People have jobs and dogs and maybe kids and they sometimes drink beer (the people not their kids) (hopefully) so sometimes it’s tough to keep up with all the innovations going on in the baseball statistical community. One thing that used to be easy to keep up with though is the value of spring training stats, which we long thought to be as meaningless as anything uttered by a six-year-old whether they’ve had beers or not. There are so many factors that go into the steady playing field that is a Major League Baseball season that are not present during spring training, including player quality, opponent quality, physical condition or lack thereof, the extremes of the playing environments in Arizona and Florida, and so on, that it’s a wonder they even call it baseball. That’s what I’ve long held to be true. Way back in 2010 our Dave Cameron wrote on this here site that spring training stats are worthless. To quote him specifically, Dave wrote, “…spring training numbers just don’t mean a thing. At all. Anything.” I’m getting a tattoo of that right above the giant eagle with the banner reading ‘There is no such thing as a bitching prospect.’ Always double confirm your tattoos before sitting, friends.

Since Dave’s piece was published, some studies, including here at FanGraphs, have showed that on-field success or failure in certain categories, such as strikeout rate (K%) and walk rate (BB%) for pitchers, during spring can foretell the same type of success during the regular season. This makes some sense as batting is reacting, so the quality of the batting would, in theory, heavily depend on the quality of the pitching, but pitching is an action not dependent on anything but itself. The quality of hitters will impact it, but a well-executed slider isn’t likely to be hit by anyone, regardless of whether they’re a major league regular or an org lifer in spring training to fill out the roster.

To be fair to Dave, he was talking about home runs and batting average, which are two traditional stats whose predictive value from spring training remains largely moot. Still, that there is some nuance to the whole value of spring-training stats is, to me at least, surprising, given all of the above. This past spring, March 31 to be exact, our Eno Sarris noted that strikeout rate for hitters stabilizes at around 100 plate appearances, and that because some hitters achieve that number of plate appearances or more during spring training that it might be worth keeping an eye on. He then created a leaderboard listing the hitters who cut their strikeout rates down the most during 2015 spring training when compared to the 2014 season, then he highlighted seven of those players. You can see his complete list here, but I think the list of seven players is worth revisiting to see if the players’ predicted progress is progressing through two months of action. So I did! And you’re reading it right now!

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We love to discuss and analyze hitting and we love to discuss and analyze pitching, but when it comes to fielding, we often just lump it in with pitching and move on to cleaning the kitchen or preventing the kids from setting the TV on fire. Well put down that sponge and don that flame-retardant suit because we’re going to talk about fielding!

A quick perusal of the AL Central standings reveals a few things. The Royals still think they are in the 2014 playoffs. The Twins don’t know they’re not very good. The Tigers don’t know they’re too old. The White Sox can apparently sign whomever they want and they’ll still be the White Sox. And at the bottom, Cleveland fields the ball like their gloves are made of actual gold. Contrary to anything awards-related you might have heard, this is not good. It is a problem for more reasons than irony and it is a primary reason the Indians are where they are in the standings.

But I’m presupposing here. Cleveland is allowing 4.6 runs per game. Only Boston (4.8) is giving up more among American League teams. The problem doesn’t sound like fielding; it sounds like pitching! Let’s see.

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For a while there we thought the Bryce Harper vs. Mike Trout thing was done with. Trout had dusted him. Trout had dusted everyone. Is there anyone Trout hasn’t dusted? Look at yourself! You are covered in dust!

Three straight MVP-quality seasons have made Trout more than a competitor with Harper, they’ve made him the face of baseball (sorry, Eric Sogard!). Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Harper has trudged along at a good, if not great, level. Sure, he’s only 22 and playing in the majors when most of his peers are at Double-A, but at this point comparing him to the best player in baseball is just silliness. That competition is over. Or was over, it seemed, until two weeks ago.

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Did you see Giancarlo Stanton’s homer that went out of Dodger Stadium? Stanton hit and the Dodger fans went “OOOOHHH!” and then 467 feet later, when they saw it go out, they went “OOOOHHH!” again. The Marlins color guy punctuated the moment by saying, “You don’t see that every night!” which indeed is true but maybe undersells it a bit. I mean I’d go so far as to say you don’t see that even every other night! In 4,000 lifetimes you and I could never do that, but Stanton did it in this one. Amazing.

