Josh Hader entered Monday’s game in the bottom of the seventh inning with the Brewers clinging to a one-run lead. Nine batters and eight strikeouts later, that one-run lead was the margin of victory. Jeff Sullivan predicted this, or something like this, more than two weeks ago in his article titled “Josh Hader Is Becoming Baseball’s Most Valuable Reliever.” You can see a lot of things coming if you read Jeff’s work, as he covered Hader’s arsenal and how the Brewers lefty is carving up hitters:

If Josh Hader isn’t baseball’s most valuable reliever, he’s close. He could get there soon, elbow willing. Plain and simple, he does everything right, going multiple innings at a time and pitching well independent of batter handedness. You could think of him as peak Dellin Betances, another non-closer who racked up strikeouts over 70 or 80 or 90 innings. Betances made four consecutive All-Star Games. Maybe his control is starting to go, but nothing is forever. Hader is that good, and he’s only improved since basically doubling the size of his repertoire.

Fast-forward a couple weeks and here’s the reliever leaderboard for April.

Hader is rightfully up top. That K/9 number is incredible and the 0.42 FIP naturally follows. Maybe most interesting is that Hader is the only pitcher on the leaderboard who has given up a home run. In small samples like what we have through one month, a homer makes a pretty significant difference. The only other pitchers among the top 20 of reliever WAR with a homer allowed are Craig Kimbrel and Bud Norris. For Hader to top the list despite allowing a home run is truly remarkable. That homer, to Tommy Pham on April 11, was very nearly not a homer considering it was called a double on the field and required a review to be turned into a home run. If that ball was a few feet shorter, Hader’s FIP for the month would have been -0.30. If you were wondering if that would have been some sort of record, the answer is yes, it would have.

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Daniel Robertson has been scorching the horsehide. With 84 plate appearances under his belt — just enough to qualify for our leaderboards — the 24-year-old Tampa Bay Rays infielder ranks fourth from the top in both wOBA (.451) and wRC+ (189). His slash line heading into the Month of May is a stand-up-and-take-notice .333/.476/.561.

He credits an adjustment for his fast start. Rightly unsatisfied with his rookie-season output — Robertson logged a .634 OPS in part-time duty — he spent the winter revamping his stroke under the tutelage of a pair of hitting gurus. No longer satisfied with a “pretty generic swing,” he’s now embracing launch angle (a term he uses cautiously) and adopting a rhythm-conscious mindset that allows him to transfer his energy through the baseball.

Robertson talked about his new mechanics and approach when the Rays visited Fenway Park over the weekend.

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Robertson on making the adjustment: “I got knocked for what I did offensively last year. I feel that I impressed with what I did defensively, but for my whole career I’ve always been a hitter. I think I’m starting to show that again this year, thanks in part to things I worked on in the offseason. I’m putting myself in a better position to hit and that’s translating into me seeing the ball a lot better, as well as doing damage rather than having a defensive swing and just slapping it around.

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Through the first month of the season, no starting pitcher has struck out more batters per nine innings than Gerrit Cole. Cole is a talented pitcher whose fastball sits at nearly 97 mph. He also seems to have made some improvements since joining the Astros. His appearance at the top of the strikeouts leaderboard isn’t a surprise.

Next on that same list is reigning National League Cy Young-winner Max Scherzer. Scherzer is routinely considered one of the three best pitchers in baseball. Last year, he recorded the 13th-best strikeouts-per-nine mark ever. His appearance near the top of the strikeouts leaderboard isn’t a surprise.

After those two, one finds Marlins pitcher Caleb Smith. Smith is left-hander who was acquired in the offseason in a trade featuring international pool money from the Yankees as New York went after Shohei Ohtani. Smith neither throws 97 mph, nor has he won a Cy Young Award. It would be fair to characterize Smith’s performance so far this season as surprising.

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This is Shakeia Taylor’s fourth and final piece as part of her April Residency at FanGraphs. Shakeia is an avid baseball fan and baseball history enthusiast. Her main interests include the Negro Leagues and women in baseball. She has written for The Hardball Times and Complex. She hosts an annual charity bartending fundraiser for Jackie Robinson Day, all of tips and raffle proceeds of which are donated to the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Though not from Baltimore, she’s still an Elite Giant. Shakeia can also be found on Twitter (@curlyfro).

“I believe God Almighty hisself would have trouble handling Richie Allen.”

–Phillies interim manager George Myatt, 1969

Despite a somewhat itinerant career and a relative lack of notoriety, there’s some evidence to suggest that Richard Anthony Allen was among the best players of his era. From the moment he debuted, Dick Allen made an impact, nearly helping the Phillies win their first National League title since 1950 in his rookie season. His professional baseball resume features a .292 career batting average, including seven seasons of .300 or better. He won the 1964 Rookie of the Year award and the 1972 MVP award. He posted a .534 career slugging percentage, which ranks second best among qualified players during his career. During the period in which he was active, Allen also produced the eighth-highest WAR among all position players — more wins than Hall of Famers Lou Brock or Willie McCovey or Willie Stargell recorded during the same timeframe, despite all benefiting from more plate appearances than Allen.

