Archive for ESPN Insider 2011

Trevor Bauer’s 3-1 win over Fresno State on Saturday looked no different than any of his other starts this year. The UCLA right-hander fanned 14 batters, walked two, yielded just six hits, hiked his season record to 13-2, dropped his ERA to 1.25 and tallied his ninth straight complete game. The skinny 20-year-old flashed another number, though, that was right in line with his season average, one that has MLB draft hounds wincing even as Bauer looks ready to be a top-10 pick: 133 pitches.

The rise in pitch count awareness across all levels of baseball makes people panic when they see a college pitcher racking up 130-plus pitches per start; doubly so when the guy doing it skews much closer to Tim Lincecum than Roger Clemens at 6-foot-1, and only 175 pounds. But Bauer’s situation is different. He pitches just once a week, taking the mound every Saturday for the Bruins. Meanwhile, the benefits to his team are huge: Every Saturday, UCLA knows it has one of the nation’s best pitchers ready to go nine innings and give the bullpen a day off.

All of which makes us wonder: Why doesn’t a major league team try that? Mostly because it’s hard, and looks risky.

“The team trainer and pitching coach have to know the pitcher’s quality of strength, quality of conditioning, what kind of a workload he can handle,” said Glenn Fleisig, research director for the American Sports Medicine Institute and an expert in pitching biomechanics. “You have to choose the right guy, then monitor him very closely.”

Nobody knows his body better than Bauer, and he has shown a unique ability to carry the burden of a heavy workload while at UCLA. He’s a rabid student of pitching, learning the value of pitch sequencing, as well as effective velocity (a pitch looks faster when released a couple of feet closer to home plate, making a long-striding delivery and big arm extension advantages for pitchers who can pull it off). Like Lincecum, Bauer relies on flexibility and athleticism more than brute strength to generate velocity and movement on his pitches. He works out with medicine balls and resistance bands, and steers clear of the weight room.

“Bauer is trained to do this,” said UCLA manager John Savage, “this” referring both to his pitcher’s unique workout habits and his ability to throw complete games nearly at will. “He can handle the baseball better than anyone. You’ll see him playing Hacky Sack with a baseball like it’s connected to his toe. I compare him to Pete Maravich.”

If anyone would know about developing elite pitchers, it’s Savage. Another Savage pupil, Bauer’s teammate Gerrit Cole, is likely to be the No. 1 overall pick in Monday night’s draft. Another Savage protege, Mark Prior, held the Pac-10 strikeout record for a decade with 202 K’s … until Bauer rang up his 203rd batter of the season Saturday.

Not just any pitcher can successfully adopt the Bauer model of 130 pitches once a week, Savage said. Using Inside Edge’s statistical analysis, Savage found that Bauer’s fastball velocity often increased in the later innings of games; you’d want a big league pitcher to show a similar tendency, or at least maintain similar velocity throughout his start. The other thing that helps Bauer go deep into games is his six-pitch repertoire. Even the third or fourth time through the lineup, opposing hitters still don’t know what they’ll see from Bauer. If a pitcher can’t throw that many pitches for strikes, he’d better have one pitch — think Mariano Rivera’s cutter — that hitters might know is coming but still can’t hit.

A pitcher able and willing to take on the Bauer model of pitching could help his team in multiple ways. Giving the bullpen a night off once a week would not only keep relievers fresher, but also allow a team to lean more heavily on its better arms the rest of the week, with less risk of shoving lesser pitchers into high-leverage situations. An open-minded team with weak back-end starters could get even more creative. Assuming a now-typical seven-man major league bullpen, that team could limit starts for its crummy fifth starter and run out, say, three rested relievers for three innings each, every fifth day.

Many caveats apply, though.

Since the last few major league teams transitioned from four-man to five-man rotations in the 1980s, we’ve seen very little experimentation with that model. Any team that tried to break the mold would face heavy scrutiny, and any manager who tried something radically different would need a general manager willing to back his decision. Also, even the best pitchers have a bad day once in a while; a manager might have to occasionally pull his once-a-week ace, both to give his team a better chance to win and to avoid a lousy day turning into a 180-pitch nightmare.

Then there are salary considerations, which already contribute to managers leaving in struggling starters through five innings, and using closers only in save situations. Would a starting pitcher embrace a system that might limit him to 26 starts a season, giving him fewer opportunities to win games? Or would teams worry that a system which encourages a pitcher to throw 20-plus complete games a season might lead to higher asking prices during salary arbitration and free agency discussions?

The biggest concern would be managing workload and preventing injuries. A starter who throws 26 nine-inning starts in a season would total 234 innings, around what aces like Roy Halladay and CC Sabathia typically produce already. Would spacing out those innings differently make injuries more likely? More broadly, are five-man rotations the best way to handle a pitching staff?

“There’s no science or medicine that says every fifth day is the answer — it’s really just trial and error over the years,” Fleisig said. “Pitch counts shouldn’t be used as a rule, either, but rather as a guide for when a guy might be running out of steam. There’s no rule that says you can’t try things, no rule that says every team has to do the same thing.”

What you want to watch, Fleisig said, are microtears. Every time a pitcher pitches, a weekend warrior goes for a three-mile run, or a bodybuilder bench-presses, he develops soreness — the body’s way of alerting you to little tears in your ligaments and tendons. The body recovers, repairs those tears, and gets stronger between workouts, or in a pitcher’s case, between starts. If you work out too hard, you can develop tears too big to repair. But there’s no rule that says that point should be 100 pitches, Fleisig said; some pitchers might need to be pulled earlier; others a lot later.

Savage closely tracks each inning Bauer throws, looking for high-stress innings or even high-stress batters who potentially create the kind of fatigue that could prove harmful down the road. So far, pushing to 130 pitches or more hasn’t resulted in injuries or ineffectiveness for Bauer.

