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Everything you know to be true in your heart but hasn’t been proven by stats is worth hanging on to, even if just a little bit, and privately. The stats may catch up some day. This isn’t to say that all conventional wisdom is correct. This is to say that all “statistically-proven” wisdom is not always going to continue to be true.

Take swinging strikes, called strikes, and Vance Worley.

Vance Worley blew up in 2011. He struck out more batters on a rate basis than he ever had in the minor leagues. He did it with one of the worst swinging strike rates among starters that year. He did it with called strikes — he was fifth among starters with at least 2000 pitches that year. He did it with style, as you can see thanks to Zoo With Roy:

As 2012 approached, I was tasked with figuring out his fantasy value for the upcoming season. I had a personal preference for the swinging strike. To me, there’s no cleaner statistical happening in baseball — that the batter swung and missed is irrefutable. And the swinging strike as a moment is both triumphant and despondent, all in at once. It renders a one-nothing August game watchable. It’s beautiful.

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At a lazy spring pre-game meeting with Bob Melvin a few weeks back, he mentioned off-hand that Marcus Semien wasn’t going to play every day. For half a second, it seemed we had a bit of a scoop on our hands, an emerging platoon at shortstop for the Athletics. But then, that was worth a confirmation — “You just mean he’s an Athletic, right?”

Yeah, Melvin said, “We don’t play anyone everyday. But when he’s playing, he’s playing short.” Less of a scoop, but still interesting, was this confirmation of what Billy Beane said during the winter meetings about Semien’s new-ish position.

Here’s a player that had played all over the diamond in Chicago, coming to a new team to take over one position as a starter. That hasn’t happened much before. In fact, only four players since 2002 have left one team as a utility man and arrived on their new team as a shortstop — Adeiny Hechavarria, Craig Counsell, Jed Lowrie, and Julio Lugo.

The manager and the player were upbeat about what the position switch would mean for his defense. As the latter three names show, it isn’t a move that’s usually done with defense standouts, but there might be something about focusing on one position that helps.

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Thirty-three innings into his major league career, Anthony DeSclafani was traded to the Reds. The Reds braintrust must have seen a few things they liked about his arsenal, and now it looks like he’s got a rotation spot. He’s got a good fastball, a decent breaking ball, and good command, that much most people agree on, even as they doubt him. So much of his future, though, hangs on the quality of his changeup.

Ask the pitcher to sum himself up, and you get what you might see the first time you take a look at DeSclafani’s numbers. “I’m an aggressive pitcher, especially with my fastball,” he said before a spring game. “Attacking hitters, going after guys — I just like to attack the strike zone, really.”

DeSclafani walked just two batters per nine in the minors, and only five in his first 33 major league innings. Last year, the league’s starters threw 56% fastballs, and the 24-year-old Marlin threw 70% fastballs. He was in the zone 49% of the time last year, and the league average was 42%. He knows himself well. His short description of himself is decent.

But most agree that he has a good fastball and decent command. And also that his breaking ball is good. It got 19% whiffs last year, and the major league average is around 14%.

Still. Batters had an OPS of .850 against his slider last year. That might be because major league hitters can be ready for those fastballs and breaking balls when the pitcher is obvious in trying to even the count.

“You have to be able to throw any pitch in any count,” DeSclafani says he learned last year. The league threw breaking balls 20% of the time in counts with zero or one strike last year, and then upped that to 30% in two-strike counts. DeSclafani went from 20% to 40% slider usage once he got two strikes, and maybe that was too predictable.

But part of the issue here is the depth of repertoire. If he had more faith in the curve or the change, he’d have another weapon at his disposal in those moments.

The curve is almost a total unknown. “Just started throwing a curveball at the end of the year last year, in September,” the pitcher admitted. He had thrown it before, but it wasn’t any good. “It was a below-average pitch so I kinda canned it. Fixed the mechanics, and I spike it now.”

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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Sometimes, in the middle of a larger research project, you run into random things that make you sit up straight. Like this one: in 2011, Chance Ruffin threw a changeup that registered 20 inches of arm-side run and ten inches of drop. Wut?

We don’t have video of 2011 — I wish I’d spied this before the calendar turned, because we only go back to 2012 now — but we do have some video. And it’s Friday, so let’s just take a look at some of the nuttiest changeups thrown by righties in the last three years.

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It looks like Adam Warren has a spot in the Yankees rotation going into the season. And, according to our depth charts, he has a chance to hold that spot until at least Ivan Nova’s mid-season return. Given the health histories of some of the veterans ahead of him, that means he could start all year.

Could he start all year? What might we expect from him, given his arsenal and transition from the bullpen to the rotation?

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What do we have here? For an explanation of this series, please read this introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data below is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems, with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Yes, we know WAR is imperfect and there is more to player value than is wrapped up in that single projection, but for the purposes of talking about a team’s strengths and weaknesses, it is a useful tool. Also, the author writing this post did not move your team down ten spots in order to make you angry. We don’t hate your team. I promise.

Time to rate the sluggers! Your first base depth chart in bar form:

Oh Philadelphia. Our heart goes out to your slugging slugger and the slugs he used to slug. Maybe your team actually would be better without Ryan Howard, though. Let’s focus on the positive, at least at first. The two studs at the top have a lot going for them.

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We have stats to help us understand which players are least replaceable in general. But the rosters are almost set, and now we can ask a specific question. Which players are least replaceable by the personnel on the team around them, right now?

To do this, we can use the depth charts on FanGraphs, manned by the writers on staff. These oft-updated team maps dole out the playing time by keeping an eye on health and current spring training updates.

So let’s compare the position players in baseball to their backups. Because players can be listed at multiple positions, these depth charts do a decent job of looking at what might actually happen should a player go down. Take a look at the Indians, for example. Brandon Moss won’t be on the bench waiting for Carlos Santana to be hurt, but if Santana is out of the lineup, it’s most likely Moss that will step in.

We can’t use counting stats to compare the starter to the backup, that should be obvious. Since defense is still an important part of the discussion, Wins Above Replacement is a good framework for us. Let’s pro-rate everyone’s WAR to 600 plate appearances so they are on the same footing. We used decimal points with the projected WAR just because we have to — there’d be a lot of backups with zeroes otherwise.

Now all we have to do is subtract the backup’s WAR/600 from the starter’s number, and we’ll get a list of the least replaceable players in baseball. Let’s group them by the number of wins their team would lose if they had to start the backup all season.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.