What do Jeffrey Leonard, Greg Briley, Kevin Mitchell, Mike Felder, Eric Anthony, Vince Coleman, Rich Amaral, Jose Cruz Jr., Glenallen Hill, Brian Hunter, Rickey Henderson, Al Martin, Mark McLemore, Randy Winn and Raul Ibanez have in common? From 1990 through 2004, each player in turn was the regular starter in left field for the Seattle Mariners. Not a single player repeated during that entire span. When Raul Ibanez occupied the primary starting role from 2004 through 2008, it marked the first time that the same person played left field regularly in consecutive years since Phil Bradley did in 1986 and 1987.

With Ibanez in Philadelphia, however, the Mariners left field carousel is back. Last year, the position was manned by Endy Chavez, Ryan Langerhans, Wladimir Balentien, Michael Saunders and Bill Hall. Saunders and Langerhans are in Triple-A Tacoma, while the other three are with other organizations.

For now, the de facto starter is Milton Bradley, but there are problems with that arrangement even without discussing Bradley’s off-field baggage. He has had surgery on both knees in the past, and in 2009 he he missed games with minor pains in his left quad, groin, right calf, right hip, both hamstrings, left knee and right quad. Safeco Field holds a vast expanse of real estate to cover in left field, and Milton Bradley attempting to cover that much ground is bad for the team’s defense and bad for Bradley’s future health.

It would be a tougher decision if the Mariners were playing Bradley in left field in order to make room for a Vladimir Guerrero-type bat at DH, but they’re not. Most projection systems have the Mariners’ current DH platoon of Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Sweeney at replacement level, meaning that they are not any better than what you’d expect to get from a player claimed on waivers. (Last year, Griffey was worth 0.3 wins above replacement, and Sweeney was 0.4.) There is no one blocking Bradley from moving to designated hitter. Not to mention the fact that Bradley had the best year of his career in 2008, when he posted a 4.6 WAR as a full-time DH for the Rangers.

With Bradley at DH, left field is opened up for a platoon of Eric Byrnes and either Ryan Langerhans or Michael Saunders; either pairing would provide solid defense coupled with enough hitting to allow Bradley to move to DH with no overall loss in left field. The Mariners are costing themselves about two projected wins with their current arrangement and, needing to make up ground in the AL West, cannot settle for another sub-par left fielder, even if that is the norm for the organization.

David Ortiz shifted his approach at the plate in 2009, perhaps hoping to generate more power on inside pitches. But instead, the results have been that he’s not pulling the ball with power.

Over the winter, FanGraphs’ pitch f/x guru Dave Allen studied Ortiz’s struggles at the plate, focusing on Ortiz’s power and plate discipline. He concluded that Ortiz was swinging at pitches outside the strike zone and that it was a tendency developed over time — dating back to the days of the prehistoric and lovably clutch “Big Papi” era. But that wasn’t the surprising part. What shocked Allen was the type of pitches Ortiz swung more at in 2009: high pitches and inside pitches.

The above graphs are from the catcher’s perspective. The contours are estimates of Ortiz’s swing rate (and contact rate). So for a pitch at the solid line (50 percent contour), there is a 50 percent chance Ortiz will swing at it. Ortiz will swing at a pitch between the solid and dotted contour between 50 percent and 75 percent of the time. He will swing at pitches inside the dotted line more than 75 percent of the time. The graph shows that in 2009 he was more likely to swing at pitches up-and-in as compared to in 2007 and 2008. The next graph shows the same thing but for his contact rate — the probability he makes contact with a pitch if he swings. The contour lines here are 80 percent (solid) and 90 percent (dotted). Since the area inside the 2009 contour lines is much smaller, there is a smaller area in which he made consistent contact compared to 2007 and 2008.

In his study, Allen surmised that perhaps Ortiz thought he would generate power only on inside pitches, so he forced the issue rather than taking these pitches as balls and waiting on better offerings.

But this shift in approach led to a drastic decrease in Ortiz’s power to right field. In short, he was sapped of any power when he pulled the ball. It also led to a decay in offensive production. In 2009, Ortiz posted a career low in home runs per fly ball, and he has yet to homer this season. So far in 2010, Ortiz has put only four balls into play that were not groundouts. Two went toward left field, one to center and one to right. This is counterintuitive to his aggressiveness on inside pitches.

