Pop quiz: Under what circumstances is it reasonable to be excited about a pitcher who posted a 6.12 ERA last season?

Answer: When that pitcher is Texas Rangers left-hander Derek Holland.

Derek Holland’s first season in the Majors was superficially poor. He went 8-13 with 26 homers allowed and had a 6.12 ERA. But look a little bit closer, at the events over which Holland — or any pitcher — exerts the most control, and the young lefty’s season has to be considered a success.

He posted a strikeout rate of 6.96 K/9, a walk rate of only 3.06 BB/9, and induced ground balls on 41.5 percent of balls in plays (only slightly below league average of around 43 percent). All that added up to a 4.38 xFIP (Fielding Independent Pitching, normalized for home-run rate), which is designed to look like ERA, but removes all the elements of luck. For a 22-year-old in his big league debut, a 4.38 xFIP is excellent.

So what’s the disconnect here? Basically everything that could go wrong for Holland did go wrong. His batting average on balls in play was .321, compared to a league average right around .300. His left-on-base percentage (a.k.a. strand rate) came in at 64.7 percent, below a typical figure of 70 percent. Home runs per fly ball? Yep, he got unlucky there, too, conceding homers on about 15 percent of fly balls, even while the average pitcher finds his number settling somewhere in the range of 10 percent. These are all elements of pitching that the pitcher has little control over. When these stats deviate heavily from the norm, it usually points to luck.

All of which is why there was some confusion among the sabermetric ranks when Texas opted to begin the season with the less talented Matt Harrison in the big league rotation while Holland got sent down to Triple-A. Such confusion was justified: Holland breezed his way through six Pacific Coast League starts (38 2/3 IP, 37 strikeouts, seven walks — good for a 2.44 xFIP). Over six starts of his own, Harrison struggled, posting a mediocre 4.82 xFIP before finding his way to the 15-day disabled list with bicep tendinitis.

Yesterday, making his season debut in Harrison’s vacated rotation spot against the A’s, Holland pitched like the guy we could have expected. He went six innings, struck out seven, walked one, and induced grounders on over half of his balls in play. He didn’t allow a run and earned him a much-deserved win.

If Holland is able to come close to matching last night’s performance in his next start — most likely next Monday, at home, versus the struggling Angels — he is almost certain to take Harrison’s spot. Such a course of events would be quite intriguing, as it should give the Rangers — along with Colby Lewis, Rich Harden, C.J. Wilson, and Scott Feldman — one of the deepest starting rotations in the league.

Today on ESPN.com, Jerry Crasnick writes about players who are carrying their teams in a variety of ways. And while we can’t put a number on any emotional or intangible lift a player gives his squad, we do have some cold, hard numbers that tell us which guys are really carrying their squads. To start, let’s look at which players have the highest percentage of their team’s wins above replacement.

Name                 WAR          %
Shin-Soo Choo        1.5        14%        
Nelson Cruz          1.9        13%       
Chase Utley          2.5        13%        
Alex Rios            1.7        12%       
Andrew McCutchen     1.1        12%
Michael Bourn        1.2        12%
Vernon Wells         2.0        11%
Jered Weaver         1.1        11%
Franklin Gutierrez   1.4        11%      
Justin Morneau       2.2        10%

Based on the numbers, no one is carrying his team quite like Choo, but that’s a byproduct of being an excellent player on a bad team. The same can be said for McCutchen and Bourn. But I think the spirit of carrying a team implies something more. To make it relevant, you have to be able to carry a team that wins.

Therefore, let’s give extra credit to Chase Utley and Roy Halladay of the Phillies. The pair has the most WAR of any batter (2.5) and pitcher (2.2) respectively this season and account for 23 percent of a first-place team’s WAR.

Moving to the American League, Nelson Cruz and Justin Morneau are both are off to scorching starts for division-leading clubs. Morneau’s 2.2 wins above replacement is already more than half as many wins as he has in any season of his career, including his 2006 MVP season and accounts for 10 percent of the Twins’ total WAR. Cruz’s 1.9 wins above replacement is possibly more impressive given that he did that in only 19 games before hitting the disabled list with a hamstring issue. He’s been a force in a lineup that has so far disappointed in offensive production. His production has accounted for 13 percent of the Rangers’ total WAR.

