In Tampa Bay, Carl Crawford was a star. He was one of the most exciting players in the sport and one of the main driving forces behind the team’s rise from ineptitude to World Series contender. He was a homegrown talent who excelled in all of the things the Rays valued. He was an example of what small market teams could do to overcome the financial gap and take down the big boys.

Then, he signed a $142 million contract with the Red Sox. A lot of people were against that contract, especially for that skillset in that ballpark. A speed-and-defense guy getting power hitter money for years when his speed-and-defense would almost certainly be in decline? A guy who specialized in covering a lot of ground playing the smallest left field in baseball? Crawford’s struggles in Boston made him a new kind of example; a warning to those who had strayed from the simple concepts of on base percentage and slugging percentage. Crawford became the poster child for those who felt like places like FanGraphs had gone too far with our affection for guys who accumulate value through singles and UZR.

Through it all, Carl Crawford has been held up as more than just another player; he’s been the bully pulpit for both sides. Now healthy and away from the spotlight on the west coast — yes, he’s in LA, but he’s playing fifth fiddle to Clayton Kershaw, Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, and Zack Greinke — Crawford has been given a chance to get his career back on track. And he is taking full advantage.

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Probably the biggest baseball story of last week was Carlos Quentin charging the mound after a hit-by-pitch and in the process badly injuring Zack Greinke. At first it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid, then after some additional consideration, it looked like Quentin had done something completely stupid and Greinke also hadn’t helped himself. (Nuance.) The pitch that hit Quentin wasn’t that bad of a pitch. Quentin is no stranger to wearing it, and generally when you have a guy who gets hit a lot, that selection will include both wild pitches and surprisingly close pitches.

Dave put up a post about Carlos Quentin’s hit-by-pitch zone, which you can see here. As can be observed from the image, over the years Quentin has been hit by a few pitches that might’ve otherwise been borderline strikes. That gave Dave the idea to ask me about other hit-by-pitches that were at least borderline strikes. With the invaluable help of friend and colleague Matthew Carruth, I present to you an overall, league-wide hit-by-pitch zone map.

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Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts announced at a Monday morning press conference that an agreement had been reached on a framework to renovate Wrigley Field. The Ricketts family plans to spend $500 million in private funds to renovate and modernize the nearly 100-year-old ballpark, develop a new hotel across from Wrigley, and make myriad pedestrian, traffic, and other improvements to the Wrigleyville neighborhood.

The framework is the result of months of negotiations among the Cubs and the Ricketts family, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney, and Wrigleyville residents, and, according to Tom Ricketts, has the backing of Emmanuel and Tunney. Getting the support of the mayor and the local alderman was critical, as the plan must now proceed through Chicago’s Planned Development process, and be voted on by the Landmarks Commission and City Council.

The details are similar to those released by the Cubs in January, when the Ricketts family dropped their request for public funds and announced their intent to privately-finance the much-needed renovation. The hook for the Ricketts family’s half a billion dollar investment: changes to Chicago ordinances that restrict the quantity and type of advertising at Wrigley and the number of Cubs night games. In other words, if the City gives the Ricketts the leeway to operate Wrigley Field profitably, then the Ricketts will modernize the landmark ballpark and revitalize the neighborhood.

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Most of the time, pictures do more justice than talking. So when Jason Castro said a few words about catcher framing, I immediately wanted to run to a computer to look at what he was talking about. Maybe next time we’ll take a look at some video together and tease out what he meant a little further. But this time, just a few words were worth a lot of thinking, and the pictures filled in the blanks.

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As a rule, Mondays suck, but as Mondays go, this is always a good one, as the Red Sox play a frightfully early home baseball game. On 2013’s Patriots’ Day, the Red Sox hosted the Rays, and it was 2-1 Boston in the top of the sixth when Evan Longoria batted with two down and runners on the corners. In a full count against Ryan Dempster, Longoria returned a grounder up the middle, but Stephen Drew made a diving stop and threw to Mike Napoli for the out. The inning was over, the Rays didn’t score, and the Rays would end up losing by a run a few innings later.

Things were that simple, and things were also a hell of a lot more complicated. Longoria was upset with the call at first base, because the play was close, and had Longoria been ruled safe, the game would’ve been tied. This was one of the higher-leverage moments of the game. Below, you can see it all for yourself:

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Although I have not done a general survey of reactions to Joe Girardi’s decision to have Robinson Cano hit second in eight of the Yankees’ first 11 games, I can imagine many saber-friendly fans are excited to see the player who is mostly likely the Yankees’ best hitter in the second spot. Ever since the findings The Book’s chapter on lineup optimization became popular among baseball bloggers, complaints about managers “wasting” the second spot in the lineup (where the best hitter, or at least one of the best three, according to The Book) have increased.

