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Comment From Guest Teixeira looks dreadful at the plate. Is he cooked?     Jason Collette: Aprils have never been a good month for him, but as long as he’s complaining about that wrist, things won’t be good for him. His history buys him some leash, but early results have not been encouraging.

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Comment From jocephus can we determine the world series after 3 games?     Jason Collette: Mariners vs Marlins — Selig’s worst nightmare!

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Comment From Mikey Jason! Thanks for the chat, was getting concerned. Thoughts on Corey Dickerson? Does his talent push him above Blackmon by late April?     Jason Collette: Yes, I think the talent wins out here. Someone has to stand out from the crowd here eventually.

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Comment From benj Who is a better offensive player right now: Jean Segura or Brad Miller?     Jason Collette: Two of my favorite players to watch. I’m biased with Miller as he’s from Orlando, so I’ve watched him quite a bit. I love his motor.

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Comment From john Please tell me I am dreaming. Lucas Duda over Ike Davis? There is nothing that Duda does better than Davis. Even saber-knowledgable Sandy Alderson idolaters must be going insane. Can this team get any worse?     Jason Collette: When you have three first basemen, you really have no first basemen. Still, they’re in a better position than Milwaukee or Pittsburgh at the moment at the position. Can the Mets get worse? Are you double-dog daring them to?

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Recently, in these electronic pages, the author made a study of those hitting prospects who had been recognized by Baseball America for possessing the best of this or that tool (i.e. ability to hit for average, ability to hit for power, etc.) within their respective organizations. The study, specifically, was designed to identify how certain tools, on average, had translated to the majors. The results? While not exhaustive, the exercise in question seemed to indicate that those prospects who had been recognized either for their ability to hit for average or their plate discipline had produced markedly better numbers at the major leagues than those prospects who were recognized for their power, speed, or athleticism.

A sequel of sorts to that first piece focused specifically on those prospects who, during at least one of the years between 2005 and -09, had been recognized by Baseball America for possessing both the best hit tool and the best plate discipline within their respective organization. While, as noted in that second post, one doesn’t expect talent to have been distributed evenly among every minor-league system — and, accordingly, can’t expect the best hitter in a talent-poor system to match the skills of the best hitter in a talent-rich one — the value of the Best Tool designations is that they function as a reasonable proxy for more sophisticated data that isn’t available publicly.

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A few weeks ago, the Cardinals signed Matt Carpenter to a six year, $52 million contract. Today, the Indians have signed Jason Kipnis to a six year, $52.5 million contract. Both players were four years from free agency, and in essence, they both signed the same basic contract. Which makes sense, because they’re pretty similar players. Here are their career performances, side by side:

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FanGraphs is proud to be the keynote sponsor of this year’s Saberseminar: Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball. The weekend event takes place in Boston on August 16th and 17th, and the line-up is already looking pretty fantastic. Confirmed speakers include Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, Red Sox GM Ben Cherington and analyst Tom Tippett, physicist Alan Nathan, SABR President Vince Gennaro, noted analysts Mitchel Lichtman, Dan Brooks, Harry Pavlidis, and others, including Matt Swartz and myself representing FanGraphs.

The event is always a great time, with lots of really interesting presentations and a lot of fantastic people. Even better, however, is that the event is put on entirely as a fundraiser, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Jimmy Fund. Every speaker donates their time and travel costs, and the entire event is put on with the goal of raising as much money for cancer research as possible. So, not only do you get to spend a few days hanging out with other baseball nerds, you get to do so while also helping save lives. It’s a win-win.

Tickets for the weekend start at $140 (and are only $65 if you’re a student, which is an incredible deal), and can be purchased now from their website. If you’re anywhere near the Boston area that weekend, you should absolutely buy a ticket. If you’re not near the Boston area, you should consider coming anyway. It’s a great event, and I couldn’t endorse it any stronger.

I hope to see you guys there.