Here’s an illustration of his drop-off in pull power:

Interestingly, pitchers are feeding Ortiz fewer changeups and more breaking pitches (specifically curveballs) this season. It could suggest other teams think Ortiz’s bat control has diminished with his wrist injuries. In fact, his wrists could be so exaggeratedly slow that when he swings expecting a fastball, he makes contact with changeups. And, sadly, that might be an improvement over Ortiz’s typical 2010 result of a grounder or infield pop. Another discouraging sign for Papi this season is that he has missed on 44 percent of his swings, while the league average is 20 percent.

Is Ortiz done? It’s too early to say. On Monday, Ortiz took a ball to the warning track in center field and wound up with a double. It could be a spark — or it could be an ember from a waning flame due to age and injury.

Outdoor baseball. Minnesota. April. Those are three things that, when put together, don’t get you overly excited about what may be in store. The historical mean temperature on April 12th in Minneapolis is 45 degrees, according to weather.com. In 1962, it was 12 degrees on this date, which doesn’t really scream take me out to the ballgame.
How will playing outdoors in the still nearly frozen tundra affect the game?

Chris Constancio wrote an article for the Hardball Times in 2007, looking at the relationship between temperature at game time and home run rate. He found a statistically significant decrease in the likelihood of a batted ball flying over the fence when the temperature dropped, which is a rather intuitive result. It’s hard to hit a baseball when your hands are frozen. Constancio writes:

“Game-time temperature is a significant predictor of whether or not batted balls leave the ballpark … A batted ball has a 4.0% chance of leaving the park during a game played in 70 degree conditions, but only a 3.5% chance of becoming a home run in a game played in 50 degree conditions.”

The teams that play outdoors at the most similar April temperatures are the Colorado Rockies and Milwaukee Brewers. The average April low in Minny and Milwaukee is 36 degrees, while in Denver it’s 32 degrees. Of course, the Twins don’t play at altitude, so they can’t expect their new park to match the offensive levels of Coors Field. And the Brewers can always close the roof at Miller Park if it gets too chilly. Look for Target Field to normally be the best pitchers park in baseball in the early months of each season.

This year, however, they may have received a gift from Mother Nature — the forecasted high for Monday afternoon’s game against the Red Sox is a balmy 66 degrees, and then jumps to a ridiculous 74 degrees on Tuesday and 78 degrees on Wednesday, threatening historical record highs. For 2010, Minneapolis is apparently going to do its best Miami impersonation, so the Red Sox and Twins should be able to put some runs on the board.

Next year, however, assuming things return to normal, prepare for a lot of low-scoring ballgames to begin the year.

It was a treat to watch a matchup Thursday night between two sophomore hurlers: the Atlanta Braves’ Tommy Hanson and Chicago Cubs’ Randy Wells. Hanson finished third in the NL Rookie of the Year voting last season, while Wells was sixth. Clearly, both pitchers have the potential to play large roles in their respective organizations’ futures. However, when they take to the mound, these two hurlers employ very different, yet effective, approaches.

Last season, Hanson’s fastball sat at 92 mph, while his slider came in at 83 mph, his curve at 75 mph and his seldom-used change-up at 83 mph, according to Pitch Type velocities at FanGraphs. In the first inning of last night’s game, the 23-year-old came out like a man possessed and was throwing his fastball 96-97 mph, his slider 89 mph and his curve 75 mph. The Cubs hitters were simply overmatched, and Hanson struck out the side (with a walk of Derrek Lee mixed in).

Hanson came out in subsequent innings and took a little off his pitches; the adrenaline had clearly drained a bit. Even so, he was still pumping his pitches in at a higher velocity than last season’s averages. When all was said and done, he had struck out seven batters in 5 1/3 innings, while issuing three walks and two solo homers. Along with the seven K’s, another seven of his outs came on fly balls and two were via the ground ball.

A former minor league catcher who couldn’t hit, Wells is already 27 years old. The late bloomer came into the first inning of last night’s game showing respectable velocity at 88-92 mph. His approach, though, was to induce contact with his heavy sinker. Wells’ ground-ball rate was just shy of 50 percent in 2009 (while Hanson just scraped 40 percent). The Cubs pitcher had his good sinker working Thursday, and he made the Braves hitters look like they should all take up new careers on the mound. And he did it without mid-to-high-90s heat.