I do not know whether Joe Girardi is putting Cano second because of sabermetric insights or simply because with Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira out, he is at a loss regarding how to split up the lefties in his lineup otherwise. The latter suggestion is what Wallace Matthews believes. Matthews is not a fan of Cano hitting second. After all, a hitter with Cano’s average and power simply can’t hit second, right? Matthews:

Robinson Cano is not a No. 2 hitter, not in any way, shape or form, and not on anyone’s lineup card in baseball. Except, of course, for Joe Girardi’s…. This adjustment, however, does not add up. In addition to all the home runs the Yankees lost to free agency, the injuries to Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira took two bats that accounted for 67 home runs last season out of the lineup. So instead of installing Cano, who hit 33 HRs last year, in the middle of the lineup where he belongs, Girardi moves him up.

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Adam Dunn arrived in the Major Leagues in 2001. Since then, he has led the major leagues in both walks (1,172) and strikeouts (2,046) and is third in home runs (408), and his career stands as something of the perfect example of the Three True Outcomes. Of the 7,256 times he’s walked up to the plate, 3,702 of those PAs (51%) have ended without defensive involvement. Dunn has perfected the slow pitch softball style of baseball and turned that skillset into a pretty effective big league career.

And now, at age 33, Dunn is participating in an experiment to become an entirely new kind of hitter. Two weeks in, and it’s hard to call the experiment anything other than a total failure.

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Saturday night in Seattle, the Mariners were playing the Rangers, and the score was 1-1 going into the top of the eighth inning. Carter Capps relieved Joe Saunders, and the broadcast warned that Capps shouldn’t walk leadoff batter Craig Gentry, because Gentry is one of the quicker runners in the league. Also because you shouldn’t walk anybody if you can help it. Capps subsequently walked Gentry, and Gentry scored, and that run would prove to be the winning run in a 3-1 final. Gentry walked on seven pitches and a full count.

It was a walk not without its controversy, although it looks like a bigger deal now than it seemed at the time. With the count 2-and-2, Capps threw Gentry a fastball in the low-away quadrant that easily could’ve been called strike three. Gameday shows that the pitch was within the strike zone, and during the game other strikes were called in the area. The pitch was ruled ball three, and the next pitch was a far less controversial ball four. Hence the walk, hence the run, hence the loss. It didn’t sit very well with Carter Capps, not that the one pitch was the reason the Mariners lost the ballgame.

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The Lexington Legends had been the Low-A affiliate for the Houston Astros for quite some time. Walking around Whitaker Bank Park, you would see images of Hunter Pence and that one time Roger Clemens pitched there. Those images aren’t there anymore after the Astros bolted and the Royals came in. This is a little sad because this would have been the year to see the Low-A Astros team as opposed to the years of yuck before that, but the Royals are a nice consolation prize. Here are some prospects of note from my four days in Lexington last week.
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And now we’re to the second part of the second edition of The Worst Of The Best. In this part, as in the second part of the first edition of this series, I encountered a problem where I logged into MLB.tv too often in too narrow a window of time. What happens then is you get your account suspended! Very temporarily. So it is something of an inconvenience, hence the delay in getting this post up on the page. So be prepared if you’re ever going to load a bunch of different MLB.tv archive games all willy-nilly. Don’t load them from Gameday or from the scoreboard page; load them through the actual MLB.tv window itself. Having had this problem twice, it’s clear that the penalty after the first infraction wasn’t enough of a deterrent to teach me a lesson, but I won’t worry about my cognitive function until or unless it happens a third time.

Incidentally, when I did something like this last year, sometimes people would write in about really ugly swings, wondering why those didn’t show up on the list. Like, swings where the batter fell down, or something. Those are bad swings, but these are the swings at the wildest pitches, which is different and which is based on PITCHf/x instead of observation and judgment. Someone, probably, should keep track of all the swings where batters fall down. But because that information isn’t easily recovered on a computer, I’m not going to worry about it, myself. Here are wild swings at pitches way out of the zone. That’s all this is, and nothing more. Off to the top five, or the bottom five, depending on your perspective.

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