Last night, Stephen Strasburg lost his first game as a major league pitcher, though not through much fault of his own, as his team fell to the Kansas City Royals, 1-0. Meanwhile, in Queens, N.Y., R.A. Dickey threw eight shutout innings for the New York Mets, continuing to offer his team a much-needed boost in their rotation. What do these two guys have in common?

Absolutely nothing.

Strasburg’s fastball averages 97.7 MPH, and he throws it 58 percent of the time. Dickey’s fastball averages 84.3 MPH, and he throws it 18 percent of the time. Dickey, of course, relies on a knuckleball to dance around and get outs. Strasburg just overpowers hitters with an assortment of pitches that is usually reserved for video games. But despite their disparate approaches, both have found success in getting big league hitters out this year. We thought it would be fun to compare how they’re doing it.

For Strasburg, it’s not that complicated. His plan is to get ahead in the count (67 percent first-pitch strikes), usually with his high-velocity fastball. Then, he makes hitters chase an assortment of pitches they can’t hit. Opponents have swung at 35.5 percent of the pitches he has thrown out of the strike zone, but made contact just 34.6 percent of the time. For comparison, the next-lowest contact rate on pitches outside the zone by a starter is 48.1 percent, by Jorge de la Rosa. When he gets hitters to chase, they come up empty, and he racks up the strikeouts.

Dickey can’t do that. Hitters are chasing his pitches slightly less often (29.3 percent), but are making contact twice as frequently — 70.2 percent of the pitches that opponents swing at outside of the strike zone they put the bat on, a pedestrian number that doesn’t explain how Dickey is striking out nearly seven batters per nine innings. The key for him is not to get hitters to fish, but to swing through pitches that they think they can whack.

Where Dickey has actually excelled this year has been on missing bats in the strike zone, where his 80.3 percent contact rate puts him just behind the league leader in that category, Clayton Kershaw. Yes, that’s right, hitters have an easier time making contact with a strike thrown from Stephen Strasburg than they do from R.A. Dickey, despite the Grand Canyon-sized difference in velocity. Here is a chart showing Dickey’s dominance in the zone. The red squares indicate a high percentage of pitches in that zone, blue is a low percentage.

As you can see, despite the erratic nature of the knuckler, Dickey is living right around the strike zone. And considering how hard of a time hitters have hitting it when it is in the zone, that’s good thing. He’s putting the knuckler in the zone, and yet, opposing hitters have not been able to catch up to it.

These two guys could not be any more different, but both are giving their teams a chance to win on a nightly basis.

On May 1, Javier Vazquez had an ERA of 9.78, and those who had asserted that he did not have the personality to succeed in New York were pointing to his first five starts as more proof that he just couldn’t cut it in the Bronx. A month later, however, and Vazquez is shutting up his critics, including a sterling performance yesterday against the Blue Jays, allowing two runs over seven innings while striking out nine. How has he turned his season around so quickly?

The big key has been keeping the ball in the park. In his first five starts, Vazquez faced 112 batters and allowed eight home runs, or one every 14 plate appearances. In his last five starts (and one very brief relief appearance), he’s faced 126 batters and allowed just three home runs, or one every 42 plate appearances. The drastic drop in balls flying over the wall has allowed Vazquez has to the big innings to a minimum, which have always been his Achilles heel.

The drop in home runs have come, in large part, due to two factors that are likely related –- a surge in strikeout rate and a run of games against teams that feature right-handed power hitters. Vazquez has been downright horrible against left-handed hitters this year — they are hitting .283/.383/.566 against him — but over the last month, he has been able to match-up against line-ups that don’t feature an abundance of lefty sluggers.

On May 12th, he faced the Detroit Tigers, whose two biggest bats belong to righties Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Cabrera. On May 17, he faced the Mets, who feature Jason Bay and David Wright as their best sources of power. On May 27, he ran into the lefty-heavy Twins and predictably struggled, but was able to rebound in his last two starts against the Orioles and Blue Jays, both of whom rely on right-handed hitters for most of their power.

