In a bit of dark hilarity, the Detroit Tigers’ official Twitter feed just announced that Dontrelle Willis will be designated for assignment tomorrow in order to make room for Detroit to recall Max Scherzer.

It’s an oddly forward thinking move given that Willis’ baseball card numbers aren’t horrific this season, Max Scherzer’s are and the Tigers are in second place of the AL Central. Of course, what matters is going forward and ZiPS gives us a great comparison there. It has Willis with a 5.48 FIP for the remainder of 2010 and Scherzer at just 4.19.

Still, that would seem to be the end of Dontrelle Willis, the Detroit Tiger. Acquired from the Florida Marlins in the Miguel Cabrera mega deal, Willis was eligible for arbitration but the Tigers instead elected to ink him to a three-year, $29 million contract to cover the 2008 through 2010 seasons.

Things went belly up immediately for Willis and Detroit and never got better with multiple injuries, the pitching version of the yips and anxiety problems. Combined over the three seasons, Willis has pitched just 101 innings and been credited with 0.3 wins below replacement.

I don’t have to spell out how that is a poor return for the money. The question I am more interested in at the moment is what’s next for Willis. There’s no indication that he’s found anything that would bring back his successes with Florida, but he is still just 28 years old and his 2010 isn’t as disastrous as his 2008 and 2009 were. Assuming the Tigers do not find a trade partner within the next ten days and Willis hits the free agent market with no financial incentive, he could make a mildly intriguing pick up.

I would be surprised if he didn’t flee back to the National League. The odds that he starts putting up mid-3 FIPs again are remote, but I can envision some roughly league average performances in the NL and for the league minimum, Willis might shift from being one of the biggest sunk costs in baseball to actually a valuable investment.

Carlos Marmol has great stuff. Carlos Marmol effectively uses that great stuff to strike out a lot of hitters. Neither of those two statements is shocking or relatively unknown, even to casual fans. Carlos Marmol has been a big component of the Chicago Cubs bullpen for the past few years and he’s consistently racked up impressive strikeout totals.

In 2007, it was 96 strikeouts in 69.1 innings or 33.7% of all batters faced. In 2008, Marmol punched out 114 over 87.1 innings with what was actually a slightly lower rate at 32.8% of all batters faced. 2009 seemed like a bad omen as the strikeouts slipped to 93 in 74 innings and just 27.8% of hitters.

I think we can put that bad omen to rest. Marmol finished today having faced 103 batters on the season. He’s sent 49 of them back to the dugout with a strikeout. That’s an absurd 47.6% strikeout rate. Given that he’s recorded 24.2 innings pitched, the strikeout rate on the more well known K/9 scale registers a you-have-to-be-kidding-me 17.9.

For every inning that Carlos Marmol has pitched, he’s averaged two strikeouts. Do I even need to put that in perspective for you or can you intuitively grasp how insanely dominant that is?

Of course, Marmol is also a bit wild, yielding about 5.5 walks per nine innings as well. For out of this world comedy when it comes to skewed pitching lines, take a gander at Jonathan Broxton’s 30 strikeouts, two walks and zero home runs allowed over 20.1 innings. Broxton’s resulting FIP of 0.45 and xFIP of 1.59 are both league leaders as is his 15.0 strikeout to walk ratio.

Broxton has been more valuable, but I’m not sure that what he’s accomplished thus far is more impressive than Carlos Marmol’s strikeout rate.

Another eight solid innings for Doug Fister last night brings him up to 55 pitched in just eight starts in 2010. With his ERA still under 2, but his xFIP (4.23) essentially matching his xFIP from a year ago (4.50), I wanted to dig into his pitch numbers to see if there is anything substantially different in his process this season.

