You know how this works: Early into any season, many of us get obsessed with checking on fastball velocities. Big positive changes might portend great success — or surgery. And big negative changes might indicate future struggles — or surgery. It’s all guesswork in the first half of April, but it’s something, something potentially meaningful. Fastball speeds generally don’t lie to you. It’s this line of thinking that brought Jake Arrieta to my attention a short while ago; out of the gate in 2017, Arrieta wasn’t throwing the same stuff. He’s a high-profile pitcher, who’s put up high-profile numbers, and so any change is an important one.

I’ve kept my eye on Arrieta. I tend to dismiss pitchers who are dismissive of velocity changes, because they all say the same thing. At the end of the day, velocity loss is correlated to performance decline. There are exceptions, but there are exceptions to almost everything. Yet, there’s a complicating factor here. Arrieta’s velocity is down, and on its own, that’s troubling to me. But within context, perhaps we’re just observing something intentional. You know who else has lost velocity? Jon Lester. Also Kyle Hendricks. Also John Lackey. And also Brett Anderson. All the other guys in Arrieta’s starting rotation.

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Everyone has bad days at work. You’ve had them. If you read my work, you sure as heck know I’ve had them. Even Mike Trout’s theoretically had one or two. Not everyone can be on top of his or her game at every second of every minute on the clock. It’s just a simple fact of life.

CB Bucknor seems to have these nights more often than most. Any cursory poll asking for the names of the worst umpires in the big leagues will yield Bucknor’s name as one of the most popular answers. Less cursory polls have produced a similar result. He has long been at the center of some of baseball’s more frustrating officiating experiences, whether it be with his work behind the plate or on the bases. It was the former that drew the ire of just about everyone in Cobb County last night, especially that of Jayson Werth.

Werth, at this stage of his career, has fully bought into the Danny Glover-in-Lethal–Weapon method of thinking. He’s too old for your crap, and he’s been here long enough to tell you why you’re wrong. It’s a pretty fun thing to behold, especially when he’s had it up to here with whatever injustice has been perpetrated that day. The crap, in Werth’s estimation, began with his fourth-inning plate appearance. Here’s a graph of the pitches from same. (Note: from catcher’s perspective.)

He struck out. BrooksBaseball and PitchInfo think the third pitch was a strike, and video from last night shows that it was borderline, but not an egregious call.

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Take a look at Charlie Blackmon’s defensive charts and you’ll notice that he has a good side, one where he’s made a higher percentage of catches than the other. On the one hand, that seems strange: humans are largely symmetrical creatures. On the other, maybe it makes perfect sense: most people have dominant hands and eyes and move better in certain directions.

Nowhere is the latter point more painfully clear to me, personally, than on the basketball court. As much as I practice going to my left, I usually do something very silly when I attempt the feat in a game. If I get to the left and actually get to the hoop, my mechanics fall apart when I get there, and I end up doing a strange thing with my right hand that leads to cuss words more often than points.

So when I saw this map for Blackmon, I figured it was all about that first step. See those hits over his left shoulder that are colored blue? Those are relatively high-percentage catches that have fallen into play against him. Must not be stepping well in that direction, I figured.

But when I asked the outfielder about those hits and his first step, he laughed. First, he thanked me for highlighting his shortcomings. Then he said something surprising — “I prefer the ball to my left,” he said. “There’s something I don’t like about running towards a ball to my right.”

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The Houston rotation is more than one man, but no one man is more important for the rotation than Dallas Keuchel. Peripherals aside, Keuchel didn’t have the year he wanted to have in 2016, having to fight most of the way through shoulder discomfort. Related to that, Keuchel saw his ERA jump from 2.48 to 4.55. There were downs, and there were ups, but Keuchel and the Astros came in this season looking for a far greater performance. Give the Astros a 2015 version of Keuchel and the rotation would feel plenty more stable.

Three starts in, Keuchel’s allowed a total of two runs. He’s gotten some of his grounders back, and he’s seeing positive results again off of his sinker. It’s fair to wonder, then, whether Keuchel has re-discovered his old form. The reality of it? Not exactly. There’s a similar-looking pitcher here, sure, but Keuchel hasn’t succeeded through the 2015 approach. Rather, he’s gone the full Brad Ziegler.

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Things were looking up for the Pirates. They’d emerged from the weekend with a sweep of the Cubs in Chicago. Jameson Taillon had pitched like a burgeoning ace. Ivan Nova had recorded more complete games than walks since joining the Pirates. The Cardinals and Cubs were scuffling. There was perhaps a sense that the Pirates’ final standing in the NL Central wasn’t predetermined.

