A few weeks ago Zach Buchanan of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a column titled “Can Michael Lorenzen be a two-way player?” It’s an intriguing question, and not an entirely far-fetched idea. The 25-year-old Reds right-hander was both a pitcher and a center fielder at Cal State Fullerton. Per Buchanan’s article, he could “kind of see it come to fruition” in the future.

For Christian Bethancourt, the future is now. As Eno Sarris shared yesterday in his look at two-way possibilities, the Padres are planning to use the strong-armed backstop both behind the plate and out of the bullpen.

Don’t count Bobby Dalbec among those looking to follow in Bethancourt’s footsteps. His resume suggests he could — Dalbec dominated on the mound in last year’s College World Series — but Boston drafted him as a third baseman, which is where he wants to stay. Our own Eric Longenhagen feels he has a future there, as Dalbec came in at No. 5 on that Red Sox’ top-prospect list.

When I talked to him this spring, the 21-year-old University of Arizona product told me he doesn’t particularly like pitching, and that he did it primarily because the Wildcats wanted him to play both ways. No longer having to perform double duty “took a big weight off [his] shoulders.”

He cited preparation as the biggest challenge.

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The other day, I got a text from a baseball friend, asking if the Padres and Dodgers were getting prepped for the most lopsided opening-day matchup in baseball history. I didn’t and don’t have any good way to respond, since the necessary calculations would be way over my head, but it’s at least fun to poke around here to show just how awful this really looks. The Padres are bad, and the Dodgers are good. To make matters worse, the opening-day Padres get Jhoulys Chacin, and the opening-day Dodgers get Clayton Kershaw. One of the best teams in baseball, at home, against one of the worst teams in baseball, and the best team gets to use the best starting pitcher on the planet. Fantastic!

You might know that we calculate game odds, based on matchups, lineups, and location. When the Nationals hosted the Marlins earlier today, we put the Nationals’ pregame odds of winning at 63.2%. When the Mets hosted the Braves, we put the Mets’ pregame odds of winning at 65.2%. Here is where the Dodgers started off:

75.6%. Before anything had happened, we gave the Dodgers a 75.6% chance of winning. You don’t need the numbers to tell you the Padres were already up against it coming in, but for reference, all of last season, there were just seven games with the favorite at at least 75%. The most lopsided matchup of all had the favorite at 77.8%. Of the seven games in this table, four were Kershaw starts.

You see that the favorite won all of those games. This Dodgers-Padres showdown would’ve ranked as the seventh-most lopsided game of last year. No one’s going to be favored against Kershaw and the Dodgers, but at least in theory, on opening day, you get to put your best foot forward. The Padres’ best foot involves Jhoulys Chacin. The next game, at least, should look a lot better.

I’ll point out that last year’s biggest upset had the Phillies overcoming pregame odds of 74.4% in the Pirates’ favor. One day in, and the Padres have a shot to pull off a bigger upset than anything we saw all of 2016. How have things been going since I started this entry, when the teams were knotted up 1-1?

I see.

It’s opening day, and things can be weird, so let’s quickly check some Brewers and Rockies readings. Junior Guerra‘s fastball today averaged a little over 92. Last year, it averaged a little over 93. Tommy Milone‘s fastball today averaged a little over 88. Last year, it averaged a little under 88. Nothing crazy yet. Scott Oberg‘s average fastball matched up well with last year’s mark. Jon Gray’s average fastball seems up a few hairs from last year. There’s adrenaline in the first game of the season. I think we’re okay to proceed.

Let’s proceed!

That’s a slider. If I could just-

But could-

There’s no w-

Jon Gray threw a very good slider last season. According to the run values we have on the leaderboards, out of all starting pitchers, Gray’s slider ranked 14th-best, at 13.9 runs above average. He was in between Carlos Rodon and CC Sabathia. Here are the fastest average sliders thrown by starters:

Hey look, it’s Gray! Gray is no stranger to having velocity. He pumps his fastball into the mid-90s with regularity. The slider, last year, was something. On Monday, according to Gameday, it averaged 90.9 miles per hour. That’s right where 2016 Syndergaard sat. Granted, Syndergaard also pitched Monday, and this time his slider averaged 91.6. No pitcher should make a habit of trying to chase Noah Syndergaard, because that’s a competition you’re going to lose, but Gray was just flinging Syndergaard-esque breaking balls in between heaters, and this would take some getting used to. Unsurprisingly, going up against the Brewers, Gray was completely dominant.

And then things came off the rails in the fifth and Gray wound up with an 11.25 ERA. Surprise! It’s baseball! This is what you missed about baseball. Or what you didn’t miss at all, even just a little bit.