On the other end of the spectrum are some players that teams were counting on to perform and have faltered so far. Chief among those would be Aramis Ramirez (-0.9 WAR) of the Cubs, who has been well below replacement level.

Howie Kendrick (-0.5 WAR) and Erick Aybar (-0.2 WAR) of the Angels have seen bigger than expected regressions from their highs in 2009. Both are under replacement level and are a big reason why the Angels have been so disappointing. Over in Boston, a team that Theo Epstein built on pitching and defense has seen good hitting and the expected solid defensive play, but has been completely let down by its vaunted pitching staff. Josh Beckett’s struggles are highly visible (0.5 WAR), but the entire staff has been less than dominating, and excluding Daniel Bard and Jonathan Papelbon, the bullpen has combined for -0.6 WAR. Defenders can only do so much when the ball is being lined all over the park.

If the Atlanta Braves could have one mulligan from this past offseason, it probably would be their decision to non-tender second baseman Kelly Johnson. While the Braves have struggled to hit for power, Johnson has supplied it in droves for the Arizona Diamondbacks this season. He has 10 home runs already, which is as many as all Braves not named Jason Heyward have hit. But although Johnson’s torrid start has been impressive, it’s unlikely he’ll remain this good throughout 2010.

Johnson first showed signs of his potential in 2007, when he hit .276/.375/.457 (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) as the Braves’ full-time second baseman. He struggled in the next two years, however, hence the non-tender. In many ways, the start to his 2010 season resembles that breakout season. His walk and strikeout rates are back in line. His batted ball data also line up fairly well, although Johnson is hitting a few more fly balls in 2010. Still, the results on those fly balls have been much better. Of the 35 fly balls he’s hit, 10 have left the park (28.6 percent). That mark is almost certainly unsustainable during the course of a full season and is higher than any hitter’s rate last year.

In 2009, only seven NL hitters cleared the fence with more than 20 percent of their fly balls. Mark Reynolds led the way with 26 percent. (See list below.) One thing that stands out about the names you see is that they all have high career isolated power (ISO) numbers, a statistic that is calculated by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage. Among last year’s leaders in home run rate, only Raul Ibanez doesn’t have a career ISO of .200 or higher, and he’s close at .194. Johnson has a career ISO of .178, so he is a prime candidate to regress.

2009 N.L. HR/FB Leaders / Career Isolated Power:
Mark Reynolds    26.0%  /  .247
Ryan Howard      25.4%  /  .301
Prince Fielder   23.1%  /  .261
Adrian Gonzalez  22.2%  /  .225
Raul Ibanez      21.1%  /  .194
Adam Dunn        21.1%  /  .270
Albert Pujols    20.1%  /  .293

Ibanez actually provides a cautionary tale of his own. Before his mid-June injury last season, he hit 22 home runs on 85 fly balls, a 25.9 percent rate, while his career rate is just 13 percent. From his mid-July return through the end of the season, he hit 75 fly balls, only 12 of which left the park (16 percent). That percentage still ranks above his career mark but certainly brought down the numbers he produced during his powerful start.

Even when Johnson does come back to Earth, he’ll likely continue to produce for the Diamondbacks. Sabermetrician Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projection, which he updates daily, has Johnson pegged for a .219 ISO the rest of the way, so his power should remain intact even when more of his fly balls start dropping into gloves or gaps. He won’t sustain his .355 ISO for the next five months, but a .251 mark, per ZiPS, would represent a huge step forward for Johnson.

Headed into the season, the Los Angeles Dodgers were considered favorites to win their third straight NL West title, but they now find themselves sitting in fourth place. The team activated Manny Ramirez off the disabled list over the weekend and will gladly welcome his bat back into the everyday lineup, but scoring runs has been the least of the team’s worries. A lack of run prevention is the shovel that the Dodgers have dug themselves in a hole with.

For starters, the Dodger pitching staff has really struggled to find the plate. Their starters have walked 4.36 batters per nine innings pitched, which is the highest mark in the National League. It’s possible that their pitchers are afraid to throw strikes because their defense isn’t catching anything. Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) has the Dodger defense costing the team 25.5 runs so far relative to average, worst in baseball. John Dewan’s defensive runs saved metric agrees, knocking the Dodgers defense to the tune of -19 runs. The primary problem? Matt Kemp, who was publicly called out by general manager Ned Colletti for his poor defense two weeks ago. While Kemp did win a Gold Glove last year, the Dodger GM’s assessment of his center fielder’s defensive butchery is confirmed by the data.

