The Washington Nationals rotation has a 4.86 ERA, a -0.77 WPA, and a -9.17 BRAA. That’s not very good, and from a look at those numbers, you’d probably think Washington needs to find some better starting pitchers. But if you look closer, you’ll see a very interesting breakdown.

Washington’s #1-#4 Starters

Odalis Perez: 3.71 ERA, 4.91 FIP, 0.41 WPA, 4.82 BRAA
Shawn Hill: 3.56 ERA, 3.23 FIP, 0.22 WPA, 3.18 BRAA
Tim Redding: 3.51 ERA, 4.56 FIP, -0.10 WPA, -1.38 BRAA
John Lannan: 3.74 ERA, 4.22 FIP, 0.65 WPA, 3.69 BRAA

Totals: 3.63 ERA, 4.34 FIP, 1.18 WPA, 10.31 BRAA

Washington’s #5 Starters

Matt Chico: 6.87 ERA, 5.19 FIP, -1.03 WPA, -9.61 BRAA
Jason Bergmann: 10.45 ERA, 6.67 FIP, -0.42 WPA, -5.18 BRAA
Mike O’Connor: 24.30 ERA, 10.21 FIP, -0.29 WPA, -4.68 BRAA

Totals: 8.67 ERA, 6.21 FIP, -1.74 WPA, -19.47 BRAA

In just over 50 innings of work, the three guys the Nationals have used to fill their final rotation spot have erased, and then some, the good work done by their teammates. Despite their overall rotations performance, Jim Bowden and company should be quite proud of the fact that they’ve assembled four useful starters for essentially nothing – Lannan, Perez, and Redding were acquired for a combined $1.25 and a couple of signed baseballs. Only Hill (6th round pick in 2000) required an asset to bring in, and let’s be honest, a 6th round pick isn’t the most valuable property in baseball.

They won’t win a championship with Perez-Hill-Lannan-Redding, but they’re the epitome of what you can do with freely available talent when you’re willing to take some flyers on guys with question marks. Along with that comes the downside of what they’ve gotten from their #5 starters, however. Washington has done well filling the front four spots in their rotation, but they’re going to have to do some more work to get a fifth starter who won’t cancel out all the work already done.

With the offense struggling and a need for some power, the Mariners recently turned their right field job over to young slugger Wladimir Balentien. No one has ever questioned Balentien’s raw power, as he can hit a baseball a country mile, but his approach at the plate has been suspect over the years. He’s made a lot of strides, cutting down on his strikeouts and laying off of breaking balls down and away, but he’s still an aggressive, swing-from-the-heels kind of guy.

Since coming to Seattle, he’s hit .212/.255/.486 thanks to an odd line where four his 11 hits have left the yard, but he’s struck out 19 times in 52 at-bats while only drawing three walks. Wily Mo Pena is the personification of this skillset, and while Balentien has a better approach to hitting than WMP, that’s the kind of production he’s giving the Mariners right now. However, Wily Mo isn’t the only low average, low on base, high slugging guy running around.

I ran Baseball Reference’s Play Index to get a list of all players in the last 20 years with at least 300 plate appearances, a batting average of less than .250, and an ISO of greater than .250. This gave me 27 guys who have posted a higher isolated slugging percentage than batting average in a given season, and Balentien looks like he has the potential to join that group. There are some of the usual names on that list that you would guess, such as Mark McGwire, Rob Deer, and Adam Dunn, all of whom are known for being all or nothing hitters. But there are also some guys on the list I wouldn’t have guessed, such as:

1997 Jose Cruz Jr, who .251/.315/.499 in his rookie season with Seattle and Toronto. When you think of big power guys, Cruz Jr doesn’t exactly spring to mind, but he’s actually not a bad comparison for Balentien, although the Mariners are certainly hoping to get more from this young RF than they did from the last one.

2004 Jose Valentin, who put up a .216/.287/.473 line. Not surprisingly, Valentin is the only middle infielder on this list, as the power/strikeout combination isn’t one you generally find playing a premium defensive position.

1996 Willie Greene, who had one of the hilarious lines of all time. 29 extra base hits, with 19 of them being home runs compared to just 5 doubles in 287 at-bats. It’s almost unheard of to get four times as many home runs as doubles in a single season, but Green pulled it off.

