In a move that has been long desired by New York fans, the Mets are handing the ball to prospect Matt Harvey. The right-hander has been recalled from triple-A and will make his debut on Thursday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Harvey, 23, was the club’s first round draft pick (7th overall) out of the University of North Carolina during the 2010 amateur draft. He’s made a quick climb through the minor league system since then and opened 2012 in triple-A. The hurler had a bit of a bumpy April but cruised through May and June by striking out 72 batters in 66.1 innings of work. In a total of 110 innings on the year, Harvey has an impressive strikeout rate of 9.16 K/9.

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On the first of June, left-hander Johan Santana labored through 134 pitches and meticulously navigated around five walks to become the first player in New York Mets history to throw a no-hitter.

It was assuredly a special moment for the organization, as well as the entire fan base. The Mets’ manager, Terry Collins, understood the magnitude of the situation. Despite the fact that Santana missed all of 2011 with a shoulder injury and had largely been limited in his pitch counts throughout the year to that point, Collins stuck with his 33-year-old veteran in an attempt to rewrite the history books.

To counteract the extra strain put on the shoulder in that no-hitter, Johan Santana received extra rest before his next start. That decision caused the left-hander to develop rust, according to his manager, and Santana was not sharp against the New York Yankees his next start — he surrendered six runs over five innings, including four home runs.

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News broke late last week that Johan Santana was experiencing fatigue in his surgically repaired left shoulder. Though there isn’t any new damage to the area, the news was unsettling, especially since he had just began throwing rehab assignments in the minor leagues. On July 28, his first taste of live action since September 2 of last season, Santana pitched three scoreless innings for St. Lucie, allowing two hits while striking out three. Nothing could be gleaned from the outing other than the fact that he had progressed in his rehab enough to actually pitch in a game.

Not much is known about what will happen to him from here on out. Few athletes have ever had the same surgery — Mark Prior, Chien-Ming Wang and NFL quarterback Chad Pennington round out the list of those with surgeries to fix torn anterior capsules — and the fatigue may or may not lead to further treatment. Right now, Santana will rest for a week before being reevaluated. If the fatigue subsides, he will probably continue his rehab, unless the team decides to shut him down. That decision would only hold water if the Mets felt the risk of further aggravation was high.

Though the Mets aren’t going to make the playoffs this season, meaning the return of Santana isn’t the difference between winning or losing the division or wild card, getting him back on a major league mound would have been a big boon for the organization. As the highest-paid player and best pitcher on the team, even making two or three starts in September would have re-acclimated him to higher leverage situations, when the arm tends to undertake more stress. In addition to getting him back on the mound for their own evaluations, Santana’s performance this season may have had trade ramifications.

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My followers and I had some fun on Twitter the other night, trying to compare actors to baseball players. Josh Hamilton to Robert Downey, Jr was a solid comparison. Robert DeNiro drew plenty of Cal Ripken, Jr, or Ken Griffey, Jr responses. Clint Eastwood was a toughy, as someone who was great in one area for an extended period of time, switched positions, and was equally great, if not better, in that area. 

Robin Yount fit that description, as he began his Hall of Fame career as a shortstop, before switching to center field.

Yount won two MVP awards in his career, recorded 3,142 hits, and finished with a .344 wOBA and 66.1 wins above replacement. He made just three all star teams in his 20-year career from 1974-1993. From 1980-83, Yount’s 25.9 WAR ranked behind only Rickey Henderson, Mike Schmidt, and Andre Dawson. He was the second best infielder in the game, and was named an all star in 1980, 1982, and 1983, only missing out in 1981, in part due to the labor strike.

He didn’t even make the all star team in 1989 when he won his second MVP award at 33 years old. The idea of a player winning a coveted end of season award while not being considered good enough in the first half to make a roster supposedly comprising the best players in each league piqued my interest.

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FanGraphs Audio surprises even itself sometimes.

Episode Six
In which the panel considers pitchers young and old-ish.

Headlines
Second Half Jackson
Scherzer to the Max
The First Word in Johan is Yo (Almost)
Roy Halladay Is an Asian Freak
… and other hilarious misunderstandings!

Featuring
Matt Klaassen
Jack Moore

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jumpity-jump.

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As we looked at yesterday with John Lannan, inducing ground balls is a great way to overcome other flaws in a pitcher’s repertoire. Lannan’s ERA stands nearly a run below his career FIP because of his high ground ball rate. Similarly, Joel Piniero had his best season in at least six years, and he achieved much of his success via an astounding 60.5% ground ball rate.

