Recently, one of the hot topics in baseball statistics has been the appearance of a measurement for hard-hit balls: here at FanGraphs, we added hard-hit rate to our leaderboards before this season, adding along with it a wealth of opportunities for analysis. An issue with any new statistic is that it can be cited without fully knowing its true use or impacts, and so hard-hit rate has been making the rounds in player analysis, generally cited in respect to how well or how poorly they have been performing.

For hitters, it might go without saying that hitting the ball harder is generally a good thing: the aim of hitting, in a certain sense, would seem to be to hit the ball as hard as possible as often as you can (except in the cases of bunting or other situational circumstances). However, it hasn’t been clear yet how hitting the ball hard impacts other rate and counting statistics, and that seems to be a hole in our understanding of a statistic that is undergoing a moment in the spotlight.

The aim today is, at the very least, to explore how hard-hit rate impacts a few of those stats, as well as to begin a conversation that more astute statistical minds may be able to take to deeper and exciting places. There are a couple levels to this piece today, but there are surely many more that I have not reached: I don’t intend to make hard conclusions, but rather to explore and provide a well-intentioned foray into the data. With that said, onward.

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People have jobs and dogs and maybe kids and they sometimes drink beer (the people not their kids) (hopefully) so sometimes it’s tough to keep up with all the innovations going on in the baseball statistical community. One thing that used to be easy to keep up with though is the value of spring training stats, which we long thought to be as meaningless as anything uttered by a six-year-old whether they’ve had beers or not. There are so many factors that go into the steady playing field that is a Major League Baseball season that are not present during spring training, including player quality, opponent quality, physical condition or lack thereof, the extremes of the playing environments in Arizona and Florida, and so on, that it’s a wonder they even call it baseball. That’s what I’ve long held to be true. Way back in 2010 our Dave Cameron wrote on this here site that spring training stats are worthless. To quote him specifically, Dave wrote, “…spring training numbers just don’t mean a thing. At all. Anything.” I’m getting a tattoo of that right above the giant eagle with the banner reading ‘There is no such thing as a bitching prospect.’ Always double confirm your tattoos before sitting, friends.

Since Dave’s piece was published, some studies, including here at FanGraphs, have showed that on-field success or failure in certain categories, such as strikeout rate (K%) and walk rate (BB%) for pitchers, during spring can foretell the same type of success during the regular season. This makes some sense as batting is reacting, so the quality of the batting would, in theory, heavily depend on the quality of the pitching, but pitching is an action not dependent on anything but itself. The quality of hitters will impact it, but a well-executed slider isn’t likely to be hit by anyone, regardless of whether they’re a major league regular or an org lifer in spring training to fill out the roster.

To be fair to Dave, he was talking about home runs and batting average, which are two traditional stats whose predictive value from spring training remains largely moot. Still, that there is some nuance to the whole value of spring-training stats is, to me at least, surprising, given all of the above. This past spring, March 31 to be exact, our Eno Sarris noted that strikeout rate for hitters stabilizes at around 100 plate appearances, and that because some hitters achieve that number of plate appearances or more during spring training that it might be worth keeping an eye on. He then created a leaderboard listing the hitters who cut their strikeout rates down the most during 2015 spring training when compared to the 2014 season, then he highlighted seven of those players. You can see his complete list here, but I think the list of seven players is worth revisiting to see if the players’ predicted progress is progressing through two months of action. So I did! And you’re reading it right now!

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Hello, and welcome to a post where you do the answering. Usually, in the course of writing our content, we try to offer something conclusive. We tackle a subject, and toward the end of the article, we discuss what might lie ahead for the player, or the team, or the policy. None of that here. What’s offered below is relevant information, but then there’s a poll, where you decide which answer suits you better. The question being asked: of the following two players, which one do you think will sooner record his first-ever major-league hit?

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The Houston Astros are 31-20 and on top of the AL West by four games. They’ve been winning in a signature way: by striking out a lot (the most in the league), hitting a lot of home runs (the most in the league), and recording a string of solid starts (10th-highest WAR among starting staffs). One way we didn’t expect the Astros to dominate this season, however: their bullpen. After two months, the Houston bullpen is ranked first among all major-league teams by strikeout and walk rate, and they also have the second-best ERA. Is this just a run of early-season success? Or, like the Royals, have the Astros built a relief corps that only a select few clubs have?

