If the Pirates are going to make any noise, whether it’s this year or in the near future, they’ll need top-notch production from the young players currently on their roster. With Andrew McCutchen, that isn’t a problem, since he’s produced at an elite level for the past year and a half. The emphasis this year will be on Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata, and Neil Walker. Walker, in particular,  has gotten off to a hot start. While it doesn’t necessarily portend a quality season to come, it certainly is a sign of encouragement. While we have only four games to work with, two things have stood out about Walker’s performance.

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Padre starter Aaron Harang approves of his new surroundings.

San Diego at San Francisco | 6:35pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Giants: Madison Bumgarner
165.0 IP, 5.84 K/9, 2.78 BB/9, 3.97 FIP, 106 ERA+ (ZiPS)

Padres: Aaron Harang
144.0 IP, 6.88 K/9, 2.44 BB/9, 3.99 FIP, 87 ERA+ (ZiPS)

Notes
Though you might not remember it, Aaron Harang has been good before. He’s compiled a 23.3 WAR over his career. He’s posted a five-win season as recently as 2007. He has a nickname, The Harangutan, capable of turning any manner of frown upside-down.

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Pirates 4, Cardinals 3

Gone. (Click for larger)

For five innings it didn’t appear that the Pirates had any life. They had just two base runners in that span, and one of them was erased via the double play. All in all, through five the Pirates had hit just three balls in the air. Everything else was a grounder or a strikeout. But then came a sixth inning rally that put them ahead for good. Unsurprisingly, we can attribute it to the Pirates’ crop of young talent.

Moving the Needle: Neil Walker goes opposite field with a go-ahead double, +.301 WPA. Even into the sixth, the Pirates had trouble hitting the ball in the air. The inning started with a Ronny Cedeno single, but it was on a grounder. Pitcher Charlie Morton, who had already walked four to that point, stayed into sacrifice. Such is the plight of the road team in the NL. Jose Tabata followed by drawing the first walk of the game. Then Lohse made his biggest mistake, leaving one up and out over the plate to Walker. He drilled it into the left field corner, scoring both Morton and Tabata and giving the Pirates the lead. They’d need the tack-on runs that followed, as the Cardinals mounted a comeback. But it wasn’t enough.

Notables

Andrew McCutchen: 1 for 4, 1 HR. His two-run blast, which immediately followed Walker’s double, provided the insurance that the Pirates needed. Two of his three hits this season have been long flies.

Kyle Lohse: 7 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR. Outside of the sixth he faced just one over the minimum, thanks to two double play balls. But that sixth inning was enough to hang the L on him.

Joel Hanrahan: 1.1 perfect innings, 2 K. The Pirates — really, Evan Meek — ran into some problems in the eighth, with the Cardinals mounting a rally. Hanrahan came into the game with two outs and a runner on third and struck out Yadier Molina to end the threat. He then got three easy outs in the ninth to end it. He’s off to a fine start, with 3.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K.

Also in this issue: Braves 2, Brewers 1, Cubs 4, Diamondbacks 1, Orioles 5, Tigers 1, Yankees 4, Twins 3, Rangers 5, Mariners 4

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Warning: The content of this post breaks two major rules recently laid out by the FanGraphs writing team. It’s a post about stats from last week, and it validates the first prediction in Matt Klaassen’s recent post. You’ve been warned, now proceed at your own risk.

Despite posting an ERA of 2.97, and winning 18 games last season, Trevor Cahill entered 2011 as one of the major regression candidates due to some poor peripherals. One of the most puzzling aspects of Cahill’s young career, and one of the reasons analysts are calling for regression, has been Cahill’s low strikeout rate in the majors. Over his minor league career, Cahill struck out 9.9 hitters per game. In the majors, however, Cahill has managed to strike out only 5.12 batters per nine innings. One theory behind Cahill’s struggles in the majors deals with the use of his curve ball. Minor league scouting reports rated Cahill’s curve as a true wipe-out offering. Once he reached the big leagues, however, he stopped relying on his curve. Well, the curve, and the strikeouts, returned in Cahill’s first start of the 2011 season. Unfortunately, those two facts have little to do with each other.

