Clayton Kershaw is obviously unprepared for the major leagues. That’s a justifiable statement if you only judge pitchers by ERA. Kershaw’s is 5.46, more than a run higher than last year. Of course, Kershaw is pitching nearly as well if you judge pitchers by FIP, and his peripherals look pretty impressive.

Kershaw is striking out 9.32 batters per nine (8.36 last season), walking 4.18 (4.35), allowing 1.29 homeruns (0.92), and has a BABIP against of .276 (.325), so what gives? Well, a LOB% of 62.5 has a lot to do with that horrendous looking ERA. Consider that league average is right at 71%, and even last year Kershaw flexed a 75.7% strand rate.

Frankly, his strand rate is a bit puzzling given that:

A. Kershaw is striking out a quarter of the batters he faces.
B. Kershaw is getting about 50% flyballs.
C. 30% of those flyballs are of the infield variety.

BIS’ batted ball data shows that Kershaw has actually given up an equal amount of liners and infield flies, which is just silly to think about. Obviously the infield pops will regress, over the last five years the seasonal highs for infield flyballs out of those who qualified are 21% by Tim Wakefield in 2004, also in 2004 Joe Kennedy at 19.6%, and Matt Garza at 18% last season. Pitchers rarely get 20% flyballs, forget about 30%.

Kershaw’s ERA should drop by at least a full run during the course of the season, if not more. He’s pitching wonderfully outside of the homeruns, and those are a product of the flyball heavy batted ball portfolio.

Taking what players say and analyzing the content literally is a dangerous game. Most of the time player quotes are nothing but an assemblage of clichés, prep talk, and prepackaged acknowledgments, leaving some style and little substance. Of course, I can’t really blame the players for taking this route, it’s not like they stand to gain much by being outspoken. With that being said, Johnny Damon may want to revise history following his recent quotes regarding Jason Varitek:

“I couldn’t believe that they were letting him walk and try to find a team. That’s the difference between New York and Boston…If you’re a part of New York, they’re going to keep you there: Posada, Jeter, Mariano, it’s the first time in history guys have been on the same team for 15 years. It goes to show you something about how the Yankees think, and how many Yankees players have been exclusive with one team. They keep them forever. (The Red Sox) were ready to let (Varitek) go. He’s their starting catcher. That’s how the two teams work. You know his days are going to be numbered here. But hopefully not — he deserves to be here until his career is over.”

I’m sure the two are friends, and obviously Damon isn’t going to bash his current team, one he might get a contract extension from. The Yankees do have some long, long time players on their roster, but they’re hardly the most loyal team around. Remember when the Yankees had an oral agreement with Albert Belle? You know, to replace Bernie Williams who had been in the Yankees organization for about 13 seasons at the time. In July of 1999 they tried trading Andy Pettitte (in the organization since 1991) for Adam Eaton, Reggie Taylor, and Anthony Shumaker. Countless threats were made towards Joe Torre’s job despite constant success. The Yankees had no qualms placing aside Tino Martinez after seven productive seasons in favor of Jason Giambi – not that it was a poor move, the Yankees certainly upgraded, but by Damon’s logic, in a rather heartless fashion.

Loyalty to players is a great idea in theory. Especially in cases like Varitek (and even Damon) where the fanbase loves them and scoops up their gear without much of a second thought, but when you’re Theo Epstein and have to win one of the toughest divisions in baseball history, you need to look wherever you can for an upgrade. That’s why it wasn’t disrespectful to Mike Lowell or Kevin Youkilis when the Red Sox sniffed around Mark Teixeira or to Tim Wakefield when the Red Sox signed John Smoltz and Brad Penny.

What the Red Sox did with Varitek wasn’t cruel or disrespectful. They were looking to upgrade their roster by getting rid of a weak link. Plus, if anyone should appreciate such an approach, it should be Damon. Unless he’s forgotten how Boston’s bucking of tradition and decaying loyalty to Nomar Garciaparra played a role in the team’s 2004 World Series title and placed Damon on another plateau of popularity.

