Last night, Eric Hinske launched his sixth home run of the young season, matching his 2007 season total before we even get to May of 2008. With a .292/.407/.639 line, Hinske is solidifying a line-up spot for himself in Tampa, at least until he cools off, as Tampa looks to strike gold for the second year in a row. But while his hot start has been one of the main reasons the Rays are racking up wins, don’t anoint him as the next Carlos Pena just yet.

Hinske has done this before. In June of 2002, on his way to the rookie of the year award, he hit .338/.442/.675 with 14 extra base hits and a 15/17 BB/K rate in 95 plate appearances. He followed up that monster performance by hitting .245/.324/.415. In fact, from July 1st through the end of the 2008 season, Hinske hit .267/.348/.427, a fairly pedestrian mark for a guy whose value comes strictly from his performance at the plate. His huge June in 2002 wasn’t indicative of a coming superstar, and odds are that neither is this April.

I don’t say this to downplay the value that Hinske has provided the Rays so far, and as a guy who was picked up for nothing, he’s already more than justified the investment they’ve given him. He’s a classic example of freely available talent that good organizations extract value from in order to allocate more of their resources to their core group of talent. However, we’ve written a lot about interesting 2008 performances in the last few weeks here on fangraphs, and I feel like it was time that we remind everyone that these are still very small samples, and April performances shouldn’t be taken as a harbinger of what the rest of the season holds.

In a small sample size, anything can happen. Even Eric Hinske hitting like an MVP candidate.

Adrian Beltre signed a 5 year, $64 million contract with the Mariners after his amazing 2004 season. Anyone expecting a repeat of that kind of performance was in for an instant disappointment, and Beltre failed to live up to even more modest expectations during his first year in Seattle, posting a .255/.303/.414 and being proclaimed a free agent bust. That label has stuck, and it’s still fairly common to see Beltre written about as an overpaid, under performing disappointment.

It’s just not true.

Beltre has been one of the better third baseman in the American League for the better part for the last two years, and he’s putting the finishing touches on an April that is one of his best months since coming over from the Dodgers. In last night’s game against Cleveland, he went 2-2 with a single, a three run home run that broke a 2-2 tie in the 9th inning, and three walks to reach base in all five of his trips to the plate. His 2008 line now stands at .309/.409/.553, or basically indistinguishable from what David Wright is giving the Mets and Aramis Ramirez is putting up for the Cubs. There isn’t a third baseman in the American League off to a better start to the season than Beltre.

He doesn’t have to keep hitting like this to justify his contract, however. In 2006 and 2007, Beltre put up two seasons of similar quality to each other, establishing himself as a slightly better than league average hitter while playing a quality defensive third base. Among American League third baseman, the only guys with an argument as superior players are Alex Rodriguez and Mike Lowell. While he’s obviously not in A-Rod’s class, you have to wonder how much their respective home parks are influencing the opinions of Lowell and Beltre. Put Lowell in Safeco and Beltre in Fenway and I’m not sure this is still a conversation we’re having.

Even if Beltre doesn’t sustain his April performance (and he probably won’t – he’s a very streaky hitter who always has good months and lousy ones), he’s still an above average major league player, 2-3 wins better than a replacement level third baseman, and in the American League, that makes him a borderline All-Star. The Mariners didn’t sign him to recreate his 2004 season in perpetuity – they signed him to be a quality player at the hot corner, and that’s exactly what he is.

Nick Johnson is having one of the more remarkable Aprils in recent memory, and not just because he’s managed to stay healthy for an entire month. No, instead, Nick Johnson is becoming the new poster child for why looking at results, and not the underlying skills, can lead to problems.

Johnson is posting a .216 batting average, so the easy narrative here is that he’s still getting his legs back under him after missing all of the 2007 season after a violent leg fracture in 2006. Perhaps the injury robbed him of some of his power, or he’s adjusting to a new swing that doesn’t allow him to drive the ball as far?

