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During their time together, much was written about Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, and the idea of lineup protection. In theory, by having Fielder right behind him, Cabrera would get more hittable pitches and hittable fastballs. Certainly, Cabrera’s offensive game didn’t suffer, and when Fielder went away, much more was written about the idea of losing lineup protection. Would Cabrera be pitched around, with an inferior threat behind him? In the very early going in 2014, there were half-humorous observations that Cabrera’s rate of pitches in the strike zone actually went up. That is, by losing his protection, Cabrera wound up in a better spot, and therefore the idea of protection is nonsense.

But there’s something interesting there. Pitch patterns, given a good-enough sample, can reveal something about opposing scouting reports. If Cabrera had seen more strikes with Fielder on deck, perhaps that would suggest that Fielder was serving as protection. Josh Hamilton doesn’t get a lot of pitches in the strike zone, because teams know to make him chase. Marco Scutaro gets a lot of pitches in the strike zone, because teams know not to be too afraid. What if — what if — teams pitched to Miguel Cabrera as if they weren’t that afraid of him? That would be crazy, right? Wouldn’t that be crazy?

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A few years ago — unfortunately I don’t remember where — I remember seeing an article beginning with the premise that not all pitches out of the strike zone are alike. What we offer here on FanGraphs is O-Swing%, a rate of swings at pitches out of the PITCHf/x zone. Yet this groups all such swings and pitches together, and for a hitter, swinging at a pitch an inch outside is different from swinging at a pitch a foot outside. One might indicate a little better discipline than the other. The author decided to see if there were cases where O-Swing% was misleading, given the distribution of swings at balls. What he found was, no, it’s fine. Over full seasons, there’s no need to get more granular. But what about when you’re short of full seasons?

This little study was inspired by Jose Abreu, and a hunch. Abreu, right now, owns a 152 wRC+ in his first-ever exposure to the bigs, and his isolated slugging percentage is an impossible .369. He’s already been everything the White Sox could’ve dreamed of. Abreu also owns one of baseball’s higher O-Swing% rates, at 39%. He’s been fed a lot of pitches out of the zone, and he’s swung at a lot of pitches out of the zone, and that trait and success don’t always go hand in hand. What I wondered was: has Abreu been swinging at borderline balls, or has he really been fishing? He’s already demonstrated that he can drive pitches on any of the edges. His functional zone might just be bigger than the average zone. To what degree has his zone really expanded?

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As I write this, it’s still early in the 2014 regular season. But, as I write this, Ervin Santana has one of baseball’s better adjusted ERAs. He has a top-five adjusted FIP and a top-10 adjusted xFIP. He has a top-10 strikeout rate, an upper-level strikeout/walk ratio and a top-five contact rate allowed. He’s been absolutely dominant against right-handed hitters, and he’s been only slightly less dominant against left-handed hitters. Santana was late to sign — and it took some injuries to get him to Atlanta — but through a handful of starts, Santana has demonstrated a new level of ability.

And, looking back, perhaps we were tipped off. Think about how you used to think about Ervin Santana. He was homer-prone — in your head and in the numbers — and he was an example of a fastball/slider starting pitcher. He never mastered a third pitch, so he never frequently threw a third pitch. And while his slider was good enough for him to get by, the limited repertoire set him a lower ceiling. Santana, we assumed, was a known entity. Then we heard something at the end of December.

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Earlier, FOX posted a piece I wrote about hitters who do and don’t see many inside pitches. Since the start of last season, Yasiel Puig has seen more inside pitches than anyone. Andrew McCutchen has been the very opposite, among righties. As far as lefties are concerned, pitchers are more willing to try to blow up Chris Davis and Ryan Howard than they are Chase Utley and David Murphy. It’s simple stuff, but I think it’s interesting stuff, and stuff we don’t get to see very often.

Now, in an outright display of corporate synergy, I thought it’d be useful to look at some similar kinds of data for pitchers, since pitchers represent the other half of the pitcher-batter equation. Consider this a companion article. Which pitchers throw inside the most to righties? Which pitchers throw inside the most to lefties? Which pitchers work down most often, and which pitchers work up most often? Probably, the data doesn’t have many surprises, but probably, the data does have some surprises. So let’s get into some tables.

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When it comes to looking at hitters, there are two ways to come up with a scouting report. One way is to do the scouting yourself. The other is to let the pitchers do it for you.

Every hitter has his own unique skillset, so every hitter gets pitched a little bit differently. As much as pitchers say they prefer to use their strengths over trying to attack the hitters’ weaknesses, what we end up observing is a compromise, an approach that blends knowledge of the pitchers’ strengths with knowledge of the hitters’ strengths.

While a good number of hitters are fairly similar, certain players are attacked in a variety of ways.

