Late on March 21, there were a flurry of tweets and other bits of news suggesting that Major League Baseball was about to file a lawsuit against Biogenesis, the Miami “age and wellness” clinic linked to high-profile ballplayers and performance enhancing drugs. The interwebs were alive with speculation on the claims MLB would make; there were even rumors that MLB would charge Biogenesis was part of a “RICO” conspriacy. “RICO” is the acronym for the federal law known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practice Act, or the law used to bring down the mob.

By mid-morning on March 22, we had some answers. MLB filed a complaint in Florida state court charging Biogenesis, clinic director Anthony Bosch and others clinic associates with intentionally and wrongfully interfering with MLB’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program  — a part of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and MLBPA — by inducing certain players to purchase, use and distribute performance enhancing substances (PES). MLB claimed the Biogenesis defendants knew of MLB’s prohibition on PES from Manny Ramirez’s 50-game suspension — if not from other sources — as Biogenesis allegedly supplied Ramirez with Human Clorionic Gonadotropin, a banned substance. According to MLB, Biogenesis ignored that information and continued to supply players with prohibited PES. MLB claimed Biogenesis’ action caused the league to suffer monetary and other damages, including the loss of goodwill, revenue, and profits and harm to its reputation.

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The big news of the morning is that Robinson Cano has fired Scott Boras as his agent, and is joining a newly created wing of the CAA group that will be led by hip hop artist Jay-Z. I don’t pretend to know anything about hip hop artists and their geographical biases, so I’ll just go along with the consensus that hiring Jay-Z as his agent is a pretty good sign that Cano wants to stay in New York. And, as Ken Rosenthal noted, CAA is the agency for many players who have re-signed with their current teams rather than test free agency, including being the representatives for Buster Posey, Matt Cain, Andre Ethier, Ryan Braun, Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Howard, and Adam Jones.

Reading all the tea leaves, I think it’s probably fair to expect Cano to re-up with with New York before he ever gets to free agency. The Yankees can’t afford to let Cano leave, and despite their desire to get under the luxury tax, they’re still the Yankees. Avoiding a bidding war with the Dodgers is almost certainly in their best interests if they want to keep Cano in the Bronx, and so it seems like the interests of both parties are aligned to keep Cano from hitting free agency.

If we scratch Cano from the list of potential free agents for next winter, that leaves us with Jacoby Ellsbury, Josh Johnson, Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum, and Shin-Soo Choo as the premier players likely to make it to the open market. And, that less than stellar class leads us the inevitable discussion of the changing role of free agency in Major League Baseball.

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I’m always looking for new angles to unlock the mysteries of BABIP, so I was intrigued by Jeff Sullivan’s exploration of pull rates against pitchers.  So I grabbed the data from baseball-reference.com, and set to work subjecting it to my usual rigmarole of correlations and multiple regressions.  You know how they say if your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you?  Well, plug your ears — there’s about to be a lot of wild, uncontrolled pounding going on in here…

I’ll cut right to the chase — did I find anything interesting relating to pitchers’ overall effectiveness when it comes to their Pull%, Middle%, and Opposite%, as I’m calling them?  Well, I found one decent connection that will seem obvious and stupid after you think about it, and a slight but kind of interesting connection.  I’ll provide you with some correlation tables that have left few stones unturned.  But, mainly, the research might help to set some things straight about how important this stuff actually is for pitchers.

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After a hard-fought, closely-followed battle, Bryce Harper beat out former relief pitcher Micah Owings for the starting left field position in Washington. Okay, Owings was never really in competition to take playing time from the reigning Rookie of the Year, Jayson Werth or Adam LaRoche — the three players in positions accessible to Owings’s limited defensive upside.

But here is the deal:

A) Pitchers do not consistently practice hitting. (Simple fact.)

B) The more time between at bats, the more a hitter struggles. (The Book.)

C) The more times a player faces a certain pitcher, the greater the advantage for the hitter — both in a game and in a career. (The Book Blog.)

All three of these elements suggest pitchers should hit, let’s say, about .145/.180/.190, or -10 wRC+ (that is, 110% worse than league average). Micah Owings — a pitcher — has, through 219 PA, hit .283/.310/.502 with 9 home runs and 14 doubles, a 104 wRC+.

Micah Owings is a good hitter. Possibly a great hitter. The Nationals have a bunch of those. But surely someone else out there could use a bench bat — or a starting outfielder — with the ability to pitch a 111 ERA- every now and then.
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Every year we hear stories about pitchers whose fastballs don’t seem to have the same life as last year. The most talked about are typically front-line starters that rely on their fastballs. In early 2013, the name that’s being discussed the most is Yankee ace CC Sabathia.

Throughout spring training, Sabathia’s velocity has been a point of concern. Coming off of elbow surgery during the offseason, Sabathia’s first regular season start did nothing to quell that concern. As The Star-Ledger’s Andy McCullough notes:

Sabathia’s fastball topped out at 91.7 mph on Monday, according to Pitch f/x data from Brooks Baseball. On Opening Day in 2012, his fastball hit 94.5 mph. On Opening Day in 2011, his fastball touched 94.7 mph.

