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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Major League Baseball introduced interleague play in 1997, in part to boost interest in the game after the 1994 season was cut short by the players’ strike. More than 15 years after the first interleague game between the Giants and the Rangers at The Ballpark at Arlington, MLB continues to boast about attendance at interleague games. Last season, the average attendance at interleague games was 34,693, the highest since 2008, when 35,587 fans, on average, attended interleague games.

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Yesterday, I was doing some All-Star Game research. In doing so, I came across the name of Bill Freehan, and was surprised to find that he started for the American League at catcher for seven straight years. Doing some more digging, I realized he was essentially the best catcher of whom I had never heard. The classic “whole is greater than the sum of his parts” player, there wasn’t anything that Freehan did poorly.

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Last night, the Tigers and Mariners squared off in a mid-week contest in front of 14,981 fans in Seattle, in a game that didn’t begin until 10:00 pm on the east coast. The Tigers are a good baseball team, and are expected to win the AL Central by a significant margin. The Mariners are a less good baseball team, and aren’t expected to be in the playoff race when the year ends. At the end of the year, there’s a pretty good chance that the outcome of this game isn’t going to have determined anything. It will get lost in the shuffle of history as just another regular season game. But, oh man, this game was not just another game. This game was amazing. Let us count the ways.

(Be warned, for there are some GIFs after the jump).

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Used to be one of the principal complaints — nay, the principal complaint — about Austin Jackson was that he struck out too much. He had all the tools, but the strikeouts were limiting his upside. Similarly, used to be one of the principal complaints about Torii Hunter was that he struck out too much. It was the same conversation, years and years earlier, and now both Jackson and Hunter are teammates. Funny thing about that.

Paul Swydan just posted about Austin Jackson’s dramatic strikeout reduction. Jackson’s strikeouts are down this season more than you would believe, and that’s given even more life to the top of the Tigers’ order. But I became independently interested in Jackson while conducting my FanGraphs chat on Tuesday, wherein I was asked plenty of times whether or not I’m buying Jackson’s early success and change. We’re always looking to make something of the early numbers, because they’re the only numbers we have and we want for them to be meaningful. Most of the early numbers are bad and stupid, but we know that certain stats stabilize faster than others, and Jackson’s stable stats are eye-popping, if you’re familiar with the previous versions of Austin Jackson.

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Austin Jackson has a fairly well-documented history of frequent strikeouts. But every day, Jackson seems to be creating a new history. That’s because he’s decided to stop striking out.

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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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At two different points in yesterday’s Tigers-Blue Jays game in Detroit, it appeared the game could hinge on, of all things, Prince Fielder’s speed. The Tigers scored a run in the bottom of the first after Fielder beat out what looked like a sure double play ball. Later, with a two-run lead in the sixth, Fielder legged out an infield single to give the Tigers two on with two outs and a chance to blow the game open.

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All offseason long, the Detroit Tigers denied interest in re-signing free-agent closer Jose Valverde. Every other team in baseball also effectively denied interest in signing Valverde. The Tigers did next to nothing to address their closer situation, and on Wednesday, Phil Coke blew a save against the Twins. Thursday, the Tigers signed Valverde, albeit to a minor-league contract with an early-May opt out. There have been, I think, two primary responses:

(1) It’s a minor-league contract so it’s utterly risk-free — if Valverde doesn’t earn a big-league job, he won’t be given a big-league job. What’s the harm?

(2) The Tigers won’t be able to help themselves. Valverde isn’t what he was, but it won’t be long before he’s closing again for Detroit, and possibly costing them games. He’s “proven”, he’s familiar, he’s still thought of as a closer despite everything. This is how it starts.

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For much of the offseason, Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw were non-literally linked. All three have been among the most consistently outstanding starting pitchers in the world entire. All three were to enter 2013 two years away from free agency. So all three were to entertain thoughts of signing long-term contract extensions. Felix signed first, re-upping with the Mariners for the rest of days. Now, Friday, with the season just about upon us, Verlander has signed second, re-upping with the Tigers for several days himself.

Depending on how you think about things, Verlander has signed either a seven-year contract or a five-year contract. Verlander was already under contract for $20 million in each of the next two seasons, but upon the new agreement some of the language concerning those two seasons has changed. In any case, after Verlander makes $20 million a year for two years, he’ll make $28 million a year for five. The breakdown:

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