Tampa Bay has been one of the fun, feel good stories of 2008. After nothing but failure in their franchises history, Tampa has finally been able to convert some of their talent into wins, and they currently have a comfortable three game lead over the Oakland Athletics in the A.L. Wild Card race. The brain trust in Tampa has been building this team around a young core of stars-in-the-making position players that include B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, and Evan Longoria.

However, interestingly enough, the Rays are winning in spite of their hitters. Indeed, it’s been the run prevention side of the ball that has Tampa in playoff contention for the first time. Their offense is a scoring 4.49 runs per game, basically league average, mostly due to the fact that Crawford (.266/.312/.371) and Pena (.227/.333/.430) have struggled significantly. Upton has maintained his role as the Rays best hitter, but even he has seen his power decline, launching just five home runs so far this year. They’ve gotten positive contributions from useful role players such as Dioner Navarro and Eric Hinske, but overall, the offense has been a disappointment and is the main reason they are no longer in first place in the A.L. East.

Instead, it’s been the pitchers carrying the load. As a team, they have a 4.01 FIP, good for fourth best in the A.L. Only Toronto, Chicago, and Oakland are getting better performances from their pitchers. Scott Kazmir has been unhittable since coming off the disabled list, while James Shields has been his usual consistent self. Edwin Jackson has flashed brilliance more often than not, so even with his inconsistency, he’s been a positive performer, and the back-end rotation guys in Matt Garza and Andy Sonnanstine have been solid if not spectacular.

It’s been the bullpen, however, that has been the biggest difference maker. Troy Percival, Dan Wheeler, and J.P. Howell have given the Rays a strong group to cover the 8th and 9th innings, and the bullpen’s performance is reflected in their league leading 4.63 WPA as a group – the highest of any team in the American League. When asked to perform in high leverage situations, Tampa’s bullpen has come through time after time. This is a radical change from last year’s pen that simply poured gasoline on every fire they could find, posting a -8.40 WPA over the season.

By improving the defense, getting better work from their relievers, and stabilizing the back end of the rotation, Tampa has built a winner in spite of the struggles of two of their best hitters. This team still needs Pena and Crawford to start hitting soon, but their unheralded teammates have kept them in the race and bought them enough time to do so.

Joe Crede is (insert your own hypberole here). Since last Wednesday, he’s had the following games:

June 4th, vs KC: 2 for 3, 1 2B, 1 HR, 2 BB, .326 WPA
June 6th, vs MIN: 4 for 4, 2 HR, .194 WPA
June 7th, vs MIN: 2 for 4, 2 HR, .120 WPA
June 8th, vs Min: 2 for 4, 1 2B, .018 WPA

He’s reached base 12 times in 17 trips to the plate (.705 OBP) and has seven extra base hits (1.800 SLG) since Wednesday. Five days ago, he was slugging .465, but after this stretch, he’s raised that mark 100 points. In four games. In June.

All winter, the White Sox did what they could to trade Crede. With Josh Fields around, Crede coming off a disastrous 2007 season, and heading into his free agent season, he didn’t seem to fit in Chicago’s plans, but they couldn’t find anyone willing to give much up for Crede, so they kept him around. That’s turned out to be a season saving decision, as he and Carlos Quentin have saved the White Sox offense amid struggles from Nick Swisher, Paul Konerko, and Jim Thome. Ozzie Guillen might not be very happy with his offense’s consistency, but Joe Crede certainly isn’t going to be the reason the hitting coach gets fired.

With the first day of the major league draft behind us, for some people, the countdown can officially begin – 364 days until someone announces that they’ve selected Stephen Strasburg from San Diego State University, potentially with the #1 overall pick. The legend of Strasburg hit new heights on April 11th in a Mountain West Conference game against the University of Utah, when Strasburg recorded 27 outs in a one hit complete game shutout – 23 of them by strikeout. After the game, Strasburg said this:

“I was trying to get the ball in play and throw strikes. I was trying to use the defense as much as possible, but I guess it didn’t work out that way.”

While trying to get the ball in play, he punched out 23 men. That’s how you build a legend. He had already been talked about as a potential top five pick for 2009 back in February, but after a dominating sophomore season for SDSU, he heads into the final twelve month push as the clear frontrunner. Usually, that guy doesn’t end up going #1 overall (Pedro Alvarez was this guy last summer), but unless Strasburg blows out his arm, he’s going to go very high.

