Archive for ESPN Insider 2012

While setting a line-up card and deciding who plays and who sits might be the most important decision a manager makes each day, how he deploys his bullpen is almost certainly a close second. Among in game decisions, proper bullpen usage has a larger effect on the outcome than pretty much anything else, and wise use of the assets that are available can have a significant impact in deciding close games. With a continuing move towards larger bullpens and more emphasis on match-ups, reliever usage is now a critical part of a manager’s job, but not every team is getting it right this year. Here are a few examples of some teams who could benefit from changing up the way they’re deploying their bullpens.

Philadelphia Phillies, Closer

Over the winter, the Phillies gave Jonathan Papelbon $52 million to take over their closer role and solidify their bullpen, and so far, he’s lived up to expectations: 17 for 17 in save opportunities, 2.10 ERA, and a fantastic 29/4 strikeout-to-walk ratio. However, the Phillies are 6-11 in one run games, the worst mark of any team in the National League, which is one of the main reasons they find themselves in last place in the National League East. With an elite closer, the team should be better at winning close games, but the problem is that manager Charlie Manuel is just not willing to use him in any situation except where there’s a save opportunity.

This issue has been most obvious whenever the Phillies have entered the late innings in a tie score on the road. Because Manuel is holding Papelbon for a save situation should the team later take the lead, he will essentially empty his bullpen in an effort to preserve Papeblon’s ability to hold down a lead at a later point should the Phillies ever score. Bill Baer at Crashburn Alley chronicled the seven instances where this has occurred and the Phillies have gone on to lose without Papelbon ever taking the mound. In those seven situations, the game has been lost by the following pitchers: Joe Blanton, David Herndon, Antonio Bastardo, Brian Sanches, Michael Schwimer, B.J. Rosenberg (making his MLB debut, no less), and Joe Savery.

Papelbon has routinely sat in the bullpen and watched his teammates blow leads, hoping to get a chance to protect a save opportunity that never materialized. Even when he has been called upon, he’s been placed in situations that are simply less important than other closers. Here is the list of the average leverage index when a pitcher enters the game for each closer with at least 15 saves this season:

Joel Hanrahan – 1.92
Jim Johnson – 1.85
Jonathan Broxton – 1.83
Brett Myers – 1.83
Alfredo Aceves – 1.74
Craig Kimbrel – 1.73
Santiago Casilla – 1.64
Chris Perez – 1.63
Frank Francisco – 1.61
Fernando Rodney – 1.52
Jonathan Papelbon – 1.45

Papelbon ranks dead last among this group, and on average, you’d expect a premium closer to have a mark between 1.70 and 2.00. Papelbon is well below that threshold, not for lack of opportunities, but because his usage has been dictated entirely by whether or not he can accumulate a save when he’s brought into the game. Giving a pitcher the security of knowing that he’s the ninth inning guy is one thing, but then not allowing him to preserve tie games in the ninth inning or in extra innings simply because it’s not technically considered a save is just a waste of an asset. The Phillies have one really great reliever, and if they’d use him more often, they’d have more wins than they do now.

Houston Astros, Setup Man

The Astros have primarily leaned on two pitchers to protect eighth inning leads – Wilton Lopez and Fernando Rodriguez. Lopez is probably the team’s best reliever, so he’s a natural fit for the role, but the decision to utilize Rodriguez as a high leverage setup man is a bit bizarre to say the least.

Rodriguez gets a decent amount of strikeouts, which is good for getting out of jams, but that’s about the only thing he does well. He’s an extreme fly ball pitcher (50% FB%) who also struggles with his command (11.9% BB%), which is a poor combination for trying to protect narrow leads. Rodriguez’s willingness to pitch up in the zone but inability to hit his spots makes him extremely prone to allowing home runs, as he’s allowed one for every 31 batters he’s faced in his career. Because he also issues a lot of walks, six of those home runs have come with men on base. Even if you hand him a lead of two or more runs, he’s capable of giving that up in a hurry.

Meanwhile, the Astros have a Brandon Lyon – a much better pitcher with a track record of success – throwing what amounts to mop-up innings in games that have already been decided. Of the 102 batters he’s faced this year, only 13 of them have hit in high leverage situations (defined as a plate appearance with a leverage index of 1.5 or higher, meaning that the PA is at least 50% more likely to effect the outcome of the game than average), while 71 of his batters faced have come in low leverage (0.5 or lower) situations, meaning that the game is essentially over at that point.

Among Astros relievers, Rodriguez has the second highest average leverage index on the staff (1.51), while Lyon has the second lowest LI (0.80). Lyon is clearly the superior pitcher, and the Astros would win more games if they simply switched the roles these two are pitching in.

