With an 8 run lead in the 9th, Keith Foulke was brought in for mop-up duty and allowed back-to-back home runs to Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. He ended up with 4 earned runs on the night raising his ERA from 3.47 to 4.81.

Despite the poor, meaningless outing, Foulke appears to have mostly returned to his 2004-self after battling a knee injury all of last season. He’s striking out about 7 batters per 9 innings and walking just over 1 per 9 innings, giving him a career high strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB). Too bad it’s going to take about 10 scoreless innings for his ERA to return to where it was.

Who would have thought that nearly two months into the season Mike Maroth would have the 5th best ERA in baseball with a 5-2 record to boot? To get right to the point, there’s only one graph you have to look at with Maroth: his left-on-base percentage (LOB%) graph.

Every stat this year except for his ERA and LOB% has shown either no significant change or have been worse than last season. In other words, he’s not really pitching any better than last year, but has been the benefactor of, dare I say, luck? Barring any significant change in his strikeout or walk habits, expect his LOB% to drift back to earth causing his ERA to be more in-line with his career average (4.68).

Last night’s 3-5 performance bumped Ichiro Suzuki’s batting average up to .314 for the season and marks the 15th game on his current hitting streak.

Over the past month or so, he’s seen a drastic rise in the number of groundballs (green) he’s hit, bringing him back to his typical batted-ball profile. Furthermore, he’s been beating out these same grounders for singles over 20% of the time, the highest at any point in his career. With his groundball percentage nearing a career high, it’s doubtful he’ll reach last year’s 15 home run mark, but I don’t see anyone complaining. Looks like this could be one of his “better” years in the average department.

After going homer-less in his previous 41 plate appearances, Aramis Ramirez hit home runs in his first two at-bats in the Cubs 7-4 victory of the White Sox. The two dingers resulted in a 26.6 Win Probability Added (WPA); his largest contribution on the season.

While struggling through back injuries he batted a horrible .197 in April, but is hitting a much better (though mediocre) .263 this month. Last season he had a scorching June compiling 35 hits for a .363 average including 7 home runs. Oddly enough, it appears he’s seeing the ball better than ever as shown by the dramatic increase in his walk-to-strikeout ratio (BB/K). Assuming his back troubles are over, it looks like he’s primed for a serious hot streak.

Scott Kazmir shut out the Marlins for 8 innings while striking out 11 batters and walking just one. Today’s win was his 7th; tying him for the league lead.

Is there any pitcher hotter than Kazmir right now? Over his past 5 starts he has a 0.77 ERA with 37 strikeouts and just 4 walks. He’s always been able to strike batters out, but he’s managed to cut his walks per 9 innings (BB/9) almost in half this year. With his wildness under control, starts like this are going to become old hat.

SportsIllustrated.com is currently running a feature on the great Albert Pujols. I was lucky enough to have my PitchZone charts included. You can find the article and all the PitchZone goodness here:

Hot Spots, Cold Spots: Where do the best sluggers do the most damage?

The Post-Gazette’s “Stats Geek” (Brian O’Neill) did a piece today on the Pirates lack of big hits in terms of Win Probability and Win Probability Added. If you’re a Pirates fan:

Click here to see the Pirates game-by-game charts….
Click here to see the full season Win Probability Added stats….

For further information on Win Probability and Leverage Index, you should head over to the Hardball Times:

Dave Studeman: The One About Win Probability
Tom Tango: Critical Situations

Daily Best

Jeff Francoeur – If a walk-off grand slam doesn’t get you top honors, what does? It wasn’t an “ultimate grand slam“, but I doubt any Braves fans are complaining. After hitting just .210 in April, he’s managed to raise his batting average to .250 by hitting a much better .310 this month. Back on May 9th he completed the daunting task of drawing his first walk of the season. Last year it took him 129 plate appearances to draw a walk and this year it took him 135 appearances.

Jon Lieber – Holding the National League’s top offense (the Reds) hitless through 7 innings was quite impressive and lowered his ERA to 5.50 on the season. A batting average on balls in play (BABIP) over .350 and a left-on-base percentage (LOB%) of 55.9% will tend to balloon your ERA. This start was more along the lines of what Lieber is capable of.

Daily Worst

Johnny Peralta – Going 0 for 4 and grounding into a double play with runners on first and second in a close game is the perfect way to make the worst list. He’s been dissapointing so far this year despite having a decent BABIP and a higher line-drive percentage. He’s been making slight corrections to his swing which will hopefully snap his slump. Don’t be surprised if the hits start falling soon.

Danys Baez – It takes some real skill to accumulate a -95 WPA over just one game. That makes him responsible for almost two losses! Baez’s has really cut down on his walks this year, but 5 blown saves are the only thing people will see. Hang in there until Eric Gagne returns.