Or maybe he’s just hitting the ball on the screws, but it’s still finding it’s way into the defenders gloves? This is what his batted ball statistics certainly suggest. Johnson’s currently posting a 28.1% line drive percentage, fifth highest in the National League. Line drives go for hits 74% of the time, so if you’re smoking liners all over the field, you generally get a lot of base hits out of it. Not surprisingly, LD% correlates very well with batting average on balls in play, and as Dave Studeman showed four years ago, you can generally estimate a hitters BABIP by adding .11 or .12 to his LD%. Following this, and looking at Johnson’s line drive rate, we’d expect him to be posting a BABIP in the high .300s.

It’s actually .241, or about what we’d expect if he had a line drive rate of 12-13% – half of his actual line drive rate. Johnson is currently among the league leaders in LD% and simultaneously has one of the lowest BABIPs in the league. That’s pretty remarkable.

How much has it impacted his performance? Well, after seeing a similar thing happen to Chipper Jones during the 2004 season (LD% of 20.4%, BABIP of .251), JC Bradbury invented Projected OPS (PrOPS for short), which creates an expected BA/OBP/SLG line based on a player’s batted ball profile. It’s not perfect, but if you want to see a list of guys who are due for a regression to the mean, the extreme ends of the PrOPS leaderboard is a good place to start.

According to PrOPS, Nick Johnson’s batting line so far should be something like .336/.493/.549. It’s actually .216/.392/.432. The difference between his results and the expected results is 120 points of batting average, 100 points of on base percentage, and 130 points of slugging percentage. PrOPS thinks Johnson’s been something like the 5th best hitter in the National League in April, putting him just behind some guys named Burrell, Utley, Pujols, and the aforementioned Chipper Jones.

I’d say it’s safe to say that Nick Johnson is just fine. As always, the questions surrounding him should be about his health, not his abilities. If he avoids the disabled list, he looks poised for a big 2008 season.

For years, Chien-Ming Wang has been the poster boy for successful pitching without strikeouts. He’s used a dominating sinker to induce a ton of ground balls, allowing him to keep hitters off the bases even without generating swings and misses. By throwing strikes and getting hitters to pound the ball into the dirt, he’s turned himself into a front line pitcher and helped analysts get away from evaluating pitchers solely by strikeout rate.

However, unlike some other groundball artists, Wang has always had strikeout stuff. He throws a 91-95 MPH fastball and an 83-86 MPH slider, and both pitches have serious movement. For comparison, his velocity on these two pitches basically matches what John Smoltz throws to a tee, and only 15 pitchers in baseball history have recorded more strikeouts than John Smoltz. Most pitchers with low strikeout rates simply don’t have the ability to make hitters miss, but Wang’s stuff has always suggested that he should be able to, but was choosing to focus on pitching to contact instead.

That may be changing (as last night’s 9 strikeout performance hightlights). Here are his strikeout rates and ground ball rates plotted on respective graphs:

The K/9 and GB% are going the opposite direction, and both are doing so fairly quickly. In 2008, Wang’s posting a league average strikeout rate and a GB% that, while above average, doesn’t put him in the class of extreme sinkerball types. This is after he posted an increase in his strikeout rate last year that corresponded with a slight decline in his ground ball rate. Pitcher aging curves have shown that, for most pitchers, strikeout rates peak early and declines as a player ages – Wang is seeing the opposite of that happen right now.

He’s always been an interesting pitcher, and this new development just makes him even more curious.

Last season, Jack Cust was one of the out-of-nowhere stories of the year. He’d received all of four plate appearances in the majors from 2004 to 2006, and had essentially been relegated to Triple-A slugger while bouncing from organization to organization. The Padres sold him to the A’s for cash after Oakland experienced enough injury problems that they felt they needed a warm body, and Cust responded to the opportunity by hitting .256/.408/.504 and becoming a key part of their line-up.

2008 hasn’t gone as well. He’s currently sitting at .161/.373/.242 through 83 plate appearances, one of the stranger batting lines you’ll ever see. He has just seven hits on the season, but he’s drawn 20 walks in 22 games, so he’s posting a respectable on base percentage despite the fact that he’s just not hitting. Generally, you’d look at a .161 batting average and conclude that the guy is just in a slump, and that regression to the mean will make that bounce back in the not too distant future. Jack Cust isn’t your normal hitter, though. He strikes out at unbelievable 41.4% clip, making contact less often than just about any other position player in recent history. Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn combine to cover the top three spots in single season strikeout totals in major league history, and even they didn’t get particularly close to striking out in 41% of their at-bats with career rates of 35% and 32% respectively.

