Oakland A’s first baseman/left fielder Mark Canha is off to a fine start to the 2015 season. Through the year’s first week and a half, he’s hitting a solid .333/.353/.515, and leads all rookies with 11 hits. This is obviously a teeny tiny sample, and we all know better than to read too much into seven games. But even so, an excellent performance from a previously unknown player is a little hard to ignore, especially after his six homers and .297/.342/.635 batting line from spring training. The A’s have to be happy with the return they’ve gotten on their rule 5 choice so far.

Although this is his first taste of big league action, Canha’s no youngster. He turned 26 this past February, and has been playing professionally since 2010, when the Marlins drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of California. Although he started out as a 21-year-old in short-season ball, Canha moved through the Marlins system relatively slowly. He spent a full year at each minor league level, so he’s just now making it to the big leagues.

Canha’s slow climb up the minor league ladder wasn’t due to a lack of hitting. His wRC+s from 2010-2014 were 139, 144, 128, 141 and 131. He’s never hit worse than his league’s average, nor has he come particularly close. But, year after year, the Marlins chose to let Canha mash as an old-for-his-league slugger instead of challenging him with more polished pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

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cistulli [4:59 PM]
I seem to be writing something about how Joe Kelly set a single-game strikeout mark for himself against the Yankees. Has anyone claimed anything like that?

davecameron [9:16 PM]
No one has. Can I suggest that maybe you write about Cody Martin instead? He’s a classic Cistulli guy and he’s killing it out of ATL’s bullpen right now.

davecameron [12:25 AM]
Cody Martin tonight: two more shutout innings, two more Ks. Now sporting a 0.12 xFIP through 5 1/3 IP. Write about him.

cistulli [10:41 AM]
I hear you, Cameron!

cistulli [10:45 AM]
Hey, additionally, did you see that weird double-steal by Mookie Betts yesterday? I was thinking of writing about that.

davecameron [10:46 AM]
CODY MARTIN

davecameron [10:46 AM]
You’re not allowed to do anything else until that’s done.

The above dialogue with managing editor and frequent pod guest Dave Cameron — excerpted from the site’s internal message board with only just minimal edits — will give the reader a sense of the hostile conditions under which FanGraphs contributors are compelled to work. Because he lives in North Carolina and the author of this post resides in New Hampshire, I’m unable to verify for certain that Cameron typed his end of the correspondence while wearing an actual iron fist. As for a metaphorical one, however, its presence is manifest.

Cameron has insisted that I write about Cody Martin — and lest I enter the ranks of America’s unemployed, I will endeavor here to fulfill that obligation. To begin, let’s evaluate some claims made by Cameron himself and examine their validity.

1. [Cody Martin] is a classic Cistulli guy.
By classic Cistulli guy, Cameron usually just means “anonymous non-prospect with no hope of major-league success.” In his more charitable moods, however, what he means is “performer with fringy tools.” Conveniently, that’s almost the precise phrase used by Kiley McDaniel to describe Martin when evaluating Atlanta’s rookie-eligible players this past January. Martin didn’t appear among the organization’s top prospects, but was featured within the Others of Note section — the equivalent, that, of honorable mention.

Martin is a Cistulli guy in a more immediate way, as well. Twice in 2013, Martin appeared within the weekly Fringe Five column I write here during the minor-league season and which is designed to identify the most compelling rookie-eligible players absent from the notable preseason prospects lists. At that time, Martin had just been promoted to Triple-A Gwinnett and proceeded to strike out 32 batters over his first 26.0 innings at that level.

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Last year, Dellin Betances was one of baseball’s elite relievers, throwing 90 dominant innings out of the Yankees bullpen. He was a young bright spot on a team full of old disappointments, flashing the kind of stuff and command that gave the Yankees confidence to let David Robertson leave via free agency. With a 97 mph fastball and a nearly unhittable breaking ball coming from a 6’8 guy, it was pretty easy to imagine Betances becoming the next great Yankee closer.

But right now, Dellin Betances is a mess. In his first three appearances of 2015, he’s walked six batters, only two fewer than his entire total from the second half of 2014. The control problems could be attributable to a larger problem, however, as his fastball is down under 95 mph, and his curveball is off last year’s mark by the same amount. He’s simply not throwing the same stuff now that he was a year ago, and he’s certainly not locating what he is throwing, giving hitters an easy plan when he’s on the mound: don’t swing.

