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Things were looking up for the Pirates. They’d emerged from the weekend with a sweep of the Cubs in Chicago. Jameson Taillon had pitched like a burgeoning ace. Ivan Nova had recorded more complete games than walks since joining the Pirates. The Cardinals and Cubs were scuffling. There was perhaps a sense that the Pirates’ final standing in the NL Central wasn’t predetermined.

And then they lost another star player for reasons unrelated to injury.

First it was Jung Ho Kang unable to gain entry to the country, denied a work visa due to his legal issues. And on Tuesday, MLB announced that Starling Marte has been suspended for 80 games due to a positive test for Nandrolone.

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Eric Thames is, at present, the major-league leader in wRC+. He’s also the major-league leader in home runs, and he’s the major-league leader in WAR. He’s gone deep in, what, five games in a row? That would be easy enough for me to fact-check, but I don’t want to waste my time checking those facts when Thames might extend his own streak at any moment. He’s homered in many games in a row. Let’s unpack what’s going on.

Literally yesterday, Nick wrote a post here entitled “Eric Thames Is Still Mashing.” That post spoke of Thames’ considerable power. Literally hours ago, Dave wrote a post here entitled “The Even Scarier Eric Thames Stat.” That post spoke of Thames’ seemingly improved ability to make contact. Power? Check! Contact? Check! What’s something that might drive both those things? Right — swinging at the correct pitches. At this writing, Eric Thames has baseball’s third-lowest swing rate at pitches out of the zone.

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Previous: AL Starters’ Changeups / NL Starters’ Changeups.

Sample sizes are building, but not nearly to a size worthy of deep analysis, so let’s keep rolling with our pitch-specific analysis of the arsenals of 2016 MLB ERA qualifiers. Last week, we looked at the best changeups in both leagues. This week, we’ll examine curveballs. Today, it’s the American League’s turn.

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Earlier today, I took a look at some of the early-season batted-ball trends with a view to exploring whether there might be early signs that significantly more hitters — and perhaps teams and instructors — are adopting the uppercut-swing-plane plan.

Yes, it’s April and the following data represents only the first two weeks of the season, so take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. But there are a number of hitters who both (a) logged at least 500 plate appearance last season and (b) are hitting the ball in the air more often this season.

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Home runs. People love them! And people love them when they happen a bunch. Giancarlo Stanton has, during his career, hit four home runs in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has also hit four home runs in a row. It’s a crazy-good achievement, pulled off only a couple dozen times. There have been about as many such home-run streaks as there have been perfect games. Everyone loves a home-run streak or a perfect game.

Part of the appeal of something like that is the individual-accomplishment aspect. A pitcher can’t be better than perfect, and homering all the time would be the hitter equivalent. But don’t forget about the related matter of scarcity. We all also fall all over ourselves when we see something that never happens. Think about what it means for a baseball event to be rare. And I mean ultra-rare. There is so much baseball, all of the time. Every season involves an unnecessarily large number of baseball games, for even the most forgettable and pointless of rosters. Baseball is nothing but an endless series of repetitions. An endless number of opportunities for strange things to happen. As a consequence, many strange things have already happened, even several times. You’d never expect a perfect game. The overwhelming majority of us have probably watched perfect games, if maybe not all the way through.

Between Sunday and Monday, Josh Harrison batted seven times. The first two times, he grounded out. The seventh time, he grounded out. In between, he was hit, then he was hit, then he was hit, and then he was hit.

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Steven Souza, Jr. is showing signs he might be ready to break out. Fourteen games are far too few to make any determinations, but the numbers are promising. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger is slashing .320/.424/.520, and six of his 16 safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn nine free passes, and fanned just 13 times, in 59 plate appearances.

Power has never been a problem for the 27-year-old Souza. Making consistent contact has. Coming into the season, he was a .234/.309/.404 hitter with a propensity for being punched out. All of a sudden, he’s the one doing the punching.

When I asked Souza why he’s gotten off to such a good start, he offered a fairly generic answer.

“I really don’t know,” Souza told me on Saturday. “Right now I’m just running into some balls, finding some holes, finding the barrel. I don’t get too caught up in the analytics stuff. I’m a guy who can’t overthink things, so I just try to keep it simple. Right now the ball is falling for me.”

For a baseball reporter, “I just try to keep it simple” is a commonly heard phrase. It’s an honest answer, but at the same time, a more concrete reason is often lurking behind the facade. Souza is hitting the ball harder than ever before — at least in terms of big-league success — and simplicity is rarely a new concept for a professional athlete.

