Friday night in Colorado, Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run. It was a long home run; it was the longest home run, of this season. This is what it looked like, and ESPN’s Home Run Tracker gave it a distance of 494 feet. The game was played at altitude, sure, but the wind was blowing in. Then Saturday in Colorado, Stanton hit another long home run. That one had a distance of 465 feet, making it Stanton’s second-longest dinger of the year. That home run also allowed Stanton to set a record. Saturday’s was Stanton’s sixth career game in Coors, and it was his sixth career game in Coors with a homer. Stanton became the first player to do that.

It makes perfect sense that Stanton would make a mockery of Colorado, just as it makes perfect sense that Wily Mo Pena would make a mockery of Japan, even though he isn’t, exactly. Stanton’s game is the jaw-dropping longball. Colorado’s game features a lot of longballs. The idea of Stanton playing in Colorado more often brings to mind the idea of some incredible records.

Sunday, Stanton played his seventh career game in Coors. In zero of his plate appearances did he hit a home run.

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Cole Hamels‘ three-pitch strikeout of Justin Ruggiano during the first inning of Monday night’s Phillies-Marlins game (box) in Miami isn’t more significant than most other three-pitch strikeouts, except for that (a) it occurred on three consecutive changeups and (b) it occurred in front of the very excellent Miami center-field camera, itself particularly well-suited to capture the movement of Hamels’ changeup and (c) the author happened — for some reason that no know one really knows — the author happened to be watching the game in question.

Also, because it’s rather late and managing editor Dave Cameron doesn’t know I’m posting this, is another reason why I’m posting this.

(PITCHf/x data courtesy Brooks Baseball.)

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The Miami Marlins grand experiment hasn’t worked this year, leading to the trades of Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, Omar Infante and Randy Choate before the non-waiver trade deadline. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t have had to trade those players, because they would still be fighting for a playoff spot at this point in the season. But it hasn’t been a perfect world for the Marlins, and one of the major imperfections is the performance of high-priced reliever Heath Bell.

Signed to a lucrative three-year deal this offseason, Bell was supposed to help transform the Marlins into legitimate championship contenders. He has, however, been quite bad, losing the confidence of his manager and the closer role itself, and there haven’t been any signs of him turning things around.

The Marlins have already unloaded a number of valuable assets, but have had trouble finding a suitor for Bell. That’s what tends to happen with relievers who make a lot of money despite being shells of their former selves. Bell was already linked to the Red Sox in a rumor that had him and Hanley heading to Boston in exchange for Carl Crawford. The deal never materialized, but it was a very interesting thought experiment, as the salaries getting swapped were similar and the move represented a change-of-scenery challenge for those involved.

According to a recent Ken Rosenthal report, the Marlins were engaged in another change-of-scenery challenge trade involving Bell this week. This time, they spoke to the Mets about trading Bell and catcher John Buck for Jason Bay. No formal deal was proposed and the idea didn’t truly gain traction, but it again represented an interesting idea. Considering that no other team is going to relieve the Marlins of Bell’s salary, or the Mets of Bay’s, this is a deal worth revisiting before the waiver deadline.

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The Pittsburgh Pirates have built up a pretty good farm system under Neal Huntington’s watch. Our own Marc Hulet ranked them ninth before the season, and over at ESPN, Keith Law ranked them eighth. They have also simulteanously been upgrading their Major League core, and have morphed into a contender this season. To do this at the same time, you have to get a little bit lucky, and you have to be a little bit creative and you can’t be squeamish about taking risks. They showed the latter two elements in trades both yesterday — when they acquired Travis Snider — and today by making two deals that essentially swap out Casey McGehee for Gaby Sanchez.

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The honeymoon is over for the Miami Marlins and Carlos Zambrano. Big-Z may have gotten off to a great start in Miami, but a recent swoon, in which he has given up 35 earned runs in his last 41.1 innings, has put the 31-year-old pitcher back in the bullpen. The Chicago Cubs used the same approach in 2010, after Zambrano got off to a poor start. The experiment lasted just 16.2 innings. With the Marlins paying Zambrano just $2.55 million this year, they can justifiably move Zambrano to the pen with little argument from their fans. But even though it’s tough to complain much about the move, it doesn’t mean that it’s the right one.

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Generally, prospects are like mozzarella: the fresher the better. Sometimes, it takes some aging to get the cheese to taste just right. The Marlins are hoping it’s the latter more than the former with Justin Ruggiano. The outfielder is in the midst of a breakout with the Fish, and even with some regression, he’ll have one of the better (older) breakouts of all time. He’s also 30. What that number means for the future of this particular cheese is not great, though.

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I’ve written quite a bit this year on trends in pitcher aging, specifically velocity loss and gain. In the last iteration I focused on the odds of pitchers gaining velocity back after a season where their fastball dropped by at least 1 mph.

In that piece I listed a few pitchers to keep your eye on given that their velocity was down from 2011. In June, I wrote about CC Sabathia for ESPN and noted that the big lefty is likely beginning to “age”, as the odds are quite a bit higher that pitchers over the age of 30 do not gain their velocity back once they’ve lost it.

After thinking about it a while it occurred to me that there is of course the chance that these pitchers will gain their velocity back by the end of the year (as I noted in both pieces). We know that, generally speaking, pitchers gain velocity as the season goes on. Temperatures rise, and so too do fastball velocities. If this is the case I wondered at what point in the season we can say with greater certainty that a pitcher is throwing as hard as he is going to throw. Is there a particular month where a velocity decline is more likely to translate to or predict a full season velocity decline?
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On Monday, the Marlins traded Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante to the Detroit Tigers for highly thought of pitching prospect Jacob Turner and a couple of other prospects, admitting that their grand experiment hadn’t produced a contender in 2012 as they had hoped. That deal didn’t generate much controversy, as Sanchez is a free agent at the end of the year and Infante is a role player without much name value.

Late last night, however, they agreed to ship Hanley Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Nathan Eovaldi, and the internet exploded.

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As the key piece received by Miami in the Hanley Ramirez trade, Nathan Eovaldi ranks as one of the better pitching prospects I’ve scouted during the past couple of seasons. And while his fastball/slider combination has not translated into numbers which stand out from a statistical standpoint, the core components are there for the former Dodgers product to emerge as a quality mid-rotation starter at the big league level. Read the rest of this entry »

There have been plenty of good signs in Josh Johnson’s return from a season-ending shoulder injury this year. His 2.98 FIP is excellent; he’s striking out nearly eight batters per nine innings and walking well under three. His 9.35 strikeout rate is an improvement over last year’s mark of 8.5%. His 46.9% ground ball rate is healthy, just under his career average. And yet, despite all this, runs keep crossing the plate against Johnson. His 4.14 ERA would easily be a career high.

As is so often the case, the issue is an elevated BABIP. Johnson checks in at .338 so far this season, a career high and 36 points over his career mark. To make matters worse, the most damage has come with runners already on — Johnson has allowed a .305 BABIP with the bases empty but a whopping .383 mark with runners on. The league typically allows more hits with runners on, but the league split is seven points higher with runners on, not well over 70.

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