I offered my explanation for Clay Buchholz’s success this season yesterday, citing improved fastball command and a recently harnessed but always nasty changeup. Jack Morris, now on the radio call for the Toronto Blue Jays, has other ideas:

I found out because the guys on the video camera showed it to me right after the game,” he said. “I didn’t see it during the game. They showed it to me and said, ‘What do you think of this?’ and I said, ‘Well, he’s throwing a spitter. Cause that’s what it is.

The scandal, if one can even call it such, involves video of rosin on Buchholz’s left forearm. The accusations are tenuous at best, and as Morris himself put it, “I can’t prove anything. I can’t prove anything.” Although Morris wasn’t the only one to accuse Buchholz of throwing a spitter — former pitcher Dirk Hayhurst, also with the Blue Jays radio team, joined in — it’s hard to imagine these accusations going anywhere.

However, Morris and Hayhurst give us an opportunity to revisit the spitball, in my opinion one of the most unique pieces of baseball history, from its time as a legal pitch in baseball’s early years to Gaylord Perry’s Hall of Fame spitball and everywhere in between.

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Although Clay Buchholz had enjoyed his share of success heading into 2013, from a no-hitter to a 17-win season, one assumes the Red Sox were hoping for more. Buchholz was Baseball America’s fourth-best prospect entering 2008 and appeared to be a top-of-the-rotation power arm capable of ace-level dominance. Instead, Buchholz has had one very good season — a 2010 with a 2.33 ERA and a still-solid 3.61 FIP. He has otherwise pitched like a back-end rotation-filler, with a 4.26 ERA and a 4.38 FIP over 500.1 innings.

Wednesday night, Buchholz’s fifth start of his age-28 season, is the latest signal of the step forward the Red Sox have been waiting for. Buchholz held the Blue Jays to just two hits and three walks over seven shutout innings as he struck out eight to lower his ERA to 1.01. And fret not, the peripherals are fantastic as well: he owns a 2.28 FIP and 3.00 xFIP.

The strikeout total he put up Wednesday night has been there all season, and it’s the main difference between the new Buchholz and the old Buchholz. Despite his blazing fastball and breaking pitches lauded as grade 70 pitches in Baseball America reports, Buchholz was posted remarkably consistent and mediocre strikeout rates from 2009-2012, always between 6.1 and 6.7 K/9. He now has 47 strikeouts in 44.2 innings in 2013.

Additionally, Buchholz kept a Blue Jays lineup loaded with power hitters without a home run, and he has allowed just one this season. His HR/FB was a horrible 13 percent last year and he had four seasons above 10 percent in his last five.

So what’s new? Via last night’s Blue Jays broadcast, Red Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia said Buchholz’s biggest difference is improved fastball command. And indeed, the numbers (via BrooksBaseball.net) bear this out: Buchholz has thrown his four-seam fastball for a called strike 27.5 percent of the time this year after just 22.8 percent in 2012. Conversely, the pitch has seen a similar drop in in-play rate. Considering Buchholz has allowed a .537 slugging on contact on the pitch for his career — the worst by over 100 points for any pitch he still throws — the fewer four-seam fastballs put in play the better.

By keeping the fastballs on the corners, something he did proficiently Wednesday night, he’ll turn what used to be balls in play into called strikes or foul balls. He has thrown the fastball for a strike but not in play 51.8 percent of the time this year, six points higher than last season. And, with 160 four-seam fastballs thrown already this season, this difference is already statistically significant (in a 90 percent confidence interval, to be specific).

His HR/FB won’t stay grounded at 3.7 percent, but keeping fastballs out of play will keep it from escalating too quickly. It’s especially key because he needs to be able to throw the fastball to get into favorable counts — it’s his best-controlled pitch at about 68 percent strikes the last two seasons, slightly better than the two-seamer and much better than his off-speed options.

And thanks to those fastball strikes, Buchholz has been in plenty of two-strike counts. The next question, then, is which pitch will be the out pitch. His curveball has been shockingly bad at drawing whiffs — under 10 percent since 2007, close to the major league fastball average — and that hasn’t changed this year. But his changeup, at least in 2013, has been an elite swing-and-miss pitch. Of the 74 Buchholz has tossed, hitters have waved at 20, a massive 27 percent.

