It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to speak with someone who’s mastered a craft to which few others in the world can lay claim. Red Sox pitcher Steven Wright, drafted as a conventional pitcher in the second round of the 2006 draft by the Cleveland Indians, was converted to a knuckleballer by that same organization in 2011. He made his major-league debut with the Red Sox in 2013, following a 2012 trade that sent Lars Anderson to Cleveland, and has since thrown more than 1,500 knuckleballs at the big-league level, joining R.A. Dickey as MLB’s only active knuckleballers. Wright was a member of Boston’s 2016 Opening Day roster, and currently occupies a space in their starting rotation.

I spoke with Wright in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field during the Red Sox’ season-opening series. He commented on his knuckleball relative to Dickey’s and Tim Wakefield’s, how speed affects a knuckleball and its location, on the evolution of the pitch, finger pressure, and more.

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On his knuckleball: “I watched a lot of video of R.A. and Wakefield. I just throw it. I just grip and it and rip it. For me, I think it’s trying to stay under control. R.A. throws his harder, Wakefield threw his slower. I feel like I’m right in the middle of them – I don’t throw quite as hard as R.A. or quite as slow as Wakefield. We’re all pretty similar, we just throw it at different speeds.”

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If you’d just oblige me by briefly viewing one screenshot and four .gifs, I believe I’ll be able to neatly tie together all the different things that have been going on with J.D. Martinez this season. Let these five visuals serve as a reference point for the remainder of this post.

First up, the screenshot, revealing what the FOX Sports Detroit broadcast team decided to reveal about Martinez’s first at-bat, in graphic form:

Information gathered: the batter’s name is J.D. Martinez, and this is what his face looks like. J.D. Martinez flew out in his first at-bat. There is one out and nobody on in the fourth inning. J.D. Martinez is having an incredible season so far. The Tigers trail, 1-0. Dallas Keuchel is pitching. The umpire will need to look up before Keuchel delivers a pitch.

The umpire has looked up. Keuchel delivers a pitch:

It’s a first-pitch curveball, and Martinez does not swing his bat. You know who doesn’t see too many first-pitch curveballs when they’re batting? Pitchers. Because the pitcher who’s pitching doesn’t really care about the pitcher who’s hitting, so he throws him a first-pitch fastball. Nothing to worry about. J.D. Martinez? Lot to worry about. First-pitch curveball. No swing.

Keuchel, typically a low-ball pitcher, elevates a fastball, up-and-in. No swing.

Another fastball, elevated (but probably more than Keuchel wanted), another no swing.

Swing. Ground ball into the teeth of the shift.

OK. Now let’s try and tie this all together. Lot’s going on with J.D. Martinez this season.

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A rebuild is the perfect time to experiment. The rebuilding club has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The rebuilding club can experiment with different players, giving as many a shot in the major leagues as possible to see what sticks, the endgame being to unearth some key pieces of the next winning team. This is one of the most commonly accepted principles of a rebuild — finding out what you’ve got. But just as a club can experiment with players during a rebuild, it can also experiment with ideas. Just as important as finding the pieces of its next winning team, an organization should also be looking to find the identity of its next winning team.

The rebuild of the Philadelphia Phillies is well underway. They cleared salary and replenished their farm system in a major way by trading longtime fan favorites Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Jimmy Rollins and Jonathan Papelbon, as well as dominant reliever Ken Giles. The Hamels and Giles moves in particular appear to have netted the club substantial hauls based on early returns. Baseball America ranked their farm system among the league’s top 10, after having not cracked the top 20 in four years. The only guaranteed money on the books beginning in 2018 and beyond is a $2 million buyout for Matt Harrison. They cleaned house from the front office all the way down to the coaching staff. The youth movement has made its way to Citizens Bank Park. The future is bright in Philadelphia. Surprisingly so, given the state of the organization no more than a year ago.

It’s very possible we’re already seeing some of the key pieces of the next good Phillies team. If all goes according to plan, Maikel Franco will be one of them. Odubel Herrera could one day be a winner in Philadelphia. And then there’s the rotation, a 3:2 mix of unproven youngsters and stopgap veterans who have struck out more batters than any rotation in baseball this season. Jeremy Hellickson and Charlie Morton may not be the future for Philadelphia, but Aaron Nola, Vincent Velasquez and Jerad Eickhoff sure look to be.