In honor of Opening Day 2017, we thought it would be fun to take a look back at the five craziest Opening Day games (or home openers), as defined by swings in win expectancy. So we did, in this video we just posted at our Facebook page! Happy baseball!

Thanks to Sean Dolinar for his research assistance.

Unless something changes between now and Monday, Byung Ho Park won’t be in Minnesota when the Twins open at home against the Kansas City Royals. According to reports, the Korean slugger will begin the season with Triple-A Rochester. This comes as a surprise. Park was by far the team’s best hitter in spring training, bashing six home runs and slashing .353/.414/,745.

Numbers of a different order are part of the reason — Park isn’t on Minnesota’s 40-man roster — and Paul Molitor’s club is apparently going to carry 13 pitchers. Even so, the lineup lacks power, and Park is one of the few players capable of providing it.

There is another matter to consider: alienation. Park presumably won’t walk away from his contract — he’s signed through 2019 with a 2020 buyout — but at the same time, he can’t be pleased. The former Nexen Heroes star has been working hard to prove that last year’s disappointing debut was a simple matter of learning curve and bum wrist. When I spoke to him earlier this week in Fort Myers, he sounded like 2016 was in his rearview.

“Last year helped me a lot toward preparing for this year,” Park told me through a translator. “Last season I was a little anxious about some of the players I was facing for the first time. Now I feel more confident to face Major League Baseball. I can be less stressed out, and play a better game.”

Park’s problems with velocity are well-documented — a fact he owns up to — but MLB-quality heat wasn’t the only hurdle he faced in his first season stateside. Much of the stress he experienced came away from Target Field.

“I had to acclimate to so many different things outside of the baseball,” explained Park. “It’s easier to get through all of those things now, so I can purely focus on baseball, and on making myself better.”

Park admitted that doubt began to creep into his mind last year — maybe he wasn’t going to succeed here, as expected — but that is no longer the case. He feels his timing is much improved, and that he’s ready to do damage against American League pitchers.

The opportunity to prove that is temporary on hold. Byung Ho Park will begin the season as a Rochester Red Wing, not a Minnesota Twin.

Earlier this week we completed the fifth annual Effectively Wild season preview series, which an astonishing 98.1 percent of polled listeners sadistically demanded that we do. If you already are or would like to become a listener, you’ve clicked on the appropriate post! Find the team that you’d like to hear me, Jeff Sullivan, Vin Scully, and an informed media member discuss. Then prepare to be disappointed, because it’s just me, Jeff, and the more informed media member, who differs by the day.

Even so, we’re worth a listen if you’re trying to set the scene for Opening Day. We’re well-trained: Click the links below (or subscribe) to open individual episodes, and we’ll start speaking on command. I’ve done the math, and even if you haven’t started yet, you have more than enough time to marathon the whole thing before the season starts.

The teams are listened in order of episode publication, so we’re not trying to predict anything on this page, except that this podcast compendium could be useful to you.

AL West: Rangers, Mariners, Athletics, Angels, Astros
AL Central: Tigers, Royals, Twins, Indians, White Sox
AL East: Yankees, Rays, Orioles, Blue Jays, Red Sox
NL West: Rockies, Diamondbacks, Giants, Dodgers, Padres
NL Central: Pirates, Cardinals, Reds, Cubs, Brewers
NL East: Marlins, Mets, Braves, Nationals, Phillies

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Position: Boras Corp. Baseball Research Analyst

Location: Southern California
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As I mentioned recently on Twitter, a friend of mine asked how common it is for a pitcher to be drafted by a major-league team after he’s already undergone Tommy John surgery.

I honestly didn’t know the answer, but assumed the rate was rather low.

I grabbed data on Tommy John surgeries from Jon Roegele’s indispensable database and draft information from Baseball-Reference. I focused on drafts that have occurred since 1986 and just the first 10 rounds. I then isolated individuals drafted as pitchers and merged the two data sets based on player name.

The overall rate of teams selecting pitchers who have already undergone Tommy John surgery appears to be 1.8%. Now, that rate changes a bit over time. There are many reasons for this, I’m sure: increased prevalence of the surgery, teams becoming more comfortable selecting a player who has undergone the surgery, and simply better data in the Tommy John database for later years.

In any case, here’s the rate trend by year:

Starting in 2006, the rate begins to increase, with the highest rates coming the past three seasons. On average, teams are now selecting pitchers with a prior Tommy John surgery between 7-9% of the time.

Who’s getting selected and by whom also differs to some extent.

