Evan Longoria has a partially torn hamstring. He’ll miss at least four weeks and as many as eight while he rehabs the injury. His team is left with a slim four-and-a-half game lead on last-place Boston and two months without their star. Their internal options may not seem scintillating, but they could do just enough… provided Longoria can return healthy.

First, let’s set the time frame involved. If we assume the hamstring is not completely torn and it’s not a grade three hamstring situation, we can use eight weeks as a worst-case scenario. If we remove tears and surgeries from the database and average up the 186 mentions of ‘hamstring strain’ and ‘thigh strain’ since 2002 from Jeff Zimmerman’s database, we get an average of 28 days missed. That includes all grades of non-completely-torn hamstring-type injuries, and this one seems somewhat severe. Let’s use four weeks as the best-case scenario.

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The strength of the A’s is their pitching staff. And the strength of the A’s pitching staff — at least as far as the future is concerned — is Jarrod Parker. The 23-year-old right-hander is considered an ace-in-the-making, which is why Oakland was willing to trade Trevor Cahill and Craig Breslow to acquire him from Arizona this past December. Now 30 months removed from Tommy John surgery, Parker began this season in Triple-A before making his first Oakland start last Wednesday. If all goes as planned, he’ll be making plenty more in years to come.

Parker talked about his enhanced repertoire — which includes a two-seamer and a pair of changeups — prior to last night’s game at Fenway Park.

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Parker on his repertoire and approach: “I throw four- and two-seamers, a changeup, a slider and a curveball. I’m aggressive. I like to attack the zone, down. I started throwing a two-seamer last year and it has helped me to use fewer pitches and go deeper into games. After surgery, I also really focused on learning a good changeup. I’m trying to not throw as many breaking balls, just use them when I need to.

“I work down more than I did [before the surgery]. The two seamer really helps me get down in front, because when it’s up, it’s not doing anything. It helps remind me to get down through it and finish out in front. I think that takes a lot of stress off of my elbow.”

On changing eye levels: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s already been one full month since FanGraphs: The Game started. We think it’s been a great first month, with over 10,641 players already created and 75,918 manual picks (plus 34,493 autopicks) entered in total.

Don’t forget: it’s not too late to create your own player. There are still 152 days left in the season, which means your player can play 152 games if you started today. That’s easily enough to give you a chance at the top prize. Not to mention there are weekly, monthly, and half-season awards.

You can join the fun anytime to compete against your friends with our custom leagues even if the top prize for the year is out of reach.

Now let’s give kudos to the positional awards winners for the month of April (with March included).

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Each winter we’re treated to the swapping or signing of former high draft picks, once productive players who have worn out their welcome, or players previously thought to have a great future devoid of on-field results. When the local media narrative begins, these players are often referred to as those who might benefit from a “change of scenery.”

“It might be just what the doctor ordered to get back on track.”

“Never felt comfortable in (insert city).”

“Needs a fresh start,” they’ll say.

Objectively, it feels rather silly to think in this game of inches that a new cut of grass, color of stirrups, or fan base might provide an entirely different result for players. But count me among the many fans who frequently think it just might work. And yet, examples of it working out are few.

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It took 21 team games and 72 plate appearances, but Giancarlo Stanton finally hit his first home run of the the season this past weekend. He drove an 0-2 fastball from left-hander Mike Zagurski out to dead center field, a 425-foot three-run shot. It raised Stanton’s season line to .246/.288/.348 and was just his fifth extra-base hit, well below both projections and expectations. There are a number of reasons for the 22-year-old’s power outage in the early going, but the most obvious one is staring us right in the face: his new ballpark.

With some help from Hit Tracker Online, here’s a look at the new Marlins Park with an overlay of the Sun Life Stadium outfield dimensions…

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Monday against Minnesota, the Angels broke the two run barrier for the first time in eight games, hanging four runs on Nick Blackburn and the Twins. With C.J. Wilson and Scott Downs on their respective games, four was enough, and the Angels won just their second game in their last eight tries. The hero was Torii Hunter, who plated the Angels first three runs behind an RBI single in the first and a two-run home run in the fourth inning. The home run marked his third of the season and his third in the past four days. Blackburn’s offering was right over the middle of the plate, just as those from Jeanmar Gomez on Saturday and Justin Masterson on Friday. The four-day run ends what has been an uncharacteristic struggle for Hunter with pitches over the middle of the plate in 2012.

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It was just another Monday night in San Diego. The Milwaukee Brewers were in town for the first game of a three-games series against the Padres. Lefty Randy Wolf was on the mound for the Brewers, facing young righty Joe Wieland for San Diego. It was the fourth big-league start for Wieland, still looking for his first win. He’d been rocked by the Los Angeles Dodgers in his major-league debut, giving up six runs — including three home runs — in five innings at Dodger Stadium. But he’d righted the ship somewhat, allowing only one and two runs, respectively, and no home runs, in his last two starts, both at PetCo Park.

Indeed, through the first fourteen games of the season, batters had hit only fourteen home runs at PetCo Park. Not Padres batters — they’d hit only six — but all batters. That’s not terribly surprising given PetCo’s notorious park factors for home runs: .59 for left-handed batters and .95 for right-handed batters, according to StatCorner.

On this night, Brewers slugger Ryan Braun had other ideas.

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Over at ESPN yesterday, Jayson Stark posed the question of whether Matt Kemp’s amazing April performance is the best April in the history of the game. Stark decided to tackle the question by looking only at the players that had matched or beaten him in a group of categories that contained BA, OBP, and SLG, but also HR, XBH, R, and RBI. I have a great deal of respect for Stark and enjoy his work, but at the end of the column, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened if we got rid of the useless numbers and looked at ones that put things in a little more context.

So, using our custom leaderboard function and the monthly split feature, I went year-by-year from 1974 (the first year we have monthly split data) to 2012 and looked for players who had matched Kemp’s 20 batting runs in the season’s first month. Batting Runs is the offensive component of WAR, and it offers a few advantages – it’s park and league adjusted so that different slash lines from different eras can be put on an even playing field, and since it is a counting stat, it evens out months where there are differences in playing time. After all, if a player hit nearly as well as Kemp but did it in 20 more plate appearances, that’s a comparable performance, even if it falls just shy by looking at rate metrics.

Over the last 39 years, eight players have created 20 or more batting runs above average in the first month of the season.

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In Jamie Moyer’s most recent start, he went 5.0 innings against the New York Metropolitans and struck out 7, walked 2, and allowed a single donger. How a post-Tommy Johns surgery 49-year-old can strike out 7 young, healthy, honest Americans (both North and South Americans) is frankly beyond me. But it is an understatement to say Moyer has surprised me this year.

Not only has the near-half-century man earned a spot on the Rockies rotation, he is pitching like their ace.
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