Zach Putnam threw 20 pitches on Monday night, and 15 of them were splitters. Many were balls. The White Sox reliever walked all three batters he faced in the ninth inning of a tie game at Fenway Park. Dennis Eckersley, doing color on the Red Sox TV broadcast wasn’t impressed. In his opinion, Putnam “deserves to lose” because he was throwing so many splitters.

Results aside, was it a mistake to throw that many? Putnam has utilized the pitch 68.3% of the time this year — the highest percentage in baseball — and he boasts a 2.30 ERA, striking out 9.9 batters per nine innings over 25 appearances.

Extreme splitter usage isn’t unique to Putnam. Koji Uehara lives and dies by the pitch. Last season, Uehara had a four-game stretch where he threw 52 splitters and just six fastballs. (Broadcasting in Boston, Eckersley presumably knows this.)

I wasn’t able to ask Putnam about his outing, as he left town after the game to have his elbow examined. (He was placed on the disabled list with ulnar neuritis.) I did check in with his catcher, Alex Avila, and his pitching coach, Don Cooper. Both defended the split-heavy ratio.

“His fastball isn’t the reason he’s in the big leagues,” Cooper told me. “If we’re going to win or lose a game, it’s going to be on the split more often than not. His best pitch is a split. He’s been striking out a batter per inning, and he hasn’t been doing it with fastballs. His fastball is to keep hitters honest.”

“We did throw fastballs,” added Avila. “On the walk to Hanley (Ramirez) we threw a 3-2 fastball and almost got him looking, because I think he was thinking splitter. It really has nothing to do with the percentage of times you’re throwing it. The game, the player, the situation, dictates that, as well as what the the pitcher is comfortable throwing. He’s comfortable throwing his split.”

Back in November, the Milwaukee acquired outfielder Ramon Flores from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for Luis Sardinas. At first glance, that move seemed inconsequential enough — one fringe major leaguer for another. But Flores’ minor-league track record suggests he may not always be inconsequential. He hit a strong .308/.401/.454 as a 23-year-old in Triple-A last year and a respectable .247/.339/.443 at the same level in 2014. That was enough to put him 24th on KATOH’s pre-season top 100 list. Due to his underwhelming tools, however, most scouts thought he was, at best, a fourth outfielder.

Flores also came with a logistical caveat: since he was out of options, he couldn’t be sent to the minor leagues without passing through waivers. It was far from obvious that Flores was up for the challenge of facing big-league pitching. Not only did he lack physicality and experience, but he was also recovering from a compound ankle fracture suffered last August. Nonetheless, the Brewers granted Flores a spot on their opening-day roster after he showed he was healthy in spring training. Early on, that decision looked somewhat questionable. In semi-regular playing time, Flores strung together several 0-fers in April, which contributed to an embarrassing .125/.205/.125 stat line through April 28th.

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Josh Donaldson is a remarkable player. You probably already knew that, given that he’s the reigning AL MVP. But when you think of Josh Donaldson, you probably think of him crushing a baseball, as he’s turned himself into one of the best hitters in baseball. Or maybe you think of him making an amazing play in the field, as he’s also one of the best defensive third baseman in the game.

But here’s a thing that maybe you did not know: Josh Donaldson is also one of the best base stealers in baseball. He’s not a high-volume base stealer — he’s never stolen more than eight bases in a season — so we’re not exactly talking about Billy Hamilton here, but no one in baseball picks their spots to run better than Donaldson.

On the year, Donaldson has stolen five bases in five attempts. Last year, he stole six bases in six attempts. In 2014, he stole eight bases in eight attempts. You have to go back to June 3rd of 2013 to find the last time Josh Donaldson was thrown out trying to steal a base. Since then, he’s successfully stolen 22 bases in a row.

Over the last three years, no other player with double-digit steal attempts has been even close to as efficient in thievery. Here are the highest success rates among players with at least 20 stolen base attempts over the last three calendar years.

Best SB%, Last Three Years

Player	Steals	SB Attempt	SB%
Josh Donaldson	22	22	100%
Shane Victorino	23	24	96%
James Jones	28	30	93%
Michael Brantley	51	55	93%
Craig Gentry	37	41	90%
Brock Holt	23	26	88%
Drew Stubbs	42	48	88%
Chris Owings	34	39	87%
Jayson Werth	18	21	86%
Leury Garcia	18	21	86%

If we used a lower threshold for SB attempts, Jackie Bradley Jr would show up here, as he’s 18 for 18 in stolen base attempts in his career. But we didn’t, so, sorry JBJ.

