It’s not everyday you get the opportunity to speak with someone who’s mastered a craft to which few others in the world can lay claim. Red Sox pitcher Steven Wright, drafted as a conventional pitcher in the second round of the 2006 draft by the Cleveland Indians, was converted to a knuckleballer by that same organization in 2011. He made his major-league debut with the Red Sox in 2013, following a 2012 trade that sent Lars Anderson to Cleveland, and has since thrown more than 1,500 knuckleballs at the big-league level, joining R.A. Dickey as MLB’s only active knuckleballers. Wright was a member of Boston’s 2016 Opening Day roster, and currently occupies a space in their starting rotation.

I spoke with Wright in the visiting clubhouse at Progressive Field during the Red Sox’ season-opening series. He commented on his knuckleball relative to Dickey’s and Tim Wakefield’s, how speed affects a knuckleball and its location, on the evolution of the pitch, finger pressure, and more.

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On his knuckleball: “I watched a lot of video of R.A. and Wakefield. I just throw it. I just grip and it and rip it. For me, I think it’s trying to stay under control. R.A. throws his harder, Wakefield threw his slower. I feel like I’m right in the middle of them – I don’t throw quite as hard as R.A. or quite as slow as Wakefield. We’re all pretty similar, we just throw it at different speeds.”

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If you’d just oblige me by briefly viewing one screenshot and four .gifs, I believe I’ll be able to neatly tie together all the different things that have been going on with J.D. Martinez this season. Let these five visuals serve as a reference point for the remainder of this post.

First up, the screenshot, revealing what the FOX Sports Detroit broadcast team decided to reveal about Martinez’s first at-bat, in graphic form:

Information gathered: the batter’s name is J.D. Martinez, and this is what his face looks like. J.D. Martinez flew out in his first at-bat. There is one out and nobody on in the fourth inning. J.D. Martinez is having an incredible season so far. The Tigers trail, 1-0. Dallas Keuchel is pitching. The umpire will need to look up before Keuchel delivers a pitch.

The umpire has looked up. Keuchel delivers a pitch:

It’s a first-pitch curveball, and Martinez does not swing his bat. You know who doesn’t see too many first-pitch curveballs when they’re batting? Pitchers. Because the pitcher who’s pitching doesn’t really care about the pitcher who’s hitting, so he throws him a first-pitch fastball. Nothing to worry about. J.D. Martinez? Lot to worry about. First-pitch curveball. No swing.

Keuchel, typically a low-ball pitcher, elevates a fastball, up-and-in. No swing.

Another fastball, elevated (but probably more than Keuchel wanted), another no swing.

Swing. Ground ball into the teeth of the shift.

OK. Now let’s try and tie this all together. Lot’s going on with J.D. Martinez this season.

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I love early-season baseball. Early-season baseball is the only time when players hit .415. Players don’t hit .415 for a full season anymore so pulling up the leaderboards and seeing .415 is like a huge neon sign blinking EARLY-SEASON BASEBALL. It’s fun to follow the MVP races later in the year, but to me now is the best time to check the leaderboards we keep here at FanGraphs because now is when things are absurd. Little is more absurd than early-season leaderboards.

So let’s look at some! I’ll give you the category, last season’s leader for some context, and the on-pace-to-finish-with figure of the current leader. Then I’ll comment! Seems a handy dandy format, wouldn’t you say?

We’ll start with hitters, unless you decide not to read this, in which case I’ll just start with hitters all by myself. Numbers are current as of yesterday afternoon. Rankings marked with a t denote that the corresponding players are tied.

Let’s start with…

Double Plays Hit Into

Current Leaderboard
t1. David Freese, 5
t1. Andrelton Simmons, 5
t3. Five Players, 4

Last Year’s Leader: Trevor Plouffe, 28
2016 Leader’s Pace: 62

Comments
For some reason I find this category fascinating. You can’t score two points on yourself in basketball when you miss a shot, but in baseball players can create two outs with one hit. It’s magical. So it’s fitting that the seventh video on David Freese’s MLB.com player page features Freese grounding into a double play. They’re on to you, David. Though this does make sense as 63.9% of Freese’s balls in play have been ground balls this season. That’s a lot of grounders. Add that to the Pirates current high on-base percentage of .432, eighth-best in baseball, and you have a batter hitting lots of grounders with runners on base.

This is going smoothly!

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Baseball has had its share of colorful characters over the years. Yogi Berra, Bo Belinsky, Bill “Spaceman” Lee, Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. The list goes on and on.

Now we have Joe Biagini. The 25-year-old former 26th-round pick is pitching out of the Blue Jays bullpen after making the team as a Rule 5 pick out of the Giants organization. His personality might best be described as playfully irreverent. Biagini throws mid-90s heat with his right hand, but his quips, which come fast and furious, are straight out of left field.

Biagini shared his atypical story, and some gloriously-sarcastic one liners, when Toronto visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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Biagini on his surprising rise to the big leagues: “I think everything up to this point has been a surprise. Right now, it’s a surprise honor to get to speak to you and answer your questions. Honestly.