The 5 Players I Feel Like Writing About

Jason Schmidt – He’s now thrown back-to-back complete games, something he hasn’t done since 2003. The strikeouts aren’t coming as frequently as they once were, but I’ll take a pitcher that can strike out 13 batters in 18 innings while issuing no walks, anyday. Keep a close eye on his walks; they will be key for him this season.

Todd Jones – Since coming back in late April, he’s converted 9 out of 10 save chances. He’s keeping his walks just as low as they were last season, but his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9) have nearly been cut in half from 7.6 to 4.4. That’s way below the acceptable level for closers and even Bob Wickman strikes batters out more often! As long as he’s converting saves he’ll hang onto the role, but I really feel Fernando Rodney is the better option.

Placido Polanco – While we’re on the topic of Tigers, Polanco has abandoned his patience and has starting to chase pitches out of the strike zone over 30% of the time. Last year he chased pitches just 16% of the time. The 14% increase has resulted in him drawing just one walk all season. Furthermore, his batting average and BABIP have returned back to his career norms. A repeat of last season’s .331 average is probably wishful thinking.

Carlos Lee – Could this guy please get a little more attention? He’s now batting just over .300 with 15 home runs; second only to Albert Pujols‘ 19. The secret to his success has been a bit more patience at the plate. He’s chasing bad pitches about 5% less and it’s resulted in a 5% decrease in his strikeout rate. It’s easier to make contact when you swing at hittable pitches.

Roy Halladay – Jason Schmidt was not the only pitcher to throw back-to-back complete games this week. Halladay limited the Angels and Devil Rays to just 1 run each while striking out 9 and walking 2. I think Halladay’s great, but if he just becomes complacent with his ground ball inducing powers and stops striking batters out, he’s in danger of turning into Tim Hudson.

As proof that I have too much time on my hands (if FanGraphs wasn’t proof enough), I was trying to think of which two pitchers currently made up the best setup-man/closer combination in baseball. The Angel’s tandem of Francisco Rodriguez and Scott Shields came to mind immediately along with the early season success of Mets’ Duaner Sanchez and Billy Wagner. As I went through the list of setup-men and closers, I came across the Mariners’ unlikely duo of Rafael Soriano and J.J. Putz; neither of which are “officially” a setup-man or a closer at the moment. Abandoning my original mission of finding the best pair, I thought these two would be perfect for my first Daily Graphing in over a month.

Back in 2004, Soriano looked like he might be headed to the starting rotation after posting a 1.53 ERA in 53 innings of relief in 2003, but Tommy John surgery limited him to just 10 innings the past two seasons. Putz on the other hand has thrown 123 innings the past two season with a 4.17 ERA and even served as closer for a brief period of time in 2004. This season, the two have combined for a 2.45 ERA in over 36 innings of work.

Neither of the two have any problems striking out batters as Soriano strikes out over 11 batters per 9 innings (K/9) and Putz currently has a K/9 over 12! As you can see, Soriano has always had immense strikeout potential, but this season, Putz has almost doubled his 2005 strikeout rate. Most of the rise is due to less reliance on his fastball (which Putz used to throw almost exclusively) and increased use of both his slider and splitter.

In terms of batted balls, the two couldn’t be more different. Putz has taken his groundball tendencies to new heights (or should that be lows?), by inducing groundballs 64% of the time. And Soriano manages to have 52% of his balls lifted into the air. Both of them are near the league leads in the respective specialties.

Typically, a 52% flyball rate might cause concern in the home run department, but I honestly don’t think it’s much of an issue with Soriano, considering his extremely high strikeout rate, not to mention his home-runs-per-fly-ball percentage has historically been low. Even though Putz does an excellent job of keeping the ball on the ground, he’s has had trouble with home runs in the past, but most of them were off his fastball which, like I mentioned before, he’s become less reliant on.

While Soriano and Putz aren’t exactly household names, through the first six weeks of the season, they have been two of the very best relievers in baseball. There’s absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t be able to continue their success. Next time you’re discussing the best setup-man/closer combinations (assuming these two eventually get slotted in permanently), you’d be wise to include them in the discussion.

Leverage Index (LI) is now available for all games and on a player-by-player basis. Much thanks to Tangotiger for letting us use his Leverage Index table to generate the graphs and player data. You can read more about Leverage Index here: Hardball Times: Critical Situations

There have also been some changes made to the Win Probability table which have resulted in some slight changes to Win Probability Added for each player. For the most part, all players should remain ranked the same in WPA, but pitchers should now have slightly more value than before and batters slightly less.