Joey Votto is up to something.

One of the game’s most selective hitters — perhaps the game’s best at discerning balls from pitches he can damage over the last decade — is hacking in 2017.

Through the first week of the season, Votto’s zone-swing rate is 90.2%. For his career, however, it’s a much more modest mark of 68.5%. Last season, it was 68.6%. Votto’s out-of-zone swing rate rests at 28.1%, up from 20.8% last season. A graphic featuring the location of pitches against Votto confirms his more liberal approach.

So, what the hell is going on here?

Intrepid Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Zach Buchanan investigated and demanded answers.

“P Double-i P” read the shirt that Cincinnati Reds assistant hitting coach Tony Jaramillo wore around the clubhouse Monday at PNC Park. It was a gift from first baseman Joey Votto, and it translates to “Put it in Play.” …

So, is he doing it on purpose? Or is it just a small-sample aberration? Votto, exceedingly secretive when it comes to his plan at the plate, fouled those questions off.

“You’re asking me about my approach and my tactics,” Votto said. “That’s kind of personal. I wouldn’t want to share the specifics when that could benefit the opposition.”

Is Votto simply employing a tactic to go against scouting reports early in the season? Is he trying for a few April ambushes when last year’s data is what everyone has had all winter to evaluate? Is he — gasp — losing bat speed and/or visual acuity?

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Over the last week or so in this space, 2016 ERA-qualifying starting pitchers’ contact-management abilities were assessed on a pitch-specific basis. (Here’s the AL post and here’s the NL one.) While 2017 sample sizes remain too small for much meaningful analysis, let’s take our 2016 pitch-specific analysis one step further.

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I could begin this post by invoking one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s most celebrated novels, but the notion of framing a conversation about Michael Pineda in the context of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been beaten as thoroughly as one of the latter’s victims. I could use Mr. Talbot and the Wolf Man, instead, or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. It doesn’t really matter, though. Whatever set of characters one prefers, the point is the same: there are two versions of Pineda, one proficient and mild-mannered, the other prone to tragic outbursts.

Indeed, just last week Craig Edwards suspected that Pineda was at it again, giving up runs in bunches while somehow also producing elite fielding-independent numbers. Yesterday we saw the the complete other end of the spectrum, as Pineda took a perfect game deep into the seventh inning against Tampa Bay while looking like the truly most optimal version of himself. Barring a continued ricochet between starts, we won’t continue to bring you updates with every outing that he makes. Yet what we saw on Monday looked almost like a totally different pitcher.

“Almost” is the operative word there. Pineda still got swings and misses, and still didn’t walk anybody. His slider, however, was quite simply otherworldly. He didn’t do the typical Pineda thing and hang one — not until the moment he lost the perfect game, at least. He buried it, and it plunged all the way down to the molten core of the planet.

Pineda racked up 11 strikeouts all told, cruising through 6.2 perfect innings before Evan Longoria doubled. His 7.2 innings were the most by any Yankee starter so far this year.

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It’s still too early to know much of anything. That’s going to stay true for a while. So we’re still going to look for indicators that ought to stabilize quickly, which means fastball velocities remain of interest. Have you grown tired of reading articles about changes in fastball velocity? I have, too! But here is another one of them, just to bring 30 names to your attention. The subject might be tiresome, but the data’s still relevant.

You’ll find two tables. One shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest gains in average fastball velocity since 2016. The other shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest losses in average fastball velocity. I could’ve cut off at 10, instead of 15, since that’s more conventional, but I think stretching to 15 brings more pitchers of interest into the fold. To gather this information, I ignored the FanGraphs leaderboards and went for the PITCHf/x leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus, powered by Brooks Baseball. That’s because the Brooks Baseball numbers have been calculated in the same way year over year, while the numbers on the FanGraphs pages have had a change in source, from PITCHf/x to Trackman. According to Brooks, the average fastball right now is down about half a tick, which is what we’d expect in early April. OK. Onward!

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Alex Cobb once had a power changeup so nasty we gave it a nickname. The Thing even had progeny: Cobb taught the grip to Jake Odorizzi, and Thing Two is now the latter pitcher’s best secondary pitch.

Likely the product of what appears to be an organization-wide focus on the changeup, Thing One was an impressive pitch. Unfortunately, it’s gone. At least for now. For the moment, it doesn’t resemble what it used to be, and Cobb is using it less and less often with each start. The weird part is, Cobb might still be okay, anyway.

