All winter, there were rumors that the Dodgers were open to trading Andre Ethier. All winter, the Dodgers declared that there was nothing to those rumors, and that they weren’t having second thoughts about the five year, $85 million contract they gave him last June. When spring training rolled around and Cuban import Yasiel Puig became The Hot New Thing, those rumors picked up again, since the Dodgers will need to open up a corner outfield spot for Puig at some point in the not too distant future.

But, LA remained patient and optioned the 22-year-old Puig to Double-A, giving him some experience against professional pitchers without throwing him immediately into the fire. They also gave Ethier a chance to play most everyday, and while they were unlikely to admit it publicly, they likely hoped that he could get off to a strong enough start to re-establish some trade value after his power fell off in the second half last year.

Today, though, manager-of-the-moment Don Mattingly sent a pretty clear signal that he is not Andre Ethier’s biggest fan, and you can probably start the clocking ticking on both of their exits from Dodger Land.

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The lowest ERA on the Diamondbacks right now belongs to Matt Reynolds. The lowest ERA on the Diamondbacks belonging to a pitcher who’s thrown more innings than a really long baseball game belongs to Patrick Corbin. Monday night, Corbin took the mound in Coors Field with an ERA of 1.52. He came away with an ERA even lower than that, and at present his ERA is the second-lowest in baseball among starters. Only Clayton Kershaw has Corbin beat — Matt Harvey, Shelby Miller, Felix Hernandez, and everyone else is behind him. And Kershaw’s allowed three unearned runs. Corbin has yet to allow his first.

It’s been a brilliant season-opening stretch for a guy who now looks to have been underrated in the past. To pick on Keith Law, here he is calling Corbin a back-end starter, and here he is calling Corbin a No. 4. To pick on us, here’s Corbin as a potential No. 3, and here he is as a potential No. 3 again. Previously, it was thought that Corbin’s ceiling would be that of a mid-rotation starter, perhaps. Already, he’s exceeding that, and I’m not blaming the prospect evaluators. Corbin’s just beating expectations, and that’s worthy of a deeper dig.

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Johnny Cueto came off the disabled list and started for the Reds last night. He had been on the disabled list due to a sore right oblique; it was the same injury he experienced during last season’s playoffs. His unique twisting windup seems to be the reason that he’s suffered the same ailment twice now, and he has said he might consider changing his delivery to correct the problem in the future.

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A couple of weeks ago, you the attentive reader, will surely have observed the introduction of our depth charts and standings pages. It was a long time coming, and we remain pretty freaking excited about it. As such, we thought that every two weeks that we’d take a look at some sort of change or happening or goings-on that occurred.

We’re not going to cover every team, because let’s face it, there really is only so many times that one can write a variation of “the Marlins aren’t even trying” without wanting to scrape out your eyebones with a rusty screwdriver. But we’ll still try to pry out an objective look in some way. This week, we’ll take a look at the three biggest movers — one positive and two negative — in terms of ranking of projected full season winning percentage. (One note — the looks here are from last Tuesday, the 14th, to this morning, but in future editions we’ll likely use Monday as the cut-off day for a number of reasons, nearly all of which involve my sanity.)

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Last night, Alex Sanabia gave up a home run to Domonic Brown in the second inning, and as he was walking back to the mound, the video appears to capture him spitting on the baseball. Sanabia then proceeded to retire 14 more batters without allowing any more runs, and the Marlins beat the Phillies 5-1. Based on the video evidence, it seems as though Sanabia may have been throwing a spitball last night. Based on the fact that he had one of his best starts of the season, by results, it appears as though the spitball might have fairly effective.

Of course, this is all still highly speculative. We only have that one video clip of him spitting that one time, and because the clip is very short, we don’t actually know what happened before he threw the next pitch. Maybe he dried the ball off. Maybe the spit didn’t actually hit the ball, and it’s all a camera angle trick. If we’re going to assume that Sanabia was throwing a loaded baseball, we should investigate a little further.

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Let me preface all of this by saying that it’s always possible that a quick video replay could be missing necessary context and misrepresenting what actually happened. There is some uncertainty when viewing events from afar, especially in a narrow timespan. It is possible that what you’re about to see isn’t what it looks like.

But, uhh, it sure looks like Alex Sanabia was caught on video spitting all over the baseball after allowing a home run to Domonic Brown tonight. As pointed out by one of our commenters, you can see the video here, and pay attention at around the 13 second mark.

