When the Marlins announced their opening day rotation, there was one shocking last minute addition: 20-year-old Jose Fernandez. One of the top pitching prospects in baseball, there had been no talk about carrying him on the Opening Day roster, and he was one of the Marlins first cuts earlier in spring training. While he’s an intriguing talent, he also hasn’t yet pitched above A-ball, and the Marlins are rushing him to the big leagues in a season that is almost certainly not going to result in contention. So, why did they abruptly promote Fernandez to the big leagues?

One idea that has been kicked around is marketing. There is no franchise in professional sports with a bigger image problem than the Miami Marlins, and the second year of the team’s new stadium is expected to be filled with empty seats. The roster has been gutted and filled with replacement level journeyman grasping on to the last legs of their careers, so not only is the team not good, it’s not particularly interesting either. Giancarlo Stanton is about the only reason to go to the park and watch the team play.

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Hello friends, and welcome to the first Friday of the 2013 MLB regular season. On this Friday we will debut a new series, to run on every Friday hereafter. The name of the series is “The Worst of the Best”, and each Friday it’s going to involve two separate but related posts, chronicling the wildest pitches of the week that was, and the wildest swings of the week that was, where for our purposes the week that was spans from the previous Friday to Thursday. Or, in this case, from Sunday to Thursday. Each post will consist of a top five, complete with a bunch of images, so prepare your computers if you have really terrible old slow computers.

I’ve done something somewhat similar to this before. I came up with this name in a hurry and I’m not wedded to it, but the idea is that we’re observing the worst performances from some of the best players in the world. These are the moments at which the world’s greatest baseball players are the most like us. Maybe even worse than us! It’s all going to be PITCHf/x-derived, so this isn’t a subjective list, but we are left with the reality that every so often, PITCHf/x misses a pitch. Also PITCHf/x doesn’t keep track of intended pitch location, which could matter a little here. But we’re all just going to deal with that, because I said so and because none of us really has a choice. Now let’s just go ahead and get to the start of our first list. This is going to at least not be the opposite of fun.

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Lucas Duda has made some changes. Though you’ll recognize the syntax from our look at Domonic Brown and his swing changes, Duda’s changes are more subtle. You might not even see them the first time around. But look a little closer — or, earlier — and you might notice a difference in approach. Maybe it’ll allow the big guy to tap into his power better this year.

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Stryker Trahan, Matt Davidson and Chris Owings each flashed plus power for their respective positions at Salt River Fields in Arizona. For Owings, it was a line drive home run to right-center field in his first at bat of the Triple-A game. Davidson just missed barreling an outside fastball, but was still able to drive it to base of the right field wall. Trahan belted multiple shots to left-center field. One resulted in a double while the other ended in a long out.

These in game displays of power were preceded by powerful batting practice sessions full of laser line drives and towering home runs.

If the game of baseball revolved around the power tool, the Diamondbacks would have three of the best prospects in baseball. Of course, hitting ability, speed, defense and arm strength are also factored into the equation. This is where each loses his luster. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s season-ticket holders will be able to take in a game this year for about the same cost as last season. They’ll also enjoy a hot dog, a beer, a soda, a program and a cap for 2012 prices — more or less. But long-time fans of the Nationals, Tigers, Giants, Angels and Rangers have had to dig deeper into their pockets. With those teams, season-ticket holders saw ticket price increases of more than 10%. The Mariners, Diamondbacks and Pirates also raised their prices for season-ticket holders by at least 7%. On the flip side, the White Sox, Royals and Mets lowered non-premium seats by 7% or more.

The ticket price information comes courtesy of Fan Cost Experience, which released its annual ticket price survey this week. The site reports on the “average ticket price” for each team — which it defines as “a weighted average of season-ticket prices for general seating categories, determined by factoring the tickets in each price range as a percentage of the total number of seats in each venue.”  Across the league, the average ticket price in 2013 is $27.48, a mere 1% increase over last season.

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It has never happened, but it might this year – the Cleveland Indians could face the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. Other match-ups are more likely — Nationals vs. Tigers, for instance — but Ohio’s teams may be on a collision course. It is less of a long shot than you might think.

On paper, the Reds are one of the best teams in baseball. They won 97 games last year and if they stay relatively healthy — the loss of Ryan Ludwick is an early blow — they should once again be favored to capture the National League Central title. Few will be surprised if Great American Ballpark is hosting games in late October.

Then there is the team 270 miles to their northeast. The Indians won just 68 games last year. They‘ve made major upgrades, but that‘s mostly on the position-player front. Their starting rotation is a question mark the size of Lake Erie. Justin Masterson, the de facto ace of the staff, again struggled with left-handers and posted a 4.93 ERA. The 4.16 FIP/4.15 xFIP suggest better things are in store in 2013, however.

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All offseason long, the Detroit Tigers denied interest in re-signing free-agent closer Jose Valverde. Every other team in baseball also effectively denied interest in signing Valverde. The Tigers did next to nothing to address their closer situation, and on Wednesday, Phil Coke blew a save against the Twins. Thursday, the Tigers signed Valverde, albeit to a minor-league contract with an early-May opt out. There have been, I think, two primary responses:

(1) It’s a minor-league contract so it’s utterly risk-free — if Valverde doesn’t earn a big-league job, he won’t be given a big-league job. What’s the harm?

(2) The Tigers won’t be able to help themselves. Valverde isn’t what he was, but it won’t be long before he’s closing again for Detroit, and possibly costing them games. He’s “proven”, he’s familiar, he’s still thought of as a closer despite everything. This is how it starts.

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We know we’re going to strike out. That’s just a given with guys who have power. And we have a lot of guys who can hit the ball out of the park. And that kind of goes hand in hand. But you look at some of the studies — and our guys have looked at them — and there’s not a direct correlation with strikeouts and offense.

— Atlanta general manager Frank Wren, interviewed by Jayson Stark on 2/18/13

Through their first two games, Braves hitters have 24 Ks in 75 PAs. But they also hit six HRs, they scored 16 runs in two games, and they’re 2-0. They’re living up to expectations. Unfortunately, so are the Astros. They have 43 Ks in 97 PAs through their first three games, becoming just the fifth team in history to strike out at least 10 times in the first three games of the season. The team is 1-2 with just 8 total runs scored. So how relevant are strikeouts to a team’s success?
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There are, I imagine, several questions one could ask about Roy Halladay. Does he eat breakfast? does he eat granola for breakfast? Which is his favorite breakfast granola? But, regarding Halladay as a baseball pitcher, there is one particularly pressing question: will he ever get back to being what he was? It would’ve been nearly impossible for Halladay to conclusively answer that question on Wednesday in Atlanta, and indeed, in the aftermath of Halladay’s start, the question remains unanswered, conclusively.

The good news, if you missed it: Halladay finished with nine strikeouts. The bad news, if you missed it: the rest. Halladay allowed five runs in 3.1 innings, and he became the first pitcher in recorded baseball history to record nine strikeouts in so brief an outing. Of course, we know better than to look at innings thrown — more meaningful is the number of batters faced, and in that regard Halladay’s start was not unprecedented. Four times before, pitchers have struck out nine of 15 batters, while Halladay faced 19 Braves. Dan Osinski once struck out ten of 16 batters. Just last April, Marco Estrada struck out nine of 17 batters. But anyway, this isn’t about establishing an historical context — this is about Halladay, and what he is, and what just happened.

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