David Price had one of the best starts of his career on Tuesday. With any start, you always have to consider the opponent, since it’s the opponent who’s responsible for doing anything with the pitches that get thrown, but at least by the numbers, Price was absolutely outstanding in Seattle, turning in a walk-free complete game with a dozen strikeouts. He was sufficiently dominant that he was allowed to handle the ninth inning of a one-run game, and he closed the deal with a 96 mile-per-hour swinging strikeout. Not that it was the swinging strikeouts for which people will remember the effort.

Closing the bottom of the first, Price froze Corey Hart with an inside running fastball. That was the first of eight called strikeouts Price would record, giving him twice as many called strikeouts as whiffs. It was tied for the highest called-strikeout start of the 2014 season, and while most called third strikes are the result of a hitter being caught off guard, in the end Price’s called strikeouts were pretty similar.

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Let’s talk about something Yasiel Puig did on Monday. In the fourth inning, off Tom Koehler, he hit a home run. He does that. In the fifth inning, off Henry Rodriguez, he walked on four pitches. The same guy had just previously walked Dee Gordon and Dan Haren. In the third inning, Puig flied out. In the seventh inning, Puig grounded out. For good measure, Puig also got caught stealing. But let’s hone in on the bottom of the first. Gordon led off with a groundout, and then it was Puig vs. Koehler with nobody on.

First pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. Second pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. That quickly, Koehler was ahead of Puig 0-and-2, and there is no more advantageous count for a pitcher, aside from 0-and-3. Koehler could choose from anything to try to put Puig away, and Puig was put on the total defensive. At that point, he probably wished he would’ve put one of the fouls in play.

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Eric Hosmer is still sitting on one home run as we approach the one-fourth point of the regular season. He hasn’t hit fewer than 14 dingers yet in a year, so it’s clear that Hosmer’s still looking for his power stroke. But don’t make the mistake of believing that Hosmer has yet to make a positive contribution — he’s got a 120 wRC+, which is basically right on what he did a year ago. Let’s keep doing that, comparing last year to this year. The offense has been identical, overall. Hosmer last year was nine runs below average defensively. Hosmer this year is on pace for about -7. So in a sense, Eric Hosmer has been just as good a player. But, last season, Hosmer was worth just over three wins. This season, he’s on pace to be worth just over one win. How do you explain that, when a guy’s been hitting the same and fielding the same? Is WAR losing the mind that it doesn’t have?

That’s one option. Or you could look at WAR’s other, oft-forgotten input. You think about baserunning value when it comes to burners like Billy Hamilton and Jacoby Ellsbury. It’s easy to kind of forget about it when you’re dealing with a first baseman or a DH. But, to this point, according to our leaderboards, Hosmer has been the worst baserunner in baseball, at almost five runs below average, already. That puts him on pace for -21, eclipsing Kendrys Morales‘ recent record of -14 in 2009. Hosmer, presumably, won’t keep up this impossible pace. Previously, for his career, he was actually above average. But how did things get to this point? How has Hosmer already cost his team that many runs in such a small sample of games?

There are .gifs, and, unfortunately, they are big.

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By now you might’ve read that, Sunday afternoon, Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run on his curveball. Clayton Kershaw does not often give up a home run on his curveball. According to some sources, it was the first time Kershaw’s curve had been hit out in the regular season, ever. This is a disputed instance, from April 2011. We do know, for certain, Kershaw gave up a playoff dinger on his curve in 2009. Matt Holliday hit it, but unfortunately for him, the same game for Holliday became differently eventful in the later innings. Also, 2009 was before Clayton Kershaw became Clayton Kershaw. But anyway! The point is that Kershaw’s curve doesn’t get taken yard. It got taken yard, so that’s interesting.

Lots of people have come at this from the Kershaw side. Not a lot of attention has been paid to the Brandon Hicks side. Hicks is 28 and a former prospect, and a big reason why he’s never gotten regular big-league playing time is because he hasn’t been able to consistently hit non-fastballs. Since 2002, 1,308 position players have batted in the majors at least 100 times. Hicks has posted the third-lowest contact rate, at 59%. According to PITCHf/x, Hicks has swung at 172 non-fastballs and whiffed at 60% of them. Hicks is an all-or-nothing sort, and maybe that’s precisely the sort that was going to take Kershaw’s curve out. But prior to the homer, it’s not like Hicks looked comfortable against Kershaw breaking balls.

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Here and elsewhere, Rob Neyer has discussed, at some length, a trend he refers to as the Strikeout Scourge. Whether you’re for it, against it, or neutral, there’s no denying what’s going on — strikeouts are rising, league-wide.

Right now, strikeouts are happening more frequently than ever. A year ago, they were occuring the most frequently they’d ever been. The year before that, swinging and missing was even more popular. The year before that . . . you get the idea.

