It’s not right to say Fernando Rodney is back to being his old self, because right now he’s sitting on a career-high strikeout rate. But he is back to being unreliable, or at least, he has been unreliable, to this point in the 2013 season. Wednesday, in Toronto, he blew a save against the Blue Jays. He was removed after facing just three batters. The save was blown on Rodney’s sixth pitch, when Jose Bautista took him deep on an inside fastball at 98 miles per hour.

Rodney retired Edwin Encarnacion, then he walked Adam Lind. Lind didn’t score, so that walk didn’t really hurt. Lind walked on five pitches, and not on one. Certainly not on the first pitch that he saw. But I want to talk a little bit about that pitch anyway, just because. I want to talk about ball one from Fernando Rodney to Adam Lind, a 97 mile-per-hour fastball that just missed away. I know this sure seems insignificant, but baseball is insignificant, and you and I are insignificant, so let’s come together in our collective insignificance and celebrate all that ultimately doesn’t matter. Celebrate or don’t celebrate; eventually you will be dead.

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A true and old expression, paraphrased, is that you never know what you might see when you go to the ballpark. A similar old expression is that whenever you go to the ballpark you’ll see something you’ve never seen before. Taken completely literally, this is true — every single pitch, every single swing, every single ball in play, every single act, specifically, is unprecedented. A baseball game has infinite coordinates and infinite possible paths. Taken less literally, some games are boring and feel like games you’ve seen before, but baseball is nevertheless full of surprises. If it doesn’t always show you something you’ve never seen, it at least frequently shows you something you’ve seldom seen. This is the magic of a sport with so many repetitions. Put another way, this is the magic of baseball.

On this particular Monday, two games are in the books as of this writing. The Indians walked off against the Mariners, and the Blue Jays hosted and defeated the Rays. Both of those things have happened before, but the games themselves included a handful of rarities. I thought it’d be a good idea to show some of them off, just to remind you that this sport we watch is insane. Below, you’ll see four things that happened that very rarely happen. For all I know I missed a couple more. Not included is that Colby Rasmus went a full game without striking out, but know that I thought about it. On now to four bits of weirdness.

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In Sports Illustrated’s 2013 baseball preview, Tom Verducci wrote a great profile of the Tampa Bay Rays and their approach to optimizing the performance of their pitching staff.

One topic that was especially interesting to me was the apparent importance the Rays place on the 1-1 count. Verducci recounts how pitching coach Jim Hickey described the organization’s focus on getting opposing batters into 1-2 counts:

The Rays believe no pitch changes the course of that at bat more than the 1-and-1 delivery. “It’s almost a 200-point swing in on-base percentage with one ball and two strikes as opposed to two balls and one strike,” Hickey told the pitchers.

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After a rough start to the season, the Rays have clawed their way back over .500 via a five-game winning streak with a series win over the disappointing (to put it mildly) Blue Jays and a three-game sweep of the Padres this weekend. Tampa Bay is still in fourth place in the American League East, four-and-a-half games back of the division-leading Yankees, but this early in the season, they are still in it. The East looks like it is going to be entertaining all season.

The Rays, like pretty much every team at this point in the season, has had their share of surprises and disappointments. Evan Longoria is back to being awesome, if he ever really stopped. David Price has had his frustrations. On Friday, Alex Cobb had one of the most incredible sub-five inning starts ever. Among the hitters, though, easily the most effective Rays hitter this season has been off-season stopgap acquisition James Loney, who is currently hitting .376/.429/.560 (176 wRC+), including homers in each of the last two games. This early in the season, is there any indication that Loney has made some changes that would mark improvement after five disappointing seasons (mostly with the Dodgers), or is just another instance of the Rays catching a Case of the Kotchmans?

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There are few reversal of fortune so dramatic as the 0-2 home run. When pitchers corner a batsman into an 0-2 count, said batsman has hit .154/.160/.216 through the 2013 season. The following sample of at bats combine for an immaculate 1.000/1.000/4.000 slash.

Let’s take a look at them.
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Yes, well obviously Roberto Hernandez is not Fausto Carmona. The name Fausto Carmona belongs to someone else, and though the history of Cleveland Indians starting pitcher “Fausto Carmona” belongs to Roberto Hernandez, the two pitchers (the one pitcher) are not the same.

What I’m saying is: Roberto Hernandez is striking out batters.

He has a 22.5% K-rate right now. His previous career high was 17.1%, but that was mostly as a rookie reliever. As a starter, his highest K-rate was 15.6%. In fact, if we dig even deeper, we find his 22.5% K-rate is the highest strikeout rate he’s ever posted over a four game period:

His recent success — underscored and even underappreciated in his 3.75 FIP and 3.60 SIERA — appears to be the product of deliberate changes. That suggests he could maintain a new level of success.
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As a rule, Mondays suck, but as Mondays go, this is always a good one, as the Red Sox play a frightfully early home baseball game. On 2013’s Patriots’ Day, the Red Sox hosted the Rays, and it was 2-1 Boston in the top of the sixth when Evan Longoria batted with two down and runners on the corners. In a full count against Ryan Dempster, Longoria returned a grounder up the middle, but Stephen Drew made a diving stop and threw to Mike Napoli for the out. The inning was over, the Rays didn’t score, and the Rays would end up losing by a run a few innings later.

Things were that simple, and things were also a hell of a lot more complicated. Longoria was upset with the call at first base, because the play was close, and had Longoria been ruled safe, the game would’ve been tied. This was one of the higher-leverage moments of the game. Below, you can see it all for yourself:

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Sometimes, a little comment can send you down a wormhole. Brandon Crawford is a glovely young man, and we talked about platoon splits — he doesn’t remember having trouble with lefties in the minors — and a few other topics, but it was one thing he said about his defense that popped.

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Not long ago, Roberto Hernandez was considered to be an up-and-coming starter for the Cleveland Indians. He was also known as Fausto Carmona. But regardless of what it said across his back, his 3.06 ERA (3.94 FIP), 1.21 WHIP, and his 64% ground ball rate produced 19 wins for the Indians in 2007, and his value was almost four wins above replacement level. He even garnered votes for the American League Cy Young award, finishing fourth overall.

Hernandez battled injuries and serious control problems the following two seasons, put together a solid 2010 campaign, then the wheels kind of fell off. And the axle broke.

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It is an irrefutable fact that nothing that happens at the beginning of April can cost a team an entire baseball season. That is, short of a disaster or otherwise some act of God. You know what there’s a lot left of? Regular-season baseball. There is so much regular-season baseball left to be played. Things are going to happen, and seasons are going to change course. At this point we’re practically still in extended spring training.

But it is likewise an irrefutable fact that every single game of a regular season matters. Which is why we turn our attention to a game between the Rays and Rangers in Texas on Monday night. A year ago, the Rays finished within a few games of a playoff spot. The Rangers lost the division on the season’s last day, and then they were eliminated in the one-game wild-card playoff. The Rays and Rangers both project to contend in 2013. Things are going to be tight, most likely, making everything matter more, and on Monday, the Rangers closed out the Rays thanks to what we might charitably label a controversial call.

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