I was going to show you a chart of the K% for those three plotted next to each other, but realized it wouldn’t be very helpful, because Jack Cust’s markings aren’t on it. See, the Fangraphs K% chart tops out at 40%, and Cust is consistently above that mark. He’s literally off the charts.

When you strike out as much as Cust does, you have to be amazing when you make contact. Last year, Cust was, posting a .366 batting average on balls in play and whacking 26 home runs in 124 games. So far, in April, Cust’s batting average on balls in play is down to .242, and only one of his seven hits are home runs. Even when he hits the ball, it’s not going anywhere, and that’s made him a significant liability at the plate during the first month of the season. With the signing of Frank Thomas to be the regular DH, Cust is going to have to play left field to keep his spot in the line-up. Unfortunately for him and the A’s, he’s about as good at that as he is at making contact. He might be the worst defensive player in baseball – if he’s not, he’s close.

Add it all up, and the A’s have a guy who has to torch the ball when he hits it in order to be a valuable player, and when he’s not driving the ball, he’s the least productive regular in the major leagues. Due to his defensive problems, it’s going to be harder and harder for the A’s to justify penciling him into the line-up if he doesn’t start producing better results when he makes contact. The A’s are surprising a lot of people by standing at 16-10 through 26 games, but they’re not going to be able to stick with Cust killing them in the field and at the plate forever.

The San Francisco Giants currently sport one of the worst offenses of all time, but have posted an 11-14 record on the strength of some quality pitching. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, both of whom have been anointed by various pundits as the best young pitcher in the National League in the last year. Lincecum, in particular, is getting plaudits at the moment, as he’s off to a terrific start to the 2008 campaign, and his tiny frame and unique delivery make him interesting to watch even when he’s not dominating. However, the Giants don’t just have a big two, and there’s a guy getting lost in the hype shuffle.

See that green dot? That’s Jonathan Sanchez, San Francisco’s 25 year old southpaw with a knockout slider. He’s struggled with command problems and nagging health issues around his arm, but he’s healthy now and making hitters look foolish. His fastball doesn’t have the velocity it used to have, but he makes up for it with a slider that’s among the best swing-and-miss pitches in the game.

Using that weapon, he’s reinstating himself into the discussion of potential aces hanging out in San Francisco. In fact, the K/BB ratio above makes a pretty strong argument that Sanchez is a better bet for the future than Cain, and the difference between he and Lincecum isn’t nearly as large as most people would believe.

When you’re talking about good young arms in baseball, don’t forget Jonathan Sanchez.

When you look at the following graph, what is your initial reaction?

Now, take that reaction and add the following information:

1. Catcher
2. Turns 32 years old in two weeks
3. Right handed pull hitter, your team plays in a park that hates right handed pull hitters

Okay, now, let’s go through the formula. If you take Initial Reaction + Position Knowledge + Age + Park Suitability and your conclusion is Contract Extension, congratulations, you’re qualified to work for the Mariners. They just extended Kenji Johjima through the 2011 season. Johjima’s a solid player and has been a real asset since arriving from Japan, but the timing of this move seems odd. Top prospect Jeff Clement is tearing the cover off the ball in Tacoma, and while his defense is underwhelming, the team could really use a left handed bat in the line-up. Extending Johjima ensures that Clement will be moving to first base or designated hitter, reducing his value to the club and taking away the chance to balance the line-up.

The Mariners just continue to fail to learn lessons from their past mistakes. The organization consistently gives overly long contracts to replaceable declining veterans, then gets surprised when those guys don’t perform at their career averages. I’m sure they’ll be stunned in several years when Carlos Silva and Johjima are struggling and eating up a good portion of the payroll along with premium roster spots.