Less amazing but more pertinent to this article is what kind of effect that has on the pitcher. As a former high-school pitcher (second-team all district, baby!) I’ve given up a homer or two and, in my very limited experience, when you face that guy again one of two things happens. The first is you challenge him again because he can’t hit your best stuff and also you’re an idiot. The second is you stay the heck away from throwing him the pitch he crushed in the first at-bat and probably stay the heck away from throwing him anything hittable in general. But that’s me in high school. Are major-league pitchers like that? At least one is!

Mike Bolsinger was the starting pitcher for the Dodgers last Tuesday. It was his 86 mph cutter at the top of the strike zone that Stanton hit so hard it briefly turned the fans of Dodger Stadium from Dodger fans into Marlins fans. An inspection of the relevant at-bat reveals that Bolsinger missed his location on both pitches he threw Stanton. The first cutter was supposed to be low and away but was up at the top of the strike zone. He was lucky Stanton missed it. The next one was supposed to be belt-high inside (there was nobody on base so I’m going by where the catcher set up). Bolsinger got the height right but left the pitch just a bit further over the plate than he probably wanted, a few inches which wound up endangering the well-being of anyone walking outside the left field area of Dodger Stadium.

So how did Bolsinger react to facing Stanton a second time? So this is interesting! Bolsinger threw Stanton six straight curveballs! Common perception is that you don’t want to throw too many of the same kind of pitch consecutively for fear the batter will hone in on the specific movement of the pitch. Mike Bolsinger may have many fears — groundhogs and people who don’t use coasters potentially among them — but what he definitely isn’t afraid of is throwing the same pitch twice.

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Coming into the season, the Red Sox rotation looked to be around league average. Instead, watching Red Sox starters this season has been like sticking 30 sporks in your eye: difficult, time consuming, and quite painful. So they’ve been worse than we thought.

The results from the starting staff have been bad and that badness has been unexpected but not nearly as unexpected as the Red Sox’ inability to score runs. While the rotation had a low upside, Boston’s hitters were expected to crush the ball. Indeed, the Red Sox were projected to score the most runs in baseball, but instead they’re seventh in the American League and closer to the last place White Sox than the first place Blue Jays.

To date, the offense has been mediocre instead of outstanding and, more importantly, hasn’t been good enough to cover for the starting rotation’s early season difficulties. But as you know if you read FanGraphs regularly, just citing runs scored isn’t enough. Though if it were I’d be finished right now and, I won’t lie, that has some appeal! Still, we want to know why, so let’s find out why.

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Remember when nobody wanted Nelson Cruz? He’d been with the Rangers but his contract had ended and steroids and everyone was like, “Nooooo thanks.” Well, not exactly everybody. After a long time the Mariners called and reportedly had a short deal done with Cruz before the front office nixed it. I picture former team president Chuck Armstrong in a military uniform with puffy pants shouting in a fake English accent, “No, no, not Mariner material!”

Finally, after waiting an entire off-season, Baseball’s Yukon called and Cruz signed a one-year deal with Baltimore and hit about a billion homers. Then he was a free agent again. It was at that point that the Mariners realized the error of their ways.

“But I thought you said…”
“Tut tut, my boy. Cruz!”

Some years to go, but so far the Mariners have nothing to complain about. Cruz leads baseball with 14 homers, three more than the closest imitator, and is currently slugging over .700. He’s done this even though he’s forsaken Texas and Baltimore, two hitter friendly parks, especially for right-handed home run hitters, for Seattle, a park a few nudges on the other side of hitter friendliness. You would think that would curtail his home run activities at least a bit, but so far, no problem for ol’ Nelly. How is Cruz still hitting homers despite his unfriendly surroundings? Let’s see!

It makes sense to write about Baseball’s home run leader in mid-May, but as you might imagine for the league’s home run leader, we here at FanGraphs have written about him before. Jeff Sullivan wrote a piece on Cruz on April 20, but it’s been three weeks and Cruz is still crushing it and we’re nothing if not completists here so why not take another crack. Read the rest of this entry »