The new “Past Calendar Year” addition to the leaderboards is tremendous. If you haven’t played around with it yet, what are you waiting for?

Here’s my fun revelation of the day. In the last year, here are the league leaders in strikeout totals for hitters.

1. Ryan Howard, Philadelphia – 236 strikeouts in 623 at-bats, 37.7% K%
2. Jack Cust, Oakland – 192 strikeouts in 490 at-bats, 39.2% K%
3. Mark Reynolds, Arizona -192 strikeouts in 509 at-bats, 37.7% K%

After those three, the dropoff in strikeout rate is huge. Mike Cameron is #4 with a 32.6% K%, not even in the same ballpark as Howard, Cust, and Reynolds. But how many people really think of the Arizona third baseman as a Cust/Howard level swing-and-miss machine? I certainly didn’t, at least until looking at this leaderboard.

It wasn’t exactly easy to see this coming either. During his 1216 minor league at-bats in 2004 to 2007, Reynolds posted a 24% K%. With guys who have huge holes in their swings, such as Cust and Branyan, we knew they were strikeout monsters even before they got to the big show. But Reynolds – he didn’t start racking up the Ks until he got to Arizona.

Unlike with Cust, who racks up the strikeouts because he just never swings (34% Swing%, which is just hilarious) and gets deep in counts, Reynolds has legitimate problems making contact. His 63.78% contact rate is the worst in the majors, with only Howard’s 64.35% even within shouting distance.

Because he’s able to drive the ball consistently, he’s still a productive hitter even with the contact issues, but it’s something that Arizona’s coaching staff should be working with him on. It’s very hard to have a sustained career with that kind of low rate of contact, and Reynolds doesn’t draw walks like Cust or Howard to offset some of the strikeouts. If he continues to swing and miss at this rate, it won’t be too long before he’s hitting .210 or .220 due to BABIP variations and, at that point, his job will be in jeopardy.

The ace of the Angels rotation, John Lackey, spent the first eight weeks of the season on the shelf recovering from a strained tricep muscle. Often times, when a pitcher opts for rest, the results when they return aren’t what they, or their teams’ fans, would hope for. Velocity drops and a loss of movement aren’t uncommon, and teams have learned that it’s not generally a great idea to count on getting premium production from a pitcher just coming off the disabled list.

Lackey, however, is bucking that trend in a big way. Since coming off the DL on May 14th, he’s been the model of consistency. Here are some of the relevant markers from 2007 and 2008.

Fastball Velocity: 2007, 90.9 MPH – 2008, 90.6 MPH
Groundball Percentage: 2007, 44.7% – 2008, 44.9%
FIP: 2007, 3.54 – 2008, 3.43

In each of his eight starts since coming off the disabled list, Lackey’s pitched a minimum of seven innings. He’s given up just one earned run in six of those starts. His game scores have ranged from a low of 60 to a high of 70. He’s posted a positive WPA in all of his appearances, and a WPA of .30 or higher in three of those eight starts.

The recovering-from-injury John Lackey is indistinguishable from the completely healthy version, and his success is one of the reason the Angels are putting some distance between themselves and the rest of the A.L. West. Consistency has always been his calling card, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that even something like an arm injury can’t slow him down.

I love the BIS pitch data statistics that are available here on FanGraphs. One of the first things we noticed using that data this season was that Justin Verlander’s fastball disappeared in April. He was throwing 91-92 instead of his usual 94-95, and his performance suffered as a result. He walked 18 and struck out just 20 batters in his six April starts, leading to a 6.50 ERA. His struggles were a major reason why Detroit failed to live up to expectations early on.

As the calender rolled into May, however, Verlander’s velocity started to pick up. After averaging just a 91.9 MPH fastball during his first three starts of the season, his fastball averaged 93.6 MPH during May, and his performance improved right along with the velocity spike. In 39 innings in May, he walked 13 and struck out 24 while posting a 3.92 ERA. It still wasn’t classic Verlander, but it was at least encouraging.

Enter June, and it’s safe to say that Verlander is back. His average fastball is now 94.5 MPH, sixth best in baseball during this month, and the results are what we expected from a guy who looked like an emerging ace last season. He’s walked 10 and struck out 28 batters in 27 1/3 innings, dominating hitters and holding them to a .575 OPS.