It’s an old bar argument that we’ve all had – who is the best player in baseball right now? It’s generally been a two horse race for the last couple of years, but we’ve got a new candidate thrusting himself into the discussion:

The best hitter alive is Albert Pujols, and no one really has any chance to claim otherwise. Alex Rodriguez is an inner circle hall of famer, but at 33, he’s a tick behind Prince Albert at the plate and the defensive difference isn’t large enough to close the gap. But now, entering his prime at age 28, Chase Utley is throwing his hat into the ring and demanding to be noticed. He’s absolutely destroying the ball right now, adding tremendous power to a package that already made him the best second baseman in the game.

That kind of offense from a guy who can really play defense at an up-the-middle position is just unbelievably valuable. While most teams are happy to have their second baseman avoid being a black hole at the plate, Utley gives the Phillies a middle of the order star, and that kind of comparative advantage is the main reason that Philadelphia is a playoff contender. Utley may have two teammates with NL MVP awards, but they’re playing in his shadow now.

There are a few skills that stand out in baseball even in a small sample size. Some guys just have them and others don’t, and even after just a few games, it’s usually pretty easy to tell which category a guy belongs in. Speed is one of the obvious ones, as you’ll never look in a box score and see that a lumbering slugger stole a couple of bags and hit a triple. Power is another one of these traits that’s fairly easy to identify. You can pretty much look at the extra base hit leaderboards on any given day and not be too surprised by the names at the top of the list. In fact, here’s the list of guys currently leading the majors in extra base hits:

Chase Utley – 20 extra base hits. Ridiculous.

Big Gap Here To Illustrate Just How Awesome Utley Has Been

This next group is all tied at 14 apiece.

Manny Ramirez
Derrek Lee
David Wright
Lance Berkman
Mike Jacobs
Nate McLouth
Rafael Furcal

Ramirez, Wright, Berkman – all elite sluggers. Jacobs is a power hitting first baseman, so while he won’t keep up this pace, it still fits. McLouth has shown some offensive promise in the minors, and it’s not a huge shock that he’s driving balls into the gaps. But, I’m sorry, what on earth is Rafael Furcal doing on this list? He’s a 5’9 shortstop with a career slugging percentage of .411, and he didn’t even get close to that last year, posting a wimpy .355 mark with 33 extra base hits the entire season. Now he has 14 extra base hits in three weeks?

Rafael Furcal could probably fit in one of Lance Berkman’s pant legs, but so far, the little guy is muscling up and driving the ball with the big boys. This isn’t going to continue (his career high in extra base hits is 60, back in 2003; he’s on pace for 110), but the Dodgers have to be happy with the production they’re getting out of their shortstop so far.

Over the winter, the Angels decided to acquire Jon Garland to bolster their rotation. In Chicago, Garland’s seasonal performances were something of a model of consistency; 200 IP with a 4.50 or so ERA. The Angels wanted that kind of stability, so they gave up their shortstop, Orlando Cabrera, to get Garland.

Unfortunately for them, they may not have noticed that Garland had taken a step back last year, seeing his stuff lose enough that he began to straddle the line between pitch-to-contact and batting-practice-thrower. As a guy with an average GB%, he just didn’t miss enough bats to sustain any real success, even though the results made him appear potentially useful.

Amazingly enough, Garland’s taken the art of not missing bats to a whole other level so far in 2008. After striking out one batter in six innings last night, Garland has now struck out a whopping four hitters. In 30 innings pitched. That’s an unreal 1.2 K/9 rate. 1.2 strikeouts per nine innings for a major league starting pitcher. Check out the graph:

Carlos Silva has basically set the standard for the minimum possible strikeout rate for a major league pitcher this decade. Garland is making Silva look like Nolan Ryan right now. He is compensating for the ridiculously low strikeout rate by getting more ground balls, but there’s just no precedence for anyone being able to pitch in the majors with a strikeout rate this low for very long. It’s not really working for Garland, either – his 5.04 ERA isn’t much better than his 5.67 FIP.

Garland can’t possibly keep putting the ball in play at this rate, but it looks pretty clear that Garland isn’t going to be the rotation stabilizer that the Angels thought they were getting.