His fastball sits in the mid-90s and he has a wipeout slider that is responsible for most of the strikeouts. He also has a classic pitchers frame, and obviously, his performance validates the stuff. There are some other highly talented players who will make a run at being the top overall pick next year, but right now, Strasburg is the Big Brown of this race.

With the second pick in the draft this afternoon, the Pittsburgh Pirates selected Vanderbilt third baseman Pedro Alvarez. I got a chance to watch Alvarez play for Team USA a couple of summers ago, and he was as impressive as any amateur hitter I’ve ever seen. His stance and physique brought immediate comparisons to Albert Pujols, though he hit from the left side. The stroke was short and powerful, and while it’s a cliche, the ball jumped off his bat. He hit a ball off the right center field wall that night (off a left-handed pitcher, by the way) that got to the fence in about two seconds. He had homered earlier, pounding a ball 450+ feet, but it was that hit that made you jump out of your chair, because he just destroyed the baseball with his line drive swing. I was surprised the seams didn’t come off.

There were some good hitters in this draft, and while I’m sure the Rays did their homework in coming to the conclusion that Tim Beckham was the right selection for their organization, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we looked back in twelve months and scratched our heads about why there was a question of who the best hitter in this draft was. Pedro Alvarez is a monster at the plate, and he’s the kind of hitter that you can build a championship offense around. Pittsburgh hasn’t seen a hitter with this kind of ability since some guy named Bonds left for San Francisco.

Congratulations to the new regime in Pittsburgh for redeeming draft day, a day that had haunted Pirates fans for the last decade or so. Pedro Alvarez is no Bryan Bullington.

The Reds might not be thrilled that they traded away Josh Hamilton, but they have to be thrilled that they acquired Edinson Volquez. After another terrific outing last night, shutting out the Phillies for seven innings, Volquez has now given up 11 earned runs in his 12 starts this season. That covers 75 innings and works out to a stellar 1.32 ERA, and he’s done the heavy lifting himself, racking up a league leading 91 strikeouts.

This is the most impressive start to a season since Pedro Martinez’s performance in 2000 that might have been the best year any pitcher has ever had. In Pedro’s first 12 starts that year, he threw 91 innings, walked 18, struck out 121, and posted a 0.99 ERA. Opponents hit .160/.223/.214 against him during that stretch. He proved somewhat human the rest of the year, posting a mortal 2.29 ERA in his final 17 starts of the season thanks to allowing 14 home runs, but his 14/163 BB/K ratio during that period of struggle is still hilariously awesome.

Before Pedro, you have to go back to 1988 and John Tudor to find a pitcher who started a season this well. Tudor’s first twelve starts covered 83 1/3 innings and a 1.08 ERA, but they come with a pretty big asterisk. Tudor allowed seven unearned runs during that span, and his walk to strikeout rate was 20/30. Seriously, he posted a 1.08 ERA while striking out 3.24 batters per nine innings. His success was completely based on getting hitters out on balls in play, and if Fangraphs had existed in 1988, we’d have been predicting a pretty severe regression to the mean. It came swiftly, as his next five starts resulted in him giving up 22 runs in 29 innings for a nifty 6.67 ERA.

Volquez isn’t Tudor, however. Volquez has some of the best stuff of any starting pitcher in baseball, and when he’s throwing it for strikes, he’s nearly untouchable. Pedro’s dominance came from his pinpoint command of his nasty fastball and change-up, which Volquez will likely never be able to match. But there’s nothing wrong with being worse than the 2000 version of Pedro Martinez – that just gives him something in common with every other pitcher in history.

Edinson Volquez is having a remarkable start to the ’08 campaign. He’s not this good – no one is – but he’s a terrific talent, and Reds fans should be ecstatic that they’re going to have this guy in their rotation for years to come.

This morning,, we looked at the six National League second baseman that are all having excellent seasons. Now, we look at those who are doing the opposite.

In 2006, Freddy Sanchez won the National League batting title. In 2008, he’s been one of the worst hitters in baseball, posting a .238/.265/.315 line that combines an aggressive approach with no power. Sanchez is pretty clearly a better hitter than this, and he’s a prime candidate for positive regression to the mean, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been killing the Pirates offense for the first two months of 2008.

Earlier in his career, Felipe Lopez had above average power for a middle infielder. During the 2005 season, he posted a .486 slugging percentage, fulfilling the potential that had been put on him since his days as a Blue Jays prospect. That power, however, is clearly gone, and with it has gone his value as a regular player. Now he’s just an easy out with mediocre defense.

