Left-handed batters generally don’t like hitting left-handed pitchers. The angles are different, the movements are different, and baseball is full of lefty specialist relievers who have honed their craft to maximize their effectiveness against same handed hitters. So, if I asked you who was hitting left-handed pitching better than any other first baseman in baseball this year, Casey Kotchman probably wouldn’t be your first choice.

But there he is, six weeks into the season, torching southpaws to the tune of a .389/.421/.583 line. In fact, Kotchman’s posting a pretty severe reverse platoon split, as he’s been much more effective against LHPs than RHPs, who he’s hitting just .286/.343/.452 against. This is a pretty significant change for Kotchman, who had never hit a home run off a left-handed pitcher in the majors before this season. From 2004 to 2007, Kotchman had 142 plate appearances against southpaws (he had been pretty strictly platooned) and notched just six extra base hits, all doubles. In 38 plate appearances against lefties this year, he’s already recorded five extra base hits including the home run.

Now, this almost certainly doesn’t represent an actual shift in Kotchman’s true talent levels, as platoon splits are notorious for small sample size flukes and don’t have as much predictive value as commonly believed. Kotchman’s unlikely to finish the year among the league leaders in offense against southpaws. However, we can note that the drastic uptick in performance does give us the knowledge that Kotchman possesses the necessary skills to hit both right handed and left handed pitching, and the Angels should abandon any idea of platooning him going forward. This is clearly an area where Kotchman has improved, and there’s simply no need to take his bat out of the line-up when a lefty is on the mound.

Los Angeles’ offense is no longer just the Vladimir Guerrero show, and as Kotchman and his fellow young hitters continue to improve, the Angels vice grip on the American League west just continues to tighten.

During the winter, the Mariners decided that the only thing keeping them from contending last year was the back end of their rotation. They got disastrous performances from Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez , but they still managed to win 88 games, so they decided that by improving on two of the worst starting pitchers in baseball, they’d make themselves a legitimate candidate for the A.L. pennant in 2008. They spared no expense, throwing a ridiculous amount of money at Carlos Silva and trading their entire farm system for Erik Bedard.

After those two moves, they announced that Jarrod Washburn and Miguel Batista were the new #4 and #5 starters, and that the improvement they’d get from those two over what they got from Ramirez and Weaver would be enough to make them the team to beat in the American League West. After getting pounded again last night, they now stand at 18-29 with the worst record in the junior circuit, and there’s this:

Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez, 2007 ERA: 6.58
Jarrod Washburn and Miguel Batista, 2008 ERA; 6.56

The names have changed, but the performance is simply a rerun. Weaver and Ramirez combined for -5.26 WPA in 245 innings last season. Washburn and Batista have racked up a combined -1.40 WPA in 91 innings of work, which puts them on pace for -3.76 WPA over a comparable innings total, so at least the new struggles have come in situations that don’t matter quite as much, but that’s not the narrative this team was selling over the winter. The Mariners really believed they were going to have one of the best rotations in baseball with a staff or proven veterans and Mel Stottlemyre as the pitching coach, but instead, the starters ERA is 4.98 while pitching half their games in a pitchers park.

The season is already over in Seattle, and while the offense and defense have been horrible as well, the back end of the starting rotation has once again been a disaster. So much for proven veterans.

The sky is blue. Water is wet. Daniel Cabrera has command problems. All of these things have been inarguable truths forever, and they’re so clear, there’s been no reason to state the obvious. His career BB/9 is 5.14, which is just one shade south of abominable. He’d walked 100 or more batters in each of the last two seasons. During the 116 starts he made from 2004 to 2007, he’d gotten through without walking a batter just three times.

Well, after last night’s 7 IP/2 R performance where he didn’t walk anyone against the Yankees, he’s now accomplished that same feat three times in his last six starts. He did it three times in 116 starts prior to this year, and he’s already done it three times in the last month. In his last four starts, he’s thrown 30 1/3 innings and walked just three batters. Three walks was a normal inning for Cabrera last year, but now he’s walking three guys over a three week stretch? This is baseball’s version of cats and dogs living together.