Shane Victorino is out of baseball because he can’t really hit anymore. James Jones and Leury Garcia are in Triple-A because they could never hit. Craig Gentry, Brock Holt, Drew Stubbs, and Chris Owings are part-time players who are around in part because of their speed, so this is a specific skill that helps keep them in the league. The only everyday players on this list are Donaldson, Brantley, and the almost-as-surprising Jayson Werth. And thanks to his perfect success rate, Donaldson stands above the rest.

This doesn’t make him the best base stealer in baseball, of course. That probably goes to a guy like Jarrod Dyson, who has managed to steal 101 bases at an 85% success rate over the last three years despite everyone knowing he’s running when he’s inserted as a pinch runner. Speed guys like Dyson don’t get to take advantage of the element of surprise in the way a guy like Donaldson does, and if Donaldson ran more often, he’d certainly get thrown out at a much higher rate than guys who run at high frequency.

But since June 3rd of 2013, Donaldson has used the element of surprise perfectly. It’s been more than three years since the last time he got nailed on the bases, and being able to take extra is one of the small things that adds up to help make the Blue Jays third baseman truly one of the very best all-around players in the game.

Team FanGraphs defeated Team RotoGraphs, 13-12, on a walkoff single by managing editor Dave Cameron off opposing pitcher Brad Johnson, scoring Craig Edwards in the middle of a field at Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Saturday afternoon. FanGraphs editor Paul Swydan was named the game’s MVP, mostly for an athletic jump over a thrown wiffle ball while advancing to third base.

What follows are two Very Important Highlights, taken from the author’s Snapchat account.
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J.D. Martinez broke his elbow Friday night, leaving an already depleted Tigers outfield even further depleted. Martinez is expected to miss 4-6 weeks according to MLB.com, and the team has called up Steven Moya to replace Martinez in the lineup. If Moya can be the best version of himself, the Tigers might not actually miss Martinez all that much.
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We’ve entered into the Statcast era, but just before the Statcast era, we had to make do with more subjective evaluations. Among the evaluations was the Fan Scouting Report, a Tangotiger project to crowd-source player defense. One of the categories to be evaluated as part of the Fan Scouting Report has been arm strength. Okay, so, getting to the point, Ben Revere became a big-league regular in 2011. I looked at all the reports for outfielders who were regulars between 2011 – 2015, splitting into individual player-seasons. This is a five-year window, yes? I sorted all the players in ascending order of perceived arm strength. I isolated the worst 20. Here’s how many times the following players appear in the worst 20:

• Ben Revere: 5 times (out of a possible 5 times)
• Coco Crisp: 4
• Juan Pierre: 3
• Carl Crawford: 1
• Curtis Granderson: 1
• Jacoby Ellsbury: 1
• Jon Jay: 1
• Khris Davis: 1
• Nate McLouth: 1
• Nyjer Morgan: 1
• Raul Ibanez: 1

Overall, combining the seasons, Revere rated second-worst in arm strength. He also tied for worst in arm accuracy, so, you know, that sucks. Revere has a weak arm, relatively speaking, and he’s always had a weak arm, relatively speaking, and this is all to establish the setting. Revere is a center fielder who can barely throw, and that’s why Miguel Montero went and tried to tag up on a routine fly near the track.

“Bold,” is one thing you could say. “Disrespectful” would be no less accurate. Montero clearly didn’t respect Revere’s throwing arm, and, well, there’s really no reason to. But this time Revere got the last laugh, and it’s not like his throw was even particularly impressive. It was off-line and short of the bag, but Montero might’ve spent too much time thinking about Revere’s arm and too little time thinking about the fact that he himself is a 32-year-old catcher. Yeah, Revere has gotten a lousy rating out of 100 in arm strength. Montero just last year got a 25 for his speed.

The best part of all: Statcast era, right? I asked Daren Willman about the Statcast reading for Revere’s assist, which was his first of the season. Willman:

Doesn’t look like the system captured the MPH for that throw…

Even Statcast doesn’t know what to do with a Ben Revere outfield assist. The entry’s blank. As blank as Joe Maddon’s mind grapes.

Revere now has as many assists this year as Jason Heyward.

At the very end of the most recent episode of FanGraphs Audio, host Carson Cistulli and guest Dave Cameron were bantering about players whose primary offensive skill was once thought to be limited to controlling the strike zone and making contact, but who have since added plus power while maintaining most of that strike zone control — guys in the mold of Jose Altuve, Matt Carpenter, Mookie Betts or Xander Bogaerts.

