PITTSBURGH – Baseball players are often late risers, working second-shift hours. As such, Eric Thames typically began his days in Changwon, South Korea, around 11 a.m. local time. He went through a series of stretching exercises in his apartment and then departed for lunch.

His home was about a mile from the ballpark in Changwon, a southeastern port city positioned on an inlet that flows to the East China Sea. For lunch, there were five of six American-style style restaurants nearby. There was a burger joint, Italian and Mexican restaurants. Web sites created by American expats documented all the options. He would eat alone, reading his Kindle or iPhone, skimming through articles. He would then walk, or travel by Onewheel skateboard, to Massan Stadium, the home of the NC Dinos. He would arrive early, and hit early, alone, for 30 or 40 minutes. Afterward, he would read more in the clubhouse as he tried to fill in the hours before first pitch.

During most of his time with the Dinos — owned by NCSoft, a South Korean video-game developer — Thames had only two American teammates and both had brought their families along with them. After home games, or on the road, Thames would often retire to his apartment or hotel room. For three years of his life, and of his professional career, Thames was often alone.

“I was so bored over there,” Thames told FanGraphs. “The language barrier was really tough. For me, it was a lot of time by myself. I didn’t speak any [Korean]. All the other American [players] had families and stuff, so they are with their kids. So I’m just online reading stuff, and I’m bored, and I’m pissed because I’m 0-for-15. ‘Let’s figure out what’s going on here.’ So I started looking up video.”

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We’re a little early for Dave Cameron’s annual must-read Trade Value series, but I suspect Matt Harvey won’t be appearing in it this year. I feel quite certain about that prognostication — even if Harvey avoids exile to the minor leagues and returns instead to his vintage 2013 form over the next few weeks.

Harvey met with the media Tuesday afternoon at Citi Field and tried to begin taking some accountability for his recent actions.

The “Dark Knight” was celebrating a late Cinco de Mayo at 1Oak until 4 a.m. Saturday — just hours before he failed to show up for a game at Citi Field, reportedly because of a “migraine,” sources said.

If true, it’s remarkable that folks still believe they can escape truth in an era of smart phones and social media.

A day earlier, Jon Heyman reported that Harvey and his agent Scott Boras planned to file a grievance over the suspension. It was suggested that the Harvey camp was displeased with the Mets’ decision to send team officials over to Harvey’s apartment for a check-in. Whatever the case, there doesn’t appear to be a lot of trust here.

The Mets’ 2017 season has become quite the soap opera, and it stars Harvey.

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Had a few calls gone differently in the ninth inning Sunday night, everyone could have gone to bed earlier. The poor beat scribes could have returned home, or to their Marriott Courtyards or SpringHill Suites, at a reasonable hour. I wouldn’t have fallen asleep on my couch. And the Cubs would have scored victory of sorts as they would have arrived to their charter flight earlier. The Cubs traveled to Denver after the game. The first night in adjusting to altitude in Denver after an 18-inning affair in Chicago is the kind of game some believe you can pencil in for a loss.

If Austin Romine could have had a better night receiving in the ninth inning, everyone could have enjoyed an earlier night. Romine is a league-average framer. Of course, it’s not easy to catch Aroldis Chapman.

Others have studied velocity and the affects it has on framing, including FanGraphs’ Jeff Sullivan way, way back in in 2013 when framing was still a relatively new development. Sullivan devised his own home-made recipe to quantify the effect:

For starters, the correlation between average fastball velocity and Diff/1000 is -0.26. For relievers, the correlation between average fastball velocity and Diff/1000 is -0.34. These aren’t real strong, but they are meaningful, and they don’t account for catcher identity. What the numbers show is that, the harder a guy throws, the less favorable a strike zone he gets.

For the first time, this season, we, the people, have the ability to search a more detailed strike zone at BaseballSavant.com. Instead of 13 zone to study, there are 29. I was curious to look at that new gray area on the edge of the zone you can search at Savant, zones No. 11-19 on the detailed search. I wanted to study borderline calls there by velocity. What I found:

Fastballs 92 mph or less: 2,805 called strikes, 2,602 balls (51.8% called strikes)
Fastballs between 93-96 mph: 2,474 called strikes, 2,627 balls (48.5% called strikes)
Fastballs 97 mph or greater: 251 called strikes, 363 balls (40.8% called strikes)

So a league average fastball, this season, has been called a strike 11% more often than a high-velocity fastball on the edge of the zone. That’s interesting.

