If you’ve been following this series from the start, then this post doesn’t need any introduction. If you haven’t, you’re probably not starting now, so this post doesn’t need any introduction. If this counts as an introduction, then, I’m certain that it’s entirely unnecessary. If this doesn’t count as an introduction, then, what does it count as? “A waste of my time,” is probably a popular suggestion.

Here are the first three installments, from earlier in the week:

• The 2013 Season In Inside Home Runs
• The 2013 Season In Outside Home Runs
• The 2013 Season In Low Home Runs

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The ESPN Home Run Tracker is a wonderful resource, and I feel like I don’t even need to point that out, because by now you’re all already well aware. One of the bits of information it calculates for every dinger is the apex. This is the highest point above the field reached by the batted ball, in feet. The average home run maxes out right around 85-90 feet above the field of play before beginning its descent, and last year’s standard deviation around that, for example, was 20 feet. On the site, you can sort by apex, allowing you to see the season’s highest-hit home runs, and the season’s lowest-hit home runs.

This has nothing to do with that, despite the misleading post headline. Monday, I looked at the 2013 season’s most inside pitches hit for home runs. Later, I looked at the season’s most outside pitches hit for home runs. Now this is about the season’s lowest pitches hit for home runs, because I’m continuing a series just like I did a year ago. I suppose I could’ve spread these out a little more, but I don’t know what that would accomplish. Might as well get them all done quickly and then get back to regular business. There is not an overwhelming demand to read these posts.

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When you’ve got something that lends itself to a series, you might as well just complete the whole series. In recycling an old idea, I just wrote about the most inside pitches hit for home runs during the 2013 season. The natural follow-up, then, is to write about the most outside pitches hit for home runs during the 2013 season, so that’s what’s going to be below, because that’s the way these things work. Later on, we’ll find the lowest pitches and the highest pitches hit for dingers, and then we’ll move on. Or we’ll take the series deeper somehow. I don’t know, but we’ll find out.

I mentioned in the earlier post that the overwhelming majority of inside pitches hit for dingers were hit by righties. Correspondingly, the overwhelming majority of outside pitches hit for dingers were hit by lefties. Of the 100 most outside pitches hit out this past season, 69 were hit by lefties and 31 were hit by righties. The numbers are closer to being even than they were a year ago, but they clearly are still not even, and my presumption is that lefties get pitched outside more often, and also stand closer to the plate, perhaps because they get pitched outside more often. We know that the left-handed strike zone is shifted more away, so everything else follows. If we had data about pitch distance from batter bodies, that could tell us a bit more, but we don’t have that and maybe never will. What we’ve got is pitch location relative to the plate. So. That’s how this is all sorted.

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The hardest thing about writing is the writing. The other hardest thing about writing is finding ideas. Without an idea, you’ve got nowhere to put your words, and sometimes baseball doesn’t cooperate by providing an abundance of discussable topics. As I write this, nothing’s going on. Maybe Ervin Santana got a phone call, or maybe his agent did, but maybe not, and we’ll definitely never know. Even the executives have probably been thinking about the Super Bowl.

So here’s an official tip of the cap to content recycling. Who needs a new idea when you can just use an old idea over again? At the end of the 2012 regular season, inspired by Erick Aybar, I wrote a post about the year’s most inside pitches slammed for home runs. As it turned out, the pitch to Aybar that got me thinking didn’t make the list, and it didn’t even come real close to making the list, but a list was still made and it was fun and informative. And now we’ve had a whole other regular season since! So what’s the harm in exploring 2013’s most inside pitches slammed for home runs? That’s what follows, in the familiar form of a top-five.

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The Cubs weren’t going to win in 2013, and everyone knew it. The organization had begun to find its way, but it was understood it would be a long process, and 2013 would be more about development. That didn’t mean, however, that the Cubs would be inactive in free agency, and one of the things they did was sign veteran starter Scott Feldman for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. Feldman was solid over 15 starts, and then the Cubs flipped him to Baltimore with Steve Clevenger in exchange for Jake Arrieta, Pedro Strop, and some international spending money. In that way, the Cubs turned a stopgap veteran into possible long-term resources. It was perfect execution of a classic idea.

The Cubs aren’t going to win in 2014, and everyone knows it. The organization is still on its way, and overall it’s made progress, but it’s still going to be a long process, and 2014 will be more about development. That doesn’t mean, however, that the Cubs need to be inactive in free agency, and something they just did is sign veteran starter Jason Hammel for a year and $6 million, with an additional $1 million in possible incentives. What Hammel hasn’t been, yet, is flipped for possible long-term resources. But that could be perfect execution of a classic idea.