Overall, these guys were all productive in the seasons that they posted the ISO higher than their average, as its hard to hit for that much power and not be at least sort of useful, but it’s also not a list of guys who had long, sustained careers. Balentien’s going to want to work on cutting down the strikeouts if he wants to be more than a curiosity on a similar list in 20 years.

After last night’s 2-1 win over the Yankees, Tampa Bay has now won six games in a row, stands at 23-16, and are in sole possession of first place on May 14th. It’s been a long, hard road for Rays fans, waiting for the organization to finally figure it out and put a competitive team on the field. They finally have, and it’s paying off, as the Rays continue to show that they’re the most improved team in baseball this year, nothing like the 66-96 team that finished last in the AL East in 2007.

There have been two significant improvements that account for almost the entirety of the Rays improve; the defense and the bullpen. Last year, the Rays were historically terrible defensively, letting balls fall in left and right, but they’re a bit above average so far this year. The defense has made a huge impact on the team’s run prevention, but it’s not the only place Tampa has taken a dramatic step forward. Take a look the bullpen’s performances from the last two years.

2007: 497 IP, 4.52 BB/9, 7.15 K/9, 1.39 HR/9, 6.16 ERA, -8.40 WPA, -106.32 BRAA
2008: 116 IP, 3.72 BB/9, 6.82 K/9, 0.54 HR/9, 3.19 ERA, 2.34 WPA, 23.26 BRAA

Thanks to a huge decrease in home run rate, the Achilles heel of the Rays team last year has been the group that carried this Tampa team to first place in 2008. Adding Troy Percival to the closer role and getting terrific performances from Dan Wheeler and J.P. Howell have given the Rays weapons at the end of games and allowed them to compete in games where the outcome isn’t decided until the 8th or 9th inning.

The young core that get most of the attention in Tampa are an impressive group, but don’t overlook the bullpen – the real reason the Rays are contenders this year.

The Toronto Blue Jays aren’t a very good offensive team. As a group, they’re a combined -50.02 BRAA and -5.93 WPA, worst in the majors in both categories. Worse than even Kansas City and San Francisco, and it’s hard to imagine a team being less effective scoring runs than the 2008 Giants. However, the Jays have managed to pull it off so far, raising offensive futility to an art form.

They have a grand total of three hitters who have produced positive Batting Runs Above Average numbers – Scott Rolen, Frank Thomas, and Aaron Hill. Thomas, of course, was released and is no longer with the team. Rolen has 57 at-bats and has missed most of the year with injuries. So, on any given day, nearly the entire offense is composed of below average hitters. That’s hard to do.

The main problems appear to be a complete lack of power, mainly thanks to subpar performances from Alex Rios and Vernon Wells, as well as a line-up that is just too right-handed. The only lefties getting regular playing time are Lyle Overbay, Matt Stairs, and Gregg Zaun, with Brad Wilkerson potentially getting worked into the mix. With a line-up that leans heavily to the right hand side of the plate, the Jays are an easy matchup for right-handed starters, and even those who don’t have a real weapon against left handed batters can get through Toronto’s line-up by just pitching around the occasional lefty.

The Jays have tried shuffling things up, but they just don’t have the personnel in the organization to put together an offense that can score a lot of runs. This is a team that absolutely has to get production from Wells and Rios, and they just aren’t. With those two struggling, we see things like the last four days, where the Jays scored one run in 36 innings before busting out for a big three spot in the 10th inning of last night’s second game against Cleveland.

Roy Halladay, Dustin McGowan, A.J. Burnett, and Shaun Marcum give Toronto one of the best starting rotations in baseball, but even they can’t overcome the struggling Jays offense. If Toronto really wants to win this year, they’re going to have to find some new hitters, because this group just isn’t getting it done.

A couple of weeks ago, I authored a post where I explained why Cliff Lee couldn’t continue pitching as well as he had in his first three starts of the season, when he’d allowed two runs and ran a 2/20 BB/K ratio. I was right; in the four starts since, he hasn’t pitched as well – he’s pitched better, walking two men and striking out 24 guys over his last 30 innings of brilliant work.

He didn’t get the win last night, but he tossed another nine inning shutout, and has now thrown 53 2/3 innings and given up five runs. He’s blanked the opponents in four of his seven starts. He’s only allowed 36 baserunners, and he’s left 31 men on base. We could go on and on, because the numbers don’t get any less ridiculous.

Here’s a comparison that might put this into perspective.