Chapman threw eight fastballs in the border region Sunday night, five were called for balls. While many hitters probably feel Chapman has plenty advantages as is he could benefit from another one: a robot ump.

The balls:

The strikes:

This is not one of the pitches studied, but consider the amount of momentum created by this pitch to have Romine nearly skid into the home team’s on-deck circle.

This is also not one of the pitches in question, but it is glaring evidence to demonstrate it is not easy to simply to catch a 100 mph fastball if it is off target.

Catching Chapman ain’t easy.

The bottom of the ninth inning began Sunday night, with Chapman walking Addison Russell without controversy. Chapman missed badly with location.

Jon Jay followed by singling on a 2-2 pitch, but consider the 1-2 offering:

The 1-2 pitch was a ball, just missing the corner. But consider the movement of Romine, moving not just his glove but his upper body moving to his left, perhaps needing to get his body behind the ball to limit his glove being demonstratively moved out of the zone.

After a Wilson Contreras strikeout, Chapman began Albert Almora with this pitch, which was unjustly deemed a ball. We know the difference between a 2-1 and 1-2 count is nearly 200 points in batting average. So that missed call represents a significant swing in probability. Again, the 99 mph pitch caused some recoil to Romine’s glove.

Almora singled in Russell to cut the Yankees’ lead to 4-2. Javier Baez followed with a single to score Jay and make it a 4-3 score with one out. Chapman struck out Kyle Schwarber for the second out and then faced the reigning NL MVP with. The one-strike, one-ball offering to Bryant:

If Chapman gets that pitch perhaps he more aggressive attacks Bryant, gets the third out, and the Yankees win. Instead, Bryant is ultimately intentionally walked to load the bases and Chapman hits Rizzo to tie the score at 4. Nine innings later, the game ended.

Chapman did not get many benefits of the doubt in the ninth inning, rare velocity doesn’t help a pitcher in every regard. Sure, you’d rather have elite velocity than not have it. But sometimes it can hurt an arm.

Sunday was a glaring reminder that velocity must be taken into account when evaluating a catcher’s framing, along with playing on the road and trying to close out a game in the ninth inning in a hostile environment. Umpire ball-strike bias explains much of home-field advantage. Sunday night was also a reminder that as great as Chapman’s stuff is, sometimes it can work against him.

It is Chapman, and the other high-velocity arms in the game, that would benefit most from an automated zone. An automated zone, would make some of the most dominant arms even better.

We ought to consider Jameson Taillon the person before we consider Jameson Taillon the pitcher.

On Sunday, the Pirates sent burgeoning top-of-the-rotation arm to the 10-day disabled list for groin discomfort. A day later, the club announced that Taillon had undergone surgery for suspected testicular cancer.

Pirates announce Jameson Taillon was treated this morning at Allegheny General Hospital for suspected testicular cancer. pic.twitter.com/JLM3KpxEBQ

— Pittsburgh Pirates (@Pirates) May 8, 2017

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Francisco Rodriguez is perhaps getting closer to riding off into the sunset, at least as the analogy applies to ninth-inning and/or high-leverage responsibilities.

The man dubbed K-Rod has, quite frankly, has been awful this season. He’s blown four saves already, and back-to-back opportunities in back-to-back days in Oakland over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon Ryon Healy
did this …

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Author Michael Lewis described his new book, ‘The Undoing Project’, as a “prequel” to Moneyball in an NPR interview, so it should have our attention.

“It explains why experts’ intuitive judgments can go wrong and why you need to have data to rely on as a check against the judgments of these experts,” Lewis said.

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This a companion piece to what I wrote earlier today on Trevor Story, in which I wondered if a hitter can become too extreme with regard to a certain approach. In Story’s case, the specific approach is one designed to lift the ball into the air.