That might be doable for certain big league pitchers too, Fleisig said. “You could get those microtears from 130 pitches and be good to go five, six, or seven days later, sure.”

But?

“With some guys, 130 pitches might take you well past the point of fatigue. You develop tears that are too big. After that, you can wait five, 10, 20, even 100 days and still not be recovered.”

If fortune really does favor the bold, maybe we’ll see a major league team go this route one day. Who knows? Maybe the guy who’ll make it work will be the prototype: Trevor Bauer himself.

It’s all too easy to diagnose the Mets’ problem this season: Their pitching has been a nightmare. With them sitting in fourth place in the National League East at 27-31, their offense has been passable, ranking 15th in the majors in runs scored despite missing David Wright and Ike Davis for extended periods of time. Meanwhile, their 4.33 team ERA ranks as the third worst in the NL ahead of only the Cubs and Astros. They already have had to use seven different starting pitchers in games, and they have had two starters — Chris Capuano and Mike Pelfrey — post ERAs of more than 5.00 while throwing 25 percent of the team’s total innings pitched.

This should come as little surprise to Mets fans, as the team entered the season with a very uncertain, risk-filled rotation. But while they expected some pitchers to struggle this year, there’s one player the Mets were counting on to bolster the front end of their rotation: R.A. Dickey.

Upon arriving in New York last year, Dickey immediately became a favorite among Mets fans. How could you hate the guy? He’s a knuckleballer — a journeyman pitcher who had never had extended success before in his career. He is well spoken and humble, and his name makes the 11-year-old in each of us smirk. He finished 2010 with a 2.84 ERA in 174 innings pitched, and the Mets rewarded him with a two-year, $7.8 million contract in the offseason. If their rotation was going to be a mess, at least they would have one spot they could feel comfortable about.

Well, so much for that. Dickey has struggled early this season, posting a 4.39 ERA. His walk rate has increased, he’s allowing more hits and home runs, and he’s not getting batters to swing and miss on pitches quite as often. So what’s wrong with him? Was his success last season a mere mirage, or is there reason to believe he will improve going forward? Have no fear, Mets fans — the Dickey you know and love is only a slight adjustment away.

To understand Dickey’s troubles so far this season, it helps to understand his pitch repertoire. Unlike fellow knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, Dickey essentially has three pitches: a slow knuckleball, a fast knuckleball and a sinker. His slow knuckleball ranges around 76 to 79 mph, while his fast knuckler has been known to peak in the mid-to-low 80s. He throws both knuckleballs equally often, although he uses his slow knuckler early in counts and his fast as a knockout pitch, and together they account for around 80 percent of his pitches. The remaining 20 percent of the time, Dickey throws his sinking fastball, which averages around 84 mph — compared to Wakefield, Dickey throws heat.

This added velocity on his knuckleball causes batters to hit a large number of ground balls; when combined with his sinker, this fast knuckleball gives Dickey a 56 percent ground ball rate — a very high rate. Ground balls are a very good outcome for a pitcher to get, as they result in hits only around 23 percent of the time and have a very low likelihood of turning into an extra-base hit.

This season, Dickey’s pitching repertoire has remained nearly exactly the same as last year. He is still throwing his fast and slow knuckleballs in similar counts and in the same proportion, and his fastball has remained as effective as last year. As such, his problem stems from the one thing that has changed slightly from last season: his knuckleball’s movement.

The knuckleball’s strength is also its Achilles’ heel: It’s totally unpredictable. When a pitcher releases a knuckler, he typically aims for the middle of the strike zone, since he has no way of knowing in which direction the pitch will break. But while knuckleball pitchers can’t control a knuckler’s movement, they can control how much it breaks. Depending on how they release the pitch, they can subtly influence whether the pitch breaks only a handful of inches or if it dances a full foot away from where the pitcher was aiming.

As Dickey has stated in the past, finding the optimal break on a knuckleball is a lot like finding your golf swing: It’s more a matter of feel than anything. Make the pitch break too much, and it will end up outside the zone. But if you don’t make the pitch break enough, you are essentially leaving the batter a juicy 78 mph fat one over the heart of the plate, begging for him to crush it.

For whatever reason, Dickey’s knuckleballs are not dancing as much right now. Last season, the majority of his knuckleballs ended up breaking 10 inches or less; this season, they are breaking around 7 inches or less. On one hand, this is a good thing — Dickey has thrown around 5 percent more first-pitch strikes this season, and his pitches are finding the zone more often. But if his knuckler doesn’t dance enough, it also makes it much easier to hit. Six of his seven home runs allowed have come off knuckleballs, with four of them sitting right over the heart of the plate. And when batters hit a ball in play against Dickey, it’s falling for a hit 32 percent of the time, which speaks partly to bad luck and partly to batters hitting the ball hard off him.

Although Dickey’s ERA this season is considerably higher than what he posted last season, he’s not that far from recapturing his success. While he is unlikely to post another ERA in the 2s, there is no reason he can’t continue to be an above-average pitcher for the Mets, eating innings and posting an ERA in the mid-to-high 3s. All he needs to do is rediscover his touch with his knuckleball and get it dancing a little more.

When it comes to shortstops, the National League is stacked. Troy Tulowitzki is generally accepted to be one of the game’s best players, and it was no surprise when he was selected first overall in ESPN’s Franchise Player Draft on Wednesday. The NL also boasts Hanley Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins and a revitalized Jose Reyes for those who like guys who can run, and Stephen Drew’s production at the position is one of the reasons the Diamondbacks are surprising contenders in the NL West. Toss in 21-year-old Starlin Castro, and there will be some tough decisions to be made when it comes time to pick who will represent the Senior Circuit at the position in next month’s All-Star Game.

Over in the American League, however, it’s a different story. Derek Jeter is the big name but his skills have eroded to the point that he’s barely contributing anymore, and the rest of the teams in the Junior Circuit field shortstops who are mostly anonymous to the national public. However, there’s one shortstop in the AL who deserves more recognition than he’s received to date and has shown that he’s good enough to hang with the big boys at the position.

