My two-year-old is in love with reading books right now, which is awesome. Our current favorite is The Day the Crayons Quit, which is affectionately known as “the crayon book” around here. Unfortunately, some books have made their way into our house which I don’t enjoy reading, with my least favorite being Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I regularly move the book to random locations where it can’t accidentally be found, since I hope to never read it again.

That’s probably how Byron Buxton feels right now. Whenever his career is over, it’s now going to include a record of the start of his 2017 season, and I’d imagine he’d like to take the record of his first seven games and shove them in a corner where they will never be found.

The Twins lost yesterday 2-1 to the Tigers, but because they have a 2.07 ERA through their first seven games, Minnesota is still 5-2, a surprisingly strong start for a team not expected to contend this year. But despite making a few fantastic defensive plays, they’re winning in spite of Byron Buxton, not because of him.

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Chris Sale is great! The Red Sox traded for Chris Sale because he is great. He was great when he was coming off his 2016 season, because that season was pretty great. When it came to Chris Sale, there weren’t any real reasons for worry, aside from his simply being a pitcher, and a team can’t not have pitchers.

That all being said, who’s to say Chris Sale was the best he could be? Who’s to say he couldn’t change some things up from what he did in his last year with Chicago? The White Sox and Sale agreed to a tweak: Sale would try to pitch more efficiently. It’s a fine idea, because if it were to work out, the White Sox would get Sale throwing more innings. That’s better than innings going to anyone else. Sale threw more fastballs, and he threw more strikes, and he was great. Lost some strikeouts, but that was the idea.

When the Red Sox got their hands on Sale, they turned back the clock. That’s what the early evidence shows, anyway. The fastballs? They’re there, but in lesser numbers. Chris Sale is back to being almost impossible to predict.

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Joey Votto is up to something.

One of the game’s most selective hitters — perhaps the game’s best at discerning balls from pitches he can damage over the last decade — is hacking in 2017.

Through the first week of the season, Votto’s zone-swing rate is 90.2%. For his career, however, it’s a much more modest mark of 68.5%. Last season, it was 68.6%. Votto’s out-of-zone swing rate rests at 28.1%, up from 20.8% last season. A graphic featuring the location of pitches against Votto confirms his more liberal approach.

So, what the hell is going on here?

Intrepid Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Zach Buchanan investigated and demanded answers.

“P Double-i P” read the shirt that Cincinnati Reds assistant hitting coach Tony Jaramillo wore around the clubhouse Monday at PNC Park. It was a gift from first baseman Joey Votto, and it translates to “Put it in Play.” …

So, is he doing it on purpose? Or is it just a small-sample aberration? Votto, exceedingly secretive when it comes to his plan at the plate, fouled those questions off.

“You’re asking me about my approach and my tactics,” Votto said. “That’s kind of personal. I wouldn’t want to share the specifics when that could benefit the opposition.”

Is Votto simply employing a tactic to go against scouting reports early in the season? Is he trying for a few April ambushes when last year’s data is what everyone has had all winter to evaluate? Is he — gasp — losing bat speed and/or visual acuity?

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Over the last week or so in this space, 2016 ERA-qualifying starting pitchers’ contact-management abilities were assessed on a pitch-specific basis. (Here’s the AL post and here’s the NL one.) While 2017 sample sizes remain too small for much meaningful analysis, let’s take our 2016 pitch-specific analysis one step further.

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I could begin this post by invoking one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s most celebrated novels, but the notion of framing a conversation about Michael Pineda in the context of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been beaten as thoroughly as one of the latter’s victims. I could use Mr. Talbot and the Wolf Man, instead, or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. It doesn’t really matter, though. Whatever set of characters one prefers, the point is the same: there are two versions of Pineda, one proficient and mild-mannered, the other prone to tragic outbursts.

Indeed, just last week Craig Edwards suspected that Pineda was at it again, giving up runs in bunches while somehow also producing elite fielding-independent numbers. Yesterday we saw the the complete other end of the spectrum, as Pineda took a perfect game deep into the seventh inning against Tampa Bay while looking like the truly most optimal version of himself. Barring a continued ricochet between starts, we won’t continue to bring you updates with every outing that he makes. Yet what we saw on Monday looked almost like a totally different pitcher.

“Almost” is the operative word there. Pineda still got swings and misses, and still didn’t walk anybody. His slider, however, was quite simply otherworldly. He didn’t do the typical Pineda thing and hang one — not until the moment he lost the perfect game, at least. He buried it, and it plunged all the way down to the molten core of the planet.

Pineda racked up 11 strikeouts all told, cruising through 6.2 perfect innings before Evan Longoria doubled. His 7.2 innings were the most by any Yankee starter so far this year.

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It’s still too early to know much of anything. That’s going to stay true for a while. So we’re still going to look for indicators that ought to stabilize quickly, which means fastball velocities remain of interest. Have you grown tired of reading articles about changes in fastball velocity? I have, too! But here is another one of them, just to bring 30 names to your attention. The subject might be tiresome, but the data’s still relevant.