Is this command improvement (3.21 BB/9 on the year is a huge improvement for Cabrera, believe it or not) based on some identifiable change in Cabrera’s skillset? Well, to start off, we see that Cabrera isn’t throwing nearly as hard as he did when he came up three years ago. In 2005, his average fastball was 96.2 MPH, making him the hardest throwing starting pitcher in baseball. This year, he’s at 93.1 MPH, which ties him for just the 9th highest average fastball in among starters. He’s still a power pitcher, but it appears he’s (intentionally or not) taken something off of his fastball, and this reduced velocity correlates very well with lower walk rates.

Also, we note that Cabrera has essentially become a one pitch pitcher. In fact, he’s taking the idea that a pitcher needs secondary pitches and throwing it out the window. He’s thrown 87 percent fastballs this year. Eighty-Seven Percent. That’s up from 74% last year, and the difference is almost entirely from the slider, which he’s using half as much as he did a year ago. Instead of throwing one of every five pitches as a breaking ball, he’s now throwing one in ten.

These two shifts represent a real change in approach for Cabrera. He’s gone from a big time power fastball/slider guy with no idea where the ball is going to a fastball pitcher with an occasional slider and decent command. Not surprisingly, he’s posting the highest ground ball rate of his career, which is directly related to the amount of fastballs he’s throwing. However, those extra ground balls and fewer walks have come at the expense of his strike out rate, which is now a below average 5.48 K/9. He ranked in the top five in strikeout rate in both 2005 and 2006, racking up nearly one per inning over those two seasons. The move away from the slider and the reduced velocity has allowed hitters to make more contact, but he’s counter balanced that drop with the improvements in walk rate and ground ball rate.

Cabrera seems to be learning that his pitch selection and velocity is a sliding scale. By throwing more fastballs at a reduced velocity, he’s getting ahead in counts and keeping runners off the bases. He might not lead the league in strikeouts anymore, but he might have finally figured out how to be an effective major league starting pitcher.

Wrapping up the Free Talent All-Star team, we move on to the easiest place to find quality contributors – the bullpen. Teams like San Diego have exploited the ability to get relievers for nothing and turn them into relief aces, essentially building bullpens for nothing and giving themselves a competitive advantage over teams who continue to throw money at veterans with track records. As you’ll see from the list below, you don’t have to give up anything to get a legitimate all-star reliever, and there’s really just no reason to spend valuable resources on your bullpen.

Closer: Joakim Soria

The Royals used the #1 pick in the 2006 Rule 5 draft to snag Soria, who has been all they could have hoped for and more. After a very good 2007, he’s been unhittable in 2008, and with his command of four pitches, don’t rule out a potential move to the rotation down the line. He’s got quality stuff that moves and that he can throw for strikes, and while relievers aren’t the most consistent bunch, Soria has a very bright future.

Closer: Bobby Jenks

Jenks was a Nuke Laloosh type prospect in the Angels organization before the White Sox claimed him on waivers. He stands as the success story of what can happen when one of these good stuff/no command types finds the strike zone with consistency, and Jenks has been lights out since joining Chicago. However, no matter how well he pitches, he’ll likely always be remembered as the guy Ozzie Guillen called in by making the “fat guy” signal to the bullpen.

Setup: Heath Bell

Of course, Guillen could have done the same thing if he was managing the Padres and wanted Heath Bell to pitch, because he’s not Mr. Fitness himself. What he is, however, is a guy who just put up one of the most impressive relief seasons in recent history last year. He pitched in 81 of the Padres 162 games, throwing 93 2/3 innings and posting a 2.50 FIP. When a reliever strikes out 100 or more batters in a season, you know you have something special, and this something special cost the Padres nothing more than Ben Johnson and Jon Adkins.

Setup: Bobby Seay

Originally, Seay made news in 1996 after being declared a free when the White Sox didn’t tender him a contract offer in time and was scooped up by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for a cool $3 million signing bonus. However, he never lived up to expectations in Tampa, was shipped off to Colorado where he lasted just one season, and was eventually given a chance in Detroit after signing for the league minimum. After more struggles in Detroit in 2006, he broke through last season with a terrific 2007 campaign and has continued to succeed as a left-handed reliever in the Tigers bullpen. Considering the going rate for a major league lefty who can get batters out, the Tigers have to be happy with what they’ve gotten from Seay for relative peanuts.

Setup: Cla Meredith

Shockingly, another Padre. Meredith was the throw-in in the Josh Bard/Doug Mirabelli trade, but quickly made it known that he was the most valuable piece acquired in that deal. A dominant groundball pitcher with good command, Meredith has been a rock in the San Diego bullpen since 2006, and he doesn’t even turn 25 until next month. This is one deal that Boston certainly won’t be bragging about as the years go on.

