Word for a while has been that Mike Leake was looking for a five-year contract worth something in the neighborhood of $80 million. The most recent thing we wrote about him was called The Upcoming Mike Leake Mistake. The Cardinals have now signed Leake to a five-year contract worth exactly $80 million, with a mutual option that won’t be mutually exercised. The Cardinals are without Lance Lynn and John Lackey, and they missed out on David Price and Jason Heyward, so it’s easy to see this as an overpay from a team in an increasingly desperate state. Mike Leake isn’t who you turn to for big, huge upside. He’s Mike Leake. As pitchers go, he’s pretty boring.

Think about it for just one minute, though. It’s fine to have an immediate response. We all have immediate responses. Immediately, nothing seems particularly special about Leake. But the Cardinals have earned some benefit of the doubt, right? They’re not an organization you’d characterize as desperate, or impulsive, or reactionary. They thought their way through this. According to reports, they preferred Leake over Jeff Samardzija. They obviously like Leake enough to give him this sort of long-term guarantee. Let us now attempt to justify this contract. Really, it isn’t that hard.

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It is well known that pitchers are less effective the third time through the order. And if you know it and I know it, you can be sure that major league managers know it, as well.

The numbers speak for themselves. As the lineup turns over, a typical starting pitcher’s OPS-against climbs from .705 to .731 to .771. Going strictly by those stats, lifting your starter when he reaches less-effective territory makes sense. But if it’s the middle innings and he’s pitching well, is automatically turning to the bullpen prudent, or is it an overreaction?

At the Winter Meetings, I asked a cross section of managers for their opinions on the third-time-through dilemma. Here are their responses, edited for clarity and concision.

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Brad Ausmus, Tigers: “The problem is the balance. I don’t disagree. I think the numbers show that the more times a hitter sees a pitcher, the more success that hitter is going to have. I don’t think it’s a secret. Before the numbers showed it, we knew that was the case. The balance is allowing the starters to go deep enough to not overuse your bullpen.

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Over the last few weeks, I’ve written a lot about opt-out clauses. Yesterday, I again attempted to show why opt-outs are a benefit to the player and come at the expense of taking power from the teams. Through all of these conversations, however, we’ve been focused on how opt-outs are currently being used in MLB; to give high-end players the chance to land a significant raise in the midst of a contract that already pays them an awful lot of money. Right now, opt-outs are luxury items that allow elite players to get both the benefits of a shorter-term commitment to a single franchise coupled with a long-term insurance policy in case things don’t work out as they hope.

But there’s nothing that says opt-outs have to be used in that manner, or for that type of player. And in thinking through various scenarios where opt-outs could be placed into contracts, I wonder if the rising acceptance of these kinds of deals might actually end up being a boon to lower-revenue franchises and players at the other end of the spectrum.

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Look at the rumors for the White Sox. They concern a certain part of the team. Though the club is ostensibly starting Melky Cabrera, Adam Eaton, and Avisail Garcia in the outfield, they’re supposedly looking for another outfielder now. Given their respective projections, that makes things particularly awkward for Avisail Garcia.

That’s not really the only thing that’s unsettling about Garcia’s situation.

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Pitch sequencing, in my opinion, is the next big thing in the field of baseball research, and despite what Samsung might like to tell you, it isn’t here yet. There has been some tremendous work done, but we’re still a long ways away from aggregating findings into one clearly defined picture of how pitch sequencing exactly works.

But we might as well continue to add to the findings. I looked at one aspect of pitch sequencing – shifts in the called strike zone – last month. Next, I’m looking at how best to set up different types of pitches. We’ll start with four-seam fastballs, and, so as to keep it simple for now, focus just on the fastball and on the pitch immediately beforehand. Not pitches before that in the same at-bat, not pitches to the same batter earlier in the game, not pitches to that batter from a different game.

Intuitively, you might expect changing speeds on the batter to be an effective way to mess with their swing and timing. A changeup, then, should be a good pitch to set up a fastball – changeups are generally 10-plus mph slower than the same pitcher’s fastball. Curveballs, too, should be decent setup pitches, as should sliders to a lesser extent. (Sliders are usually thrown harder than curves.) As it turns out, though, it doesn’t quite work that way.

Contact% = Foul balls + balls in play per swing

There’s some year-to-year variation, but, by and large, changeups are ineffective ways to get swings and misses on the fastballs which follow them. Now, bear in mind, the scale here isn’t so large – it’s a few percentage points each way. But it’s still pretty clear that changeups, as well as curveballs, don’t help the pitcher throw a better fastball the next pitch.

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Episode 618
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he examines the utility — both for player and club — of the opt-outs appearing in recent free-agent contracts.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 39 min play time.)

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Aroldis Chapman throws a changeup, and I’ve written before about how unfair that is. It’s not the best pitch in baseball or anything, but because Chapman’s fastball might be the actual best pitch in baseball, it seems almost impossible to defend against both the heater and the change, not to mention the slider. When you have to prepare for 100, I don’t know how you adjust on the fly for 88, with the same throwing motion. My favorite fun fact from a couple years back is that, of all the swings against Chapman’s changeup, just one made contact.

Chapman isn’t the game’s only elite reliever, and he’s not the only elite reliever with a signature pitch. When you have an elite reliever with a signature pitch, you can imagine it’s difficult to try to hit anything that isn’t the signature pitch. Take Zach Britton, who within a couple months went from potential waiver bait to shutdown closer. This past year, Britton took another step forward, leaning heavily upon his sinker. It’s becoming a famously dominant sinker, which has been a wonderful development for Britton’s non-sinker.

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With the news that Bartolo Colon signed a one-year, $7.25 million deal with the New York Mets, we once again have a chance to talk about the skill set of one of the most beloved players in baseball. Add onto that the fact that his new contract includes a $50,000 bonus if he wins a Silver Slugger Award, and we’re perfectly set up to talk about the most loved aspect of one of the most loved player’s game: his performance at the plate. Any chance to talk about Colon is a good one. A chance to find a new angle on Colon’s hitting is the El Dorado of baseball writing.

The search for that city of gold could start in any number of places. Especially over the past few years, we’ve seen highlights of Colon’s exploits with the bat, from his helmet doing everything it could to escape the perch atop his head, to him legging out infield singles. He’s a human highlight reel when he gets a piece of maple in his hands, and it would be very easy to simply embed a few videos of his at-bats here and call it a day (I’ve linked to them instead).

Let’s dig a little deeper, however. One question we can answer is where Colon ranks among all pitchers who have accrued (or endured) their fair share of plate appearances. We all know of the jokes about him at the plate, and the at-bats in which he simply seems to have better things to do. But is Bartolo really one of the worst hitting pitchers of all time?

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