It’s too early to worry. It’s only one outing, right? Right?

But when three of baseball’s premier strikeout pitchers combine for just one punchout in games on Friday, well, it’s interesting. And exceptionally rare–especially for these guys.

Entering 2011, Jon Lester had made 123 starts in his career, with his only K-less appearance coming on April 9, 2008. In that game he lasted 5 1/3 frames, allowing four hits and four runs to go along with four walks. Brett Myers had made 216 career starts and never left a game sans strikeout while lasting at least five frames. Ubaldo Jimenez had started 116 games, whiffing one or fewer batters in at least five innings on just two occasions: September 20, 2007 (6 1/3 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 1 K), and May 21, 2008 (7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 1 K).

On Friday, neither Lester nor Myers recorded a strikeout, and Jimenez fanned only one batter. In fact, Myers recorded only one missed swing. In a total of 18 1/3 innings, this trio managed fewer strikeouts than Ryan Madson did in his one inning of work.

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The absolute hardest part of being a fan or analyst is avoiding the use of small samples to make a definitive claim. Allowing unreliable information to shape an opinion or serve as the foundation for an important decision is a mistake. This especially occurs in the opening week of the season when the statistics produced are meaningless and everyone is susceptible to the manipulation of numbers out of sheer joy that baseball has resumed. Just because Ramon Hernandez went 4-5 yesterday does not mean he has regained his stroke and will have an all-star caliber season. The same can be said if he starts the season 12-20, or 21-40.

We have enough information about his true level of abilities at this point in time that 20 trips to the dish is nothing more than a mere blip in the dataset. But when can we be sure that a trend to open the season is actually indicative of a noteworthy change?

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The Marlins recently decided that Matt Dominguez is not ready to hold down a starting gig in the majors. By sending him back to the minor leagues for more seasoning the team explicitly acknowledged the need for an everyday corner infielder. However, finding the right player will prove to be an interesting exercise in roster management given that Dominguez is not far away from starting. Since he could conceivably be ready by the middle or end of the season, the Marlins find themselves in need of a stopgap solution–a placeholder brought in to hold down the fort until their top prospect is ready to contribute.

There are several freely available external options that fit this bill as well as a few players already at the team’s disposal. The Marlins need to stick to this group of players and resist the urge to spring for the pricier, sexier names. Perhaps that qualifier was unnecessary since the words “pricier” and “Marlins” aren’t usually found in the same sentence. Anywho, acquiring a more costly player could hamper the team’s payroll and block a future contributor for a mere marginal gain in the interim.

It is important to keep in mind that the Marlins were essentially willing to punt the position by even considering Dominguez for the starting spot. Had he been ready to shoulder the load of an everyday role, three or four wins of production would have been an unrealistic expectation. He managed just a .337 wOBA in Triple-A last season and has not raked since his 2008 stint in Single-A. His value stems primarily from his work with the glove, and while the bat may develop, it wasn’t going to do much damage this season.

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We’re pleased to welcome Eric Seidman back to FanGraphs today. Despite taking a 20 month sabbatical, he is still second among writers in post count here on the site. He’ll be contributing his thoughts here on a regular basis, and we’re pleased to welcome our own prodigal back home.

Brandon Allen has done everything a prospect can do to prove he deserves a legitimate major league opportunity, but the Diamondbacks seem unwilling to give their young slugger an extended look. With the emergence of Juan Miranda as a potential starter and the news that Russell Branyan will make the opening day roster, Allen appears to be the odd man out at first base. Since the team signed Xavier Nady to an incentive-laden major league deal and is committed to giving Gerardo Parra another shot as a starter, Allen also finds himself on the outside looking in at a crowded outfield. Add in that he has options remaining and it becomes increasingly likely with each passing day that he will open the season back in the Diamondbacks farm system, a destination he has completely outgrown.

Over 688 Triple-A plate appearances since 2009, Allen has hit .277/.397/.541 with passable defense at both first base and left field. He’s young, cost-controlled, and clearly capable of producing at a high level, but for whatever reason the Snakes lack confidence in his abilities. Scouts have expressed concern about his swing, but anybody with those numbers at the highest level of minor league competition deserves serious major league consideration.