The reason for the low ERA is easy to souse out. Fister’s BABIP is just .231, his home run per fly ball stands at 1.8% and his LOB% is 79.1%. The first two are obviously unsustainable and the LOB% might be realistic if he struck out a batter per inning, but given that he’s at less than half that rate, I wouldn’t bank on it holding up. Granted, Fister has allowed fewer line drives this season so his lower BABIP is not entirely a result of great defense, but it’s far too early to call that a repeatable skill.

Doug Fister has almost an identical strikeout to walk ratio this year (2.5) as last year (2.4), but only because both strikeouts and walks have declined by a nearly equal percentage. The main change is an 11-point increase in his ground ball rate. That is a significant leap and worth finding out the cause for.

I created a table of all of Doug Fister’s pitches from each of 2009 and 2010 and compared how each pitch has generated swinging strikes (to predict strikeouts), balls (to predict walks) and ground balls (to predict home runs). The conclusion I can draw is that Fister is somehow getting far more ground balls from his primary fastball in 2010 (49%) than he did previously (26%). Doing so has allowed him to throw it much more often and he has thrown his fastball nearly 80% of the time in 2010 from 61% in 2009.

I can only find that as a clear difference. Fister is missing fewer bats, but that is to be expected when he throws fewer breaking pitches and more fastballs. Ditto for issuing fewer walks. Fister appears to have added some deception to his delivery that has increased his ability to get batters to take fastball for strikes and hit more of them on the ground when they do swing.

What change that is and whether it actually exists rather than a statistical sample issue is the purview of scouts. I cannot tell if Doug Fister is a different pitcher this season, but his numbers so far do exhibit some suggestive trends.

One of the more intriguing quirks of the young 2010 season has been Jose Lopez. A full time second baseman for the prior four seasons, Lopez earned a reputation as a visually unappealing glove man who made frequent lapses on routine plays and exhibited little horizontal range. A variety of numerical systems tempered that judgment, painting Lopez as a roughly average fielder at second.

Given his set of skills though, he was never a perfect fit at second base. He moved best forward and back, not side to side and owning a strong arm there was always a sense that he profiled more as a third baseman. Lopez never got that opportunity however as Adrian Beltre, one of the best fielders in recent memory, reigned over third base.

Once Beltre departed to the land of free agency, it seemed that Lopez was too entrenched at second base to change positions. That notion was only further reinforced when the Mariners signed Chone Figgins this past winter. Figgins is a versatile player but he had settled into a majority role at third base and performed quite well there. It was surprising to many then when tidbits began to leak that the Mariners were considering moving Lopez to third and Figgins to second. It was more surprising still when it actually happened this spring.

However, those surprises have nothing on the surprise over the actual results. Jose Lopez has looked fantastic and the numbers agree. Coming off five years of Adrian Beltre, Mariner fans steeled themselves all winter awaiting the inevitable downgrade in defensive performance. Instead, Jose Lopez has undergone a renaissance at the position. His UZR numbers are off the charts, well ahead of any other player in baseball and DRS also has Jose Lopez leading the league.

It’s not all cheery news however. While Lopez may pace the entire league in defensive rankings at the moment, he also trails the entire league in hitting value. Seriously. According to wRAA, Jose Lopez has been the least valuable hitter in baseball. We have all heard the term ‘all glove, no bat’ before, but this is insane.

Simply because of their importance, number of innings thrown and less volatile nature, entire starting rotations are rarely ever around replacement level. The same is not true for bullpens which can be torpedoed by a fewer poor performers and also because managers tend to display a level of loyalty to relief pitchers that is unjustified given how much variance they display in performance from year to year.

Last season saw both the Pirates and Nationals have their collective bullpen be worse than replacement level. To date in 2010, the biggest team culprit in the bullpen failure Olympics has been the Arizona Diamondbacks. The unit’s 1.24 strikeouts per walk allowed is the third worst in baseball barely ahead of the Indians and Angels.

While those two teams are worse in that regard, both compensate somewhat with low home run rates. The Indians have allowed just 0.5 home runs per nine innings. The Angels are at almost exactly one home run per nine. By contrast, the Diamondback relievers have allowed over two home runs per game!

