Recently, the Orioles have finally gotten active with regard to improving their ballclub. Such behavior was long overdue, because inactivity was likely to leave the Orioles in a non-competitive place despite a roster littered with upper-level talent. Their offseason, for a while, was as disappointing as Cincinnati’s, and on the heels of the Ubaldo Jimenez acquisition, writers all over the place have emphasized that the Orioles are working with a short-term window. That is, the Orioles need to win in 2014 or 2015, because after that, they could easily be without both Matt Wieters and Chris Davis.

Wieters is good, and next year is his last year of team control, and he’s represented by Scott Boras. Davis is good, and next year is his last year of team control, and he’s represented by Scott Boras as well. Certainly, the Orioles would rather have more good players than fewer good players, and if they do lose these two, they’ll have to work hard to make up for it. But I want to talk about the Orioles’ perceived window, just as I talked some time ago about the Royals’ perceived window, because the actual reality is always more complicated than the sound-byte reality. For Baltimore, it doesn’t have to be two years or bust.

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Sometimes there just isn’t a way to sex up a headline. The other day I tried to sate my own curiosity by looking at what happens to the called strike zone when there’s a runner on the move. The results supported what I expected to be the case, but the data’s also incomplete, so it’s not like anything could be proven one way or another. Ultimately it turned out to be half study and half idea-introduction. There’s not a lot I can do about it now.

The post was powered by the searchable Baseball Savant, which somewhat recently added a “stolen base attempt” check box. This time around, I want to do something a little more obvious with the data, since it’s data I’ve never played with before. There’s information for more than 14,000 stolen-base attempts in the past four seasons, which doesn’t cover all the stolen-base attempts, but does cover most of them. Let’s assume, for the moment, the data that’s available is accurate. How do stolen-base rates change by pitch velocity? How do stolen-base rates change by pitch height? Do the trends follow the patterns we’d expect?

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I’m pretty fascinated by the strike zone. More specifically, while the strike zone is supposed to be laid out in black-and-white in the rules, I’m fascinated by the fact that the strike zone changes. It’s there, at the very heart of the game, and it’s inconsistent. It always has been, and that’s something people just deal with. I’m fascinated by the documented realities of pitch-framing. I’m fascinated by the zone changes with the count. I’m fascinated by bad calls, in both directions.

In the past, I’ve looked up a bunch of should-be strikes that were called balls. In each case, I was searching for some kind of explanation. I noticed that on a handful of occasions, there was a runner on base and he had taken off for the next one with the pitch on the way. So the catcher would’ve prepared himself to throw, taking him out of ordinary pitch-receiving position. This got me wondering what happens to the strike zone when there’s a runner on the move. Not long ago, Baseball Savant added a “stolen base attempt” check box to its PITCHf/x search. So now you know where this is going.

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It’s been long enough that I think it’s easy to forget Homer Bailey was a top prospect. Between 2007-2008, Baseball America ranked him No. 9 overall, between Franklin Morales and David Price. A year earlier, he was fifth overall, between Phil Hughes and Cameron Maybin. Hughes was supposed to blossom into a guy who pitched like an ace. He hasn’t yet. Bailey was supposed to blossom into a guy who pitched like an ace. He has, now, having reached a new level with the Cincinnati Reds. Hitters are the ones who’re supposed to peak at 27, but Bailey stole a page out of their book, and now word is he’s on the verge of inking a long-term contract extension to stay where he is in Ohio. A year away from free agency, the talk is that Bailey’s looking at nine guaranteed figures.

Bailey was already a pretty good starting pitcher, before leveling up. He never let anything get out of control, and for a few years he was in the vicinity of league-average. But last season, he dropped his FIP- into the 80s, and he did the same with his xFIP-. Because the Reds aren’t a huge-budget ballclub, it’s a risk for them to attempt this kind of commitment, so they’re rolling the dice as an organization on Bailey being more like his 2013 self going forward. Naturally, then, one gets curious about what changed between seasons. Was there any kind of key to Bailey’s improvement?

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It wouldn’t be accurate to say that Craig Kimbrel is a rich man, now. But he’s basically guaranteed to become a rich man, soon, and then soon after that, he’ll be richer. His new contract with the Braves is a fascinating one, for reasons…Dave…has probably already illustrated, or probably will soon illustrate. The Braves have made a major commitment to an incredible and seemingly risky reliever, and in so doing they’ve avoided having to take this year-to-year. Kimbrel was in line to set some arbitration records.