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For the sake of brevity, let’s just say that I have been critical of rookie GM Ruben Amaro this season. Perhaps my criticisms were the result of my being a Phillies fan as well as an analyst, making an example of him in an unfair manner. Or, perhaps my remarks were right on the money. Who knows? What I do know, after reading something this morning, is that there is now at least one more reason to be optimistic about his reign atop the defending champions. And let’s get this out of the way before moving forward – this is not a Raul Ibanez post so please be mature and avoid derailing the comments thread.

The Phillies have reportedly been mulling over anyone and everyone in their quest to fix a bruised and underachieving starting rotation. Recently, their thoughts turned to Paul Byrd, the veteran last seen in action with the Indians and Red Sox a year ago. Byrd made 30 starts and posted a 4.60 ERA and a 5.14 FIP derived from a sub 4.20 K/9 and a higher-than-desired home run rate. Essentially, Byrd put up numbers that one might consider acceptable from a minor league prospect in his first go-around with the team, not a 38-yr old with no upside and limited utility in the present.

Fortunately, Amaro feels the same way. I’m paraphrasing here, but he told reporters they had been considering Byrd but ultimately concluded that the former Phillie would not represent an upgrade over their minor league candidates. The Phillies have Kyle Drabek tearing up Double-A, as well asKyle Kendrick, Rodrigo Lopez, Andrew Carpenter and Carlos Carrasco pitching in Triple-A. Sure, Byrd would be “new,” and fans occasionally mix up new with good, but any of those four pitchers, already employed by the team, would be equal to, or better than, Byrd.

Last night I called for teams to avoid signing Brandon Backe, at least as a starting pitcher on the major league roster, since he comes close to defining replacement level and would barely be an upgrade for even a cellar-dweller. Thankfully, at least Amaro feels the same way. It is time to give young pitchers a chance and to stop recycling the garbage that is Horacio Ramirez, Sidney Ponson, Adam Eaton, Brandon Backe, Bruce Chen, etc. Reading his words was a breath of fresh air. Now, if he turns around and sends Greg Dobbs to the Mariners for Miguel Batista, I might revert to my prior opinions, but understanding that new!=good and that veteran!=automatically > minor leaguer are two key characteristics I want a GM of my team to possess. They seem like easy attributes to attain but as we have seen lately, not everyone can stake claim as acting on this knowledge.

The Houston Astros wisely designated Brandon Backe for assignment last week, eventually ending his tenure with the club. Nobody claimed Backe when he was placed on waivers, meaning that Backe could either opt to be released or accept a demotion to the minors. He declined the latter and was given his outright release, making him available to the 29 other teams in the league.

This isn’t going to be a lengthy post because it doesn’t need to be, but I am strongly advocating that teams avoid Backe. With injuries and ineffectiveness, he hasn’t been a viable major league starter since the 2005 season, and at 31 years old, there really isn’t much upside here.

If he is willing to accept a minor league deal and prove himself then the story might go a little differently, but a pitcher with a sub-2.0 K/BB ratio, thereby exhibiting poor command usually needs to have some potential to improve to sustain a job or some sort of blistering fastball. Backe has neither, and at this point would not upgrade the rotation of any contender or serve as a potential chip for any of the non-contenders.

Backe has a career 5.23 ERA and 5.33 FIP, an 88-89 mph fastball with average or below movement, and has never ventured above the 0.9 WAR mark. Full disclosure, that 0.9 win season wasn’t very good, but involved about 150 innings being logged. Simply put, Backe is a replacement level pitcher, the kind of guy a team should call up from Triple A when someone gets hurt.

Sure, he will be cheap, but teams would be better suited to try their young guys than dish out starts to a subpar pitcher. Replacement level with potential for upside always beats plain old replacement level.

Last week, Dave discussed how inept analysts have become in terms of assessing when players considered to be over the hill fall off said hill. Most wrote off David Ortiz as being done, washed up, having nothing left in the tank, and then June rolled around and he “found his stroke.” Personally, I think the problem extends way beyond just determining when aging players become washed up, and deals more with our obsession to find reasons capable of explaining potentially unexplainable phenomena.

There are certainly areas within the game of baseball that lend themselves to individual skills and not chance, but there are an equal number of areas that fluctuate randomly. Trying to pinpoint a single reason as to why one of these random fluctuations occur makes very little sense and proves to be nothing more than a futile exercise. Not everything can be explained, concisely wrapped up in a neat little bun, and then brushed aside as an issue solved.

