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It is inarguably a great thrill to bear witness to the major-league debut of a top pitching prospect. It felt, for example, like the nation set aside whatever else it was doing to watch Stephen Strasburg blaze his way through the Pittsburgh Pirates on ESPN. You hear about the makeup and you hear about the stuff, and when it comes time for the debut, you’re looking for the pitcher to confirm the expectations you’ve had for him for months, if not years. You want evidence the guy’s as good as you already believe. Pitching prospects are aces long before they’re actual aces.

It’s a very different story with a player like Jose Abreu. He’s a prospect, yes, and there’s excitement there, sure, but Abreu is more of an unknown, no matter how much the White Sox committed to him. With a lot of inexperienced players, you’re looking for expectations to be confirmed. With Abreu, you’re looking for expectations to be set. This is the discovery period — we’re all learning the things we’re supposed to know about Jose Abreu down the road. What is there to be said about Jose Abreu after just his first week?

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The first batter Masahiro Tanaka ever faced in a regular-season game in the majors hit a home run. On Tanaka’s third-ever pitch, Melky Cabrera blasted Tanaka’s signature splitter, and just that quickly was the fairy tale smashed. There would be no season-opening whiff or shutout, and Tanaka might’ve figured the home run would stick with him for the length of his career. And that much is true, in that the game was documented, and Cabrera’s homer is something people will always be able to look up. But no one thinks of Yu Darvish and remembers that his career began with a four-pitch walk of Chone Figgins. No one thinks of Daisuke Matsuzaka and remembers that his career began with a single by David DeJesus. No one thinks of Stephen Strasburg and remembers that his career began with a 2-and-0 line drive by Andrew McCutchen. People will remember Tanaka for however Tanaka performs overall, and, one start in, it seems there’s an awful lot to like.

Which should surprise absolutely no one. Tanaka isn’t just a rookie — he’s a rookie recently given a nine-figure contract. Against the Jays, he threw two-thirds of his pitches for strikes. He kept the ball on the ground, outside of the dinger, and he didn’t issue a single walk while he struck the hitter out eight times. It was, granted, a Jays lineup without Jose Reyes, but it was a Jays lineup with everybody else, and Tanaka needed very little time to settle in and find a dominant groove. And along the way, he happened to pitch a lot like another front-of-the-rotation American League arm.

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One of my favorite tools we have here is our Playoff Odds page. I used to make frequent use of Cool Standings, and I keep track of hockey playoff odds at Sports Club Stats. I like looking at the playoff odds because they give the clearest sense of where things stand, and in theory, the whole point is getting to October, so why not monitor how likely that is in real time? Of course, we’re not just in it to see the playoffs — if that were the case, most baseball fans would be pissed off all the time, if they’d be fans at all — but getting to the postseason is at the core of most of what we talk about. Why do we care about player analysis? Good players make teams better. Better teams are more likely to go to the playoffs and win the World Series. And so forth.

Eventually, on our Playoff Odds page, you’ll be able to click through and see how the odds have changed over time. That hasn’t rolled out yet, though, nor are people probably even thinking about it in the first week of April. The season is so new we’re all still trying to find our baseball-fan footing, and it feels like the whole thing is in front of us. Most of it is, to be sure, but what’s already happened counts. And it turns out, what’s already happened for a few teams is pretty significant.

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Just yesterday, I was writing about pitches down the middle called balls, and I identified one from the other day thrown by Gio Gonzalez to Josh Satin. The umpire who called the ball was Clint Fagan, and I haven’t heard that name much before, but I didn’t think much of it, until a commenter pointed out that the strike zone was off all game. That one call, of course, was the worst, but Fagan called a zone that wasn’t the ordinary, familiar zone, and we can only speculate on the impact it had. There’s nothing to be done about it now.

Then last night, I started getting tweets to the effect of, “there’s another ball on a pitch down the middle.” That pitch was thrown by Roenis Elias (Seattle Mariners baseball player) to Nick Punto, and the umpire was Sean Barber, which is another name I’m unfamiliar with. Barber, like Fagan, had a weird zone all game, outside of the one call. Barber aggravated some players and his zone became a story, even in a tight game that went 12 innings. Barber and Fagan called strange zones on consecutive days, and it turns out the two of them are linked, besides just being included in the introduction of this post.

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This is an image, from Baseball Savant:

You’ll recognize that as the strike zone (1-9) and areas around the strike zone (11-14). What we have in Zone 5 is a zone that’s middle-middle — that is, that’s the heart. As a pitcher, that’s a good place to avoid. As a pitcher, you’re presumably incapable of avoiding it entirely. Now, in theory, there should never be a called ball on a pitch in Zone 5. You can kind of understand balls on pitches in the zone but near the edges. Umpires don’t have perfect vision. But, in theory, pitches taken in Zone 5 are unmistakable strikes. They’re pitches literally right down the middle. In practice, those pitches aren’t strikes 100% of the time, and I like to keep track of when things go awry in order to examine how it might have happened.