Alexei Ramirez has quietly become the best player on the White Sox and is perhaps the best-kept secret in all of baseball. How underrated is he? He’s not even in the top five in voting at the position for next month’s All-Star Game, although at this point, he’s clearly the best shortstop the AL has to offer.

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, when the White Sox shifted him across the bag from second base to shortstop, Ramirez has posted the highest UZR of any player at the position in either league, even ahead of defensive specialists such as Cesar Izturis, Elvis Andrus and Brendan Ryan.

And unlike that trio, Ramirez can actually hit.

He’s not quite Tulowitzki at the plate, but Ramirez has legitimate power; he averaged 18 home runs per season during his first three years in the big leagues. He combines above-average power with quality contact skills, allowing him to avoid strikeouts and keep his batting average at a more than respectable level. Ramirez has never been the most patient hitter at the plate, but he’s nearly doubled his walk rate from last year, and he’s currently only seven walks away from tying his entire 2010 total.

Even as offense around the league has decreased the past few years, Ramirez has continued to improve, and he is now on pace to have the best season of his career. In fact, the 2.7 wins above replacement that he has accumulated so far this season is second only to Reyes among shortstops in MLB. This isn’t just a flukey hot start to the season, either — Ramirez has been legitimately terrific for several years now.

Since the beginning of the 2009 season, Ramirez has posted 9.3 WAR, the fourth-highest total of any shortstop in baseball, American League or National League. The only players ahead of him? Tulowitzki, Ramirez and Jeter, and I doubt you’ll find too many people who think that Jeter is still a high-quality player at this point in his career.

And yet, Ramirez is never mentioned as one of the best in the league at the position. Perhaps it is partially due to the fact that he spent his rookie year as a poor defensive second baseman who made a lot of mental mistakes, or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t fit the mold of a high-profile player. He doesn’t have the flair of Reyes or make as many highlight-reel plays as Andrus, but the reality is that Ramirez has produced at an elite level since moving to the position.

Reyes is going to cash in on the scarcity of shortstops in baseball this winter when he lands a monster contract as a free agent, but his signing will only continue to reinforce how valuable Ramirez is to the White Sox. After getting away with paying him just a total of $6.3 million over the first four years of his career (including just $2.75 million this season), the White Sox were able to lock up the next four years of his career for a total of just $32.5 million, a fraction of what Reyes will get in the free-agent market this winter, and just a drop in the bucket compared to the massive 10-year, $157 million contract the Rockies gave Tulowitzki.

Not only is Ramirez producing an an All-Star level for the White Sox, he’s doing so while earning a fraction of what he’s worth, and the contract extension he signed will keep it that way for the foreseeable future. Underappreciated and underpaid, Ramirez is truly one of the game’s hidden gems.

Both the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves entered the season as contenders in their respective divisions, but both also began the year with similar concerns at third base. At this stage of their careers, Chipper Jones and Scott Rolen are incredibly similar players. While they still are capable of providing value to their teams when healthy, neither of them are exactly iron men anymore; both Jones and Rolen have bodies that are breaking down after long, illustrious careers in the big leagues. However, both teams decided to go into the year hoping that their aging stars at the hot corner would produce and be able to stay on the field, as neither team has much in the way of in-house alternatives.

Unsurprisingly, both players have already dealt with injuries this season. Rolen spent time on the disabled list with a strained left shoulder, while Jones is attempting to play through a small tear in his knee. Both teams knew the risks involved in employing such fragile players, but neither team seemed to have much of a backup plan if and when Jones and Rolen suffered injuries.

With the Reds and Braves expected to be battling for their division crowns all season long, that oversight could be the difference between making the playoffs and watching them from home.

Atlanta and Cincinnati must overcome some tough competition if they hope to win their respective divisions. The Braves, who currently trail the Philadelphia Phillies by 3.5 games, must find a way to beat one of the strongest pitching staffs in recent memory. The Reds, on the other hand, are in a three-way dogfight for the division with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Brewers.

In both situations, one game could ultimately decide who takes home the division crown. In other words, the difference in value between Jones/Rolen and their potential replacements could be the deciding factor behind whether either team returns to the postseason.

The failure to act is even more incredulous considering both players were dealing with injuries at the conclusion of last season. Jones suffered a career-threatening ACL tear in August, while various injuries led to a poor second half for Rolen, in which he completely stopped hitting for power. Their injury history reads much deeper, of course, as neither player has played 150-plus games in a season since 2003.

While the free-agent class wasn’t particularly strong at third base, neither team even elected to test the waters. Cincinnati may have considered other options at the position, but ultimately settled on re-signing Miguel Cairo, who experienced a fluky rebirth in 2010. Atlanta chose to stand pat, hoping that Chipper would recover from his injury in time to contribute once the season started. If injuries struck again, both teams seemed comfortable sticking with their internal options at the position.

Unfortunately, this strategy may not work for either team. Cairo had a nice year filling in for Rolen last season, but he’s a career journeyman who benefited from good luck on balls in play. In 83 plate appearances this season, Cairo has gotten off to a strong start once again. He’ll be exposed if he’s asked to play every day, however, as his strong start has small sample size fluke written all over it.

Along with Cairo, the Reds have also used Paul Janish and Juan Francisco in Rolen’s absence. While Francisco has displayed power in his minor league career, he has virtually no plate discipline. If pressed into a starting role, major league pitchers would quickly expose Francisco as a free-swinging hacker; Janish’s bat barely plays at short, and profiles even worse at third. Moving Janish over to third also exposes Cincinnati’s lack of depth at other positions, as it forces Edgar Renteria into a full-time role as well.

