One of the big conversations taking place in baseball right now concerns whether or not Billy Hamilton is going to hit enough to stick as an actual long-term regular. It’s a justifiable worry, because Hamilton didn’t exactly tear up the minors, and he hasn’t looked fantastic in his limited exposure to the majors. We won’t know for a while whether Hamilton can do enough at the plate, but it’s good to have the occasional reminder of why he’s being held to a lower baseline than others. Wednesday’s fifth inning of a game between the Reds and Cardinals provided such a reminder.

It wouldn’t be fair to say that Hamilton made a run happen entirely on his own. He required assistance from the pitcher, his teammates, and the rest of the opposition. But with no other player in baseball would a run have been scored, given the sequence you’re about to observe, in .gif form.

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A few weeks ago, the Cardinals signed Matt Carpenter to a six year, $52 million contract. Today, the Indians have signed Jason Kipnis to a six year, $52.5 million contract. Both players were four years from free agency, and in essence, they both signed the same basic contract. Which makes sense, because they’re pretty similar players. Here are their career performances, side by side:

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Monday featured, for the first time in 2014, a full slate of meaningful baseball, albeit with a bit of a lull in the late afternoon as the only live game for a stretch had the Rockies and the Marlins. I met a friend at a neighborhood bar a little after 5, and the bar had the game on all of its screens, and after a little conversation I found I was completely hanging on the action. Come August, I probably won’t be watching the Rockies and the Marlins, but this early in the year, everything’s interesting. And while we always know that anything can happen, there’s no cynicism around opening day. By the middle of the year, anything can happen, but we know what’s probably going to happen. In late March and early April, it’s more fun to imagine that baseball’s a big giant toss-up. That Marcell Ozuna looks good. If he hits, and if the Marlins get their pitching…

I don’t remember what most opening days are like, but this one felt like it had an unusual number of anything-can-happens. That is, events that would take one by complete and utter surprise. What are documented below are, I think, the five most outstanding miracles from a long and rejuvenating Monday. From one perspective, this is evidence that the future is a mystery and all a surprise is is a run of good or bad luck. From another, more bummer of a perspective, this is evidence that opening day doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things and come on why are you already projecting Grady Sizemore to be a five-win center fielder? Why are you already freaking out about the 2014 Blue Jays? Be whatever kind of fan you like. Just remember that baseball is a silly game, and you’ll never outsmart it.

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During the two weeks leading up to Opening Day, we’ve been taking a look at some of the most interesting teams in baseball – one contender and one rebuilder from each league. What makes a team “interesting”? Taking advantage of the extreme nature of its ballpark, for a couple of clubs. Bucking some of the game’s most prevalent current trends and having success, for another. Or almost completely breaking from every pattern displayed in a club’s fairly successful recent past. In this installment, let’s look at our NL contender, the reigning NL champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, who have built a sustainable winner by having a somewhat contrarian plan, and sticking to it. Read the rest of this entry »

As has been the case each of the past two years, the present author has recently transported his dumb body to Jupiter, FL, America — spring home of the Miami Marlins, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the author’s (now) 93-year-old grandfather.

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If there are two somewhat separate skills when it comes to defense — getting to balls and converting the chances you can get to — we all know which one gets more attention. The leapers and divers get the oohs and ahs while those watching the ball all the way into the glove gets golf claps at best. It’s time to appreciate the guys that make the plays they are supposed to.

The All Sure-Handed Team.

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Spring is a time for big talk, for positive talk. Spring is when everyone’s sure they’re going to get better. And maybe everyone really does get better all the time. It’s just that some people get less better than others. Mike Matheny is in charge of a really good baseball team that almost won the World Series last fall. But Matheny, like most baseball people, wasn’t completely satisfied. In 2014, he wants his team to be better. And specifically, he’s also looking for his pitchers to be better… at hitting. And he thinks it’s going to happen.

“We’re going to be a better hitting group of pitchers this year,” Matheny said. “They do so much talking about how athletic they are but they were not content with what they were able to do on the offensive side last year.”

Continued:

“There were a lot of swings and misses,” Matheny said. “We were one of the worst teams in baseball with strikeouts from the pitcher’s position. That just shouldn’t be so.”

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the St. Louis Cardinals.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Cardinals or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto.

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A little over a month ago, I wrote this piece, examining how minor league catchers cut down on their passed ball rates over time. Indeed, anyone who peruses Baseball-Reference minor league catcher pages probably notices the tendency for teenage backstops to let pitches by them at alarming rates, only to ultimately settle into a more acceptable range as they reach their mid-twenties. On at least an anecdotal level, one can observe a similar phenomenon with left-side infielders–third base and shortstop are the most error-prone positions, and these tendencies can be blown up by inexperience. The worst qualified fielding percentage by an MLB shortstop in 2013 was Jed Lowrie‘s .962, and the worst from a qualified third baseman was Pablo Sandoval’s .940, but in, say, the Low-A South Atlantic League, ten of the fourteen third basemen who got over fifty games at the spot fell below that .940 fielding mark, and twelve of the fifteen shortstops didn’t break .962. And the short-season levels are a level of magnitude worse than that.

As with catchers, then, we can assume that left-side infielders cut down on their error totals significantly as time goes on. In this piece, I’m going to examine the development of shortstops in this area.

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Lance Berkman announced his retirement last week. While a week may seem like an eternity in the world of baseball blogs (especially during the seemingly endless off-season), a player of Berkman’s stature cannot be allowed to slip quietly into the night. If for no other reason, Berkman would deserve recognition on the basis of not one, but two of the best nicknames (judged on originality and appropriateness to the subject) in contemporary baseball in “Big Puma” and “Fat Elvis.” But he was also, as one would hope FanGraphs readers know, a tremendous player. As we so often do, let’s look back on some of Lance Berkman’s biggest hits from the perspective on their impact on individual games.

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