And so not only do the Phillies seemingly have 60% of their next contending rotation in place just 14 games into their first full-on rebuild season, but they’ve already got their identity, too. Their pitching philosophy, if you will. The Pirates have their own inside sinker. The Mets have their own slider. These Phillies? They have their own curveball.

Nobody’s starters are throwing the curveball like the Phillies starters are throwing the curveball. More than a quarter of all pitches thrown by the Philadelphia rotation have been curveballs. The single-season high by a team in the PITCHf/x era is 24%, by the 2012 Pirates. After that, it’s just 19%, by the 2010 Cardinals. This Phillies team might have the most curveball-heavy rotation since we started tracking such things. Phillies starters have thrown 431 curveballs this season. No other team’s rotation has thrown more than 300.

But it’s not just that the Phillies are throwing a ton of curveballs, it’s how they’re throwing them. The average Phillies curveball breaks seven inches to the glove side, drops eight inches, and spins more than 2,600 revolutions per minute. Only three teams average more drop on their curves than Philadelphia. Only two teams average more spins on their curve than Philadelphia. Spin rate and vertical drop are the two keys to getting whiffs on a curve. The Phillies have those in spades. The Phillies aren’t throwing a ton of curves just because. The Phillies are throwing a ton of curves because they’ve mastered them.

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Seung Hwan Oh has faced 25 batters this season, and thus, 25 batters in his major league career. There. You can’t say I didn’t warn you about sample sizes limitations. But sometimes, a number just sticks out at you, and you can’t ignore it. Sometimes, a number is separated so far from the pack that even when you consider the limited sample and factor in the expected regression, it still means something. Sometimes, that number looks like this:

Blink, rub your eyes, do whatever you need to do, and then look at that last column again. More than half of all swings offered against Oh pitches this year have resulted in whiffs. He’s got nearly a 20 percentage point lead over Craig Kimbrel and Ken Giles. Look at that rate of contact inside the zone. Look at it! Oh has gotten whiffs at would-be strikes like Francisco Liriano has gotten whiffs at would-be balls. He’s been completely untouchable. Through 25 batters faced.

The lowest single-season contact rate ever allowed by a qualified reliever was 56% by Aroldis Chapman, in 2014. Both Chapman and Andrew Miller checked in below 60% last year. Oh clearly won’t stay near where he is, and he might not even stay near where Kimbrel is, but his first handful of big league appearances have been about as meaningful as they possibly could be, and I think I’m already comfortable saying that, at the very least, Oh isn’t going to be an easy at-bat for anyone. It seems like the Cardinals have found themselves a real weapon. The question is, just how strong is that weapon?

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If George Springer’s rookie season was like a breath of fresh air, then last year represented a sigh of relief. The breath of fresh air, because Springer was not only great, but great in such a unique way. The sigh of relief because Springer’s uncommon profile made him an outlier in some potentially worrisome areas, and last year, he patched up his most glaring weaknesses. Namely, he made more contact, and while that didn’t boost his production, it didn’t hurt his production either, and it also made him feel like a much more certain thing. George Springer comes with fewer caveats now. His production is easier to explain.

I’ve compared Domingo Santana to Springer before. That comparison comes with the important disclaimer that Santana isn’t nearly as fast as Springer, nor does he appear to be as useful a defender, and so he’s never likely to be as valuable a package as Springer. But at the plate, they sure look similar, and Springer at the plate is one hell of a threat, as is. They’re both massive, freak athletes who swing and miss a ton but have enough power to where pitchers feel compelled to work around the zone, and both have good enough eyes to take their walks. They’re nearly identical in their aggression, swing plane, and penchant for going the other way.

And now, 2016 Santana is furthering the comp by making the same adjustment made by 2015 Springer. When I wrote that comparison piece last month, I included this paragraph near the end:

While being unique is interesting from the writer’s prospective, it also means that essentially nobody else is succeeding in the way Santana is attempting to, and that’s not exactly optimistic. It’s hard to be a big league player making as little contact as Santana does, and it’s hard to see Santana being able to put this all together and keep it up without making some adjustments to increase the contact rate, just like Springer did last year.