Oakland Athletics, Left-Handed Specialist

The A’s are known for being on the cutting edge of using data to make decisions, but one has to wonder how you’d fit Brian Fuentes’ usage into Moneyball. For his career, Fuentes has been one of the best left-on-left relief pitchers in baseball, using his sidearm delivery to dominate quality LHBs while just trying to survive against right-handers. Here are his career platoon splits:

Vs Left: 7.2% BB%, 28.3% K%, 0.64 HR/9
Vs Right: 10.% BB%, 22.9% K%, 1.01 HR/9

He’s not a disaster against right-handers, but he’s at his best when he’s facing mostly left-handed hitters. However, 60 of the 96 batters Fuentes has pitched to this year have been right-handed, and not surprisingly, he struggled when he was asked to pitch in the closer role. Fuentes’ skillset is perfect for seventh or eighth inning match-up work, but as the closer, he simply had to face whatever batters were coming up to bat in the ninth, regardless of what side of the plate they pitched from. There’s a reason you don’t see many sidearming closers – it’s not a very good use of their abilities.

With the Chicago Cubs in rebuilding mode, Theo Epstein is likely to be a very busy man during this summer’s trading season. The addition of the second wild card incentivizes teams that are hanging around on the periphery of the playoff race to keep their rosters in tact and try to make a second half run, so the Cubs president will be one of just a few people with legitimate talent to unload. In Matt Garza, the team has an asset who could probably command more in return than any other pitcher on the market, but when playoff contenders start hunting around the north side of Chicago, they may do better by letting someone else pay the premium for Garza and instead focus on his less heralded but equally effective teammate – Ryan Dempster.

Dempster might not get the same kind of notoriety as Garza, but when you look at their recent body of work, you can see just how similar they actually are.

2009 – 2012:

Garza: 8.0% BB%, 21.1% K%, 1.02 HR/9
Dempster: 8.7% BB%, 21.5% K%, 1.00 HR/9

Their walk, strikeout, and home run rates are nearly identical over a sample that covers their last three seasons and change. Garza’s ERA is slightly lower (3.76 to 3.95) on account of posting a better batting average on balls in play (.281 to .301), but that’s a mark that is influenced heavily by a team’s defenders, and not surprisingly, a low BABIP isn’t something Garza was able to sustain after leaving Tampa Bay, a team that is often among the best in baseball at turning batted balls into outs.

Despite their similar numbers, there are usually two arguments made in Garza’s favor – his “breakout” 2011 season and his prior success in the American League East. We’ll do with them in that order.

There’s no question that last year was the best year of Garza’s career, setting personal bests in nearly every meaningful category. The most drastic change was in his home run rate (dropping from 1.23 HR/9 in 2010 to 0.64 HR/9 in 2011), which had always been a problem in prior years. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have carried over to 2012, as he’s again giving up home runs in bunches, and his performance this season looks an awful lot like his pre-breakout performance of 2009.

2009: 9.2% BB%, 22.0% K%, 1.11 HR/9
2012: 8.2% BB%, 22.6% K%, 1.24 HR/9

When you account for the relative strength of the different parks and leagues he was pitching in, Garza’s 2009 rated as a 94 xFIP-, which essentially means he was six percent above average in the skills that best predict future pitching performance. In 2012, his numbers equal that same 94 xFIP-, and his career mark is 96. In other words, Garza is pitching to the level you’d expect based on his career norms, and last year looks more like an aberration than any real breakout.

Now, about that success against the tough AL East competitors. It’s true that Garza managed to hold his own while pitching for the Rays, but if the Orioles or Blue Jays are looking to bring him in because of his past success against the Red Sox and Yankees, they might want to look again.

Garza’s career numbers versus MLB: 8.1% BB%, 19.8% K%, 0.99 HR/9
Garza’s career numbers versus BOS: 8.5% BB%, 16.2% K%, 1.22 HR/9
Garza’s career numbers versus NYY: 8.3% BB%, 16.5% K%, 1.49 HR/9

The Red Sox and Yankees historically put some terrific line-ups on the field, so there’s no shame in giving up a lot of home runs against them, but there’s not much evidence to suggest that Garza has some special skill that allows him to hold down the two offensive titans of the division. As most pitchers do, when faced with a series of good hitters, he performs worse than his overall numbers. This isn’t a knock against him, but a team should understand that Garza’s experience pitching in Tampa Bay doesn’t mean he actually performed all that well against the Yankees and Red Sox.

Garza is a quality pitcher, but so is Dempster, and a team willing to settle for a 2012 rotation upgrade only would likely get just as strong of a performance from the Cubs other starting pitcher for sale as they would by acquiring their supposed ace. Given Dempster’s age, higher higher salary, and impending free agency, he won’t require the same kinds of sacrifices in terms of prospects to obtain, and whichever team gets Dempster may find that he’s not just a one year rental after all.