And then they lost another star player for reasons unrelated to injury.

First it was Jung Ho Kang unable to gain entry to the country, denied a work visa due to his legal issues. And on Tuesday, MLB announced that Starling Marte has been suspended for 80 games due to a positive test for Nandrolone.

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Eric Thames is, at present, the major-league leader in wRC+. He’s also the major-league leader in home runs, and he’s the major-league leader in WAR. He’s gone deep in, what, five games in a row? That would be easy enough for me to fact-check, but I don’t want to waste my time checking those facts when Thames might extend his own streak at any moment. He’s homered in many games in a row. Let’s unpack what’s going on.

Literally yesterday, Nick wrote a post here entitled “Eric Thames Is Still Mashing.” That post spoke of Thames’ considerable power. Literally hours ago, Dave wrote a post here entitled “The Even Scarier Eric Thames Stat.” That post spoke of Thames’ seemingly improved ability to make contact. Power? Check! Contact? Check! What’s something that might drive both those things? Right — swinging at the correct pitches. At this writing, Eric Thames has baseball’s third-lowest swing rate at pitches out of the zone.

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Previous: AL Starters’ Changeups / NL Starters’ Changeups.

Sample sizes are building, but not nearly to a size worthy of deep analysis, so let’s keep rolling with our pitch-specific analysis of the arsenals of 2016 MLB ERA qualifiers. Last week, we looked at the best changeups in both leagues. This week, we’ll examine curveballs. Today, it’s the American League’s turn.

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Earlier today, I took a look at some of the early-season batted-ball trends with a view to exploring whether there might be early signs that significantly more hitters — and perhaps teams and instructors — are adopting the uppercut-swing-plane plan.

Yes, it’s April and the following data represents only the first two weeks of the season, so take it with a healthy dose of skepticism. But there are a number of hitters who both (a) logged at least 500 plate appearance last season and (b) are hitting the ball in the air more often this season.

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Home runs. People love them! And people love them when they happen a bunch. Giancarlo Stanton has, during his career, hit four home runs in a row. Carlos Gonzalez has also hit four home runs in a row. It’s a crazy-good achievement, pulled off only a couple dozen times. There have been about as many such home-run streaks as there have been perfect games. Everyone loves a home-run streak or a perfect game.

Part of the appeal of something like that is the individual-accomplishment aspect. A pitcher can’t be better than perfect, and homering all the time would be the hitter equivalent. But don’t forget about the related matter of scarcity. We all also fall all over ourselves when we see something that never happens. Think about what it means for a baseball event to be rare. And I mean ultra-rare. There is so much baseball, all of the time. Every season involves an unnecessarily large number of baseball games, for even the most forgettable and pointless of rosters. Baseball is nothing but an endless series of repetitions. An endless number of opportunities for strange things to happen. As a consequence, many strange things have already happened, even several times. You’d never expect a perfect game. The overwhelming majority of us have probably watched perfect games, if maybe not all the way through.

Between Sunday and Monday, Josh Harrison batted seven times. The first two times, he grounded out. The seventh time, he grounded out. In between, he was hit, then he was hit, then he was hit, and then he was hit.

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Steven Souza, Jr. is showing signs he might be ready to break out. Fourteen games are far too few to make any determinations, but the numbers are promising. The Tampa Bay Rays slugger is slashing .320/.424/.520, and six of his 16 safeties have gone for extra bases. Every bit as notable is the fact that he’s drawn nine free passes, and fanned just 13 times, in 59 plate appearances.

Power has never been a problem for the 27-year-old Souza. Making consistent contact has. Coming into the season, he was a .234/.309/.404 hitter with a propensity for being punched out. All of a sudden, he’s the one doing the punching.

When I asked Souza why he’s gotten off to such a good start, he offered a fairly generic answer.

“I really don’t know,” Souza told me on Saturday. “Right now I’m just running into some balls, finding some holes, finding the barrel. I don’t get too caught up in the analytics stuff. I’m a guy who can’t overthink things, so I just try to keep it simple. Right now the ball is falling for me.”

For a baseball reporter, “I just try to keep it simple” is a commonly heard phrase. It’s an honest answer, but at the same time, a more concrete reason is often lurking behind the facade. Souza is hitting the ball harder than ever before — at least in terms of big-league success — and simplicity is rarely a new concept for a professional athlete.

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