As a starting pitcher, you get to the All Star Game by dominating with a full array of pitches. You’re built to go deep into games and see lineups multiple times. You scout the opposing hitters and it’s all a lot of work. Then you get to the All Star Game, you break from your routine, you have to come in for a short stint, and you can air it out.

It’s a situation ripe for fastballs.

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Because of  interleague play, many of this season’s All-Stars have already seen who’s on the other side. But there’s a unique opportunity to see the best of the other league on one field in Minnesota. So I asked some All-Stars if they were looking forward to a particular matchup today.

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Brandon Belt was once thought of primarily a pitcher, so the Giants’ first baseman knows a little bit about change. He’s been accused of walking too much, striking out too much, and now perhaps swinging too much. But he’s still found his way to just outside the top ten at a position with a high offensive bar.

The process hasn’t been easy, but past changes to his game, combined with his current mindset, can both give us hope that he’s got what it takes to continue improving, while also dishing us a dollop of despair — hitting seems hopelessly hard, a continual game of adjustments, even on the game level.

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In order to get through the lineup multiple times, a starting pitcher generally needs to have more than two pitches. The list of starters with only one non-fastball is short, at least. So far, new Padres pitching phenom Jesse Hahn belongs on that list, as he’s thrown his fastball or curve almost 94% of the time this year. But there’s also a good chance that Hahn can be more than just the sum of those two pitches, as good as they might be.

For one, the curve ball is a pretty good place to start. Particularly Hahn’s sort of curve ball. “I really try to get on top of it and pull it down, I think it drops a good bit,” Hahn told me before an early July game against the Reds. “I think it has a lot of depth.” Even if he’s modest, he’s right — only seven qualified curve balls in the game drop more than Hahn’s at 8.8 inches. That makes it a ’roundhouse curve,’ which has a reverse platoon split. In other words, he has a weapon against lefties in that breaking pitch.

Hahn pulls those seams down and gets top-ten drop on his curve.

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The Yankees just pulled a rare feat by trading Vidal Nuno to the Diamondbacks for Brandon McCarthy. Only once in the last five years has a team traded for a pitcher whose results were so out of whack with their process and peripherals. Of course, that was when the Dodgers traded a player to be named later to the Phillies for Joe Blanton in 2012, but the Yankees have a few reasons to believe that this will turn out better for them than that trade did for the Dodgers.

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Before a game against the Padres, I sat down with Reds outfielder Jay Bruce to talk about his frustrating season so far, divorcing process from results, the value of routine, and his hitting approach in general. The player was so eloquent that it seemed best to leave his words alone.

Eno Sarris: I read a great piece you did with Trent Rosecrans recently. I thought it was very heartfelt and honest. When you said that in the past you felt what it feels like to be lost, and that you don’t really feel that this year, and about divorcing results from process. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the lost feeling — how did you feel that was so different then?

Jay Bruce: My whole life, I had not really had a fall back on routine. I just kinda played baseball and was really good at it, but everyone here is really good at baseball. Up until I got to the major leagues in 2009, I had never struggled anywhere. I mean I hit .270 in the GCL…

And you still hit for power. [.230 ISO]

Yeah. There was never really any reason to question what I was doing or why I was doing it or why I wasn’t doing it. I just always played. Just played baseball and the results came to what I thought they should have been and what the standard I had set for myself based on performances in the past. 2009 was the first time I wasn’t performing to the level I had expected and I didn’t have something to fall back on. What now? What do I do now?

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It’s hard being a young catcher. Even ones as highly regarded as Devin Mesoraco — rated the 11th best prospect in baseball the year he debuted — find the adjustment difficult. 589 plate appearances into his big league career, the young catcher entered the 2014 season still looking for a regular job and an approach at the plate that worked. In his fourth year, everything has clicked for him, and there he is, a top five catcher in the big leagues.

He’s not bitter, though. He understands that those years were important, and that they helped him make some important adjustments that have paved the way for this breakout.

“It’s tough to call a catcher up and throw him right in the fire to be the everyday guy, because there is so much to do,” Mesoraco said before a late June against the Giants. “You have to learn all the pitching staff, you have to learn the league and what those guys are trying to do at the plate. You also have to work on your fundamentals, throwing and blocking.”

It’s this kind of work that seems to suggest a later peak for catchers. They’re not only involved in almost every single play in the game, they’re helping the pitcher with his game plan and sitting in the most athletically demanding position on the field. But if you look at catcher aging curves, it’s unclear if there’s actually a later peak:

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Cliff Lee. David Price. Jordan Zimmerman. Tanner Roark. They share consecutive spots on an important leaderboard, but maybe more importantly for Tanner Roark is that he’s even in the same paragraph to begin with. Since he was released by his college team in 2007, a few signature moments have taught him the tools (and grips) to survive (and thrive) in the big leagues.

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