Arizona is well known for yielding home runs, but even adjusting the unit’s home run rate down with xFIP, they still post a 5.45 figure, which is half a run worse than what the 29th best unit, the Royals at 4.96 is. The Diamondbacks’ bullpen has the league’s worst ground ball rate.

According to tRA, the only reliever for Arizona that has managed to be above average is Carlos Rosa who has faced all of three batters. Of particular note for an atrocious level of play thus far are Bob Howry (8.96 FIP), Kevin Mulvey (14.09 FIP), Juan Gutierrez (7.32 FIP) and Esmerling Vasquez (6.71 FIP).

Reputations and public conceptions are hard to shake, even in the light of contradictory evidence. The Red Sox through the 2000s were known as heavy hitting team thanks in part to the exploits of Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz and a good supporting cast. With Ramirez gone and David Ortiz visibly declining last season, the Red Sox changed course over the winter and tacked toward a pitching and defense-oriented ball club.

Despite a recent spate of acceptance of the value of good defense can bring amongst mainstream fans and pundits, the praising of it still tends to be limited to teams with good overall records. After all, defense first is a strategy whose fruits are hard to see. People can easily digest the value of a home run. Excellent outfield range is a lot harder. So if the team is doing poorly after deemphasizing offense, then said plan comes under easy attack.

It’s no surprise that Boston’s 19-19 record and current fourth place standing in the AL East has them facing some of these criticisms. The problem is that Boston’s offense is not the unit that is letting down the team, far from it in fact. Even with the continued demise of David Ortiz the Boston offense remains strong. So strong that by batting runs alone, they rank fifth in the Major Leagues. They are well ahead of the sixth-ranked Tigers and within easy striking distance of third-place Minnesota.

What’s actually been felling the Red Sox involves more shades of gray than a simple black hole on offense. The bullpen has been mediocre to downright bad with high walk totals and only average strikeout figures. The defense has also been merely average when it was hoped they would be well above that. On top of that is a slight dose of bad luck in their expected wins and losses and the bad luck to be playing in a division with the Yankees and Rays, two teams everyone expected to be great, and the Blue Jays, who have legitimately played like one of the best teams in baseball.

The Red Sox current record is a result of many things, but most of those 19 losses are not the hitter’s fault and a fair share of the 19 victories are.

While updating my numbers on the average run and out values of various batted ball types this past afternoon, I noticed what looked like an anomaly when it came to ground balls in the American League this season. The average run value of a ground ball was roughly half so far in 2010 of what it was in 2007-9. I assumed there had to be something off with my code and my first check was to look at the National League, but that did not turn up any unexpected results.

Curious, I spit out the odds of an out occurring on a groundball in each year as a chart. In years past, right around 66% of all ground balls were turned into a single out. An additional 7% caused a double play. The National League is almost exactly the same though it has had more single outs and slightly fewer double plays on account of there being fewer runners on base on average.

However, so far in 2010, those ratios are up to 68% and 7.5% in the American League while the National League shows no significant deviation. Now, that does not seem like much of a change from average in the AL numbers but consider that a ground ball is the single most likely outcome for any plate appearance. There are lots of them and any movement can reap big changes.

In 2009, hitters batted .239 on ground balls. That’s down to .210 in 2010 and there’s been a rise in double plays turned (and a triple play as well). All that adds up to a lot more outs, about 163 in fact. Over just under 4500 ground balls, you have outs up about 4%, but only in the AL. What’s changed? I have no idea, but right now ground ball hitters are having quite a tough time of it.

Dropped from Braves at the end of 2009, Kelly Johnson found little interest in his services and ended up in Arizona on a one year contract paying him just $2.3 million. Arizona gambled that Johnson would rebound from, among other things, a .247 BABIP in 2009 that severely depressed his offensive numbers. Rebound he has. Though his 2010 BABIP remains below his career rate, Johnson is hitting a superb .303/.394/.697, good enough for a .459 wOBA which is slightly above 2009’s .306 mark.