During this conversation, Cistulli submitted an anecdote that made my ears perk up:

Carson Cistulli: This is uber-anecdotal, but I do feel as though we see more players going from this high-contact, control sort of skill set and developing power from that direction than, say, the Joey Gallo skillset, where the power is obvious but the ability to make contact — I feel like those players do not grow into contact.

Dave Cameron: I think that’s absolutely true. Contact rate is something that is very difficult to change. Your swing is kind of your swing, to some regard. You can change it, but it does not appear that players have as much ability to shift from a Giancarlo Stanton-level contact ability to a Mookie Betts kind of contact level. We just don’t see those dramatic changes.

CC: And it’s your brain, too, right? Isn’t your brain involved in that?

DC: Yeah, it’s like how fast your mind fires when it sees a pitch and how well it picks up the spin of the ball and the location of the ball, and it tells your hand-eye coordination and how quickly you can get the bat through the zone. There’s a lot of neuroscience that goes into that ability.

It’s an interesting conversation for a number of reasons — namely the distinction between innate vs. physical abilities — but the reason it made my ears perk up is because I’d just been thinking about Joc Pederson, who’s currently doing the exact sort of thing Cameron and Cistulli submitted was more difficult to do.

Pederson was a polarizing figure as a rookie in 2015 thanks to his red-hot start, his dreadful second half, and perhaps more than anything else his three-true outcomes approach at the plate which, after the All-Star Break, resulted in countless whiffs and very few homers. It’s the exact sort of skillset that fanbases tend not to appreciate, because nothing looks uglier than a swing and a miss.

What isn’t ugly is this:

Largest improvements in contact rate

1. Joc Pederson, +9.0%
2. DJ LeMahieu, +6.2%
3. Brett Gardner, +6.2%
4. Didi Gregorius, +6.0%
5. Kris Bryant, +5.8%

That’s every qualified hitter from 2015 to 2016, and Pederson’s lead is enormous. Last year, Pederson had the second-worst contact rate in the league, within spitting distance of Ryan Howard. This year, he’s climbed nearly all the way to league-average, making company with guys like Carlos Correa and Starling Marte.

And Pederson hasn’t traded any of his power for this newfound contact. Rather, he’s added power.

This plot nicely ties together the strides Pederson’s made at the plate:

That’s Pederson way up top in the yellow, the most encouraging dot in the entire image, unless you’re partial to DJ LeMahieu’s place to his right.

You’ve got to love what Pederson’s doing. The interesting thing is that his season wRC+ (117) is essentially unchanged from last year’s (115), due mostly to the fact that his walk rate has taken a bit of a hit. Goes to show that walks are valuable, too, and so was last year’s version of Pederson. This year’s version is just what people wanted to see.

Just over a month ago, I led one of my Sunday Notes columns with Jon Perrin and his microscopic walk rate. At the time, the 22-year-old Milwaukee Brewers prospect had issued just one free pass in 36 innings. He had 47 strikeouts.

A few days later, Perrin was promoted from Low-A Wisconsin to High-A Brevard County. His numbers with the Manatees aren’t quite as eye-popping, but they’re still impressive. On the season, Perrin has now issued seven walks over 71 innings. The Oklahoma State alum has 77 strikeouts and a 2.66 ERA between the two stops.

His numbers were only part of the story. An aspiring attorney, Perrin had taken the LSAT and was awaiting word on a law school application. Despite his success on the diamond, he was possibly going to be hanging up the spikes.

As Perrin put it in May, “If I get into Harvard, I’m probably going to be out of here. I love the game, but I think I can do more good in this world with a degree from Harvard Law School than I ever could playing baseball.”

He’ll have to settle for baseball (at least for now). Perrin learned earlier today that he wasn’t accepted at Harvard Law.

We’re given a few things. One, Salvador Perez is rather newly 26 years old. And he’s a catcher, and you know how they develop. Two, Perez is running what would be a career-high strikeout rate. Three, Perez is running what would be a career-high isolated slugging. We’ve seen this before, and the speculation is almost always the same. Is Perez starting to trade some of his contact for power? He wouldn’t be the first to go down that path, even if it seems like a particularly anti-Royals thing to do.

