I’d like to introduce a new feature at FanGraphs: the pitcher spotlight.  While I will continue to try to highlight unique skills or aspects of the sport in other pieces, Major League Baseball is overflowing with quality pitching and interesting prospects worth addressing.  To cover a wider range of pitchers, these posts will be a regular but relatively brief look at a pitcher’s repertoire.

This week’s subject is 24-year-old Chicago White Sox ace Chris Sale, who is fresh off a dominating 13 strikeout performance in his last start.  Sale is a deceptive low arm-slot lefty who fully utilizes his quality four pitch mix, which includes a four seam fastball, two seam fastball, slider and changeup.  Here are those offerings in the usual composite graphic with footage stabilized and synchronized to provide a relative look at their movement and velocity.

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

1. Night of Precisely One-Thousand Rookie Starters
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Night of Precisely One-Thousand Rookie Starters
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to alert the readership to how either exactly one-thousand or at least ten rookie pitchers are starting tonight for their respective teams.

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Noah Syndergaard made his Double-A debut for the Binghamton Mets this past Sunday. In six innings against Erie, he allowed two runs on five hits, he walked one and fanned seven. How did the right-hander look? According to a scout who was at the game: “The kid is 20, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s pitching in New York next season. He‘s a horse.”

The 6-foot-6 prospect joined the Mets’ stable last December as part of the R.A. Dickey deal. Drafted 38th overall in 2010 out of Legacy High School in Mansfield, Texas, Syndergaard (pronounced SIN-der-guard) came into this season rated the team’s No. 3 prospect, behind Zack Wheeler and Travis d’Arnaud. Prior to his promotion, he logged a 3.11 ERA in 12 starts for High-A St. Lucie.

Syndergaard discussed Sunday’s outing — as well as his repertoire and a recent mechanical adjustment — prior to Monday’s game in Portland, Maine.

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Ben and Sam discuss three things about the Twins, then talk about Dylan Bundy and the PRP approach to treating partial UCL tears.

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Everyone agrees that there are good stories in baseball. When it comes to deciding what counts as a good story, though, there are as many definitions as there are people who care to have one. Yet as far as the 2013 Pittsburgh Pirates are concerned, the majority are on the same page. The last time the Pirates finished at least .500 was 1992, and they were eliminated from the playoffs on October 14. Two days later, Bryce Harper was born. Now, the Pirates are tied with the Cardinals for the best record in baseball right around the midpoint, and though the Pirates might not be baseball’s best team, they’re well on their way to finishing .500 and then some. One of the keys to enjoying baseball is freshness, and the Pirates’ success feels fresh. They’re a fun team to support and an easy team to bandwagon.

However, while on the surface everything’s peaches, the team success has hidden a team weakness of historical significance. And this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that Clint Barmes just can’t hit, even though, yeah, he can’t hit. There’s something the Pirates have done worse than anyone else. And I don’t just mean anyone else this season. I mean anyone else at least since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. There’s something at which the Pirates have been historically dreadful.

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Last year, we were pro-Mike Trout. The AL MVP debate pitted the Triple Crown against overall performance, and we came down on the side of evaluating players by things other than batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. Unfortunately, being pro-Mike Trout meant that we were perceived to be inherently anti-Miguel Cabrera. It’s not that we had anything against Cabrera, but he became the personification of The Other Side. In order to help explain why Trout was better, we had to point out where Cabrera was deficient relative to the guy we supported. It’s the nature of comparisons, but it’s not always fair to the guys being compared, especially when picking between multiple great players while trying to decide which one happened to be the greatest.

This post is not a comparison. This post is just about Miguel Cabrera, and appreciating how good he actually is, because as a follow-up to his Triple Crown season, Cabrera’s 2013 season is shaping up to be his best season yet, and one of the best offensive seasons in baseball history.

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With the trade deadline a little more than a month away, we’re going to see a lot of rumors and speculation over the next few weeks, with reporters tying players to certain teams based on what they’ve heard from industry sources. This post is neither rumor nor speculation. No one in the game has suggested to me that this might happen. I have no inside information. I’m just pointing out a trade that, from an outside perspective, looks so glaringly obvious that it has to happen for the world to make sense.

The Oakland A’s need a second baseman. Well, maybe you could argue that they need a shortstop, because Jed Lowrie’s defense is pretty lousy at he’d be less harmful at 2B than SS, but Lowrie is still playing SS on a fairly regular basis, so technically, the A’s still need a second baseman. Preferably a second baseman who can hit. Eric Sogard is not a bad utility player to come off the bench, but he shouldn’t be playing regularly for a team in the midst of a pennant race. They should be able to do better.

So, let’s assume that the A’s are hunting for a second baseman, and not just a fill-in stop-gap type, but a guy who could make a real difference and push them over the hump as a legitimate World Series contender. But, because they’re the A’s and they’re constantly balancing current wins against maintaining enough assets for the future, they also need that impact player to come at something of a discount due to a diminished perception of his abilities. Basically, they need an impact player who people don’t think of as an impact player anymore.

They need Chase Utley.

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When you’re active on a site like FanGraphs, it’s easy to forget the majority of baseball fans don’t consume the game the way you do. Most people don’t know nearly so much about baseball analysis; most people don’t have the foggiest about UZR. More people, though, are writing about the game in an analytical fashion — meaning more people are being exposed to such analysis. Meaning more people are taking an interest in such analysis, and more or less are just getting started. It’s daunting, because there’s a lot of information out there, but contemporary baseball analysis comes with a handful of fairly basic principles. Principles that are easy to get accustomed to, and principles that can take you most of the way.

We could probably spend several hours coming up with the starter set of analytical principles with which one should be familiar. That’s even without getting too advanced. For pitchers, probably, one would begin with DIPS, or that would at least be near the start. But there are principles for hitters, too, and there’s something convenient about the 2013 version of Raul Ibanez. On Wednesday, Ibanez slugged his 18th home run of the season. In one year — in one half of one year — Ibanez by himself can teach three important lessons. Maybe more. But here are three of them.

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

1. Meeting of the Corey Kluber Society, At Last
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Meeting of the Corey Kluber Society, At Last
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce another meeting — in this case, at 7:05pm ET today (Thursday) — of the Corey Kluber Society.

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