Whether it was just a tired arm phase or a mechanical tweak, Verlander’s fastball is back, and he’s pitching like the Tigers thought he would heading into the year. Detroit fans have to be happy to have their ace back to pitching like one, and it’s even more comforting that there’s a verifiable explanation for the improvement. For all the talk of guys learning how to pitch without their best stuff, Justin Verlander is clearly a better pitcher when he’s throwing 95 instead of 92.

If there’s been a theme to some of my recent posts, it’s that baseball is fairly unpredictable. From Jim Edmonds‘ revival in Chicago, Russ Branyan doing a pretty good Ruth impression after getting called up from Triple-A, and Jose Guillen drawing two walks the day after I write about his 37 game walk-free streak, the game does a good job of reminding us that on any given day, you just don’t know what’s going to happen.

But, as much as we don’t know, there are some things that we do know. One of those things that we can all agree on is that the 2008 Toronto Blue Jays can’t hit. Their offense is sadder than a Lifetime Original Movie marathon. They’re slugging .376 as a team, with Matt Stairs leading the team in home runs… with eight. At the end of June. Their supposed star hitters, Vernon Wells and Alex Rios, are producing more like fourth outfielders. They average 4.0 runs per game and the hitters undermine the great work done by their teammates on the pitching staff.

So, knowing that the Jays are a pitiful offensive club, I have to ask – Bronson Arroyo, how on earth did you manage to give up 10 runs to that club while getting just three people out last night. 12 of the 15 batters you faced reach base. The amount of outs you recorded was equal to the amount of home runs you gave up. Your game score was -9. Negative Nine!

This was easily the worst pitching performance we’ve seen so far in 2008. In fact, in the last 50 years, only 13 starting pitchers have managed to record three outs or less and post a negative game score. Arroyo’s -9 will rank behind only Jason Jennings‘ performance last year when he allowed 11 runs in 2/3 of an inning.

Giving up double digit runs while not recording an out past the first inning against the worst offense in baseball? That’s a pretty special performance, but in all the wrong ways. Congratulations Bronson, we’ll remember this game for years to come, even if you don’t want us to.

There are several different levels of groundball pitchers floating around major league baseball right now. There are the no-stuff command types who get grounders based on movement and location (Jon Garland, Braden Looper), the guys who have devastating sinkers with average velocity (Derek Lowe, Aaron Cook), and then there’s the power pitchers who hammer the bottom of the zone with fastballs that simply can’t be hit in the air (Brandon Webb, Chien-Ming Wang).

And then there’s Brad Ziegler. He’s a side-arm reliever for the A’s, and his fastball tops out at about 86 MPH. It’s basically his only real pitch – he throws it 89% of the time, mixing in a below average slider just to keep hitters occasionally off balance. Just based on velocity, his stuff could charitably described as marginal. If he was a lefty, he’d be described as crafty, which is code for can’t-break-glass-with-his-fastball.

But what he lacks in velocity, he makes up for in movement and deception. His fastball has so much sink, in fact, that in his first 11 1/3 innings of major league pitching, he’s posting a 73.5% GB% and an 8.33 GB/FB rate. He’s faced 40 batters since the A’s brought him up from Triple-A, and a whopping three of them have managed to hit the ball in the air.

Apparently, Billy Beane missed having Chad Bradford in the bullpen, so they decided to create another one. Until 2006, Ziegler was a traditional over the top pitcher, but given his limited chances to make the majors as a “normal” pitcher, the A’s convinced him to become a side-arming reliever. It’s worked wonders, as he hasn’t given up a home run since at any level, and he’s run a GB% of 60% or higher at every stop along the way.

Because of his delivery and his repertoire, Ziegler’s always going to be more of a ROOGY than a true dominating relief ace, as lefties will enjoy seeing that fastball come in from the low arm slot, but he’s clearly got enough movement on his fastball to be a nightmare for right-handed hitters in late game situations. Once again, the A’s demonstrate just how easy it is to build a quality bullpen, converting a fringe prospect into a real weapon coming out of their bullpen.

Jose Guillen is currently putting together the weirdest hot streak of all time. In his last 37 games, he’s racked up 55 hits – 23 of those going for extra bases – and a .359/.365/.613 mark. Nothing wrong with a .360 batting average and a .600 slugging percentage, but you may notice that the on base percentage isn’t much higher than that batting average. That’s because, during those 37 games, Guillen hasn’t drawn a single walk. He’s been hit by pitch twice, accounting for the tiny difference between his BA and OBP, but he hasn’t heard the umpire call ball four since May 15th.