As we continue to look at the Free Talent All-Stars, the job gets a bit harder. Right now, pitching is severely overvalued by major league clubs, as they give extreme amounts of credit to pitchers who experience any success at all and horde arms in their organization. They also value experience and track records more than they should, so the list of guys being given jobs in the rotation is mostly made up of players who don’t qualify by our standards for this team. That isn’t to say there aren’t free talent starters, however – they’re just fewer and farther between than position players. On to the guys who made the cut.

Number One: Jeremy Guthrie

The Orioles claimed Guthrie off waivers from the Indians after they ran out of patience with him following the 2006 season. It was a good move, as Guthrie has been a well above average starter since he arrived in Baltimore, throwing 238 quality innings and establishing himself as the anchor of Baltimore’s rotation after the Erik Bedard trade. The Indians do a lot of things right, but giving up on Guthrie right before he made the leap wasn’t one of them.

Number Two: Chad Gaudin

Yep, another Oakland player. J.P. Ricciardi tossed his former organization a bone when he traded Gaudin to the A’s for a player to be named later, which turned out to be career minor leaguer Dustin Majewski. Gaudin has gone on to become a valuable member of the A’s rotation and bullpen, switching between roles as needed. The A’s keep winning despite churning their roster every year, and picking up guys like Gaudin for nothing are the main reason why.

Number Three: Brian Bannister

The only player on the Free Talent All-Stars who might actually read this post, Bannister has gotten a lot of publicity for admitting that he’s fully aware of the sabermetric writings of the day. While he’s not blessed with his father’s raw abilities, the younger Bannister has created a career as a strike-throwing innings eater out of his intelligence and understanding of how to pitch. Considering that he only cost the Royals Ambiorix Burgos, he may have been the best hiring of a stathead in major league history.

Number Four: Odalis Perez

The Nationals pulled the rare trick of signing a guy to a minor league contract and then having him start on opening day that same year. You can generally say that a team isn’t a contender when they pull that off, but Perez has given them solid performances for next to nothing. With his shaky command and home run problems, he’s no one’s idea of an ace, but he is showing that he’s perfectly capable of putting together a respectable performance, and that teams don’t have to pay top dollar to get a useful veteran starting pitcher to fill their rotation.

Number Five: Armando Galarraga

The Tigers rotation has been a disaster this year, but Galarraga has been the bright spot in a very dark cloud. Acquired from the Rangers for non-prospect Michael Hernandez, Galarraga has come up from Triple-A and brought some hope to a team that finds itself extremely disappointed in how the 2008 season is shaping up.

Following up on this morning’s post about the Free Talent Infield, here’s a look at an outfield and designated hitter that could have been assembled for the baseball equivalent of nothing.

Left Field: Matt Diaz

Diaz makes this team in spite of being pretty awful so far in 2008 thanks to the success he’s had the past two years. After the 2005 season, the Royals gave up on Diaz, designating him for assignment and trading him for Ricardo Rodriguez, whom you’ve rightfully never heard of. Diaz turned into quite the effective outfielder for the Braves, breaking out of his preassigned role as platoon player with a stellar 2007 season. He’s hyper aggressive (swings at 43.17% of pitches outside the strike zone), but his ability to drive the ball when he makes contact makes up for some of that. He’s not a true all-star, but the return the Braves have gotten from him compared to what they gave up make him a Free Talent All-Star.

Center Field: Josh Hamilton

Like Ludwick, we’ve already profiled Josh Hamilton here on FanGraphs, and you’ve almost certainly heard his story a few hundred times by now. As a Rule 5 selection by the Reds, he’s been one of the biggest success stories of that draft in its history, and after being shipped to Texas, he’s now laying claim to being the best player in the American League West. You’ll probably want to be okay with hearing Hamilton’s story, because he’s going to be a big star for the next decade.

Right Field: Ryan Ludwick

I noted Ludwick’s strong start last week, and he hasn’t slowed down since. He’s hitting .336/.413/.739 so far in 2008, giving the Cardinals a legitimate weapon to drive in on base machine Albert Pujols. Interestingly enough, before he became a freely available talent and signed with the Cardinals in 2005, he was traded (in a package) for fellow Free Talent All-Star Carlos Pena back in 2002. Perhaps the lesson of that trade should be not to give up on prospects who don’t hit the ground running so easily.