Over the weekend, a good friend of mine and I were discussing Johan Santana and how he has not looked like himself lately. After several back and forth ideas, wondering about Santana’s health or the competition he had been facing, it dawned on me that this might be a non-issue and searching for an explanation could pave the way to inaccurate claims being dished out. In a piece I wrote for BP earlier in the year, I investigated the idea of consistency, checking to see if it mattered or if consistency itself was stable. Short answer: consistency itself was inconsistent. Johan may have looked mortal recently, but the fact that his performances did not match his early season dominance really does not tell us anything. At season’s end, we are probably going to look at his gamelogs and chalk this recent stretch up as a rough patch everyone goes through that eventually corrects itself.

Think about that Raul Ibanez fiasco a few weeks ago and how that almost exponentially found itself the topic of interest amongst sports sites, radio stations, and television productions.

If I recall correctly, Person A, who partakes in a fantasy league, asked Person B about Ibanez’s revival. Person B then looked into the numbers and wrote a lengthy diatribe about Ibanez’s career, searching for a definitive reason as to why Raul had been hitting like Albert Pujols. In his search for a reason, performance enhancers were brought up, and within days, Person B had to defend himself on national television against Ken Rosenthal. No, Robothal isn’t Dave Winfield-esque in stature, but the point remains that searching for a reason to explain what could potentially amount to nothing more than an extended hot streak not necessarily foreign to Raul, who has posted some insane streaks in years prior, led to an extremely overhyped media frenzy.

There are certainly times when looking for a reason makes sense, like with the current performance of Jimmy Rollins, but for the most part doing so is useless. Non-Pujols players always fuse together various ups and downs in a season before arriving at their bottom line. Just because a player slumps and then gets hot doesn’t mean that he lost some skill in the former and gained it back in the latter. Assign grains of salt to reasoning or explanations derived from small samples of data, especially if they involve an area of the game that fluctuates randomly.

As Dave noted earlier this afternoon, several teams are currently trying to improve their starting pitching, presently plugging holes either internally or via stopgap veterans. Two of the bigger names on the market, Erik Bedard and Jake Peavy, have battled health issues all season, vastly reducing their perceived value in the market, especially given the haul of prospects required to entice their respective employers. Another name tossed around a bit, Brandon Webb, is out for the season and potentially half of the 2010 campaign.

Rumors regarding Roy Oswalt have been floated with increased regularity as well, but his no-trade clause combined with a very lucrative contract and Drayton McClane’s unwillingness to realize the current incarnation of his franchise is doomed, makes the Astros ace hard to move. The other popular trade candidates are Jarrod Washburn, Paul Maholm, Zach Duke, Jason Marquis, and potentially, Aaron Harang.

All of this brings us to Cliff Lee, currently a better pitcher than any of the guys mentioned above, who also has a pretty favorable contract relative to his contributions. Lee makes $5.75 mil this season with an $8 mil option for next season. His 2010 salary will actually be $9 mil on the option based on the incentive stipulating a $1 mil raise should he win the Cy Young Award in either 2008 or 2009. Seeing as he won the award last year, the incentive has kicked in.

With the Indians tanking and Lee’s value likely higher than it ever will be, it makes sense for Shapiro to kick the tires on a potential deal netting him prospects, but for some reason, more rumors and trade talks have involved guys like Marquis, who is actually making almost double Lee’s salary this year, and is a free agent at the end of the season with no option on which to hang his head. I am honestly perplexed as to why Lee has not attracted more attention; or if he has, why we have not heard about it yet. It is almost as if teams are still waiting for the massive regression to occur, when we now have a year and a half of awesomeness from the Indians lefty proving his worth.

Since the beginning of last season, Lee has thrown 334.1 innings over 47 starts, with a 2.67 ERA almost matched by an equally low FIP, a 1.17 WHIP, a sub-2.0 walk rate, and a 4.2 K/BB ratio. The only thing missing is the reputation that usually accompanies the name of a pitcher with numbers like that over an extended period of time. It is time to start realizing that Cliff Lee has become a very good pitcher, not a back of the rotation upgrade. If any of the Phillies, Brewers or Rangers is serious about solidifying their rotation by trading a young stud prospect, they should start amping up efforts to acquire Lee. He might not win the Cy Young Award again, but given his contract and current established level of performance, as well as the lack of health issues, no other pitcher being discussed as a trade target would be a more significant upgrade.

