Lost in the incredible drama of Roy Halladay pitching a no-hitter in his first postseason start is the fact that Halladay recorded a hit in his first playoff at-bat. In fact, his second-inning RBI single changed the win expectancy of the game more than any of the 104 pitches he threw. Halladay entered Wednesday’s game with 136 career plate appearances. He has never had an extra-base hit; he has drawn just one walk. And just eight times in his career, Halladay has hit a line drive. Before 2010, Halladay hadn’t hit regularly since he was an amateur in 1995. A game-changing hit was almost as unlikely for Halladay as a no-hitter. Almost.

Like a poker player with a tell, Halladay has one distinct approach at the plate: He goes up looking to swing. Five of his 13 hits this season, including four of his past six, have occurred on the first pitch. If he sees a fastball in the zone on the first pitch, there is a good chance he’s going to offer at it. So, if there was anything that Edinson Volquez should not have done with the first pitch he ever threw Halladay, it was throwing a 93 mph fastball on the inner half of the plate. By doing so, he allowed the ninth line drive of Halladay’s offensive career.

That should have been it for Volquez, though, because the ball hung up toward left field. It was a hit that left fielders should catch, that the vast majority of left fielders do catch. Playing left field on Wednesday for the Reds was Jonny Gomes, one of the worst defensive left fielders in baseball. In fact, using ultimate zone rating, the preferred fielding metric at FanGraphs, Gomes ranked as the fourth-worst defender at any position.

Matt Kemp: -24.3 runs.
Carlos Quentin: -22.9 runs.
Carlos Lee: -17.4 runs.
Jonny Gomes: -16.1 runs.
Trevor Crowe: -15.7 runs.

Gomes got a late jump on the Halladay line drive, and by the time he recovered, it was too late. He attempted a feet-first dive to catch the ball, but he couldn’t glove it, and had no chance to make a throw to home plate. The slow-footed Carlos Ruiz was running from second base, but with two outs, had a good jump toward scoring the game’s second run. When Halladay’s 17th career hit plated Ruiz, the Phillies’ win expectancy odds went from 64.7 percent to 74.3 percent. Before the inning ended, a two-run single by Shane Victorino pushed them to 85.2 percent.

Because Jim Edmonds‘ Achilles injury rendered him unavailable for the first round of the playoffs, the Reds decided Laynce Nix was healthy enough to earn a spot on their playoff roster. Nix returned from an ankle injury on Sept. 22, and made just one start between then and the playoffs, collecting two hits against the Astros on Sept. 29. The left-handed-hitting outfielder made only 31 starts this season, but in a predominantly reserve role, he had the best offensive season of his eight-year career. Generally, when Nix has been able to catch on to a major league roster, it’s because of the qualities he offers as a defender. In nearly 3,000 defensive innings in the outfield, Nix has a positive ultimate zone rating at each outfield position: +0.3 runs in right field, +11.8 runs in center, +8.1 runs in left. This season, in limited time, he was worth 7 runs above average, and 23.1 runs more than Jonny Gomes.

We don’t know if Nix playing left field instead of Gomes would have changed the outcome of Game 1. We don’t know if Nix, traditionally a worse hitter than Gomes (though left-handed), would have done anything to spoil Halladay’s no-hitter. But, given their histories and drastically different defensive abilities, it’s pretty likely that Nix would have caught Halladay’s line drive, and ended the second inning with the score still 1-0.

Losers of seven games in a row entering yesterday, the Brewers desperately needed a win against the first-place Reds. Holding a 4-2 lead entering the bottom of the ninth, the Brewers weren’t aware that the unceremonious end to Trevor Hoffman’s storied career was on the horizon. While the 42-year-old closer has been bad this season, suffice it to say he hasn’t had worse stuff this season than he had yesterday. Thanks to TexasLeaguers.com, we have this sad-looking graph that shows neither Hoffman’s fastball nor legendary changeup had any horizontal movement against Cincinnati:

Scott Rolen’s game-tying home run came on one of those straight change-ups, leading to Hoffman’s third loss and fifth blown save of the season. Even if last night is viewed as an anomaly, there are plenty of indicators that Hoffman is pitching at an all-time low level. Not since 2002 — when FanGraphs started tracking pitch stats — has the right-hander’s changeup been below-average relative to the rest of the league. This season, it has been one of the least valuable 20 changeups in all of baseball, worth 2.2 runs below average. (It was 8.3 runs above average in 2009.) His fastball, which has always been a weapon merely as a counter to the change, has taken a predictable beating as a result. The pitch has a tiny 2.1 whiff rate (versus a league average of around 8 percent), and batters are having no problem hitting it hard and into the air.

