You all know the R.A. Dickey story by now. Journeyman major leaguer reinvents himself as a knuckleball thrower in his 30s, then refines the pitch to become one of the better starting pitchers in baseball, culminating with his selection as the National League Cy Young Award winner last year. The knuckleball is always a fascinating pitch, and Dickey is a fascinating guy, so there has been no shortage of media attention focused his direction.

While I was not working here at FanGraphs last year, I could not resist taking a belated look at some of Dickey’s dominating knuckleballs from that 2012 season. I’ve selected three particularly impressive pitches from that campaign and used an effect known as StroMotion to help track their movement.

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Ike Davis homered in the season’s second game. He homered twice a couple weeks later, then he homered again a week after that. That makes it sound like Davis hit a flurry of home runs, which he didn’t. He hit four over a handful of weeks. But then, after going deep on April 25, he didn’t go deep again until the beginning of June. On June 2, Davis took Kevin Slowey deep to center in Miami, and Ron Darling chimed in innocently enough:

Well let’s see if that can get Ike going.

Davis singled in his next at-bat. Then he went 1-for-14. Finally, after weeks of speculation and strong denial and halfhearted denial, the Mets gave Davis a demotion to Triple-A, his OPS standing at an even .500. It’s been Davis’ contention that he can’t learn to hit major-league pitchers in the minor leagues. The Mets, though, would like to see him at least hit minor-league pitchers. They’d like to see him at least hit someone.

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In a Friday matinee, the sensational Matt Harvey will take the mound for the Mets against the Cubs in Chicago. Though the Cubs are hardly to be considered a daunting opponent, Harvey’s right-handed, and the Cubs hitters to be worth a damn so far are the left-handed Anthony Rizzo, the left-handed Luis Valbuena, the left-handed Nate Schierholtz, and the left-handed David DeJesus. At a glance, you might figure this could be a tougher matchup for Harvey than it seems.

And it might well play out that way, because, baseball. The other day, after Dave Cameron ripped the Mariners for starting Raul Ibanez against CC Sabathia, Ibanez singled and homered. Hilarious! There’s absolutely not a single way to know how a given player is going to perform on a given day. Harvey might be aces, Harvey might be awful, or he might be somewhere in between. But if we’re going to think about the probability, we shouldn’t be worried about Harvey facing the Cubs’ lefties. Because to this point in his career, Harvey’s been doing something unusual.

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Matt Harvey placed an exclamation point on his excellent start to the season Tuesday night with 9 one-hit innings, let’s take a look at how he’s doing it with a slant towards the visual.

Harvey is one of the hardest throwing starters in the league on a typical night, and he had a little extra on his stuff against the WhiteSox, averaging over 95 miles per hour on his fastball.  I’ve captured, stabilized and overlaid a selection of his primary pitches below.

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Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, in part to boost interest in the game after the 1994 season was cut short by the players’ strike. More than 15 years after the first interleague game between the Giants and the Rangers at The Ballpark at Arlington, MLB continues to boast about attendance at interleague games. Last season, the average attendance at interleague games was 34,693, the highest since 2008, when 35,587 fans, on average, attended interleague games.

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The Mets’ farm system rates in the top third of baseball due to a plethora of pitching prospects. In addition to Zack Wheeler, Rafael Montero and Cory Mazzoni in the upper minors, the organization’s Florida State League affiliate has the minor leagues’ best rotation. It features Noah Syndergaard, Domingo Tapia, Luis Mateo (who is on the disabled list with an elbow injury), Michael Fulmer (DL – Meniscus) and Hansel Robles. The Savannah Sand Gnats are stocked with intriguing arms as well. Mike Newman recently discussed Gabriel Ynoa and Rainy Lara with his audience, and I mentioned the resurgence of Steven Matz several weeks ago. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets boast a quartet of Dominican arms who rank among the top-15 prospects in the organization. Jeurys Familia, Rafael Montero, Luis Mateo and Domingo Tapia are off to strong starts. And with Rainy Lara and Gabriel Ynoa pitching well in Savannah, the core of young, Dominican arms will only continue to grow.

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In the first game of a Tuesday doubleheader in Colorado, the Braves and Rockies played in a temperature that was measured at 23 degrees at first pitch. It’s hardly impossible to imagine temperatures that low — in some places temperatures are that low all of the time — but it’s hard to imagine playing baseball, and specifically hitting a baseball, when it’s below freezing out. Nevertheless, the Braves and Rockies played, and the Braves emerged victorious, having slammed a trio of dingers. That got my mental gears whirring.

Take an ordinary fly ball. At room temperature, it would have a given distance. In hotter conditions, it would fly farther. In colder conditions, it would fly less far. So I found it impressive that the Braves hit three home runs when it was around 23 degrees, and my initial thought was that the cold canceled out the effect of the altitude. From there, I started messing around on the ESPN Home Run Tracker, and I looked beyond Tuesday’s first game in Colorado. I started looking for the 2013 home run that has lost the most distance due to non-standard conditions.

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The hard-throwing, 24-year-old Matt Harvey has quickly become a must watch when he toes the rubber for the Mets. Called up in late July of last year, Harvey and his blistering fastball (94.6 average velocity) currently sport a 31.3% strikeout rate and an ERA- of 25 — no, not 75, 25. In 2013, Harvey has made four starts, lasting at least seven innings in each appearance. He has only allowed one home run and a paltry 10 hits in 29 innings.

Harvey does feature a number of pitches, but he’s heavily reliant on his four-seam fastball, throwing that pitch 60% of the time. That ranks him fifth among all qualified pitchers in 2013. And that fastball has been deadly.

According to the PITCHf/x leader boards at Baseball Prospectus (powered by Brooks Baseball), Harvey has induced a .042 ISO (2nd best) and a .167 BA (3rd best) against when using his fastball. David Golebiewski from Baseball Analytics recently wrote about Harvey’s ability to win with the high fastball. The numbers were eye-popping. Harvey so far this year has induced whiffs on high fastballs 48.4% of the time, and he’s throwing upstairs over 50% of the time.

I was curious how this compared to others this year and in previous years. So I did some digging.

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With the 35th pick in the 2012 draft, the New York Mets selected Kevin Plawecki out of Purdue University. In a draft where the organization was questioned for drafting low ceiling talents, the now 22-year old catcher was assumed to be an overdraft — Fueled by his ranking as the 68th best prospect pre-draft per Baseball America.

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