You’ll find two tables. One shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest gains in average fastball velocity since 2016. The other shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest losses in average fastball velocity. I could’ve cut off at 10, instead of 15, since that’s more conventional, but I think stretching to 15 brings more pitchers of interest into the fold. To gather this information, I ignored the FanGraphs leaderboards and went for the PITCHf/x leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus, powered by Brooks Baseball. That’s because the Brooks Baseball numbers have been calculated in the same way year over year, while the numbers on the FanGraphs pages have had a change in source, from PITCHf/x to Trackman. According to Brooks, the average fastball right now is down about half a tick, which is what we’d expect in early April. OK. Onward!

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When we think about how parks affect players, we generally think of it in the context of hitting and pitching. Bring the fences in and batters will hit more homers. Build a taller wall or a whole new park with bigger dimensions, and pitchers are going to have an easier time preventing the long ball.

For the Houston Astros and George Springer, however, the removal of Tal’s Hill has added significance. While it might add a homer or two to Springer’s home-run ledger, the greater impact is likely to be a defensive one. This represents Springer’s first season as Houston’s starting center fielder. With four homers already to his name this year, Springer is making a big impact with the bat. His ability to play the more demanding outfield position — one now free of deadly obstacles — also deepens the Astros’ excellent lineup.

In the minors, Springer primarily played center field, getting 244 of his 267 starts at the position as he ascended through Houston’s minor-league system. Once he got to the majors, though, he was moved to a corner while a combination of Dexter Fowler, Carlos Gomez, Jake Marisnick, Colby Rasmus, and even Alex Presley all got time there. Of those players, the only real plus defender — accounting for Gomez’s hip problems — was Marisnick. Fowler, meanwhile, provided the only decent bat Houston has featured in center field, and that was back in 2014. Springer ended up starting just 16 games in center field from 2014 to 2016 — and 10 of those were on the road. The removal of Tal’s Hill helps to facilitate Springer’s transition to a full-time role in center field. The team sacrifices a little on defense in favor of Springer’s offensive ability over Jake Marisnick’s.

Springer has been a positive out in right field for the Astros since joining the team three years ago, posting positive numbers in both UZR (+2.5) and DRS(+10) over nearly 3,000 innings. While certainly solid, such numbers don’t cry out for a great defensive challenge for Springer. Prior to this season, they likely discouraged time in center field, especially in Houston. With a center-field fence extending out to 440 feet and a gigantic hill to make everything more difficult, Springer’s range likely would have been exposed. For one of the team’s best hitters, it might have put him at increased injury risk given his penchant for running into walls.

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After two starts and one week of baseball, Sean Manaea has the seventh-worst ERA among qualified pitchers at 7.15. That’s a pretty useless sentence for about five different reasons, but I’m going to rely on it briefly because it’s April and being a baseball writer is very difficult in April. In early April, we’re on the hunt for indicators. Other than health and velocity, it’s hard to find anything that happens in week one that will meaningfully shift your opinion, but we’re all keeping our eyes open for signs of things to come. The data points from April matter, it’s just too early to know if they’re representative of anything.

Typically, if a promising young pitcher like Manaea recorded two starts during which he allowed 10 runs over 11.1 innings, we would either brush it aside as a product of growing pains or consider it as a possible indication that something is wrong. In general, it’s not good to give up a lot of runs, even if we’re all in agreement that pitchers don’t have complete control over how many runs they allow.

But what’s so interesting about Manaea is that, in addition to what appear to be a couple of rough starts in the outcome department, he’s excelling in two of the pitching statistics that become reliable most quickly. Any reasonably astute fan can take a look at Manaea’s strikeout rate (28.6%), walk rate (8.2 %), home-run rate (0.79 HR/9), and BABIP (.259) to determine that his opponents have stacked all their success into just a couple of weird innings. But while those indicators look good enough to chalk this up to sequencing, there are actually two deeper measures that are quite interesting.

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While Byron Buxton’s first week was discouraging owing to the presence of his ongoing contact issues, another former uber prospect, Miguel Sano, put together a promising opening week during the Twins’ surprising start to the season.

Sano’s resume is dotted with its own swing-and-miss issues, and strikeouts will always be a part of Sano’s game as a three-outcome slugger.

But when Sano makes contact, special things happen. According to Statcast data, he finished 13th in average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives last season (97.0 mph) — minimum 100 batted ball events — and second in 2015 (99.2 mph), trailing only Giancarlo Stanton, a frequent comp for Sano.

After giving us a taste of his promise in 2015, Sano dealt with injury, inconsistency, and perhaps an ill-advised position change last season.

But things are looking up for Sano in 2017. As Dave Cameron noted earlier this year, there’s evidence he possesses the athleticism to handle third base, the position to which he’s returned this year. And Sano received an interesting — and perhaps crucial — swing tip this offseason.

In an age when more hitters are receiving help from non-traditional sources — such as private hitting instructors, for example — Sano received some advice this offseason while home in the Dominican Republic, where he encountered former major leaguer Fernando Tatis.

Sano recalled the exchange last month for Phil Miller of the Star Tribune. From Miller’s piece:

Tatis, whose son Fernando Jr. is a top prospect in the Padres organization, watched Sano take batting practice and made a suggestion.

“He said hands up high takes me too much time to [get in position to] swing,” Sano explained, demonstrating the extra motion required to trigger his swing. “Put my hands lower, and it’s just one move. Faster.”

The result, according to Sano? “If I put [my hands] lower, I have more time. I can see the ball more,” he said. “I start them down, see the pitch, and boom.”

Consider Sano’s hand placement last season in this at-bat…

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