As mentioned above, Buchholz’s changeup has been heralded in the past; a 70 grade is frontline material. But he was struggling mightily with the pitch last season, so much so that he scrapped it for a splitter Josh Beckett taught him after he threw the pitch for a ball nearly 50 percent of the time in April last season.

That arsenal change didn’t take as the calendar flipped to 2013. Buchholz had little trouble drawing swings and misses when he used the changeup in 2012 — 18.9 percent is still an excellent mark for a changeup — and his control issues have disappeared. Buchholz threw 13 changeups Wednesday night with nine (69 percent) going for strikes, and his 63 percent overall strike rate works fine for a pitch designed to fool hitters. The pitch has been devastating to left-handers and right-handers alike, with whiff rates over 20 percent to both sides. It’s been so good, he’s put the splitter back in the toolbox, leaving it as a side project for bullpen sessions.

Things will come back to earth. Buchholz’s changeup probably won’t finish with a higher whiff rate than Aroldis Chapman’s slider (currently at 24.4 percent). Teams will tag his fastball for a few home runs. But Buchholz has already thrown enough fastballs to suggest his control and command of the pitch have improved this year, and his changeup has been a highly regarded pitch dating back to his time in Double-A. If he can maintain even a fraction of the improvements he’s shown over his first five starts with these two pitches, the Red Sox can expect Buchholz to finally step into his frontline potential.

As you read this, the Boston Red Sox have the best record in all of major-league baseball, unless you’re reading this at least a few days after it was published. The Red Sox’s success is less of a surprise than the Blue Jays’ lack of success, but nobody expected Boston to start this well, and the organization is well on its way toward restoring the city’s confidence in the team. The Red Sox have gotten to this point by getting valuable contributions from their position players and from their pitchers. That will not be the only obvious sentence in this post.

We should pause to acknowledge what the Boston pitching staff has done to date. If the season were to end today, we’d all be left wondering, “wait, what?” But eventually we’d get over it and look at the statistics, and the statistics would show that the Red Sox have the highest team pitching strikeout rate in baseball history. As a team, the Sox have struck out 26.7% of opposing batters, and second place would be the…2013 Tigers, at 25.8%. Third place would be the…2013 Reds, at 23.3%. Fourth place would be the…2013 Royals, at 23.2%. So times have changed and strikeouts are up, but for the sake of perspective, the Red Sox as a team have a higher strikeout rate than both Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax. This is, of course, a team effort, but the greatest individual contribution so far has been made by Ryan Dempster.

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Although the “bunt wars” may not rage on, they are at least still simmering. The older, stale debates about whether sacrifice bunts are good strategy or the wastes of outs often miss the point by leaving aside game situation, game theory, the skill of the bunter, and other considerations. Even when such things are taken into account, discussions can get a bit abstract. Concrete examples of bunts and the situations around them can illustrate what complexities are involved in deciding whether a bunt is the right call. So let’s make it concrete: the sixth inning of the Red Sox-Royals game on Saturday provided two bunts worth closer consideration.

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The first two-and-a-half weeks of the season have been a struggle for Red Sox prospect Xander Bogaerts. Last year, the shortstop excelled in the Eastern League and earned his place as one of baseball’s elite prospects. But his return to Double-A Portland has been underwhelming thus far. Against New Britain, Bogaerts went 0-for-6 with a strikeout, a walk and a groundball double play. His frustration was palpable. But there were still plenty of positives too.

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Brandon Workman, a 24-year-old Texan, dominated an undermanned New Britain Rockcats lineup over six frigid innings last week. In 2010, he was selected out of the University of Texas by the Red Sox in second round of the Rule 4 Draft. In his first two full seasons he’s posted strong peripherals, striking out more than eight batters per nine innings and walking fewer than two. Early in 2013, he sits near the top of Carson Cistulli’s Eastern League SCOUT Leaderboard (see bottom of this post); but Workman’s statistics are misleading. He profiles as a reliever or as a spot-starter.

