Over the past 365 days, Paul Goldschmidt has been the best hitter in baseball, posting a .331/.458/.610 line that is good for an absurd 184 wRC+. Do you know who the second best hitter has been over the past year? It’s not Bryce Harper: He’s third, at 167. And Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera are tied for fifth, each putting up a 161 wRC+ during that span. So who’s the mystery man who has put his name among this elite group of hitters?

Dodgers infielder Justin Turner. Yes, the same Justin Turner who began the year as LA’s second-string utility guy, as he wasn’t even the team’s top infield reserve. Despite a very strong 2014 season of part-time work, the Dodgers glut of infield talent put Turner behind not only the starting trio of Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins and Juan Uribe, but also saw him slide in behind Alex Guerrero for playing time at third base. Turner didn’t get his first start of 2015 until April 22, the Dodgers 14th game of the year.

But just as he did a year ago — when he’s been placed in the line-up — Turner has done nothing but hit. In fact, while his 157 wRC+ a year ago looked like a total fluke — given that he’d put up marks of 96, 98 and 99 the the three years prior — he’s actually hitting even better this season, cutting his strikeout rate while also hitting the ball in the air more frequently and with more authority, leading to a 169 wRC+ in the first few months of 2015.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Turner’s breakout, of course. He didn’t have his first above-average hitting season as a big leaguer until last year — when he was 29 — and even dating back to the beginning of 2014, Turner has only hit 503 times, less than most players get in a full season. Most of Turner’s track record suggests that he’s not really a great hitter, but a guy with good contact skills and some power who is on the hot streak to end all hot streaks. It’s also somewhat telling that the Dodgers watched him destroy opposing pitchers last year, but still weren’t interested in expanding his role for 2015, then also went out and spent $63 million to sign infielder Hector Olivera this spring.

But while there are plenty of reasons to not believe in Turner’s breakout, it’s not like this career arc is entirely without precedent. For some historical context, here are five recent hitters who were, like Turner, essentially useless at the big league level through age-28, then turned into quality big leaguers later in their career.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

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A little over a month ago, I wandered into the depths of the Baseball Prospectus PITCHf/x leaderboards, looking to see who had the most increased movement on their breaking pitches through the first month of the season compared to last year. As you might imagine, increased movement doesn’t always mean increased success, and so many of the names that turned up were interesting but inconclusive: seeing names like Rick Porcello and Ross Detwiler leading best-of lists tells us that the article was a fun exercise, if not a totally meaningful one.

However, there were a couple of interesting names when it came to right-handed pitchers with increased horizontal movement on their sliders. First, there was Sonny Gray, who is now the proud owner of a top-three slider by run value this year. Then, coming in a close third after Seth Maness, was Drew Storen. Unlike Gray and Maness, Storen has been around for a while, so the prospect of him tinkering with pitches (especially after four mostly successful years), drew some attention.

That attention was, and is, warranted: Storen’s slider (PITCHf/x calls it a slider; some say it’s a cutter. For ease, we’ll go with slider) now has over two inches of greater horizontal movement than last season, and at least one inch more than his previous career-high. Take a look at the horizontal movement change of his slider over his career, courtesy of Brooks Baseball:

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ATT Park, from behind home plate, at game time for a night game.

Justin Upton has hit the ground running in San Diego. His power stats have not suffered as much as you might expect, at least, as his isolated slugging (.194) and home runs per fly ball (16.7%) are right in line with career norms (.201 and 15.1%, respectively). When I asked him about hitting in San Diego, he shrugged it off. He also said something interesting about San Francisco’s park.

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This is a weird home run, that Yoenis Cespedes hit off Trevor Bauer Monday night:

It’s weird for a few reasons. The pitch was down. Cespedes hit it to the other side of center field. It was a low rocket, and the majority of these low-rocket dingers tend to hug the lines. Pretty good demonstration of Cespedes’ strength, or bat speed, if you think of those as different things. Things that are weird make me curious. Alas, I found a recent home run that was even weirder. It happened just this past weekend.

I hear you guys. You’re sick of reading about the Red Sox. You’re sick of reading about Hanley Ramirez. It’s totally understandable, but let me assure you — this isn’t being written because it’s about Hanley Ramirez on the Red Sox. That’s a coincidence. This would’ve been written about, I don’t know, Shin-Soo Choo on the Rangers, if that had been what’d happened. But there was a weird home run, and Hanley Ramirez hit it, and, dammit, it’s going to get words.