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The fastest pitch Mark Buehrle threw Wednesday was just shy of 84 miles per hour. For Buehrle, in early April, that’s not out of the ordinary, and he’s long been a guy who’s managed to make it work in the low- to mid-80s. What was a little more out of the ordinary was everything else. Armed with his usual stuff, Buehrle struck out 11 of 30 Tampa Bay batters. He was a fastball away from completing a shutout, and Buehrle himself was taken by surprise by what he was able to do.

Only one other time in his extraordinary career has Buehrle’s strikeout total reached double digits. He whiffed a dozen Mariners all the way back in April 2005, in a game that lasted all of 99 minutes. So, this was Buehrle’s second-highest strikeout total ever. Yet he generated just a dozen swings and misses. That’s a high number, but not as high as the strikeouts would suggest. In 28 career starts, Buehrle has missed more than 12 bats. In another 14, he’s missed exactly 12 bats. Buehrle was unusually unhittable without being unusually unhittable, and the reason for that is the very reason for Buehrle’s continued success in the bigs.

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Brandon McCarthy isn’t our boss, nor is he anywhere on the FanGraphs payroll, but similar to how one would act around a boss, we’re willing to do what McCarthy asks us to do. There’s nothing better than being handed an idea, and a year ago, McCarthy handed over an idea that we get to write about on an annual basis! The old tweet in question:

? for my stat enthusiast followers- in last 5 years, has any team’s opening day starter started the season with an off-speed pitch?

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) March 19, 2013

This was written about on March 20, 2013. Based on the evidence, it was pretty much fastballs all the way down, with one or two potential question marks. But now we can put together an update, because as of the beginning of Tuesday’s game between the Yankees and Astros, everyone’s 2014 opening-day game is complete. So what’d we get in terms of opening-day first pitches? Was it all fastballs, or were there breaking balls and changeups to be found? Please consult the following big giant table.

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In a close game Tuesday night, the Angels faced Robinson Cano with two on, two outs, and a base open. Standing on deck, instead of actual protection, was Justin Smoak, and in the clearest demonstration of protection theory, or lack thereof, the Angels put Cano on to take their chances with the next guy. If all you knew were those sentences, this wouldn’t seem worthy of a blog post. Smoak might one day turn into a good hitter, but so far it’s been all hype and lousy results. Cano is one of the very best players in the world, still hanging out in his prime. Yeah, you’d rather face Smoak than Cano, and while doing so requires you put another runner on base, the intentional walk is a low win-expectancy swing. Nothing seems strange, except for one thing.

Cano wasn’t simply intentionally walked by an Angels pitcher. Cano was intentionally walked by Angels starting pitcher C.J. Wilson. Left-handed Angels starting pitcher C.J. Wilson, who’s always run a big lefty-killing platoon split. Wilson put the lefty on to load the bases to face a switch-hitter, and as such, Mike Scioscia both played the matchups and didn’t play the matchups. It became a story because Smoak cleared the bases with a double, but even had Smoak gotten out, as was the likelihood, this decision would still be of interest. It isn’t often you see strategy that seems to run counter to the ordinary strategy. If there’s one thing a manager usually likes, it’s having his lefty pitcher get to face a lefty hitter.

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Monday featured, for the first time in 2014, a full slate of meaningful baseball, albeit with a bit of a lull in the late afternoon as the only live game for a stretch had the Rockies and the Marlins. I met a friend at a neighborhood bar a little after 5, and the bar had the game on all of its screens, and after a little conversation I found I was completely hanging on the action. Come August, I probably won’t be watching the Rockies and the Marlins, but this early in the year, everything’s interesting. And while we always know that anything can happen, there’s no cynicism around opening day. By the middle of the year, anything can happen, but we know what’s probably going to happen. In late March and early April, it’s more fun to imagine that baseball’s a big giant toss-up. That Marcell Ozuna looks good. If he hits, and if the Marlins get their pitching…

I don’t remember what most opening days are like, but this one felt like it had an unusual number of anything-can-happens. That is, events that would take one by complete and utter surprise. What are documented below are, I think, the five most outstanding miracles from a long and rejuvenating Monday. From one perspective, this is evidence that the future is a mystery and all a surprise is is a run of good or bad luck. From another, more bummer of a perspective, this is evidence that opening day doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things and come on why are you already projecting Grady Sizemore to be a five-win center fielder? Why are you already freaking out about the 2014 Blue Jays? Be whatever kind of fan you like. Just remember that baseball is a silly game, and you’ll never outsmart it.

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