While the Braves entered the season with a stronger backup plan, their situation is also far from ideal. Martin Prado can play third effectively if Chipper goes down with an injury, but Atlanta was initially counting on Prado to play left field this season. Brooks Conrad would be the next logical option to replace Jones, but pitchers could exploit Conrad’s high strikeout rate if he is pushed into a full-time role, and his high-profile defensive lapses have given the Braves fits.

Both teams are currently experiencing the dangers of relying on injury-prone players. While neither Jones nor Rolen is currently on the disabled list, it’s not encouraging that both players have already dealt with injuries this season. Based on their injury history, it’s more than likely their backups will be pushed into important roles as the season progresses. Due to the perception that few games will separate the division winners in the NL East and NL Central, the performance of those backups could play a major role in whether the Reds or Braves are playing in October.

Eleven years removed from his MVP season, well past his prime and near the end of his career, Jason Giambi doesn’t play much anymore. When the Rockies penciled him into the lineup Thursday, it marked just his second start in nearly a month.

But the 40-year-old slugger showed he had something left in the tank, blasting three homers and knocking in all seven of Colorado’s runs in a blowout win over the Phillies. In the process, Giambi accomplished a feat that’s becoming increasingly rare in baseball: providing a big contribution off the bench.

A generation ago, teams carried 10-man pitching staffs, allowing managers to deploy a litany of platoons and employ ace pinch hitters, while still saving room for speedy pinch runners and defensive replacements who could make big plays late in a game. Before Bobby Cox built a dynasty in Atlanta, he managed the first winning clubs in Blue Jays history, using his deep bench to field platoons at multiple positions. Meanwhile, professional pinch hitters such as Manny Mota and Wallace Johnson stayed employed, despite having little value other than their ability to bag a base hit late in a game.

Today, teams use 12-, even 13-man pitching staffs, leaving little room to collect a group of quality backups. For all the advantages managers gain by being able to play bullpen matchups, they’re giving a lot of that back by trotting out shallow benches.

Though it’s tough to peg one person for starting the trend of bloated bullpens and tiny benches, Tony LaRussa certainly helped get the movement going with the way he built his pen around Dennis Eckersley while managing the Oakland A’s in the late 1980s.

Baseball being a game of copycats, other teams started expanding the size of their bullpens, hoping to tap into that Oakland magic. The trend rapidly accelerated once pitch counts and more conservative usage of starting pitchers came into vogue. Today, a typical American League team carries just four bench players.

One of the best ways to handle this severe limitation is to build a versatile roster. The Tampa Bay Rays have Ben Zobrist, who doubles as one of the better hitters in the league and a multi-position threat, having played everywhere except pitcher and catcher in 2009, then skipping just pitcher, catcher and shortstop last season. Adding Sean Rodriguez (seven positions played last year) allows the Rays to platoon, pinch run and pinch hit as well as any club with just four bench guys possibly can. (Why the Rays have bothered with a seven-man ‘pen while their long relief man almost never pitches is another question, and a strike against their usually sharp manager Joe Maddon.)

Through the season’s first six weeks, however, the honor of baseball’s best bench goes to another team: LaRussa’s own St. Louis Cardinals. Perhaps realizing what he’s wrought with his bullpen tinkering, LaRussa has long targeted the most versatile players to man his bench, shying away from the Matt Stairs types who can get you an occasional pinch-hit homer but little else.

Hole Cards
Owning baseball’s best bench is one of many reasons the St. Louis Cardinals sit in first place in the NL Central.

PLAYER PA AVG/OBP/SLG
Jon Jay 89 .312/.398/.455
Allen Craig 80 .319/.400/.507
Nick Punto 77 .262/.355/.385
Gerald Laird 48 .214/.313/.381

This year’s club is no exception. The three bench players who’ve seen the most playing time — Allen Craig, Jon Jay and Nick Punto — have played four, three and three positions, respectively. All three have hit well, too (see table), so much so that Craig has seized the starting second-base job with Skip Schumaker on the disabled list. LaRussa’s penchant for flexing players at different spots doesn’t just extend to relative no-names either. To make room for other players, Albert Pujols has played two games at third base this year, the first time he’s handled that position in nine years. As much as Matt Holliday and Lance Berkman have supercharged the offense and Jaime Garcia, Kyle McLellan and Kyle Lohse have been revelations in the rotation, the Cardinals might not be in first place if not for the contributions of their reserves.

The contending team that might have the weakest bench is Philadelphia. Though the Phillies knew they had a major injury risk with Chase Utley, they failed to acquire quality backups, watching Wilson Valdez (.234 AVG/.261 OBP/.290 SLG, not far off his career numbers) and Pete Orr (.230/.299/.279, and ditto) struggle mightily in Utley’s place. Brian Schneider, 34, predictably flailed (.173/.218/.327) behind Carlos Ruiz at catcher before going on the DL. With Raul Ibanez looking close to the end and All-Star center fielder Shane Victorino on the DL, backup outfielder Ben Francisco’s performance (.216/.329/.360) has also been a letdown, though his career numbers are considerably better.

With a team heavy on star power but showing age or injuries or both at several positions, the Phillies could sorely use some bench reinforcements to hold off the upstart Marlins and Braves in the NL East. Given GM Ruben Amaro’s history of making in-season upgrades (including Stairs, Professional Hitter himself), we could well see that happen in the next few weeks.

Matt Garza is good. Very good. His stuff, as many a catcher will attest, is as filthy as a chimney sweep. Yet, despite this, he has produced the results of a merely above-average starter. This year, in-the-know Cubs fans have observed The Tale of Two Garzas — the story of a devastating strikeout pitcher who just can’t seem to keep the scoreboard clean.

What gives? Which is the real Matt Garza? The one who can make Albert Pujols look like Neifi Perez, or the one who watches opponents slap pitches for key double after key double? Well, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Garza is never hard to find in a dugout. Leaning on the railing, nervously spitting sunflower seeds, waiting for any reason to vault over the railing and scream a little, the Cubs third starting pitcher is always totally immersed in the game, whether he’s pitching or still four days away from taking the mound. But the Cubs didn’t trade a hefty slice of their farm system for a cheerleader — they wanted Garza win some games. Unfortunately for the Cubs, that hasn’t happened very often this year.