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At the end of January, I observed that the Astros projected to get a lot better at making contact. Making contact, of course, is not the primary goal for any hitter in the box, since some kinds of contact are hardly worth making, but we still think of certain lineups as being strikeout-prone, and I think we’d all prefer more contact, if we had our druthers.

Anyway, that post was done when we had end-of-January depth charts. More importantly, that post was done when all we had were the Steamer projections. Now we have the blended Steamer and ZiPS projections, so, long story short, here are all 30 projected team offensive strikeout rates, for non-pitchers. (We don’t project pitchers batting.) (Why would we?) (Ugh)

The lowest projected rate belongs to the Red Sox, barely. The highest projected rate belongs to the Brewers, less barely. This order of teams might not tell you very much — I don’t know — so for another look, here are the projected changes in strikeout rate, relative to last year’s numbers. A negative here means more contact, because a lower strikeout rate minus a higher strikeout rate yields a negative result.

This confirms what the original post already said: The Astros should make plenty more contact this time around. Projections can be wrong, and hitters can make adjustments, but strikeouts tend to be one of those “sticky” things year-to-year. Coming up behind the Astros, the Padres also project to make a lot more contact than they just did. Good for them! There’s a difference of more than a percentage point between the Astros and the Padres, but then between the Padres and the Indians, there are almost two percentage points. The Angels and Giants bring up the rear, even though they still project to have team strikeout rates within the best 10. They should be both good at contact and worse at contact. If the projections hold, which, you know, they often don’t. That’s baseball!

Late last September, in this very space, I put up a short post entitled “Clayton Kershaw Experimented On the Rockies.” The idea: Two times, in low-leverage situations, Kershaw showed Rockies hitters a new twist. Specifically, the over-the-top southpaw dropped his arm angle to deliver what was more of a tailing fastball. It’s weird whenever a high-profile pitcher does anything different, and it was fair to wonder whether Kershaw might bring the tweak into the playoffs. He did! Take a look.

Borrowing from Texas Leaguers, here are Kershaw’s release points last year, before and then beginning from the Rockies start.

It’s easy to spot the exceptional pitches. When Kershaw dropped down — which he apparently did a total of 25 times — his release point dropped a half-foot, and it shifted over roughly a foot and a half. That’s a significantly different throwing motion, and you could see from Kershaw’s follow-throughs that nothing about it was ordinary. The lower slot was supposedly how Kershaw used to throw in high school. He was inspired to bring it into game action by teammate Rich Hill.

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the world. Therefore, one should always be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. You’d think that whatever Kershaw touches should turn to gold. But how did this experiment actually do? I’ll note that, of Kershaw’s 25 lower-slot pitches, all of them were fastballs. They averaged two inches more drop than Kershaw’s normal four-seamer, and six inches more horizontal break. Over the games in which Kershaw dropped down, his regular fastball averaged 93.9 miles per hour, and his drop-down fastballs averaged 95.3. Hey, that’s pretty good!

Yet there is more information. All but one of the drop-down fastballs were thrown in one-strike or two-strike counts. Of the fastballs, 16 counted as strikes, and there were three whiffs. There were also 15 swings, and eight of those hit a ball fair. Based on that last part, Kershaw wasn’t exactly successful in screwing with the hitters’ timing. Here’s the last drop-down fastball of Kershaw’s 2016:

From earlier in the same game:

And, I showed you the Anthony Rizzo home run. The start before, Kershaw tried the same thing on Rizzo, and Rizzo *almost* went deep. Or, I guess he did go deep, but just not the right kind of deep.

We’re talking about 25 pitches. One can reach no firm conclusions. Encouragingly, Kershaw’s drop-down fastballs were fast. Discouragingly, they didn’t seem to screw with hitters that much. Encouragingly, Kershaw had the confidence to drop down in playoff situations in the first place. Discouragingly, his motion was weird and his command of the fastball was lacking. Kershaw’s average drop-down fastball was higher than his average normal fastball, even though the movement would dictate putting in lower zones. More than a few times, the pitch was left up.

I don’t know if we’ll see Kershaw do this anymore. Maybe the experiment is over. Maybe, like the changeup, Kershaw will work at this without ever perfecting it. Maybe, like the slider, Kershaw will perfect it, and the best pitcher in the world will get even better. Plenty still to find out! I would suggest that, if this is something Kershaw does intend to keep up, he learn a second lesson from Hill.

Hill, you see, throws both fastballs and breaking balls from his lower slot. Kershaw didn’t do that, and so one could interpret his drop-down as something of a tell. It’s worth keeping in mind. Kershaw’s experiment, in its first run, was nothing fantastic. Maybe there’ll still be more trials.