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Everybody’s interested in free-agent bargains. Regular free-agent prices always seem increasingly insane, so everybody’s interested in free-agent bargains. People ask about remaining bargains in seemingly every FanGraphs chat I either run or read, and my automatic answer has long been Chris Capuano. I don’t even think about it anymore. It’s Capuano, and then it’s on to the next question. I don’t remember when it started this way. I don’t remember what my initial explanation was. It seems about time to actually write a post about this, and as it happens, this post can even be timely.

Buster Olney wrote this morning about how free-agent prices are coming down with spring training nearly upon us. Teams have even exploited this as a strategy, figuring that, in time, players will get more desperate than the teams will. Olney also composed a few tweets, two of which are relevant to this particular Capuano-centric discussion. Now I’ll embed them, as you do.

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Let’s grant that there’s pretty much always something to not like about a given free agent. Baseball has a very limited number of truly extraordinary players, and those players seldom become free agents, at least before they start getting old. So any free agent will always have a more optimistic perception, and a more pessimistic perception. But no matter what could be said about other years, it’s felt like there’s been a lot of uncertainty within this year’s free-agent-starting-pitcher class. Teams didn’t know whether they could trust Matt Garza’s elbow. A year ago, Ervin Santana wasn’t good. A year ago, Ubaldo Jimenez wasn’t good. Masahiro Tanaka has never pitched in the States. Hell, the surest thing might be A.J. Burnett, and he’s old, and he just became an actual free agent the other day. For effect, let’s repeat that the surest thing within a given player pool might be A.J. Burnett.

Jimenez is probably the most mysterious out of everybody. He’s been an ace, he’s been a wreck, and he’s been everything in between. He’s not old, but he doesn’t throw like he did when he was young. Statistically, he’s coming off a bounceback season, having posted the same adjusted FIP and the same adjusted xFIP as Zack Greinke. The strikeouts were there, even if the old velocity wasn’t. On the surface, Jimenez and Santana look similar, in that they’re asking suitors to buy in to surprisingly successful 2013s. That makes them kind of difficult to trust. With Jimenez, though, it’s even more difficult. With Jimenez, it isn’t about all of 2013.

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Here are a couple things that we know:

• The Rays and the A’s are lower-budget baseball teams
• The Rays and the A’s have good ideas of what they’re doing

I suppose we can’t really prove the second one, but to the extent that results can serve as indicators, it’s hard to argue with how successful the teams have been despite their considerable financial disadvantages. Both front offices are thought of as intelligent, forward-thinking, analytical, and efficient, and they’re efficient out of necessity, because neither team can afford to flush money down the toilet. They need to try to get the most out of every dollar they spend.

Here’s another thing that we know: over the offseason, the Rays and the A’s have poured some millions into building up their bullpens. Relievers are often thought of as being lousy investments, and it seems easy enough to cobble a bullpen together on the cheap, so when the Rays and the A’s invest in late-inning vets, it gets attention. The temptation is to believe they’re exploiting some kind of inefficiency. The temptation is to believe we’ve been wrong about relievers for a while. Basically, the temptation is to believe that they’re on to something. And, you know, maybe that’s true. Maybe they’ve figured something out. Or maybe people are just looking for patterns in the sand. Maybe there’s nothing weird going on at all.

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To me, it isn’t fair to evaluate trades in retrospect. While there can be significance there, it’ll be out-shouted by all the random noise, and you can only ever make a decision based upon the information that you have at the time. But we can still look at trades in retrospect, just to see how they worked out, and of course there’s some insight in exploring the deal that swapped James Shields and another for Wil Myers and others. Plenty was written here about the trade at the time. Shields was worth 4.5 WAR last year, and he projects for 4 WAR this year. Myers was worth 2.4 WAR last year in a partial season, and he projects for 3 WAR this year. Shields is expensive and in his contract season. Myers is cheap and under control forever. This was basically the problem all along, even ignoring all the other parts, which can’t be ignored.

I don’t think opinions of the trade have changed. Those who supported the Royals going for it still applaud the boldness. Those who criticized the Royals going for it still believe it was a poorly-timed mistake. The move was controversial enough that people have dug in to their positions, and those minds are all made up. I’m definitely still on the critical side, myself. I thought it was too short-term of a move for a team that wasn’t ready. But a lot of people have taken this one step further. There’s a common belief that, by making the trade, the Royals gave themselves a two-year window, before losing Shields to free agency. The first year is gone. So there’s one year left of the window, but really, there’s not. The truth is a lot less black and a lot less white.

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