When the Cubs acquired Garza this offseason, they were getting a starter who had pitched nearly 200 innings for three straight seasons with an ERA under 4.00. So far in 2011, Garza has been decent, but not lights-out-go-to-bed-you’re-grounded, sporting a 3.72 ERA.

After his trade to the North Side, the common fear surrounded his stadium change. Despite his good ERA with the Tampa Bay Rays, Garza allowed more than the league average in homers in both 2009 and 2010 — despite playing in a park known to depress power numbers. Moving to Wrigley Field, where a windy day can transform a popup into a double and a Mohawk into a comb-over, Garza looked poised for some serious struggles.

Instead, he changed his approach and found a new form of success.

In 2010, Garza threw his four-seam fastball (the straight or rising fastball) about 60 percent of the time, essentially challenging hitters to do their worst. This approach, coupled with the Rays’ superior defense, made Garza relatively successful. However, without Evan Longoria snaring grounders like a demigod, the righty needed a more defensive-independent approach. So he replaced his extra four-seamers with a slew of bendy and wobbly pitches: more two-seamers (22 percent), sliders (21 percent), changeups (12 percent) and curves (11 percent).

Garza has gone from a fastball-obsessed flamethrower to a crafty right-hander, who happens to sport a flammable fastball. The result has been a significant uptick in swinging strikes (7.5 percent in 2010 to 11.1 percent in 2011). Only his curveball seems to have lost some whiffs, but nearly every other pitch has induced many more frustrated batters; his changeup alone went from 33 percent whiffs to more than 54 percent.

His ERA (3.72) is nearly his career best; his strikeouts per nine innings (10.99) are way up from his career norm (7.36); and despite the extra K’s, his walks per nine (3.23) are near his career norm (3.18). Everything but the ERA screams, “Elite!”

In the National League, Garza gets to face pitchers and pinch hitters — essentially giving an extra one or two strikeouts every game over his former league — but still, no one anticipated that Garza would (1) change his approach and (2) become a strikeout machine because of it.

Fielding independent pitching (FIP), a statistic which combines strikeouts, walks, homers and hit-by-pitches to predict ERA, suggests Garza has actually been playing at a sub-2.00 ERA level. Through his first nine starts, Garza has mustered a 1.82 FIP, good for second in the majors behind Roy Halladay.

So is Garza on the road to Cy Young consideration? Well, no. Not really.

One of the reasons Garza’s FIP is so low is the same reason his ERA is so high: BABIP. Garza’s batting average on balls in play is extraordinarily high this year. Coming into his 10th start, Garza brings with him the highest BABIP of his career (.362). For pitchers, balls in play tend to go for only about a .300 average. When they fluctuate from that number, it oftentimes means the pitcher is rather lucky or unlucky.

Garza’s high BABIP, which is about 60 points higher than his career norm, has not only allowed extra runs to score (increasing his ERA), but has also helped depress his FIP. Like the dandelion, which chokes out the grass but offers its own little flower, Garza’s high and unlucky BABIP has led to more strikeouts. As noted before, Garza’s K’s are way up (about 55 percent up per inning). However, if we look at his strikeouts per batter faced, he has only gone from 19 percent (in 2008 through 2010) to 28 percent — up only 9 percent, not 55 percent.

On top of that, Garza has allowed only one home run this year, after allowing 28 in 2010 and 25 in 2009. Though his new pitch selection approach may certainly play a role, he still appears to have Lady Luck’s favor. Only 2.4 percent of Garza’s fly balls have gone deep this year, despite allowing around 10 percent the last two years. One must expect, especially given his home stadium, that he will return to his career norm.

So altogether, the Cubs have one tough pitcher to predict: He’s changed his approach significantly and seems to have increased his strikeouts; he’s pitched better than his record (2-4) implies and maybe even better than his ERA suggests; but he’s also pitched worse than his stellar K/9 and FIP report.

Which Garza will the Cubs get moving forward? Probably one similar to what we saw from 2008 through 2010, but over the next few years, Garza will likely continue to mature into one of the league’s better right-handers, improving to a 3.25-3.50 ERA pitcher over the coming years. For now, though, his new approach will likely only improve his play marginally, taking him from a 4.00 ERA pitcher to a 3.80 ERA pitcher.

In the meantime, he’ll at least be one hell of cheerleader.

Carl Crawford became a top-of-the-order hitter in his first full big league season, at age 21. Batting almost exclusively in the top three spots, he developed into an All-Star and the best player in Tampa Bay Rays history. He banked the best season of his career in 2010, making his fourth All-Star team, winning the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards, finishing seventh in MVP voting, and propelling Tampa Bay to an achievement few ever thought possible: their second AL East title in three years. His success was so overwhelming, the Boston Red Sox gave Crawford a seven-year, $142 million contract, the second-richest deal in club history.

Then the Red Sox started the season 0-2. Terry Francona promptly dropped his left fielder to No. 7 in the Boston order — the lowest Crawford had batted since 2003 — against Rangers lefty Matt Harrison on Sunday.

But really, it was the other way around. For eight long years, Crawford’s managers misused him. Boston’s 0-2 start simply offered an excuse to make what might turn out to be one of Francona’s smartest moves of 2011.

In exactly 1,600 career plate appearances versus left-handed pitching, Crawford has hit just .270/.315/.381. For comparison’s sake, Jeff Francoeur, one of the most notorious hackers of his generation and a whipping boy for many baseball writers and analysts, has hit .268/.310/.425 for his career. Even Neifi Perez’s .672 career OPS isn’t far off Crawford’s .696 mark versus lefties.

