When you look up and see that the Athletics are in the midst of a two-game mid-week series against the Marlins in late May, you might suspect that the major-league baseball schedule is simply an exercise in randomness. At this point in the campaign, that’s actually sort of the case. The combination of interleague play and the random vagaries of an early-season schedule conspire to mean that your favorite team hasn’t had the same schedule as your least favorite team. Let’s try to put a number on that disparity.

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These days, we’re blessed with a number of amazing young shortstops. Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Corey Seager, for example, are already among baseball’s top players. Manny Machado is a shortstop who just accidentally plays third base. All of them are younger than 25.

Second base isn’t as notable for its youth. Last year, however, second basemen recorded one of the top collective offensive lines at the position in the history of the game. Good job, second basemen.

So both positions are experiencing a bit of a renaissance at the moment. This led me to wonder which teams might be benefiting most from that renaissance. It’s rare that teams can keep a second baseman and shortstop together long enough to form a lasting and effective double-play combo. Right now, MLB has some pretty great ones. But which is the greatest — particularly, on the defensive side of thing? Let’s explore.

First, we want to know who has played together for awhile. Since the start of the 2015 season, 21 players have played at least 200 games as a shortstop, and 23 have done the same at second base. Cross-referencing them and weeding out the players who have played for multiple teams, we get the following list:

That’s a pretty good list. There are some tough omissions here. The most notable is the Angels, as Andrelton Simmons hasn’t been with them long enough to meet our bar here. Given Johnny Giavotella’s defensive contributions, however, we can guess that the combo here would be quite one-sided. Also excluded are teams with new double-play combos, like the Dodgers and Mariners. Not only are the Logan Forsythe-Corey Seager and Robinson Cano–Jean Segura combos new this season, but thanks to injuries they haven’t even played together much this season. Cano-Segura has only happened 22 times this season, and Forsythe-Seager only 10 times.

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Round bat, round ball, traveling in different directions: the eight-word story of hitting really captures some of the difficulty of that practice. When you get into the art of choking up — moving the hands up the barrel and shortening the bat — you uncover a whole world of players attempting to address that difficulty. David Kagan examined the physics of choking up today at The Hardball Times. Here, we ask the practitioners what they think. It turns out, the players serve up some conventional wisdom, but also some insight into the reasoning behind the practice.

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Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for the Giants. A year after winning the Wild Card game, they’ve got the worst record in baseball and, as of right now, a 7% chance of making the playoffs. They’ve lost their ace to a foolish dirt-bike accident, and their starters at shortstop and center field, as well as their closer, are on the DL. They’ve scored the second-fewest runs of any team, and their run differential of -69 makes that even worse. It’s May 10th and the Giants may already be dead.

Teams this far out of the playoff picture typically make the most of it by offloading pieces to contenders in exchange for prospects. It’s much too early in the year for theoretical contenders to be pushing their chips to the center of the table just yet, but it’s not too early for them to be surveying the shape of the market. Unfortunately for both buyers and San Francisco, the Giants may not have many pieces to pick over.

Players who get moved at midseason usually don’t have much time remaining on their contracts before they hit free agency. They’re guys who may not be around when the selling team is making its next playoff run — or whom the club can otherwise afford to replace. The Giants have pretty much their entire core under contract for next year. Only Hunter Pence and possibly Denard Span (depending on how the Giants decide to handle his option) will leave for free agency following 2018’s conclusion. They’ll have Bumgarner back at full strength next year, and in the unlikely event that Johnny Cueto doesn’t opt out, he’ll be there, too. If Cueto does opt out, this upcoming free-agent class doesn’t lack for premium starting pitching, on which the Giants have repeatedly shown themselves willing to spend.