Wells induced 13 ground ball outs; that’s important because it means none of those batted balls were a threat to go over the wall for a home run, or to split the outfield defense for a bases-clearing triple. Just two of his 18 outs came in the air. When Wells did get into trouble, he was able to defuse the situations with three double plays. Jason Heyward, Atlanta’s rookie phenom, was rendered impotent by Wells’ approach. The right-fielder could not get any lift on the ball. He rolled into a force play in the second inning and then, after breaking his bat, grounded weakly back to Wells in the fourth. All the Braves hitters shared his frustrations.

In 27 starts in ’09, Wells posted a WAR (Wins Above Replacement) of 3.0, while Hanson came in at 2.6 WAR in 21 starts. While the Braves right-hander is clearly a crowd favorite for his radar-busting velocities and eye-popping counting stats, Wells has shown that he can be an equally effective big league pitcher — albeit with a lower overall ceiling — by pounding the lower half of the strike zone with sinkers and pitching to contact.

On Monday, nestled in his comments on potential radical changes, Rob Neyer called for some simulation work, saying the following:

“When thinking about the impact of realignment, additional wild cards, or whatever, it would be shockingly simple to set up some simulations and figure out what it would mean for competitive balance, fairness, fan interest, TV ratings, attendance, etc.”

With the help of a season simulation that decides the outcome of each game using the log5 formula, we can address the impact different realignment options would have on the 2010 season. I will measure the impact by comparing playoff probabilities across the various alignments. The alignments simulated were the current divisional alignment, an alignment based on 2009 record and an alignment based on 2009 payroll. The divisions in the realignment options were created using a snake system based on each criterium, and the fallout is as follows.

MLB, Realigned By 2009 Record

MLB, Realigned By 2009 Payroll

I used CHONE projections (specifically the Starting Lineup Projected Standings) for the team’s strengths and simulated each season 10,000 times. The resulting playoff probabilities are as follows:

Projections Of Realigned MLB

A few observations:

The big takeaway is this: The Red Sox benefit from being in a non-Yankees division, becoming nearly as close to a playoff lock as the Yankees themselves. And New York even sees its playoff odds increase in both realignments. The bottom line is that splitting up these two teams just makes it more likely that both of them make the playoffs.

In the NL, there are only a few instances where playoff probabilities change drastically. One is the Phillies becoming the top projected team in their division under the 2009 record alignment. The other is because of the relative weakness of Division 2 in the 2009 payroll alignment, allowing some weaker-projected teams to make the playoffs more often.

In the AL, most of the large swings in playoff probabilities result from moving into or out of divisions that have either the Yankees or Red Sox.

The Rays, one of the teams most often seen as the biggest victim of the current alignment, pass the Twins and Rangers to become the third-most-likely team to make the playoffs in either realignment.

When the Giants signed Barry Zito to a seven-year, $126 million contract after the 2006 season, few thought he would live up to it. He was four years removed from his stellar Cy Young season at the time, and in the ensuing years had shown signs of decline. His strikeout rate declined, his home run rate increased, and his batting average on balls in play (BABIP) returned to league average after years of falling far below it.

In 2009, however, Zito experienced a turnaround of sorts. His strikeout rate rose to 7.22 per nine innings, his highest rate since 2001. His walks also dropped back to around his career rate (3.8 per nine), as did his home runs allowed (0.8). Along with this went his ERA, 4.03, much closer to his career average than his previous two seasons. And after shutting out the Astros for six innings last night, it appears Zito has been reborn. What changed for him?

Part of it was the return of his curveball, a weapon that failed him during his first two seasons in San Francisco. Another large part of his transformation came from an increased use of his slider. Zito started employing a slider in 2005 after performing poorly in 2004. He didn’t throw it too often, never using it more than 8.5 percent of the time in 2005 or 2006. In 2009, however, he used it more than his curveball, throwing it 18.6 percent of the time against 18.2 percent with his curveball. During his 2010 debut on Tuesday night, Zito continued using his slider effectively.

