If you missed the inaugural post of The Best Of FanGraphs, you can do so here. In case you don’t feel like clicking through though, here is how this post is structured:

We’ll pull from the whole FanGraphs family, picking 10-15 stories that we feel you really should read before the week draws to a close. The links are color coded — green for FanGraphs, burnt sienna for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community. They are listed in this order as well in each day, just for the sake of consistency.

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The Pirates signed Edinson Volquez as a reclamation project, and it was easy enough to explain. A season ago, Volquez posted a 5.71 ERA, which is terrible. But he also posted a 4.24 FIP and a 4.07 xFIP, and on that basis alone, one could’ve argued that Volquez still had a place in the league. His pitches had remained the same as ever. The results didn’t follow, but the Pirates were willing to take a chance, just as they’d taken chances on other seemingly damaged pitchers in the recent past. Some got no better, but some were repaired.

Stop now and take a look at things. Between 2008-2013, out of pitchers who threw at least 500 innings, Volquez put up the second-worst walk rate and the second-worst strike rate. Now, out of qualified pitchers in 2014, Volquez is putting up a top-20 walk rate and a top-20 strike rate. Used to be, Volquez would throw about six of every ten pitches for strikes. So far this month, he’s thrown about seven of every ten pitches for strikes. There’s tweaking Edinson Volquez, and there’s making him a whole new guy. What might be a reasonable explanation for this?

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When the Diamondbacks won the National League West division in 2011, they looked like they had a pretty decent future. This week, things don’t look quite as rosy. According to our Playoff Odds page, only four teams have less of a shot at reaching the postseason as of this writing — the Astros, Twins, Cubs or Marlins. None of those teams were expected to contend for a playoff berth this season. The Dbacks were. Unless things change fast, they will not actually contend for a playoff spot, and then the question becomes how can the organization right the ship?

Since Jonah Keri had a great look over at Grantland at how we got to this point, and since I try to follow the mantra of Chris Tucker/Smokey and not bring up old ‘ish, I won’t waste your time repeating it. Here though, if you don’t feel like clicking through, is the money quote:
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Earlier this week I looked at some notably terrible months by hitters in seasons that otherwise turned out to be very good. As I said there, while we might know that it is too early in the season to be worried about individual hitters who are slumping, it is difficult not to let extreme early season lines get to us. Some players are smoking the ball unexpectedly at this point as well, and although the point can be made either way, looking at some individual cases in which hitters had great single months during otherwise horrible seasons might also be interesting.

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You probably are well aware that offensive levels in baseball have collapsed over the last few years. We’re well past the “Year of the Pitcher” and are now at a point where run scoring is as scarce as it was back in the 1970s. It seems like no one can hit anymore, or at least, no more than one or two guys per team anyway. For various reasons, the recent trends in baseball have almost all gone in favor of the pitchers.

But not quite all. There is one place in baseball where offense is actually trending upwards, and that trend is behind the plate.

Last March, Mark Smith wrote about the improved offensive levels of catchers in recent years, but with another year of data and our new by-position split leaderboards, I think it’s worth pointing this out again. Especially because, for the first few weeks of 2014 at least, the trend seems to only be accelerating.

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12:01

Comment From Shawn Kelley Am I worth hanging on to after David Robertson returns?     Jason Collette: In AL leagues, yes, you still have value

12:02

Comment From Autodraft Problems My autodraft left me with Andrus, Segura and A. Ramirez. Any advice on moving a surplus at one position?     Jason Collette: Play one at utility unless you have a dire need elsewhere.

12:03

Comment From randplaty Are getting swinging strikes more important than getting called strikes? Should we worry about Andrew Cashner, who has an extremely low swinging strike rate this season?     Jason Collette: Just get strikes. If the stuff is moving so much it is fooling batters and locking them up so be it. Zero concern with Cashner on my end.

12:04

Comment From Alam What are your thoughts on Matt Cain?     Jason Collette: More hittable right now and all of those flyballs that never left the yard in previous years are catching up with him now.

12:04

Comment From Guest Arenado for Homer. What side do you like OBP, and Whip leauge     Jason Collette: Bailey’s worst baseball is behind him. I’d be trying to buy him up everywhere I could right now.

12:05

Comment From Tony the Tiger Hi Jason. Thanks for doing the chat today! I have to replace Calhoun for the next six weeks, and the only half decent options available are J.B. Shuck and Daniel Nava. Who would you target of the two?     Jason Collette: I’ll go with Nava – more upside in the bat.

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As long as there are humans in charge of the strike zone, there are going to be inconsistencies. And as long as there are inconsistencies, there are going to be suspicions of bias.

Sometimes these are specific and a little paranoid. There are fans who believe umpires are biased against their favorite teams. Other times these paranoia are general and accepted without actual hard proof. For example, there’s a common belief that pitchers considered aces get the benefit of a bigger strike zone, that they’re given the benefit of the doubt around the borders, and this is just a part of the game, and there’s nothing to be done about it, really.

But is this really a part of the game?

We can accept it, or we can investigate it, and we might as well investigate it before we decide whether or not to accept it. This wouldn’t have been an option in the ’90s, when people believed Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were getting calls. But we’ve had PITCHf/x data for the past several years, and we can make use of it toward this end. What strikes zones do aces get, relative to the non-aces?

We’ll cover the window between 2008-13. First, we must define an ace. This is subjective, but I’m going with a definition of at least five Wins Above Replacement, based on runs allowed. In other words, an ace-level season is defined as a season worth at least five WAR as a starting pitcher within the six-year window. This gives me a sample of 99 pitcher-seasons, or about 17 a year, which sounds fine to me. These seasons will be compared against other, inferior starting pitcher-seasons, of at least 50 innings each.

The next step is the more complicated step, involving a little math. For every pitcher’s season, we have to figure out what the strike zone was like that they pitched to. It turns out this is actually pretty simple. Over on FanGraphs, we offer PITCHf/x-based plate-discipline data. You can see the rate of pitches thrown in the strike zone, and you can see the rate of swings at pitches out of the strike zone. FanGraphs also offers raw strike and pitch totals. From all this information, one can calculate an “expected strike” total.

This can then be compared to the actual strike total. If a pitcher got more actual strikes than expected strikes, it can be said he pitched to a more favorable zone. If a pitcher got fewer actual strikes than expected strikes, it can be said he pitched to a less favorable zone. The theory here is that ace-level pitchers end up with more actual strikes than expected strikes, because they get more calls off the edges.

For every pitcher-season, I calculated the difference between actual strikes and expected strikes, per 200 innings. So what do we find from the resulting data?

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Ben discusses the origins and implications of baseball’s skyrocketing strikeout rate with a panel of experts including Harry Pavlidis, Rob Neyer, Brian Bannister, and Alan Nathan.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
After a romp through the Pioneer League last year, McMahon is continuing to crush the ball, and he projects well going forward.

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On April 10 in an outing against the Toronto Blue Jays, Dallas Keuchel was pitching Jose Bautista outside in the fourth inning.

That much isn’t really surprising, because since September of 2009, Bautista has done the bulk of his damage by pulling the ball. What was curious to me, however, was that Keuchel was pitching Bautista well outside despite the fact that the Astros defense was employing a heavy shift. It seemed counterintuitive, since I had assumed – though I hadn’t previously given it much thought – that a pitcher would be best served by pitching into a shift and giving the batter something he’s more likely to pull.

As it turns out, Keuchel was probably using the proper approach.
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