Last week, I wrote about some findings regarding in-season fastball velocity loss and how experiencing a loss in different months affects a pitcher’s chances of finishing a season with diminished pitch speed. The general takeaway was that June and July were the most telling months.

But what about velocity gain? We know that, generally speaking, pitchers lose velocity more than they gain it. So while velocity loss isn’t good, it’s to be expected — and starting pitchers seem to be able to deal with that loss better than relievers. Pitchers who can stave off velocity loss (year-over-year change between +/- .5 mph) perform even better. Moreover, if a pitcher gains at least 1 mph on their fastball in a season they are twice as likely to maintain some or all of that gain the following year.

Gaining velocity, while not a guarantee of better performance, is certainly a boon to a pitcher and his organization. But given that velocity varies for all sorts of reasons, when can a team have confidence that the increase they’re seeing is real and sustainable?

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[With apologies to Mike Keneally]

[Author’s note added later for anyone who cares: the mentions of the differences between subjective and objective senses of time should not be taken as technical or precise in the way one would expect when reading, say, a historical explication of classic philosophies of time. This is just supposed to be an entertaining way of launching a discussion of how a few years can seem so distant with respect to certain things in baseball. For a technical and precise account of the different senses of time in Augustine, Husserl, or whomever, you should look elsewhere. Sorry.]

The existential experience of time passing is different than the intellectual acknowledgement of “how much time has passed.” I do not mean anything “deep” by that — I’m generally opposed to depth, or at least the appearance of depth. What I mean is simply that while, for example, every year is about 365.242199 days, on a subjective, personal level, it feels as if some slices of time go by faster than others. An hour spent staring at a clock feels longer than an hour playing video games. An hour watching Stephen Strasburg pitch flies by faster than an hour watching Jonathan Sanchez pitch. You get the idea.

That is all a prelude to saying that 2009 “feels” pretty recent to me. I am not sure why. Maybe because when I first started blogging (for the dearly-departed SB Nation site Driveline Mechanics) around that time. “Pretty recent” is itself a vague description — it is not “objectively” a correct or incorrect description. But it really has been a while since 2009. It was three birthdays ago. Looking at the changing perceptions of particualr baseball players is one way of measuring how much time has passed. Without giving a full recap of the year, here are a few things from 2009 that drove home the reality that, in fact, 2009 was a “million” years ago.

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Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated posted the results (in slide-show form, yay!) of recent survey they took asking 228 MLB players to name the most underrated position player in the game. These sorts of things usually generate “interesting” results, and this case was no exception. This is supposed to be a fun exercise, so it would be unfair to complain about the “unscientific” nature of the poll: why 228 players? How were they distributed across the teams? Were they position players themselves or a mix? How many votes did each player get? The notions of “underrated” and is itself vague (underrated by the media? The fans? Statistics?), so the respondents may have been thinking of different things when answering. Wouldn’t a truly underrated player fail to show up on a list of “top underrated players” at all?

Such complaints sort of miss the point. I assume this was simply meant to be a fun way to generate discussion. I personally would have liked to have seen one or two comments from respondents about each player to get a sense of what the respondents were thinking about when they answered. In any case, the list has some results that are pretty hilarious, as one might expect. One way of responding would be to come up with a different list. Grant Brisbee wrote up an excellent list of his own. Another would be to simply go through SI’s list and comment on it.

This post takes the second path, but the truth is, it is not quite the “fisking” one might expect. Yes, some choices are downright hilarious. However, given the qualifications above, I thought the responding players did okay. It is not the list I would have made, but they made some decent choices. Or maybe the list is like the movie Juno: the beginning is so horribly annoying that the rest seems better than it actually is.

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Let’s put it this way: when a team is looking up at the Royals in the standings halfway through the season, that team should probably be thinking about selling. The Minnesota Twins are having a miserable year, although it was hardly unexpected. Naturally, this has brought trade speculation about some of their more attractive pieces. The Twins do have some players having good seasons. Joe Maueris one of them, but due to his contract and other issues, he is not that great of a trade option.

