Just the other day, we went through the first half of the season’s strike-iest called balls, which were more or less called balls on pitches taken right down the middle. Those are always interesting to observe and analyze, but that idea also has a natural follow-up, which is what we’ll review here. Below, the first half of the season’s ball-iest called strikes, which are called strikes on pitches absolutely not taken right down the middle. Umpire mistakes are always frustrating for about half of the observers, and on the larger scale umpire mistakes are frustrating for everybody, but the purpose of these posts isn’t to lead you to your individual boiling points; rather, this is just about identifying and reflecting on curiosities. What you see below is weird! Never a bad time to look at weird.

I’m changing things up just a little bit. Instead of calculating distance from the center of the strike zone, I’ve calculated distance from the nearest point of the strike zone. I’ve also gone with Brooks Baseball’s corrected PITCHf/x pitch locations, instead of the raw PITCHf/x pitch locations, because I am taking this way too seriously. The top five? Four left-handed batters, as you’d expect. But one righty. One most unfortunate righty. Here now are the ball-iest called strikes of 2014.

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This is the fourth season in five in which we’ve experienced — or for some, endured — a retirement tour. First was Bobby Cox in 2010, and then Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter have all been feted by their peers around the game. That begs the question, who’s next?

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If the baseball season ended today, an awful lot of people would be awfully confused, and the Seattle Mariners would qualify for the playoffs. There’s no bigger reason for the Mariners’ success than Felix Hernandez, and there’s no bigger reason for Felix Hernandez’s success than his changeup. Felix featured his change as the American League’s starting pitcher in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, and here’s that pitch putting away Yasiel Puig:

Here’s that pitch putting away Troy Tulowitzki:

Good hitters, both of those. Good pitches, both of those. By this point Felix is a household name, and it’s no secret that he offers a dominant changeup, or cambio. He’s been throwing the pitch for years, for almost exactly as long as he’s been a Cy Young contender.

But sometimes it isn’t enough to just know something. With Felix pitching as well as he ever has, it seems like a good time to get more familiar with the best pitch he throws, that’s also one of the best pitches in the league. Let’s review some facts about the Felix Hernandez changeup.

Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.

The Dodgers’ outfield situation might be more complicated than ever. Yasiel Puig is one of the league’s better young players, you’re all familiar with the three expensive veterans, Scott Van Slyke is a better player than even the Dodgers might’ve recognized, and Joc Pederson is hanging out in Triple-A with a four-digit OPS. It’s pretty obvious that some bodies are going to have to be moved, and one trade possibility is Matt Kemp. Kemp was the subject of rumors over the offseason, and those rumors haven’t gone away now that Kemp’s on the field and getting kind of squeezed out. The idea is he isn’t yet 30, and he’s an athlete who can be a source of right-handed power. If the Dodgers were to cover some of Kemp’s remaining contract, they would be able to find a destination.

On paper, Kemp is a two-time winner of a Gold Glove. Yet one of the problems here is that Kemp doesn’t appear to be a good defender. He’s been moved away from center field by a team without a true center fielder, and Kemp’s reduced mobility reduces the value he can provide, to the Dodgers or to someone else. Worse, Kemp isn’t accepting the aging process. From a newsy article Wednesday, by Ken Rosenthal:

The outfielder’s agent, former major-league pitcher Dave Stewart, told FOX Sports on Wednesday that Kemp again wants to be an everyday center fielder, something that isn’t in his immediate future with the Dodgers.

“Whatever they want to do we’re favorable to, as long as it gives him an opportunity to play every day,” Stewart said. “He’d like to eventually go back to center field. He’s not opposed to right or left. But his hope at some point is to get back to center.”

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It’s time to hang out with your local favorite writers and talk baseball… when there’s no baseball on. (It actually makes for better conversations, because everything you say doesn’t trail off into ellipses when something happens on the field.)

I’m off to Minneapolis for the All-Star game and then on to Chicago for Pitchfork and BeerGraphs business, so we’ll take this show on the road.

