The following data is current through 5-30-2011.

If you, dear reader, are like me, then you agonize unnecessarily over every lineup on every team in every game. Aaron Rowand leading off?! Yargh! No! Carlos Gomez batting second for the Brewers?! WRONG. Aaron Miles batting anything?! Unforgivable.

Holding egos constant, inefficiency is the greatest enemy of success. With regards to lineups, however, teams can really only lose a handful of runs over the course of full season, but a handful of runs, in real terms, can mean the difference between the division or a boring October. So it’s a dicey proposition. A mismanaged lineup on the Royals team does not mean a whole lot because they will lose the division by several trillion runs. A few lost runs for the Rays, Yankees, or Red Sox, though, can mean the season.
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Jair Jurrjens is having a great year so far. Obviously, he is getting lucky as he doesn’t have the talent of his league-leading 1.51 ERA. Still, his xFIP of 3.47 is considerably better than his career xFIP of 4.22. This is largely thanks to a big drop in walks, from his career rate of 3.24 to just 1.51 this year. This success is even more striking because his fastball is 1.5 mph slower than he has previously thrown it — usually not a sign of improvement.

Carroll Rogers reported that Jurrjens, 25, picked up a new grip on his two-seam fastball from Jonny Venters, and has been using it since his April 16th start against the Los Angeles Dodgers. But the velocity is down on both his two-seam fastball, from 91.4 mph to 89.4 mph, and his four-seam fastball, from 91.4 mph to 89.7 mph. So I don’t think the change in two-seam grip is responsible for the slower fastballs. He is throwing his two-seam fastball at about the same frequency as he has previously.
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Sometimes you come across a player that is putting up such ridiculous numbers that you just want to share him with others. “Hey, check out so and so,” you text or tell to the friends that you have that you know would appreciate immediately the incredibility of that person’s stats. I had that happen when I came across Glenn Abbott’s 1979 season wherein he struck out fewer than 5% of batters he faced that year. It was made even funnier that Abbott was the Mariners’ Opening Day starter that year.

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What to do with a struggling hitter? This among the many tough decisions a manager must make. Dropping him in the order, or removing him from it completely, might put a band-aid on the issue, but it doesn’t get at the root. It also opens up confidence issues, which are completely subjective and run on a case-by-case basis. So why while we, the fans and interested observers, might call for a player’s demotion, it’s not always that easy. Yet in other cases it’s just what the player needs. Good managers have a feeling for what the appropriate course of action is in each case. While it is far from being universally accepted that Joe Girardi and Fredi Gonzalez are good managers, they both made smart moves, at least in terms of results, when they dropped top of the order guys down to the bottom.

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[Alt: “Uggla’s Stick,” “Dan’s Uggla Stick”]

When the Atlanta Braves moved Marvin Prado to left field in order to make room at second base for Dan Uggla, whom they signed to a five-year, $62 million extension, this is obviously not what they had in mind. Prado (27) is currently hitting .252/.292/.370 (77wRC+) on the season, and Uggla (31) is chugging along at a robust .209/.266/.391 (73 wRC+). Prado’s problems are easy enough to explain by way of the pool of toxic waste in Turner’s left-center field — the same one that mangled the careers of Nate McLouth and Melky Cabrera. But what’s going on with Uggla? Is this simply a small-sample slump, or should the team be worried?

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In a couple of hours, for The Morning After, you’ll see the story of the Dodgers and Braves playing a fun, exciting, memorable game. It featured pitching dominance, comebacks, clutch two-out hits, and a walk-off. The game went 12 innings, but it could have gone longer. It probably should have gone longer, really. But Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez made a decision in the 12th that, I think, cost his team the game.

Criticizing the manager is as old as baseball itself, and most of the time it amounts to petty bickering. Armchair managing is easy, because the moves never blow up in our faces. But every once in a while there is a move so painfully wrong that a comment from the ivory tower is warranted. This is one of those instances. I simply cannot understand why Gonzalez would pitch to Matt Kemp in the 12th.

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There’s a mini-outrage going on down in Atlanta right now, as the Braves offense isn’t performing as well as expected, and the natives are getting restless with Fredi Gonzalez’s designated batting order. The main complaint revolves around the fact that Nate McLouth, he of the .228/.328/.373 mark as a Brave, is batting second, while Jason Heyward (.275/.393/.464 career) hits sixth. Heyward is unquestionably a better hitter than McLouth, and by having him lower in the order, Gonzalez is intentionally choosing to have McLouth receive more plate appearances. Generally, you want your worst hitters to get fewer chances – not more.

That said, the amount of virtual ink being spilled over this issue doesn’t commensurate to the outcome it’s having on the Braves chances of winning baseball games. Yes, hitting McLouth second and Heyward sixth is an inefficiency, but in reality, it just doesn’t matter all that much.

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