If Vazquez is going to maintain his recent success going forward, he’s going to have to figure out how to get left-handed hitters out again. While he’s always been better against right-handed hitters (.662 OPS against in 2010), the difference this year is remarkable, and his problems against lefties have been the source of most of his struggles. While Yankee fans should be encouraged by his recent outings, they may want to wait until he blows away a team with some good left-handed bats before they get too excited.

Two months into the season, the reigning American League Cy Young winner has just one victory. Zack Greinke, who managed 16 victories last season despite playing for a terrible Kansas City club, has been abandoned by his offense this year, as they are scoring just 2.97 runs per game when Greinke takes the hill. In fact, the Royals are just 2-9 when Greinke pitches, a testament to just how bad his teammates are.

But when assigning blame for Greinke’s problems, we can’t forget Greinke himself.

He has been significantly worse than he was a year ago. Most notably, Greinke’s strikeout rate has taken a tumble, falling from 9.50 K/9 last year to just 7.04 K/9 this season, ranking 21st in the American League in that category after finishing third in 2009. Fewer strikeouts increase the need for the Royals defense to make plays behind him, and their below-average gloves are rarely up to the task.

What’s caused Greinke suddenly to morph back into a strike-throwing, pitch-to-contact guy, rather than the blow-you-away ace we saw last year? His breaking ball.

A year ago, hitters swung and missed at 9 percent of Greinke’s curveballs, and a whopping 25 percent of his sliders. This year, hitters are whiffing on just 4 percent of curveballs and 11 percent of sliders.

The slider is clearly his out pitch — he throws it most often in two-strike counts. But he has not been able to get hitters to swing through the breaking balls nearly as often. To try to understand why this is happening, I asked our resident graphing guru, Dave Allen, to look at his off-speed stuff. Here’s what he found:

The first graph shows the vertical height of the curves and sliders that are being swung at, both this year and last. Hitters have adjusted to Greinke’s breaking balls: After chasing a lot of them down in the zone, they’ve now primarily been going after the ones he hangs up in the zone. The second graph shows why this has translated to fewer whiffs: Hitters have been laying off those low breaking balls that they couldn’t touch in 2009.

It appears opposing scouting reports on Greinke suggest hitters should take the two-strike breaking ball, which was Grienke’s bread-and-butter knockout pitch a year ago. And because hitters aren’t chasing breaking balls down out of the zone, Greinke will have to alter his two-strike approach if he wants to get back to Cy Young form.

At 32-12, the Tampa Bay Rays are on top of the baseball world. Despite playing in the toughest division in baseball, they currently enjoy a six-game gap over their nearest competitor, easily the largest lead of any first-place team in the game. They have outscored their opponents 240 to 138, and their plus-102 run differential is also the best in baseball by a significant margin. The Rays are a very good
baseball team.

However, while they have played well, there are several reasons to expect a pretty significant step back may be forthcoming.

Offensively, the Rays just haven’t been that good, despite being just six runs off of the league lead in scoring. They’ve racked up their runs through timely hitting rather than good hitting, the latter of which is much more likely to be sustained over a full season. As a team, the Rays are hitting .231/.311/.370 with the bases empty (10th best in the AL), but have hit .294/.368/.462 with runners on base (2nd best in AL), and those clutch hits have put a lot of extra runs on the
board.

How many? Based on their .333 Weighted On Base Average (league average is .326), we’d have expected the Rays to score 211 runs so far this year, or 29 fewer than they’ve actually scored. Historically, it’s been shown that 10 runs are worth about one win to a team, so the Rays have gained approximately three wins just by making their hits count. (To read specifics about how they’re producing clutch hitting see this post.)

While getting clutch hits is fun and nice to root for, historically this isn’t the kind of thing that teams can actually specialize in. Over time, pretty much all teams regress back to being about as good (or bad) at hitting with men on base as they are with the bases empty. Good hitting is a repeatable skill — timely hitting is (mostly) not.