A change in the new collective bargaining agreement requires a team to make a one year qualifying offer equal to the average salary of the 125 highest paid players in baseball – most estimates place that around $12 to $13 million. At age 35, Dempster probably won’t be landing a lucrative long term contract over the winter, and depending on how he finishes the season, he may be tempted to accept an offer of $12 million in salary for 2013 – after all, Hiroki Kuroda was a fairly similar free agent and ended up settling for $10 million last winter. Any team acquiring Dempster could have the option of either getting him back for 2013 at a fair salary without a long term commitment or getting draft pick compensation if he decides to sign elsewhere next winter. Either outcome could be beneficial to the team.

For the rebuilding Cubs, they probably wouldn’t be interested in retaining Dempster at that price next year, so they’re less likely to make the qualifying offer than a club who expects to be a contender. But, other teams in need of a short term rotation upgrade could see Dempster as a significant boost to their playoff chances this year while also offering some potential future value as well.

Garza is the brand name product while Dempster is the generic version, but as in most cases, buying the generic can get you the same product at a fraction of the cost. My advice to teams looking to the Cubs for pitching help – you want Dempster, not Garza.

At the top of the ground ball leaderboards for starting pitchers, there are three pretty familiar names – Derek Lowe, Trevor Cahill, and Jake Westbrook. All three rely heavily on their sinker and are primarily pitch-to-contact starters who rely on their infielders to make outs behind them. They have long track records of extreme ground ball rates, and their performance this year is nothing new.

However, coming in right behind Westbrook is James Shields, who is getting ground balls on 59 percent of his balls in play this year. Shields is nothing like Lowe, Cahill, or Westbrook – he’s a strikeout pitcher who throws a lot of change-ups and has never relied much on the ground ball in previous years. In fact, from 2009 to 2011, Shields GB% was 43.3%, slightly below the league average. Shields extreme spike in getting ground balls is fascinating enough on its own, but is compounded by the fact that he’s not the only guy who has transformed himself into a ground ball pitcher in the first two months of the season.

Over in Philadelphia, Cliff Lee is also seeing a significant uptick in ground balls, posting a 54.5% GB% this year after coming in at just 43.1% over the prior three seasons. Like Shields, Lee is also a high strikeout pitcher with one of the game’s better change-ups, but he has been incorporating a two seam fastball more over the last several years, and the pitch seems to be gaining in effectiveness. In fact, this isn’t the first time Lee has dramatically altered his batted ball profile – Lee went from being an extreme fly ball pitcher in 2007 (35.3% GB%) to a slightly above average ground ball pitcher (45.9% GB%) in 2008, the year he turned into one of the game’s elite starting pitchers.

Finally, Jason Hammel has also seen a drastic rise in his ground ball rate as well, and his early success has been one of the keys to the Orioles surprising start to the season. Hammel has jumped from a 45.6% GB% from 2009 to 2011 to a 53.8% GB% this season, while also seeing a dramatic increase in strikeout rate. Often times, pitchers have to trade strikeouts (which are often generated through pitching up in the strike zone) for ground balls (which come from pitching down in the zone), but Hammel has managed to get both more ground balls and more strikeouts at the same time. That’s a pretty remarkable change.

With three guys all seeing big shifts in their batted ball profiles this season, you might think this is a fairly normal occurrence, but in reality, these guys are defying a significant amount of recent history. GB% for starting pitchers has a year to year correlation of 0.85, the highest mark of any results-oriented pitching metric out there. The only numbers for starting pitchers with a higher correlation relate to pitch selection, as guys who throw a lot of change-ups in one year tend to throw a lot of change-ups the next year, and we don’t see a lot of massive changes in types of pitches thrown. Ground ball rate actually holds as strongly from one year to the next as rate of fastballs thrown, which shows just how few changes we actually see in a pitcher’s batted ball profile.

In fact, if Shields were able to maintain his current ground ball rate, he’d post the largest single year spike in GB% of any pitcher since 2002, the first year batted ball data was collected. However, we can look at how other recent pitchers who have experienced large increases in ground ball rates have fared, and whether they were able to keep performing at a new level for a significant period of time. The most notable ground ball spikers of the last 10 years:

Joel Pineiro, STL, 2009.

Pineiro had always been a slightly above average ground ball guy, but once he bought into Dave Duncan’s affection for the two-seam fastball, he really took off. His GB rate jumped from 48.5% in 2008 to 60.5% in 2009, and he posted the best season of his career as a result. He cashed in on his success by signing a two year contract with the Angels after the season ended, and he essentially split the difference between the ground ball rates he’d posted in the prior two seasons, coming in at 54.9% in his first year in Anaheim. However, in 2010, he went right back to posting a similar mark to what he’d done in his pre-Duncan career, and performed poorly enough that he hasn’t pitched in the Major Leagues since.

