It’s early, but some teams in the American League seriously need to take a hard look at their guys manning the DH position. No less than five teams, the White Sox, Indians, Athletics, Red Sox and Mariners have DHs that have amassed a wOBA that ranks below the combined wOBAs that two National League teams have received from their pitchers!

Houston pitchers have a collective .305 wOBA and the Diamondbacks are second in the NL with a .289 wOBA at the plate from their hurlers. The Padres are in third at .261 and the Rockies in fourth at .249, which both still manage to rank ahead of the Red Sox (.248) and the Mariners.

The Mariners deserve special scorn for their below pathetic .210 wOBA from Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Sweeney. That scornful figure would rank 9th amongst National League pitchers. The Mariners have had a DH combo that would be in the bottom half of pitchers.

It’s not quite as bad, but it’s worth pointing out the awful rates put up by the Yankees (.234) and Rangers (.240) at first base as well. First base at least is an actual defensive position, but it is the lowliest of them, and teams really need to get an offensive powerhouse there.

The Yankees will certainly be fine with Mark Teixeira. Will Justin Smoak be the savior for the Rangers at the position and will Chris Davis get another shot? Time will tell.

.356/.418/.661 looks like a pretty good batting line doesn’t it? Well, I mean it is a really good line. That is, unless you are a pitcher and that’s the batting line for hitters against you. It’s even worse if you are a collection of pitchers and that’s the combined batting line of hitters facing you in the 9th inning. That’s exactly what the Texas Rangers have faced coming into today in 2010.

Yeah, opponents batting line is a mediocre way to evaluate individual pitchers. I used it just to offer up a feel for how much offense has been produced against the Rangers’ during that almost always crucial inning.

The lion’s share of time in that frame has been taken up by Frank Francisco to begin the season and after he faltered in tremendous fashion, Neftali Feliz was elevated to the closer’s role, but he has been ignominous as well. Francisco faced 28 batters and yielded three extra-base hits, four walks and punched out five. Feliz has faced 22 so far and given up four extra-base hits, but has just one walk allowed to the same five strikeouts.

With four blown saves and just three actual saves, the Rangers are currently one of just seven teams suffering more blown opportunities than converted. Again, as poor of a statistic as saves are for evaluating individual pitchers; on a team-level, they can illustrate the general level of frustration that a fanbase might be currently having with its team’s relievers. Faced with a division projected to be tight, Ranger fans might be boiling already, well ahead of the Texas summer heat.

When the news first broke and the details started to emerge, I was tempted to fill this entire article with just me laughing. My co-writers convinced me that while an appropriate response, that was not quite informative enough so I have relented and will actually map out the value of Ryan Howard’s new extension. I’m laughing pretty hard, though, in case you wanted to picture it.

Howard receives $20 million in 2012 (his age 32 season) and ’13, $25 million per from 2014 through ’16 and there is a team option on 2017 (his age 37 season) for $23 million that costs the Phillies $10 million to buy out. They even threw in a limited no trade clause.

The extension kicks in after Howard’s current 3-year, $54-million deal ends in 2011. I wrote about that deal back in February of 2009 when the Phillies avoided arbitration with him by signing it. I was not a fan of the deal at the time but pointed out the Phillies were bound by the arbitration process and the way it tends to overvalue the skills that Howard had in excess and marginalize the skills that he lacked. There is no such rationalization here as this new deal covers only free agent years.

Howard did well in 2009, besting projections by about a win. That made him a solid bet to produce the amount of value needed to match his salary from 2009-11. Projecting Howard’s performance from 2012-7 is incredibly difficult. We’re not only looking very far into the future, but we’re doing so with a hitting profile that historically ages awfully. Richie Sexson, Cecil Fielder, Mo Vaugn, David Ortiz, Tony Clark and others are among Ryan Howard’s most comparable hitters according to Baseball-Reference. All of them dropped off harshly in their early 30s. About the only success story in Howard’s top ten comparables in Willie McCovey.