Among pitchers who have faced at least 10 batters this year, no pitcher has seen opponents swing less often than they have against Betances; they’ve only gone after 24 of his 81 pitches, a 29.6% swing rate. Opponents have recognized that Betances doesn’t know where the ball is going, and they’re letting him dig his own grave. So far, he’s done just that.

This isn’t just an April problem, either; Betances struggled to find the strike zone in Spring Training, walking six batters in just 8 1/3 innings during the month of March. Clearly, opponents noticed his Grapefruit League troubles, and they’ve now carried over to the start of the regular season. So, how concerned should the Yankees be about their young former-flamethrower?

Maybe less than you’d think.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

In seven innings this season, including six in his start on Sunday, Carlos Martinez has faced 10 right-handed hitters. None of them has reached base and four hitters have struck out. Martinez’s early season dominance against righties is not altogether surprising. Splitting time between the bullpen and the rotation last season, Martinez faced 215 right-handers and struck out more than 30% of them while walking just shy of 7% and giving up only one home run for a 1.94 FIP.

Martinez featured a four-seam and a two-seam sinking fastball with his slider as his out pitch. The slider worked particularly well against righties, generating over a 25% whiff rate, per Brooks Baseball. Of the 87 plate appearances against right-handers that ended on a slider, 41 were strikeouts and five were walks. Martinez had the slider going against the Reds on Sunday, striking out four of the seven right-handed hitters he faced — three of whom he finished off with the slider. Against seven right-handers, Martinez made 31 pitches and threw 25 strikes. As a reminder, here is what the slider looked like against Zach Cozart.
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Nolan Arenado will never be Joey Votto. He’s too hyperactive, he’s too aggressive, and he knows it. He’s fine being Nolan Arenado, too. But that doesn’t mean the Rockies’ standout third baseman doesn’t struggle to find the perfect approach at the plate to fit his skill set.

Over the last two years, there hasn’t been so much of a yo-yo in his approach as a steady progression. “I’m just trying to be selective, as much as I can,” he said before a game with the Giants. “But I don’t want to get too selective, because that’s when I get tentative.”

A hitter in his own head is no good, but a hitter that swings at everything isn’t either. While Arenado’s swing rates have never swung below league average (he’s almost 10% above league average for his career), his reach rates have changed, signaling that the batter has indeed started to discern balls and strikes better. Watch his monthly reach rate haltingly improve over his career:

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Ben and Sam banter about Mike Trout and answer listener emails about trading draft picks and divisions, saving failing franchises, limiting pitchers, and more.

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You had, probably, heard of Arquimedes Caminero before. This is because his full name is Arquimedes Euclides Caminero, and that speaks for itself. His existence as a baseballer was something of a curiosity, but that was more or less the extent of it. However much you knew about Caminero, you probably knew next to nothing about his actual talent. In January, he was designated for assignment by the Marlins. Some days later, he was acquired by the Pirates for cash considerations. He was added to the spring-training pile of guys competing for a major-league bullpen spot. These are the transactions you ignore, and you’re usually justified in doing so. Most of the time, the Camineros of the world remain the Camineros, only a little bit older every year.

And to be fair, it’s April 14. It’s been two and a half months since the Marlins gave Caminero up, so it’s not like we can know the rest of his career. But, in February, I polled the audience about pitching coaches, and Pirates fans liked theirs the most. Big fans of Ray Searage, those Pirates people. Searage has developed a reputation for getting the most out of troubled live arms, and based on early indications, with Caminero, Searage can count for himself another unlikely win.

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We’ve spoken about Mookie Betts a few times recently in these digital pages, highlighting what we might expect out of him given his age and tools, and looking at the validity of some of the comparisons to a young Andrew McCutchen. And why not: despite a batting line in the opening week that might not wow us at first glance, he’s been a walking highlight reel since spring training with his sneaky power, base running, and defense in centerfield.

Monday only added to the hype, as he did this in the top of the first inning on a Bryce Harper would-be home run:

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Yesterday, against the Pirates, Anthony Gose finished 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. He has, so far, struck out nine times in 23 plate appearances. Let’s talk about why he’s possibly better.

Through his first three opportunities in the bigs, Gose came to the plate more than 600 times, and he managed a .285 wOBA. That’s a bad wOBA — the sort of wOBA acceptable only from a pinch-runner or defensive specialist. For 2015, our own projections peg him for a .292 wOBA, which is technically better, but ranked with Shane Robinson and Aaron Hicks. It’s a perfectly sensible projection; it matches what Gose has done, allowing for a little improvement from the 24-year-old. But there’s something projections can’t account for as they analyze the history: what if a hitter changes his swing?

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