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Chris Getz hit his first home run in 1,144 plate appearances against Atlanta last night. It was rather overshadowed when the Braves smacked three home runs off of Kelvin Herrera in the eighth inning as if they had a whole lineup full of Chris Getzes. Getz does not have much power, but he does make up for it with other skills. Yeah, right. Getz is off to a pretty hot start (for him, certainly) this year, but he is a pretty terrible hitter. Over 1351 career plate appearances, he has a .258/.314/.323 (.286 wOBA) line. His utter lack of power is only part of the problem.

There have been hitters who have excelled without much power, of course. Even before Getz’s shot off of Kris Medlen, I had been thinking about looking at hitters who managed big numbers without much power. Baseball fans like benchmarks: 500 home runs, .300 batting average, 100 runs batted in, 20 wins. Some of them may be more telling regarding a player’s actual value than others, but we understandably like those standard numbers. So I decided to look at .400 hitters — well, .400 wOBA hitters. I think of a .400 on-base percentage as an “awesomeness benchmark,” and since wOBA is scaled on on-base percentage, it works well enough.

For the sake of historical curiosity, here are some of the .400 wOBA seasons with the fewest home runs.

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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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One of the great subplots of every Major League season is the rookies that come up and show a glimpse of baseball’s future. It’s what had us enthralled by Jackie Bradley Jr. all spring, what has us dutifully analyzing Julio Teheran appearances, and what has us so eagerly waiting for Jurickson Profar and Wil Myers. This season, we will track rookies, both the prospects and suspects, as they make adjustments to playing in the bigs. This bi-weekly list will highlight rookies who have accomplished the most in 2013, regardless of future projection (though that will always be discussed). These are the players whose week one performances deserve recognition.

1. Dan Straily, RH SP, Athletics

If we’ve learned anything from Yu Darvish this season, it’s that success pitching against the Astros is not exactly analogous to pitching against baseball’s other 29 teams. The Athletics know this, why is probably why just one day after an 11 strikeout, 0 walk performance (a start worth an unofficial 0.6 WAR by our metrics), the A’s were comfortable sending Straily back to Triple-A. As sixth starters go, Straily is an excellent one, with a fastball at 90-93 mph, 83-86 mph slider, and 82-85 mph change (let’s agree to ignore that low 70s curveball, please). He showed great command against the Astros, the best he’s had in all 8 starts at the Major League level.

But, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in Straily’s success. The Astros, as we’re finding out, are a historically swing-and-miss team. All 11 of Straily’s strikeouts were of the swinging variety, and amazingly, nine were against left-handed hitters. Brett Wallace and Rick Ankiel struck out a combined 6 times, all on Straily fastballs. While Baseball America’s scouting report of him, as the A’s #6 prospect, reads “[His] slider and change up are his two best offerings and account for the bulk of his strikeouts,” that wasn’t true against Houston. Eight of the 11 strikeouts were from the fastball, and a remarkable number of them looked like this to Jason Castro — right down the heart of the plate. If you want to see why we simply can’t get too excited about Straily yet, consider the caliber of competition:

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Sunday was the beginning of the 2013 MLB regular season, and it kicked off with a bang, as the Astros bombed the Rangers and we all learned a lesson about the real value of a one-game playoff. Not like the stakes were the same, so the game was managed differently from how it could’ve been, but in any one given game, a team like the Houston Astros can beat a team unlike the Houston Astros. Of course, it should be noted that the difference between the Astros and the best team in baseball might be like the difference between a city’s best restaurant and a city’s 29th or 30th best restaurant. That 29th or 30th best restaurant is probably still a very good restaurant! It’s just outclassed relative to the elite. It still beats the hell out of Hardee’s.

Monday is more of a baseball extravaganza, with several games on the schedule, none of which involve the Astros. Monday feels more like a true opening day, and below, I’ve assembled some quick thoughts based on some of the early games. I didn’t watch a single inning from spring training so, for me personally, baseball couldn’t feel more fresh. It will feel like this for the rest of the day, and then tomorrow, it will feel like baseball as usual. Savor the feeling of today, or tomorrow.

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