Cliff Lee, first seven starts of 2008: 53 2/3 IP, 32 H, 4 BB, 44 K
Orel Hershiser, last six starts of 1988: 55 IP, 30 H, 9 BB, 34 K

You may have heard about that particular stretch of pitching, as Hershiser set the major league record for consecutive scoreless innings during that run. Cliff Lee is pitching at that level right now.

It’s not going to last – that much is obvious, because no one is this good. But while it does, let’s tip our caps to the guy who has put together one of the great pitching stretches in the history of baseball.

Oliver Perez has always been something of an enigma. A power throwing southpaw who got to the majors with San Diego at a young age and had some early success, he was sent to Pittsburgh along with Jason Bay in the ill fated Brian Giles deal and turned in an amazing 2004 season, striking out 239 batters in 198 innings on his way to posting a 2.98 ERA at age 22. At that point, he looked like one of the best young hurlers in baseball.

The wheels came off the bus quickly, though, as he lost his command of the strike zone and dealt with mechanical issues. In just a year and a half, he went from Pittsburgh ace to New York reclamation project, as the Mets picked him up and hoped to get his career back on track. It worked, too, as he threw 177 quality innings last year and helped add some firepower to the Mets rotation. However, while he has become an asset on the mound, you never really know what you’re going to get from Perez on any given day. Here are his starts from 2007 and 2008, broken down into groupings of Game Scores (where 50 represents an average start, 40 or less is lousy, and 60 or more is quite good).

20-29: 3
30-39: 7
40-49: 4
50-59: 8
60-69: 10
70:79: 5

While Perez’s personal average game score in 2007 and 2008 is 52.8, he’s been disastrously bad in 10 those 37 starts. In three of his first four starts this year, he didn’t give up a single run. In the other start, he gave up six runs in 4 1/3 innings. Perez is both occasionally great and occasionally awful. The end result is a pretty decent pitcher, but certainly not one you want to bet on.

The Cardinals offense this year was supposed to be Albert Pujols, Rick Ankiel, and not a whole heck of a lot else. Ryan Ludwick apparently had other ideas. He hit his 8th home run of the season last night and is now second in the National League in OPS behind Lance Berkman. Chipper Jones is getting a lot of notoriety, since he’s hitting .400 and all, but Ludwick is producing at a similar level through the first quarter of the season.

Not a bad return for St. Louis, who picked up Ludwick on a minor league contract in December of 2006, after four previous organizations decided he wasn’t in their plans. A former 2nd round pick of the A’s, he’d shown some power while climbing the minor league ladder, but his aggressive approach and lack of contact caused teams to question whether he’d produce enough to justify a regular job in a corner outfield spot. Poor major league performances, albeit in limited trials, from 2002 to 2004 didn’t help his cause, and last season was his first real chance to play on even a semi-regular basis. He showed the same aggressive power hitter skill set as always, but improved his contact rate enough to get his batting average and on base percentage up to respectable levels.

Given a mostly regular job so far this year, he’s performing like never before. His line drive percentage is an other-worldly 39.1%, or higher than Lance Berkman and Hanley Ramirez’s combined line drive rates. The next highest LD% is Matt Kemp at 32.3%, and Aaron Rowand (30.1%) is the only other guy in baseball above the 30% threshold. Ludwick’s hitting line drives almost 40% of the time. That’s just ridiculous.

It’s also totally unsustainable. The highest full season LD% from 2004 to 2007 belonged to Brian Roberts in 2005, at 27.4%. As good as Ludwick is going, he just can’t keep hitting line drives at a 40% clip. He will cool off, and regression to the mean will rear its ugly little head. But for six weeks, Ludwick has been about as good as anyone in baseball.

The St. Louis Cardinals are playing surprisingly good baseball so far in 2008, posting a 22-15 record and leading the NL Central division. However, they could be doing substantially better if not for the struggles of their closer, Jason Isringhausen. After blowing another 9th inning lead last night, Izzy has now accumulated a major league worst -2.25 WPA, thanks to allowing 13 runs in 15 2/3 high leverage innings. During the last two and a half weeks, Isringhausen has given up a lead or tie five times. Charts like this will give Tony LaRussa some kind of heartburn.