Even if you think baseball’s salary per win goes up to $4.25 million this coming offseason and rises at a 5% clip every winter through 2017, Howard will need to produce an average of 4.75 wins from 2012 through 2017 just in order to justify his salary. If you factor in that Howard gets (even more) long-term security from this deal, then that average production levels goes up to 5.3 wins.

In other words, Howard will need six seasons that were better than his 2009 season, except over his 32-37 years. I’m not sure I would lay even money on him achieving even half of that. This contract is both incredibly risky and unnecessary since Howard was already signed through 2011. Say hello to baseball’s newest worst contract.

When you get waist deep into park factors you can discover some really odd quirks that you never expected. Lately I have been looking at the frequency of events at certain parks compared to when that park’s home team played on the road and one of the ratios – triples in Texas — stuck out to me.

Intrigued, I investigated the home and away splits for the Texas Rangers since 2007 and found that indeed there seems to be something going on with the Ballpark in Arlington that promotes triples. Starting from 2007 and going through 2010 to date, the Texas Rangers hitters have hit 25, 24, 18 and 2 triples while at home. Contrast that to 11, 11, 9 and just one triple while on the road. All told, that is 69 triples while at home and 32 while on the road.

That’s not a small or insignificant split, that’s gigantic. I’m also not sure what’s causing it. Generally, you expect parks that are favorable to triples to have gigantic outfields and weather patterns that inhibit home runs to keep more balls in the park, but deep toward far away walls. Arlington certainly does not fit that model given it’s notoriety for allowing home runs and it’s roughly average depth to the walls.

I’m curious to hear people’s theories. Is it because the ground gets dried out in the summer heat, making balls run faster like if they were on Astroturf? Maybe there is something with the outfield dimensions in Texas that invites triples? Or maybe there is something with the road parks the Rangers play in that suppresses them?

The Mets and Cardinals played 20 innings that saw Tony La Russa use every position player available and a majority of his pitchers as well. He sent ten different players to the mound. While he was pulling relievers after an inning of use, Mets manager Jerry Manuel had four consecutive relievers toss at least two innings, enabling him to keep bodies in reserve.

At least in theory, because it doesn’t really matter if you keep a couple relievers back in case you do end up playing 20 innings when you have those relievers constantly warming up. See, those pitches they throw out in the bullpen actually tax their arms too, even though they don’t show up in the box score. Quoting from Anthony DiComo’s post game report,

Four Mets pitchers threw at least two innings of relief, allowing Manuel to save closer Francisco Rodriguez for a save situation. That did not occur until the 19th… Rodriguez, who had warmed up every inning from the eighth through the 19th, estimated that he threw more than 100 pitches in the bullpen. And he admitted to being somewhat gassed by the time Manuel finally called his name.

Amazing, just plain amazing. Forget the idiocy of holding your supposed best reliever back for a possible future lead for a moment and just soak in the stupidity on the part of whoever had Rodriguez up and throwing for 11 consecutive innings.

On the plus side, I think he’s stretched out now so the Mets can go ahead and get Oliver Perez out of the rotation.

The last two posts have covered the best and worst fastballs when it comes to generating ground balls upon contact. The worst fastballs doubled as the worst pitches overall. Enough foreplay with the fastballs though, it’s time to reveal the best overall pitches. Who had the biggest, manliest, most groundballsiest pitches of 2009? Unsurprisingly, of the top five, four are curves with the misfit being a changeup.

Starting at the bottom of the list, we first encounter Erik Bedard and his curveball. Said pitch racked up an impressive 71% ground ball rate when put in play. Ahead of him is that aforementioned changeup, thrown by the master of the ground ball and the walk, Fausto Carmona. 74% of the time that Carmona’s changeup made contact with a bat, it fell toward the earth in rapid fashion.

