Source: FanGraphs

Josh Hamilton wrote his name into the history books in Baltimore tonight, becoming just the 14th player in Major League history to hit four home runs in a single game, launching two off Orioles starter Jake Arrieta, one off reliever Zach Phillips, and one off side-armer Darren O’Day.

He’s just the third player to ever record a fifth extra base hit in the game in which he also hit four homers, as he added a double to rack up 18 total bases on the night. Only Shawn Green in 2002 and Joe Adcock in 1954 added a fifth XBH to their big night, and prior to tonight, those were the only games in history where a player had accumulated at least 18 total bases in a single performance. Green actually added a single as well, so he still stands alone with 19 total bases based on his 6-6 night.

Hamilton homered in his final at-bat in last night’s game, so over the span of six plate appearances, he managed to hit five home runs and a double. It will take a little more digging to confirm, but there’s a pretty good chance that no one has ever done that before.

Hamilton now has 14 home runs on the season, two more than the San Diego Padres and just three behind the Minnesota Twins. As far as FanGraphs metrics go, Hamilton entered the night with a .474 wOBA and raised it to .536, passing Matt Kemp for the best mark in baseball. For the evening, he posted a wRC+ of 1,212. His wRC+ for the year is now 247 – Babe Ruth’s highest single season wRC+ was .235.

If you want to view the home runs, the highlights are up on MLB.com.

HR #1
HR #2
HR #3
HR #4

It’s April 26th, so it’s just too early to jump to any conclusions based on what has happened thus far in 2012. There are 140+ games still to go in the season, and as we’ve seen before, the standings at the end of April often don’t look like the standings at the end of September. Three weeks of baseball shouldn’t have changed our minds too much about what we believed to be true before the season began. That the Angels are 6-12, and that Albert Pujols has yet to hit a home run, should not lead us to believe that the Angels are a bad team or that Pujols run as an elite hitter has come to an end.

However, April counts too, and it couldn’t have gone much worse for Anaheim than it did. Not only have they struggled out of the gates, but Texas has blitzed through the American League, and currently hold an 8 1/2 game lead over the Angels in the American League West. Even if we still believe that the Angels are capable of outplaying the Rangers over the rest of the season – and we should – the hole they have to dig out of has become so large that winning their division has become significantly less likely.

For instance, here’s a few examples of what it would take for the Angels to win the AL West by a margin of one game, with all of these scenarios needing to begin immediately:

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Carl Crawford, Adam Dunn, and Jayson Werth signed large free agent contracts with new teams last offseason, and each were unequivocal disappointments in 2011 with their new club. This phenomenon is not limited to free agents. In recent memory, several highly touted prospects have been traded and not lived up to expectations with their new teams: Justin Smoak, Brett Wallace, and Kyle Drabek, to name a few.

Whenever a player changes teams and fails to live up to expectations, I find myself wondering, “Did his old team see this coming?” In these specific examples, we may never know, but we do know that teams have internal information which creates an advantage in personnel decisions. While this advantage may never completely go away, there is evidence to suggest that it’s starting to disappear.

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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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The quality of Yu Darvish’s stuff is glaringly obvious. His fastball sits between 91-95 MPH and has serious run, while he throws a pair of breaking balls that dive differently and works in an 89 MPH cutter with late action. And, he’s got a wide enough variety of options to give hitters a lot of different looks.

As you can see, there are no distinct clumps there. He’s thrown curveballs at 66 MPH, curveballs at 80 MPH, and pretty much everything in between. His slider has been between 80 and 86, and then his three fastballs give him the ability to go anywhere between 88 and 95. This is the repertoire of a guy who should miss a lot of bats.

And yet, after three starts, Darvish just isn’t fooling anyone. 333 pitches into his big league career, and opposing batters have made contact on 81.6% of the pitches he’s thrown. Major League average for a starting pitcher in 2012 is 81.7%. For comparison, the other pitchers with contact rates between 81.0-81.9% include Doug Fister, Felix Doubront, Jake Arrieta, R.A. Dickey, Ervin Santana, Mark Buehrle, Jamie Moyer, Jaime Garcia, Ryan Vogelsong, Jonathan Sanchez, Ian Kennedy, and Freddy Garcia.

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“Mentally, I was very calm, but my body felt like it wanted to go and go and go,” Darvish said through his translator. “At the beginning of the game, my mind and my body kind of weren’t on the same page.” — Yu Darvish after his first MLB start

On Monday, I watched with imprisoned eyes as Yu Darvish made his major league debut and did that which many had thought impossible — he walked Chone Figgins.

To say the least, I studied Yu Darvish quite a bit this offseason and was surprised at this seemingly immediate loss of control and command. Some of the hits that followed in that four-run first inning were bloops and seers, but even in the pitches preceding the bad luck, Darvish looked wild — nothing like he looked in Japan or even in the 2012 Spring Training season.

