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Oakland A’s first baseman/left fielder Mark Canha is off to a fine start to the 2015 season. Through the year’s first week and a half, he’s hitting a solid .333/.353/.515, and leads all rookies with 11 hits. This is obviously a teeny tiny sample, and we all know better than to read too much into seven games. But even so, an excellent performance from a previously unknown player is a little hard to ignore, especially after his six homers and .297/.342/.635 batting line from spring training. The A’s have to be happy with the return they’ve gotten on their rule 5 choice so far.

Although this is his first taste of big league action, Canha’s no youngster. He turned 26 this past February, and has been playing professionally since 2010, when the Marlins drafted him in the seventh round out of the University of California. Although he started out as a 21-year-old in short-season ball, Canha moved through the Marlins system relatively slowly. He spent a full year at each minor league level, so he’s just now making it to the big leagues.

Canha’s slow climb up the minor league ladder wasn’t due to a lack of hitting. His wRC+s from 2010-2014 were 139, 144, 128, 141 and 131. He’s never hit worse than his league’s average, nor has he come particularly close. But, year after year, the Marlins chose to let Canha mash as an old-for-his-league slugger instead of challenging him with more polished pitching. Read the rest of this entry »

cistulli [4:59 PM]
I seem to be writing something about how Joe Kelly set a single-game strikeout mark for himself against the Yankees. Has anyone claimed anything like that?

davecameron [9:16 PM]
No one has. Can I suggest that maybe you write about Cody Martin instead? He’s a classic Cistulli guy and he’s killing it out of ATL’s bullpen right now.

davecameron [12:25 AM]
Cody Martin tonight: two more shutout innings, two more Ks. Now sporting a 0.12 xFIP through 5 1/3 IP. Write about him.

cistulli [10:41 AM]
I hear you, Cameron!

cistulli [10:45 AM]
Hey, additionally, did you see that weird double-steal by Mookie Betts yesterday? I was thinking of writing about that.

davecameron [10:46 AM]
CODY MARTIN

davecameron [10:46 AM]
You’re not allowed to do anything else until that’s done.

The above dialogue with managing editor and frequent pod guest Dave Cameron — excerpted from the site’s internal message board with only just minimal edits — will give the reader a sense of the hostile conditions under which FanGraphs contributors are compelled to work. Because he lives in North Carolina and the author of this post resides in New Hampshire, I’m unable to verify for certain that Cameron typed his end of the correspondence while wearing an actual iron fist. As for a metaphorical one, however, its presence is manifest.

Cameron has insisted that I write about Cody Martin — and lest I enter the ranks of America’s unemployed, I will endeavor here to fulfill that obligation. To begin, let’s evaluate some claims made by Cameron himself and examine their validity.

1. [Cody Martin] is a classic Cistulli guy.
By classic Cistulli guy, Cameron usually just means “anonymous non-prospect with no hope of major-league success.” In his more charitable moods, however, what he means is “performer with fringy tools.” Conveniently, that’s almost the precise phrase used by Kiley McDaniel to describe Martin when evaluating Atlanta’s rookie-eligible players this past January. Martin didn’t appear among the organization’s top prospects, but was featured within the Others of Note section — the equivalent, that, of honorable mention.

Martin is a Cistulli guy in a more immediate way, as well. Twice in 2013, Martin appeared within the weekly Fringe Five column I write here during the minor-league season and which is designed to identify the most compelling rookie-eligible players absent from the notable preseason prospects lists. At that time, Martin had just been promoted to Triple-A Gwinnett and proceeded to strike out 32 batters over his first 26.0 innings at that level.

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In seven innings this season, including six in his start on Sunday, Carlos Martinez has faced 10 right-handed hitters. None of them has reached base and four hitters have struck out. Martinez’s early season dominance against righties is not altogether surprising. Splitting time between the bullpen and the rotation last season, Martinez faced 215 right-handers and struck out more than 30% of them while walking just shy of 7% and giving up only one home run for a 1.94 FIP.

Martinez featured a four-seam and a two-seam sinking fastball with his slider as his out pitch. The slider worked particularly well against righties, generating over a 25% whiff rate, per Brooks Baseball. Of the 87 plate appearances against right-handers that ended on a slider, 41 were strikeouts and five were walks. Martinez had the slider going against the Reds on Sunday, striking out four of the seven right-handed hitters he faced — three of whom he finished off with the slider. Against seven right-handers, Martinez made 31 pitches and threw 25 strikes. As a reminder, here is what the slider looked like against Zach Cozart.
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Nolan Arenado will never be Joey Votto. He’s too hyperactive, he’s too aggressive, and he knows it. He’s fine being Nolan Arenado, too. But that doesn’t mean the Rockies’ standout third baseman doesn’t struggle to find the perfect approach at the plate to fit his skill set.

Over the last two years, there hasn’t been so much of a yo-yo in his approach as a steady progression. “I’m just trying to be selective, as much as I can,” he said before a game with the Giants. “But I don’t want to get too selective, because that’s when I get tentative.”