DRS says he’s cost the Dodgers -14 runs; UZR has him at -11.8, which is by far the lowest in baseball at his position. That’s a staggering amount of runs this early in the season. The worst center fielders might do that over the course of a year, not over the course of thirty or so games. (For context, Vernon Wells had the worst UZR among center fielders last year at -16.6.) While there’s bound to be some noise in such small sample stats, there is no doubt that the normally reliable Kemp — who had a UZR of 3.1 last year — has been bad in the outfield, whether judged by the eyes or the numbers. As Colletti said, “It’s a shame that he would go from where he was a year ago to revert back to when the ball goes up in the air and you’re not sure where it’s going, or if it’s going to get caught.”

If the Dodgers are going to make up the ground they’ve lost in the early stages of the season, they must get back to some very basic, fundamental principles of the game. Pitchers need to throw more first pitch strikes and stop issuing so many silly walks, and their fielders, particularly Matt Kemp, need to start getting to more balls.

While the San Francisco Giants have put together one of the best starting rotations in all of baseball, they entered the 2010 season with legitimate questions about where they’d find any offense. A month into the season, one of the early answers has been Nate Schierholtz, a guy who didn’t even crack their opening day lineup.

After collecting three hits Thursday night, including his first home run of the season, Schierholtz is now hitting .381/.458/.587, and is establishing himself as a potential every-day player for the Giants. He had shown the ability to make contact and hit for power in the minors, but an undisciplined approach led to unproductive major league results, such as his career .329 on-base percentage. However, Schierholtz is showing signs of offensive development at age 26.

In addition to the three hits Thursday night, he also drew his seventh walk of the season, which doesn’t sound that impressive until you realize that he managed only 16 walks in 308 plate appearances a year ago. He’s managed to work his way on base while simultaneously cutting down on his strikeouts, which is no easy feat. The combination of improved contact and better selectivity has allowed Schierholtz to make the most of the offensive skills he’s been given, and the Giants have to be thrilled with the results to date.

He won’t keep hitting .381, of course, but Schierholtz’s overall game is fairly similar to that of former Giants outfielder Randy Winn, who combined gap power, good contact skills and quality defense in the outfield to become one of San Francisco’s better regular players. UZR thinks very highly of Schierholtz’s glove in right field, so if he can sustain the newfound patience and keep hitting doubles with some frequency, the Giants may just have found a new right fielder.

It is difficult to find a bargain on the free-agent market. While teams can often find players who fit their needs, they often have to pay through the nose to get them. For example, Torii Hunter is a perfect fit for the Angels, but at $18 million per year, they’re paying a heavy premium for his services.

In his column today, Jayson Stark examines some of the most untradable contracts in baseball. But there are still values to be found on the free-agent market. Here are five guys who have turned out to be excellent free-agent bargains.

J.D. Drew, Red Sox (2007 — five years, $70 million): The Boston faithful might not appreciate him, but after his rocky debut season with the Red Sox, Drew has been excellent. In each of the past two years, his OPS has been above .900, which placed him in the top three among AL outfielders. According to Dollars, a metric we use at FanGraphs that converts wins above replacement to what a player would receive as a free agent, Drew has been worth $47.1 million in his three years in Boston, which is more than $5 million more than he is being paid. As long as his performance doesn’t completely crater over the next two years, he’ll have been worth every penny.

Ryan Dempster, Cubs (2009 — four years, $52 million) Dempster began his career as a starter, but moved to the bullpen when he signed with the Cubs in 2004. After he struggled in 2006 and 2007, they moved him back to the rotation for the 2008 season, and Dempster responded brilliantly, posting a 2.96 ERA in 206 2/3 innings. He still pitched well in 2009 after the new contract (3.65 ERA in 200 innings), and has started strong once again in 2010. According to Dollars, he was worth $16.4 million last year while being paid $8 million (his contract is back-loaded). He’s not an ace, but dependable midrotation starters are extremely valuable.