While Allen was noted for his talent, he also developed a reputation as one of the most controversial players in the game. He arrived for games hungover and would smoke in the dugout. He was often fined for showing up late or not showing up at all. He was known as a “divisive clubhouse guy.” His attitude would shape future perceptions of him, changing the way fans viewed him as a player.

As the years have passed, though — and as his Hall of Fame case has been evaluated and re-evaluated — those perceptions have shifted, giving way to a more complete understanding of what he endured. Many attribute his “bad attitude” to the racism and mistreatment he suffered in the minor leagues, an unfortunate trend that would follow him to the Phillies clubhouse.

Allen suffered through more unfortunate chapters that I can recount here, but perhaps the defining one came before a game on July 3, 1965, when Allen got into a brawl with Phillies teammate Frank Thomas. According to late Daily News writer Bill Conlin, the fight stemmed from an incident a week earlier when Thomas jokingly asked Allen, “Hey, boy, can you carry my bags to the lobby?” The fight solidified Allen’s bad reputation; his life in Philadelphia became hell. The city was still dealing with the effects of the 1964 racial riots and many white people sided with Thomas. The team put Thomas on irrevocable waivers. Fans began to boo loudly after Thomas, in a radio interview, said that Allen should’ve been punished, too. Allen’s left shoulder was injured in the fight with Thomas, making it difficult to play third base. He was moved to left field. The booing turned to death threats, which turned into fans throwing things at Allen on the field. He began to wear a helmet in the outfield to protect himself from further injury.

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The Dodgers’ 2018 season has already seen its share of insult and injury, but Monday brought the coup de grâce: Corey Seager will miss the remainder of the year due to Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. His loss means that the defending NL champions, who have limped through March and April with a 12-16 record, will never get a chance to field their best lineup, with Seager alongside third baseman Justin Turner, who’s been sidelined by a broken left wrist since March 19.

Seager has had elbow problems since late August of last season, when inflammation limited him to pinch-hitting duty during an 11-game span that was part of the team’s dreadful 1-16 tailspin. Though he said that the injury bothered him more while throwing than while batting, he struggled at the plate for the remainder of the season and into the postseason; his absence from the team’s NLCS roster was due to a back strain, not the elbow. In the wake of an MRI taken at the beginning of the offseason, TJ surgery wasn’t considered as an option, and Seager spent the winter working on rehabbing and strengthening the elbow. He didn’t play shortstop in a spring-training game until March 7.

Seager aggravated his elbow making a pair of relay throws in a loss to the Giants, and an MRI taken on Monday revealed “a much worse” injury than before. “There was no gray area as to what the right decision was,” he told reporters. Given the typical nine- to 12-month rehab period for a position player undergoing TJ, Seager might have missed the entire 2018 season anyway if his November MRI had been more conclusive.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Steven Brault’s non-strikeout streak, the failing Wilmer Font and Kazuhisa Makita, the excellent Ozzie Albies, scouting Pablo Sandoval’s pitching, a silly Salvador Perez-Tim Anderson dust-up, the AL Central’s weakness so far, the streaking Diamondbacks, Adrian Gonzalez getting booed in San Diego, and a dead man rounding the bases, then talk to Baseball Prospectus’s Rob Mains about why ticket prices won’t go down, why player salaries have little to do with the cost of attending games, when free admission might make sense, and how baseball in 2018 does and doesn’t resemble baseball in 1968.

Audio intro 1: Mother McRee’s Uptown Jug Band Champions, "Boo Breaks"
Audio intro 2: Lord Huron, "Dead Man’s Hand"
Audio interstitial: Superchunk, "Saving My Ticket"
Audio outro: The New Pornographers, "High Ticket Attractions"

Link to Jeff’s Shohei Ohtani post
Link to Pages From Baseball’s Past newsletter
Link to Rob’s article about ticket prices
Link to Rob’s article about baseball in 1968

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Episode 811
Shakeia Taylor’s work has appeared both at Complex and The Hardball Times. Most relevant to this episode, she has also served as FanGraphs’ resident for the month of April. On this edition of the program, she discusses Cleveland baseball and Chicago baseball and youth baseball.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 57 min play time.)

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The Diamondbacks are way out in first place in the National League West, and while the biggest story might arguably be the early struggles of the Dodgers, Arizona has issued an immediate reminder that last year this club just won 93 games. J.D. Martinez is gone, playing now in Boston. Steven Souza Jr. is on the disabled list. Jake Lamb is also on the disabled list. But the Diamondbacks have still thrived, not even needing that many surprises. Patrick Corbin is one — his development has been an encouraging turn. And then there’s the matter of the shortstop. The no-hit glove guy who had to fight for a job.

Before the year, for the Effectively Wild podcast, Ben Lindbergh and I ran our annual season-preview series. When it came time to talk about the Diamondbacks, we chatted with guest Nick Piecoro. Piecoro expressed what I found to be a surprising amount of optimism about Nick Ahmed. Ahmed had never before hit well in the majors, and his peripheral skills didn’t suggest a strong offensive foundation. How many no-hit shortstops figure it out at 28? Ahmed was never a threat. Suffice to say Piecoro caught me off guard.

And now here we are, and as early as it is, Ahmed owns a three-digit wRC+. By itself, that’s not much. Roughly half of all batters will have a three-digit wRC+. But you have to remember where Ahmed is coming from. You have to remember his record.

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