Holding and participating in weekly live chats is a really effective way to find out what people want to know more about, and therefore what might be worth writing about. It’s at least an effective way to find out what a few people want to know more about, and that’s usually good enough for me. I’ve been receiving an awful lot of questions about Rockies catcher Wilin Rosario, so he seems like a guy to discuss. Before we discuss Wilin Rosario, we must first discuss Josh Bard.

In 2005, the Red Sox had both Tim Wakefield and Doug Mirabelli. Mirabelli worked well with Wakefield, by which I mean Mirabelli demonstrated that he was capable of catching Wakefield, but in December Mirabelli got traded to the Padres. The next April, Wakefield made five starts for the Red Sox, throwing each time to Josh Bard. In the first start, Bard registered three passed balls. In the next start, Bard registered zero passed balls, but in the start after that, Bard registered two passed balls. He had another passed ball in Wakefield’s fourth start, and in Wakefield’s fifth start, Bard racked up four passed balls. That was on April 26. On May 1, the Red Sox traded with the Padres to get Mirabelli back, and Mirabelli caught Wakefield that day. He didn’t record any passed balls.

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I was watching the Mariners play the Angels Tuesday night, and unlike the majority of Mariners games, this was one I was glad I took the time to see. As my Mariners interests are concerned, I got to see Justin Smoak drill a couple dingers, continuing what’s been for him a rather torrid September. As my general baseball interests are concerned, I got to see the Mariners strike out 20 times, or I got to see Angels pitchers strike out Mariners hitters 20 times, tying the all-time nine-inning record. A team has recorded 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game only four times, ever. The Mariners have done it twice. From the hitting side, not from the good, dominant side.

There are three images, though, not two, that are sticking with me. There’s the image of a generic Mariners hitter striking out, there’s the image of Justin Smoak hitting a ball on a line, and there’s the image of Erick Aybar taking Erasmo Ramirez deep to right field. Aybar launched what I thought to be a pretty remarkable solo home run, and you can watch the video highlight right here. It’s not yet embeddable, because if this recent video clip were embeddable Major League Baseball would surely stand to lose millions of dollars.

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First there was man, and then there was baseball. Soon after baseball there were baseball statistics, because there’s no sense in male competition if you don’t have a record of who’s good and who’s not. Baseball was played in ballparks, and in time people came to notice that different ballparks affected the game in different ways. Eventually people put numbers to park factors, and after there were park factors, there were park factors broken down by handedness. This is where we are today, with the focus being on how specific environments affect specific players. Later on, we’ll know a lot more than we know today, but today we know plenty, relative to what we knew just a few years ago.

As we’ve come to understand park factors, we’ve come to understand the importance of sample sizes. Many prefer multi-year factors over single-year factors, because single-year factors can be misleading. That’s when you’re dealing with events that happen a lot, like walks or strikeouts or singles. Even with multi-year factors, you can observe wild swings with events that happen more rarely. I’m talking here about park factors for, say, hit batters, or park factors for triples. With that in mind, the updated righty park factor for Progressive Field for triples could end up looking a little silly. Let me explain.

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Are you familiar with FanGraphs? If so, hello there, friend! If not, welcome to FanGraphs, future friend! On FanGraphs you can find a wide variety of statistics and statistical leaderboards, and among the selection is plate-discipline data from PITCHf/x. As of a couple years ago, this data started including a Pace column. Pace is a simple statistic to understand: it’s the average number of seconds that pass between pitches, for both pitchers and hitters.

Pace is not a statistic that tells you anything at all about how good or bad a player is. There are relationships between Pace and deep counts or Pace and plate appearances with runners on, but Pace is more of a statistic intended to describe the game. We know that there are fast pitchers and slow pitchers, eager hitters and methodical hitters, and Pace gives us numbers. Pace has zero value when you’re talking about who stands the best chance of winning the next World Series. Pace has plenty of value when you’re talking about the gameplay itself, because it captures and describes a part of the viewing experience. It’s good to have numbers that do that, and the introduction of PITCHf/x-based Pace filled a tiny void.

