On the first of June, left-hander Johan Santana labored through 134 pitches and meticulously navigated around five walks to become the first player in New York Mets history to throw a no-hitter.

It was assuredly a special moment for the organization, as well as the entire fan base. The Mets’ manager, Terry Collins, understood the magnitude of the situation. Despite the fact that Santana missed all of 2011 with a shoulder injury and had largely been limited in his pitch counts throughout the year to that point, Collins stuck with his 33-year-old veteran in an attempt to rewrite the history books.

To counteract the extra strain put on the shoulder in that no-hitter, Johan Santana received extra rest before his next start. That decision caused the left-hander to develop rust, according to his manager, and Santana was not sharp against the New York Yankees his next start — he surrendered six runs over five innings, including four home runs.

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The trade market for Kevin Youkilis is heating up. With Will Middlebrooks playing well — and both first base and designated hitter occupied — it looks like Youkilis will be the odd man out in Boston.

But while the 33-year-old has been a strong offensive performer in the past, this year he’s been awful. Youkilis has hit just .215/.301/.341 this season, and that’s going to make it difficult for the Red Sox to get anything useful in return for him. The Sox realize this, and are reportedly willing to pay some of Youkilis’ remaining contract as an enticement to get a better package for him. But with Youkilis slipping offensively, teams will be hesitant to offer anything of value for the third baseman.

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Rocco Baldelli knows what it’s like to be a promising young hitter. Drafted sixth overall out of a Rhode Island high school, in 2000 by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, he was viewed as a potential superstar. He reached the big leagues at the age of 21, and despite three solid campaigns was still a work-in-progress when his career was derailed by injuries and illness.

He is now entrusted with helping other young players reach their potential. Still just 30 years old, he is working for the Rays as a special assistant to baseball operations. Baldelli shared his thoughts on the art of hitting — or is it a science? — at the MIT-Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, earlier this year.

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Rocco Baldelli: “As a hitter — a former hitter — I’ve always been enamored of just watching guys and seeing who has success and who doesn’t. I’ve seen guys who look as though they should be able to hit and can’t. I’ve seen guys who struggle early in their careers and then figure out a way to become productive major-league offensive players.

“You look for separators, but it‘s not that simple. You start looking for commons traits in good hitters, and common traits in guys who struggle, and you think you’ve found them. Then you see some of the best hitters in baseball doing things you wouldn’t necessarily expect good hitters to do. To me, the amount of questions is endless. There are so many variables that go into the process of hitting at the highest level.

“Pitchers can reinvent themselves. For instance, say you have a big guy with a good arm and he can spin the ball a little bit. He can progress and change the type of player he is. But hitters and swings seem to be so ingrained. Read the rest of this entry »

Mets right-hander and soft-spoken Southern gentleman R.A. Dickey threw his second consecutive one-hitter tonight — in this case, against the Orioles of Baltimore. Nor do his defense-independent numbers suggest that he was anything but excellent on Monday night (box): 9.0 IP, 30 TBF, 13 K, 2 BB, 11 GB on 15 batted-balls (73.3% GB), 1.14 xFIP.

The average knuckleball from Dickey has approximately zero inches of horizontal movement and a single inch of positive vertical movement — or “rise,” a concept the present author discussed briefly earlier on Monday. Of course, the idea of an “average” knuckleball is a bit of a misnomer: given the nature of the pitch, the standard deviation of both sorts of movement is likely quite high. Indeed, this is the strength of the pitch: no one really knows where it’s going, not even Dickey.

As a sort of celebration of Dickey’s last two games — of his entire season, really — I sought out Dickey’s three “movingest” knuckleballs from his Monday start. In this case, I’ve identified the three of Dickey’s knuckleballs with the highest absolute value of total movement (i.e. the sum of the absolute values of both horizontal and vertical movement, in inches).

It’s hard to say if what follows are necessarily Dickey’s three best knuckleballs from Monday. However, each of them really does move quite a bit: indeed, the reader will note that catcher Josh Thole is unable to catch two of the three pitches and has to sort of violently move his glove to catch the other.

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If you’ve ever watched even maybe one baseball game in your entire life, you’ve probably heard the term “rising fastball” used by a broadcaster, coach, or player. In point of fact, insofar as gravity is a thing that we have on earth, the notion that a fastball can “rise” is a misnomer. Like any object, a baseball is drawn toward the earth at 9.8 meters per second squared.