The Mariners’ new centerfielder was the heavy favorite for the UZR king crown just a few weeks ago, and now the Mariners’ old centerfielder is paving the way for himself. Mike Cameron shot up the charts with a strong showing this week backed mostly on – or rather beside – his right-arm, which accounts for 2.4 of the 6.2 runs. Cameron’s range has been nice as well to the tone of 3.6 runs.

In second place is another former Mariner, Raul Ibanez. Uh, yeah I’m surprised too. A lot of people are going to point to this and say, “See, see! Raul is good!” which is funny, because these are the same people who probably said defensive metrics were lousy just a few months ago. A small sample size tag is implied on these posts, and Ibanez has a nice big sticker next to his. It’s hard to ignore Ibanez UZR track record over the last few years; -12.1, -20.5, and -5.8. You can’t just dump that data in favor of 200 innings worth. Let’s see how Raul continues to do, but it would be quite the outlier and oddity if Ibanez is suddenly rated as a positive defender come September.

Speaking of the Mariners, they are now back on top of the team UZR leaderboard, slightly ahead of the Rays. The Rangers, Brewers, and Astros (!?) round out the top five. The Orioles, Mets, White Sox, Marlins, and Indians are using oven mitts in place of gloves. As are Brian Giles, Cody Ross, and Vernon Wells; the department of silly statistics has those three finishing with UZR/150 of -38 and worse.

Gotta love and hate those small sample sizes.

Since 1954, baseball has seen a total of 18 occurrences where one player steals at least five bases during one game. We’ve seen two this week. Last week Dexter Fowler took five against the Dan Diego Padres and on Sunday, Carl Crawford stole six against the Boston Red Sox.

So let’s talk about stealing five or more bases from a historical aspect.

Eric Young pulled the feat twice, once in 1996 and once in 2000. Kenny Lofton also took five in 2000, about three weeks earlier then Scarborough Green – who? – nabbed five against Seattle in 2000. Otis Nixon snagged six against Montreal in 1991. Ryan Freel managed five in 2005. Willy Tavares took a handful against the White Sox last season as well.

Most of the accomplished players were center fielders or middle infielders, but there are a few corner outfielders who pulled the trick, including Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, and Alex Cole, the only player besides Young to steal five twice, and the only to do so while playing two different positions. Damian Jackson is the only player to manage from a lineup slot lower than third, during his game he batted 8th.

12 of the 19 happened at the player’s home park. I would’ve expected the number to be a bit higher honestly. You always hear jokes (most of the time) about how teams water down the basepaths a little extra when a known speedster is in town. Having the homefield advantage certainly can’t hurt, unless of course your team is winning

As you may have guessed, 2000 was the year of five+ steals. No other season has two cases, let alone three. Although, it seems like 2009 could be the season to knock 2000 off the throne, especially since Fowler gets to feast on Chris Young a few more times.

Oliver Perez had a bad day.

To start the bottom half of the third inning, Perez walked Jimmy Rollins. After a Pedro Feliz fly out, Perez walked Eric Bruntlett. Then he walked Carlos Ruiz, loading the bases for pitcher Jamie Moyer and setting the scene for the unthinkable: walking the pitcher to walk in a run. Jerry Manuel was less than pleased, pulling Perez after 2.1 innings, six walks, five hits, and only two strikeouts. Of the 77 pitches Perez threw, only 36 were strikes.

Entering the game Perez’ BB/9 sat just shy of seven. Extremely odd, given Perez is not only throwing more pitches in the zone this season (52.5%, Perez’ Mets career high) but also more first pitch strikes, nearly 60% (previous high with the Mets: 55.6% in 2007.) Generally, those two variables don’t have an inverse relationship with the amount of walks issued.

Even worse for Perez, his batted profile is ugly. No matter your source for batted ball data, the number of line drives hit off Perez is in the neighborhood of 30%. Unnecessary baserunners + tons of liners = the opposite of fun.