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Joc Pederson and Kris Bryant are ahead of the pack when it comes to the National League Rookie of the year race, but perhaps lost among many other intriguing promotions, Maikel Franco is having himself a solid rookie season in Philadelphia. Franco has been up just over a month and received 150 plate appearances, but he has already hit nine home runs after two more cleared the fences against the Yankees last night. The 22-year-old does come with some questions, particularly with regard to his plate discipline, but his power is clearly major league-ready. His line on the season is an impressive .312/.353/.574 with a 154 wRC+ that outpaces Bryant thus far, and he provides some hope for the future in a dismal season for the Phillies.

Franco signed out of the Dominican Republic for $100,000 in 2010 without a lot of bulk, but he has beefed up considerably since that time and made a power bat his ticket to the majors. He was noticed as a prospect in 2013 when the 20-year-old Franco tore up High-A and Double-A pitching, hitting 31 home runs with an on-base percentage above .350 despite taking very few walks. Baseball America put Franco at No. 17 on its prospect list entering 2014. Franco was young for the level and struggled with the transition to Triple-A hitting just .209/.267/.318 the first three months of the season before posting excellent numbers in July and August and earning a promotion to Philadelphia in September. Read the rest of this entry »

In this age of Hitf/x and StatCast, batted ball velocity is a hotter topic than ever. We only have had access to such data for a limited period of time, but the hypothesizing regarding the loudest contact-makers in the game’s history has been going on as long as the game itself. While we can’t go back and retroactively calculate batted ball velocity, we can go back and calculate contact scores, and make very educated guesses to this eternal question. Read the rest of this entry »

It seems like a simple question to ask. Which recent home run was the least likely?

You could flippantly answer — the one Erick Aybar hit this year, or the one Melky Cabrera hit this year — and because they’ve got the lowest isolated slugging percentages with at least one homer hit, you would be right. But that doesn’t control for the quality of the pitcher. Aybar hit his off of Rick Porcello, who is having some issues with the home run right now.

A slightly more sophisticated approach might have you scan down the list of the worst isolated powers in the game right now, and then cross-reference those names with the pitchers that allowed those home runs. If you do that, you’ll eventually settle on Alexei Ramirez, who hit his first homer of the year off of Johnny Cueto earlier this year.

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Last Thursday, Nationals fans had the season flash before their eyes when Bryce Harper’s leg buckled while attempting an aggressive throw. The Nationals, to this point, have managed to withstand certain injuries, but no injury would be more crippling than a big one to the best hitter in the game. Thankfully for those with an interest, Harper’s issue was minor, and he was back in the lineup Saturday. In his return, he hit a home run; in his return, Max Scherzer no-hit the Pirates.

For all the Nationals have already been through, Harper’s been there all along, and Scherzer has too. That either player is having success is by no means surprising. The Nationals gave Scherzer a big giant contract, and Harper’s been hyped since he was still in the womb. The two were expected to be two of the best players on the team. But where the Nationals find themselves now is in a particularly unusual situation. That is: Bryce Harper has been the best position player in baseball. And Max Scherzer has been the best pitcher in baseball.

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Kyle Gibson is a tall pitcher with a low K rate. The Minnesota Twins right-hander is 6-foot-6 and has fanned 5.76 batters per nine innings this season. Last year, that number was an even-more-contact-heavy 5.37. Strikeouts aren’t what he does. Gibson relies on ground balls for the majority of his outs.

A first-round pick in 2009 out of the University of Missouri, Gibson had the fifth-highest ground ball rate (54.4) among qualified starters in the American League last year. He’s a shade lower (52.8) in the current campaign, but even more successful. After going 13-12, 4.47 in his first full season as a big league starter, the 27-year-old boasts a 3.35 ERA in 14 outings for one of the junior circuit’s most-surprising squads.

Gibson talked about his approach when the Twins visited Fenway Park earlier this month.

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Gibson on height and mechanics: “ I’ve had similar mechanics since I was 15 years old. I wouldn’t say there are only so many ways a tall guy can throw, but for me to repeat my delivery I need to have certain mechanics. My dad – he pitched in junior college and was a high school coach – and I worked really hard on them from a young age. I was never a guy who threw really hard, so I’ve always had to be able to throw strikes. The best way for a kid to throw strikes is to have clean mechanics and a good release point. Read the rest of this entry »