Jhoulys Chacin hasn’t thrown a curve ball yet this season. Don’t think he hasn’t noticed. “That was my strikeout pitch,” he said, while agreeing he hasn’t thrown it. But he used it more before the four-man rotation, before the team decided to emphasize ground balls, before he injured his pectoral muscle, and before he learned the benefits of contact. This year, he hasn’t thrown a curve ball.

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Lucas Duda has made some changes. Though you’ll recognize the syntax from our look at Domonic Brown and his swing changes, Duda’s changes are more subtle. You might not even see them the first time around. But look a little closer — or, earlier — and you might notice a difference in approach. Maybe it’ll allow the big guy to tap into his power better this year.

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Sean Doolittle is a lefty and throws one pitch 87% of the time. Even without knowing his back story — he was a first base prospect that couldn’t stay healthy on the field, and pitching was his chance to “activate his insurance plan” as he put it — you’d be forgiven for throwing the dreaded “LOOGY” moniker on him. First basemen aren’t generally known for their arms, he can’t have a great breaking ball with so little experience pitching, and he’s a lefty with one pitch. He must be there to get lefties out.

But no, Doolittle is not a LOOGY, and he talked to me a little about how he makes that one pitch work for him.

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It’s been five years since Domonic Brown cracked the public consciousness as a five-tooler in the Phillies system. Five up and down years. Three of those years, he failed to impress in short samples with the big league team, and yet the team’s outfield crumbled around him gradually. So this year, playing time in the outfield is embarrassingly available. Domonic Brown made some changes, and looks to be ready to capitalize, finally.

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When FanGraphs was in Arizona earlier this spring, our merry band of nerds made our way to a Jarrod Parker vs Chris Sale afternoon tilt. The result on that 16th of March — an 11-5 win for the White Sox and bad performances from the two starting pitchers — was mostly unimportant to everyone in involved. But a few innings sitting behind the plate did provide some insights, including some reasons why those results were unimportant.

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Joey Votto wasn’t always Joey Votto. Not only is his mother happy about that fact — it would have made for quite a delivery — but his journey from the 44th pick in the 2002 draft to the hitter he is today covers a lot of ground. Talk to him about pulling the ball, infield fly balls, swing planes, and batted ball distance and you quickly understand that this is a man that studies and understands his craft. Learning his story from him can help us understand baseball better.

“I was a big pull hitter in high school, but when I tried to do that in Midwest League, I failed,” he said when we talked about hitting. He’s remembering it right, too — his .231/.348/.287 line in that league was very un-Votto-ian even if the walks were there. But since then he’s changed his approach in order to use the entire ballpark.

“The ability to spread the ball all over the field prevents shifting,” he said, and with his current approach, Votto thinks he’s “a tough guy to defend.” Specifically, Votto thought that the shift (and avoiding it) might be part of the reason why his .359 batting average on balls in play leads all hitters with with more than 2000 plate appearances since 2008.

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