Those 37 games encompass 156 plate appearances where Guillen has just swung at absolutely everything. Generally, that’s a pretty bad idea, but the aggressive approach he’s taken may have actually rescued his season. The last time Guillen took a walk, he was hitting .224/.260/.395. He had drawn 7 walks in his first 154 plate appearances, right in line with what we’d expect based on his career walk rate. Clearly, all that walking was getting in the way of his hitting, so he decided to just eliminate the pesky base on balls, and voila, an offensive surge was born.

Okay, so that’s not really fair. Guillen actually caught fire a week before he drew his last walk, hitting .533/.563/.833 from May 7th to May 15th before the end-of-walks approach kicked in. So maybe there’s no cause and effect here, but it’s still at least interesting how well Guillen has hit while completely abandoning one of the easier ways to get on base. For comparison, Adam Dunn has drawn 32 walks since Guillen drew his last – that’s a lot of free pass opportunities to give up.

But for Guillen, it works. His hyper-aggressive approach at the plate doesn’t cost him his power, and his game continues to be centered around his ability to drive the ball into the alleys and over the wall. When he stops being able to do that, I’ll tell him to stop swinging at everything. Until then, I’m not going to argue with the guy slugging better than .600 while ignoring the base on balls.

After his May 21st drubbing against the Detroit Tigers when he allowed nine runs in just over two innings of work, Jarrod Washburn’s ERA stood at 6.99. He wasn’t actually pitching much worse than usual, however, posting a 4.75 FIP that was basically in line with his career averages. He was just struggling to leave runners on base, and the runs were being piled up due to a poor performance with men on base. With an ERA over 2.00 points higher than his FIP, Washburn was a prime candidate for regression to the mean.

Not surprisingly, in his last five starts, Washburn’s ERA has been reduced significantly. His ERA during his last five starts is 3.10 after a solid performance against the Braves yesterday, and Washburn is crediting his college pitching coach.

“It was a mechanical adjustment I made after I called my college coach and asked him what I was doing wrong,” Washburn said. “He knew. It was a little adjustment at the beginning (of the windup) that turned into something big by the time I released the ball.”

Pitchers do this all the time – they struggle, they make some minor change, and the struggles end, so therefore, the minor change fixed the problem. Unfortunately, it’s almost never true. Here’s Washburn’s performance up to the phone call and since, broken down by metrics that actually judge pitching effectiveness, rather than a useless measure such as ERA.

April 4th – May 21st: 47 2/3 IP, 1.89 BB/9, 5.67 K/9, 11% HR/FB, 4.75 FIP, 4.93 xFIP
May 25th – June 21st: 29 IP, 4.97 BB/9, 6.21 K/9, 4% HR/FB, 3.92 FIP, 4.98 xFIP

If we were going to evaluate the usefulness of Washburn’s mechanical tweak based on a ridiculously small sample, we’d be forced to conclude that it destroyed his ability to throw strikes and was otherwise pretty useless. The uptick in strikeout rate is basically meaningless (it’s two strikeouts total over five starts), and the decrease in allowing runs is due to one very obvious unsustainable performance – the home run per fly rate.

Eight of Washburn’s 72 fly balls went over the fence in his first ten starts, but just one of 28 has gone for a home run in his last five starts. That’s not the result of a mechanical change – that’s random variation that has nothing to do with Washburn.

Jarrod Washburn isn’t pitching any better since he called his college pitching coach – you could easily make an argument that he’s pitching worse. However, because his ERA has predictably regressed to the mean, we get fed stories about his supposed improvements and the cause of those improvements, all of which are bunk.

Tipping pitches, holding the glove higher, changing grips – it’s almost always a post-hoc explanation for regression to the mean, and 99% of the time, it’s got no grounding in reality. Jarrod Washburn’s the exact same guy he was a month ago, and this entire non-story is simply another reason why results based analysis is doomed to failure.

On May 28th, a eulogy for Jim Edmonds‘ career would not have been out of place. He had been released by the Padres on May 9th after hitting a measly .178/.265/.233 during the first five weeks of the season, then caught on with the Cubs on May 15th and began his career in Chicago by going 3 for 24 out of the gates. Following his 0 for 4 performance on May 27th, his OPS stood at .455.

