So here’s the deal for the Tigers: they were planning to run with a platoon of Andy Dirks and Rajai Davis in left field. Davis is still his ordinary, healthy, surprisingly-33-year-old self. Dirks, however, is hurt, and he’s going to have back surgery, and the timetable has him maybe returning in three months. Neither the injury nor the procedure is expected to jeopardize Dirks’ career, but he’ll miss a lot of time in this year’s first half. The Tigers have a problem because one of their projected regulars won’t be able to be a regular for some time, and the guys behind regulars are worse than the regulars are.

The Tigers are trying to be a playoff team, so on the heels of the Dirks announcement, the natural question is, what’ll they do to patch this? Suddenly, the team has an obvious weakness. Playoff teams ought to address their obvious weaknesses. If you’ve mentally skipped ahead, perhaps you’ve concluded that this won’t actually be that big of a deal. It turns out I agree with you, but wait, I have several hundred words of explanation! Don’t go!

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Baseball, without question, is going to be a worse game without Mariano Rivera. It wasn’t just that Rivera was consistently excellent. It’s that he was also unwaveringly humble and gracious, being the rare sort of Yankee you could like even if you rooted for a team of non-Yankees. But Rivera’s retirement does, at least, open up some questions that previously wouldn’t have been up for debate. When it comes to picking the best at something, Rivera’s absence gives a chance to somebody else.

I was asked in my Tuesday chat to identify the new most dominant pitch in baseball. Before, the answer was automatic: Mariano Rivera’s cutter. It was that way for nearly two decades, as Rivera rode one masterful pitch to glory and a certain place in the Hall of Fame. Rivera never really declined, and his cutter topped the list because of his command, his results and his longevity. But now we’re able to entertain the idea of other pitchers and other pitches. With Rivera out of the picture, choosing another pitch isn’t blasphemous. The way I see it, there are two contenders.

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Spring is a time for big talk, for positive talk. Spring is when everyone’s sure they’re going to get better. And maybe everyone really does get better all the time. It’s just that some people get less better than others. Mike Matheny is in charge of a really good baseball team that almost won the World Series last fall. But Matheny, like most baseball people, wasn’t completely satisfied. In 2014, he wants his team to be better. And specifically, he’s also looking for his pitchers to be better… at hitting. And he thinks it’s going to happen.

“We’re going to be a better hitting group of pitchers this year,” Matheny said. “They do so much talking about how athletic they are but they were not content with what they were able to do on the offensive side last year.”

Continued:

“There were a lot of swings and misses,” Matheny said. “We were one of the worst teams in baseball with strikeouts from the pitcher’s position. That just shouldn’t be so.”

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Something that makes total sense is that catchers need to know their pitchers. Catchers, after all, are the guys calling all of the pitches, and catching many of the pitches, and you often hear about guys who either are or are not on the same page. It makes sense how familiarity could have an effect on pitch-calling. It also makes sense how familiarity could have an effect on pitch-receiving, as greater familiarity will yield a greater understanding of how pitches move and where they’re likely to go.

Earlier this very Monday, Eno posted an article titled “Familiarity Breeds Better Framing“. Eno was passing along material he got in speaking with Oakland catcher Stephen Vogt, and Vogt used Luke Gregerson as an example of a guy he doesn’t know well enough yet. Vogt needs to learn Gregerson’s tendencies and movement in order to maximize his own ability to catch him. This all got me wondering: can we see anything in the PITCHf/x data? What do the framing numbers look like for pitchers who’ve changed teams?

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There are three primary benefits of spring training. One, all the players get to get ready for the regular season. Two, Arizona and Florida get to have people want to go there on purpose. Three, it’s like a two-minute warning for writers. It’s irrelevant, transitional baseball that reminds writers they’re running out of time to look back on the previous season. Right now, I can still get away with a post about stuff that happened in 2013. A month from now that’d be a waste of everyone’s time. So here’s a review of last season’s bunt doubles. If this doesn’t interest you, that’s fine, and soon enough we’ll have plenty of other posts about projections of the future that will turn out looking lousy in retrospect.