This is also a status update on a comment made by Eno Sarris regarding Ryan Schimpf back in early March, after Schimpf had just produced the most fly-ball-oriented season on record. Wrote Sarris:

And maybe that’s the lesson in the end: Ryan Schimpf is so extreme that two things are true. On the one hand, he won’t be as extreme next year, because only one person has ever been as extreme as Schimpf was last year, and that player also didn’t play a full season. But it’s also true to say that Schimpf will probably a hit a ton of fly balls next year, even with regression.

Schimpf was not a qualified hitter last year, recording just 330 plate appearances, but among single seasons of 100 plate appearances or more, no hitter on record had produced a higher fly-ball rate or a more extreme ratio of fly balls to ground ball.

Schimpf is always going to be a fly-ball hitter, because he’s always been a fly-ball hitter. Schimpf routinely posted sub-0.60 GB/FB ratios throughout his lengthy, winding minor-league career. But he’d never produced a ratio like the 0.30 mark he produced last season in a half-season’s worth of work. Surely he was going to regress nearer his minor-league career average this season, nearer normal MLB batted-ball distribution, right?

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Trevor Story was one of the great surprises of 2016. He continues to be of interest early in 2017.

Story has always been a fly-ball hitter, which is an attractive trait for a player who calls Coors Field home. In his eight minor-league stops, Story hit more fly balls than ground balls six times. As a rookie last season, he posted a 0.62 GB/FB ratio and a 47.1 FB%.

This season?

Story has gone full Schimpf on us. He ranks second only to Schimpf in GB/FB ratio and second in GB/FB ratio (minimum 100 plate appearances) since batted-ball ratios have been recorded.

Story was already an extreme fly-ball hitter. Now he’s even more extreme — nearly the most extreme on record.

Story’s proclivity for fly balls doesn’t appear to be the result of fluky, early-season sample size. Consider: his average launch angle is 32 degrees, nearly double his 2016 average (16.7 degrees). A number of batted-ball metrics are near stabilization points. In the majors, Story ranks second only to Schimpf (33.1 degrees) in average launch angle. I haven’t seen any reports on Story’s apparent swing alterations or changes to philosophy early this season, but it appears as though he’s up to something.

We’ve written quite a bit about the uppercut philosophy this spring, and more and more MLB hitters appear to be buying in. The league’s average launch angle has inched up from 10.0 degrees in 2015, to 10.6 degrees in 2016, to 10.9 in 2017.

The question is, when does a hitter become too extreme in approach?

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The Mets, of course, were dealt a significant setback with the news on Noah Syndergaard earlier this week. Steven Matz is on the DL and has a long injury history. Robert Gsellman has some ominous velocity and spin-rate trends. That represents the majority of the starting-rotation arms upon which the Mets were counting this season.

Then there’s Matt Harvey.

The Mets — along with the entirety of baseball — had no idea what to expect from Harvey entering this season. There were plenty of concerns this spring, certainly, when Harvey was sitting at 92 mph with his fastball. The concerns have continued into the regular season.

Harvey struggled again on Tuesday in Atlanta. A month into the season, the right-hander now owns a 5.14 ERA and even worse 5.75 FIP. He’s striking out a paltry 13.5% of batters while walking 8.8% — not even a five-point difference. Here, the sake of context, are Harvey’s K-BB% marks over the last four seasons: 23.2% (2013), 20% (2015), 12.7% (2016) and 4.7% (2017).

The 2013 and 2015 versions of Harvey seem less and less likely to reappear.

Said Mets manager Terry Collins to reporters present:

“You’re talking about a guy that did not pitch very much last year. He’s coming back from a surgery that not a lot of guys have really come back to be 100 percent again. Especially when you’ve lost the feeling in your fingers and you’ve got to regain the feel of the seams.”

That’s not encouraging. That sounds like the description of a pitcher who has a long way back if he’s ever going to return to something near to what he was, which was a legit ace. Harvey had surgery in July for thoracic outlet syndrome. (Some PITCHf/x forensics on the issue were conducted here by Mike Sonne.)

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