The bullpen was a major focus of the Astros’ offseason plans before the start of the 2015 season, as they added Pat Neshek, Luke Gregerson, Will Harris, and Joe Thatcher to a group that finished dead last in bullpen ERA in 2014. Neshek and Gregerson were brought in as high-pressure help, with Gregerson installed immediately into the closer role. Gregerson has struggled (relatively speaking) to the tune of a 3.74 ERA, but he’s really been the only one in the bullpen who hasn’t been lights out, and he’s chosen great times to be bad, blowing only one save.

What’s been the key to the success for the Astros bullpen? First of all, they’re striking out an incredible rate of opposing batters. Houston relievers have struck out 28.8% of the hitters they’ve faced — a figure which would be the most ever for a bullpen in history. They’ve also limited walks, only handing out free passes to 6.2% of opposition batters. That walk rate would be good for 25th-best in baseball history if the season ended today. Looking at these two figures, it’s not hard to see why the Houston bullpen has been great: success usually follows pitchers who strike out a high percentage of batters while keeping walks to an absolute minimum.

This mostly unexpected domination out of the Astros bullpen has come from a few unlikely places. First, there’s newcomer Will Harris, who’s struck out 29 batters in 24 innings of work while posting an elite ground-ball rate (58.3%). As the most-used pitcher out of the Houston pen, his two pitch, hard cutter/curveball combination has been very effective in two parts of the strike zone: 10 out of his 13 strikeouts with the cutter have been in the upper half of the strike zone and above, while all but one of his 11 strikeouts with his curveball have been in the lower half of the zone and below. This is what success in changing eye levels looks like:

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Strictly based on WAR, the top middle-infield tandem so far has been playing half the time in Miami. The season hasn’t been a complete disaster for the Marlins, because they’ve observed steps forward by Dee Gordon and Adeiny Hechavarria, and that bodes well for the future, if the present is a little bit shot. Also based on WAR, the Marlins’ lead is about as small as it gets. Right on their heels is the Giants’ tag-team of Brandon Crawford and Joe Panik. The difference is something like one-tenth of one point. Let’s not split figurative hairs.

It’s a really interesting evolution that’s taking place in San Francisco. Crawford’s offensive development has been something to behold, starting out as a glove-first shortstop with a better bat than most pitchers. Crawford, now, is one of the best shortstops in baseball, provided the season doesn’t wear him down. But any attention paid to Crawford is attention not paid to Panik. And while Panik didn’t begin his big-league career in the same sort of way, he’s also reaching a level at the plate few would’ve imagined. Joe Panik isn’t just a slap hitter. Joe Panik is a genuine threat!

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The first-place Minnesota Twins have 30 wins on the season and sit 11 games above .500 as we enter June. Questioning Minnesota’s sustainability as a first-place team is going to be a topic of discussion for as long as Minnesota remains in the race. Jeff Sullivan detailed the Twins’ performance a few weeks ago and not much has changed since then aside from more Twins’ wins. Dave Cameron warned this morning about being mindful of the future when considering potential mid-season moves. Even mainstream statistics makes it easy to see why there are questions about the Twins. The team is 13th in batting average (excluding pitchers), 24th in on-base percentage, 23rd in slugging percentage, and their ERA for both starters (14th) and relievers (17th) are merely average. While there are questions about the Twins sustainability as a winner, there are fewer questions about the short-term sustainability of the performance of leadoff man Brian Dozier, who has played excellently in May and should have another good year after a five-win 2014 season.

While Paul Goldschmidt and Matt Carpenter are the poster boys for non-prospect players who have excelled at the major-league level, Brian Dozier is cut from the same mold. An eighth-round pick out of Southern Mississippi in 2009, Dozier was a senior sign who received just a $30,000 signing bonus. Dozier played well in the minors, but starting his professional career made him older than most of his competition. Dozier performed poorly when called up to the majors in 2012, hitting .234/.271/.332 in 340 plate appearances. That performance carried over into the first two months of 2013, but Dozier rebounded to post a wRC+ of 117 from June through the end of the season.