Always a fly-ball pitcher, Hoffman is allowing elevation at never-before-seen heights in 2010. Since 2002, Hoffman’s ground-ball percentage has been between 30 and 40 percent every season. This year, through a little more than 50 balls in play, he’s allowed just seven ground balls, for a minute 13.7 ground-ball rate. Considering that 20 percent of the fly balls he’s allowed have left the stadium, we’re seeing a bad combination of epic proportions. Hoffman’s 13.15 ERA is probably higher than it should be, but considering a career-high walk rate, his fielding independent pitching (FIP) suggests it should still be 10.48.

This season, the Brewers have trusted their worst pitcher with one of their most important roles. It is strange to think about Hoffman in any inning besides the ninth, but if the right-hander understandably doesn’t want to retire on this note, then he can’t be trusted with anything besides mopping up until some semblance of good stuff comes back.

According to CoolStandings.com, the Brewers now have a 6.1 percent chance of making the playoffs as they stand eight games back of the Reds. It’s likely that those 6.1 percent of simulations in which the Brewers made the comeback were not with Hoffman pitching high leverage innings.

Livan Hernandez saw his unlikely scoreless streak end at 17 innings yesterday, as he gave up the first of two solo home runs that would give him his first loss of the season. It was the kind of start that serves as a lesson for why wins and losses don’t matter, as the Nationals offered no run support. But the loss does nothing to taint what has been the best April of Livan’s career, coming in a season where even the most optimistic of projection systems saw him as a 5.00 ERA pitcher. There are a lot of explanations for why Hernandez won’t be sustain his success going forward — his 9-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio, for instance — but none more so than a hitless streak that would make Ubaldo Jimenez jealous.

Hernandez has pitched from the stretch in 29 plate appearances this season, and in none of those has he allowed a hit. In all, opponents are hitting a ridiculous .000/.138/.000 when their teammates are on base against Livan, which explains why two solo home runs on Thursday are the only runs that have crossed the plate in the 24 innings Hernandez has pitched this season.

At FanGraphs, we track a stat called Left on Base Percentage, which monitors the rate that pitchers strand baserunners. League averages usually hover between 70 and 72 percent, and while better pitchers can routinely be above-average, pitchers of Livan’s ilk see a great deal of variance. Stranding runners is a huge part of run prevention, which is why the season Hernandez had his best LOB% (2003 – 78.7 percent) corresponded with his best full-season ERA (3.20). And the year of his worst LOB% (2008 – 64.8 percent) led to a career-worst ERA (6.05). This season, Livan’s Left on Base Percentage is a perfect 100 percent, a rate difficult to sustain for three starts, much less an entire season.

In his career, which spans 2,750 innings, Livan has been identical with the bases empty (.780 OPS allowed) and with runners on base (.782 OPS allowed). His stuff doesn’t get better from the stretch, his delivery isn’t more deceptive. People will say that Hernandez is succeeding because he is “bearing down” with runners on base. This is not true. He is merely in the midst of an amazing stretch of good fortune. While a career revival makes a good story, this is a tale more likely to end with regression to the mean, and another below-average, innings-eating season for Hernandez.

By conventional wisdom, Rick Porcello is the type of pitcher who is supposed to succeed in the major leagues. He has the perfect pitcher’s physique at 6-foot-5, 200 pounds. He can touch 95 miles per hour and throws two wipeout breaking pitches. It takes a special arm to handle the jump from A-ball to The Show, and Porcello proved he has it last year.