A hitter in his own head is no good, but a hitter that swings at everything isn’t either. While Arenado’s swing rates have never swung below league average (he’s almost 10% above league average for his career), his reach rates have changed, signaling that the batter has indeed started to discern balls and strikes better. Watch his monthly reach rate haltingly improve over his career:

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You had, probably, heard of Arquimedes Caminero before. This is because his full name is Arquimedes Euclides Caminero, and that speaks for itself. His existence as a baseballer was something of a curiosity, but that was more or less the extent of it. However much you knew about Caminero, you probably knew next to nothing about his actual talent. In January, he was designated for assignment by the Marlins. Some days later, he was acquired by the Pirates for cash considerations. He was added to the spring-training pile of guys competing for a major-league bullpen spot. These are the transactions you ignore, and you’re usually justified in doing so. Most of the time, the Camineros of the world remain the Camineros, only a little bit older every year.

And to be fair, it’s April 14. It’s been two and a half months since the Marlins gave Caminero up, so it’s not like we can know the rest of his career. But, in February, I polled the audience about pitching coaches, and Pirates fans liked theirs the most. Big fans of Ray Searage, those Pirates people. Searage has developed a reputation for getting the most out of troubled live arms, and based on early indications, with Caminero, Searage can count for himself another unlikely win.

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Yesterday, against the Pirates, Anthony Gose finished 0-for-3 with two strikeouts. He has, so far, struck out nine times in 23 plate appearances. Let’s talk about why he’s possibly better.

Through his first three opportunities in the bigs, Gose came to the plate more than 600 times, and he managed a .285 wOBA. That’s a bad wOBA — the sort of wOBA acceptable only from a pinch-runner or defensive specialist. For 2015, our own projections peg him for a .292 wOBA, which is technically better, but ranked with Shane Robinson and Aaron Hicks. It’s a perfectly sensible projection; it matches what Gose has done, allowing for a little improvement from the 24-year-old. But there’s something projections can’t account for as they analyze the history: what if a hitter changes his swing?

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The list of guys with new pitches every spring runs deep (27 last year on Jason Collette’s excellent list). The list of those that continue to throw those pitches during the regular season is a little bit shorter (23 last year). And the group that see real success from adding that extra pitch is even shorter — ten pitchers added more than a percentage point to their swinging strike rate thanks to a new pitch last year.

This year, the Spring Training list was once again full. Brewers’ starter Jimmy Nelson is on there, and he’s often been called a two-pitch guy since his changeup is not a plus pitch. Now he’s added a spike curve to his mid-90s fastball and above-average slider. He used it plenty in his first start, so he’s already made the jump to the second list. Can his new pitch mean continued success this year?

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As baseball fans who happily allow themselves to be consumed by information, we know, automatically, what certain number sequences refer to. Take, for example, 40-40. That’s homers and steals, applying to the rare player both speedy and powerful. 30-100? Homers and RBI, which, whatever, don’t act like you didn’t know. 6-4-3? That’s a run-of-the-mill double play. 2-1? Padres game. It’s all a different language, and we’re fluent in it, even if it isn’t the sort of fluency you’re comfortable declaring on a resume.

But numbers are just numbers, and they can refer to anything. I mean, it’s possible that 6-4-3 could also mean six runs on four hits, with three errors. You just can’t be sure right away. Now, baseball makes this promise: any day at the ballpark, you might see something you’ve never seen before. It’s an element that helps to keep the game fresh, despite 162 repetitions. Not everyone, granted, might appreciate something rare, something historical. Kind of depends what we’re talking about. In this case, we have something appealing only to dorks. Sunday afternoon in Oakland, Mike Zunino and Felix Hernandez of the Mariners turned a 2-1 double play.

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Hello! The baseball season just started. We’ve gone from one Sunday to a second Sunday, and we still aren’t allowed to do anything with statistics because nobody cares about them yet. While, in theory, spring training is supposed to get everyone ready for the year, the beginning feels like an extended spring training, a transition period following a transition period, and at this point the standings mean nothing. If you were to ask a player today about the wins and the losses, you’d get laughed out of the clubhouse. It doesn’t just feel like there’s a long way to go — it feels like there’s the whole way to go. Also, the Indians and White Sox are four games back of the Tigers and Royals.

It happened fast. It happened before anyone cared, but the White Sox have been swept by the Royals, and the Indians have been swept by the Tigers. Series conclude every few days, and standings change literally every day, but this is notable because the AL Central has four teams who’ve been thinking about the playoffs. The same four teams are still thinking about the playoffs, but as much as you want to say nothing matters yet, everything matters. This is my most- and least-favorite post to write every season.

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When the Reds signed Aroldis Chapman out of Cuba, a brief attempt was made to make him a starter in the minors, but in the majors, he has pitched exclusively out of the bullpen. Raisel Iglesias, a fellow Cuban import who has been ticketed by some for the bullpen, has already made one more start than Chapman with his debut on Sunday against the Cardinals. Iglesias made it through five innings, giving up three runs while striking out four and walking two. There are still some concerns that could cause him to end in the bullpen, but he showed an impressive fastball that fooled Cardinals hitters when he dropped his arm angle.

Iglesias pitched as a reliever in Cuba and has not been seen too often since signing with the Reds last July for seven years and $27 million. In Kiley McDaniel’s write-up on the Reds prospects, he had this to say about his performance in the Arizona Fall League:

He sat 91-95 and hit 97 mph in these outings, with his stuff varying a bit in each outing. Iglesias is about to turn 25 and there’s some east/west, inconsistency and effort to his delivery, but scouts see the elements of average command in the tank. Iglesias has a four pitch mix and his slider will flash plus every now and then, so there’s mid-rotation upside.

Iglesias’ slider performed well, striking out Jason Heyward in the first inning.
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