Earlier in the season Dave Cameron asked me what to make of Ben Sheets‘ release points. Sheets has two distinct release points: check it out. Dave wanted to know whether that was a real difference or some noise in the pitchf/x system. Release points are not directly measured by the pitchf/x system, but placed some constant distance away from the plate (the default is 50 feet) along the trajectory of the pitch. This means they are not perfect, but a pattern of such distinct clumps is usually a legitimate phenomenon and not just noise.

Sheets’ clumps were noted over at Athletics Nation where danmerqury suggested they were due to different arm angles (you see that with Jose Contreras where the different clumps of release points correspond to different arm angles). But in this case it is something else as Mike Fast offered great visual evidence (make sure to click through and see what Mike posted) that Sheets is shifting on the rubber based on the handedness of the batter. Here are Sheets’ release points this year color-coded by RHB v LHB.

So Sheets shifts to the catcher’s left (Sheets’ right) against LHBs. I think this allows him to keep his pitches away against LHBs even if they have the same movement and trajectory. Sheets throws the occasional changeup, but most of the time it is either his fastball or his curve (between the two they make up over 90% of his pitches). Here are the trajectories of four of his pitches from last night. A curve and fastball to Jorge Posada (batting lefty) and a curve and a fastball to Alex Rodriguez.

His two fastballs (in green) have about the same movement and trajectory, but because they are thrown from a different starting point they both end up away both end up away, at least partially because of how Sheets shifts over against Posada. Remember LHBs stand to the right of the zone and RHBs to the left because the image is from the catcher’s perspective. The two curves have slightly different movement (this is not consistent across his curves to RHBs and LHBs just happened with the two I choose), but I think the shifting also helps him keep his curves away to all batters.

Mike Fast noted Trevor Hoffman as another guy who shifts on the rubber based on batter handedness. Do you all know any other pitchers who do this?

Adding a new pitch has often been used as an explanation for a breakout year by a pitcher. But with the narrative bias it was important to be skeptical of such claims: when a pitcher adds a pitch and does well we hear about it, when he adds a pitch and nothing happens it is ignored — did you know that Jon Garland added a cutter last year! With the pitchf/x pitch-by-pitch data, we are better equipped to systematically look at the effect of adding a pitch.

Over the past weekend we had the interesting reverse of this story with some suggesting that Kyle Kendrick’s and Cole Hamels‘, before they pitched very well on Sunday and Tuesday, high ERAs were due to them adding the cutter. It shows how tempting it is to find anything to explain what is almost surely variation from a small sample size. Had Kendrick and Hamels pitched amazingly in their first games everyone would have credited the new pitch. And after both pitched well in their last outings I am sure the narratives will change.

Anyway, the point is that, right now, with both pitchers having thrown less than 20 innings, we cannot possibly assess how the cutter has or will affect the two pitchers. The data does show them throwing the new pitch: Hamels about 14% of the time to the expense of all of his other pitches, and Kendrick over 30% of the time giving up completely on his slider (and it does look to me like the cutter is a distinct pitch and not just a reclassification of the slider). It is just too early to say what this will mean for them (more ground balls? smaller platoon splits? …). But as the season progresses these new-pitch pitchers are interesting to check out because adding a new pitch can have a large effect as Carson, Matt, Mike and I talked about in a recent podcast.

Surprising fact of the early season: with 8 games and 35 PAs Jeff Francoeur has six walks. That puts him in the top 35 for number of walks and walk rate. Last year his walk rate of 3.6% was 4th worst, and he did not collect his sixth walk until June 2nd (he finished with 23). His best walk-taking eight-game span last year was 6/2 to 6/10 when he took four walks. In 2008 it was 7/27/08 to 8/2/08 when he had five walks. And back in 2007 he had two eight-game six-walk spans (4/11/07 to 4/18/07 and 9/8/07 to 9/16/07). So Francouer has had such periods of patience in his past, but they are relatively distant and very rare.