Strikeouts are just a common part of the game, and statistical benchmarks you used to consider familiar and stable no longer have the same meaning. Just about everybody is striking out more.
So it’s no longer odd to notice a rising strikeout rate. What’s odd is to notice the very opposite of that, and this brings us to something most curious about the so-far surprising Colorado Rockies.

One of the hottest players out of the gate has been Charlie Blackmon, after spending spring training not sure if he’d have a regular job. Blackmon’s been one of the most valuable players in baseball, and as a component of his success, he’s all but completely stopped striking out. The single most valuable player in baseball, meanwhile, has been teammate Troy Tulowitzki, and he’s also an excellent contact hitter. Nolan Arenado has established a new franchise record with a 28-game hitting streak, and he makes a habit of putting the ball in play. The Rockies have hit the snot out of the ball, and driving that is that they’ve actually hit the ball.

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A couple days ago, the Orioles and Rays played an ordinary, nine-inning baseball game. The Orioles won, 5-3, and the official time of game was three hours and 36 minutes, excluding a short delay. In the low minors on Wednesday, Clinton and Burlington played an extraordinary, 12-inning baseball game that Clinton won 20-17. The official time of game was three hours and 28 minutes. That could make for a story in and of itself, but with the particular game in question, such a story would kind of bury the lede.

By now, you’ve probably heard about what happened, because what happened has shown up on news sites and television shows across the country. And when something from a minor-league baseball game goes viral, you know you’re not dealing with just any other game. In part, it’s just crazy how many total runs were scored, but the real story is about the sequencing — host Burlington scored 17 of the first 18 runs. Clinton scored the remaining 19, erasing a 17-1 sixth-inning deficit. These aren’t teams that play in the California League. It was classic minor-league insanity in a way that wasn’t really classic at all, and whenever you see something like this, you always want to check out a win-expectancy chart. Or, I do, anyway.

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Plate discipline is easy. You’re supposed to swing at hittable strikes and lay off of everything else. Two-strike discipline is also easy. You’re supposed to swing at basically all strikes and lay off of everything else. The problem is pitchers have conspired to throw baseballs both wickedly fast and wickedly darty, because they are the hitters’ very opponents, and this makes the ideal theoretical discipline impossible to achieve. But when you have two strikes, you definitely don’t want to get caught staring at a third. That’s a pitch a hitter should’ve swung at. It’s an inevitability that called strikeouts happen, and that’s even inevitable for Victor Martinez, But for the longest stretch, he was clean. For 641 consecutive plate appearances, he was clean.

Understand what we’re talking about: Over just about a full season’s worth of plate appearances, Martinez didn’t strike out looking. His streak started on May 22, 2013, carried through the playoffs and ended on Monday. Now, this isn’t always necessarily indicative of success. Last year, Endy Chavez struck out looking once, and he was bad. Josh Phegley struck out looking once, and he was bad. This year, Alex Presley has yet to strike out looking. Back in 2012, the lowest ratio of called strikeouts to swinging strikeouts belonged to Delmon Young. If you swing at everything, you’ll never watch strike three. But the same numbers can be different indicators for different players, and for Martinez, this seems like an accomplishment to celebrate.

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I know you’ve got pitch-framing fatigue, and I know this isn’t going to help. I know that some of you are going to skip right over this, and that’s fine. But this post isn’t about a leaderboard, or a specific pitch or pitch sequence. This is about an acknowledgment of the role of the skill, from one of the people we figure catchers are trying to convince. A lot of the time, when a post goes up here about framing, someone chimes in in the comments all skeptical-like, claiming that umpires aren’t influenced by the catchers catching the pitches. The very fact that framing numbers hold up season-to-season suggests strongly that they’re measuring something. There’s also a little something from Tuesday, as brought to my attention by @AaronBell80.

The Dodgers beat the Nationals 8-3, in Washington. The biggest story of the game, probably, wasn’t the start by Blake Treinen. The biggest story about Blake Treinen, probably, wasn’t about his called strike zone. But, Treinen started and threw to Jose Lobaton, with Paul Nauert behind the plate. When the game was over, Lobaton passed a little something along to the media.

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Probably the worst move of the offseason was when the Tigers shipped Doug Fister to the Nationals for a package highlighted by prospect Robbie Ray. It was at least the move most commonly referred to as the worst move of the offseason, and on his own list of the worst transactions, Dave Cameron put it at No. 1. I don’t need to go into all the explanations, but because of all the conversations we’ve had, Ray and Fister might be forever linked. Ray is certainly a pretty well-known prospect, now. And just as everyone expected when the trade was announced, Ray has ended up pitching in the majors in 2014 sooner than Fister has, after making his big-league debut Tuesday night.

There’s only so much you can make of a start, particularly when it’s a first start. You have to account for all the jitters. You have to think a pitcher might not have his normal approach. Ray happened to start against the Astros, which makes for another variable, and then, above everything else, you have the sample size of a handful of innings. Ray survived, which means his start was a success, and he allowed just one run, which means he can feel really good today. Big-time analysis, we can’t perform. But for some analysis, we are already in the clear.

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