Despite what’s now nearly a decade of futility against southpaws, Crawford has never seen anything close to a platoon, let alone been dropped from his perch at or near the top of the order. At first, this made some sense. When Crawford began his career in 2002, the then-Devil Rays were a joke of a team, licking their wounds after the ill-fated Hit Show saw Greg Vaughn, Jose Canseco and Vinny Castilla blow up the team’s building efforts and financial situation in one offseason spending orgy. Tampa Bay saw a future star in Crawford, and wanted to give him every chance to grow into a successful everyday player.

Lou Piniella took the reins in 2003, found little in the way of dynamic, young talent and installed Crawford as his leadoff hitter. In 184 times up versus lefties that year, Crawford hit an abysmal .263/.283/.302. The next season, Crawford saw big improvement in both his overall game, and in his efforts against left-handers. His OPS versus lefties spiked 180 points (.295/.346/.418). But in 2005, Crawford’s production versus lefties nosedived again, to .244/.293/.326, the D-Rays won 70 or fewer games for the eighth straight year, and Piniella was out of a job.

Joe Maddon took over in 2006, rightly waiting to see what his young players had to offer before making big decisions. What he saw from Crawford in the next two years was a hitter who looked like he could hack it against pitchers of all stripes. Crawford hit a solid .288/.341/.436 versus lefties in ’06, then a career-best .318/.350/.437 against them in ’07. The Rays were maturing as a young club, a new wave of intriguing players had filtered in, and Crawford was going to be Maddon’s go-to guy, a five-tool player who would play (and bat high in the order) against everyone, no matter the circumstances.

That’s when the law of averages kicked in, and Crawford’s truer tendencies re-emerged. From 2008 through 2010, Crawford hit a blistering .316/.367/.493 versus righties, but just .259/.312/.372 versus lefties, right around his career average. Ever the lineup tinkerer and fearless decision maker, Maddon showed he would do just about anything to find the smallest edges — except drop Crawford lower in the order versus left-handed pitchers.

Left with a problem
These left-handed hitters are all considered stars. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at their career numbers against southpaws.

Player OPS vs. RHP OPS vs. LHP
Ryan Howard 1.039 .769
Josh Hamilton .984 .786
Prince Fielder .974 .796
Andre Ethier .915 .676
Carl Crawford .816 .696
Whether it was the team’s 0-2 start or other factors that prompted Francona to drop Crawford down to seventh in the order yesterday, the Red Sox could be better for it, while also being unique in taking such action. The Phillies’ Ryan Howard has always been a mediocre hitter versus lefties, posting a career OPS of just .769 against them, with an awful .316 on-base percentage. But the politics and optics of the situation dictate that Charlie Manuel keep batting his $125 million slugger in the middle of the lineup against any and all pitchers, just as other managers stubbornly give prime lineup spots to other hitters when career-long tendencies suggest they’re wrong in doing so.

The Red Sox should still play Crawford every day. As the game’s best defensive left fielder, and one of baseball’s most dynamic baserunners and base stealers, he offers plenty of value even when he’s not hitting. There’s even an argument to be made that his speed is even more valuable at the bottom of the lineup because he can take chances without worrying about robbing the likes of Kevin Youkilis and Adrian Gonzalez of RBI opportunities.

Once the Sox’s lineup gets cooking, it will be very interesting to see if Francona keeps Crawford near the bottom of the lineup.

The strength of the San Francisco Giants is undoubtedly their pitching staff, which annually ranks among the best in baseball. Led by ace Tim Lincecum and a collection of hard-throwing relievers, the Giants once again led all of baseball in strikeout rate last year, but the thing that makes their pitchers special isn’t their ability to miss bats, but rather their unique ability to rack up a ton of outs on fly balls.

This might not sound like a particularly sexy skill for a pitching staff to possess, but most fly balls that are not caught become extra-base hits and about 10 percent of the time they fly over the wall for a home run. Pitchers who give up a lot of balls in the air tend to do so because they throw a lot of fastballs up in the strike zone, where hitters are prone to chasing pitches that they can’t get the bat on. That’s why a lot of fly ball pitchers are also good strikeout pitchers. The problem is that when a pitcher who lives in the high part of the strike zone misses with his location the ball can get hit very hard and far, so these pitchers often give up a lot of homers; for example, Ted Lilly had the lowest rate of ground balls in baseball last year and gave up a staggering 1.49 home runs per nine innings.

While most pitchers tend to hover around a rate of 10 percent of their fly balls leaving the yard, this does not hold true for pitchers who wear the Giants’ jersey, and it hasn’t for quite some time. Only 8 percent of the fly balls allowed by San Francisco pitchers in 2010 went over the fence, and as usual that was the best mark in baseball. This isn’t anything new — the Giants’ staff has been beating the league average on home runs per fly ball rate for a decade now.

Since 2002 (the first year our batted ball data is available at FanGraphs), the league average HR/FB rate is 10.4 percent with 27 of the 30 teams within 1 percent of that mark on either side. Very few pitchers have shown a constant ability to post a better than average rate in this category over large amounts of innings, so this isn’t a skill that teams have been able to cultivate among their pitchers. Except for the Giants. Their HR/FB rate since 2002 is just 8.6 percent, and the gap between them and the next best team (Oakland at 9.3 percent) is equal in distance between the second-place team and the ninth-place team (the Dodgers).

Put simply, no team is even close to the Giants in keeping its fly balls in the yard, and it hasn’t really mattered who the pitchers on the staff have been. While you might suspect that the low HR/FB rates posted by Lincecum, Matt Cain and Jason Schmidt are simply due to their high-quality pitches, the team has also seen the likes of Russ Ortiz, Brett Tomko and Matt Morris prevent home runs during their stints in San Francisco. And, to make things even more interesting, none of the pitchers who have shown this ability while in the Bay Area have been able to take those skills to other cities and keep their home run rates as low as they were previously.