Johnson’s walk rate has returned to the level that he had the first few seasons of his career helped by a drop in out of zone pitches that he’s chasing. Despite a slight rise in how often he misses on his swings, Johnson’s strikeout rate has remained near his career level.

The real story for Johnson has been the power. Never much of a power hitter, Johnson is already at nine home runs and has another eight doubles to boot. Well over half of his hits (17 of his 27) have gone for extra bases and combined with his high average gives rise to that atmospheric slugging percentage.

The Diamondbacks will pay Kelly Johnson just $2.3 million this season. They’ve already received over twice that in value. Johnson is not going to continue posting a 1.100 OPS and hitting 30% of his fly balls over the wall, but even after he tails off he will have a good shot at being one of 2010’s best free agent bargains.

Signed to a one-year contract with a team option for 2011 by the Blue Jays this offseason, Alex Gonzalez did not attract much attention on the free agent market after being cut loose by the Red Sox. He netted just $2.75 million for this year and his option is worth only $2.5 million. There was good reason for that lack of fanfare. Alex Gonzalez hasn’t been a good hitter ever aside from 2007. He has survived by being a solid glove man at short stop but having turned 33, one had to wonder how much longer that would hold out.

It is too soon into the season to make any comments on Gonzalez’s fielding prowess, though the early returns look good, but he has apparently remembered that he once hit 23 home runs with the Marlins. Hitting just eight home runs all of last year over 429 trips to the plate, Gonzalez already has matched that total in just 109 plate appearances this season. His eighth home run coming off Ben Sheets yesterday, Gonzalez now boasts a .922 OPS completely supported by his .619 slugging percentage.

Gonzalez still lacks plate patience and is striking out a prodigious level which might undermine his offensive output down the line, but for now he is surviving and managing to be an asset despite a .303 on base percentage. At 1.3 WAR, Gonzalez is already nearly halfway to his previous career high.

Given his current plate discipline numbers, he seems a prime candidate to suffer through some horrendous slumps as the year progresses but with his good fielding at a premium position, Alex Gonzalez has already returned adequate value on the Toronto’s investment.

I enjoy using the BaseRuns formula as a sanity check for team performance to date. There are big flaws in simply taking a team’s actual runs scored and allowed and applying the Pythagorean formula to come up with expected wins. It assumes that the actual run totals are sacrosanct when they are anything but. Especially so early in the year when factors such as competition faced and home/away splits are more likely to be dramatic.

I ran through each team coming into play today and noted the difference in what BaseRuns said the team should have scored and allowed and their actual results so far. There is little surprise at the bottom of the table; Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston and Pittsburgh have all legitimately played atrociously. Pittsburgh has actually been more than doubled up on runs allowed versus runs scored and if they kept playing at this level, BaseRuns says they would be a 39-win team.

The top of the table also is not shocking, but it does affirm some early season surprises. The Yanks are on top, but second place belongs to those stingy Giants, leading the league in run prevention. The Cardinals, Rockies and Twins follow suit, even though the Twins have gotten lucky so far on their own solid run prevention numbers.

Among teams that BaseRuns decrees are ten or more games off their straight pythag win-loss record are the Rays, currently 13 wins lucky but still a legit top ten team. The Blue Jays are ten games unlucky on their projected pace and the White Sox are 14 games on the same side of the ledger.

By far the biggest outlier is the New York Mets. They have scored 86 and allowed 69 for a pythag pace of 95 wins. According to BaseRuns they should have scored 82, but allowed 88 for a BaseRuns pace of just 76 wins. That is a mammoth 19-win spread and a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about jumping on the Mets bandwagon for 2010. That’s not to say it cannot be done, but they need to up their level of play dramatically.