Of the 90 pitches he threw, 11 were sliders, or 12.2 percent. He went to the changeup and curveball more often, though neither was as effective as the slider. Only one of the 11 sliders ended up outside the zone, and Zito generated three swings and misses off the slider, more than the changeup and curveball combined. Additionally, he threw eight of those 11 sliders in a two-strike count, signaling that it could be employed as his primary out pitch this season. In his six innings of work, the southpaw fanned six, walked one, and allowed just three hits in the Giants’ 3-0 win.

It seems that Zito learned something during his poor 2008 season, when he had a career-high 5.15 ERA. That was when he started increasing his slider usage, and it proved his most effective pitch. In 2007, he threw his slider 4.3 percent of the time. In 2008, 9.8 percent and last year 18.6 percent. In his 2010 debut he employed his curveball and changeup more frequently, but picked his spots with the slider. It worked out for him. The slider is what turned Barry Zito back into an effective pitcher.

I join many others in welcoming Bill Simmons to the statistical revolution in baseball. While statistics have always been an integral part of baseball, we have learned to tinker with them to more accurately reflect what happens on the field, and more importantly, what will happen. One of the more difficult puzzles to crack has been evaluating pitchers due to how entangled their performance is with that of their defenders. Accepting the move from ERA to Fielding Independent Pitching is probably the single biggest step one can take on the right path of separating the two, and Simmons has made that leap.

The Sports Guy made the case for FIP in his piece by referencing White Sox closer Bobby Jenks, who posted a decent 3.71 ERA last year, but whose secondary stats added up to a more mediocre 4.47 FIP. Given that Jenks’ ERA was significantly lower than his FIP, he concluded that Jenks wasn’t as good as his traditional numbers made him appear. While this is usually true, and the process he used to make his conclusion works most of the time, there is one more important number to check.

Home Runs allowed, an important input to the FIP formula, are not as skill-based as had been thought throughout history. Research has shown that pitchers have little control over how often a fly ball actually leaves the yard. In fact, if you want to predict how many home runs a pitcher will give up in 2010 you are better off looking at his 2009 ground ball ratio rather than his 2009 home run totals, the latter of which can occasionally include some good or bad luck due to wind, park, or random variation.

That is why xFIP exists, to correct those home run rates. It is simply the FIP formula with an expected home run rate based on fly ball totals, rather than actual home run rate. Substituting for the average amount of fly balls that turn into home runs leads to more accurate future projections than just looking at FIP by itself. Sticking with Simmons’ example of Bobby Jenks, he certainly did look like garbage at times last season, in large part because 17 percent of his fly balls went for home runs. That’s nearly double his career rate and well above the league average, which is around 11 percent. While Jenks’ ERA of 3.71 didn’t match up well with his 4.47 FIP, his xFIP of 3.63 shows that Jenks had some bad luck on fly balls clearing the wall.

Bobby Jenks rediscovered his strikeout touch in 2009 (8.3 K/9) and kept his walks low (2.7 BB/9). If his home runs hadn’t ballooned, he would have been seen as one of baseball’s best closers. While Bill was right to look at FIP to see whether Jenks’ ERA reflected how he really pitched, making that last small step to using xFIP to project his future performance will give him, and you, an even greater advantage.

The Indians and the Blue Jays had something in common on Opening Day. While both staffs feature a number of promising arms, each of their Opening Day starters hadn’t thrown a pitch in the majors since 2008. Jake Westbrook, understandably, struggled during his start four Cleveland. In four innings of work he threw 82 pitches and just 47 for strikes. That led to four walks. Combined with five hits, including a two-run home run by White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko, and Westbrook surrendered five runs in his return. For Shawn Marcum, however, it was a different story.

Marcum has never been an overpowering pitcher. His fastball tops out at 88 mph, and over his career he has relied on his secondary pitches to keep hitters off-balance. He features a full arsenal, including a cutter, changeup, slider, and curveball, which allows him to throw his fastball only 40 percent of the time. While his cut fastball grades well, Marcum’s favored secondary pitch is his changeup. It averages around 81 mph, giving it only five to six mph separation from his fastball, but it is his most effective weapon.

The changeup played a large part in Marcum’s Opening Day no-hit bid. He deployed it liberally, throwing it 29 times out of 92 pitches, according to Pitch F/X. While Marcum has favored the changeup in the past, he hasn’t typically thrown it this frequently, usually using it about 20 percent of the time. Then again, it was incredibly effective during this start. Only eight times did the umpire call his changeup a ball. The Rangers swung and missed at it 11 times, including four to end at-bats, accounting for two-thirds of Marcum’s strikeout total for the day.

