A puppet on the hand is equivalent to no specific number in the bush.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. An expanded preview for tonight’s biggest of events: Tampa Bay at Milwaukee.

2. Brief, but no less charming, previews for these games: Toronto at Atlanta, Colorado at Cleveland, and Philadelphia at St. Louis.

3. Yet another experimental design for the day’s slate of games — including, as always, very proprietary Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

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Nationals 6, Mariners 5

Moving the Needle: Wilson Ramos’s three-run blast ends the game, +.913 WPA. Hooray for vertical WPA lines. The Mariners entered the bottom of the ninth with a 5-1 lead and Brandon League on the mound. An error started the inning, and a walk made things worse. But a double play seemed to put a damper on any potential rally. But three straight singles made it a 5-3 game, setting up Ramos, who hit a hanger a long way out to left-center to send the Nationals home winners.

Notables

Nationals offense: 7 for 31, 1 HR. They had three hits in the first eight innings, and four in the last one.

Adam Kennedy: 3 for 5, 1 2B. He continues to contribute, which ranks among the more unexpected developments of the season. Who would have thought that Dustin Ackley’s promotion would affect Chone Figgins rather than Kennedy?

Doug Fister: 8 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 3 K. At 99 pitches, do you think he wanted to come out for the ninth? Do you think that the result amplified that feeling?

Also in this issue: Padres 5, Red Sox 4 | Braves 5, Blue Jays 1 | White Sox 3, Cubs 2 | Marlins 5, Angels 2 | Rockies4, Indians 3 | Dodgers 6, Tigers 1 | Diamondbacks 7, Royals 2 | Brewers 5, Rays 1 | Rangers 5, Astros 4 | A’s 7, Mets 3 | Pirates 9, Orioles 3 | Phillies 10, Cardinals 2 | Twins 9, Giants 2

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Ryne Sandberg spent 15-plus seasons in the big leagues, which means that he faced a generation’s worth of great pitchers. The Cubs Hall of Famer hit .285/.344/.452 overall, but how did he do against the likes of Pedro Martinez, Nolan Ryan and Bruce Sutter? And how did the pitchers’ respective repertoires and approaches influence those results? Sandberg delved into his memory bank to analyze those match-ups, and several more.

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David Laurila: What was your approach as a hitter?

Ryne Sandberg: When I went up there, I was basically looking to dominate middle away and react inside, just naturally. I covered 70 percent of the plate with that approach. When I first came up, I was a hitter that hit up the middle and to right center, and one thing I had to learn was to react on the inside fastball, to be able to get the head out and pull that pitch. It took me until my third year in the major leagues to accomplish that. That’s when the power numbers came and I was able to turn on a fastball with some pop.

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Facing one of the worst offenses in baseball last night, Andrew Miller yielded 10 baserunners, became the first pitcher to give up a home run to Orlando Hudson all season, and walked away with a no-decision, despite facing an unimpressive mound opponent and pitching for a clearly superior team.

He also pitched out of trouble multiple times, pitched backwards when he needed to, and induced nine whiffs out of 89 pitches. For a pitcher making his first big league start of the year following an 8.54 ERA last season, three runs allowed in 5 2/3 innings ain’t half bad. Clay Buchholz’s stint on the disabled list might not hurt much at all.

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Observe, if you will, the following WAR leaderboard, covering from the beginning of the 2010 season to the current date.

There, in 12th place amongst all position players, sits New York Yankees left fielder Brett Gardner. His total of 9.2 is closer to fifth place then it is to 13th place. Perhaps he hasn’t done it in the traditional way — blasting the ball across the ballpark and hitting his way into the hearts and minds of baseball fans — but there should be little doubt. Brett Gardner is one of baseball’s elite.

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Last week, I wrote about how the dramatic turnaround Josh Beckett has experienced this year has been mostly driven by a huge change in his BABIP, and in doing so, noted that this year’s version of Beckett doesn’t seem to be that different from last year’s version. The always insightful David Pinto responded, using Pitch F/x data and heat maps to show that Beckett’s pitches are showing a real difference this year. His conclusion:

To sum up, Beckett exhibited less control of a straighter fastball in 2010. Batters hit that pitch harder. Beckett’s bad luck seemed more due to an injury hurting his mechanics than balls finding holes on good pitches.

DIPS is often right, as it was on Dan Haren. In the case of Beckett, however, there is reason to believe that his improvement is more than just regression to and past the mean. Sometimes pitchers make their own luck.

In reality, I don’t think David and I actually disagree here — he just corrected some sloppy writing on my part, and that got me thinking that I probably needed to talk more about BABIP and regression, because too often, we just sum up variation as luck but don’t explain what we really mean by that. So, here’s a general take on what I see as the main causes of variations in BABIP.

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Billy Beane made it clear this past off-season that he intended to improve the A’s offense for the 2011 season. They had performed reasonably well in 2010, finishing with a 97 wRC+, which represented an improvement over the 2008 and 2009 teams. By trading for David DeJesus and Josh Willingham, and signing Hideki Matsui, Beane moved to bring that offense above the league average level, which, combined with its young and effective pitching staff, figured to make the A’s contenders in the AL West. Many writers indeed picked the A’s over the Rangers before the season began. But the plan hasn’t exactly worked. Oakland currently sports an 86 wRC+, which is third worst in the AL. Worse yet, they’re getting their best production from the lineup spot that bats least frequently.

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The Rockies have activated Dexter Fowler from his recent rehab assignment and demoted him to Triple-A to work on his strikeouts. Haven’t we heard this all before? Recently we’ve seen Ian Stewart and Chris Iannetta struggle with the same issues and get the same treatment. At some point, there has to be some exploration into the culpability of the team itself. Is there a chance the Rockies have brought this on themselves somehow?

First, let’s establish if there is a pattern. At the very least, we know that the team has had three young players struggle with strikeouts in the major leagues. Fowler’s lifetime strikeout rate is 26.3%, Stewart’s is 32.3% and Iannetta’s 27.3%. All three have had trouble staying with the big league club — or at least they’ve all been sent down after showing decent performances in the major leagues. All three have achieved wRC+ numbers at least 100 or more, all three whiffed a little too much thereafter, and all three lost their jobs. Only Iannetta so far has retaken his job. 

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This is happening again.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. An expanded preview for the big, big Houston-Texas match-up.

2. Brief, but totally charming, previews for these games: Colorado at Cleveland, New York (AL) at Cincinnati, and Philadelphia at St. Louis.

3. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games — in a sweet new, slightly more interactive table.

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