Confession: while I enjoy no-hitters as much as most baseball fans, part of me wanted Johan Santana’s no-hitter to get broken up. That impulse did not stem from a particular animus against Santana or the Mets. It most certainly did not stem from a liking for the Cardinals. In fact, the desire only reared its head when Carlos Beltran faced Santana. I thought it would be cool if Beltran rocked one out of the park in the midst of a dominating display. What can I say: I like watching Carlos Beltran, and I feel like he “deserves” to have some more memorable moments on the positive side of the ledger. I believe Beltran has a Hall-worthy resume already, but he also shares a few characteristics of the sort of players who get overlooked, which makes me wonder if he will be left out in the cold.

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Long after Johan Santana retires, memories of his changeup will delight fans and haunt opponents. It’s only fitting that Santana’s changeup frustrated Cardinals hitters from wire to wire in his no-hitter Friday night, dominating from the first inning to the last. Santana went to his signature pitch 38 times out of his 3 total offerings, going for 24 strikes, nine whiffs, and recording nine of his 27 outs.

It’s only fitting. Although his injuries may make a Hall of Fame bid difficult, Santana’s changeup is no doubt a hall-of-fame caliber pitch. Santana is the career leader in changeup pitch value since BIS began tracking the data in 2002 at 133.4 runs saved, and his changeup saves an average of 2.11 runs per 100 times thrown. The only pitcher who throws his changeup so often to even come close is Cole Hamels, at 2.02.

Numbers don’t to justice to this caliber of a pitch, though — let’s relive six of the best changeups on the night that made history for both Santana and the New York Mets:

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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 »

In Jamie Moyer’s most recent start, he went 5.0 innings against the New York Metropolitans and struck out 7, walked 2, and allowed a single donger. How a post-Tommy Johns surgery 49-year-old can strike out 7 young, healthy, honest Americans (both North and South Americans) is frankly beyond me. But it is an understatement to say Moyer has surprised me this year.

Not only has the near-half-century man earned a spot on the Rockies rotation, he is pitching like their ace.
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There has been a lot of speculation whether David Wright will remain a New York Met. While the club still has a $16 million option on the 29-year-old third baseman for next season, Wright has been mentioned as a contract-extension candidate.

Whether he stays with the Mets — or he’s dealt to another team — it seems likely Wright would be locked up before hitting the free-agent market. Assuming that’s the case, he should  be in for a large payday. Wright, however, could be looking for an extension in the $100 million range. And though Wright has been stellar throughout his career, $100 million is far from a guarantee.

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Calculations!

Every year, some players start hot, others start cold. In the past, when a player had a high BABIP to start the season, we said, “Oh, well he’s lucky. His numbers will come down.” But now we can say with greater certainty, using Fielding Independent wOBA (or FI wOBA), what a player’s wOBA would actually regress to, given their performance in other areas.

Let’s look at the top five BABIPs in the league with FI wOBA regressed to career BABIP rates (or CaB-FIw for Career BABIP FI wOBA).

David Wright: .536 BABIP, .503 wOBA, .424 CaB-FIw

Even if/when Wright’s BABIP comes back to his career .342 BABIP, his peripherals are off the charts. He is on pace for 30 homers, which is nothing miraculous for Wright, but he is also walking and striking out at a 12.5% rate.

Will that kind of patience continue? Eh, probably not to that extreme, but it certainly means Wright is seeing the ball well right now and could be poised for a really good year.

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Fernando Rodney has three saves and a win so far this season. Fernando Rodney has gotten eight outs so far this season. As strange as it may first seem for a late-inning reliever to have four decisions with so few batters faced, it’s business as usual in Tampa Bay. Here’s a box score that is fairly typical for the Rays:

It certainly appears that the Rays are micro-managing their bullpen. Perhaps the aim is to gain the platoon advantage in as many situations as possible — teams do that all the time. But which ones are doing it most often?

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This past Tuesday on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential, I predicted that Mets first basemen Ike Davis would be the breakout player in MLB this coming season. Yes, it was a bit of a homer pick, but I had solid reasoning to back it up. In his first 754 plate appearances in the big leagues, Davis put up an OBP of .355, a SLG of .457, and a wOBA of .352 all while playing in the pitcher-friendly Citi Field. That translates to a 121 wRC+, not bad considering only six other players 24 years old or younger have ever matched or exceeded that total over their first 800 plate appearances.

While watching Davis go 0-for-4 with two strike outs in yesterday’s opener I noticed something interesting: the Braves only threw Davis one fastball out of 18 total pitches. Not only that, but 41% of those pitches where thrown low and away, with Davis striking out twice on pitches in that area.

We can’t read too much into performance metrics in the early part of the season, especially after the first game, but the strategy executed by the Braves yesterday is consistent with the book on Ike, and may have provided a preview of what the young slugger will see throughout the year.

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The Mets extended lefty Jonathon Niese for five years and $25.5 million, and even without the two club option years ($10 and $10.5 million respectively), the deal should be a solid one for the front office. They’ve bought out all of his arbitration years, a year of free agency, and have two friendly options — and his comps suggest that he’ll make the deal look good.

Using the new age filters on the site, we can find all the pitchers between 23 and 25 years old that pitched in the PITCH F/x era (2002+). From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to all 23-25 year olds that managed to induce more than 47% of their contact on the ground (Niese career GB% 49.1%), strike out more than seven batters per nine (career 7.65 K/9), walk fewer than 3.4 batters per nine (career 2.99 BB/9), and amass more than 150 innings in a season. Suddenly, Niese is in good company.
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Remember back in the 2009-2010 off-season, when some people weren’t sure who was better between big-time free agent outfielders Jason Bay and Matt Holliday? That was awesome. The Bay contract may not have been the nail in the coffin of Omar Minaya’s tenure as general manager of the Mets, but it was pretty close.

It is unlikely that even the biggest critics of the Bay contract at the time (and I was not a fan) thought things would get this bad this quickly. Bay was paid to be a star, but he has not even been an average player in either of his seasons so far with the Mets. Perhaps he was about average overall when he played in 2010, but he missed more than a third of the 2010 season. In 2011 he played more, but went from overpaid average player to just a bad player. He has looked so poor in spring training that there is talk (understandably dismissed by the Mets) that Bay could be platooned if he starts slow this year. The talk may be baseless, but that it is even out there is a bad sign for the Mets given that Bay still has two years and $35 million guaranteed (including the $3 million buyout on the 2014 club option) on his contract, which also includes a full no-trade clause.

But for the sake of speculation, if the Mets did decide to platoon Bay, would it really accomplish anything?

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