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I recall that Tangotiger likes to think of pitchers as batters as a control group. Here we have a bunch of non-hitters put into hitting situations, and so their statistics in such situations are worthy of investigation. The best control group might be American League pitchers, pitchers who’ve never been in the National League before — NL pitchers, obviously, get more than a little batting practice — but even NL pitchers get only a fraction of the batting practice that position players get, because they are pitchers and they all need to work on their pitching. All of them. So they work as an effective control group anyway.

Within that control group, though, there exists a variety of batting approaches. Not every pitcher as a batter is alike, nor would we expect them to be. There’s Yovani Gallardo, who bats like a power hitter. There’s Barry Zito, who tries his damnedest to get his bat on everything and who doesn’t at all concern himself with the quality of actual contact. There’s Tommy Hanson, who sucks. Every pitcher as a batter is at least just a little bit different from all the others, and this all brings us to Ian Kennedy. Today you’re going to learn something about Ian Kennedy that you presumably didn’t know, and that you presumably didn’t think you would ever bother to know.

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Being a Mariners fan, I’m spoiled by the fact that I get to watch Brendan Ryan play defense almost every day. I’m anti-spoiled by the fact that I also have to watch Brendan Ryan play offense almost every day, but memories of watching Yuniesky Betancourt in the field are still fresh in my brain, and it’s difficult for me to imagine that there’s a better defensive shortstop than Ryan currently in the major leagues. I don’t even know what such a shortstop would look like; seems to me that, if there’s a fieldable ball in play, Ryan will turn it into an out or two, provided it’s somewhere within screaming distance of his starting position.

Ryan, absolutely, is one of the best. Some of the numbers suggest that he is indeed the very best. Even ignoring the numbers, his ability is readily evident to the casual observer. If there’s one guy who’s better, though, he plays in Atlanta. And he isn’t Tyler Pastornicky.

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Alternate headline: Yu Darvish Stops Being Polite, Starts Getting Real

Yu Darvish pitched again on Thursday, and Yu Darvish dominated again on Thursday. Unlike when he dominated the Mariners in his previous outing, this time he dominated a good team on the road, allowing a run over eight innings against the Angels. The Rangers beat the Angels, which the Angels found particularly devastating, and while it wasn’t all Darvish’s fault, it was a lot Darvish’s fault. Said Michael Young afterward:

“Yu has just been awesome,” said 3B Michael Young. “I hope people are appreciating what they are seeing, because rookies don’t usually get stronger as the season goes on. It’s usually the other way around. Guys are running on fumes as the season is ending. Not Yu. He’s getting stronger and better. He’s just been rock solid.”

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Shortly after the Mariners made the mistake of trading Brandon Morrow for Brandon League and another guy, it was noted by the Mariners’ front office that, the season before, League had thrown baseball’s most unhittable pitch. No pitch in baseball, apparently, generated a lower contact rate against than Brandon League’s splitter, and that gave us Mariners fans something to look forward to. What it actually wound up doing was give us something to complain about all the time, but no matter. That was the first I’d personally heard of a most unhittable pitch, and I fell in love with the concept. What better measure of dominance than whiffs over swings?

Of course, we all understand that pitches don’t exist in isolation. That year, League’s splitter was baseball’s most unhittable pitch, but it wouldn’t have been so if League only ever threw his splitter and never threw his fastball. There’s a lot of game theory stuff at play, so isolating individual pitch types is a little improper and misleading. Still, it’s a fun exercise, and I’m about to indulge. So we’re all about to indulge.

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There’s a sentiment that the players for the Miami Marlins have more or less given up. Not too long ago, Buster Olney wrote about it, and Ozzie Guillen fired back in fairly colorful fashion. On one hand, since June 5, the Marlins have gone 35-61, better only than the Astros in the National League. On the other hand, since the start of August the Marlins’ run differential is essentially even. There’s some evidence pointing both ways, and when uncertain, it’s probably wisest to err on the side of professionals behaving like professionals.

Wednesday, it might not have mattered whether the Marlins have given up or not, because Wednesday the Marlins went up against Kris Medlen. The Marlins beat the Braves in ten innings on Tuesday, but Wednesday they were left as Medlen’s latest victims. The Braves scored three times, which was two more times than they needed to, as Medlen worked eight scoreless before handing the ball off.

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