Designated Hitter: Jack Cust

I’m scared to put anything here – anytime I write about Jack Cust, he hits .900 for the next several weeks and A’s fans descend like a swarm of locusts. So I’ll just say that the A’s picking up Jack Cust for cash has turned out pretty well for them.

One of the most important concepts for an organization to grasp in this day and age is that of replacement level, or the knowledge that baseball’s talent is distributed as a pyramid with a large base at the bottom. Teams that understand that they can get real performance from guys who aren’t necessarily “established veterans” or “proven winners” can exercise this advantage to create a strong cost advantage when compiling their roster, thus saving more money to be spent on guys with talent levels near the top of the pyramid. Teams that fail to grasp the concept of replacement level often have large amounts of dead money sitting on their payroll, as they pay players for their reputation rather than their future performance.

So, today, I’m beginning a four part series on guys that I’ll refer to as the Free Talent All-Stars – those players who were recently acquired for essentially nothing and have become valuable contributors to their franchises after being picked up on the cheap. The rules for inclusion are simple; a player must have been acquired by one of the following methods within the last three years.

Selected via the Rule 5 draft
Placed on waivers
Included in an inconsequential trade
Signed to a free agent contract of no longer than one year and worth no more than $1 million

The Free Talent Infield

Catcher: Jesus Flores

Teams covet talent behind the plate and rarely let it get away, so it’s not a surprise that the pickings at catcher were a little slim. However, Flores was obtained by the Nationals in the 2006 Rule 5 draft, and he’s posted a .262/.340/.400 line in the majors since. As a 24-year-old with a decent bit of power, Washington has to be happy with the fact that they acquired a useful big league backstop for essentially nothing.

First Base: Carlos Pena

The Rays gave Pena a one year, $800,000 contract before the 2007 season after the Red Sox decided that they didn’t have room for him on their roster anymore. 46 home runs later, Tampa was buying out the rest of Pena’s arbitration years by signing him to a three year contract extension to keep him in the middle of their order for the foreseeable future. Free talent signings don’t work out much better than this one did.

Second Base: Dan Uggla

Our second Rule 5 guy, the Marlins grabbed him from Arizona’s farm system in the 2005 version of that draft. Since then, he’s hit .269/.339/.501 while doing his best Jeff Kent impersonation. He’s not much to write home about defensively, but there aren’t many middle infielders who have as much power as he does. Uggla’s pop from a non-traditional offensive position is one reason the Marlins are surprising everyone so far in 2008.

Shortstop: Jeff Keppinger

I profiled Keppinger a few weeks ago, but Keppinger has been overlooked by several organizations, passing him around as a replaceable 25th guy, while in reality, he’s an above average major league shortstop.

Third Base: Jack Hannahan

The Tigers decided that Hannahan didn’t fit in their plans and gave him to the A’s last summer, and all Hannahan has done since then is fill the void left by Eric Chavez’s numerous injuries. He doesn’t have a ton of power, but he works the count, gets on base, and plays a decent third base. Billy Beane has made a living off picking up guys like this and getting useful production out of them to fill holes, and Hannahan certainly won’t be the last Free Talent All-Star hailing from Oakland.

The words flounder and founder are often misused in the English language (including by me), as they sound similar and actually have meanings that aren’t that different. Floundering means “to struggle to move or stay upright, especially in water”, while foundering means “to sink below the surface of the water”. Essentially, floundering is the struggle to succeed while foundering is just failing to succeed. What does any of this have to do with baseball?

Well, Jeremy Bonderman is currently floundering, and it’s raising questions whether his career is on the fast track to foundering. He’s had a very interesting career path, reaching the majors at age 20 as a highly regarded prospect, but then proceeding to lose 19 games as a rookie that year. From 2003 to 2006, he steadily improved, taking his FIP from 4.69 to 3.29, and after using his power stuff to post one of the better seasons in the American League at the age of 24, he looked like a guy who had turned into a young all-star hurler.

However, the last two years have seen a regression in both stuff and performance. His average fastball velocity now sits at just 90.7 MPH, down from the 93.3 MPH mark he notched in 2006. He now throws about as hard as Kevin Millwood and Braden Looper, when he used to throw as hard as Matt Cain and Kelvim Escobar. The loss of velocity is clearly manifest in his strikeout rate.