Looking at the per-pitch numbers his O-swing rate is just as poor as always, but his Z-Swing rate is down (67% this year compared to a career average of 81%). It is counter intuitive but swinging at fewer pitches in the zone could contribute to more walks. By swinging at fewer of these pitches he gets called strikes, but also extends at-bats in which he could potentially take a walk. The other big change so far is his number of pitches in the zone (44% compared to 50%). Fewer swings and more pitches out of the zone means more walks. With the small number of PAs the lower Zone% is probably just random variation, but it might also have to do with the quality of hitters he is in front of (twice Fernando Tatis, twice Gary Matthews Jr. and four times Rod Barajas).

Either way as Dave C. noted we should take these 35 PAs with the smallest grain of salt compared to his almost 3000 career PAs. But the fact that he has accomplished something that it took him until June 2nd to do last year (get six walks) and that he has done just twice before in his career, and both times back in 2007, (six walks in eight games) should at least be applauded. This is also encouraging based on his apparent change in attitude towards walks: going from “If on-base percentage is important, then why don’t they put it up on the scoreboard?” in the middle of last season, to “If I can mix in 50-60 walks, I become a totally different guy” this offseason. You sure do Jeff.

Watching the Braves’ game on Sunday, I think, the announcer noted that Jason Heyward was having trouble laying-off breaking pitches in the dirt, and that is what it looked like to me in the couple of at-bats I have seen from him. I turned to the pitchf/x data to see whether that was the case. Here I plot all non-fastballs Heyward has seen so far: the pitches are color-coded with the FanGraphs PitchF/X section’s color scheme: whiffed pitches are encircled and contacted ones ex-ed. The graph is from the catcher’s perspective, so Heyward, a lefty, stands to the right of the zone, and the location indicated is where the pitch crosses the plate.

That is a striking trend. Of the 18 non-fastballs below the zone, he has swung at 12 of them and not made contact with one. On non-fastballs in the zone, on the other hand, he has 16 swings and just one whiff — and actually swings at a smaller percentage of non-fastballs in the zone than below the zone. So it does look like Heyward is having quite a problem laying off those pitches, and that results in tons of swinging strikes.

At just twenty years old, even a player as phenomenal as Heyward is going to have a transition period — Dave C. talked a little bit about this in yesterday’s podcast. In 31 PAs so far Heyward has an encouraging three HRs and five walks, but also ten strikeouts. So it looks like a big part of this transition period might be these low breaking balls and changeups that will result in a number of swinging strikes. And he will only see more of these pitches going forward if he continues to struggle with them.

Yesterday, knuckleballer Charlie Haeger had a pretty amazing game. He struck out 12 batters while walking four in six innings. He also threw three wild pitches, two of which were on third strikes and got far enough from A.J. Ellis for the batter to reach.

Obviously, based on the 12 strikeouts, Ellis wasn’t the only one having a tough time with Haeger’s knuckler. By my count he threw 94 knuckleballs (along with 22 fastballs) with 43 swings and 13 whiffs. That works out to a 70% contact rate and a 13.8% swinging strike percentage. Both those rates are very good. That contact rate was about where Huston Street and Andrew Bailey were all of last year (not to say that Haeger will maintain such a rate, but just to put it in context). Haeger’s knuckleball was dancing like crazy.

I have talked about the knuckleball before, but here’s a quick refresher. While all other pitch types have consistent movement — fastballs rise and move towards the glove-side, curves drop and move away from the glove-side — and cluster out cleanly in horizontal movement versus vertical movement space, the knuckleball has no clear movement and instead forms a diffuse cloud when plotted in horizontal movement versus vertical movement space. Some move up-and-in, others up-and-away, others down-and-in, and others don’t move much at all. Not surprisingly, the success of a knuckleball is directly tied to this amount of movement. Those which move little are rarely whiffed and hit hard. Those that move far result in whiffs and weak contact. Tim Wakefield is successful because his knuckles have a large spread in movement.

With that in mind I wanted to see whether Haeger’s knuckleballs yesterday had more movement than they did in his previous appearances. Here are the fraction of Haeger’s knuckleballs whose movement fell in one of three categories (movement measured as the square root of the sum of the square horizontal movement and square of vertical movement). I included the value from yesterday, his career and the value for Wakefield’s knuckleballs.

