The bar is fairly low for an offensive catcher — the position has been 11% below league average since Brian McCann entered the league — and so even when the Yankee backstop hasn’t been at his best with his bat, he’s been good. Still, last year wasn’t his best year, and he noticed something he didn’t like, so he “got with Kevin Long” as he told me. Now McCann is back at career production levels, thanks to eliminating something he’s done his whole career: popping it up.

Maybe it’s unfair to call it a problem, but McCann has popped the ball up fairly regularly over the course of his career. Of the 533 qualified batters that have played since 2006, McCann has the 186th-worst pop-up rate (4.1%), which is a bit worse than the league average over that time period (3.5%).

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Hitting and pitching may seem equally complicated, but consider this: when it comes to hitting, you have to use both of your hands in one place. By necessity, that adds a wrinkle, and can make hitting analysis difficult. In order to focus on something we can bite off and digest, let’s just ask Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Joc Pederson what they think about the top hand.

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12:01

Comment From Maxamuz I paid $18 for Harper. Trout went for $42.

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“Lots of people say I’ve changed, and that I’ve done that or done this, but I’ve done this my whole life,” Bryce Harper said when I approached him about his breakout season so far. To some extent, he’s right. He’s just doing what he’s done, more often. Even the things he’s changed have been a return to his roots, to an extent.

“I’ve walked my whole life,” he pointed out. His walk rate in the minors was 13.3%, and before this year, he had a 10.4% walk rate in the majors. So he’s right, and as a young player — at 22, he’d still be two years younger than the average Double-A player, and he has yet to face a pitcher younger than him in the big leagues — he was destined to get better. Batters swing and reach less at the steepest rate before they turn 24, and Harper has improved in both cases by about five percentage points so far this year. Even if his current walk rate is double his career rate.

“Staying in the lineup, being healthy, being in the lineup every day no matter what”: that’s what Bryce Harper thought led to this start. “Not taking breaks. When I’m hurt, I’ll take a two month break and I’m not quite the same when I come back, it’s like going back to Spring Training. In September and October, I rake again.”

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Joe Kelly always seems just a tweak away from greatness. He owns one of the biggest fastballs in the game, and has decent secondary pitches that don’t deserve scorn either. His command isn’t great, but he’s no Henry Rodriguez either. Throw a little bit more of one pitch, or a little bit less of another, the thinking has gone, and we’ll finally see greatness from the guy to match his athleticism and velocity.

You might have to admit that the latest tweak, suggested publicly by his manager, makes you wonder if there’s a fatal flaw that will forever keep the 26-year-old Red Sox starter from realizing his potential. It’s already the third such tweak that either the player or the team has discussed since they acquired him late last year.

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Clay Buchholz has the best strikeout and swinging-strike rate of his career! Clay Buchholz has a new changeup grip! Therefore his strikeout rate must be because of his new changeup? Maybe, but it’s not a linear thing. Nothing in baseball ever is.

The Red Sox pitcher did change from a four-seam changeup grip to a two-seam grip — look at Jake Peavy’s versions for a reference point — and the difference has been stark. Read the excellent Brian MacPherson on the subject, and then look at the change in horizontal movement from the changeup.

When Buchholz has thrown his four-seam changeup, it tended to have little side-to-side movement. It instead would mimic the path of his four-seam fastball and then dive straight toward the dirt as it neared the plate. What the two-seam changeup does is mimic the path of a two-seam fastball, fading horizontally at the end of its flight — in on righties, away from lefties.

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This spring, the Arizona rotation was a fascinating mix of imported and home-grown youth, and Josh Collmenter and Jeremy Hellickson. Each of the youngsters gave us a point of emphasis this spring, and now that they’ve each had a few chances to show their work, we could give out some first semester grades. And maybe figure out how who’s at the head of the class.

Chase Anderson might have the best argument for valedictorian. He’s had the best ERA and peripherals, and that’s not too surprising, since he was the guy that had the most experience. And if Rubby de la Rosa has a plus changeup, you could say that Anderson has two.

So Anderson spent the spring working on his two-seamer, he said. If you look at PITCHf/x and his homer and grounder rates, you’d think he has succeeded in that effort. By that measure, he’s upped his usage of the sinker from 18% to 27%. His ground-ball rate has gone up from 40% to 43%. It’s a tempting narrative, especially since it fits into what the pitcher himself said earlier this year.

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Mat Latos throws a pitch that nobody in the big leagues throws. For good reason, too. He has no idea where it’s going.

“I was told in high school that it would never be a realistic pitch in the big leagues,” Latos said when I asked him about the pitch that he gripped like a knuckle curve but released like a changeup and was neither his breaking ball nor his changeup. Yeah, I said, sure, but what is this pitch?

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