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Every year around this time, Major League Baseball starts their periodic All-Star Game voting updates. This year’s process has been flawed, to say the least. And like we always do about this time, we go through and pick the updates apart and see who still hasn’t got their due, to try to find the right recipe for the game. In doing so this year, the most glaring omission appears to be A.J. Pollock.

As of Thursday, A.J. Pollock was 11th in the majors in position player WAR. Let’s start there. If we look at the top 10, we can note that as of our last ballot update — which was Monday for the American League and Tuesday for the National League — that every one in the top 10 had at least 900,000 votes, and all but Joc Pederson had at least one million. Pollock, however, didn’t rate. He wasn’t one of the top-15 vote getters among NL outfielders, and 15th place Starling Marte had totaled 635,125 votes thus far. So Pollock is pretty far behind his fellow WAR leaders.

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So much of the analysis we do in baseball follows a pretty simple formula. We notice a player is getting different results, we look for explanations for the change, and then we speculate about whether the latter caused the former and if it will continue. Baseball includes so much random variation and you have to make decisions all the time about how much information is enough to rule out randomness as an answer. When it came to Phil Hughes in 2014, we didn’t have to worry too much about randomness as an explanation.

Hughes rattled off the best K/BB ratio of all time and was somewhere between very good and excellent for the first time in his career. While we can chalk lots of leaps up to random variation, Hughes seemed immune because he was such a drastically different pitcher in Minnesota compared to New York. It appeared to be quite clear why Hughes was so much better. He stopped issuing walks and pounded the strike zone. He bumped up his strikeouts as a result, and seemingly cut his home runs because he was in better counts and not in Yankee Stadium.

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I think we’ve established by now that it’s the year of Bryce Harper. He’s the current major-league leader in Wins Above Replacement, and in case you’re not a real big fan of WAR, Harper’s also the leader in wRC+, and wOBA, and slugging percentage. This is the year we’ve been waiting for, and this is the year that makes it exponentially less silly to draw comparisons between Harper and Mike Trout. This healthy version of Harper has climbed within sight of his ceiling, and he’s still 22 years old. He’s younger than Kris Bryant, Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, and Noah Syndergaard. Harper-is-young facts are the oldest of hats, but then, they’re almost as old as Bryce Harper, who is young.

Harper’s been written about. We’ve all taken our turns, digging into his breakout that at this point appears undeniable. No one would dare pass up an opportunity to get into detail on baseball’s newest emerging superstar, so by now you should consider yourself mostly informed. Yet now I feel like there’s more that needs to be added. Since getting hot, Harper hasn’t really cooled off. He has, however, changed what he’s been doing. You could say he’s performed more like himself.

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The prospects just keep on coming for the Houston Astros this year. First, it was Preston Tucker, who’s stepped in to produce a 110 wRC+ as the team’s left fielder. Then, along came Lance McCullers, who’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball over his first month in the majors. Another came on Monday,when Houston summoned Carlos Correa — arguably the best prospect left in the minors. Then, last night, the Astros graduated yet another impact prospect to the majors in Vincent Velasquez. The 23-year-old tossed five scoreless innings in his debut, striking out five while walking four.

Heading into the year, very few anticipated that Velasquez would make it to Houston in 2015, as he had zero experience above A-ball. He pitched reasonably well in High-A Lancaster last year, posting a 3.74 ERA and 3.96 FIP, but a groin injury limited him to just 51 innings of work. At year’s end, he reported to the Arizona Fall League, where he posted an unsightly 6.59 ERA before he was shut down with a lat strain. Velasquez looked as though he was still at least a year away from the show.

But something seemed to click for Velasquez between this year and last. After sitting out the first few weeks of the year recovering from his lat injury, the 23-year-old hit the ground running in Double-A Corpus Christi. In five starts, he pitched to a sparkling 1.37 ERA and 2.13 FIP on the strength of a 37% strikeout rate. Yes, that’s a small sample, but those numbers are about as good as it gets.

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It’s only been 35 major-league plate appearances, but Joey Gallo has already made quite the impression. The ball doesn’t fly off the bat any faster than it does off his, and he’s also second in the big leagues in three-true-outcome percentage (K%+BB%+HR%) — he’s a slugger’s slugger.

He’s also second in the big leagues in strikeout rate. “I’ve tried to cut down on them,” Gallo sighed when I asked. “I’ve tried. I promise.”

So we talked about the strikeouts, and what he can do about them, and why they have happened, and why they will continue to happen.