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Sports Business Journal published an article on Monday sounding the alarm about the Los Angeles Dodgers’ plummeting local TV ratings. Last season, the Dodgers averaged 226,000 households per game telecast. This season, the average is 40,000 households.

Of course the Dodgers’ ratings have plummeted. The team’s new regional sports network — SportsNetLA — isn’t available to fans who don’t subscribe to Time Warner Cable, because the network has been unable to reach distribution deals with the other cable and satellite companies like DirecTV and DISH. Only 30% of households in Los Angeles have Time Warner Cable and, thus, access to SportsNetLA. But the Dodgers lead the majors in attendance with 2,277,891 tickets sold through 49 home games, for an average of 46,487 per game.

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In one sense, baseball’s most extraordinary pitcher right now might be Clayton Kershaw. He’s generating results that put even Cy Young-winning Clayton Kershaw to shame, to the point where he’s starting to make people reflect upon career-prime Pedro Martinez. Career-prime Pedro Martinez sets an impossibly high bar, but Kershaw’s trying his damnedest to get there, and it’s a pleasure for everybody that isn’t a baseball player tasked with the responsibility of opposing Clayton Kershaw. He’s doing what he can to be the perfect starting pitcher.

But we can attack the term “extraordinary” in a variety of different ways. Kershaw might be the most extraordinary pitcher by results, but what about the related but different matter of style? Who are baseball’s most unusual pitchers, in the way they go about their business? That’s the question I set out to answer, following a fairly simple and user-friendly process.

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The All Star Game took place on Tuesday, and for the first time since 2008, Justin Verlander was not there for the festivities. Looking at his recent performance, it seems like very, very long ago that Verlander was the consensus pick as the best pitcher in baseball, when in fact, it was 2012. What has happened, and is his descent from the Mount Rushmore of starting pitchers permanent? Great pitchers have had bad years before regaining their groove — Steve Carlton, for one, lost 20 games in 1973 and didn’t come close to resembling the monster who won 27 games for a terrible Philadelphia team the year before. All he did was go on to win three more Cy Young Awards over the next decade, while in the process reclaiming Best Pitcher in Baseball honors. Can Verlander make a similar resurgence? Read the rest of this entry »

Based on the chats that we host, these things seem to go in waves. This past spring training, it felt like one of every two questions asked about teams trading for Nick Franklin. Once the season got underway, everybody was wondering when the Pirates would finally call up Gregory Polanco. And now there’s a new and different question of the moment: what are the Cubs going to do with all of their prospects? The situation appeared to be a little bit crowded even before the organization added Addison Russell and, less notably, Billy McKinney. Now there are people wondering when the Cubs are going to diversify.

I’ve dealt with this in a few consecutive chats. I think Dave has also done the same. But it seems like a topic worthy of a dedicated post. If all the players were to stay where they are, and if they all were to develop well, then the Cubs would have quite the crowd on their hands. At the moment, though, it’s a crowd that doesn’t exist. It’s a crowd that exists only in theory, in some possible future out of infinite possible futures, and therefore the Cubs aren’t facing any kind of urgency.

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Madison Kyle Bumgarner plays pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. At 52-43, the Giants have the sixth-best record in baseball. Madison the pitcher has +0.8 WAR as a hitter. That means a pitcher has been the seventh-most valuable hitter on a playoff-caliber team. Most major league pitchers make very poor major league hitters. This hasn’t applied to pretty much any of the San Francisco Giants starters, but especially to Madison Kyle Bumgarner.

Bumgarner’s slash line through the first half of the 2014 season is .275/.302/.550. That gives him matching wRC+ and OPS+ totals of 140. Thanks to the great Dan Szymborski, I can tell you that his ZiPS end-of-season-projection includes a 107 OPS+. That is to say, even if he goes back to hitting like a pitcher in the second half, it is more likely than not that Madison Bumgarner will finish the season with above-league average hitting numbers. There are many actual major league hitters that won’t finish the season with above-league average hitting numbers.

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