We go back to curveballs for good now with our third place finisher, Chris Jakubauskas who, like Bedard, was with the Mariners. Now a Pirate after being claimed off waivers last November, Jakubauskas’ curveball registered a ground ball 75% of the time which is about all he has going for him. Coming out of the desolate wastelands of the Independent Leagues, it’s impressive enough that Jakubauskas has such a good pitch at his disposal.

Tying that mark was another AL West hurler, Gio Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a weird specimen, racking up huge strikeout rates but possessing no ability to consistently find the strike zone. His curve is about his only good pitch at this point, but if he ever manages to cut down his walk rate, he could make a big leap forward.

Finally, atop the leader board is Yovani Gallardo and his curve, which eeked past Gonzalez and Jakubauskas to the 76% mark for ground balls. There’s not much that needs to be said about Gallardo. We all know he’s good, he just needs to stay healthy.

I made mention yesterday of the five worst pitches at inducing ground balls once contact is made. All five happened to be fastballs. Before I get to the five best pitches, unsurprisingly dominated by breaking pitches, I wanted to highlight four pitchers who happened to have fastballs that were actually competitive with the league’s best breaking balls at garnering ground balls.

While Russ Springer and company were chucking up straight four-seamers that hovered around 17% on the ground ball rate, these four were so far on the other end as to need a galactic wormhole to see each other. Randy Choate topped all in the land with his fastball recording a ground ball a remarkable 69% of the time it was put in play. Cla Meredith and Sean Green equaled that mark though were a few fraction points below. And Jeremy Affeldt was at 67%. Together, those four were above and beyond what other fastball throwers managed, the average remember being around 39%.

Of course, there’s a catch. Cla Meredith, Sean Green and Randy Choate are all extreme side arm throwers. While their offerings are technically not two-seamers, the angles they create make them act just like sinkers nonetheless. Though they may not belong in the same comparison as the fastball pitchers mentioned before, they still deserve attention for racking up such high ground ball rates off any type of fastball-like pitch.

Just like those with the fly-ball-prone fastballs had overall fly ball batted ball profiles, the pitchers listed here have some of the most ground ball heavy profiles in the Majors. However, given that three of the four are sidearmers, I decree that the true title for having the best worm-burning fastball in baseball last season goes to Jeremy Affeldt.

As is probably apparent, I am routinely interested in individual pitch stats for pitchers. I’ve looked at which pitches generated the highest rates of swings and misses for instance. I am also pretty keen on ground balls rates. It’s time to combine those two into a look at which pitcher’s pitches were the best and worst at causing ground balls.

Ranking pitches (a minimum of 200 thrown) by the percentage of ground balls out of all batted balls leads to some predictable results. For one, fastballs dominate the low end of the spectrum. Pitchers ten to throw fastballs up in the zone when gunning for strikeouts so it is no shock that fastballs get ground balls about 10% less on average than your typical breaking ball.

Curveballs, changeups and two-seamers, or sinker, average around 48% ground balls once the pitch is batted. On the other hand, four-seam fastballs turn into a ground ball just 39% of the time on average. Sliders are about halfway between the two at 44% or so.

Still, Russ Springer (15%), Juan Cruz (15%), Craig Breslow (17%), Bruce Chen (17%) and Chris Narveson (18%) deserve special recognition for having the five worst pitches in all of baseball at getting a ground ball. Given that all five pitches in question are four-seam fastballs and fastballs are usually a pitcher’s most common pitch thrown, it should be no surprise to find out that all five of the listed pitchers suffer from rather low ground ball ratios overall.

It’s amazing that Springer and Cruz have managed to have significant success with such rates. Both used superb strikeout rates to offset the extreme fly ball rates. As Cruz showed last year though, that’s a volatile line to walk and when the strikeouts dip you can get yourself into trouble in a hurry.