And now, for a few relevant statistics, comparing players with at least 50 plate appearances in each of the last two years to themselves:

Largest improvement in contact rate

1. John Jaso, +14%
2. Domingo Santana, +11%
3. Joe Mauer, +10%

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It’s funny — a couple months back, Jeff did a little study on the teams about which we’ve written the most and least. At the time of his study, we’d written fewer articles about the Twins than any other team, since 2008. And I’d bet a good chunk of those articles were about the Twins’ pitching staff, and their avoidance of strikeouts, or something similar along those lines. Well, here’s a new Twins article! And, guess what, it’s about strikeouts again!

Except, well:

I’m sorry it has to be this way, Minnesota.

In case it’s not clear, those aren’t just the top two names on the strikeout leaderboard of Twins batters with at least 20 plate appearances this season, those are the top two names on the strikeout leaderboard of all batters with at least 20 plate appearances this season. Miguel Sano is sixth. Eddie Rosario is 15th. Things haven’t gone particularly well for the Twins thus far. They’re 0-8.

And I suppose this post could be about Byron Buxton, or collectively all those names I named, but I don’t meant to pile on. Sano will be just fine, and his strikeout rate really isn’t that much higher than we’d expect it to be. Rosario just isn’t particularly interesting. Buxton’s struck out 13 times and walked zero in 25 plate appearances, and actually, that should probably have its own post, but I’ve already done all this research on Park, so this is what you’ve got for now. Someone will get to Buxton soon enough. Let’s talk about Byung-ho Park, who’s struck out exactly as often as he hasn’t.

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We all know by now about velocity being up league-wide and strikeouts having been on the rise for more than a decade. If you didn’t: welcome to baseball in 2016! Everyone throws 95 and there’s darn near 20 strikeouts a game now.

The inverse of that, naturally, is that walks are harder to come by. Pitchers are working outside the zone more than ever and hitters aren’t adjusting, and they’re having a harder time catching up to the heat even when it’s inside the zone. Hitters are finding themselves behind in the count far more often than we’ve seen in the past, and in the last two years, we’ve seen the two lowest league-wide walk rates in almost 50 years.

Which brings us to this year’s Chicago Cubs, who aren’t playing by those rules. They’re off to a ridiculous start, with a 6-1 record and a league-best +29 run differential. Their pitchers have struck out 56 batters and walked just nine. Thus far, they’ve looked every bit the powerhouse folks envisioned in the offseason. And there’s another part of this Cubs team that’s staying true to preseason expectations, an important part of the team’s DNA that hasn’t been given much publicity. It’s not a sexy characteristic, which would explain the lack of fanfare surrounding this trait, but it’s an important one. The 2016 Cubs have a very real chance to be the most disciplined lineup we’ve ever seen.

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Bryce Harper’s at-bats have become events. Maybe more so than any other player in baseball, a Harper at-bat is the kind of thing that you set an alert for on MLB.TV so you can switch over to the Nationals’ feed when he comes up. He averaged more than four pitches per plate appearance last year, so you’re probably getting your money’s worth, and the allure of seeing a baseball hit 450 to center is ever present. A Harper at-bat is a spectacle, not only because of the raw power, but because of the craft.

I was one of those people keeping tabs on each Harper at-bat yesterday, except this time it wasn’t because I was enticed by the power. This time, it was because I wanted to see if he’d strike out. He did. Which is a pretty normal thing for baseball players to do. Except this time, it was noteworthy, because Harper hadn’t yet struck out this year. Entering the game, he was just one of two qualified hitters to have not yet K’d, and the other was Melky Cabrera, who never K’s. Cabrera’s offensive game is built around putting the bat on the ball, without much care for authority. Harper is all about authority, and it’s already been on display, which makes his strikeout-averse start to the season feel like it means more than Cabrera’s.

Harper went 21 plate appearances into the season without being sat down on strikes, a streak which lasted four games and then some. Last year, he only went four games without a strikeout once, and never beyond that. Last year’s streak lasted 22 place appearances. There was a 22-plate-appearance run in 2013. He didn’t set any personal records — though if you want to get technical, you could extend back to last year and say he actually went 28 consecutive plate appearances without a whiff — but it also means the first we’ve seen of Harper this year is, in this one particular way, Harper at his best. For a 23-year-old coming off a historic MVP season, that’s fun, because we spent the offseason wondering what he’d do next. Maybe it’s “never strike out.”

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