Eighteen months ago, Yan Gomes was considered the “other guy” in the deal where Cleveland strengthened its infield depth and added Mike Aviles. Cleveland made the move for Aviles after going through myriad replacements at shortstop in 2012, when Asdrubal Cabrera was injured or needed a day off. The move was also made to beef up the team’s right-handed-batting depth because the team had an American League-worst .234 team batting average and .296 wOBA against left-handed pitching. Aviles came to Cleveland with a career .276 batting average and .317 wOBA against lefties in 421 plate appearances, while Gomes had very limited exposure at the major league level.

Ben Zobrist is the exception to the thought that if you can play multiple positions, you can’t play any position. If a player is good enough at any one position, organizations will leave that player there as long as possible until skill or better talent behind that player dictate a move. The latter scenario victimized Gomes as Travis d’Arnaud was coming through the organization at a similar pace. The team exclusively used Gomes at catcher in 2009 and 2010, but then gave him 20 games at first base in Double-A New Hampshire. In 2011, Gomes got  47 games behind the plate in 83 games and d’Arnaud did a majority of the catching. In 2012, Gomes caught 39 games while spending 42 games at other positions on the field as d’Arnaud once again did most of the catching. Gomes was never ranked in the top 30 prospects by Baseball American while he was in Toronto’s organization; he was 27th in Cleveland’s rankings after his trade.

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Ben and Sam discuss the impact of extensions on the players’ share of baseball’s record revenues.

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This is an image, from Baseball Savant:

You’ll recognize that as the strike zone (1-9) and areas around the strike zone (11-14). What we have in Zone 5 is a zone that’s middle-middle — that is, that’s the heart. As a pitcher, that’s a good place to avoid. As a pitcher, you’re presumably incapable of avoiding it entirely. Now, in theory, there should never be a called ball on a pitch in Zone 5. You can kind of understand balls on pitches in the zone but near the edges. Umpires don’t have perfect vision. But, in theory, pitches taken in Zone 5 are unmistakable strikes. They’re pitches literally right down the middle. In practice, those pitches aren’t strikes 100% of the time, and I like to keep track of when things go awry in order to examine how it might have happened.

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The fastest pitch Mark Buehrle threw Wednesday was just shy of 84 miles per hour. For Buehrle, in early April, that’s not out of the ordinary, and he’s long been a guy who’s managed to make it work in the low- to mid-80s. What was a little more out of the ordinary was everything else. Armed with his usual stuff, Buehrle struck out 11 of 30 Tampa Bay batters. He was a fastball away from completing a shutout, and Buehrle himself was taken by surprise by what he was able to do.

Only one other time in his extraordinary career has Buehrle’s strikeout total reached double digits. He whiffed a dozen Mariners all the way back in April 2005, in a game that lasted all of 99 minutes. So, this was Buehrle’s second-highest strikeout total ever. Yet he generated just a dozen swings and misses. That’s a high number, but not as high as the strikeouts would suggest. In 28 career starts, Buehrle has missed more than 12 bats. In another 14, he’s missed exactly 12 bats. Buehrle was unusually unhittable without being unusually unhittable, and the reason for that is the very reason for Buehrle’s continued success in the bigs.

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The rise of the early career contract extension has, in some cases, made it clear just how much impact one contract extension can have on future contract negotiations. For instance, nine months after Justin Upton signed a six year, $51 million contract with the Diamondbacks, Jay Bruce signed a six year, $51 million deal with the Reds. A year after that, Andrew McCutchen signed a six year, $51 million deal with the Pirates. A couple of years ago, Madison Bumgarner, Jon Niese, Derek Holland, and Chris Sale all signed long term deals with very similar parameters at similar levels of service time. Even just a few weeks ago, Starling Marte signed a $31 million contract that is almost exactly a clone of the deal Paul Goldschmidt signed last spring.

This is basically how the extension market works. There are parameters in place that drive the fundamentals, but by and large, a lot of the negotiation boils down to making sure that the deal is in the same range of what the last few similar players signed for. And so it’s not surprising that the two most recent extensions for young, early career pitchers come with almost exactly the same terms.

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