Speaking of evaporating power, Tadahito Iguchi was a pretty solid player for the White Sox and Phillies the last three years, doing nothing great but nothing poorly. He was the classic “took nothing off the table” player, where he wouldn’t be the reason you won a title, but he wouldn’t cost you one either. Second baseman don’t age very well, however, and at age 33, Iguchi’s power has disappeared into the sands of time, and now he takes plenty off the table. You can’t even blame the power loss on the move to Petco, as he has more extra base hits at home than on the road. Iguchi just isn’t a starting second baseman anymore.

And, since we’re in the age related collapse category, here’s Jeff Kent. At 40, it’s remarkable that he’s still playing the position, and he’s had an amazing career. That career is pretty much over, though. At .244/.287/.392 with defense that suggests he shouldn’t be handling the keystone position anymore, it’s probably time for Kent to walk away at years end. Very few second baseman last as long as he did, and we shouldn’t be surprised that Father Time has finally come calling for him.

Then, there’s Rickie Weeks, an enigma of a player if ever there was one. His physical skills are obvious, but he’s never been able to put the entire package together in the same season. He’s cut down on his strikeout rate this season, but his walk rate has suffered as well, and his power has regressed from where it was in 2007, and even with the improved contact, he’s a worse hitter. At 25 years old, there’s still time for Weeks to figure things out and become the player that the Brewers want him to be, but more and more, he’s looking like the new version of Jose Cruz Jr.

When I first started working on these posts yesterday, Kaz Matsui was hitting .259/.344/.335, so he qualified for the sub-.700 OPS club that included all the above. But, apparently, he didn’t want to be written up in this post, so he went 4 for 4 last night to raise his season line to .278/.359/.352. That’s still not good, especially for a guy who plays half his games in Minute Maid Park, but since he went out and fought like mad to get himself off the list, I’ll concede to Matsui’s desires and not lump him in with the struggling second baseman any more than I already have.

If you’ve taken an introductory math class, you’ve probably seen the bell curve graph that explains how the distribution of things are grouped around the average and thinner at the extremes. National League second baseman have decided to band together and disprove normal distribution in 2008, however.

As a group, they are hitting .267/.335/.415 for a .750 OPS. Normal distribution would suggest that we’d find a cluster of players with an OPS between .700 and .800, but in reality, only one of the 13 qualified second baseman falls in that range – Luis Castillo. The other twelve are split into two distinct groups – tremendous and terrible. This morning, we look at the guys excelling, and tonight, we’ll look at those who are dragging the average down.

We’ve talked about the amazing years Chase Utley and Dan Uggla are having. Both are having historically tremendous seasons for a second baseman, and they’re mortal locks to represent the NL at the all-star game. But behind those two MVP candidates are four pretty good players in their own right.

Orlando Hudson: .303/.372/.503, 0.82 WPA/LI
Brandon Phillips: .287/.336/.529, 0.55 WPA/LI
Kelly Johnson: .299/.362/.495, 0.34 WPA/LI
Mark DeRosa: .297/.384/.449, 0.66 WPA/LI

All of these guys are having seasons that would create a strong case for an all-star bid in any other year. Hudson and Phillips both add terrific defense to their offensive value, while Johnson and DeRosa continue to be the under the radar stars for their respective teams. You really can’t go wrong with any of these six guys, as all of them are having tremendously valuable seasons.

Hanley Ramirez has been a star from day one in Florida, putting up remarkably impressive seasons in his first two years with the Marlins and establishing himself as one of the game’s elite young talents. He built on an already strong rookie season last year, lowering his strikeout rate and raising his power, and even with defense that suggests he belongs in the outfield, a .332/.386/.562 season from a 23-year-old who plays half his games in a pitcher’s park is pretty special, and when you toss in the 51 stolen bases, you have a guy who can lay claim as the league’s most versatile offensive weapon.

So, when Ramirez led the surprising Marlins to a first place April with a blistering start, the natural assumption was that this kid was just continuing to develop into a potential hall of fame talent. He hit .324/.400/.595 with eight home runs and nine steals in the first 27 games of the season, which put him on pace to get near an unheard of 50-50 combination in steals and home runs. No one expected him to actually pull it off, but with the way he was progressing as a hitter, people weren’t lining up to bet against him either. There was virtually no ceiling for what Ramirez could accomplish in 2008.