This isn’t just bad timing, either – Isringhausen is running a 5.16 FIP, thanks to command problems and an inability to keep the ball in the yard. He’s not as bad as his 7.47 ERA would indicate, but St. Louis is going to have to see him pitcher better than he is if they’re going to keep handing him high leverage situations where they can’t afford to let him give up a run. With youngster Kyle McClellan throwing well (2.87 FIP, closer stuff), the Cardinals have an alternative option. Isringhausen may be the established veteran down there, but right now, the only thing he’s establishing is that he shouldn’t be pitching in the 9th inning.

If you don’t live in Washington D.C. and you actually know something about John Lannan, raise your hand. Don’t worry hands-in-your-lappers, you’re not alone. This nondescript lefty has snuck up on the world, and outside of the Nationals season ticket holders and his immediate family, he’s still an unknown. But, as long as Lannan continues to be overlooked, the world will continue to miss out on one of the more underrated youngsters around.

Lannan was an 11th round pick by the Nationals in the 2005 draft out of noted baseball powerhouse Siena College. At 6’5, he’s in the John Halama school of tall guys who look like they should throw harder than they do. His below average velocity and no real out pitch caused him to be seen as a longshot to make the majors, which is why Washington was able to select him 324th overall three years ago.

He didn’t exactly light the minor leagues on fire, either. His debut in Vermont was mediocre at best, as he po6sted 5.34 ERA with 31 walks and 41 strikeouts in 63 innings of work. Generally, guys who can’t get swings and misses in short season leagues don’t make it to the majors. However, he moved up to Savannah, the Nationals full season affiliate in the South Atlantic League, in 2001, and made some strides. He struck out 114 batters in 138 innings, but his command problems (54 walks and six hit batters) helped him give up 83 runs.

Heading into last season, he was still more organizational player than real prospect, but started to get better sink on his fastball and improved his command, allowing him to climb from high-A ball all the way to the majors in a single season. He earned the distinction of being the first player ejected from his ML debut last summer after hitting Chase Utley and Ryan Howard, breaking Utley’s wrist in the process.

But now, after his 6 IP/1 R performance against Houston last night, he sports a 3.40 ERA and 3.98 FIP, entrenching himself as a regular member of the Washington rotation and making himself memorable for reasons beyond injuring all-stars. How has this kid come from out of nowhere to become a viable major league starter?

Once again, the hidden goodness of ground balls. Lannan’s pounding the bottom of the zone with his mixture of pitches that includes a solid two-seam fastball that makes up in movement what it lacks in velocity. His slider, curve, change, and cut fastball help keep hitters off balance, and he mixes all five pitches well and keeps them down in the zone. His command still isn’t great, but when he misses, he misses down in the zone, which helps keep the ball in the yard.

His stuff is good enough to rack up an average strikeout rate, and as we’ve talked about before, the combination of some strikeouts and a lot of ground balls are a powerful force for any pitcher. He may have come out of nowhere, but he’s showing staying power. As long as he keeps that sinking fastball down in the zone, the Nationals will be quite happy to pencil Lannan into their rotation for the next several years.

Finding a designated hitter is very easy. The skills required to be a successful DH aren’t rare, and there are an abundance of guys with offensive abilities and defensive problems that a team can generally count on getting quality production from the designated hitter spot. Unless, of course, that team is the Seattle Mariners, who simply can’t figure out how to find a guy who can hit and do nothing else. So far, in 2008, their DHs have combined to hit .208/.268/.308, a pathetic .575 OPS that translates into -0.71 WPA/LI. That’s brutal. For comparison, Arizona Diamondbacks pitchers are hitting .242/.292/.333 (thank you, Micah Owings).

The main culprit has been Jose Vidro, whose collapse was the easiest thing to see coming this side of a neon freight train. However, the Mariners haven’t gotten any improvement from switching to Jeff Clement a week ago, as he has struggled to adjust to major league pitching since coming up from the PCL. His problems ran so deep that the team used Willie Bloomquist to pinch hit for Clement in the 9th inning of last night’s game. Willie Bloomquist!

Greg Norton had 11 successful at-bats before he was discarded as a less useful part than Miguel Cairo, a decision so unfathomable that I don’t even know which wall to begin banging my head on.

The Mariners offense has been horrendous the last few weeks, and the lack of production from their DHs is one of the main reasons why. When you have a group of players whose entire value is derived from their offense and they’re getting outhit by another team’s starting pitchers, you’re in trouble. And the Mariners are certainly in trouble.