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When we think about how parks affect players, we generally think of it in the context of hitting and pitching. Bring the fences in and batters will hit more homers. Build a taller wall or a whole new park with bigger dimensions, and pitchers are going to have an easier time preventing the long ball.

For the Houston Astros and George Springer, however, the removal of Tal’s Hill has added significance. While it might add a homer or two to Springer’s home-run ledger, the greater impact is likely to be a defensive one. This represents Springer’s first season as Houston’s starting center fielder. With four homers already to his name this year, Springer is making a big impact with the bat. His ability to play the more demanding outfield position — one now free of deadly obstacles — also deepens the Astros’ excellent lineup.

In the minors, Springer primarily played center field, getting 244 of his 267 starts at the position as he ascended through Houston’s minor-league system. Once he got to the majors, though, he was moved to a corner while a combination of Dexter Fowler, Carlos Gomez, Jake Marisnick, Colby Rasmus, and even Alex Presley all got time there. Of those players, the only real plus defender — accounting for Gomez’s hip problems — was Marisnick. Fowler, meanwhile, provided the only decent bat Houston has featured in center field, and that was back in 2014. Springer ended up starting just 16 games in center field from 2014 to 2016 — and 10 of those were on the road. The removal of Tal’s Hill helps to facilitate Springer’s transition to a full-time role in center field. The team sacrifices a little on defense in favor of Springer’s offensive ability over Jake Marisnick’s.

Springer has been a positive out in right field for the Astros since joining the team three years ago, posting positive numbers in both UZR (+2.5) and DRS(+10) over nearly 3,000 innings. While certainly solid, such numbers don’t cry out for a great defensive challenge for Springer. Prior to this season, they likely discouraged time in center field, especially in Houston. With a center-field fence extending out to 440 feet and a gigantic hill to make everything more difficult, Springer’s range likely would have been exposed. For one of the team’s best hitters, it might have put him at increased injury risk given his penchant for running into walls.

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For most of the winter and a good chunk of spring training, the Astros have been speculated as a potential landing spot for Jose Quintana. Reports are that they’ve made offers to the White Sox to add the left-hander to their rotation, and now that Collin McHugh has been shut down for six weeks during his rehab stint, the fit seems even better than it did over the off-season.

But while Jose Quintana would help any team, I still look at Houston’s rotation and see a pretty decent group there. Dallas Keuchel and a healthy (for now, at least) Lance McCullers are a quality pair at the front of the rotation, and while a back-end of Charlie Morton, Joe Musgrove, and Mike Fiers isn’t the strongest group #3-#5 in the game, all three project as roughly league average hurlers, and McHugh is better than that if he gets healthy. Toss in the possibility of stretching out Chris Devenski — who has looked amazing in his two long relief stints this year — or promoting one of their promising arms from the minors, and there’s depth here beyond a strong top two.

So instead of talking about their starting pitching, perhaps the Astros should start thinking about using their surplus of quality prospects to land a first baseman. Because while it’s still early, the evidence is mounting that they may have a real problem there.

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After two starts and one week of baseball, Sean Manaea has the seventh-worst ERA among qualified pitchers at 7.15. That’s a pretty useless sentence for about five different reasons, but I’m going to rely on it briefly because it’s April and being a baseball writer is very difficult in April. In early April, we’re on the hunt for indicators. Other than health and velocity, it’s hard to find anything that happens in week one that will meaningfully shift your opinion, but we’re all keeping our eyes open for signs of things to come. The data points from April matter, it’s just too early to know if they’re representative of anything.

Typically, if a promising young pitcher like Manaea recorded two starts during which he allowed 10 runs over 11.1 innings, we would either brush it aside as a product of growing pains or consider it as a possible indication that something is wrong. In general, it’s not good to give up a lot of runs, even if we’re all in agreement that pitchers don’t have complete control over how many runs they allow.

But what’s so interesting about Manaea is that, in addition to what appear to be a couple of rough starts in the outcome department, he’s excelling in two of the pitching statistics that become reliable most quickly. Any reasonably astute fan can take a look at Manaea’s strikeout rate (28.6%), walk rate (8.2 %), home-run rate (0.79 HR/9), and BABIP (.259) to determine that his opponents have stacked all their success into just a couple of weird innings. But while those indicators look good enough to chalk this up to sequencing, there are actually two deeper measures that are quite interesting.

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