Or, if you’d rather, just watch this helpful GIF, care of Jeff Sullivan.

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A true and old expression, paraphrased, is that you never know what you might see when you go to the ballpark. A similar old expression is that whenever you go to the ballpark you’ll see something you’ve never seen before. Taken completely literally, this is true — every single pitch, every single swing, every single ball in play, every single act, specifically, is unprecedented. A baseball game has infinite coordinates and infinite possible paths. Taken less literally, some games are boring and feel like games you’ve seen before, but baseball is nevertheless full of surprises. If it doesn’t always show you something you’ve never seen, it at least frequently shows you something you’ve seldom seen. This is the magic of a sport with so many repetitions. Put another way, this is the magic of baseball.

On this particular Monday, two games are in the books as of this writing. The Indians walked off against the Mariners, and the Blue Jays hosted and defeated the Rays. Both of those things have happened before, but the games themselves included a handful of rarities. I thought it’d be a good idea to show some of them off, just to remind you that this sport we watch is insane. Below, you’ll see four things that happened that very rarely happen. For all I know I missed a couple more. Not included is that Colby Rasmus went a full game without striking out, but know that I thought about it. On now to four bits of weirdness.

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Sunday night, the Rangers hosted the Tigers in a matchup between two of the American League’s better teams. You’d think the big story would be that the Rangers rallied from a deficit to beat the Tigers 11-8. But then, it’s May, and the Rangers are going to win a lot, and the Tigers are going to lose a lot (albeit, presumably, a smaller lot than the first lot). Sure seems to me the big story is that Miguel Cabrera clubbed three dingers. That sort of game for Cabrera shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s a bigger surprise than the Rangers beating the Tigers. Cabrera’s individual effort has people re-analyzing his game, in the exact same way everyone did last November.

And Cabrera didn’t just club three ordinary dingers. According to the ESPN Home Run Tracker, there were 22 homers on Sunday. The longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The second-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The third-longest was hit by Miguel Cabrera. The fourth-longest wasn’t hit by Miguel Cabrera, but now you’re being greedy. All of the homers were similar, and all of the homers were significantly different.

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Cole Hamels has not looked like himself this year. After ERAs of 3.06, 2.79, and 3.05 from 2010 through 2012, Hamels now has a 4.61 ERA nine starts into this season. By itself, that doesn’t mean he’s doing anything wrong. Pitchers are vulnerable to random fluctuations and luck in nine — or even in 30 — starts. For example, take the Hamels from 2009: After the left-hander finished 2008 with a 3.09 ERA and a World Series MVP trophy, expectations were high for the next season. But Hamels fell by the wayside and posted a 4.32 ERA, even though his walk, strikeout, and ground ball numbers were all in the normal range for him.

His DIPS numbers suggested that there wasn’t anything really wrong with Hamels then, and that with a little bit of patience, he would go back to dominating hitters as he had previously. In 2010, that suggestion came to fruition, and Hamels went right back to being one of the game’s premier left-handed starters.

Fast forward to 2013, and Hamels ERA is up once again. However, this time, something does look different. Look at his walk rate, his strikeout rate, his SIERA and his ERA in the past six years:
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Hey there, and welcome to the second part of the sixth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s second part, which happened to cover twice as many weeks as usual due to reasons. This post would’ve gone up sooner in the day, but MLB.tv chose this afternoon to be obnoxiously buggy with the archives, and this series is completely, utterly, helplessly dependent on MLB.tv functioning like a reliable service. Which it normally does, because it’s great, but that only makes it all the more frustrating when it doesn’t, especially when you need it for part of your job. If MLB.tv were to never work again, I, too, would never work again, here. I’d be stripped naked. When the archives are malfunctioning, I lose my cool. I yelled at my computer because I couldn’t watch Jeff Locke throw a two-strike breaking ball to Kyle Lohse for 20 minutes. There’s an ugly side to me, and MLB.tv knows just how to reveal it to the world.

Anyway, I was eventually able to obtain everything I needed, so off we go with the week’s five wildest swings, or five swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. I don’t count attempted hit-and-runs, and I don’t count checked swings that were judged to have gone too far. That Lohse swing I waited 20 minutes to see? Checked. We’re looking at games from between May 10 – May 16, and of course there are going to be .gifs ahead. I hope you like two-strike breaking balls, because we’ve got a lot of ’em. And only three pitchers! Unless you count a fourth pitcher, who was serving as a hitter. Whatever, you’ll see what I mean. Let’s get this over with.

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