So, while the Rays’ record is sparkly, and even their Pythagorean Expected Record is impressive, there are chinks in the armor. With Carlos Pena struggling, Ben Zobrist hitting like it’s 2006 again and the team struggling to find a productive designated hitter, this isn’t the offense of a team that will win 70 percent of its games. While their strong start to the season will help them in their quest for a playoff berth, the Rays would be wise to not rest on their laurels if they want to hold on to their spot atop the American League East.

The Minnesota Twins have issued the fewest walks of any team in baseball, despite playing in the league that features the designated hitter. There isn’t even another team within shouting distance of their 2.40 BB/9 ratio — the Phillies are next at 2.8 walks per nine — and the Twins’ strike-throwing ways are one of the main reasons they sit atop the American League Central.

Obviously, not giving out free passes is a good thing for a pitcher, but just how valuable of a skill is it? Let’s find out.

One way of measuring a single variable’s effect on an overall result is to determine the coefficient of determination. That is essentially a five-dollar phrase for “how much does Thing A cause Thing B to happen?” or, if you’re mathematically inclined, it’s the square of the correlation between two things.

This coefficient can be between 0 and 1, where zero is no relationship between two items and one is a perfect relationship (when one thing happens, so does the other, every single time), and these relationships can be either positive or negative — a negative correlation suggests that when one thing happens, the result is less
likely to occur.

So, what does this show the relationship between walks and winning percentage to be? The coefficient of determination between team BB/9 and team winning percentage since the wild-card era began is 0.21, a number that suggests that it’s not the only thing you need to win games, but it’s a pretty good thing to succeed at. In other words, it means that 21 percent of a team’s winning percentage can be explained simply by walk rate. And since 1995 (the dawn of the wild card), 57 percent of playoff teams have finished in the top 10 in all of baseball in BB/9 ratio.

While you still need to do things like score runs (as the Seattle Mariners are currently proving night in and night out), assembling a pitching staff of strike-throwers will get you well on your way to winning baseball games. Just ask the Twins.

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.

The San Diego Padres lost Sunday. This qualifies as news because lately they’ve been playing like the best team in baseball. Before Sunday’s loss, the Padres had won eight consecutive games, including sweeps of divisional foes Arizona and San Francisco. And in ESPN.com’s latest MLB Power Rankings, San Diego is No. 7.

Although superstar first baseman Adrian Gonzalez is doing his thing, hitting home runs in each of the past four games, the key to the Padres’ early success is a bunch of no-names.

Chase Headley, a former hotshot prospect who previously struggled to adjust to the big leagues, has found his stroke in April. His .371 batting average easily paces the team. Although the third baseman is not a huge power threat, he has seven extra-base hits and six stolen bases, providing all-around value. Based on FanGraphs’ wins above replacement statistic, Headley has been worth 1.1 wins (compared with Gonzalez’s 1.0), making him the team’s co-MVP through the first three weeks of the season.

Headley isn’t the only low-profile guy carrying his weight. Outfielder Will Venable has provided some much-needed power to a lineup that lacks punch beyond Gonzalez. His .262 average might not look like much on the surface, but nine of his 16 hits have gone for extra bases, giving him a ridiculous .312 isolated slugging percentage on the season. (Isolated slugging is simply slugging minus batting average, which allows us to measure the power output of a player by excluding singles.) For comparison, Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers posted a .303 ISO last season.

Wrapping up the trio of unheralded early-season Padres hitting stars is catcher Nick Hundley. Like Venable, his .262 batting average isn’t all that impressive, but instead of supplying power, Hundley is busting out the walking stick. He’s drawn eight free passes in 13 games, driving his on-base percentage up to .380, a remarkably high number for a backstop. Although the base on balls is a less sexy way to derive value, there is no more important offensive skill than the ability to get on base.