Perhaps the only humorous aspect of this affair is the articles being produced on how the Mets flopped when choosing Perez over an additional year of Derek Lowe. These articles are being written as if, within the time since, new information arrived and suggested Perez was a far less valuable pitcher than Lowe. The idea isn’t simply hindsight – after all, Eric laid out the terms and everything before either deal wrapped and Matthew suggested Perez was overpaid directly after— but why weren’t these same articles written by these same people before or directly after the Mets made that decision? Why has it taken a month of the new season for everyone to finally realize that the Mets may have made a mistake?

As poor as Perez has pitched, unless there’s something more at work here – an injury, an outlier, whatever – his FIP will not remain this high all season. Meanwhile, hopefully this leads to some smarter decision making and decision making analysis on behalf of those who entertained the idea of Perez over Lowe, and perhaps next time they won’t entertain the idea one bit.

Prior to this season, I remember seeing Wade Boggs and Josh Wilson pitch an inning of relief each. That’s it. Never before had I discovered the pleasure(?) of seeing a positional player pitch in a game. Earlier this year Nick Swisher did the feat (and turned himself into a cult icon in New York) and last night, Jonathan Van Every gave it a go. Bonus points go to Van Every, since Red Sox manager Terry Francona decided to flip Van Every and the current pitcher, Javier Lopez, meaning Lopez had to go to the field after getting touched up a bit.

I must say, there was something poetic about Lopez having to chase down a double in the gap.

The plan was to look at Van Every through PItchFx, but naturally GameDay encountered a few glitches during his appearance, all but wiping that idea out. Only five pitches were recorded, each registering as a fastball. It seems 81 miles per hour is where Every topped out, while sitting around 78. His “change-up” actually got nice break towards lefties, but as you would expect the command isn’t there.

For Van Every, this is another feather in his cap in only his 16th major league game. The only reason he’s even on the Red Sox is thanks to injuries to Rocco Baldelli and Mark Kotsay.

Ignoring big-named players (for health reasons) and Rick Ankiel (for mental health) which positional players do you think would make the best relievers? Who would throw the hardest? Who would make Daniel Cabrera look like Johan Santana?

Scott Downs is pretty good at baseball even though there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of him. Down is the designated closer now that B.J. Ryan is taking his annual DL vacation. That means fantasy owners are probably learning more and more about one of baseball’s more underrated relievers.

Downs is a lefty, which makes him a rarity at closer despite the obvious advantages one capable of retiring lefties and righties alike brings. Drafted by the Cubs in the third round of the 1997 draft, he would later be traded to the Twins then right back to the Cubs in the Rick Aguilera deal. Just over a year later the Cubs would send him to Montreal for Rondell White, and in 2004 the Nationals would release Downs.

Downs reached the Jays in 2005 and made his last start in 2006. Since then Downs has posted FIP of 4.33, 3.24, 3.39, and so far this season 0.84 thanks to allowing a combined zero walks and homeruns.

Backed by a generally stellar defensive infield, Downs groundball heavy ways (around 60% since joining the Jays) works ridiculously well. As most relievers are, Downs is basically a two-pitch pitcher. An 89-90 MPH fastball that breaks down and in to lefties gets most of the reps while a curveball that has ridiculous down and away movement from left-handers gets the call to finish hitters. The average left-handed curveball breaks 4.5 inches towards righties, Downs’ breaks 7.1 inches towards righties. With stuff like that, it’s not hard to imagine why Downs has been successful at retiring batters of both dexterities since moving to the pen.

And yes, it took a ton of self-restraint to avoid any “Up and Downs” related puns.

Run distribution over a given season is an amusing thing. Most offenses are judged off their seasonal runs scored average, but that’s often a bit misleading, as Studes showed us a while back. So far this season, despite being nearly a month engaged, the San Francisco Giants are yet to score 70 runs. In fact, the Astros, Diamondbacks, Athletics, and Reds have yet to score even 75 runs. On the other hand the only team to score more than 120 runs is the Blue Jays of all teams.

