We are pleased to welcome David Laurila to the FanGraphs staff. He’s an accomplished journalist who was accepted into the Baseball Writer’s Association of America in December, and has become one of the premier interviewers of those in and around the game. We’re excited to bring his series of excellent Q&As to FanGraphs, and the series kicks of today with a certain reigning Cy Young award winner.

Few, if any, hurlers combine overpowering stuff and pitching acumen quite like Felix Hernandez. The Mariners workhorse has dominated the American League each of the past two-plus seasons, going 19-5 in 2009 and capturing the Cy Young Award last year despite logging just 13 wins. He’s done so with an array of offerings, all of which induce weak contact and swings and misses on a consistent basis. The 25-year-old right-hander led the league in numerous categories in 2010, including ERA, innings pitched, and hits per nine innings. He topped all American League pitchers in WAR and finished second in strikeouts. In eight starts this season he is 4-2, 3.02, including a pair of complete games.

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David Laurila: How would you define yourself as a pitcher?

Felix Hernandez: I’m a smart pitcher. I’m a hard thrower who knows what he has to do. I know myself and go by my strengths and not by the guys who are hitting. I know what I have to do. That’s me.

DL: Do you use video or scouting reports?

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Justin Masterson, James Shields, and Bud Norris enjoy a boating holiday.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Expanded previews for two games: Tampa Bay at Cleveland and Arizona at San Francisco.

2. Brief, but still entirely illuminating, comments on three more games: Los Angeles (NL) at Pittsburgh, Washington at Atlanta, and St. Louis at Chicago (NL).

3. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

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Bryce Harper has received his fair share of attention over the years, coming as close to being labeled a prodigy as anyone in recent history. As a sophomore in high school, he was launching 500 foot home runs in Major League Stadiums. At 16 years old, Sports Illustrated put him on the cover of their magazine. At 17, he left high school a year early to compete with wood bats against Junior College players and hit 31 home runs, breaking the previous school record for homers in a season… which was 12. He also won the Golden Spikes award as the best amateur player in the country during the year in which he should have been a Junior in High School, and then was the first overall pick in the draft last summer.

And yet, despite all the hype, I’m still not sure we’re accurately appreciating just how good this kid really could be. He’s 18 years old, playing in his first professional season at a time when he should be getting ready to graduate from high school, and he’s hitting .396/.472/.712. That’s his line after last night’s 4 for 5 performance – one which included a grand slam, his eighth home run of the season.

He’s eighteen years old. Sure, it’s only 111 at-bats, but he could go into a slump of epic proportions and still match the numbers put up by some of the best age-18 seasons of all time.

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Guess where that one’s headed.

Tigers 9, Twins 7

Moving the Needle: Jhonny Peralta homers to put the Tigers back on top, +.467 WPA. Do you like high scoring games? Do you like multiple lead changes? Then you probably should have been watching the Tigers and Twins square off yesterday afternoon. Only one inning passed without either team scoring a run, the sixth, and even then both teams loaded the bases. In the eighth, with the Twins on top 6-5, the Tigers seemingly struck the definitive blow when Jhonny Peralta hit a long two-run homer to left. It flew farther than the two-run shot that topped the charts in Tuesday’s game. The Twins caught a break in the bottom of the inning when they scored on an error, but the Tigers again struck in the ninth, this time holding the lead and taking the game.

Notables

Jason Kubel: 2 for 3, 1 HR, 2 BB. That’s only his fourth home run of the year, yet his wOBA has crossed the .400 mark.

Victor Martinez: 3 for 4, 1 HR, 1 BB. He has three hits in each of his last three games, including four doubles, two home runs, and three walks. That’s one way to compensate for missed time.

Brandon Inge: 2 for 5, 1 3B. His ninth-inning triple put the Tigers on top for good.