                   Haeger          Wakefield
               Career  Yesterday    Career
0-5  inches      0.35      0.32      0.32   
5-10 inches      0.53      0.50      0.48
10+  inches      0.12      0.18      0.20

Haeger’s knuckleball was moving a lot more than previously in his career, though still not as much as Wakefield has averaged through his career. Obviously this one value does not tell you everything, but I think it is a nice metric to show us that his knuckleballs were really moving yesterday — that is if the 12 strikeouts wasn’t enough.

Last night — while I had the pleasure of chatting with not one but two Royals fans — Luke Hochevar pitched seven and two thirds shutout innings. One game’s worth of data is, of course, of limited interest and Hochevar only struck out two Tigers, but one very encouraging sign was the speed on Hochevar’s fastballs. In the first inning he was throwing gas: his four-seamer worked around 96 mph and topped 97 mph three times. He was clearly excited to start the season as the speed dropped down after that, but his four-seamer still averaged over 95 mph and his two-seamer averaged over 94 mph. Even his last pitch — a 94 mph two-seam fastball — was up there.

Last year his four-seam fastball averaged 92.5 mph and his two-seam, 91.5mph. So it looks like he was about 2.5 mph faster, not an insignificant difference. Last year his fastest four-seam fastball was 95.8 (compared to 97.2 last night) and fastest two-seamer was 94.8 (compared to 96.2 last night). Here is how last night’s four-seam fastball speed compared with his past starts:

The difference could be because of the pitchf/x system running hot, but the system is very good now with very slight day-to-day and park-to-park differences. Looking at the other pitchers in the game: Max Scherzer’s fastballs were right were they were last year; and most of the game’s relievers’ pitch speeds seemed in line with their past, the exceptions being Joakim Soria and Phil Coke who were just one mph faster. So it looks like Hochevar really was throwing that fast.

Although the relationship is not perfect, generally a faster fastball is a better fastball. Last night Hochevar didn’t have many strikeouts, but generally pitchers who throw faster fastballs strike out more batters and on a per-pitch basis faster fastballs are missed more often when they are swung at. If Hochevar works around 95 to 94 mph rather than 92.5 to 91.5 mph with his fastballs he might be in line for a breakout season.

Last night, Dallas Braden pitched his first game of the season, and first start after missing half of last year. It was more than encouraging as last year’s Opening Day starter struck out ten Mariners while walking just one and giving up just four hits over seven innings. Those ten strikeouts are a career best (his previous high was seven). Last year Braden was successful based on an unsustainable sub-5% HR/FB, so to be successful this year he is going to need to strike guys out like he did yesterday and in his 117 innings at Triple-A in 2007 and 2008.

Braden is an interesting pitcher; the lefty throws an 87 MPH fastball and along with it the slowest changeup in baseball. Last year, it averaged 72 mph. By comparison, Barry Zito’s was 73.6, and no other starting pitcher had one slower than 78 mph. That separation of 15 mph is also one of the greatest between a fastball and changeup. And it works, as the pitch was worth almost two runs above average per 100 in 2009 and 2008, and he throws it often — 21% of the time last year.

Last night he threw it even more often, throwing 34 changeups out of his 91 pitches, and 32 changeups out of his 71 pitches to RHBs. It did not disappoint, inducing 12 of his 16 swinging strikes. It will be interesting to see whether he continues to use the change more often this season, as it is his best pitch.

To get a feeling for just how much slower his change is I plotted the pitches in Braden’s three-pitch strikeout of Milton Bradley in the first. He started off with a two-seam fastball (blue) for a swinging strike, then a four-seam fastball (green) up-and-in fouled off, and finally the changeup (yellow) down-and-away for a swinging strike three. I put a little dot every 0.075 seconds. The horizontal and vertical axis are not to scale, with the height exaggerated relative to the length.

By the time the change reaches the plate it is almost tenth of a second behind his two fastballs.