By the third inning, a different man was pitching, a steadier, stronger Darvish. He mowed through the Mariners lineup — while the Mariners pitchers got mowed over by the Rangers — and ended up “winning” the game with 5 ER, 6.2 IP, and raucous applause. Watching the game, I could not help but suspect something more than a rusty start was at hand. Maybe my studies of Darvish and likewise high expectations for him tainted my perception? Maybe the psychological framing of it being his first start in the MLB pushed me to think this, but for my money, Darvish looked nervous.
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For the last few seasons, Ian Kinsler has been one of the more under-appreciated stars in Major League Baseball. From 2009 to 2011, Kinsler produced +15.8 WAR for the Rangers, putting him in a near dead heat with Robinson Cano (+16.4) and Dustin Pedroia (+16.2) at second base, and ranking him ahead of high profile players such as Prince Fielder (+15.3), Matt Kemp (+14.3), and even his teammate Josh Hamilton (+14.1). Even if you think defensive metrics are completely useless and you want to assume that every player is an average defender at their position, Kinsler would still grade out as top 25 position player, and he’d still grade out ahead of Hamilton. His combination of plate discipline, elite contact skills, rare power for a middle infielder, and his ability to add value on the bases makes him one of the most complete players in the game.

Recognizing his value to the franchise, the Rangers rewarded him with a new five year contract extension today, agreeing to pay him $75 million from 2013 to 2017. This deal will keep Kinsler from becoming a free agent after the 2013 season and allows Texas to retain one of the core players at a price that shouldn’t prove too prohibitive going forward. At $15 million per year, Kinsler won’t have to remain a superstar in his mid-30s to justify the contract – as long as he’s healthy and retains some of the skills he’s shown up to this point in his career, it should prove to be a solid investment by the Rangers.

However, there’s a bit of an asterisk when you deal with second baseman on the wrong side of 30 – they don’t age very well at all. While the reasons behind the phenomenon aren’t perfectly understood (best guesses at the moment include the physical toll taken via turning the double play, and a selection bias effect based on what traits 2Bs get selected for having), the evidence is too strong to ignore.

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Yu Darvish debuted yesterday. His first pitch registered 95 MPH and the flashbulbs popped. Then things went south in Texas.

Four singles, three walks, a wild pitch, and 42 combined pitches later, his first inning finally went into the books. With it went much of the mania surrounding his arrival in the states. Was this pitcher, despite being about 50% better relative to the Japanese league than the last great Japanese import, going to suffer the same control problems that plagued Daisuke Matsuzaka before him? Was he a nibbler without an out pitch?

At the risk of being an apologist, even in this small sample there were mitigating factors.

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Arizona
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Chicago Cubs
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit
#6 – St. Louis
#5 – Philadelphia
#4 – Anaheim

Texas 2011 Rating: #7

2012 Outlook: 68 (2nd)

The Rangers return most of a team that reached the World Series for a second straight year in 2011, and they replaced their only significant departure by bringing in Yu Darvish, billed as perhaps the best international free agent in history. There just isn’t an area of the game where the Rangers are deficient, as they have one of the league’s deepest pitching staffs, best defenses, and an offense that can score runs in bunches. They have a terrific, balanced roster, and they are very likely to contend for their third consecutive World Series appearance.

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The Texas Rangers and second baseman Ian Kinsler have been discussing a possible six-year contract extension for the better part of two months, but Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the negotiations will be heating up prior to Opening Day on Friday.

Rosenthal states that the Rangers are willing to exceed the record $12.4M average annual value given to Dan Uggla in March 2011, but Kinsler and his agent may be holding out to determine what Robinson Cano receives, which will help set Kinsler’s overall market. Of course, Cano will likely not be a free agent until after the 2013 season, so there are no guarantees that the Yankees’ second baseman will set the market until that time. That could persuade Kinsler to simply ride out the remainder of his contract with the Rangers and attempt to secure the most lucrative deal possible in free agency.

Although Kinsler may ultimately have a chance to sign for more money if he waits until he reaches free agency, the 29-year-old second baseman would take a serious risk. He has been injury-prone throughout his big league career. He only averages 128.8 games per year, and last season was the first season he played in more than 144 games in a single season. Waiting another two years before signing an extension opens up the possibility for more injuries and more question marks, which would only cost him money in his next contract.

For that reason, I would argue that it makes the most financial sense for Kinsler to sign a contract extension prior to Opening Day. It is the same argument for younger players signing contract extensions in their arbitration years. Take a hit in terms of total possible dollars in return for financial security and removing the possibility of one injury shattering the dreams of a mega-contract.

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