Jeffrey Niemann was the only player to make his debut yesterday. He picked up the win for the Rays by throwing 6 innings with 5 strikeouts and allowing just a single run. Niemann, the fourth overall pick the 2004 draft, was listed as Baseball America’s 99th best prospect this year. At 6 feet and 9 inches tall, he holds the distinction of being the tallest player in Rays history.

Sal Baxamusa wrote an article in today’s Hardball Times about some of the fastball velocity data on FanGraphs and how they correlate year-to-year.

And Chone Smith over at Anaheim Angels all the way wrote about 2002 Baseball America prospects and how their fastballs have fared over time. He’ll be working on aging curves next. Hat tip to Tango!

I’d also like to say there are two new writers joining the FanGraphs team today. David Cameron already introduced himself and Eric Seidman of Statistically Speaking will be stepping up to the plate a bit later today.

Projections will be hidden by default later today, but will still be available if you click the “Show Projections” button. I wanted to thank all the projection system owners for contributing their projections this year, so… I give a very big thanks (in no particular order) to Dan Szymborski, Baseball Info Solutions, Bill James, Chone Smith, Jeff Sackman, Tom Tango, and John Burnson.

This NPR interview was done back on March 28th, but don’t worry, it’s still relevant. Baseball science has not changed that much in 2 weeks.

Ira Flatow on Science Friday interviews three experts on why fans remain loyal to their team, the physical act of hitting a baseball, and why lowering the pitchers mound might help prevent injury. It’s definitely a good listen.

Evan Longoria made his long awaited debut last night by singling in a run, and taking a walk in 4 plate appearances. Hardball Times fantasy writer, Derek Carty, suggest that first year expectations for Longoria should be tempered even though he’s listed as a top 5 prospect on pretty much every single list available. He was called up due to Willy Aybar’s trip to the DL, although for financial reasons the Rays might have wanted to wait a bit longer to roster Longoria.

John Bowker had a monster debut for the Giants. He hit a three-run home run and singled in three plate appearances. Despite the Giants taking a 5-0 lead, much in part to Bowker’s efforts, they lost anyway. Apparently, he had trouble containing his glee even though his team had suffered a tough loss.

Hernan Iribarren pinch hit and singled in his first major league at-bat. He’s a high-average, low power hitter who takes a good amount of walks, leading to a pretty solid OBP. Irabarren was called up to replace the DL bound Tony Gwynn Jr.

Jesse Carlson made his first appearance in relief on April 10th. He entered the game with 2 outs and the bases loaded with his team, the Blue Jays, down 1-3 in the top of the 12th. He got Daric Barton to strike out on three pitches and called it a day. Bluebird Banter recently did a full piece on him covering pretty much everything you’d want to know, including his abrupt release from the Tigers organization nearly 5 years ago.

Burke Heinrich Badenhop got to finish off the Nationals in his big league debut with his team, the Marlins, up 10-4. He pitched a perfect ninth with one strikeout. Badenhop was one of the prospects the Marlins acquired from the Tigers in return for Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera. He was called up to fill in for Rick Vanden Hurk’s demotion to the minors.

Fernando Hernandez pitched the bottom of the 8th inning for the A’s and picked up his first win as a reliever in his debut. He allowed no runs with 2 walks and a strikeout in the one inning he pitched. He was an A’s Rule 5 Draft pick from the White Sox, after having pitched quite well in AA last year. He had 84/23 K/BB ratio and allowed just 4 home runs in 85-plus innings of work.

Gregory Smith also made his debut for the A’s as the starting pitcher. He threw 6 innings of two hit ball, while striking out 5 and also walking 5. He had pretty solid control in the minors, so perhaps his nerves got the better of him. Smith, who was acquired by the A’s in the Dan Haren trade, got the call when Justin Duchscherer was placed on the disabled list.

The Cubs and Pirates thought it’d be a good idea to play six extra innings tonight in their roller coaster of a game. Win Expectancy suggests the Cubs pretty much had the game won on three separate occasions and lucky for them, that third time was a charm.

First, Kerry Wood blew his second first save of the season by allowing a game tying solo home run to Jason Bay. Then Kevin Hart blew a two run lead by serving up a two-run home run to Adam LaRoche. Finally, Felix Pie singled with the bases loaded, allowing Sean Marshall to preserve the two run lead and the Cubs to win!

Hidden in the blown saves was the very impressive performance of none other than Ryan Dempster. He struck out 5 and allowed only 2 walks and 1 hit in 7 innings of work. He has now allowed only 2 runs in 13 innings with 10 strikeouts and an uncharacteristically low 4 walks, which makes his BB/9 just 2.8 to a K/9 of 6.9.

Dempster also has a ground ball percentage of 56.3% on the season, which would make him an extreme ground ball pitcher. The problem is his line drive percentage of 12.5% is due for a bit of upward correction and is in turn inflating his ground ball percentage.

The real question will be whether Dempster can keep his walk rate down. He has lowered it in each of the past three seasons; down from an astronomically high 5.7 in 2004. Keeping it below 3 would be quite the jump, but so far so good for the former closer.