Lineup optimization — ordering batters to create a lineup that produces the most runs — is a topic that receives a great deal of attention relative to its importance (and this article will only make the ratio worse). The fact is most sensible lineups (not batting the pitcher first or putting Alex Rodriguez 8th) will produce nearly the same amount of runs. Still, with the ever-expanding search to find any slim advantage it is something to think about. Sabermetric studies of lineup optimization have produced some interesting results; Sky Kalkman neatly reviews The Book’s findings on the topic. Compared to the old-school lineup dogma, more weight is given to the second and fifth spots, while less to the third spot. In addition, the Book suggests that batting the pitcher 8th is a good idea.

Baseball Musings has a lineup optimizer tool, which gives the optimal lineup based on each players’s projected OBP and SLG (this ignores speed and handedness, which are also important). Out of curiosity I wanted to see how each of yesterday’s lineups compared with the best one predicted by this tool. I used the CHONE projections and the tool spit out the estimated runs per game for the given lineup and the optimal lineup. I gave all pitchers the average OBP, 0.176, and SLG, 0.179, that NL pitchers had in 2009:

Team      Actual      Best      Dif
TEX       5.017       5.033    -0.016
MIN       5.257       5.308    -0.051
OAK       4.519       4.571    -0.052
CLE       5.019       5.081    -0.062
KCA       4.379       4.446    -0.067
PIT       4.552       4.628    -0.076 *
DET       4.698       4.776    -0.078
TOR       4.676       4.763    -0.087
CHA       4.759       4.858    -0.099
SEA       4.478       4.578    -0.100
LAA       4.891       5.016    -0.125
HOU       3.967       4.142    -0.175
COL       5.064       5.258    -0.194
ATL       4.898       5.106    -0.208
LAN       4.773       4.982    -0.209
ARI       4.704       4.916    -0.212
FLO       4.813       5.035    -0.222
SFN       4.294       4.522    -0.228
PHI       4.873       5.102    -0.229
WAS       4.410       4.644    -0.234
CIN       4.608       4.846    -0.238
CHN       4.660       4.899    -0.239
MIL       4.629       4.876    -0.247
SDN       4.176       4.431    -0.255
NYN       4.381       4.645    -0.264
STL       4.843       5.116    -0.273

* pitcher batted 8th

First off, notice that the worst-optimized lineups were all NL teams that had the pitcher bat 9th. The one NL team that had the pitcher bat 8th, Pittsburgh, fell out in the middle of the AL teams. So it looks like, given a reasonably constructed lineup (as these are), having the pitcher bat 9th results in a pretty big drop. The average pitcher-bats-9th team was 0.23 runs below optimal, while Pittsburgh and the AL teams averaged 0.07 runs below optimal. This would suggest flipping the pitcher and 8th hitter on the other NL teams would result in an improvement of about 0.16 runs. Over 162 games that is 25 runs or 2.5 wins, a surprisingly high number to me.Edit: It looks like the method I took is not correct and this conclusion is false. See the comments and this post by Tango. I apologize.

St. Louis had the worst-optimized lineup. The big problem for them, in addition to having Chris Carpenter batting 9th, was Albert Pujols batting 3rd. As noted above, the studies of lineup optimization shows that the 2nd, 4th and 5th spots should all have better hitters than the third, so having the game’s best hitter bat third really hurts.

I think Texas is the closest to their optimized lineup because they have so many similar hitters. Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero, Nelson Cruz and Chris Davis all project to have about average OBP (0.320 to 0.340) and good SLG (0.467 to 0.508). Once you throw Julio Borbon in the leadoff spot and Andres Blanco–Elvis Andrus eight-nine there is little variation in runs scored based on the ordering of the middle guys.

Two other quick notes: with Boston, Tampa Bay and the Yankees all off for the night CHONE saw the Twins’ lineup as the best, and Houston’s lineup was expected to score under four runs against the average pitcher, but they had to face one of the best.

The Boston Red Sox have, by most projection systems, the second best current talent in the league. Their financial advantage, ability to to value players and commitment to their farm system has left them with this amazing current talent, and, thus, a solid chance at making the playoffs and winning the World Series.

