Jed Lowrie has played for three organizations already, despite having accrued little more than two full seasons worth of Major League plate appearances. That might be because the oft-injured 29-year-old has never had so much as 400 plate appearances in a given season since his major league debut in 2008. Through it all, he’s been trying to shake off those injuries and prove himself as a young veteran in the league. Maybe we’re just getting to know the real Jed Lowrie now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

“I’m not a tremendously gifted athlete,” Mark Trumbo said. “I have to work at it, and be smart out there.” That might be surprising given how country strong the six-foot-four, 225-pound outfielder looks, but if you consider his game at as a whole, it’s obvious that there are aspects that could use refinement. Statistics have helped shape some of his baseball values as he’s worked to improve himself, even if he doesn’t incorporate them daily.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sliders have platoon splits. The traditional slider does, at least. So opposite-handed hitters are always a struggle for the fastball/slider reliever.

That’s not really the case for Luke Gregerson. Though the throws his slider more often, percentage-wise, than anybody in baseball not named Sergio Romo, Gregerson has avoided platoon splits over his career for the most part. The right-hander has struck out 24.6% of lefties, and 25.2% of righties. He walks a few more lefties (9.6% vs 6.3%), but that’s not the profile of a guy who can only get righties out. How does he do it?

Luke Gregerson has three sliders.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

When we, as fans, use anecdotal evidence in our quest for baseball truths, we often over-emphasize iconic moments. Our sample degrades into big moments we can remember. So we turn to data to give us an unbiased look at the facts. But when a hitter evaluates himself and his swing, he usually turns to his memory for help. And though that evidence is anecdotal as well, the sample is huge — that hitter spends most of his time thinking about hitting, and all of his time being himself.

So it’s no surprise that Chase Headley knows best why Chase Headley showed more power in 2012. And that the slugger has had a complicated history when it comes to using data.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The ranking might change day-by-day, Jarrod Parker said, but he agreed: “Overall I would say the fastball and changeup are my two better pitches.” And that changeup is special — he threw it more than any secondary pitch last year, it was his best-rated pitch, and a big part of why he had the 21st-best swinging strike rate among qualified starters. It wasn’t always that way, though. Coming out of high school, Parker was a fastball/curve guy. So what happened?

“I got hurt and didn’t want to throw as many breaking pitches, so I started working on a changeup.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of the time, pictures do more justice than talking. So when Jason Castro said a few words about catcher framing, I immediately wanted to run to a computer to look at what he was talking about. Maybe next time we’ll take a look at some video together and tease out what he meant a little further. But this time, just a few words were worth a lot of thinking, and the pictures filled in the blanks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, a little comment can send you down a wormhole. Brandon Crawford is a glovely young man, and we talked about platoon splits — he doesn’t remember having trouble with lefties in the minors — and a few other topics, but it was one thing he said about his defense that popped.

Read the rest of this entry »