His strikeouts are way down (5.0 K/9) and his walks are way up (5.8 BB/9), and when you combine that information with the velocity drop, you have to wonder if he’s healthy. Of course, we’ve seen similar problems with Justin Verlander this year, so perhaps the Detroit coaching staff might want to see if there’s something going on with their young starters and see if it’s fixable. If it’s not, Bonderman’s floundering could easily become foundering, and a once promising young pitcher could be seeing the decline of his career set in a little earlier than hoped.

Lance Berkman is having a remarkable season. He hit his 15th home run of the season (into McCovey Cove to boot) in the 9th inning last night, giving the Astros an 8-7 win over San Francisco and continuing to push the surprising Astros into contention in the N.L. Central. Berkman is carrying Houston’s offense, hitting .391/.472/.808 and leading the majors in WPA at 4.13. He’s on a 14 game hitting streak during which he’s hitting .556. His BRAA (32.45) is almost equal to the combined total of the #1 (Carlos Quentin, 18.43) and #2 guys (Grady Sizemore, 14.27) in the American League. He’s playing at another level right now.

However, Berkman did something else yesterday as well that might put all the other numbers to shame – he stole his seventh base of the season, tying his total from last year and putting him three away from his career high. He’s never stolen double digit bases in a season before, but right now, he’s on pace for 28. He’s tied for second among Astros players in steals with Kaz Matsui, and is ahead of notable speedsters Brandon Phillips and Johnny Damon among others.

Apparently, Berkman isn’t satisfied with creating runs by pounding the ball over the wall or wearing pitchers out by drawing walks, but he has to advance himself once he gets on base as well. I think we’ll all be pretty shocked if he keeps running as often as he is now, but considering how well he’s doing everything right now, let’s not put anything past Lance Berkman.

Mike Mussina has been one of the most reliable, consistent pitchers in baseball for the last 17 years. He’s tossed over 3,400 innings in his career, racked up 256 wins, and is putting together an argument for Hall of Fame induction. And, at 39 years old, he’s still ticking, helping to keep the Yankees rotation stable despite the injuries and struggles of the young hurlers on the staff.

However, Mussina clearly doesn’t have the same arsenal he had in his prime. Take a look at his velocity of each pitch type for the last three years:

Fastball: 88.6 MPH, 87.1 MPH, 84.9 MPH
Slider: 82.8 MPH, 82.1 MPH, 80.5 MPH
Curveball: 77.2 MPH, 75.3 MPH, 72.,4 MPH
Change: 72.0 MPH, 72.1 MPH, 69.8 MPH

In the last year, he’s lost about two miles per hour off each pitch in his arsenal, and he’s down almost four miles per hour on his fastball from two years ago and five miles per hour on his curveball in that same time frame. As he’s aged, his velocity has deserted him, and his average fastball is now the fifth slowest in baseball (among non-knuckleballers), behind only Jamie Moyer, Livan Hernandez, Greg Maddux, and Paul Byrd. His change-up is the slowest in baseball, four miles per hour slower than Moyer’s, who comes in at #2 on the list. He just doesn’t have the stuff he used to have, and with this velocity, he’s had to reinvent himself in order to stay successful.

So that’s exactly what he’s done. Through the first 50 innings of 2008, he’s issued just six bases on balls, a 1.09 BB/9 that ranks #3 among major league starters. He’s also posting a 48.2% ground ball rate, the highest mark he’s posted since it began being tracked by BIS in 2002. With his stuff deteriorating, he’s no longer able to rack up the strikeouts like he used to, so Mussina has essentially turned himself into a strike-throwing ground ball guy who lets hitters get themselves out by attacking the strike zone. It’s a diversion from the path he took to greatness, but considering his current skills, it’s an adjustment he had to make, and one that has worked well so far.

His FIP stands at a respectable 4.50, making him a solid middle of the rotation starter and an asset to the Yankees rotation. Considering that many New Yorkers were willing to write Mussina off after his struggles last season, it’s a testament to his understanding of his own limitations that he’s been able to find a new way to succeed even after his physical talents have eroded. Mussina is one of the best pitchers of our lifetime, and he’s continuing to find ways to get hitters out, no matter what kind of stuff he takes to the hill each day.