Casey Blake, Dodgers (2009 — three years, $18 million) The Dodgers liked what they saw of Blake after acquiring him from the Indians in a 2008 midseason trade, and they re-signed him before the 2009 season. In the first year of his new contract, he was incredibly valuable to Los Angeles, registering an .832 OPS while playing excellent defense at third. That performance was worth $20.7 million, so he’s already paid for himself. That’s some good news for Dodgers fans, considering the team gave up catcher Carlos Santana, one of the best prospects in baseball, in the trade to get him.

Juan Rivera, Angels (2009 — three years, $12.75 million) Rivera isn’t as good as Drew, but his salary is also much lower. The Angels paid him just $3.25 million last season and he produced an .810 OPS, which was worth more than $14 million. This year hasn’t gone as well, but it won’t take much for him to be worth his salary. Like Blake, he’s already paid for himself anyway.

Brad Penny, Cardinals (2010 — one year, $7.5 million) Penny’s return to the NL has gone very well to date, and he’s looking like Dave Duncan’s newest reclamation success, though he did pitch well down the stretch for the Giants after faltering with the Red Sox. His new splitter has produced ground balls aplenty and he has kept the ball in the park. He won’t sustain his 1.99 ERA, but he doesn’t have to justify the Cardinals’ minor investment in his right arm. According to Dollars, he’s already been worth $4.1 million, and it’s barely May.

Philadelphia Phillies left-hander Cole Hamels put on a pitching clinic Tuesday night. In eight innings, he struck out eight Cardinals batters and walked two, allowing just one run to cross home plate. His signature changeup was in fine form: According to Pitch F/X data from BrooksBaseball.net, Hamels threw 23 of his 28 changeups for a strike, and St. Louis hitters swung and missed at 11 of those off-speed offerings.

Expect more performances like this from Hamels in the days to come. Although the 26-year-old entered Tuesday’s action with a 5.06 ERA, he lowered that mark to 4.42 last night. And his peripheral stats suggest that he has been one of the best starters in the National League to this point.

In 38 2/3 innings, Hamels has whiffed 10.24 batters per nine innings, while allowing 2.79 walks per nine. Tim Lincecum, Jonathan Sanchez, Clayton Kershaw and Bud Norris are the only Senior Circuit pitchers with a higher K rate. Hamels is doing a great job of getting batters to chase his stuff off the plate, as opponents have swung at 31.6 percent of his pitches outside the strike zone. (The major league average this season is 27 percent.) That’s a career-best rate, and it places him in the top 10 among NL starters.

Despite the strong peripherals, Hamels’ numbers have been dragged down by abnormally high batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and home runs per fly ball figures. Hamels has suffered from a .356 BABIP in 2010, compared with a career .298 BABIP. Also obscuring his excellent pitching is a 16.7 percent home run per fly ball rate, well north of his career 11.9 percent clip and the league average, which typically sits in the 10-12 percent range. Hamels was also a bit unlucky last season, as his strikeout, walk and home run rates were virtually identical to his 2008 marks. However, his BABIP went from .270 to .325, and his ERA jumped from 3.09 to 4.32.

With fewer bloop hits falling in and fly balls finding the stands less often, Hamels should see his ERA dip this season. He currently holds a 3.31 expected fielding-independent ERA (xFIP), which gauges a pitcher’s performance based on strikeouts, walks and a normal home run per fly ball rate. That places Hamels seventh among NL starters.

Roy Halladay may be the talk of the town, but Hamels gives the Phillies a second ace.

Not long ago, Denard Span looked like nothing more than a grade C prospect who failed to make good on his tremendous athletic ability. Then, something changed, and quickly. Span developed a more patient approach at the plate, which led to him drawing more walks and getting better pitches to hit. Fast-forwarding to today, Span is an extremely valuable regular on a winning team. Breakouts can seemingly come from out of nowhere, but there are statistical indicators that tell us which are more real than others.