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CLEVELAND — We’re still early in the 2017 season. We should be careful not to make too much of the goings-on of April, of course. I’m aware of all the small-sample-size disclaimers that should be attached to nearly every bit of analysis and assessment at this point. Yet, I still must write and search for things that are interesting. The baseball media industry cannot wait silently at keyboards until sample sizes accumulate and become more meaningful in mid-summer.

Since so much was written about fly-ball philosophy and trends at FanGraphs this offseason and spring — like here and here and here — I thought it would be irresponsible not to check in early (and often) and examine whether we’re were seeing any hints of the revolutionaries growing in number.

Jeff Sullivan identified a slight increase in hitters adopting lift last season. Through two weeks of this season, hitters are producing fewer ground balls and more fly balls.

Through two weeks — that is, through Sunday’s games — major-league hitters combined to produce a 43.5% ground-ball rate collectively, which would mark the lowest ground-ball rate since 2009 (43.3%). The MLB ground-ball rate has stood at 44.4% or greater since 2011, rates perhaps influenced by a greater value placed upon two-seam pitchers, ground balls, and the proliferation of infield defensive shifts.

Fly balls are also up (36.2%) early this season, the highest rate since 2011. It’s an increase of nearly two percentage points from last season (34.6%) and the decade-low rate of 33.8% in 2015. It’s early, but we should also see evidence early if more hitters are trying to lift and drive.

And it’s not just fly balls that should be examined. We should also study Statcast “barrels” and hard-contact rates, as getting on plane with a pitch should result in more quality contact. And the percentage of contact catalogued as “hard” stands at 31.4% early this season, which is tied with last season’s mark and represents the highest mark since 2007 (32%), nearly a 2.5% jump from 2015 and 2014. Uppercut swing advocate J.D. Martinez, for instance, has not dramatically lifted more balls into the air by changing his swing plane, but he has significantly boosted his hard-hit percentage since making his alterations.

These are incremental gains, but string enough incremental gains together and a tipping point is reached. Consider this graph created by my colleague Sean Dolinar:

So perhaps there is a story to be told here — or, at least another chapter of a story to be written.

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Last night, the Chicago Cubs lost their seventh game of the season, falling to 6-7 in the process. In 2016, the Cubs didn’t lose their seventh game of the year until May 11, so this start represents a departure from last season’s 103-win, World Series champion.

That doesn’t mean there’s cause for concern, though. The team isn’t hitting all that well, but Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, Willson Contreras, and Addison Russell are all likely to improve upon their early-season lines. The offense, as a whole, ought to come around. The rotation is pitching well — Kyle Hendricks has had a rough start, but Brett Anderson has been a pleasant surprise — so nothing really to worry about there. The bullpen, though, might be worth a closer look.

The Cubs’ bullpen has put up a 4.10 ERA, which isn’t very good, and a 4.46 FIP, which is even worse. Through 41.2 innings, the team’s relievers have been slightly worse than replacement level as a group. They’ve blown four saves already, tied with the Marlins for the most in the National League — and for whatever shortcomings the save possesses as a metric, having a bullpen blow a lead four times in 13 games isn’t good.

On the whole, the bullpen has been bad. Has it been team-wide issue, though, or the product of a few poor performers? Let’s see.

New closer Wade Davis has been good. Koji Uehara has been fine. Carl Edwards, Jr. looks like he’s ready to step into a more prominent role. Mike Montgomery hasn’t been great, really, but he’s covered a lot of innings adequately. Hector Rondon seems like he’s probably back after a rough 2016 season, and Brian Duensing has only pitched two innings. If there’s blame to had it is coming from two guys: Justin Grimm and Pedro Strop. While Grimm’s start hasn’t been great, he’s also not expected to be more than the sixth- or seventh-best reliever on the team. Looking even closer, Grimm’s poor pitching hasn’t really even cost the Cubs. Here are the same pitchers by win-probability statistics.

Of Grimm’s six appearances, three have come in very low-leverage situations, one has been roughly neutral, and two have occurred in high-leverage situations. On April 10, Grimm came on in the seventh with the bases loaded and no outs with the Cubs holding a one-run lead. A pop fly and a double play later, the Cubs’ chances of winning moved from 39% to 79%, making up for Grimm’s few poor performances in low-leverage outings, as well as another appearance (April 14) during which he allowed two inherited runners plus a run of his own en route to turning a 2-1 lead into a 4-2 deficit.

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As Nick noted yesterday, Eric Thames is destroying the baseball right now. Through his first 48 plate appearances, he’s hitting .405/.479/1.000, good for a ridiculous .604 wOBA and 287 wRC+, both the best in baseball. He’s homered in five consecutive games, and 11 of his 17 hits this year have gone for extra bases. Power was the one part of Thames’ game in which we were fairly confident, but he’s putting to rest any doubts about whether his thump would translate back to the big leagues.

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