Also in this issue: White Sox 6, Angels 4 | Nationals 7, Braves 3 | Orioles 4, Mariners 2 | Cubs 11, Cardinals 4 | Rays 8, Indians 2 | Phillies 5, Marlins 3 | Astros 4, Reds 3 | Royals 4, Yankees 3 | Padres 13, Brewers 6 | Blue Jays 9, Red Sox 3 | Dodgers 2, Pirates 0 | Giants 4, Diamondbacks 3

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Entering the 2006 season, you would have been hard pressed to find an analyst that didn’t believe in Howie Kendrick. Kendrick not only displayed solid power for a middle infielder, but his bat was also supposed to carry him to multiple batting titles. Five mostly injury-plagued seasons later and Kendrick is one of the most frustrating players in all of baseball. It’s one thing to be injured and ineffective, but Kendrick has actually flashed some skills when healthy (which, of course, makes him even more frustrating). It may have taken five seasons, but Kendrick finally seems to be living up to expectations. Less than two months into the season, Kendrick has already posted the highest WAR of his career. We have waited what seems like an eternity, but this could be the year Kendrick finally breaks out.
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If you follow the business side of baseball or wear a 10-gallon cowboy hat all day, you may well know the Houston Astros’s owner, Drayton McLane Jr., is preparing to sell the franchise. Reports have diverged on what the final selling cost might be — anywhere from a paltry $650 million to a respectable $680 million.

Now that McLane begins to close the baseball chapter of his life, my knowledge of the wealthy elite informs me he will now spend the remainder of his days getting in shape whilst swimming laps in his massive vault of gold coins. While he readies his swimming top hat and alligator-skin booties, let’s take this time to reflect on McLane’s investment.
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Yesterday, in a game against the Houston Astros, Aroldis Chapman entered the game in the top of the 8th inning and faced four batters; he walked three of them and hit the other. That leaves Chapman with a league-leading 11.37 walks per nine innings, 16 walks and two hit batsmen in 12.2 innings. In his 15 innings last year (including the playoffs) he walked just five batters and hit one.

Obviously these are tiny samples of innings, but going from three walks per nine to over 11 is alarming. His BIS-reported Zone% is down from 43% last year to 38% this year. Here are the locations of his fastballs to right-handed batters in 2010 and 2011 to see where he is missing:

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Matt Holliday is one of the best players in baseball. Joey Votto currently has a so-slight-it-is-meaningless lead in Wins Above Replacement among National League players over Holliday despite Holliday missing time at the beginning of the season recovering from an appendectomy. Holliday (201) is second only to his teammate Lance Berkman in wRC+ (213), and plays superior defense to Berkman.

Holliday’s excellence isn’t a recent development. From 2007 to the present, Holliday has accumulated more WAR (27.6) than any other position players in baseball other than acknowledged-best-in-the-business Albert Pujols (34.3) and the similarly underrated Chase Utley (28.6). Of course, there is a distinction between true talent and observed performance, and the uncertainty involved, e.g., with defensive metrics means that we don’t know “for sure” where Holliday ranks, but you get the idea. It is easy enough to see how good Holliday has been and continues simply by looking at his player page. He’s been just about as good or better than Carl Crawford each of the last few years; Crawford has been an excellent player (and very probably still is, despite his dreadful start in Boston), yet, unless I missed it, despite the big eventual payday, Holliday’s free agency did not receive the hype that Crawford’s did. Indeed, relative to his peers-in-performance, Holliday has not received much national attention lately. Why might that be?

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While examining the Pirates this week, I’ve found myself asking the same question again and again: how important is it for the team to get the .500-record monkey off its back? Put another way, I’ve been wondering what portion of its resources it should use to help the 2011 team for the 2011 team’s sake, and what portion it should use to help the 2012 and beyond teams actually contend. Clearly the focus is on 2012 and beyond, since the goal is contention, not a .500 record. Still, teams have to consider the present for many reasons, including fan interest. If the Pirates continue winning at a reasonable clip, the front office could face some tough decisions in July.

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