On April 10 in an outing against the Toronto Blue Jays, Dallas Keuchel was pitching Jose Bautista outside in the fourth inning.

That much isn’t really surprising, because since September of 2009, Bautista has done the bulk of his damage by pulling the ball. What was curious to me, however, was that Keuchel was pitching Bautista well outside despite the fact that the Astros defense was employing a heavy shift. It seemed counterintuitive, since I had assumed – though I hadn’t previously given it much thought – that a pitcher would be best served by pitching into a shift and giving the batter something he’s more likely to pull.

As it turns out, Keuchel was probably using the proper approach.
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The first step was identifying pitch-framing as a skill. I don’t mean to diminish all the work that was done — it was phenomenal work, and illuminating work. We can’t stop talking about it! But there are other steps, or if you prefer, follow-up questions. Three of them:

1. How much does pitch-framing matter?
2. Is there a pitch-framing aging curve?
3. To what extent can better pitch-framing be taught?

As far as No. 1 is concerned, we’ve got a lot of educated guesses. As far as No. 2 is concerned, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of an aging curve at all. And as far as No. 3 is concerned, it’s interesting to look at certain case studies. It seemed like J.P. Arencibia improved a season ago after working pretty hard on his receiving technique. And now we’ve got the case of Jason Castro, which, given his team, probably isn’t a coincidence. Well, no, it definitely isn’t a coincidence. I’ll get to that!

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Two things, both from Wednesday. Before the first game of a Yankees/Cubs doubleheader, the YES Network broadcast was profiling scheduled starter Masahiro Tanaka. They, of course, had very positive things to say, and at one point, Al Leiter remarked, “what I like is that he’s attacking the zone.” No nibbling, with that guy. Aggressive, polished rookie.

Later, Wednesday night, I got an email from Dave Cameron, asking if hitters should just stand there with their bats on their shoulders, since Tanaka doesn’t throw strikes. Why not force him to come into the zone? Is he even able to come into the zone often enough?

Two analyses by two analysts of one pitcher on one day, arriving at basically opposite conclusions. Leiter said Tanaka attacks the zone. Dave said Tanaka doesn’t attack the zone. What’s going on here? It’s time to gush some more about Masahiro Tanaka.

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Deadly accurate demographic information for the present site reveals that nearly all FanGraphs readers are either (a) busy executives or (b) busy executives on the go — in either case, one finds, the sort of people who can’t spend the day in explanation.

With a view to serving that particular demographic, the author presents the following — i.e. a small collection of numbered facts regarding celebrated Houston prospect George Springer’s debut, all of them (i.e. all the facts) of the sort which might appeal to those with a soft spot for the scientific method.

1. Over six plate appearances in an 11-inning game, Springer walked once, struck out twice, and recorded an infield hit — producing a single-game .263 wOBA (box).

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The Houston Astros added outfielder George Springer to their major league roster on Tuesday night and batted him second in the lineup in their game on Wednesday against the Kansas City Royals. Springer had an infield hit in five at-bats plus a walk in his debut.

Astros fans — indeed, fans of young baseball talent — have been pining for Springer’s call up since last season when he batted .301/.411/.600 in 589 plate appearances with 37 home runs and 45 stolen bases between Triple-A and Double-A. That followed his successful 2012 campaign in Double-A and high Single-A, when he posted a .302/.383/.526 line in 581 plate appearances. In February, Baseball America ranked Springer as the 18th best prospect. My colleague Marc Hulet put Springer at No. 14 on his Top 100 prospect list.

Yet Springer remained in the minors, without even a whiff of the big leagues last September, when the Astros expanded their roster. And he was sent back to Triple-A during spring training, with no place on Houston’s 40-man.

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There are a couple of very broad ways for pitchers to keep the opposition off of the scoreboard. One is to impose your will, maximizing K’s and minimizing BB’s – in most cases, pitchers excelling in those areas possess obvious, in-your-face tools and skills that are very easy to see. The other way is much more subtle – to manage contact, optimizing the batted-ball mix allowed and minimizing the authority with which the ball is impacted. Sometimes, pitchers more skilled in this area fly beneath the radar a bit compared to their more dominant counterparts. If you can accomplish both, however, you’ve got something. Based on the very early returns of the 2014 season, the Oakland A’s might have something. Read the rest of this entry »

When we last talked to Brandon McCarthy, he was looking for a change-up. He didn’t find it. But he did find what he hopes will be the key to a successful — and full — season this year: Bulk.

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Not long ago, I pointed out a couple hilarious game strike zones called by Sean Barber and Clint Fagan. Both umpires called balls on pitches well within the usual zone, and both umpires called strikes on pitches somewhere around the shins. They were awful displays of umpire judgment, but after that, Barber called a much better zone in his next game, and far more importantly, both Barber and Fagan are Triple-A umpires and not regular major-league umpires. The regulars are better than the prospects, just like we see with the players.

And about those regulars — I’ve pointed out in the past that they seemed to be calling more consistent strike zones. One of the neat things about a post like that is that it can be updated, and now that we’ve got a few hundred games finished in 2014, I come bearing some further encouraging news.

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There was a variety of reasons for why certain people were opposed to instant-replay expansion. It was certainly an affront to baseball purists, who’d already had to deal with replay on boundary calls. Replay reviews would serve to disrupt the flow of the game, irritating observers and players alike. But maybe most importantly, replay threatened to slow down a slow game. Baseball doesn’t exactly fly by at a dizzying pace at the best of times, and the game hasn’t been in need of additional minutes of nothing. Baseball was thought by some a boring sport before agreeing to sometimes spend several minutes stopping the game to look at the same play over and over.

It’s the middle of April and we have some early results. There have been nearly 70 challenges, and those games have lasted an average of 197 minutes. If you’re not super good at mental math, that’s three hours and more than a quarter of another hour. That’s too long, considering baseball is supposed to be maybe three hours of programming. The easy assumption, then, is that replay is to blame. But while the current replay system could use a little bit of polish, there’s also a lot more that needs to be said.

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Even good hitters go through a cold streaks at some point. If they want to avoid fan panic, though, they need to make sure and save those week or month-long slumps for later in the season. When slumps happen at the beginning of the season, they sandbag the player’s line, and it takes a while for even a good hitter’s line to return to “normal.” Most FanGraphs readers are familiar with the notion of small sample, and thus are, at least on an intellectual level, hopefully immunized against overreaction to early season struggles of good players.

Nonetheless, at this time of the year it is often good to have some existential reassurance. Intellectually, we know that just because a cold streak happens over the first two weeks or month of a season it is not any different than happening in the middle of the year. Slumps at the beginning of the year simply stand out more because they are the whole of the player’s line. One terrible month (and we are not even at the one month point in this season) does not doom a season. Rather than repeat the same old stuff about regression and sample size, this post will offer to anecdotal help. Here are five seasons from hitters, each of which contain (at least) one terrible month at some point, but each of which turned out to be excellent overall.

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