Sometimes I just like to mess around with data to see if I find something. Today was one of those days. Two years ago, Perri Klass wrote in The New York Times, “The percentage of left-handers in the population seems to be relatively constant, at 10 percent. And this goes back to studies of cave paintings, looking at which hands hunters are using to hold their spears, and to archaeological analyses of ancient artifacts.”

So I wanted to figure out whether handedness had changed at all in baseball. Are there more southpaws or switch-hitters in baseball now than there used to be a decade ago, or half a century ago?
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The St. Louis Cardinals just finished off a sweep of the Washington Nationals, and currently stand at the top of the NL Central with a 13-8 record. At 4.9 runs per game, they’re fourth in the NL in offensive production, which is one of the primary reasons they have outscored their opponents by 27 runs so far. (The other main reason is Adam Wainwright.)

Now, though, here’s a fun fact you might not expect; the St. Louis Cardinals currently have a wRC+ of 88, tied — with the Mariners! — for 24th in MLB. Even if we remove pitcher hitting from the group and only look at offense from position players, their wRC+ is 97, still below the Major League average. From just looking at their batting lines, it’d be fair to describe the Cardinals offensive performance to date as sub-par, and yet, they’re scoring nearly five runs per game.

This is the power of situational hitting. Behold, the Cardinals offense, by baserunner state:

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Used to be, earlier in his career, Alfonso Soriano was the very model of an undisciplined hitter. He got a lot of press, because he was a Yankee, and back in 2002, Soriano drew 22 unintentional walks while striking out 157 times. He also mashed 39 dingers, so it’s not like there was much reason for Soriano to change. But as time has gone by, it seems like Soriano has drawn less attention for his hacking, probably because it’s become entirely familiar. And probably because he’s managed to have a hell of a career, so it’s not like the hacking really dragged him down. Soriano with a different approach might not have been as good as the Soriano we’ve been able to observe.

But Soriano’s still very much a hacker. As a rule of thumb, if a young hitter is pretty undisciplined, he’s likely to remain pretty undisciplined as an older hitter. That is, if his career survives. Soriano, for his career, has four times as many strikeouts as unintentional walks. That makes for a similar ratio to those belonging to Reed Johnson and Jeff Francoeur. During the PITCHf/x era, 515 players have batted at least 500 times. Soriano’s rate of swings at pitches out of the strike zone is the tenth-highest in the group. That Soriano has a career .351 wOBA is a testament to his ability to punish a variety of pitches, but the hacking still gets him in trouble, and Thursday provided a wonderful example. Thursday, in a game between the Cubs and the Reds, Soriano went and had himself an unforgivable plate appearance in a critical spot. Or what would have been a critical spot, if the Cubs weren’t dreadful.

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Carson Cistulli’s infatuation with specific pitches and Jeff Sullivan’s desire to highlight the bizarre and hilarious have led to some great GIFs on FanGraphs over the last few years. But, today, I think we all have to acknowledge that the art form of the GIF has been perfected. Or, at least, has hit a new high. Because this is simply incredible.

A commenter on Lone Star Ball created this image, showing the difference in movement on Yu Darvish’s pitches, and I can’t stop watching this. Mesmerizing is probably the best word I can use.

Thanks to Drew Sheppard — the guy has a webcomic, by the way, which deserves a plug just because of how great this GIF is for making this — for originally posting it to Lone Star Ball. I hope this inspires Drew (or others) to make more of these, though it might be that the Darvish one will never be topped. This feels like the Mona Lisa of GIFs.

Also, good luck to opposing hitters trying to hit Yu Darvish.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Three Notable International League Peformances
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Triple-A International League
3. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Three Notable International League Peformances
The leaderboards for the Triple-A International League are below. Here are brief notes on three players from those leaderboards.