That’s all a somewhat roundabout way of saying that the Giants don’t exactly have a ton of expendable trade chips at the moment. This season doesn’t look like the start of an irreparable decline as much as it looks like a rather large bump in the road. There’s no reason the Giants can’t be competitive next year, even if they do lose Cueto. But barring a massive resurgence and excellent play from their currently injured players, the Giants aren’t going anywhere this year, and they’re not really in a position to better prepare themselves for the future.

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On Wednesday night, Brandon Belt came to the plate six times. He drew four walks, struck out once, and put one ball in play, a single in the 11th that drove in a run. Of course, the combination of all those walks and the relative lack of homers sometimes leads to spurious criticisms not unlike those leveled at Joey Votto. While most understand that Votto is a great hitter and many understand that what Belt does is good, Belt’s reputation likely suffers more than Votto’s for a few reasons.

1. He’s not as good as Joey Votto.
2. He hits relatively few homers for a first baseman.

As to that first point, there’s no shame in failing to rival Joey Votto. As to the second, it really is hard to overstate the effects of Belt’s home park. Despite what Barry Bonds might have led everyone to believe, it’s incredibly difficult to hit homers in San Francisco. Despite what Barry Bonds might have led everyone to believe, it’s even more incredibly difficult for lefties to homer there.

Brandon Belt isn’t without power. He has posted ISOs well above league average throughout his career. Since the beginning of 2015, his .226 ISO on the road is 23rd best in baseball among the 160 players who’ve recorded at least 500 away plate appearances. He’s within 10 points of Joey Votto; he’s right behind Josh Donaldson, Brian Dozier, and Daniel Murphy; and he’s just ahead of Miguel Cabrera and Jose Bautista. In 580 away plate appearances since the beginning of 2015 — roughly a season’s worth of playing time- – Belt has 28 home runs, having hit them at a greater rate than Kris Bryant and Paul Goldschmidt. His numbers are good in high-leverage and low-leverage situations. He’s good with runners on and the bases empty. He’s consistent, too, as the chart showing his 100-game rolling ISO shows.

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Rich Hill is in the midst of a blister problem. It’s been going on since his breakout season last year. Since only three pitchers in 2016 threw more curveballs than Hill, it makes sense to blame the curve. Maybe there’s more at work, but also maybe not. It’s a pretty reasonable hypothesis.

I mean, for one, the pitcher himself believes it. “It’s right there, on the pad of my finger, where it touches the seams on my curveball,” said Hill on Tuesday night. Curious about the condition of his digit, I pushed: could I take a picture of the pad on his middle finger pad? “Nobody’s taking a picture of my finger,” he laughed. I didn’t pursue the matter any further.

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Episode 735
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses the absence of Starling Marte from the Pirates and the absence of Madison Bumgarner from the Giants and, implicitly, the absence of “human behavior” from his behavior.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)

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Last Thursday, Madison Bumgarner wrecked his dirt bike, and in the process, also wrecked his throwing shoulder. The team publicly announced that he’d be out 6-8 weeks while rehabbing the injury, but reports suggest that might be an optimistic belief.

SF will get more info on Bumgarner in days ahead, but there is concern within organization the injury will sideline him longer than 2 months

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 22, 2017

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It’s not a shock that Madison Bumgarner has never been on the disabled list before now. He’s a big horse of a man, made purely of muscle and tree sap. The only thing that’s prevented him from being sidelined is Bruce Bochy not letting him throw 400 innings in a year and, apparently, that he’s been steady on a dirt bike until now.

Bumgarner is on the DL after a dirt bike accident. He has bruised ribs and a Grade One or Two Strain of his shoulder AC joint. #SFGiants

— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) April 21, 2017

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Previously
Changeup: AL Starters / NL Starters.
Curveball: AL Starters.

We’re almost three weeks into the regular season, with sample sizes mounting but still not to a level worthy of significant analysis, Eric Thames notwithstanding. We’ll take the opportunity to continue our look back at 2016 pitch quality. We looked at AL ERA qualifiers’ curveballs earlier this week; today, we turn our attention to the senior circuit.

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