirators in his inflated ERA? A .433 BABIP and 51.3 LOB%.

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Adieu ball. Adieu.

Bue Jays 8, Mariners 3

Moving the Needle: Jose Bautista brings the Jays back with his third homer of the season, +.455 WPA. This game unfolded oddly. For starters, Chris Ray was in for the eighth inning of a one-run game. I dunno, maybe he has something left in the tank. But it doesn’t seem that way. Second, with a runner on first and none out, Corey Patterson laid down a sac bunt. I had this one on the radio, and the Mariners guys seemed to think that Justin Smoak could have made a play on it. Instead he just watched it, and it stayed on the infield grass, which meant two on and none out for Bautista, who laid into one and hit it way out to left. Milton Bradley gave it the courtesy chase, but it was immediately apparent that it was goodbye baseball.

Notables

Jason Vargas: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 7 K. Six strikeouts in his first start, and now seven in this one for Vargas. Quite impressive for a guy with a 5.66 career K/9.

Yunel Escobar: 3 for 5, 1 2B. His single to lead off the eighth started the comeback.

Also in this issue: Angels 4, Indians 3 | Also in this issue: Cardinals 15, Diamondbacks 5 | Also in this issue: A’s 7, White Sox 4 | Also in this issue: Marlins 5, Braves 1 | Also in this issue: Tigers 3, Rangers 2 | Also in this issue: Cubs 9, Astros 5 | Also in this issue: Royals 10, Twins 5 | Also in this issue: Phillies 3, Nationals 2 | Also in this issue: Yankees 7, Orioles 4 | Also in this issue: Rockies 5, Mets 4 | Also in this issue: Brewers 6, Pirates 0 | Also in this issue: Padres 3, Reds 2 |

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No lead is safe these days when a White Sox reliever enters the game. While Matt Thornton has taken the brunt of fan anger, his struggles now seem to have spread to the rest of the bullpen. The situation got crazier Wednesday when three relievers — including Thornton — blew a three-run lead in the final inning, leading Ozzie Guillen to tell the media that he didn’t have a closer. It’s too early to overreact, and Guillen is smarter than that*, but frustration is beginning to boil over with the Sox. 

Thornton entered the season as the newly-minted closer, but the shine quickly wore off. While the lefty has been his team’s best reliever the past few seasons (not to mention one of the best relievers in all of baseball), he’s struggled in his new role. No one wants to overreact to 4.2 innings pitched, but Thornton might need more time to refine his approach. Walks plagued him when he was with the Seattle Mariners, and those troubles have revisited Thornton so far this season. His velocity appears fine, which could mean that a bullpen session will fix these early struggles.

Chris Sale emerged as a potential candidate for saves this season as well, but he’s also experienced some problems. His issues, though, appear based more on luck rather than skill. Despite a strong strikeout to walk rate (9:1), Sale’s given up 11 hits in only 7.1 innings. So long as Sale doesn’t turn into a home-run machine, he should be fine.

Neither Jesse Crain, nor Sergio Santos, have pitched poorly this season, so perhaps they’re next in line for closing opportunities. Crain was part of the White Sox’s bullpen meltdown yesterday, which could mean that Santos might have a longer leash at the moment. Both players are capable of being successful closers, but the two lack the upside of either Thornton or Sale. It’s also Santos’ second season as a pitcher (in his career), so Guillen may be hesitant to install him in that role in the immediate future. With four options, none of which are all that appealing at the moment, what will Guillen do?

Despite his early troubles, Thornton has gotten consistent support from his manager. Guillen also likely realizes that Thornton is his best pitcher, and that he should be able to rebound rather quickly. For now, the frustration with the pen is at a high point and Guillen is likely to ride the hot hand. Could that include Tony Pena? Maybe, but it’s not likely. Once Thornton returns to form, he should return to the closer role.

If, however, one player emerges and Guillen names him the closer for the remainder of the season, not all is lost for Thornton. If we think a team’s best pitcher should be used during the most important moments of the game, then utilizing Thornton in that role is the optimal way for Ozzie to run his pen. Even though Bobby Jenks was the closer the past few seasons, Thornton was the Sox’s most reliable pitcher, and the guy Guillen brought in with the bases loaded in the eighth inning.

It’s too early for teams to panic and make dramatic changes with such small samples, but that won’t stop the White Sox. Their early bullpen issues have been so overblown this season that Guillen will play the match-up game until someone emerges. Thornton, though, is still the best option in the pen. Once he returns to form, the Sox could re-install him as the full-time closer. But it shouldn’t be viewed as a failure if Thornton doesn’t reclaim the job. He’s long been one of the best “secret closers**” in the game, and the White Sox have plenty of options.

*You can take my word for it, or you can call me an idiot in the comments.

**Copyright Carson Cistulli

According to Internet: Sam Fuld once caught a cold and then set it free. Sam Fuld once threw himself out at home just to see what it was like. Superman wears Sam Fuld pajamas to bed. When Sam Fuld shaves, his razor begs for mercy.