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When Butler takes on UConn tonight, you can imagine that a large percentage of the people who have no vested interest in the outcome will be pulling for the Bulldogs. Butler isn’t the same Cinderella story as they were last year, but they’re still a mid-major who entered the tournament as an eight seed, and unlike UConn, they don’t have a long history of winning NCAA tournament games. They’re the little guy who shouldn’t be here, and we like to root for these guys to do well.

Basketball doesn’t have a monopoly on those kinds of stories today, though, as Brandon Beachy made his season debut for the Atlanta Braves this afternoon. Beachy was signed by the Braves in 2008 as an undrafted free agent, used mostly in relief during his first two season in their system, and then skyrocketed to the Majors after moving into the rotation last summer. After a fantastic spring training, Beachy was named the Braves fifth starter, beating out Mike Minor (who was taken seventh overall by the Braves in 2009) for the job in a rather major upset.

Today, he went up against the Brewers – you know, the team with the best offense in the National League last year. The knocks against Beachy have been that his stuff is pedestrian. He lacks an obvious knockout pitch, and while he’s listed at 6’2/210, that seems generous, so there’s not a lot of projection there. However, Beachy shoved his “pedestrian” stuff right down the Brewers’ throats today, and ended up giving up just one run on four hits over six innings, striking out seven Milwaukee hitters in the process. He made one mistake to Rickie Weeks, but besides that, he dominated a really good Brewers offense.

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Whenever I watch Major League action, I typically watch the games with the same intent in which I watch games I’m scouting in person.  When evaluating a hitting prospect, I’m interested in finding out how the pitchers are attacking him.  Where are his holes?  How easily are pitchers exploiting those holes?  Is there one spot or type of pitch you can get him out with or does it take a variation of approaches to get him out?

Things like this can be seen in big league games as well, except the holes are smaller, the weaknesses are more difficult to exploit, and the pitchers are better.  Even baseball’s great hitters like Robinson Cano have holes that pitchers and advance scouting departments are constantly searching for ways to exploit.  One of the ways teams might try to get Cano out in 2011 showed up on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. 

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Ben Zobrist did everything for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2009. He posted 8.4 WAR and earned MVP consideration from out of nowhere despite entering the season with only 530 below-replacement plate appearances to his credit. With that given, perhaps it’s not surprising that the MVP candidate in 2009 was merely a solid contributor in 2010, posting 3.1 WAR in 151 games for the AL East Champion Rays. Zobrist was still a solid fielder all around the diamond in his second campaign as a full-time player. The difference instead was a stark drop-off in the power that fueled his .408 wOBA. In 2010, Zobrist’s ISO fell from .246 all the way down to .115, and with it his wOBA plummeted to .323. Which Zobrist will show up in 2011?

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Might baseball be cycling back to a pitching-dominant period? Last year we saw indications that pitchers were starting to get a leg up on hitters. There are many different ways to explain the change, but the facts are in front of us. The league hit 4,878 home runs in 2008, followed by 5,042 in 2009. In 2010 that dropped to 4,613. Determined to reverse course, this weekend teams set the bar high for the 2010 season. With the season just 1.9 percent complete, batters have already hit 2.3 percent of last year’s home run totals.

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Last week, full-time employee Dave Cameron unveiled his 2011 Predictions That Will Be Wrong. I guess there’s a certain humility in that, but I also detect a lack of courage. Believe me, as someone who inserts a qualification in every sentence he writes (almost), I know that “covering your butt” is as much a play to shield oneself from criticism as it is intellectual honesty. So I’m going to show ya’ll how it’s done. Thus, here are some predictions for 2011 that will be right.

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