On the position player side there is not a below-average player to be seen. The squad is lead by a pair of up-the-middle superstars, Victor Martinez and Dustin Pedroia: both good bats at premium defensive positions. Kevin Youkilis, who in the past two years added power to his existing walk- and defense-based skill-set, holds down first. The remainder of the infield is made up of two newcomers, Adrian Beltre and Marco Scutaro. The outfield of J.D. Drew, Mike Cameron and Jacoby Ellsbury might not have quite the talent of the infield, but still is a solid group. As a whole the position players should play great defense (the off-season signings seemed particularly focused on defense) while still providing a solidly above-average offense.

The Red Sox’ starting pitching similarly shines. A top three of Jon Lester, Josh Beckett and John Lackey gives the Sox one of, if not the best, top three in baseball. In fact, CHONE projects over 180 innings of sub-four ERA pitching from each. No other rotation can make such a claim. The cut-offs are arbitrary, but it illustrate how strong the top three-fifths of the rotation is. After that, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Clay Buchholz complete the starting rotation. Both are probably average starters with the potential to be quite good — not too bad for the end of the rotation. But even if one of those two stumbles or anyone goes down with injury the Sox have very capable replacements in Tim Wakefield and Michael Bowden.

As Patrick Sullivan mentioned in an interview with Zack Scott, the bullpen had a couple guys whose performance took a step back last year (Jonathan Papelbon, Hideki Okajima and Ramon Ramirez), but I think there is enough talent in the pen for it to be an asset.

Overall this is a very talented team, it is brimming with projected three-plus-win players and has no real discernible holes (except maybe the potential for an Ortiz collapse). Their playoff probability takes a hit because they play in the same division as the Rays and Yankees, but still, if they played the season 1000 times, they should make the playoffs as often, if not a little more often, than they don’t.

The Twins are in a great position to compete for their division title, and thus the World Series, in 2010. Outside of their injured closer, they return all of the key members of last year’s AL Central-winning squad and also made some good pickups over the off-season. As a result, they have, mostly likely, the best team in the AL Central heading into the 2010 season.

Of course, for the Twins it all starts with their recently locked-up catcher, Joe Mauer — one of the best players in baseball. Mauer plays the most demanding defensive position, from which offensive value is the hardest to find; is projected to have a wOBA above .400; and is not yet 27. Along with Albert Pujols and Hanley Ramirez he is one of the game’s greatest talents.

The rest of their position players have enough talent to form a competent core around Mauer. Outside of their catcher, the infield was a wasteland after Justin Morneau went down with an injury in 2009. But the Twins made steps to address that major weakness in the 2010 off-season. They brought in Orlando Hudson and J.J. Hardy, which should result in fewer plate appearances from the likes of Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, Matt Tolbert and Brian Buscher. Also, Morneau comes back from injury, looking to replicate his three-win season of 2007 and 2008.

The outfield will have its defensive liabilities and is, generally, not a strength of the team. But it has enough talent, especially in Denard Span, not to be a liability to the rest of the team.

The rotation — although it does not have a lights-out, number-one guy — is solid one to four and one of the better ones in baseball. Its top four members are united by their strike-throwing ability, as none projects by CHONE to throw more than 2.11 BB/9: Scott Baker is the ace of the staff, quietly posting a top-fifteen K/BB ratio over the past three years; Kevin Slowey, coming back from injury, could be Baker’s equal, if not better; Carl Pavano re-signed with the Twins after an encouraging 2009; and, finally, Nick Blackburn limits walks enough to make his poor strikeout and average walk rate work. After that the Twins will go with Francisco Liriano, who they are guardedly optimistic about after a solid performance in Winter Ball. If he recaptures any of his past glory this could be an amazing rotation top to bottom.

The loss of Joe Nathan for the season no doubt hurts, but the Twins have a number of good relievers to cover the loss. And picking up bullpen guys during the season is easier than getting starting pitchers or position players; if the Twins need to they can trade for a closer (although not one of Nathan’s level).

All in all the Twins have surrounded their superstar with enough talent to make themselves the team to beat in the AL Central.