Dozier’s mini-breakout carried over to 2014 with a five-win season, as he hit 23 home runs with a 13% walk rate that was fifth in the American League. That performance earned him a contract extension for four years and $20 million, buying out his arbitration years but keeping his time to free agency intact. Dozier got off to a slow start this season, hitting just one home run in his first 90 plate appearances despite decent walk and strikeout numbers. Since that time, Dozier has had a run of good play coinciding with the Twins good fortune. He’s hit eight home runs since his slow start and his 170 wRC+ in May is seventh among AL batters.

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Last week, I took a look at some of the hitters taken in the early portion of the first round of last year’s amateur draft. Today, I’m going to repeat this exercise for pitchers, and examine the first eight arms taken in last year’s first round. I’m going to skip over last year’s first-overall pick, Brady Aiken, who wound up not signing with the Houston Astros due to a dispute centered around an issue with his elbow.

At this point, most of these players have something close to a year’s worth of games under their belts. Obviously, all these players are very early on in their respective careers, and still have plenty of developing left to do. Their futures are far from set in stone. Still, their stats from the last calendar year should be able to give us a general sense of how good they are now and, by extension, how good they might ultimately become.

Tyler Kolek, RHP (Profile)
Team: Miami Marlins   Age: 19
Stats: 4.65 ERA, 4.28 FIP between R, A

Kolek came with a lot of hype when the Marlins selected him seconf overall. He was tall, athletic, his fastball touched 100 and he had an impressive curveball, as well. Yet, despite his blazing stuff, he’s endured a rough transition to pro ball. Kolek held his own in Rookie-ball last year, where he pitched to a 3.92 FIP with an 18% strikeout rate. However, he’s really scuffled this year following a promotion to Low-A.

The most disappointing part of Kolek’s 2015 has been his lack of strikeouts. His strikeout rate currently sits at 16% — well below the South Atlantic League average of 20%. His 12% walk rate is also worse than his league’s average. At 19, there’s still plenty of time for Kolek’s performance to catch up with his stuff, but the early returns haven’t been what many had hoped for.

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Sometimes, I feel like I have to set these things up. This isn’t one of those times. The other day, Bryce Harper batted against Aroldis Chapman. Who wouldn’t want to examine that plate appearance in detail? We’re talking about the game’s premier one-inning pitcher, a guy who does something that might never have been done before, and then you’ve got the hottest hitter on the planet, a guy whose at-bats are worth setting alerts for if you’re not already tuned the hell in. Yeah, they’ve matched up before. Yeah, Chapman struck Harper out all three times, on a combined 10 pitches. That was that Bryce Harper. This is this Bryce Harper. Or, as you might know him, Bryce Harper.

The evening: Friday, May 29. The setting: nobody cares. This is about the individuals, not the circumstance, and while the leverage could’ve been higher, the game was close enough everyone was trying their hardest. This was about something other than deciding the score. This was arguably the game’s most watchable hitter and arguably the game’s most watchable pitcher. So you know they had to combine for a watchable matchup.

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Financially, being on the Angels roster is a plus for Taylor Featherston. The major league minimum is $507,500 and he’d be making a fraction of that down on the farm. Developmentally, it’s a different story. Being in Anaheim is a minus for the 25-year-old infielder.

Featherston is languishing on the end of Mike Scioscia’s bench. He has just 31 plate appearances on the season. That’s what happens when you can’t be sent to the minors without first passing through waivers and being offered back to your old club. A fifth round pick by the Rockies in 2011, the former TCU Horned Frog was claimed by the Cubs in last December’s Rule 5 draft and subsequently swapped to the Angels for cash considerations.

“For 30 minutes I thought I was going to be a Cub,” said Featherston, who had 53 extra-base hits last year for Colorado’s Double-A afilliate. “My phone was blowing up. I was working out, and my trainer was yelling at me to put it down and focus on my lift. I had hundreds of texts and calls saying, ‘Congratulations, Chicago.’ The next thing I know, the script was flipped and I was in LA. It’s been a fun ride.”

It’s also been an exercise in frustration. Featherston has but a lone base knock in 27 at bats. It’s easy to picture him removing splinters from his backside when Scioscia calls his name. To his credit, he’s taking a glass-is-half-full approach. Read the rest of this entry »