At FanGraphs, we track the runs above average of every type of pitch in a pitcher’s arsenal. These, called “pitch type linear weights,” examine how each pitch thrown alters the expected number of runs scored in the inning. Last season, only 23 starting pitchers — including seven of the 10 who received Cy Young votes — had fastballs that were at least 10 runs above average over the course of the season. Porcello was one of them, ranking between Cliff Lee and CC Sabathia at 14.4 runs above average. This is a case in which the statistics match the scouting reports: Porcello has one of the game’s best fastballs.

The wonder, however, is why these scouting elements that put Porcello in such high standing don’t translate to the strikeout column. Of all starting pitchers to qualify for the ERA title last season, Porcello ranked eighth from the bottom in strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) at just 4.69. Of the 23 pitchers on the best fastballs list, the average strikeout rate was 7.61, and only Joel Pineiro had a K/9 ratio lower than Porcello’s. The Tigers right-hander succeeded the same way as Pineiro, with ground balls, at the fifth-highest rate in the majors (Pineiro was No. 1).

Still, to have success going forward, Porcello will need to pitch more like he did in the Tigers’ final game last season, when he left the American League Central tiebreaker with the lead after striking out a career-high eight batters. Sustaining this type of performance for Year 2 isn’t unheard of, and given Porcello’s pedigree, pointing to Bret Saberhagen as an example is fair. Like Porcello, Saberhagen debuted in the majors at age 20, had an ERA 16 percent above league average, had good control and had a below-average strikeout rate. In his second year, Saberhagen went out and won the Cy Young, striking out hitters at a 30 percent higher clip in the process.

The Tigers don’t need Porcello to win the Cy Young this season to win their division. But to reach the peak Porcello’s stuff suggests, pitching coach Rick Knapp must scrap any instruction centering around pitching to contact. More strikeouts are the fastest way to lower your ERA, and Porcello has the stuff to do it. The sooner the Tigers convince their young star of this, the sooner he joins Justin Verlander atop the rotation.

While losing 97 games last season, the Cleveland Indians were the worst team in baseball at the two facets of run prevention. No other team ranked in the bottom five of Major League Baseball in both Fielding Independent Pitching (28th of 30) and Ultimate Zone Rating (26th), signaling problems with their pitchers and fielders alike. That’s bad, but is it fixable?

A lot of last year’s pitching problems can be blamed on trial and error, as the Indians tried an AL-leading 29 different pitchers on the mound. The hurlers projected to make up this season’s rotation, led by stalwart Jake Westbrook, provide a telling comment on the organizational philosophy for better run prevention in 2010: groundballs.

An average Major League Baseball team turns a groundball into an out about 67% of the time; it’s the most pitcher-friendly ball in play. The Indians rotation, not coincidentally, is built around pitchers that throw sinkers and induce grounders. Westbrook’s return from injury paves the way for this strategy, but he’s joined in practice by Fausto Carmona, Justin Masterson and Aaron Laffey. Together, the four have a career GB/FB rate of 2.46 versus the approximate league average of 1.7.

To collect all the wormburners this staff is sure to produce, the Tribe have put together an infield of shortstops. Along with incumbent shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera, third baseman Jhonny Peralta and second baseman Luis Valbuena both have experience at that position. Like the Mariners, an organization that has built an outfield with two centerfield-caliber defenders (Ichiro Suzuki and Franklin Gutierrez), the Indians are hoping an infield featuring three players with experience at shortstop will be far more efficient at turning grounders into outs. The key to Cleveland’s success is whether these are the correct three infielders. All three ranked below average in Ultimate Zone Rating a year ago, combining to cost the Indians 15.6 runs with their glove.

However, most statheads will tell you that you need at least three years of fielding data to reach an accurate conclusion, and none of these three infielders have played more than 127 games at their current spot. Therefore, we can’t say they are below-average fielders based on UZR just yet. But if you put any faith in the fan projections featured at FanGraphs, there isn’t much reason for optimism: The trio is projected by our readers to cost the club -3.6 runs collectively. The jury’s still out on this threesome, and the groundball-inducing staff will be praying that all of them can live up to their shortstop pedigree. If not, it’s going to be another long year at Jacobs Field.