125 runs for the Jays, 65 for the Giants, that’s not a perfect 2:1 ratio, but it’ll work. What you see below is a run distribution chart. Basically, I took the amount of runs scored, plugged in how many games Team X scored Y amount of runs, divided that amount of games by the total amount of games played, and bam, we have liftoff. What’s the difference between the best and worse run producing lineups so far It’s important to note that while the Jays have played three additional games, the Giants are not being punished for a less-hectic schedule.

The Jays offense has scored 4 or 5 runs in nearly a combined 40% of their games. Compare that to the Giants ability to score 4+ runs, and you end up seeing that the Jays are scoring 4 or 5 runs in nearly more games than the Giants are scoring at least four. Interestingly, the two are close to equal on the amount of one run games while the Giants are blowing the Jays out of the water in two run games.

The big key to the difference: the Jays have yet to end a game with zero on the scoreboard, the Giants are about 5% of the time.

The baseball season is less of a dash and more of a marathon, which is bad news for those of you who took Nelson Cruz in your UZR seasonal pools. Cruz leads by a half of a run over Jay Bruce, and nearly two full runs over Franklin Gutierrez and Placido Polanco.

You can tell the sample size is still small, because Raul Ibanez of all people has a positive UZR. Even more odd: he’s equal to Endy Chavez – the guy responsible for replacing Raul’s grit and work ethic. I wish a beat writer would ask Raul about his thoughts on defensive metrics now.

Aubrey Huff should probably only be used at DH. Thus far his UZR at first base is -3.5. Take that with the normal sample size warnings – like all of these pieces – but being poor defensively at first base generally means you aren’t very good defensively at all. Other poor defenders this season: Yuniesky Betancourt (-4.1, SS),Vernon Wells (-3.8, CF), Khalil Greene (-3.6, SS) and Nate McLouth (-3.6, CF). Gold Glove be damned.

What do Jordan Schafer Elvis Andrus share, besides their historic ties to the Atlanta Braves? Well, neither are making much headway defensively. I guess if we’re looking for an Evan Longoria-esque defensive rookie season, these two might not be the ones to hand your hat on.

Team rankings wise, the Rays are the leaders (13.9), with the Brewers (10.4), Pirates (9.7), Mariners (7.4), and Rangers (6.5) rounding out the top five. Meanwhile the Orioles (-11.3), Angels (-8.1), and Indians (-8) are the worst.

One has to figure the Orioles will finish the season better off than the Angels defense, right?

Oakland has a team batting line of .232/.307/.304.

That’s a .611 OPS. Last year, Jose Vidro’s OPS was .612. Jose Vidro the DH was one of the bigger jokes in the baseball community. That doesn’t speak too well for Oakland’s lineup, one that saw numerous additions during the off-season.

Thus far only Jack Cust and Kurt Suzuki have been bright spots. Cust is walking nearly 20% of the time and Suzuki is putting almost everything into play. After that, Matt Holliday is the only other hitter with an OPS over .700 and only Ryan Sweeney has an OPS over .600. When Billy Beane traded for Holliday, I’m guessing he expected a bit better performance than what we’ve seen thus far.

Jason Giambi has a lower ISO than Bobby Crosby and Landon Powell. Nomar Garciaparra and Orlando Cabrera are doing poorly – although when the former is getting a hit, it’s usually been one for extra bases – and Eric Chavez is doing his best Jack Hannahan impression.

The offensive struggles are a gut punch to a team who had contention hopes. Throw in a struggling young rotation (5.22 FIP) and the Athletics find themselves below an injury depleted Angels squad.

Good news could be on the way, since most of the issues seem BABIP related. Plus, there’s just no way a major league team is going to OPS .611 for an entire season. Since 2000, exactly zero teams have finished with OPS below .650. Yes, even the 2003 Tigers, who were pitiful in every way imaginable found a way to hit for a higher OPS.