David Price had one of the best starts of his career on Tuesday. With any start, you always have to consider the opponent, since it’s the opponent who’s responsible for doing anything with the pitches that get thrown, but at least by the numbers, Price was absolutely outstanding in Seattle, turning in a walk-free complete game with a dozen strikeouts. He was sufficiently dominant that he was allowed to handle the ninth inning of a one-run game, and he closed the deal with a 96 mile-per-hour swinging strikeout. Not that it was the swinging strikeouts for which people will remember the effort.

Closing the bottom of the first, Price froze Corey Hart with an inside running fastball. That was the first of eight called strikeouts Price would record, giving him twice as many called strikeouts as whiffs. It was tied for the highest called-strikeout start of the 2014 season, and while most called third strikes are the result of a hitter being caught off guard, in the end Price’s called strikeouts were pretty similar.

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“Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.” — Crash Davis, in 1988’s classic baseball flick “Bull Durham”

This piece of advice from Kevin Costner’s character has been translated into nearly every ballpark in America, as fans and commentators alike lament a struggling pitcher’s inability to just throw the ball over the plate. Even if they hit the ball, it’s not another boring walk, and besides, you have seven guys standing behind you who are covering most of the field; as long you keep the ball in the ballpark, odds are that the hitter is going to make an out. Trust your defense, pitch to contact and, most importantly, work deep in the game.

But is putting trust into your defense actually a good strategy? After all, while most balls in play become outs, almost every strikeout becomes an out — there are rare times when a batter does reach on a strikeout due to a wild pitch or passed ball — and a pitcher’s job is to rack up as many outs as he can, while allowing as few runs as he can in the process. Are strikeouts an inefficient way of collecting outs, and would a pitcher be better off trading them in for those democratic ground balls if he wants to get as many outs as possible while staying within his pitch count? Let’s dive into the numbers.

Overall, there are 105 starting pitchers who have thrown enough innings to qualify for the ERA title. The average pitcher in this group has thrown 3.8 pitches for every batter faced, so given today’s rough guideline of 100 pitches per game for a starter, a pitcher can be expected to face about 26 batters per game, or get through the entire batting order nearly three times. However, because some batters reach base, the average qualified starter has required 5.3 pitches for each out he has recorded, meaning that he records about 19 outs per start, or 6 1/3 innings pitched.

Do groundball pitchers get more bang for their buck, as is often suggested? Let’s take a look at those 105 starters broken into quartiles based on ground ball percentage this year.

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Just over a month ago, Dave Cameron made an astute observation: Kenley Jansen was suddenly throwing harder in the earliest part of the season. Or as he put it, “PITCHF/x has already classified more 97+ mph pitches from Kenley Jansen this year than it did all of last year.” And since Jansen was already a hard-throwing and dominant closer with an unhittable pitch even before the velocity jump, it made for an interesting proposition. Namely, what would hitters do against a Jansen who was actually throwing harder? What happens if you take someone who is one of the three or four best in the world at what he does, and then give him something more to work with? What then?

Six weeks into the season, Jansen now has one more 97-plus mph pitch (21) logged than in his entire career through 2013. He’s also already allowed more than half as many earned runs as he allowed in any of the last three years, and he has four meltdowns as compared to eight in all of 2013. Hitters have a .276/.349/.408 line against in 2014, as opposed to .158/.245/.249 previously. He’s throwing harder, finding less success despite it, and, well, baseball is just the worst sometimes. (This may be residual Jose Fernandez anger.)

This has led to a pretty predictable narrative: Jansen is throwing harder…

…and it’s because of that that he’s had problems. Causation! It implies correlation, except when it doesn’t.

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Let’s talk about something Yasiel Puig did on Monday. In the fourth inning, off Tom Koehler, he hit a home run. He does that. In the fifth inning, off Henry Rodriguez, he walked on four pitches. The same guy had just previously walked Dee Gordon and Dan Haren. In the third inning, Puig flied out. In the seventh inning, Puig grounded out. For good measure, Puig also got caught stealing. But let’s hone in on the bottom of the first. Gordon led off with a groundout, and then it was Puig vs. Koehler with nobody on.

First pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. Second pitch, fastball, in the zone, foul. That quickly, Koehler was ahead of Puig 0-and-2, and there is no more advantageous count for a pitcher, aside from 0-and-3. Koehler could choose from anything to try to put Puig away, and Puig was put on the total defensive. At that point, he probably wished he would’ve put one of the fouls in play.

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Jose Fernandez is broken. After allowing him to throw ridiculous pitches that opposing hitters simply couldn’t touch, his elbow threw in the towel in the fifth inning of his start on Friday night. You can basically see the injury occur in his in-game velocity chart.

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Normally, when a championship season begins, there already is a pretty clear stratification of teams within a league. In the current 15-team league era, leagues often divide fairly neatly into thirds: five pretty clear contenders, five pretty clear laggards or rebuilders and five “meh” clubs in the middle. As the season begins to unfold, a game of musical chairs begins, with a contender or two often falling short and a club or two from the “meh” and rebuilder categories making a surprise run.

