Things have not gone well for Justin Upton this season. After posting an MVP-caliber season in 2011, Upton has struggled to reach the same level this year. The situation worsened on Tuesday, when Arizona Diamondbacks’ Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick criticized Upton’s performance so far this season. Later that night, Upton left out of the Diamondbacks’ starting lineup. Upton told reporters he was not pleased about the situation. And while that should have been the end of it, Upton found himself on the bench again last night. At this point, it seems like the only thing Upton can do to repair the situation is to start producing like his old self.

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The Arizona Diamondbacks placed utility infielder Cody Ransom on waivers earlier this week. On Thursday, the Milwaukee Brewers claimed Ransom and added him to their active roster. A commonplace transaction, repeated hundreds of times throughout the baseball season. Oh, but when it comes to Cody Ransom, nothing is commonplace.

When Ransom plays in his first game for the Brewers, he will hold an interesting distinction. You see, the Brewers are Ransom’s 6th major-league team. Okay, that’s not terribly unusual. Lots of players have played for 6 or more teams. But in the Expansion Era (1961 to the present), no player who’s played for 6 or more major-league teams has had 8 or more seasons in which he’s played 35 games or fewer.

Allow me to explain.

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With the closest Midwest League stadium five hours away, my providing first hand scouting coverage of that league is difficult to say the least. Fortunately, a contact has been kind enough to provide me the scouting scoop on more than a handful of the league’s top prospects. These aren’t exact quotes, but summaries of conversations had over the course of the first two months of the minor league season. Read the rest of this entry »

Mets first baseman Ike Davis has seen the number of fastballs thrown to him drop significantly since his rookie season in 2010. In that year, 57% of the pitches thrown to Davis were some type of fastball. So far in 2012? Only 51%. There have been only 30 seasons between 2007 and 2011 where a hitter with more than 100 plate appearances saw a lower percentage of fastballs in a season than Ike this year — and only five where a player accumulated more than 500 plate appearances.

Clearly pitchers are adjusting to Davis, altering their approach based upon Davis’ perceived offensive strengths and weaknesses. This got me thinking about the extent to which major league pitchers adjust to hitters from year to year. Was this change significant, or more common based on the normal adjustments hitters can expect to see from year to year.

As a first cut, I decided to look at changes in the pitch types that batters faced in consecutive years. Throwing hitters a different mix of pitches (i.e. fastballs, curveballs, sliders, etc.) is just one way the league can adjust. Pitchers can alter location, sequence and speed. However, the data was more readily available for pitch types, so the choice was made to focus there first. Read the rest of this entry »

The Peter Bourjos trade rumors have started to circulate again. The primary discussant in the linked article is the Nationals, but the Royals, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays are also mentioned. With super-prospect Mike Trout in the majors, the Angels already having something of an outfield crunch and Bourjos flat-lining on offense so far this season, there is a surface rationality to the idea of trading him. Let’s briefly look at how Bourjos might fit into the plans of the teams allegedly interested in Bourjos before turning to the question of how this makes sense (or nonsense) for the Angels.

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From the moment Trevor Bauer’s name was announced as the third overall pick in the 2011 draft, the pitcher with my favorite twitter handle (@BauerOutage) has been in the conversation for best pitching prospect in all of baseball. Against Chattanooga, the former UCLA ace (sorry Gerrit Cole) carved up double-A hitters at times, but struggled to command a fastball up in the zone, leading to mixed results in the stat column.

Video after the jump.

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Way out in the National League West, the much-mocked Barry Zito and the much-debated Trevor Cahill are both off to good starts. Both players got their starts with the Oakland As before moving the to National League. Of more interest is that both players have, at different times, been held up as examples of pitchers for whom DIPS stats like FIP are inadequate. Without getting into lengthy discussions of each pitcher or the whole debate about DIPS (of which FIP is just one variety), let’s take a look at Zito and Cahill’s early-season performances with a glance at their past performances and see if there is anything of interest.

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To write that Arizona Diamondbacks pitching prospect Tyler Skaggs is very good isn’t exactly going out on a limb. However, with the young lefty ranking no lower than number-21 on major prospect lists and posting gaudy double-A numbers this season, readers expect Skaggs to rank among the truly elite pitching prospects in the game. For me personally, it was Skaggs being universally ranked above Mariners Danny Hultzen this past off-season that left me anticipating he would become my standard bearer for southpaws. In this particular start, he fell a bit short.

Video after the jump

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Willie Bloomquist has been playing baseball for a long time. This will be his 10th full year in the Majors, and in the previous nine, he has never been even an average hitter. Despite this, Bloomquist has started the season as the D-backs’ leadoff hitter, a role he filled nearly half of the time last season. He has started the season hot, but history tells us that will not last, and when he reverts back to form, the D-backs may have trouble scoring runs.

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles
#18 – Colorado
#17 – Miami

Arizona’s 2011 Ranking: #29

2012 Outlook: – 55 (12th)

Combine an offense that is well above average with a pitching staff that is a touch above average, and you have a playoff team. It wasn’t enough to get the D-backs into baseball’s final four, but they came about as you could come, taking the Brewers into extras in the deciding Game 5 of their National League Division Series. Most of the principals from that team are intact this year. They are once again faced with mediocre competition in the NL West, and are in a position to win the division in consecutive years since the Randy Johnson–Curt Schilling–Luis Gonzalez-mountains of debt years. And while Ian Kennedy and Daniel Hudson may be in for a bit of regression, the team may be better this year than last.

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