Johan Santana, on the other hand, is a pitcher who has no problems striking batters out. Although he has slipped some in recent years, his career K/9 stands at 9.12, meaning he strikes out over a batter per inning on average. He doesn’t struggle with walks either, giving up almost a whole walk less than average, both in recent years and in his career.

However, Santana does not excel in inducing ground balls. His 35.7% ground ball rate last season ranked sixth in the major leagues. Clearly, Santana is a great pitcher, as his 3.38 career FIP, 3.60 career tRA, and 42.4 WAR in the win value era (second only to Roy Halladay) suggest. This begs the question – if inducing ground balls is so essential to pitcher success with guys like Lannan and Piniero, how come it doesn’t seem to affect Santana?

Of course, as mentioned above, Santana’s basic peripherals are incredible. With the amount of outs that Santana gets via the strikeout, his batted ball profile has a much lower impact than with a guy like Lannan (3.9 K/9) or Piniero (4.4 K/9). Also, with a low walk total, the impact of hits on balls in play is lower due to having fewer runners on base for those hits.

The fact that Santana’s peripherals make him a good pitcher isn’t terribly interesting to us here. That’s the crux of the DIPS theory behind FIP. However, tRA, based on batted balls, doesn’t see an issue with Santana due to low GB% as it does with players like Ted Lilly (34.5% GB, 5.12 tRA, 4.45 FIP) or especially Aaron Harang (38.0% GB, 4.98 tRA, 4.10 FIP)

Here, we see two major things come into play. First is line drive rate. As we hit upon with Lannan yesterday, the NL BABIP on line drives is .718. Giving up line drives is an almost sure way to give up hits. Santana, despite the fact that he doesn’t give up many ground balls, has a career line drive rate that is nearly average. Aaron Harang, on the other hand, has a career LD% over 2% above the average – significant for a statistic that has a range under 9% for a single season.

Also, Santana’s infield fly rate is one of the highest in the league. His 16.4% rate led the majors by 1.5%, and his 13.3% career rate is in the top 10 since 2002, the beginning of our batted ball data. The league BABIP on infield flies is miniscule. After a strikeout, the next best way to insure an out is to induce an infield fly. Santana has repeatedly been above average in this statistic since 2002. As a result, the true problem with fly balls – their penchant to turn into home runs – is minimized by this ability to induce weak contact on balls in the air. As such, Santana’s career HR/FB is below average, and has effectively cancelled out the sheer number of fly balls he gives up, resulting in an average HR/9.

With the amount of HRs and line drives Santana gives up limited, and the amount of essentially automatic outs he induces via the infield fly, Santana’s low amount of ground balls has no impact on his incredible peripherals, making him still one of the best pitchers in the game today.

Cliff Lee had, by all accounts, a fantastic 2008 season en route to a Cy Young Award. What made his performance more remarkable was how he seemingly came out of nowhere, a back end of the rotation type of pitcher without any history of complete and utter dominance. Unfortunately, his success last season also paved the way for a wide array of speculation with regards to which pitcher will repeat such a turnaround this season.

Double unfortunately, many of those doing the speculating lack some sort of uniform criteria, leading to several names being floated that realistically fail to match the exactitudes of Lee’s season.

Pitchers like Zack Greinke, Josh Johnson and Chad Billingsley are mentioned the most often. All three of these righties have been dominant in April but do not really have that “Cliff Lee” feel in that they are fairly recently removed from prospect status. Lee experienced a bit of success in the majors for several seasons before an injury plagued 2007 and a dominant 2008; guys like Greinke, Johnson and Billingsley simply do not fit that bill.

Greinke suffered from depression early in his career, rebounded for a very stellar 2008 campaign and has allowed just one unearned run in four starts this season. That doesn’t place him in the same category as Lee. Greinke isn’t a non-descript pitcher suddenly becoming an ace but rather an ace in the making living up to his potential. The same can be said for Billingsley, whom many have been high on for over two years now. Johnson looked dominant before injuries got the best of him so he, too, does not belong in such conversations.

If people are really looking to try and find the “next Cliff Lee” they need to include back end pitchers with a smidgeon of success in their past who have looked solid so far. Someone like Wandy Rodriguez comes to mind. If Rodriguez finishes this season with incredible numbers then his season would have a similar feel to Lee’s. Looking for someone to replicate what Lee did goes beyond someone posting incredible numbers who is not an established ace like Johan Santana or Roy Halladay and too many analyses are failing to make this distinction.

Case in point, speculating on which pitchers are going to have breakout seasons and cement themselves as horses capable of carrying a team is fine… just do not label such speculations as searching for the next Cliff Lee. Or if such a label is involved, make sure the pitchers being discussed are actually in the same category as Lee and not just young pitchers coming into their own.