The most natural explanation in situations like this would be the home park that the team plays in, and indeed AT&T Park is one of the toughest places in baseball for a left-handed hitter to hit a home run. The long distance to the right-field wall, combined with the wall’s height and proximity to a body of water which can produce some stiff winds, make it a challenging place for lefties to pull the ball out of the park.

However, the way their home park plays does nothing to explain the fact they also have the lowest rate of home runs per fly balls on the road since 2002 as well, coming in at just 9.1 percent. That’s higher than their home mark of 8.0 percent, but still quite a bit better than average. It is true that their road games involve a number of stints in Petco Park, but their division also includes the homer-havens of Colorado and Arizona, so we can’t give credit to their rivals’ parks, either.

Despite turning over the pitching staff several times and pitching in a way that suggest that their home park is not the sole factor (though it is certainly one of the factors), the Giants have continually been among the league leaders in home run prevention. The only constant during the past nine years has been Dave Righetti, who has been the pitching coach for that entire stretch. When I asked him about this phenomenon during spring training, however, he didn’t seem to have any more answers than I did.

He dismissed the notion that he encourages his pitchers to walk hitters rather than groove pitches that they might hit out of the park, responding with a firm “absolutely not” when asked if he coached his pitchers to avoid giving in when behind in the count. I also asked him if he or the organization specifically targeted or developed pitchers who they thought could limit home runs, and he said that they did not — they try to get pitchers who could limit walks and get strikeouts, just like everyone else.

And yet, whether it is intentional or not, the Giants have been able to cultivate a pitching staff that consistently gives up few home runs despite putting the ball in the air with some frequency. Even during the playoffs last year, facing some of the game’s most impressive power hitters, they allowed just nine home runs in 15 postseason games.

Whether it’s Righetti, the park, the pitchers or some really long-lasting good fortune — or, most likely, a combination of all of these things — the Giants have been better at preventing home runs than any other team in baseball, and it is perhaps the biggest reason that their pitching has annually been among the best in the game.

Don Mattingly won his first game as a major league manager Thursday night, as his Los Angeles Dodgers knocked off the San Francisco Giants behind a stellar pitching performance from Clayton Kershaw. However, while all of his moves “worked” in retrospect, Mattingly made one big rookie mistake that could have cost the Dodgers the game — he left Kershaw in the game too long.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Dodgers capitalized on some defensive miscues to break the scoreless tie and take a 1-0 lead. However, after Rod Barajas lined out for the second out of the inning, Bruce Bochy opted to intentionally walk Jamey Carroll to load the bases and bring Kershaw to the plate, forcing Mattingly to choose whether to let Kershaw hit in order to pitch the seventh inning or go to the bench and then use a reliever to get the next three outs.

Mattingly chose to stick with Kershaw, which is understandable considering how well he had been pitching. However, like football coaches who punt far too often on fourth down, that’s a conservative call that actually lowers a team’s chances of winning.

Let’s start with Kershaw’s offense — he’s one of the worst hitting pitchers in baseball, having accumulated just 10 hits (all singles) in 132 major league at-bats. He’s drawn just four walks and struck out 46 times, and his lack of ability to hit the ball with any authority has led to a miserable .076/.103/.076 career mark. And remember, that’s his line against pitchers of varying quality — if he consistently had to face Tim Lincecum, his numbers would be even worse.

Charitably, we can say that there was approximately a 7.5 percent chance that Kershaw would have reached base safely in that situation, extending the rally and pushing the Dodgers’ lead to two or three runs. Those odds are not good, and predictably, Kershaw bounced out to first base to end the inning.

If Mattingly had chosen to pinch hit, he likely would have turned to Marcus Thames or Xavier Paul. While Paul would have given them a left-handed bat to counter the right-handed Lincecum on the mound, he’s also a young player without much of a track record in the major leagues, so the safe assumption is that Thames would have been the one to get the call.

While he’s on the roster for his ability to hit lefties, Thames still holds a career line of .236/.296/.480 against right-handed pitchers. Again, we have to adjust those numbers downward to adjust for Lincecum’s abilities and the fact pinch-hitters fare worse than normal on average, but Thames still had at least a 20 percent chance of getting hit and another 7.5 percent chance of getting on via hit batsman, walk or error. Thames was four times as likely to produce a positive outcome in a critical situation in which any base hit would have likely plated multiple runs, and he also presented a real opportunity for a grand slam that would have essentially put the game out of reach.

There was a significant opportunity cost to letting Kershaw bat in that situation, and Mattingly traded away a real chance for an expanded lead for the right to keep Kershaw on the hill in the seventh inning. Kershaw rewarded his manager with a three-up, three-down inning, but given that he was facing the 6-7-8 hitters in the Giants’ order, this was a job that could have easily been entrusted to Matt Guerrier.

After all, the Dodgers thought enough of Guerrier to sign him to a three-year contract as a free agent this winter. Guerrier is not nearly as good as Kershaw, but he’s an effective reliever, and he could be trusted to get out Miguel Tejada, Brandon Belt and Pablo Sandoval, especially with the pitcher’s spot looming if the Giants were able to get a rally going. However, this isn’t about Guerrier — the run expectation of the two situations is so large that Mattingly could have handed the ball to almost any other reliever in the seventh inning and still come out ahead.

The difference between Thames and Kershaw hitting in that situation was more than two-tenths of a run in expected value. Kershaw’s career 3.17 ERA translates to an expectation of .35 runs allowed per inning, so Mattingly could have chosen a pitcher with an ERA of 5.00 (.55 runs per inning, creating that same two-tenths of a run gap) and had it be a push. Using Thames to pinch hit and any reliever with an expected ERA below 5.00 would have been a better bet than letting Kershaw bat for himself and then pitch in the seventh inning.