(By the way, if you don’t read McCullough on a regular basis you are missing out.)

In the end, McCullough notes that while it’s reasonable to be concerned, Sabathia is likely to improve as the season wears on and has good enough secondary stuff to still be very good.

Overall McCullough is right, however, I think there is greater reason for concern than some may think.

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Sean Doolittle is a lefty and throws one pitch 87% of the time. Even without knowing his back story — he was a first base prospect that couldn’t stay healthy on the field, and pitching was his chance to “activate his insurance plan” as he put it — you’d be forgiven for throwing the dreaded “LOOGY” moniker on him. First basemen aren’t generally known for their arms, he can’t have a great breaking ball with so little experience pitching, and he’s a lefty with one pitch. He must be there to get lefties out.

But no, Doolittle is not a LOOGY, and he talked to me a little about how he makes that one pitch work for him.

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Sunday was the beginning of the 2013 MLB regular season, and it kicked off with a bang, as the Astros bombed the Rangers and we all learned a lesson about the real value of a one-game playoff. Not like the stakes were the same, so the game was managed differently from how it could’ve been, but in any one given game, a team like the Houston Astros can beat a team unlike the Houston Astros. Of course, it should be noted that the difference between the Astros and the best team in baseball might be like the difference between a city’s best restaurant and a city’s 29th or 30th best restaurant. That 29th or 30th best restaurant is probably still a very good restaurant! It’s just outclassed relative to the elite. It still beats the hell out of Hardee’s.

Monday is more of a baseball extravaganza, with several games on the schedule, none of which involve the Astros. Monday feels more like a true opening day, and below, I’ve assembled some quick thoughts based on some of the early games. I didn’t watch a single inning from spring training so, for me personally, baseball couldn’t feel more fresh. It will feel like this for the rest of the day, and then tomorrow, it will feel like baseball as usual. Savor the feeling of today, or tomorrow.

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The Texas Rangers have the best prospect in baseball, a 20-year-old shortstop named Jurickson Profar who the public projection systems think could be a league average player in the big leagues right now. He’s going to start the year in Triple-A, though, as neither middle infield position is currently available in Arlington, with Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler currently entrenched at shortstop and second base respectively. Kinsler is beginning the first year of a five year contract extension, and after posting the worst year of his career at age 30, he wouldn’t be particularly easy to trade at the moment. Thus, the presumption has been that Andrus was going to be the odd man out, especially since he’s represented by Scott Boras, an agent known for encouraging his players to get to free agency when they have the chance.

Well, apparently, we can throw that assumption down the drain, because Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Rangers are getting close to signing Andrus to an eight year extension that would total approximately $120 million. Because it’s eight new years on top of the two he’s already signed for, the Rangers’ obligation to Andrus now runs $131 million over the next 10 years. It’s a long contract and a lot of money, but given Andrus’ skills and value, this is a deal worth doing for Texas.

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Johan Santana will go down as one of the game’s best pitchers. I say ‘go down’ because after the news yesterday that Santana has probably re-torn the anterior capsule in his left, or throwing shoulder. Will Carroll said this was about the worst news that Santana could have received. Given how lengthy Santana’s rehab was the first time, and given the fact that he is set to be a free agent at the end of this season, we may have seen the last of the lefty with one of the deadliest changeups in baseball history.

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If you hadn’t noticed, Major League teams have decided that the best way to use their current financial windfall is to keep their best players for essentially their entire careers. It wasn’t long ago that single team lifers like Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn were the outliers, but now, it is becoming unusual for an elite player to not sign a mega-contract with his original franchise. Just in the last few years, we’ve seen the following players commit to spending the great majority of their careers with just one Major League team:

Joe Mauer, Joey Votto, Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, Evan Longoria, Felix Hernandez, Matt Kemp, David Wright, Cole Hamels, Matt Cain, Yadier Molina, Ryan Zimmerman, Justin Verlander, Adam Wainwright, and now Buster Posey.

Maybe not all of these players will stay with their current teams for the duration of these contracts, and a few might end up going elsewhere after these deals expire to squeeze an extra year or two out of the end of their careers. These aren’t necessarily contracts “for life”, but they do cover enough of the prime years of the game’s best players that it ensures that their legacy will be forever tied to one franchise. This represents a significant shift for Major League Baseball since free agency began.

Great players still change teams, of course. Albert Pujols left the Cardinals. Prince Fielder left the Brewers. David Price is almost certainly going to leave the Rays. Robinson Cano might leave the Yankees, though I’ll believe that when I see it. It isn’t true that every great player now retires with the team that brought him to the Majors. But there’s no question that MLB teams are moving to make that the more common occurrence, and fewer stars are waiting to get to free agency before cashing in on massive paychecks.

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