The first eight batters of the 2010 season came and went without much fanfare. An impartial observer might even have begun hoping for a baseball game between the Yankees and Red Sox that did not require four hours to complete. That was not to be and the problems began with Jorge Posada in top of the second inning.

With two outs already recorded, Josh Beckett started Posada out with a fastball well down and inside that no self-respecting hitter, or Vladimir Guerrero, would have swung at. Beckett followed with a 95mph fastball over the middle of the plate that Posada fouled back, just missing under the pitch. Posada had the pitch pretty well timed, but could not get his bat elevated in time. Take note, as that would be important about 20 seconds later.

Beckett stayed with the fastball for a third time on the next pitch, this one again landing too far inside but closer to the knees for ball two. It is worth stopping the narrative at this point to digress into some stats. Josh Beckett owns one of the league’s better curve balls. His fastball is good, too, but not as good as the curve. Jorge Posada makes a living off hitting fastballs, averaging almost two runs of offense above what the average hitter would produce for every 100 fastballs that he sees at the plate. On the other hand, Posada has been markedly worse at hitting curve balls, about one run below average per 100 curve balls.

Beckett had drawn Posada’s eyesight inside with his first and third pitches and upward with his second that Posada, remember, was just underneath. He had given Jorge three straight fastballs with which to time his swing. What would be the worst pitch to throw next? A fourth consecutive fastball, this time on the inner half of the plate and a little below the belt was probably it and Posada turned all over it. That Posada was so far in front of Beckett’s pitch tells us that he was sitting fastball and the location was right in his wheelhouse. With the aid of Pesky’s Pole and mediocre pitch sequencing, Posada had 2010’s first hit, first run and first home run.

Not the latest of the late term Spring Training extensions (see Matt Klaassen’s piece on Adam Lind), but one that threatens to slip through the weekend cracks. Scott Feldman inked an extension yesterday that bought out his arbitration years and gave the Rangers an option on his first free agent year (2013).

Once again, we have a contract that technically wipes out a previously agreed deal, Feldman’s contract for 2010, but actually calls for identical money in 2010 as the original deal. Feldman and the Rangers had already agreed to a $2.425 million salary this season to avoid his first year of arbitration. Feldman’s new deal calls for that same amount this year and then salaries of $4.4 million in 2011, $6.5 million in 2012 and come with a team option for $9.2 million in 2013 or a $600K buyout.

Feldman has been pretty unimpressive statistically until last season when he posted a roughly league average season over 183 innings in the rotation and 6.2 innings in the bullpen, no small feat. Feldman doesn’t miss bats all that well (6.5% compared to an 8.6% average last year) or find the zone all that well either (45.6% against league average of 49.4% in 2009). He was helped by an above average ground ball rate and a .275 BABIP and a little luck on home runs per fly balls, especially given his home park. Unsurprisingly, CHONE and the Fans are divergent on Feldman’s projections.

Even the fans see a regression to 2.2 wins in 2010 for Feldman. CHONE is a lot more bearish and clocks in at just under 1.4 wins. If you factor the 2010 salary into the new contract, then Feldman is being guaranteed 1.8 free market seasons for a total of just under $14 million (scenario 1) with an option to extend to 2.8 seasons at $22.5 million (scenario 2). If you disregard 2010 as already agreed upon, then this contract is worth 1.4 free market seasons for $11.5 million (scenario 3) or 2.4 seasons for $20.1 million (scenario 4).

Under all four scenarios, the Rangers are paying Feldman as if he is going to produce at a two-win level over the life of the deal. Based solely on his 2009 numbers, that’s a good deal for Texas. However, based on his projections, backed up by some middling core numbers, this is a reach for the Rangers.

Granted, it’s unlikely to blow up in their faces, but it’s also a deal that they could have avoided with little cost since Feldman was under club control anyways and they have seemed to secure no meaningful discount for granting Feldman some financial security. If Feldman declines at all (he’s already 27), then this quickly turns into a misstep by the Rangers.