By no means has Perez been powerless in the past. Last year he socked 21 dingers! The year before, 17 dingers. The year before that, 13 dingers. But there could be more in there, and there’s no ignoring the signs. I’m not coming up with things out of the blue; I’m just following the evidence. And now, here, have some more evidence. Using Baseball Savant, I looked at all the hitters who had at least 100 batted balls tracked in both 2015 and 2016. I calculated the changes in average exit velocity and average launch angle, and then I used some simple math to find the biggest overall changers. Here are the top five, in the more-power direction. These guys have hit the ball harder, or lifted the ball more, or both.

Based on z-scores, Espinosa is up a combined 3.8, while Perez is up a combined 3.7. So maybe this could just as easily be a post about Danny Espinosa, but Perez is more interesting to me. With a batted-ball-speed increase of 3.4 miles per hour, Perez ranks fifth-best in the pool. And with a launch angle that’s increased by 6.1 degrees, Perez ranks seventh-largest in the pool. Having both things happening at once points in a direction, and that’s backed up by the increase in strikeouts. It’s not at all certain, but on appearances, Salvador Perez seems to be less of a contact hitter, and more of an extra-base-hit hitter. And after posting consecutive sub-100 wRC+ marks, he’s presently up at 120. He’s already cleared last year’s overall WAR.

This is an InstaGraphs entry, so I’m afraid I don’t have anything else. I’m going to monitor Perez for longer before I go into more detail. It’s always fascinating when a bat elects to begin a new chapter. That’s what it looks like Perez is doing, and though it could just be a fluke, it could also be the next stage of development for a potential franchise icon. The Royals have always loved Perez, from the beginning. It’s been easy to forget he wasn’t a finished product.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my favorite Andrew Miller fun fact. It’s no longer true, but, at the time, Miller was generating a higher rate of swings at would-be balls than he was generating at would-be strikes. That is, batters were making worse decisions than they’d make by flipping a coin. It was so absurd a fun fact it almost couldn’t possibly hold up, and it hasn’t, but it speaks to Miller’s early dominance in a way that few statistics could. It painted a picture of utter helplessness.

If that kind of thing is good for a pitcher, it stands to reason it’s bad for a hitter. Allow me to show you something. From our leaderboards, over the past 30 days:

Now that I look at this again, it’s weird to see Joe Mauer. Maybe there’s something to be written about Joe Mauer. But I want to focus on the first name, that being Rougned Odor. Odor hasn’t quite posted a higher O-Swing% than Z-Swing%, but he’s come dangerously close, and much closer than anyone else, among those qualified peers. Odor has that rate gap of six percentage points. Runner-up is at 16. Big difference. And small difference. You get it.

I wouldn’t say discipline has ever been Odor’s strong suit, at least not in the way we think of it. But he hasn’t before been this ugly for this long. He’s simultaneously over-aggressive and over-passive, and I don’t know if it’s possible to spin that in a good way. Let me take that back. No, it is not. It is not possible to spin that in a good way.

The split was over the past 30 days. What’s interesting is that Odor had a good start to the season. Through May 11, he owned a 125 wRC+. Since May 13, he’s posted a 38 wRC+, with one walk and 21 strikeouts. With something like this, the endpoints tend to be arbitrary, and it’s not like these endpoints aren’t arbitrary, but I will note that, on May 13, the Rangers began that home series against the Blue Jays, the series in which Odor delivered an urgent memo of disapproval to Jose Bautista’s face. If I wanted to read too much into that, I could suggest that Odor has been playing on emotion for weeks. In reality, it’s probably a random slump with convenient timing. Odor lost control of his discipline, just as he was losing control of his discipline.

There’s something else here. Through May 11, Odor saw 52% fastballs. Since May 13, he’s seen 43% fastballs, and that’s the lowest rate in all of baseball. And this, presumably, isn’t unrelated to the plate-discipline numbers above. Odor’s been looking for fastballs, and he’s shown a willingness to over-expand. So pitchers haven’t had to come after him, as Odor hasn’t shown he can lay off of secondary pitches consistently. If anything, too many of the pitches he’s been laying off have been strikes. Everything is all tangled, and the result has been a pretty lousy second baseman.

Odor is better than this, and before long, I assume he’ll start playing better than this. It’s a question of magnitude, and it’s a question of whether Jurickson Profar should slide in every so often. When Odor is running a wRC+ around 110 or 120, you want him in the lineup every day. If he’s more like an 80 or 90, then for Profar, that should be an opportunity. You don’t want to give up on Odor, but Profar needs to play somewhere. Lately, Odor hasn’t done much to fend him off.