To be fair, it’s not like people really expected Vernon Wells to be that good this season. The Angels’ decision to bring in Wells and his colossal contract was universally panned. But even though Wells wasn’t going to be worth $23 million in a season, he did show signs of life in 2010, posting a .362 wOBA and 3.8 WAR for the Blue Jays. The Angels thought they were at least getting a solid, if overpriced, player in Wells. Instead, Wells has posted a .214 wOBA so far. What gives?

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The opening of any MLB season brings with it a host of underperforming players, and 2011 is no different. Superstars like Carl Crawford, Carlos Gonzalez, and Hanley Ramirez have taken up lodging in the unfortunate sub-50 wRC+ club. Although Crawford’s .199 wOBA and 15 wRC+ are the worst among qualified players, not even he can approach the unfortunate season Alcides Escobar is suffering through. Escobar’s league-worst Win Probability Added of -2.01 is nearly a full win worse than second-place Crawford’s -1.02.

Escobar’s context-neutral stats aren’t much better, but his .224/.248/.265 line is still, somehow, significantly better than what Crawford has managed through his inaugural Red Sox campaign. Unlike Crawford, though, Escobar has had his poor season magnified by multiple failures in extremely high leverage situations. Escobar has seen seen six situations with a leverage index of 4.0 or higher — given that 1.5 is considered high leverage, these were extremely important situations. Except for receiving one intentional walk, Escobar made an out in every single one. All told, his WPA for these six plate appearances alone adds up to -0.911, nearly equaling Crawford’s WPA from his entire horrible season. Expanding our scope to all high-leverage situations, Escobar holds a .059/.158/.059 triple-slash. He even breaks wRC+, with a -38 mark in those situations.

The Royals have quickly fallen back to earth since opening up the year at the top of the AL Central. Escobar’s incompetence in high leverage situations has been a significant reason why. It is a tiny sample, and one will imagine that Escobar can turn things around at least a bit, and get some hits to drop in. Unfortunately for the young Escobar, though, nothing can change what’s already happened: one of the worst clutch stretches imaginable for an MLB player.

For the second year running, the Padres look to have one of the best bullpens in baseball. After posting a 2.75 ERA and 2.95 FIP as part of an unlikely 90-win season in 2010, the Padres are doing it again in 2011, with a 2.33 ERA and 2.85 FIP out of the gates. Although Heath Bell is the headliner of the group, his opening act, Mike Adams, deserves just as much credit. His ascension from total baseball obscurity was detailed excellently by SBNation’s Grant Brisbee today. The man just keeps getting better, too: since 2010, Adams has a 1.60 ERA and 2.31 FIP, both in the top 10 among pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched in that span.

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When the Yankees acquired Curtis Granderson from the Detroit Tigers prior to the 2010 season, many expected the All-Star center fielder to thrive in the New Yankee Stadium, even relative to his excellent tenure in the Motor City. Although 2010 wasn’t a disappointing season by any means — Granderson put up a .346 wOBA and solid defense in center en route to 3.7 WAR — he didn’t realize the power boost that many expected with the move from lefty-suppressing Comerica Park to lefty-friendly New Yankee Stadium. That is, until this season. After a modest 24 homer season in 2010, Granderson has slugged seven quick bombs in 2011, lending credence to those who expected Granderson to go supernova last season but were left disappointed. Even though it took a full year, though, we shouldn’t be surprised Granderson is showing some premiere power.

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One of the more bizarre plays I’ve seen by a pitcher occurred during Saturday’s tilt between the Oakland Athletics and the Detroit Tigers. With Daric Barton on first base and David DeJesus batting, Justin Verlander appeared to hit DeJesus with a pitch. However, a look at Verlander’s footwork revealed something very odd, and confusion ensued. Due to MLBAM’s arcane rules regarding video, I cannot embed the video here, but you can see it at this link. (And now in .gif form from Chad Moriyama of Memories of Kevin Malone!)

Although you can’t tell from the end of the video or the befuddled announcing crew, the result of that play was actually a balk, resulting in Barton moving over to second base and the at-bat resuming with a 2-1 count. Let’s dive into the video and examine just why the balk was called here, with the help of some screenshots.

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The first ten games of Justin Upton ‘s age 23 season have gone pretty well. Through his first 46 plate appearances, Arizona’s prodigy has a .300/.391/.575 triple-slash line and a .411 wOBA. This comes even without the ever-present sky-high BABIPs that tend to characterize early season success. Instead, Upton’s BABIP sits at .290, well below his career average of .343. Upton’s success is coming with walks, heavy doses of contact, and Power.

That’s Power with a capital P. Upton hit his third home run of the season last night off Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter. It went far.

(Click to embiggen, click this for video)

According to HitTracker, Upton’s bomb traveled 478 feet, the best of the young season by 16 feet.

This kind of elite power was missing from Upton’s 2010 season, where he posted a rather human .349 wOBA and 3.1 WAR. As annoying as the small sample size caveat can be early in a season, I’m not invoking it for this year’s numbers. Instead, I prefer to give a reminder that power numbers barely even stabilize over the course of a full season. The numbers presented by Eric in that link say that SLG only stabilizes after 500 PAs and ISO after 550, a number that Upton barely passed in 2010 (571 total PAs).

Upton isn’t likely to continue to homer on one out of every four fly balls he hits, but mammoth shots like the one above tell us that his true talent probably isn’t too different from the 2009 season, when he posted a .232 ISO and 26 home runs in just under 600 PAs. And, of course, at only 23 years of age, there’s plenty of room for growth as well.

The other thing to watch for Upton as his year continues is his strikeout rate. So far, through 46 plate appearances, Upton has only struck out in 15% of his at-bats, nearly half his career rate. It only takes 150 plate appearances for strikeout rate to begin to stabilize, so we should be able to get a good beat on Upton’s progress in three weeks or so. The strikeout rate is the last thing keeping Upton from moving into the truly elite tier of hitters – just imagine what a player with that kind of power could do if he made contact on 80% of his at-bats instead of 70%. Upton didn’t get much experience in the high minors, but in the low minors, he had strikeout rates hovering around 20% instead of 30%, so it’s possible that his development in the majors could lead to a lower strikeout rate this year.

Hopefully one slightly down year as a 22-year-old Major Leaguer didn’t fool anybody. Justin Upton is here to stay, and he should be an MLB force for years to come. With what we’re already seeing from him at such a young age, we shouldn’t be surprised if Upton continues to impress with his power and with his other tools as well.