If you’ve ever made your way to a pitcher’s PITCHf/x page here at the site, however, you might’ve noticed that, indeed, pitchers are credited with positive (or “rising”) horizontal movement on many of their offerings. The league-average vertical movement for most pitch types, in fact, registers as positive.

While these two facts appear to contradict each other, they actually don’t. The PITCHf/x numbers for vertical movement one finds here — and at sites like Brooks Baseball and Texas Leaguers — are presented not as absolute movement, but movement relative to a spinless ball. When we see that a league-average fastball has 8.8 inches of postive vertical (i.e. Y-axis) movement, what that means is, is that the league-average fastball drops 8.8 inches fewer than a ball without backspin.

The intent of the present post, however, is neither to discuss the finer points of physics nor to make a particularly salient point about or using PITCHf/x. The author has expertise in neither. What the author does know about is how to make a GIF, which is what he (read: I) has/have done.

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In the 2011 draft, Baltimore drafted prep catcher/third baseman Nicky Delmonico in the sixth round for a bonus of 1.525 million. Entering the 2011 high school season, the Knoxville, Tennessee product and son of former Volunteers head coach Rod Delmonico was expected to be a first round pick before injuries and bonus demands caused him to slip. Additionally, a strong commitment to the University of Georgia and opportunity to play alongside his older brother made him an extremely hard sign. However, the Orioles ponied up the cash and somewhat surprisingly signed the left-handed hitter causing him to instantly become one of the top position prospects in the organization.

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After giving up five runs in five innings in Seattle on Saturday, Tim Lincecum’s ERA now stands at 6.19. However, his 3.87 FIP and 3.82 xFIP stand in stark contrast to that mark, and his walk rate, strikeout rate, and home run (or fly ball) rate suggest that his process and results haven’t lined up in the season’s first two months. You can essentially trace the cause of his runs allowed to a .330 BABIP and an 11.4% HR/FB ratio, both of which are categories that have wide variation and less predictive value than more core metrics. In fact, many times, you’ll hear a pitcher who is at one extreme in either BABIP or HR/FB be referred to as being either lucky or unlucky, depending on which side of the spectrum they’re residing on at the moment.

That’s no question that FanGraphs is a contributor to those kinds of statements, as we’ve long supported the idea that pitchers should be evaluated more by their ability to throw strikes and either miss bats or get batters to hit the ball on the ground than they are by the outcomes of when a batter does make contact. We’ve used the term luck to describe fluctuations in BABIP or HR/FB, so any critiques I make about the use of that word are as introspective as they are anything else. But, that said, I do want to suggest that using the word luck to describe Tim Lincecum’s early season results is probably doing a disservice his actual performance.

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It’s been a trying year for the Kansas City Royals. After being one of the better hitting outfits in the game last season, they have not hit nearly as well this year, and while the pitching has improved, they are currently down two starters in Danny Duffy and Felipe Paulino as well. Still, the team has persevered. Since posting a 6-15 record in April, they have gone 23-20 — including five wins in their past six games — to remain on the periphery of the American League Central “race.” They are still not scoring enough runs to be taken seriously as we move closer to the All-Star break, but unlike many teams, Kansas City has a great in-house solution laying in wait in prospect Wil Myers.

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Episode 200
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• Mariners unsigned third-round draft pick (from 2010) — and likely first-round selection in 2013 — Ryne Stanek, who pitches for Arkansas on Monday night in the College World Series.
• The American League’s continued dominance over the National one.
• Teams in need: the Detroit Tigers, for example, who have multiple outfielders with negative WARs.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min. play time.)

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Lost in the Kansas City Royals’ Yuniesky Betancourt-fueled 5-3 extra-innings win over the Cardinals yesterday was that Alex Gordon tied his franchise record with five walks in a single game. Yeah, I’m as furious as the rest of you that this was overlooked. But hey, at least this time he at least scored a run. When Gordon originally set the record (as I am sure you all remember) back on July 30, 2008 against Oakland, he did not score once. (I remember that game well, as not long before that I had an argument with someone who said that Jose Guillen was the Royals’ only “feared” hitter, unlike that loser Gordon. Guillen hit right behind Gordon in this game. FEAR.)

It was an amazing feat, in a way, but not nearly the most times on base without scoring. In fact, since 1918, there have been 73 players who have gotten on base six or more times without scoring in regular season games. What follows is a look at the most extreme cases.

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