Then came May 1st, and it brought a pretty big dose of reality to Ramirez’s season. Since that day, he’s hitting .257/.355/.343 with one home run and four stolen bases. He has half as many extra base hits in the same amount of plate appearances, as the power has just disappeared. Interestingly enough, Ramirez did something similar a year ago, when he hit .364/.462/.626 in April and .279/.326/.410 in May. For whatever reason (and there probably isn’t one, honestly), he’s come out of the gates charging, but keeps running into a wall around the 30 game mark.

He’s going to bounce, back, however. This kid is too good of a hitter, even with his contact problems, to struggle like this for much longer. He still has some work to do before he can challenge Albert Pujols and Chase Utley for the title of best player in the National League, but the talent is there.

In order to cope with the loss of two starting pitchers from last year’s club, the Twins imported veteran starter Livan Hernandez to fill innings at a reasonable clip. At this point in his career, though, it was clear that Hernandez wasn’t going to be much more than a pitch to contact innings eater. Well, he’s lived up to that persona and then some.

A guy who posted average strikeout rates in his prime is now transitioning into the second stage of his career as the new Nate Cornejo. His K/9 this year stands at a paltry 2.83, second lowest in baseball among starting pitchers. Only Jon Garland, who we discussed previously, is missing bats with less frequency than Livan Hernandez. In fact, both Garland and Hernandez are posting remarkably low strikeout rates compared to recent history.

Since 1988, only 17 pitchers have tossed 100 or more innings in a season with a K/9 of 3.00 or less, combining to make it happen 22 times. Kirk Rueter was the last to do it, pitching himself out of baseball in 2005 with a 2.10 K/9. The previously mentioned Cornejo did it in 2003, but only lasted 25 innings into the 2004 season before seeing his career end as well. Clearly, this isn’t a list of guys who went on to have long, productive careers after watching their ability to rack up the strikeouts all but disappear.

However, Hernandez has managed to succeed despite the strikeout rate by dramatically cutting down on his walks and keeping the ball in the yard. In all, he’s actually posting a not horrible 4.46 FIP, and while he probably won’t be able to keep his home run rate this low, that he’s not walking anyone should give the Twins hope that he can squeeze together a few more months of useful pitching. Hernandez isn’t a guy you want in your rotation long term, but given the choice between paying Carlos Silva $48 million over four years or paying Hernandez $5 million for one year, it seems pretty clear that Minnesota made the right choice.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself – the desire for a bad pun was just too strong. But, yes, this post is about Chris Coste, the 35-year-old journeyman Triple-A catcher who is trying to convince the Phillies to never send him back down, and doing a pretty good job of it. After hitting his fifth home run of the season last night, Coste now has the highest OPS (.999) of any catcher with at least 100 plate appearances in 2008. Among that group, he’s third in batting average, second in on base percentage, and first in slugging, giving the Phillies an offensive boost from behind the plate.

This isn’t the first time Coste has blistered major league pitching either. He hit .328/.376/.505 in 213 plate appearances with Philadelphia back in 2006, and his career major league line now stands at .316/.363/.498. Since making his major league debut at age 33, Coste has been worth approximately three wins more than an average catcher. That’s a huge contribution from a guy who was living the Crash Davis persona for a decade.

Realistically, though, no one could have seen this coming, and that it continues is one of the more improbable story lines in baseball. Despite being a three time All-American for Division III Concorida College, Coste couldn’t find an organization willing to give him a minor league job, so he hooked on with the independent Frontier League, where he played from 1996 to 1999. He did enough to earn a minor league contract from the Indians in 2000, and he kicked around various Double-A and Triple-A affiliates for the next six years. He never stood out as anything spectacular, posting a career .286/.335/.421 mark. He was a serviceable minor league catcher, but nothing more. In fact, in 2006, he was hitting .177/.236/.272 for Scranton before getting the call to Philadelphia to make his debut. When you see a 33-year-old posting a .508 OPS in Triple-A, you’re not thinking that he’s going to get to the majors and start hitting from day one.

But that’s exactly what Coste has done. Since arriving, he’s done his best Gary Carter impression, and his offensive performance as a big leaguer would fit right into any Hall of Fame catcher’s resume. Coste certainly isn’t going to end up in Cooperstown, but he’s hitting like someone who deserves to be remembered as more than the 33 year old rookie. His story is the kind of thing they make movies out of, but they can worry about that when he’s done. Right now, it looks like it will be a while before he’s ready to hang up his spikes.