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A rebuild is the perfect time to experiment. The rebuilding club has nothing to lose and everything to gain. The rebuilding club can experiment with different players, giving as many a shot in the major leagues as possible to see what sticks, the endgame being to unearth some key pieces of the next winning team. This is one of the most commonly accepted principles of a rebuild — finding out what you’ve got. But just as a club can experiment with players during a rebuild, it can also experiment with ideas. Just as important as finding the pieces of its next winning team, an organization should also be looking to find the identity of its next winning team.

The rebuild of the Philadelphia Phillies is well underway. They cleared salary and replenished their farm system in a major way by trading longtime fan favorites Chase Utley, Cole Hamels, Jimmy Rollins and Jonathan Papelbon, as well as dominant reliever Ken Giles. The Hamels and Giles moves in particular appear to have netted the club substantial hauls based on early returns. Baseball America ranked their farm system among the league’s top 10, after having not cracked the top 20 in four years. The only guaranteed money on the books beginning in 2018 and beyond is a $2 million buyout for Matt Harrison. They cleaned house from the front office all the way down to the coaching staff. The youth movement has made its way to Citizens Bank Park. The future is bright in Philadelphia. Surprisingly so, given the state of the organization no more than a year ago.

It’s very possible we’re already seeing some of the key pieces of the next good Phillies team. If all goes according to plan, Maikel Franco will be one of them. Odubel Herrera could one day be a winner in Philadelphia. And then there’s the rotation, a 3:2 mix of unproven youngsters and stopgap veterans who have struck out more batters than any rotation in baseball this season. Jeremy Hellickson and Charlie Morton may not be the future for Philadelphia, but Aaron Nola, Vincent Velasquez and Jerad Eickhoff sure look to be.

And so not only do the Phillies seemingly have 60% of their next contending rotation in place just 14 games into their first full-on rebuild season, but they’ve already got their identity, too. Their pitching philosophy, if you will. The Pirates have their own inside sinker. The Mets have their own slider. These Phillies? They have their own curveball.

Nobody’s starters are throwing the curveball like the Phillies starters are throwing the curveball. More than a quarter of all pitches thrown by the Philadelphia rotation have been curveballs. The single-season high by a team in the PITCHf/x era is 24%, by the 2012 Pirates. After that, it’s just 19%, by the 2010 Cardinals. This Phillies team might have the most curveball-heavy rotation since we started tracking such things. Phillies starters have thrown 431 curveballs this season. No other team’s rotation has thrown more than 300.

But it’s not just that the Phillies are throwing a ton of curveballs, it’s how they’re throwing them. The average Phillies curveball breaks seven inches to the glove side, drops eight inches, and spins more than 2,600 revolutions per minute. Only three teams average more drop on their curves than Philadelphia. Only two teams average more spins on their curve than Philadelphia. Spin rate and vertical drop are the two keys to getting whiffs on a curve. The Phillies have those in spades. The Phillies aren’t throwing a ton of curves just because. The Phillies are throwing a ton of curves because they’ve mastered them.

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Time catches up to us all, but Adrian Beltre seems to have secured a fairly sizable lead, leaving time a little further behind than for most 37-year-olds. Beltre debuted with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the shadow of the Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa home-run race during the 1998 season. Eighteen seasons later, the only players active during that season who’ve also recorded an appearance in this one are Carlos Beltran, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz, A.J. Pierzynski, and Alex Rodriguez. Beltre was just 19 years old at that time and, after signing a two-year contract extension with the Texas Rangers worth $36 million, he’s in position to outlast all of them.

No discussion of what Beltre will do is complete without discussing what he has done. Beltre signed with the Dodgers at 15 years old for just $23,000 (improperly, as it turns out) and debuted in majors at age 19. At the time, Beltre was one of just four players (Ken Griffey, Edgar Renteria, and Ivan Rodriguez were the others) in the previous decade to record at least 200 plate appearances at age 19 or under. It would be more than a decade before any player would do it again, as Bryce Harper and Manny Machado both reached that mark in the 2012 season.

Since making his debut, Beltre has always been a good player. His 41.3 WAR figure through his age-30 season is identical to the mark produced by Derek Jeter through the same age. What has differentiated Beltre’s play over the last half-decade is his refusal to slow down and it has made him a surefire Hall of Famer. After Beltre’s contract with the Seattle Mariners ended, he was forced to re-establish his value with a one-year deal with the Red Sox. That one-year deal turned into a five-year deal with the Texas Rangers, including an option for this season that the Rangers happily exercised.

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Previous editions: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York (AL) / New York (NL)  / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Texas.

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Toronto Blue Jays. In this companion piece, I look at that same Toronto farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Blue Jays have the 28th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

*****

1. Richard Urena, SS (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 6.2 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 45 FV

Although he played the entire year as a 19-year-old, Urena belted 16 homers as a shortstop in A-ball. His 21% strikeout rate and 3% walk rate speak to his unrefined plate discipline, but Urena’s so good in other areas that KATOH doesn’t much care.