His body was breaking down, his bat looked slow, and he couldn’t even hit his weight with two franchises. It looked like time had taken its toll, and Edmonds was just done as a major league player.

Looks can be deceiving. On May 30th, his next time in the line-up, he went 3 for 4 with a double and a home run (his first extra base hits since April 21st) and he hasn’t looked back since. From that day through his two home run performance on Saturday, Edmonds hit .400/.446/.800 in 56 plate appearances. 11 of his 20 hits have gone for extra bases during that stretch, and only J.D. Drew, Milton Bradley, and Vladimir Guerrero have been more productive hitters since Edmonds started hitting again.

Edmonds line as a Cub stands at .311/.358/.581, even with his auspicious start to his career on the north side. For whatever reason, he was able to find a juvenation machine and resurrect a career that looked to be just about over. To paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of Edmonds death were greatly exaggerated, and Cubs fans couldn’t be happier about it.

Last year, in need of an offensive boost, the Brewers called Ryan Braun up from Triple-A and handed him their third base job despite concerns about whether he was capable of playing a major league quality third base. Braun went on to have one of the most remarkable rookie seasons in major league history, becoming one of the league’s best hitters from the day he stepped on the field.

Russ Branyan isn’t at the beginning of a great long career, but it’s eerie to note just how history is repeating itself up in Milwaukee. With a struggling offense and no obvious answers at third base, the Brewers recalled Branyan from Nashville (where he was hitting .359/.453/.693) on May 25th and gave him regular playing time at third to get his bat in the line-up while they figured out if they could live with his defense.

He hasn’t stopped hitting since he got to Milwaukee, putting up a .306/.405/.855 mark in 62 at-bats since he got the call. He’s doing it in typical Branyan-style fashion, joining the three true outcome heroes of the game with a 15.1% BB%, 38.7% K%, and .548 ISO based on 10 longballs. Of his 74 plate appearances, 45 of them (61%) have ended in a walk, strikeout, or home run. Notable TTO monster Jack Cust has had 56% of his plate appearances end in a BB, K, or HR for comparison, while Adam Dunn is at 55% and Ryan Howard is at 53%.

With Branyan, the Brewers knew what kind of player they were getting, and they were willing to overlook the flaws in order to see if he could provide some much needed offense. Perhaps teams that continue to overlook these AAAA sluggers should take note – Branyan already has more extra base hits in 20 games than everyday designated hitter Jose Vidro has for the Mariners all season, for instance. Finding a guy who can just hit the baseball really far isn’t all that hard, and the organizations struggling to get production from their DH positions should be fairly ashamed of themselves.

Does anyone remember a stranger season in recent memory than the one Cliff Lee is currently putting together? As we’ve covered extensively here, Lee came out of the gates pitching like 1988 Orel Hershiser, dominating opponents with ridiculous performances that seemingly came out of nowhere, but lately, he’s been hit hard and watched his ERA rise significantly – he’s just barely edging out Shaun Marcum for the AL Lead as of today. However, his core performance hasn’t regressed nearly as far. Look at his by month performances:

April: 0.48 BB/9, 7.65 K/9, 0.24 HR/9, 1.80 FIP, .195 BABIP, 81.6% LOB%
May: 2.10 BB/9, 6.55 K/9, 0.52 HR/9, 2.99 FIP, .346 BABIP, 79.7% LOB%
June: 2.20 BB/9, 10.47 K/9, 1.10 HR/9, 2.99 FIP, .437 BABIP, 70.3% LOB%

He got lucky in April, so maybe karma is coming back to haunt him, but really, a .437 batting average on balls in play is not regression to the mean – it’s regression so far past the mean that it can’t even see it with a telescope. It might be tempting to look at Lee’s 5.51 ERA in June and determine that he’s back to being what he always was, but the old Cliff Lee was never a 2 BB/10 K/1 HR pitcher. His core stats from June would fit right in with Johan Santana’s career line. June is simply not an example of Lee reverting to previous form.

As Lee continues to post months with a FIP below 3.00, we’re going to have to continue to revise our estimate of his true talent level upwards. This is a classic example of why I couldn’t care less about a pitcher’s ERA. His run prevention results of late hide the fact that he just continues to assert that he’s a better pitcher now than he’s ever been.