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Carlos Martinez is a starting pitcher now. He’s not some guy who throws 75 pitches and four innings a game. This year he’s often exceeded triple digits, and he’s one of the big reasons why the St. Louis Cardinals are where they are despite the loss of some important players. Before the season, there was some uncertainty surrounding Martinez, and it’s still not clear how he’ll hold up down the stretch. But after pitching well in Colorado on Wednesday, Martinez has turned in six strong starts in a row. His ERA is a hair under 3, and he has the peripherals to match.

With every starting pitcher who’s ever become good, the reasons behind the success are numerous. It’s never as easy as, “He replaced this pitch with this other pitch,” or “He added a tick of velocity.” So understand that, with Martinez, I’m sure there’s been a lot going on. Most conspicuously, Martinez is now throwing a changeup he believes in. Even though observers liked Martinez’s changeup in the minors, it wasn’t there for him in the bigs, and he had problems putting lefties away. That problem is in the process of being resolved, as Martinez has evidently found a changeup he likes.

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There’s a belief that, when a guy throws a no-hitter, that means that somewhere along the line a defensive player made a hell of a play to keep it alive. There are certain famous examples that prop the theory up, and without doubt, there are easier plays made, and more difficult plays made, every single time. One of the interesting things about Chris Heston’s no-hitter is that no defensive plays really stand out. Granted, because of the strikeouts, there were just 15 balls put into play, but all of those turned into 16 outs, and no one had to make an all-out dive. It was, in retrospect, an easy-seeming no-hitter, if that’s not an oxymoron. (It is, but, anyway.)

Heston’s not the best pitcher to ever throw a no-hitter. Nor is he the worst. In fact, we don’t yet really know what Heston is, because his big-league career is barely underway. All we know for sure is he’s something of a groundball machine. There are only so many ways to analyze a game like this, such that you’re in any way original, but then there is that new Statcast wrinkle. We’ve got some Statcast information for all of Heston’s balls in play allowed. That’s potentially useful.

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We haven’t spoken about Xander Bogaerts at length in these digital pages for some time, so let’s remedy that situation. It seems like a good time to check in on the young shortstop’s development as a major-league hitter: Bogaerts is posting a wRC+ north of 100 in the first two months of the season, and he’s also almost cut his strikeout rate in half compared to last year. There’s also this group, which is an interesting subset of players, of which Boston’s shortstop is the leader — hitters with the highest increase in batted balls to the opposite field this season over last season:

Though it’s still perhaps a little early to be putting a ton of confidence in these numbers, changes as large as these in a hitter’s opposite-field tendencies merit attention. Opposite-field approach is often a good place to look when searching for a reason behind a change in type of production, and, given the drop in Bogaert’s ISO numbers from last year — .123 in 2014 vs. .106 this year — plus the fact that we’re over the ISO stabilization point, it’s one of the spots we’re going to focus on.

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Throwing a no-hitter can seem like a random occurrence. Edwin Jackson has a no-hitter. Dallas Braden has a no-hitter. One of Bud Smith’s 24 starts in the majors was a no hitter. Philip Humber has a perfect game. Tim Lincecum threw zero no-hitters in his incredible prime, and has thrown two since entering his decline. Pedro Martinez never threw one. Steve Carlton never did, either. No-hitters in major-league baseball require incredible skill, opportunity, and some luck. Thousands upon thousands of pitchers have had all three of those things, but fewer than 300 pitchers in MLB history have thrown a no-hitter. Chris Heston is now among that rare group.

Tidbits using the Baseball Reference Play Index:

• Chris Heston is only the 13th pitcher in MLB history to throw a no-hitter within his first 15 games in the majors. The last pitcher to match that feat was Clay Buchholz in 2007.
• Heston’s no-hitter was only the third in history in which the only hitters to reach base did so by means of a hit-by-pitch (HBP). The other two were Kevin Brown in 1997 and Lew Burdette in 1960.
• Heston’s three HBPs are the most in any no-hitter.
• Only ten pitchers have thrown a nine-inning no-hitter with a higher Game Score than Heston’s 98. Clayton Kershaw’s 102 mark from last season remains the top score.
• Of the 24 pitchers to throw a no-hitter within their first 30 games, Heston is the fifth-oldest at 27 years and 60 days. Bobo Holloman was the oldest at 30 years and 60 days when he threw his no-hitter in 1953 for the St. Louis Browns. Read the rest of this entry »

J.D. Martinez is a thoughtful baseball player who has made major changes to his swing mechanics. As much as writing is what gets me out of bed on Monday mornings, it seems a shame to sully this one with too much of my own clumsy verbiage. So what follows is just J.D. Martinez, running us through the myriad realizations and swing changes he’s made since he was once a struggling Astro. Of course, there are a few edits and moving pictures.

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