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If you look at the positional adjustments for Wins Above Replacement on our website, it looks like left and right field are equally valuable, and the second-easiest positions to play on the field. Generally, that seems about right — first base is where you put your slugger, and the corner-outfield spots is where you put your other sluggers.

And yet, if you look for bats that qualified for the batting title (and didn’t play catcher, the most platooned position on the field), you’ll find that there are fewer left fielders than any other position, and significantly so. Only 15 left fielders qualified last year. Even shortstop had 20 guys who reached that threshold. If you look at the Fans Scouting Report, left fielders were better defensively last year (overall and in almost every component) than they had been before in the life of the Report.

It seems that there’s a bit of a difference between left and right field, and in the types of players who are playing those positions. So I thought it made sense to ask the players what the difference actually was. It’s not as easy as putting the better arm in right field because he has a longer throw to third base.

Tim Leiper, Blue Jays first base coach: “The nuances for me… when the ball is hit directly at you, it’s learning how to open up toward the line. If you’re in right field and it’s a right-handed hitter, and he hits it directly at you, he probably stayed inside the ball and it’s going to slice to the line a little bit. Same thing with a left-handed hitter to left field. But I find that left-handed hitters actually have more slice to the ball than right-handed hitters. That’s probably because they’re right-hand dominant. The spin is different. I think the right-handed hitter’s balls have a lot more chance to stay true. I also think some outfielders maybe open up in one direction better than the other.”

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Seung Hwan Oh has faced 25 batters this season, and thus, 25 batters in his major league career. There. You can’t say I didn’t warn you about sample sizes limitations. But sometimes, a number just sticks out at you, and you can’t ignore it. Sometimes, a number is separated so far from the pack that even when you consider the limited sample and factor in the expected regression, it still means something. Sometimes, that number looks like this:

Blink, rub your eyes, do whatever you need to do, and then look at that last column again. More than half of all swings offered against Oh pitches this year have resulted in whiffs. He’s got nearly a 20 percentage point lead over Craig Kimbrel and Ken Giles. Look at that rate of contact inside the zone. Look at it! Oh has gotten whiffs at would-be strikes like Francisco Liriano has gotten whiffs at would-be balls. He’s been completely untouchable. Through 25 batters faced.

The lowest single-season contact rate ever allowed by a qualified reliever was 56% by Aroldis Chapman, in 2014. Both Chapman and Andrew Miller checked in below 60% last year. Oh clearly won’t stay near where he is, and he might not even stay near where Kimbrel is, but his first handful of big league appearances have been about as meaningful as they possibly could be, and I think I’m already comfortable saying that, at the very least, Oh isn’t going to be an easy at-bat for anyone. It seems like the Cardinals have found themselves a real weapon. The question is, just how strong is that weapon?

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Over the last few weeks in this space, we’ve conducted a ball-in-play based analysis of position players’ and starting pitchers’ 2015 performance, the most recent post featuring an examination of starting pitchers in the AL West. Next, we’ll take a similar look at relief pitchers. It’s admittedly a little dicey to evaluate relief pitchers in this manner. The sample sizes are much smaller, and filled with more noise. Still, it’s a worthwhile exercise that can show us the different manners in which closers, set-up men, et al, get it done.

First, some background on the process. I identified the 214 relief pitchers from both leagues who yielded the most batted balls in 2015, making sure that all team save leaders were included in the sample. From that group, I selected 28 pitchers from each league for further scrutiny. Pitchers are listed with their 2015 league mates; those who were traded during the season will appear in the division in which they compiled the most innings. Pitchers are listed in “tru” ERA order. For those who have not read my previous articles on the topic, “tru” ERA is the ERA pitchers “should” have compiled based on the actual BIP frequency and authority they allowed relative to the league. Here we go:

First, a little background. The larger group of 214 relievers had a cumulative strikeout rate of 22.2% and walk rate of 8.2%. Both rates are higher than the comparable marks for starters (19.8% and 7.0%, respectively). The larger group of relievers also conceded less authoritative contact than starters, allowing lesser overall (88.02 mph for relievers, 88.46 mph for starters), FLY/LD (91.24 vs. 91.78) and grounder (85.76 vs. 86.30) authority. With regard to BIP frequency, relievers outpaced starters in the key grounder rate category by 45.6% to 45.2%, and matched them in pop-up rate (3.2%).

The subset of relievers listed above generally represents the cream of the relief crop. Most of the column headers are self-explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and traditional ERA-, FIP-, and “tru” ERA-. Each pitcher’s Adjusted Contact Score (ADJ C) is also listed. Again, for those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Unadjusted Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from opposing hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100. Adjusted Contact Score applies league-average production to each pitchers’ individual actual BIP type and velocity mix, and compares it to league average of 100.

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