On Tuesday night in Miami, Clay Buchholz had one of his best performances in recent memory, posting his highest single-game strikeout total (nine) since April of 2010 (when he struck out 10 at home against Texas) and second-lowest single-game xFIP (2.77) in over a year (box).

It’s probably not controversial to suggest that Buchholz has been somewhat mercurial in his brief-ish major-league career. Despite a no-hitter and a more or less successful 2010 campaign, Buchholz has a career xFIP that’s precisely league average.

Still, with a five-pitch repertoire, there’s always the sense that Buchholz has the potential to be something better than league average.

Not only did Buchholz utilize his entire repertoire on Tuesday — throwing a four-seamer, two-seamer, changeup, cutter, and curveball each at last 14 times, per Texas Leaguers’ PITCHf/x data — he actually threw his entire repertoire to Giancarlo Stanton alone, recording strikeouts in each of the pair’s three encounters.

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The month of June has been very kind to Josh Johnson. In 14.2 innings, the big right-hander owns a 1.84 ERA with impressive peripheral numbers to match: 16 strikeouts, just four walks, and no home runs against two quality lineups in Atlanta and Boston. The key has been a revival off the stuff that made him a Cy Young Award contender when healthy, stuff that was missing in the first two months of his return from a shoulder injury that ended his season after just nine starts in 2011.

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Through all the tirades and tantrums that marred his eventual exit from Chicago, it can be easy to forget Carlos Zambrano is just 30 years old. This season, Zambrano is showing the world that he just might have something left in the tank. Through 41 innings, Zambrano is the proud owner of a 1.98 ERA. Despite his effectiveness, he wasn’t rewarded with his first victory of the season until Monday night, when he twirled his best start of the season, a complete game, nine-strikeout shutout of the Astros in Houston. In many ways, Zambrano is looking like the pitcher who shined with the Cubs throughout the last decade.

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It took 21 team games and 72 plate appearances, but Giancarlo Stanton finally hit his first home run of the the season this past weekend. He drove an 0-2 fastball from left-hander Mike Zagurski out to dead center field, a 425-foot three-run shot. It raised Stanton’s season line to .246/.288/.348 and was just his fifth extra-base hit, well below both projections and expectations. There are a number of reasons for the 22-year-old’s power outage in the early going, but the most obvious one is staring us right in the face: his new ballpark.

With some help from Hit Tracker Online, here’s a look at the new Marlins Park with an overlay of the Sun Life Stadium outfield dimensions…

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Heath Bell was just one strike away from getting the second out in the ninth Thursday in New York. Bell was in just another jam, the fourth time in seven outings this season at least three baserunners reached against him. But with Justin Turner at the plate — a lifetime .248/.325/.336 hitter — Bell jumped out to an 0-2 count. There was his way out.

And then Turner fouled off a couple pitches. And then a couple more. And the next thing we knew, it was a full count. And then he fouled off four more pitches. Finally, on the 13th pitch of the at-bat, Turner took ball four on a pitch down and out of the zone. The Mets had the game tied and would eventually win it on Kirk Niewenhuis’s long single to right field as the rain poured on Citi Field.

It’s been about as rough a season as anybody could imagine for the 34-year-old closer. In just 5.2 innings, Bell has allowed eight runs (six earned), walked seven batters, and allowed nine hits. Pretty much every rate imaginable to measure his pitching is unfortunate at this point, but the most distressing? Perhaps a 4.9% swinging strike rate, a big part of the reason Bell couldn’t get out of the ninth Thursday at Citi Field. It used to be Bell could take a hitter like Justin Turner and blow him away. Not so throughout 2012 thus far.

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Ivan Rodriguez is reportedly slated to announce his retirement from baseball today. There will be much written about his impressive career, and much of it will focus on whether or not he will get into the Hall of Fame, even though his numbers pretty obviously warrant it. Personally, I think that sidesteps the issue of how such a great player had not one but two lame nicknames: “Pudge,” which would not be so bad if it had not already been used; and “I-Rod,” which involved the incredibly annoying “first initial-first syllable” lazy nicknaming thing. It makes it hard to give this post a decent title.

Rather than looking at a career overview, let’s focus on a few particular moments: Rodriguez’ three biggest in-game hits according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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I have been toying around with an idea for pitcher-hitter match-ups based not on prior head-to-head performance or platoon splits, but rather pitch type linear weights.

For those that are unfamiliar, pitch type linear weights basically takes a batter or pitcher’s performance on each type of pitch they throw or face during the year (e.g. four-seam fastball, slider, etc.) and converts that performance into runs created or runs saved relative to average. At FanGraphs, we show both the total runs created or saved for each pitch (e.g. wFB) and a normalized version for the value per 100 pitches thrown (e.g. wFB/C).

I thought it would be interesting to compare the starting pitcher’s pitch type linear weight performance against the lineup he is facing. To do this, I calculated the difference in run value between each pitch type for each starting pitcher and the hitters they might face. The difference is shown in the tables below. Green coding denotes an advantage to the pitcher, while red indicates an advantage for the hitter. I used the normalized version of each pitch type (i.e. run value per 100 pitches thrown/faced) to control for playing time, pitches seen, etc.

The tables below show the match-ups for tonight’s game between the Marlins and Phillies (7:05pm EST) for both Josh Johnson and Roy Halladay:

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Opening Day 1.5 featured a one-game series with the defending world champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the league’s latest makeover recipient, the Miami Marlins. Righty Kyle Lohse earned the Opening Day honors for the Cardinals on the merit of being not recently or presently injured, and much to the surprise of many, Lohse took a perfect game no hitter into the 7th inning.

His line from the game:

7.1 IP, 1 ER, 3 K, 0 BB, 8 GB, 10 FB, 2 LD

All told, that comes to a 1.23 ERA, 1.49 FIP, 2.94 xFIP, and… a 4.22 SIERA…

Everything but that SIERA number suggests Lohse had a great start. Let’s find out why.
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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#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 Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#18 – Colorado

Miami’s 2011 Ranking: 17th

2012 Outlook: 53 (14th)

The biggest strength for the Marlins this year will likely be their lineup. While the team finished slightly behind the middle of the pack in wOBA at .311 (9th in the NL) last year, the progressions of Logan Morrison and Giancarlo Stanton, along with the expected bounce back from Hanley Ramirez and the acquisition of Jose Reyes should make this one of the better lineups in the league.

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I’m currently in Jupiter, Florida, as a guest both of (a) my 91-year-old grandfather and (a) the Miami Marlins of Florida. Today was Day 1 of 3 of my time here. I’ll be spending time on the backfields, watching some minor-league games and providing mediocre analysis on same.

Today, I watched mostly the High-A game between the Marlins and Cardinals — or, alternately, the Jupiter Hammerheads and Palm Beach Cardinals, of the Sally and Florida State League, respectively.

Regarding Grant Dayton
Left-hander Grant Dayton, 24, pitched for Miami and was generally excellent — although, perhaps, less excellent in consideration of his age. He threw what appeared to be four or five pitches, depending on how all the breaking balls are split up: a fastball at 88-91 mph, a cutter at ca. 85 mph, a slider at around 80 mph, and a change at 82-83 mph. There were a couple of breaking balls in the high 70s, too, so it’s possible that he was throwing a curve. In any case, the shape of the pitch was pretty similar to the slider.

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