Yes, the Tampa Bay Rays seem to have serendipitously acquired themselves a Legend. The 29-year-old outfielder, traded to the Rays in the Matt Garza deal this offseason, has earned himself a nifty Twitter hash-tag (#LegendOfSamFuld) in which Tweetors pine away about the preposterous magnificence of the base-pilfering, run-saving highlight-reel machine. In an uncanny show of heroics, Fuld has made two stupendous diving catches, hit a near-cycle (he was too fast for the necessary single), and seemingly won the left field job — all in the Rays’ first 11 games.

But this brings us to a most difficult quandary: Is Sam Fuld a legitimate starting option? The Rays, despite their loathsome start, sit a mere four games behind the division-leading Baltimore Orioles. The Rays certainly have the talent to fight for the division, but should Fuld be a part of that fight?

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The first ten games of Justin Upton ‘s age 23 season have gone pretty well. Through his first 46 plate appearances, Arizona’s prodigy has a .300/.391/.575 triple-slash line and a .411 wOBA. This comes even without the ever-present sky-high BABIPs that tend to characterize early season success. Instead, Upton’s BABIP sits at .290, well below his career average of .343. Upton’s success is coming with walks, heavy doses of contact, and Power.

That’s Power with a capital P. Upton hit his third home run of the season last night off Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter. It went far.

(Click to embiggen, click this for video)

According to HitTracker, Upton’s bomb traveled 478 feet, the best of the young season by 16 feet.

This kind of elite power was missing from Upton’s 2010 season, where he posted a rather human .349 wOBA and 3.1 WAR. As annoying as the small sample size caveat can be early in a season, I’m not invoking it for this year’s numbers. Instead, I prefer to give a reminder that power numbers barely even stabilize over the course of a full season. The numbers presented by Eric in that link say that SLG only stabilizes after 500 PAs and ISO after 550, a number that Upton barely passed in 2010 (571 total PAs).

Upton isn’t likely to continue to homer on one out of every four fly balls he hits, but mammoth shots like the one above tell us that his true talent probably isn’t too different from the 2009 season, when he posted a .232 ISO and 26 home runs in just under 600 PAs. And, of course, at only 23 years of age, there’s plenty of room for growth as well.

The other thing to watch for Upton as his year continues is his strikeout rate. So far, through 46 plate appearances, Upton has only struck out in 15% of his at-bats, nearly half his career rate. It only takes 150 plate appearances for strikeout rate to begin to stabilize, so we should be able to get a good beat on Upton’s progress in three weeks or so. The strikeout rate is the last thing keeping Upton from moving into the truly elite tier of hitters – just imagine what a player with that kind of power could do if he made contact on 80% of his at-bats instead of 70%. Upton didn’t get much experience in the high minors, but in the low minors, he had strikeout rates hovering around 20% instead of 30%, so it’s possible that his development in the majors could lead to a lower strikeout rate this year.

Hopefully one slightly down year as a 22-year-old Major Leaguer didn’t fool anybody. Justin Upton is here to stay, and he should be an MLB force for years to come. With what we’re already seeing from him at such a young age, we shouldn’t be surprised if Upton continues to impress with his power and with his other tools as well.

If you haven’t taken a statistics class, regression can be rather tricky to grasp at first. It’s a word you’ll hear bantered about frequently on sabermetrically inclined websites, especially during the beginning of the season: “Oh, Albert Pujols is hitting .200, but it’s early so he’s bound to regress.” “Nick Hundley is slugging over .700, but that’s sure to regress.” This seems like a straightforward concept on the surface – good players that are underperforming are bound to improve, and over-performing scrubs will eventually cool down – but it leaves out an important piece of information: regress to what level?

The common mistake is to assume that if a good player has been underperforming, their “regression” will consist of them hitting .400 and bringing their overall line up to the level of their preseason projections. I like to call this the “overcorrection fallacy”, the belief that players will somehow compensate for their hot or cold performances by reverting to the other extreme going forward. While that may happen in select instances, it’s not what “regression” actually means. Instead, when someone says a player is likely to regress, they mean that the player should be expected to perform closer to their true talent level going forward.

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As the Butler Bulldogs and Connecticut Huskies clanged shot after shot in last week’s NCAA title game, pundits raced to explain the ugliest championship in a generation. Both teams played stifling defense. They gameplanned well. They were tired after long seasons and long tournament runs.

There are grains of truth in each of those explanations. But all those justifications ignored the obvious: These were two mediocre teams, brought together by a playoff system that’s exciting, unpredictable…and criminally unfair.

We haven’t seen a World Series quite that bad in recent memory. But Major League Baseball’s playoff system also gives very little advantage to teams who fared best over 162 games. Again, unfairly so.

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It’s not a play you see very often. When it happens twice in a day, then, it certainly garners a bit more attention. That is, if a star player didn’t get hurt on the first instance, and the second instance doesn’t occur in a West Coast game that is of little interest to the non-diehard observer. Yesterday we saw two players tag up and try to score on pop-ups to infielders. Josh Hamilton infamously gave it a go in an afternoon game, while Corey Patterson made his attempt many hours later out in Seattle. Both failed. Still, the process is the thing to consider. Did Hamilton or Patterson make the right call in dashing for home?

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