When the Mets traded for Johan Santana and promptly signed him to a six year contract extension, I was one of few Phillies fans actually excited that their rivals had just acquired arguably the best pitcher in the game. My sentiment was that, come September, I could not wait for a Santana vs. Cole Hamels matchup with the division potentially on the line; two of the league’s best lefties, with the best two changeups in baseball, squaring off with the collective fanbase of each team hanging onto every pitch. You can imagine that when Sunday’s game was moved to 8 pm EST, to be the ESPN national Sunday Night Game, everything I looked forward to before the season had gone to that next level.

What occurred, however, was a pretty one-sided beating in which the score did not tell the whole story. The Mets may have won 6-3, but the deficit seemed much larger than that, as the Phillies failed to do anything against Johan Santana for virtually the entire game. Hamels pitched poorly, giving Carlos Delgado’s much-publicized book some great notes to add, and the Phillies failed to put the finishing touches on a sweep that would have put them in a tie for first place.

With 19 games to play, the Mets are in the driver’s seat with a two game lead. Last year, with 17 games remaining, the Mets led by 7 games and managed to lose the division. One of the primary reasons for that collapse was a sweep at the hands of the Phillies, which directly loosened their divisional grip by three games. Unlike then, the Phillies and Mets are now finished playing each other for the season, which means the division will be decided by how they fare against their remaining opponents.

The Phillies start a three game set with the Marlins tonight, before playing the Brewers for four. Following that seven game homestand, they go to Atlanta and then Florida for three games each, before returning home to finish the year out against the Braves and Nationals. All told, they have 3 against the Nationals, 4 against the Brewers, 6 against the Marlins, and 6 against the Braves. The Mets, on the other hand, have 3 against the Marlins, 4 against the Cubs, 6 against the Nationals, and 6 against the Braves. It seems that the division will be decided by which team fares the best against potential NL East spoilers and the top-tier NL Central teams. Or, the Marlins could win all six against the Phillies and all three against the Mets and win the division.

This September might not have the exact makings of 2007, but it still has the potential to be a very fun and intense stretch of 19 games. Throw in the close proximity between the DBacks-Dodgers and Twins-White Sox and there are three potential divisions that could be decided over the last few games.

Last night was one of many emotions for me, all of which happened to coincide with the Phillies-Mets game. Johan Santana took on Phillies newcomer Joe Blanton in a contest that would eventually result in a sole owner of first place for the time being. While my night got off to an exciting bang thanks to a Jayson Werth RBI single in the first inning, it quickly turned sour when the Mets tied it up and pulled ahead thanks to a blown call from the umpire two run homer from the ever-so-torrid Carlos Delgado. The deflation quickly shifted to awe as Santana once again just cruised through the high-powered offense of the Phillies. Eventually that awe turned back into some form of sadness as Ramon Castro added to the Mets’ lead, before pulling a complete 180 to elation as the Phillies scored six runs in the ninth inning once Johan was taken out.

After the game, however, the baseball fan and analyst in me angered at the audacity of some mainstream writers to suggest, in so many words, Johan doesn’t have that “it” factor anymore, or that he isn’t nearly as good and seems to be on the decline. And the major reasons for these opinions stem from last year’s 15-13 W-L record and this year’s mere 8-7. From reading some of these articles or listening to some Baseball Tonight analysts you would think that Johan would struggle to cut it as the #3 option on most teams.

Frequent Fangraphs commenter Bill Baer wrote a great piece at Crashburn Alley that echoed my feelings last night during the game, that Johan has been incredibly unlucky this year, just like Phillies ace Cole Hamels. My feeling was that if Santana’s record was 11-3 or even 10-4 that most people would feel very differently about his performance this year. But then I looked at his numbers and calculated his projection over the remainder to see what his end of season statistics might look like… and my anger that he has lost something based on his W-L shifted to surprise.

See, even though his record doesn’t do his season justice, Santana does appear to have lost some semblance of effectiveness. Entering this season his projection called for around a 3.26 FIP, 1.10 WHIP, 2.24 BB/9, 9.23 K/9, and a 4.12 K/BB. Here are his 2008 numbers, his projection over the remainder, and what his overall numbers would be should this projection hold true:

2008 to date: 3.75 FIP, 1.21 WHIP, 2.47 BB/9, 7.79 K/9, 3.16 K/BB
Second Half: 3.45 FIP, 1.17 WHIP, 2.41 BB/9, 8.58 K/9, 3.57 K/BB
2008 Overall: 3.64 FIP, 1.20 WHIP, 2.44 BB/9, 8.08 K/9, 3.31 K/BB

If his season ends up like this, it would mark his worst K/9, BB/9, WHIP, K/BB, and BAA since becoming a full-time starter in 2004. Don’t confuse this with ineffectiveness, however, as he has been very productive this year, ranking in the NL’s top ten in several pertinent categories. As I mentioned above, if his record were 11-3 or something along those lines most of these conversations would cease to exist because most fans are usually quite content in believing a pitcher with a record that good is impervious to luck.