During the playoffs last season I penned a brief post here with a title similar to this, focusing on Ryan Madson, who had suddenly discovered how to throw 97 miles per hour. Well, teammate Joe Blanton hasn’t exactly increased his velocity this season, or implemented a new pitch, but he is currently hurling like we have never before seen. His overall numbers are not much to look at, but his early season struggles have seemingly subsided over the last month.

Through May 21, Blanton had the following numbers: 8 GS, 44.1 IP, 17 BB, 37 K, 7.11 ERA. Since then: 6 GS, 39.1 IP, 9 BB, 40 K, 2.75 ERA.

Even when he struggled mightily with home runs and stranding baserunners, Blanton’s strikeouts and walk rates bested those of years past. Suffice to say, his rates over the last month have looked even better. For the season, his 8.3 K/9 and 2.7 UBB/9 are tremendously un-Blantonesque.

The “innings eater” has never before exceeded 5.5 in the K/9 department yet has added approximately three more strikeouts per nine innings this year. With a respectable unintentional walk rate, if Blanton could just stop giving up dingers at a Brett Myers-like pace, he might be considered a legit #2 right now.

His plate discipline metrics reveal an interesting tell: virtually nothing has changed from the last few seasons except contact on pitches out of the zone. Hitters have not reduced their rates of swings on these outside pitches but they are simply swinging and missing much more often. Blanton has opted for some more sliders at the expense of his curve, but could that really be the root cause of his new-found success?

A 5.06 ERA and 4.82 FIP is nothing to write home about, but if Blanton can continue to twirl gems similar to his last several starts, then Kentucky Joe may be able to fill the void left by Myers, meaning someone like Jason Marquis could potentially fill Blanton’s role. Many are quick to suggest the Phillies need to acquire an ace, but if Blanton has legitimately improved into an under the radar, #2 pitcher, they might not need to mortgage the farm for someone like Roy Oswalt.

ZiPS sees Blanton’s K/9 regressing to the 7.4-7.5 area with the UBB/9 coming down to 2.5-2.6. The strikeout rate would remain, by far, the best of his career, while the walk rate would be in line with his career mark, one that is quite solid. Home runs remain an issue, but if he can continue to limit the number of runners that reach base, the inevitable regression in this area might mean more than meets the eye.

The Phillies rotation, as a whole, has substantially improved this month, and the primary reason is Joe Blanton.

This morning, RJ took a look at the ridiculously high BABIP belonging to David Wright, noting that nobody since 1954, with 300+ AB has ever exceeded .408, let alone .450 or .460. Though hitters tend to exert more influence over their BABIP than pitchers, not necessarily falling prey to the standard regression to .300, it is less likely for a hitter to post a .450+ BABIP than it is for Adam Eaton to pull a Johnny Vander Meer. One of the primary culprits of Wright’s BIP success is an otherworldly batting average on groundballs.

To date, Wright has a .471 BA on grounders. The league average is right around .240 over the last several seasons. Wright has essentially doubled that mark so far, recording hits on almost half of his grounded balls. Over the last few seasons, his GB% has held relatively steady with raw numbers in the 180-210 range. Given that his current pace falls in line with past results, a query for his contemporaries will stipulate a minimum of 160 groundballs.

Of those with 160+ GB from 2003-08, here are the highest GB-BAs:

Willy Taveras    2007  .413
Ichiro Suzuki    2007  .379
Norris Hopper    2007  .364
Akinori Iwamura  2007  .361
Carlos Gomez     2008  .359

Only one player with as many grounders as Wright has bested a .400 BA and only eight others have even exceeded .350. Suffice to say, Wright is currently in uncharted territory. There is no way he will sustain his seasonal line, but even with a severe regression, Wright is on par for an historical season in a few different areas.

Most of the players atop this groundball success leaderboard are speedsters, the guys known more for stealing bases than mashing longballs. Ironically, and somewhat comically, with his current tally of both steals and home runs, as well as his high BA on grounders, Wright has been performing more like the theoretical leadoff hitter than the powerhouse corner infielder we have come to expect.