• This season is likely to mark the third consecutive one in which Chris Marrero, in his age-24 season, makes the majority of his plate appearances at Triple-A. Either a return to health or exposure to the level has allowed him to flourish early on. Generally speaking, it’s to the hitter’s advantage to walk and strikeout and homer all at the same rate — a thing which Marrero is more or less doing at the moment. Still, his currently major-league prospects rely on an injury to Adam LaRoche or trade.

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When Jason Hammel takes the mound tonight against the A’s, he’ll be visualizing the shape of his pitches. He’ll also be throwing a lot of two-seamers and sliders. Last season the Baltimore Orioles right-hander threw his signature offerings 34.5% and 22.2% of the time. This year – according to PITCHf/x — those numbers have merged somewhat to 27.8% and 23.7%, respectively.

Originally with Tampa Bay, Hammel spent three years with Colorado before being traded to Baltimore — in exchange for Jeremy Guthrie — in 2012. Last year he went 8-6 with a 3.43 ERA, and 8.6 strikeouts-per-nine-innings, in 20 starts. Hammel talked about his development as a pitcher when the Orioles visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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David Laurila: How have you evolved as a pitcher?

Jason Hammel: First of all, I throw harder. I’ve basically grown into my body. I probably have a sounder delivery. There’s also the idea of just knowing how to pitch.

Out of high school, I was 89 [mph], then I went to college and got up around 91-92. As I started getting a little deeper into the minors, my velocity began to show up more. I got into the mid-90s.Velocity opens up more room for error. If you make a bad pitch you can maybe get away with it because you’re throwing harder. I’ve always been a max-effort guy.

DL: What is the history behind your two-seamer?

JH: I experimented with it in Denver, in my first year out there [2009], but it wasn’t successful for me. I wasn’t getting any movement, so… well, I was, but it was too inconsistent. I wasn’t about to keep working on it in the middle of the season. I got traded to the Rockies right after spring training, from the Rays, and started working with Bob Apodaca, their pitching coach. I worked on it for maybe the first two months of the season.

DL: When did it become a quality pitch for you? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Paul talk to Corey Dawkins about Chad Billingsley’s elbow, then discuss the Mariners’ decision to start Robert Andino over Brendan Ryan and the state of Seattle’s organization.

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Earlier, we took a look at the young season’s most impeded home run so far, which is the home run that faced the most opposition from the game conditions at the time. All necessary data was recovered from the ESPN Home Run Tracker, which is among my most favorite of Internet resources. If we look at one extreme, then, it follows that we should look also at the other extreme, or else the matter will feel incomplete, and this is a website devoted to completeness. And so we now turn our attention to the home run that has gotten the biggest boost from the game conditions. Home runs like this are probably more interesting than home runs that remain home runs despite strong winds and cold conditions, because these might be identified as “lucky”.

In terms of impeded home runs, we had one dinger at -20 feet, and another dinger at -17 feet. So it was a close race, and the error bars probably overlap. Here, in terms of aided home runs, we have one dinger at +64 feet, and another dinger at +43 feet. That’s a much bigger difference, but there might still be some error-bar overlap, for reasons we’ll get into. Let’s look at the home run in question!

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In the first game of a Tuesday doubleheader in Colorado, the Braves and Rockies played in a temperature that was measured at 23 degrees at first pitch. It’s hardly impossible to imagine temperatures that low — in some places temperatures are that low all of the time — but it’s hard to imagine playing baseball, and specifically hitting a baseball, when it’s below freezing out. Nevertheless, the Braves and Rockies played, and the Braves emerged victorious, having slammed a trio of dingers. That got my mental gears whirring.

Take an ordinary fly ball. At room temperature, it would have a given distance. In hotter conditions, it would fly farther. In colder conditions, it would fly less far. So I found it impressive that the Braves hit three home runs when it was around 23 degrees, and my initial thought was that the cold canceled out the effect of the altitude. From there, I started messing around on the ESPN Home Run Tracker, and I looked beyond Tuesday’s first game in Colorado. I started looking for the 2013 home run that has lost the most distance due to non-standard conditions.

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