In the end, it didn’t end up costing the Dodgers a win, but this is the baseball version of punting on fourth-and-1 from your opponent’s 30-yard line. Mattingly can create a significant advantage for his team by more aggressively pinch hitting for his starting pitcher in high-leverage situations and accepting the fact that, while the reliever will not be as good as the pitcher you’re replacing, the drastic upgrade at the plate with a chance to blow the game open is more than worth it.

Carlos Gonzalez’s gigantic breakout was one of the great stories of the 2010 season. Few players in major league history have exploded onto the scene quite the way he did — leading the circuit in hits, total bases and batting average, and finishing third in NL MVP voting.

So impressive was CarGo’s effort that he might have won more fantasy leagues for his owners than perhaps any player other than Jose Bautista, and he also earned a seven-year, $80 million contract. Not bad for a player in his first full big league season.

But in a year of amazing numbers, one stat soared so high that it makes you wonder whether Gonzalez can do it again. Major league hitters batted .297 on balls hit in play last season; Gonzalez hit .384.

To understand what .384 means — and to find out whether this amazing performance is repeatable — we need to examine how baseball research has influenced the way we’ve come to evaluate pitchers and how hitters are subject to many of the same variables, although to a lesser extent.

Ten years ago, an inquisitive student and baseball fan named Voros McCracken wrote an article for Baseball Prospectus that set the analytical community on its head. The story, titled “Pitching and Defense: How Much Control Do Hurlers Have?” posited that pitchers had very little control over a pitch once the hitter made contact. Once a hitter put the ball into play, the pitcher was at the mercy of his defense, which would decide whether the batted ball would result in a hit or an out. Our understanding grew, to the point where we also could describe a batted ball as neither the result of pitching nor defense but rather pure luck (or random variance, or however you want to describe a seven-hopper squirting through while a scorching liner lands right in a fielder’s glove).

Today, we use one five-letter acronym as short-hand for the separation of pitching and hitting from defense and luck: BABIP (batting average on balls in play). McCracken’s theory has held up well during the past decade, with few pitchers managing to post BABIP results drastically different from league norms throughout a career. (League average is typically around .300 or a shade below.) But BABIP means something different on the hitters’ side. Hitters tend to show more BABIP variance throughout their careers, both above and below league norms, than pitchers do.

One of the most common ways for a hitter to post unusually high BABIP numbers is with great speed. Ichiro Suzuki sports a career .357 BABIP, making him perennially one of the league leaders. His hitting approach is unique, specifically tailored to his ability to hit ’em where they ain’t, and to beat the play when the ball doesn’t leave the infield.

According to FanGraphs, Ichiro’s career ground-ball rate is a sky-high 55.7 percent, compared to just a 24 percent fly-ball rate. Grounders turn into hits more often than fly balls for any player. In Ichiro’s case, he is fast enough to beat out a ton of infield hits and possesses a swing that has him bailing out of the box early, propelling him halfway to first base by the time the ball takes its second hop. Ichiro’s slashing approach also has netted a career 20.3 percent line-drive rate, a high-average figure that also makes hits more likely.

By both traditional and advanced measures, CarGo ranks among the fastest players in the game today. He stole 26 bases in 2010, an impressive-enough total. But take a look at his speed score, a metric devised by Bill James that combines a player’s stolen-base percentage, frequency of stolen-base attempts, percentage of triples and runs scored percentage. By that standard, CarGo ranked 11th in the majors, well ahead of Ichiro, and also above known speedsters (and prolific base stealers) like Juan Pierre and Rajai Davis.

The bigger factor boosting CarGo’s BABIP, though, is Coors Field. The accompanying table lists the BABIPs of the Rockies’ 10 most frequently used hitters. Eight of the 10 came in above .300, four of them above .325. The list of BABIP outperformers includes fast guys like CarGo and outfield running mate Dexter Fowler but also plodders like Melvin Mora, Brad Hawpe and Todd Helton.

Coors Field is a well-known hitters’ haven, and it even helps batting average on balls in play. The league’s BABIP was .297 in 2010, but most of the Rockies far exceeded that figure.

Player 2010 BABIP
Carlos Gonzalez .384
Ryan Spilborghs .341
Dexter Fowler .328
Troy Tulowitzki .327
Melvin Mora .324
Brad Hawpe .314
Ian Stewart .308
Todd Helton .307
Clint Barmes .263
Seth Smith .256

No major league park boosts hits more than Coors, whether you’re using 2010 figures or more reliable three-year park factors. According to stat-tracking site StatCorner.com, Coors does tend to help right-handed hitters a little more than it does lefties. Still, the spacious Coors outfield, the lack of ample foul territory (as seen in parks like Oakland Coliseum) and some managers’ desire to play deep and prevent extra-base hits have conspired to boost hits across the board, be they singles, doubles or triples on balls in play, not to mention the homer spike we’ve come to know through the days of the Blake Street Bombers to more recent balls-in-humidor tactics.

Even accounting for Gonzalez’s speed, his own healthy line-drive rates (20.8 percent in 2010, 20.7 percent career) and high ground-ball-to-fly-ball rate for a power hitter (42.5 percent GB vs. 36.6 percent FB last year), and Coors Field’s significant impact, Gonzalez’s BABIP was abnormally high last year. Only Austin Jackson‘s and Josh Hamilton’s numbers were higher, and only four batting-title-qualified hitters in the past three years have topped Gonzalez’s .384 BABIP from last season. Other numbers warrant concern, such as Gonzalez’s strikeout-to-walk ratio (nearly 4-to-1 in 2010) and his poor walk rate (just 32 unintentional walks in 628 plate appearances last year).

But Gonzalez is still a 25-year-old outfielder with immense physical talents, playing in the friendliest hitters’ park in the game with a skill set that suggests he’ll continue hitting — and BABIPing — his way to big numbers. Don’t expect the moon this season. Do expect another round of impressive results. Even his true level of a talent is a .350 BABIP, he’s still an All-Star.