Here’s a fun fact for you: last year, there were more bunt doubles around baseball than Astros wins. That isn’t true, but here’s a fun fact that is true: last year, from September 13 onward, there were more bunt doubles around baseball than Astros wins. Two years ago, Quintin Berry bunted for a double for his first major-league hit. Juan Pierre also had a slap-bunt double, and that was it for the season. Last year, there were three legitimate bunt doubles. And to make things even more interesting, all three were different in structure and sequence. Below you’ll find .gifs, screenshots, and attempted explanations. Nothing here has been doctored, except for the players, who have probably been to the doctor.

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This post isn’t about Ervin Santana, who remains a free agent. This post was inspired by fly-ball pitchers, and, interestingly, Santana is no longer one of those, despite his reputation. Definitely, he’s still somewhat homer-prone, but his groundball rates have been creeping up over a few years. He’s pretty neutral, but still, people see him as this fly-ball guy, and so as rumors have flown around, people have questioned the wisdom of certain places being potential destinations. Would you really want a fly-ball guy in, say, Baltimore? Would you really want a fly-ball guy in Toronto? Those are pretty homer-friendly parks. In theory, they’re not suited to Santana’s skillset.

So there’s a question to research: how much does it matter? How much are fly-ball guys hurt by homer-friendly parks? How much do fly-ball guys benefit from non-homer-friendly parks? Beyond the simple park factors, of course. Everybody gives up more homers in more homer-friendly parks, but we know how to adjust for that. What can we say about fly-ball pitchers after that adjustment, for example? Hopefully, you follow. If not, well, I’m still typing. Maybe you’ll start following soon.

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Here’s something that should be pretty evident: If you’ve got a ground-ball pitcher, you want him pitching in front of a strong infield defense. Likewise, if you’ve got a fly-ball pitcher, you want him pitching in front of a strong outfield defense. I feel like I don’t even need to explain the thought processes. How many times did people express concern over Rick Porcello starting for last year’s Detroit Tigers? Porcello’s a ground ball guy. Last year’s Tigers started Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder at the corners. Intuitively, that could’ve been a problem.

OK. As presented on FanGraphs, the UZR era stretches back to 2002. Over that span, last year’s Tampa Bay Rays had one of the best infield defenses, at +50 runs. Not surprisingly, ground-baller Alex Cobb posted an ERA well below his FIP. More surprisingly, fly-baller Matt Moore showed an even bigger positive difference. Let’s flip things around. The 2004 New York Yankees had one of the worst outfield defenses, at -68 runs. Not surprisingly, fly-baller Javier Vazquez pitched below his peripherals. More surprisingly, ground-baller Jon Lieber showed an even bigger negative difference. These are just carefully selected individual examples, but they help to set up a bigger-picture study.

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I don’t even remember what I was looking up on YouTube this morning, but there, in the sidebar, was this, and it just had to be clicked on.

It was, of course, a legendary baseball game, the rare regular-season game that interests more than just fans of the two teams involved. It wasn’t supposed to be anything special from the outset, but most people understand what happened that day — the unbeatable Seattle Mariners took a 14-2 lead over the Cleveland Indians into the bottom of the seventh, and the Cleveland Indians won.

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This began with an observation: Since 2008 — covering the bulk of the reliable PITCHf/x era — Miguel Cabrera has swung at just under 47% of pitches with the bases empty, and just over 53% of pitches with a runner or runners on. Now, in that span, 130 different players have faced at least 10,000 pitches. Out of all of them, Cabrera has the biggest positive difference in swing rate. As it happens, Derek Jeter has the biggest negative difference in swing rate, but maybe that’s a different article. Cabrera has swung more with men on; and at bats with men on are more important at bats.

I wanted to dig deeper.

The next step was to break things down by year, to see if there might be a developing trend or a steady pattern. As is often the case, I have to express my gratitude for the existence of Baseball Savant. This table suggests one thing:

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