For the Braves, and for analysis, what’s most important is what’s likely to happen with Kimbrel down the road. Contracts are forward-looking, and what’s already happened only matters in that it can help one determine a fraction of the future. People want to know what Kimbrel’s likely to be at 26, what he’s likely to be at 30. So much of our time here is spent looking ahead, and that is how it ought to be, but every so often it’s worth acknowledging the past. Worth acknowledging remarkable things that might originally have escaped notice. See, there’s this one thing Craig Kimbrel did.

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According to legend, Vladimir Guerrero once hit a home run off a pitch that bounced off the ground. According to similar legends, he hit more than one such home run. I haven’t actually been able to find any confirmation, myself, but I’ve been in possession of this alleged memory for years, and Guerrero was the kind of hitter who at least made you believe he was capable of such an extraordinary feat. I’m disinclined to doubt any story about Vladimir Guerrero, and we do, if nothing else, have video evidence of this, a single he hit off the ground against the Orioles in 2009. Guerrero was a free swinger, and a contact swinger, and when you put those two qualities together, you can see some incredible things.

Now, Guerrero last played in the majors in 2011. There’s certainly no one quite like him, and Pablo Sandoval might be the current game’s closest approximation. No one in baseball is capable of doing all the same things Guerrero did, but that doesn’t mean Guerrero’s departure marked the end of hits against pitches that bounce. From time to time, you still see a hitter get lucky after he’s chosen to be overaggressive, and below, let’s walk through all the hits from the 2013 season against pitches that first found the dirt.

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The other day, I got the idea to compare UZR data against data taken from the results of the Fan Scouting Report. Though there are certain things I’d change about the methodology were I to repeat the study, I’m still content with what I found, and I think it’s interesting to look at where the fans and where the numbers don’t see eye-to-eye. For example: Juan Uribe, when he’s playing in the field. The numbers have loved him. The fans have tolerated him. That’s interesting, even if I don’t know exactly why — yet. It might just have to do with the way Uribe looks, but there could be more to it than that.

Anyhow, once I compared and contrasted fans and numbers in the past, I felt the urge to do a similar sort of thing looking forward. FanGraphs hosts a few different projection systems; among them are the Fan projections and the Steamer projections. Soon, we’ll also have full ZiPS data, but we don’t have that uploaded yet. But we can make do with those two. Many fan opinions are in, and all the Steamer evaluations are in. Which players and pitchers do the fans like more? Which players and pitchers do the fans like less? Is there anything we can learn from what we find?

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For the Orioles it’s been an offseason of mostly quiet contemplation, interrupted only by brief attempted dalliances with Grant Balfour and Tyler Colvin. At last, though, they are stirring again, reaching a three-year agreement with Korean righty Suk-min Yoon worth a reported $5.75 million. The contract, like the others were, is pending a physical, so perhaps it would’ve been wiser to hold off on writing this for another few days, but let’s just assume this is going to be official. Let’s assume the Orioles know what they’re getting into.

Yoon’s a risky sort with limited upside, and there are real questions here that’ll be discussed later on. There’s a reasonable chance Yoon never throws quality innings in the bigs, and there are reasons why he’s signed for less than the market rate of one single win. But let’s just get something clear: this is hardly any money, especially given the three-year guarantee. More money this offseason was thrown at Garrett Jones. A similar amount of money was guaranteed to Willie Bloomquist. Michael Morse got more money. Chad Qualls got more money. Edward Mujica got a lot more money, despite ending up last year with shoulder fatigue. It should be recognized that this is a small commitment, with upside more in terms of potential value than potential ability on the pitcher’s part.

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A.J. Burnett’s been real good for two years, and he was better last year than he was the year before, so there’s good reason to believe he’ll be an effective pitcher in 2014. On paper, he was one of the best pitchers available this offseason, but for the longest time he was a special case because it seemed like he’d either retire or return to the Pirates. Only more recently did Burnett express his desire to play, and his openness to playing elsewhere. Immediately he looked like an interesting short-term target for probable contenders. What’s happened instead is that the Phillies have signed him, for a year and $16 million.

The Phillies were long thought one of the finalists. It seems Burnett didn’t want to stray too far from home, and that eliminated plenty of would-be interested baseball teams. And I want to make it clear that one-year deals for good players are usually good deals, and for the Phillies, I don’t have a big problem with this roll of the dice. But Burnett probably took the biggest contract, and he wound up with a mediocre ballclub. Burnett probably doesn’t make the Phillies a playoff team, and an interesting question concerns what might happen in June or July.

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