The Twins’ most obvious trade bait is outfielder Josh Willingham, who was signed in the off-season for three years and $21 million. Willingham (33) is having a monster year at the plate, hitting .268/.381/.564 (156 wRC+) with 22 home runs already playing in a home park that saps home run power. Willingham has easily outproduced the player he (pretty much) replaced — Michael Cuddyer. (Of course, Cuddyer is also being out-produced by the man he replaced in Colorado, the guy who replaced Wilingham in Oakland: Seth Smith. That is another [hilarious] story. Well, hilarious for people who aren’t Rockies fans.)

A combination of great performance and team-friendly salary would seem to make Willingham a great trade candidate, yet the Twins are reportedly not all that interested in trading him. This is somewhat puzzling, but teams do have reasons for making these decisions. Assuming this is not some sort of smoke screen intended to up the asking price for Willingham, let’s look at the case against the Twins trading Willingham and see how it holds up.

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Fare thee well, father, mother. I’m off
to de-luck the f*** out of this s***.

With this All-Star break forcing to watch so little baseball, we now have a moment to drink up the frothy milkshake of statistics from the first half. So, you and I, we shall dissect the stats and find out who has been lucky, unlucky and a little of both.

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With Francisco Liriano heating up, and so few teams branded as definitive sellers as trade-deadline season gets ready to kick into high gear, interest in the lefty figures to pique soon. Earlier today, Ken Rosenthal reported that some teams prefer Liriano as a reliever. While Liriano could work out as a reliever, acquiring him to be one seems like a circuitous route to success.

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When Francisco Liriano shut down the Athletics in his return to the starting rotation, many dismissed it as just one start, and one against the Athletics at that. Instead, Liriano has taken that start and ran with it, and six starts later he looks reborn. There could hardly be a bigger difference between Liriano’s first five starts and his last seven:

First five starts:
26.2 IP, 37 H, 30 R, 28 ER, 21 K, 19 BB, 6 HR

Last seven starts:
42.2 IP, 25 H, 15 R, 14 ER, 46 K, 18 BB, 1 HR

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The reader may very well be totally and irretrievably drunk at the moment, but it’s not for that reason that he’s seeing Trevor Plouffe‘s name near the top of the preceding [leaderboard]. As of Tuesday night, at least, Plouffe had hit the most home runs (nine) among major leaguers in June.

— Carson Cistulli, Daily Notes

If you are a self-respecting, perfectly rational human, then you have no doubt been ignoring the Minnesota Twins. Even fans from the Northstar State have been watching their beloved team — now at 34-45 — through face-covering hands of anguish.

So it is likely you, like me, did not really think about Trevor Plouffe before right now or perhaps earlier this month. I knew his name, but it was not until a fan suggested he deserved a movie in his honor that I realized something was askew.

And a askew it is: Plouffe — a utility infielder with a consistent history of ~95 wRC+ in the minors — has 18 home runs and a .371 wOBA (137 wRC+). Not only has he earned the starting third base job in Minnesota, he has shot up the MLB leaderboards and would currently have the 3rd best wRC+ among third basemen if he had the qualifying plate appearances.

And though his home run power may be partly mirage, there is enough evidence now to think Plouffe’s re-birth is for real.
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While watching the Mets pound on the Cubs yesterday, I noticed that David Wright still has a walk rate (BB%) higher than his strikeout rate (K%). If Wright managed to continue this trend through the end of the season it would be the first time in his career he achieved such a feat.

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Francisco Liriano is back. After a month-long banishment to the bullpen, Liriano has returned to the rotation looking like a completely different pitcher. In his six starts prior to his demotion, Liriano was broken. The lefty allowed 37 hits in just 26.2 innings, and racked up a 9.45 ERA. While his stint in the bullpen only lasted five outings, it seemed to be exactly what he needed. Since rejoining the Minnesota Twins’ rotation, Liriano has allowed just 16 hits in 30.1 innings, and has posted a 2.67 ERA. Even though there are some reasons to doubt Liriano’s recent performance, there are also some signs that his success could be due to an altered approach.

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