The 2014 American League breaks this mold. almost a full quarter into the season, there are two clear contending clubs — the Detroit Tigers and Oakland A’s — and only the Houston Astros are an obvious laggard. The “meh” pile is 12 deep. Let’s look at this group a little closer for clues as to who might emerge as the other three AL playoff teams. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This was written just before Monday night’s game, in which Bautista had three hits and a homer. So, most of his 2014 stats are even better than they appear below.

One of the more impressive active streaks in baseball ended recently, and I bet you didn’t know anything about it. No, not the end of Nolan Arenado’s 28-game hitting streak, as nice as that was. Jose Bautista went 0-4 in a loss to the Angels on Sunday, failing to reach base for the first time all year after doing so 37 consecutive times. It’s the longest streak since Michael Cuddyer (!) did so 46 consecutive times last year; it’s the longest to start a season since Albert Pujols had 42 in 2008; it’s tied with Carlos Delgado for the longest in Blue Jays history.

That’s interesting, but it’s not that interesting on its own, really. Bautista wasn’t even halfway to Ted Williams‘ record of 84. Orlando Cabrera once got on base 63 games in a row. Kevin Millar, 52. It’s hard to be a poor player and continually get on base, but it doesn’t on its own make you a great player. What’s interesting about what Bautista just did is that it’s a small part of the larger whole: After back-to-back seasons that were very good but hardly up to the standard he set during his insane 2010-11 run, and at age 33, Bautista is once again absolutely destroying baseballs, currently sitting with the fourth-best wRC+ in the game. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Hosmer is still sitting on one home run as we approach the one-fourth point of the regular season. He hasn’t hit fewer than 14 dingers yet in a year, so it’s clear that Hosmer’s still looking for his power stroke. But don’t make the mistake of believing that Hosmer has yet to make a positive contribution — he’s got a 120 wRC+, which is basically right on what he did a year ago. Let’s keep doing that, comparing last year to this year. The offense has been identical, overall. Hosmer last year was nine runs below average defensively. Hosmer this year is on pace for about -7. So in a sense, Eric Hosmer has been just as good a player. But, last season, Hosmer was worth just over three wins. This season, he’s on pace to be worth just over one win. How do you explain that, when a guy’s been hitting the same and fielding the same? Is WAR losing the mind that it doesn’t have?

That’s one option. Or you could look at WAR’s other, oft-forgotten input. You think about baserunning value when it comes to burners like Billy Hamilton and Jacoby Ellsbury. It’s easy to kind of forget about it when you’re dealing with a first baseman or a DH. But, to this point, according to our leaderboards, Hosmer has been the worst baserunner in baseball, at almost five runs below average, already. That puts him on pace for -21, eclipsing Kendrys Morales‘ recent record of -14 in 2009. Hosmer, presumably, won’t keep up this impossible pace. Previously, for his career, he was actually above average. But how did things get to this point? How has Hosmer already cost his team that many runs in such a small sample of games?

There are .gifs, and, unfortunately, they are big.

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By now you might’ve read that, Sunday afternoon, Clayton Kershaw gave up a home run on his curveball. Clayton Kershaw does not often give up a home run on his curveball. According to some sources, it was the first time Kershaw’s curve had been hit out in the regular season, ever. This is a disputed instance, from April 2011. We do know, for certain, Kershaw gave up a playoff dinger on his curve in 2009. Matt Holliday hit it, but unfortunately for him, the same game for Holliday became differently eventful in the later innings. Also, 2009 was before Clayton Kershaw became Clayton Kershaw. But anyway! The point is that Kershaw’s curve doesn’t get taken yard. It got taken yard, so that’s interesting.

Lots of people have come at this from the Kershaw side. Not a lot of attention has been paid to the Brandon Hicks side. Hicks is 28 and a former prospect, and a big reason why he’s never gotten regular big-league playing time is because he hasn’t been able to consistently hit non-fastballs. Since 2002, 1,308 position players have batted in the majors at least 100 times. Hicks has posted the third-lowest contact rate, at 59%. According to PITCHf/x, Hicks has swung at 172 non-fastballs and whiffed at 60% of them. Hicks is an all-or-nothing sort, and maybe that’s precisely the sort that was going to take Kershaw’s curve out. But prior to the homer, it’s not like Hicks looked comfortable against Kershaw breaking balls.

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During a conversation with Alex Rios about the changes he’s made over his career, the Texas Rangers outfielder made a comment about an accepted truth in baseball. His comment was seemingly simple but hid one of the more complicated aspects of the game.

We were talking about his bad year in Chicago in 2011, when he hit .227 with 13 homers and 11 stolen bases, and his wRC+ was 40 percent below the league average. When pushed to come up with a reason for his renaissance since that low, Rios could only think of one thing he’d really changed.

“I was trying to get deeper into the count and see more pitches and be a little more patient at the plate, to make myself hit a better pitch,” he said of 2012, when his career got back on track.

Rios did take more pitches per plate appearance in 2012 than he did in 2011 — .05 pitch more per plate appearance, or about 30 more pitches over the course of a full season. Not a ton more pitches, but more. And it’s a trend he’s continued since, to the point that he’s now back above league average in the stat (3.85).

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