To measure the break of a pitch, the Pitch F/X system compares it with a pitch that has no spin. If a pitch had no spin, gravity would act on it to a greater degree than it would a pitch with backspin, so a pitch with no spin would drop faster. Because of this, many pitches have a positive vertical break. This doesn’t mean that the pitch broke upward, but rather that it didn’t drop as quickly as a pitch with no spin. A fastball with 10 inches of vertical break, for instance, stayed 10 inches higher than the same pitch if it had no spin.

The effectiveness of Marcum’s change comes not from its separation from his fastball, but from its movement. His four-seam fastball has a vertical break of around 10 to 11 inches. His changeup has a vertical break of around 5 inches, so while a pitch with no spin would drop more, the changeup drops considerably more than the fastball. The movement keeps hitters off-balance, as they oftentimes think they see fastball, only to have the ball drop under their swings.

For the past seven seasons Blue Jays fans got to see Roy Halladay, perhaps the best pitcher in baseball over that span, start on Opening Day. Seeing Marcum, over a year removed from meaningful baseball, might have been a disappointment at first, but he certainly gave them something to cheer for. It was a disappointment to see Vladimir Guerrero single with one out in the seventh inning to break up the no-hit bid, and then to see Nelson Cruz hit a home run to tie a game the Jays would eventually lose. But Marcum certainly gave Jays fans something to look forward to. He, and his changeup, could lead the Jays to a few unexpected wins in the 2010 season.

It didn’t take long for criticism to rain down on the new Yankee Stadium last season. From fans pining for the mystique and aura of the old stadium, which was still standing across the street, to the pundits who claimed it more a mall than a ballpark, everyone had an opinion about what was wrong with the park. But a few games into the 2009 season, another issue emerged: Baseballs were leaving the park at an alarming rate. The effect seemed so pronounced, in fact, that commentators came up with a new name for the Stadium: Coors Field East.

Through the season’s first two months the park lived up to the moniker. The Yankees came to bat 921 times during that span and hit 45 home runs, or one every 20.5 plate appearances (PA). Opponents didn’t have quite as much success, hitting 42 home runs in 983 PA, one every 23.4 PA. That was still far ahead of the AL pace for those two months, a home run every 35.2 PA. The Yankees claimed that the new stadium’s dimenions were identical to the old (though a few sources disputed that notion). But something appeared to be a bit different at the new park.

Two months represents a small sample, especially regarding park data. Park factors are most accurate when using a three-year sample, so a two-month sample might mean nothing. To that end, the stadium experienced a statistical correction in June. While the Yankees hit home runs at a slightly less rapid pace, one every 22.3 PA, their opponents saw a precipitous drop, hitting a home run once every 41.8 PA. Opponents never got close to their early-season marks, hitting a home run every 37.7 PA from June through season’s end. The Yankees hit a home run every 24.8 PA from June through September, a bit lower than their April and May pace.

Yankees	PA	HR	PA/HR	Opp.PA	Opp.HR	Opp. PA/HR
April	298	15	19.87	311	13	23.92
May	623	30	20.77	672	29	23.17
June	490	22	22.27	502	12	41.83
July	604	24	25.17	603	16	37.69
August	539	26	20.73	517	15	34.47
Sept	623	19	32.79	603	16	37.69
Total	3177	136	23.36	3208	101	31.76

There is no doubt that the Yankees benefitted from their new park, though that appears to be by design. The lineup featured not only three lefties, but also four switch hitters. Each of those four switch hitters has displayed more power from the left side over his career, and each also exceeded his career power numbers from the left side in 2009. After losing two lefties this off-season, the Yankees added three to their starting lineup, so perhaps we will see a similar effect this season.

But despite all those home runs, Yankee Stadium actually leaned towards being a pitchers’ park, according to ESPN’s Park Factors. While it ranked first in HR factor, it ranked second to last in doubles, with only Petco Park — considered the most cavernous park in the league — more heavily suppressing doubles. But, again, all of this uses just one year’s worth of data. In order to get a better read on how the park plays we need to study it over multiple seasons. As we saw in April and May, a few months of aberrant production can skew a season’s worth of numbers.