Clay Timpner was the only player to make his debut last night. He pinch hit and struck out in his only at-bat and then continued on in the outfield. Timpner bat just over .300 in AAA last year for the Giants. He doesn’t appear to have much power, but his OBP of .361 was pretty good. Honestly, I had a bit of trouble finding information on Timpner except that he still has a strong following at the University of Central Florida, and Baseball America thought he was one of the best defensive outfield prospects way back in 2005.

Chase Utley was hit by three pitches in today’s game to tie a Major League record. Oliver Perez hit him twice and then Scott Schoeneweis decided that twice wasn’t enough and hit him again! Utley was actually hit a fourth time if you count Carlos Delgado’s errant throw which nailed him right in the back.

The last player to get hit three times was Nomar Garciappara on July 3rd, 2006.

Johnny Cueto made his second big league start and struck out 8 with no walks in 6.1 innings of work. He gave up 5 hits and 1 home run in what turned out to be a no-decision instead of a loss thanks to….

Eric Gagne! The 2003 Cy Young award winner blew his second save of the season by giving up a solo shot to Corey Patterson. Gagne has now allowed 2 home runs in 3 innings of work. His fastball velocity appears to be at 88.5mph, which is down 4 from last year’s 92.3mph. It may be is just a sample size issue and considering the Brewers other options, I think it’d be wise to give Gagne a bit of breathing room.

Mark Reynolds hit his MLB leading 5th home run tonight and he’s making a strong case for his Reynolds being Reynolds approach at the plate. Apparently his hitting coach believes he’s been chasing pitches outside the strike zone considerably less. His hitting coach is indeed correct since the data shows that he’s cut down on swinging at pitches outside the strike zone by 6%.

In some site related news, FanGraphs has updated it’s leverage index (LI) tables to Tangotiger’s latest and greatest. You may see some very (very, very) slight changes in LI related stats.

The Great Clutch Project tracker page has been updated and now includes BABIP. Also, the wildcard players now have gray backgrounds so you differentiate between them.

Every week, probably on Monday nights, we’ll be recounting the past week’s top players in terms of WPA and a number of the top plays of the week. I’ll also include whatever else I feel like recapping. Onto the Awards!

Batter of the Week:

Kosuke Fukudome led all players with .95 wins. He’s batting .421 on the season with a 1.279 OPS and couldn’t be off to a better start. His biggest play of the week was on opening day when he hit a three-run home run off Eric Gagne in the bottom of the 9th to tie the game.

Pitcher of the Week:

Felix Hernandez threw 15 shutout innings to start the season but failed to pick up a win. He struck out 9 and walked 5 in his two starts. He almost bested Fukudome’s WPA total with .92 wins.

Worst of the Week:

Brandon Lyon blew two saves this week giving him a WPA of -1.09 wins. Two of the six most valuable WPA plays were off of Lyon. He’s currently allowed 6 hits, 2 home runs, and 4 earned runs in 3 innings of work.

The 3 Biggest Hits:

#1: (.667 wins) – You guessed it, Edwin Encarnacion’s walk-off, three-run, home run takes top honors this week. We covered it when it happened and even have the great video of Jeff Brantley saying how “not clutch” Encarnacion is right before he knocks the ball out of the park. Classic.

#2: (.630 wins) – Josh Hamilton’s two-run, home run off of closer J.J. Putz put the Rangers up 5-4 and denied Felix Hernandez his first win of the season.

#3: (.550 wins) – Mark Reynold hit a two-run, home run off of Rockies closer Matt Corpas, which put the Diamondbacks in the lead 2-1. Brandon Lyon managed to blow the save opportunity, but the Diamondbacks eventually went on to win the game 5-2.

The 3 Biggest Outs:

#1: (-.288 wins) – On opening day, Rafael Betancourt got Jim Thome to ground into an inning-ending double play with the bases loaded and the game tied in the bottom of the 8th. His team, the White Sox, went on to lose to the Indians 10-8.

#2: (-.253 wins) – With the a runner on third and one out, Joakim Soria struck out Edgar Renteria in the bottom of the 9th. Soria’s team, the Royals, were up 5-4 against the Tigers and won the game on the very next play. This was just the start of the Tigers’ current six game losing streak.

#3: (-.221 wins) – In a game where the Twins grounded into 4 double plays, Joe Mauer’s game ending double play with a runner on 1st with one out was the most costly.

Brian Bixler pinch hit and struck out in the top of the 9th with his team, the Pirates, ahead 9-2. He failed to make the opening day roster after a horrible spring, but was called up after an shortstop Jack Wilson landed on the DL. Baseball America named Bixler the 8th best prospect in the Pirates system this season.

Denard Span got the his first start in right field for the Twins and batted 9th. He went 0-2 on the day with 1 walk and played the entire game. He was called up from AAA, where he was batting .333 on the season, to replace the injured Michael Cuddyer. Span spent his off-season listening to cassette tapes of Maury Willis to improve his base running skills.