FanGraphs has ready access to data about the types of pitches that different hitters see. Owing to their respective strengths and weaknesses, San Francisco’s Marco Scutaro gets a lot more fastballs thrown his direction than Pedro Alvarez.

FanGraphs also has ready access to data about whether hitters see more or fewer pitches in the strike zone. Again, Scutaro sees a lot of strikes, because generally speaking the worst he can do is hit a single. Guys like Josh Hamilton (Angels) and Jose Abreu (White Sox), meanwhile, are pitched around, because they can hit the ball hard and they’re willing to expand their zones.

Consider the second set of data, above. The stats display who gets pitched in the zone, and who gets pitched out of the zone.

But what if we went about that a little differently, with a little more granularity? Let’s look at the guys who get pitched inside the most and the least often? What does that information tell us?

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From Michael Wacha’s start Wednesday night in New York, there might be something to learn about the notion of a pitcher either having it or not having it on a particular day. Conventional wisdom is that pitchers have good days and bad days, and sometimes a guy just doesn’t feel it from the start. Through three innings against the Mets, Wacha had nine strikeouts out of a possible 12. In the fourth inning, Wacha had one strikeout out of a possible eight. In other words, Wacha went from doing something historically great to struggling to find the zone, in a matter of minutes. Reality is that a pitcher can find or lose his feel between pitches. How a guy looks at one minute might not mean very much with regard to how he’ll look a few minutes later on.

But while I went into this thinking I’d write about Wacha’s strikeouts, what I stumbled upon is something even more remarkable. There are more high-strikeout games now than ever before, and while Wacha’s feat was certainly unusual, it no longer feels so insane. But how Wacha actually pitched against the Mets — he didn’t really pitch like himself. Pitch mixes vary to some degree all the time, yet Wacha all but abandoned his signature.

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An important point to remember is that defensive shifting isn’t new. As much attention as the shift gets these days from broadcasts and other media, teams have been moving their defenders around for decades. What’s changed are two things: shifts now are a little more individualized, and shifts now are a hell of a lot more common than ever before, by leaps and bounds. Used to be a few guys would get shifted against. Now it isn’t even unusual to get shifted against, since it’s not like it’s only the elite hitters worth a bit of strategizing. Pull and spray tendencies, after all, are similar across the board.

It isn’t just the greats that get shifted against, which is how you end up with situations like the Pirates shifting against Brayan Pena. It doesn’t matter that Brayan Pena isn’t a good hitter — if there are ways to make him worse, any gain is a gain. It’s strategy, on the Pirates’ part, to shift against Pena. And for every strategy, there is a counter-strategy. What you’re about to observe is Brayan Pena trying to beat the Pirates’ shift, from Tuesday night. Did I already mention that Brayan Pena isn’t a good hitter? Yes, okay, good, that’s going to come up again.

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The best and the worst thing about baseball is that, during the season, it’s almost never not going on. Every single day brings a new slate of games, and if you actually step back and think about it, it’s kind of overwhelming. The Brewers are off to a hot start, at 15-6. All they have left is another 141 baseball games. The upside is that, if there’s a lousy baseball day, there could be a better baseball day right around the corner. The downside is that, if there’s an incredible baseball day, in a short amount of time it’s yesterday’s news. Baseball allows for only so much time to reflect.

Case in point: it’s Wednesday, and at this writing, on Wednesday, the Marlins and Braves have already finished a game. Because the Marlins and Braves have already played Wednesday, there’s less will to think about what the Marlins and Braves did Tuesday. But just Tuesday night — last night — the Marlins and Braves competed in a classic. As things turned out, Jose Fernandez and Alex Wood put together at least the pitchers’ duel of the season, and perhaps the pitchers’ duel of the last many seasons.

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While there’s a chance you have your own personal anecdotes, most of us are familiar with Nathan Eovaldi for one thing: He’s a starting pitcher who throws super hard. I guess that’s two things. But so far this year, he’s got baseball’s second-fastest average fastball among starting pitchers, behind only Yordano Ventura. Eovaldi has been doing this since he first reached the majors, and he’s one of those live arms on the Marlins that leads people to think the staff has enormous upside. There’s all kinds of sex appeal in a starter who can throw 98 mph.

Most people equate good velocity with good stuff. And I think good velocity leads to one of two assumptions . Either the guy is an unhittable ace, or he’s tough to hit but wild. Basically, there’s the thought that good velocity means a low contact rate, and then it’s just a matter of how many strikes get thrown. But this year, Eovaldi’s been doing something different to the extreme — pitching like a guy with a very different profile. Nathan Eovaldi has been blending Ventura’s fastball with Bartolo Colon’s approach.

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