In his seven losses this year, Johan has pitched 45.2 innings and surrendered just 17 earned runs, good for a 3.35 ERA. That’s an extremely solid ERA for games in which he received a loss. In these same seven games, he has received only nine runs of support. Nine. That’s 1.77 RS/9 in these games. Of course he’s going to lose some of these if his team fails to score any runs. While I was shocked to see his strikeout numbers decline and baserunners increase, he is still among the elite in my eyes and the eyes of many others, I’m sure. If someone wishes to poke holes in his production this year it would make much more sense to note some of the aforementioned numbers, not to say his record is a disappointing 8-7, especially when considering how well he has pitched in some of these losses and how little support he has received.

He may not be the 2004 Johan and his true talent level may have changed a bit, but he is still a darned good pitcher.

The biggest move this offseason saw Johan Santana heading to the Mets in exchange for Carlos Gomez and some more prospects. The former two-time (should be three-time) Cy Young Award winner looked to solidify a pitching rotation that seemed more than capable of making fans forget all about last year’s end of season breakdown. Coming off of a relative down year—a down year for him was still better than the up year of most others—there were some who questioned whether or not Johan would be able to regain whatever made him successful pre-2007.

One of the biggest reasons his performance suffered last year came in the form of home run balls. From 2003-2006 his HR/9 ranged from 0.85-0.97; in 2007 it jumped to 1.36 as he allowed 33 dingers. I recently took a look at his Pitch F/X data over the last year and a half to see if he had done anything differently on hits as compared to fouls or swinging strikes. The results also showed that his home run balls—or other hard hit balls—generally came from pitches not just with lesser velocity and/or movement but also very poor location: Most of his home run balls came on pitches right down the middle.

In Johan’s first 60 innings this season he surrendered 11 HR; over his last 34.2 he has surrendered just one.

First 9: 60.0 IP, 52 H, 11 HR, 15 BB, 57 K
Last 5: 34.2 IP, 36 H, 1 HR, 9 BB, 29 K

Of course it is too small of a sample to generate definitive conclusions but we can still investigate and make observations pertaining to whether or not any discrepancies in relevant Pitch F/X data exist in this split. For starters, here are the velocity and movement data for his first nine starts:

FA: 90.54 mph, 5.63 horiz/9.22 vert
SL: 84.18 mph, -0.98 horiz/4.53 vert
CH: 79.69 mph, 5.51 horiz/8.13 vert

And here is the same data in his last five starts:

FA: 92.39 mph, 6.68 horiz/9.64 vert
SL: 84.89 mph, -0.57 horiz/4.64 vert
CH: 79.94 mph, 6.48 horiz/7.54 vert

He has thrown harder and with more movement lately. One of the problems with his hard hit balls, as mentioned above, dealt with the percentage of pitches he threw down the middle. Here are his splits of pitches thrown down the middle:

First 9: 11.5%
Last 5: 11.9%

Though it appears he has thrown slightly more down the middle recently the small sample detracts from any real discrepancy. How about his accuracy? Here is his Ball/Strike/In Play breakdown for the first nine starts, followed by the last five:

K: 46.8%, 45.1%
B: 35.1%, 34.5%
X: 18.1%, 20.4%

Speaking of balls put in play, have any less fallen in for hits lately?

Outs In Play: 67.5%, 64.2%
Hits In Play: 32.5%, 35.8%

Despite sustaining a similar level of accuracy and balls put in play he has actually allowed a slightly higher percentage of those in play to fall in for hits. Looking at his WHIP in these two different spans (1.12 compared to 1.25) it seems that he was hit less in the early going though those hits were of a higher value than recently, despite the increase in hits given up lately. Lastly, has he gotten ahead of hitters any more or less lately? Here is his first-pitch strike split:

First 9: 51.2%
Last 5: 44.8%

All told, not much can truly be garnered in terms of data discrepancies but Johan has gotten ahead of hitters less as of late, has essentially sustained his patterns of accuracy, is throwing virtually the same percentage of pitches down the middle, and is allowing more hits. All of these signs would intuitively point toward similar or worse performance and yet he has thrown better lately. Perhaps his increase in velocity and movement over his last five starts has prevented hitters from getting the fat part of the bat on the ball quite as often. Definitely something to look out for as the season progresses.