It’s unlikely that Headley, Venable and Hundley will continue to perform like stars because none of them has a track record that suggests he can sustain his performance. But if you’re looking for the reason the Padres are in first place, look no further than these three. And considering none of the members of the trio is older than 27, it’s possible they’ve turned a corner in their development. If they all continue on their current career-year course, the NL West will be a lot more interesting.

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.

Ricky Nolasco was one of the biggest disappointments in baseball last year, posting a 5.06 ERA when he was expected to be a front-line starter for the Marlins. However, if you peruse the leaderboards at FanGraphs, you may notice that Nolasco actually pitched really well most of the time; his 3.28 xFIP (which stands for Fielder Independent Pitching, and evaluates a pitcher based on his walk rate, strikeout rate, and ground ball rate) ranked fourth in the National League, ahead of both Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter. That bodes well for Nolasco in 2010.

Earlier today, Tom Tango listed a few pitchers who are bound to regress in 2010. I’m here to do the opposite. Along with Nolasco, here are seven other hurlers whose 2009 xFIP gives reason for optimism this season.

Getting back to Nolasco for a moment, the reason his ERA was nearly two full runs higher than his xFIP is because he was remarkably terrible with runners on base. With no one on, opponents hit just .222/.254/.351 off of him, but they teed off for a .317/.371/.562 line with a runner on base. As a result, Nolasco had a LOB% of 61.0 percent, the lowest of any NL starter by a huge distance. Mike Pelfrey had the second-lowest LOB% of any qualified starter at 66.7 percent, with league average being close to 70 percent.

Performance with men on base does not generally carry over from year to year, which is one of the reasons xFIP is a better predictor of future performance than ERA. For instance, in 2008, Nolasco was actually better with men on base than with the bases empty, and he was dominant with runners in scoring position, stranding 75.7 percent of runners. We should expect him to perform much more evenly between those two situations in 2010, and his ERA should go way down, even if he doesn’t really improve as a pitcher.

Below is a table of pitchers with who posted an ERA at least half a run higher than their xFIP in 2009 — you should expect this group to post substantially better results this year.

PLAYER               2009 xFIP           2009 ERA
Ricky Nolasco             3.28               5.06
Carl Pavano               3.96               5.10
Livan Hernandez           4.78               5.44
Cole Hamels               3.69               4.32
Jorge de la Rosa          3.76               4.38
Jason Hammel              3.81               4.33
Mike Pelfrey              4.52               5.03
Josh Beckett              3.35               3.86

With a new eight-year, $184 million contract that includes a full no-trade clause, the Minnesota Twins have essentially guaranteed their fan base that hometown hero Joe Mauer will be spending the majority of his career in the Twin Cities. The guaranteed money is steep — the contract is the fourth-largest in the history of the game — but only pays Mauer as if he’s worth an average of six wins per year over a replacement-level player. He was worth eight wins over a replacement-level catcher a year ago, so even if the power surge of 2009 doesn’t carry over, the Twins still have a good chance of getting their money’s worth.

The risk surrounding this deal is not about 2010 or 2011, but whether Mauer can continue to play well through age 35, when this new contract will expire. Catchers age in dog years, as the physical strain of crouching behind the plate 130-plus times per year takes its toll. However, a look through the history books shows that catchers who can really hit have not just survived, but thrived even after a decade in baseball.

Here are the 10 best-hitting catchers in baseball history through their age-26 season. While John Romano offers a cautionary tale of a guy who didn’t last much past 30, the
list is surprisingly positive for Twins fans. Romano is the exception, not the rule. Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench, Joe Torre and Yogi Berra were all excellent well beyond their age-27 peak, and there is certainly no discernable trend of these catchers flaming out in their early 30s.

While an eight-year deal is a risk for any player, history does not suggest that we should expect Mauer’s bat to wilt in the next few years. He may eventually have to change positions, but regardless of where he plays, we shoul