Naturally, at this time of the year we view players with a certain air of suspicion, and rightly so; Small sample sizes make trusting early season statistics difficult. However, there is a point in time when certain stats can become more trustworthy than others. A study done by Russell Carlton showed that after 50 plate appearances, a player’s swing habits can be a reliable guide to what’s going on. In the case of Colby Rasmus, his swing habits give us a substantial reason to believe he’s a changed man. According to O-Swing percentage (which is a stat we use at FanGraphs that measures the percentage of swings a batter takes at pitches outside of the strike zone), undisciplined batters greatly decrease their odds of reaching base by mercilessly hacking at everything thrown their direction. (This shouldn’t surprise anyone.) Rasmus did not really show great plate discipline last season, evidenced by a paltry .307 on-base percentage. He swung at 25.9 percent of pitches thrown out of the zone last year, but this season, he’s decreased that number to just 17.8 percent. As a result, Rasmus has drawn more walks (17) than teammate Albert Pujols (15) and he’s taking more advantage of pitches he’s finding to his liking. The result? A line of .316/.436/.658. People have projected stardom for Rasmus since he was a first-round pick in 2005, and it appears the 23-year-old is figuring things out.

Like Rasmus, Oakland’s Daric Barton is also demonstrating a tremendous amount of selectivity at the plate, with an O-Swing percentage of just 13 percent. Barton’s been known for this for a while, but he is also making a lot more contact when he does swing. He’s getting the bat on the ball 89.7 percent of the time when he swings, a 4.8 percent increase over his career rates. When you’re not swinging at a lot of bad pitches, and making that much contact with the pitches you do swing at, good things are bound to happen, and they are so far for Barton. He’s never going to hit for a ton of power, but he has a .407 OBP and should be an on-base machine for years to come.

Chicago Cubs left-handed reliever Sean Marshall is another breakout to believe in. In the early goings of the season, we see that his curve has about 2 more inches of downward movement according to Pitch f/x data, and he’s throwing his curve 41.5 percent of the time. Batters against Marshall have an O-Swing percentage of 33.0 this season, and his career rate is 23.0. Translation: He’s getting a lot more guys to chase out of the zone, because he’s throwing a curve with more movement. While he’s not going to be confused with a flamethrower anytime soon, his average fastball velocity is up from 87 mph to 89.3 mph, a considerable increase. A better fastball helps set up the off-speed, and it helps when that off-speed pitch is a filthy, knee-buckling curveball like Marshall’s. He’s fanned 18 and walked just two batters in 14 innings, and his dominance could give the Cubs the flexibility to move Carlos Zambrano back into the rotation.

On the heels of Ryan Ludwick’s somewhat innocuous 1-for-3 performance Sunday against the Reds, it might seem odd to focus on the Cardinals right fielder today. But there was a lot of intrigue in those few at-bats, and a lot of food for thought.

Ludwick’s strong season to date has garnered some notice. He is batting .290, he’s walking more than 10 percent of the time, and he has an isolated power above .190. These all are benchmarks he met back in the halcyon days of yore (aka 2008, when he also hit 37 home runs), but fell short of last year. So what has changed?

For starters, manager Tony La Russa has him hitting second this year after usually batting him fourth or fifth the past two seasons. The stated reason for the switch was to get Ludwick more fastballs while hitting in front of Albert Pujols. So far, so good. Thus far, Ludwick is seeing fastballs 57 percent of the time, which is the most he’s seen in five years. In Sunday’s win against Cincy, 10 of the 13 pitches Ludwick got were fastballs.

This would seem like a silly new strategy because Ludwick crushes fastballs. A statistic on FanGraphs measures a batters’ effectiveness versus each type of pitch and produces a runs above average figure for each offering. In his career, Ludwick has been most successful against the fastball, to the tune of 53 runs above average. Compare that to his success against the curve (plus-3 runs) and the change (plus-7.8 runs), and you get a sense of how much he enjoys the fastball. His run-producing single Sunday came on a fastball.

So why are pitchers throwing him the fastball? Convention wisdom says that Pujols lurking in the on-deck circle has something to do with it. Fastballs find the strike zone 54.1 percent of the time across baseball, compared to 44.7 percent of the time for curveballs and 42.9 percent of the time for changeups. (Thanks to Daniel Moroz of Beyond the Box Score for those numbers.) If pitchers are worried about Pujols coming up next, it makes sense they’d want to make sure not to walk Ludwick and use a pitch that they could command against him.

Lineup protection is an easy explanation for all the fastballs Ludwick is seeing, but there has been research that shows that lineup protection is a myth. Whether you are inclined to believe J.C. Bradbury or conventional wisdom of lineup protection, the bottom line is that Ludwick is seeing more fastball this year. And that’s a boon to his bottom line.