In the wake of his demolition of the Twins the previous weekend, last week was apparently the Nerdosphere’s official Jose Bautista Fest. As we bask in the the heat generated by the re-entry of Bautista’s various shots into the left-field seats, it is worth noticing some striking similarities between the mashing Blue Jay’s recent path and that begun just a season earlier by Tampa Bay’s Ben Zobrist. While Bautista is easily the superior hitter, Zobrist is no slouch himself. Beyond the general career parallels, what might make this worth examining is what we might learn about the sort of hitters that can develop power seemingly “out of nowhere” as these two did.

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It’s time for interleague play, again. Even moreso than the interminable disputes about which “style of play” is aesthetically superior, complaining about fairness of the presence/lack of the DH in away games, perhaps the most contentious debate among many fans (contentious despite the overwhelming evidence on one side) is that interleague play proves that the American League has been significantly stronger than the National League for at least a decade, no matter what this fine representative of the Best Fans in Baseball believes:

The American League’s domination of interleague for an extended period of time is good evidence for its superiority, whatever the causes of that superiority might be. However, some will point to individual players as being independent demonstrations. For example, Matt Holliday was a great hitter with the Rockies through 2008. He started the 2009 season in Oakland and “struggled” relative to what he’d done before. Some people attributed that simply to him being a product of Coors Field (sigh), but when he was traded to St. Louis, he started raking at almost the same level. It must be the league, right?

Or how about Pat Burrell, who came off a number of successful seasons in Philadelphia, signed with Tampa Bay, then bombed so badly for a season-and-a-half the Rays let him go for nothing in 2010. He then signed with San Francisco and tore the cover off the ball to help the Giants on their way to a World Series Championship.

Naturally, it is silly to argue from individual cases to a league-wide issue. However, I wondered if taking all the cases like Holliday’s and Burrell’s and putting them together might show us something about the relative strength of leagues, both now and in the past.

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Coming off of their 2-0 sweep (or non-sweep, depending on how you interpret Sunday’s rainout) of the Kansas City Royals, the Detroit Tigers are closing in on American League Central-leading Cleveland. The Tigers were one of the pre-season favorites to win the Central, so despite a rough start to the season (similar to the ones from which fellow projected contenders in Chicago and Minnesota are still recovering, if they do) this is no big surprise, especially given the overall weakness of the division. While the non-Justin Verlander contingent of Detroit’s starting pitching has been far from flawless, they’ve been pretty good overall (although it would help if Brad Penny could remember how to strike hitters out). The bullpen could probably use a bit of help, but that’s true of most teams, and the difference is usually marginal (and, to be honest, boring to write about). The Tigers might be good enough to take the division as they are now, but there also seems to be a couple of areas among their position players where they might be able to improve things.

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The vastly under-appreciated Carlos Beltran hit three home runs last night, boosting his line for the season to .296/.387/.590 (.417 wOBA). Although the Mets are, as expected, not in contention this season, Beltran’s return to his pre-2010 offensive form so far has been a welcome development. Given Beltran’s age and recent injury issues, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he’d simply not be able to contribute much this season. Despite the hot start, he’s in the last year of a big contract and probably not part of the Mets future. Beltran is probably a trade candidate. What sort of value does he have on the trade market?

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Matt Holliday is one of the best players in baseball. Joey Votto currently has a so-slight-it-is-meaningless lead in Wins Above Replacement among National League players over Holliday despite Holliday missing time at the beginning of the season recovering from an appendectomy. Holliday (201) is second only to his teammate Lance Berkman in wRC+ (213), and plays superior defense to Berkman.

Holliday’s excellence isn’t a recent development. From 2007 to the present, Holliday has accumulated more WAR (27.6) than any other position players in baseball other than acknowledged-best-in-the-business Albert Pujols (34.3) and the similarly underrated Chase Utley (28.6). Of course, there is a distinction between true talent and observed performance, and the uncertainty involved, e.g., with defensive metrics means that we don’t know “for sure” where Holliday ranks, but you get the idea. It is easy enough to see how good Holliday has been and continues simply by looking at his player page. He’s been just about as good or better than Carl Crawford each of the last few years; Crawford has been an excellent player (and very probably still is, despite his dreadful start in Boston), yet, unless I missed it, despite the big eventual payday, Holliday’s free agency did not receive the hype that Crawford’s did. Indeed, relative to his peers-in-performance, Holliday has not received much national attention lately. Why might that be?

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Chris Ian–, I mean Ian Stewart (26) has been horrible in almost every way possible at the plate so far this season. The Colorado Rockies obviously thought so right away, and optioned him to Triple-A after only 28 plate appearances. He came back last week, and has thus far on the season has accumulated a terrifying .073/.174/.098 (.137 wOBA) line. There’s no doubt it has been ugly, and manager Jim Tracy has had it, saying that it is “time for Stewart to fish or cut bait. He’s either going to play his way in or play his way off the team.” Tracy is understandably frustrated, with the first-place Rockies losing four games in a row, including three to second-place San Francisco. However, as might be implied by Stewart be called back up after only a couple of weeks in the minors, it is not clear that the the Rockies really have any better alternative than playing Stewart at the moment.

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After their 1-6 loss to the White Sox on April 10, the feeling in many quarters was probably that the Rays’ hopes for contention were on the rocks, as they dropped to 1-8. It was early, but if over the winter some were already skeptical of the Rays’ chances gives the offseason departures of Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, Matt Garza, Rafael Soriano, and Grant Balfour, then after the Manny Ramirez Era in Tampa Bay ending, um, not well, fellow free agent acquisition Johnny Damon not hitting, and, worst of all, Evan Longoria out with injury, the Rays goose understandably may have seemed cooked.

Fast forward to today: the Rays are 17-14, one game behind the Yankees, and pre-season favorites Boston are still under .500 after their own rocky start. Are the Rays simply having a hot streak, or are they positioned to contend for the rest of the season?

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[Alt: “Uggla’s Stick,” “Dan’s Uggla Stick”]

When the Atlanta Braves moved Marvin Prado to left field in order to make room at second base for Dan Uggla, whom they signed to a five-year, $62 million extension, this is obviously not what they had in mind. Prado (27) is currently hitting .252/.292/.370 (77wRC+) on the season, and Uggla (31) is chugging along at a robust .209/.266/.391 (73 wRC+). Prado’s problems are easy enough to explain by way of the pool of toxic waste in Turner’s left-center field — the same one that mangled the careers of Nate McLouth and Melky Cabrera. But what’s going on with Uggla? Is this simply a small-sample slump, or should the team be worried?

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