Charlie Morton, PIT, 2011.

Morton famously revamped his mechanics after the 2010 season, deciding to emulate Roy Halladay’s delivery in hopes to achieving success in the big leagues. The new delivery and pound-the-bottom-of-the-zone approach resulted in a GB% jump from 46.8% to 58.5%, giving Morton his most successful season in the big leagues to date. Because this transformation occurred just last year, we don’t exactly how this change will play out over the long term, but it’s worth noting that Morton’s ground ball rate (56.5%) this year is almost as high as it was a year ago, and at least for now, it appears that the change has stuck.

Johan Santana, MIN, 2004.

After spending four years bouncing between the rotation and the bullpen, Santana was finally given a permanent starting job to begin the 2004 season. He’d been the most extreme fly ball pitcher in baseball the year before, posting a 28.2% GB%, but in his first full-time gig as a starter, he cranked the ground ball rate up to 40.6%, just a bit below league average. Santana would go on to be a unanimous Cy Young Award winner that year, and he kept his ground ball rate around 40 percent until 2008, when arm problems began to erode his velocity. The slower-throwing Santana of the last four years has gone back to being more of a fly ball pitcher, but given the spaciousness of Citi Field, that could be also be a conscious decision.

Of the three most significant spikes in ground ball rate, Santana maintained his GB% gains for several years, Pineiro held on to part of his for a year before regressing and getting injured, and Morton has held onto most of his gains during the first several months of this season. Given what we know about the strong year to year correlation of GB rates, this is about what we’d expect – changes in batted ball rates tend to be much more real than changes in other types of results, as pitchers have a lot of influence over the trajectory of the balls they allow to be put in play.

So, what does this mean for Shields, Lee, and Hammel? If they can sustain significantly higher ground ball rates while still getting as many strikeouts as they are now, this could be the start of legitimate improvement for all three. Since we’re dealing with a smaller sample of just two months, we should still expect some regression back towards previous career norms, but they don’t have to keep getting ground balls at their current rates in order for these changes to represent legitimate steps forward. For Lee, this shift could vault him into the elite tier of starting pitchers (if he wasn’t already), while the extra ground balls for Shields and Hammel should help them continue to pitch well in a the toughest division in baseball.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are threatening all-time records for offensive ineptitude. They are scoring just 2.86 runs per game and posting a .266 on base percentage that is tied with the 1908 Brooklyn Superbas for the lowest mark any team has posted since 1900. And yet, surrounded by teammates who are performing at historically inept levels, star center fielder Andrew McCutchen has been brilliant.

Through his first 41 games, McCutchen is hitting .338/.391/.543, racking up 20 percent of the team’s home runs and runs scored totals by himself. Already a budding star, McCutchen is posting a career high in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, and he’s doing it with the worst surrounding cast anybody has had in quite some time.

The Pirates rotation of cleanup hitters – which have included Pedro Alvarez, Neil Walker, and Casey McGehee – have combined to hit .199/.258/.280 when batting behind McCutchen. With this kind of protection, you might think McCutchen would be setting a career high in walks and rarely seeing a pitch anywhere near the strike zone.

You would be wrong. McCutchen is actually seeing more pitches in the strike zone this year than he has in any other season of his career.

PITCH F/x Zone%, by season:

2009: 53.9%
2010: 53.0%
2011: 51.4%
2012: 55.1%

As a response to the increased number of strikes he’s seeing, McCutchen is also swinging at more pitches than ever, and the combination of more strikes and more swings has led to the the lowest walk rate of his career. After drawing 89 free passes last year, he has just 13 in the first quarter of the 2012 season, and two of those were intentional.

It’s hard to explain these results under the umbrella of the “protection theory”, which holds that batters get better pitches to hit if there is a quality hitter on deck, as pitchers don’t want to issue a walk that would put a baserunner on for that quality hitter. It’s hard to imagine the Pirates cleanup hitters are intimidating anyone right now, however, so how do we explain why McCutchen is being thrown so many strikes in a line-up that is one of the most futile in the game’s history?

Small sample size would be one explanation, as one example doesn’t prove anything conclusively. But, we can look around the league and see other scenarios where the protection theory would suggest a significant difference from what is actually taking place. In Milwaukee, Ryan Braun’s protector shifted from Prince Fielder to Aramis Ramirez, and the lack of Fielder’s presence was supposed to lead to a significant uptick in walks for Braun as pitchers chose to go after the much weaker hitting right-hander instead.

However, Braun’s percentage of pitches in the strike zone has also gone up from what it was a year ago, like McCutchen, he’s also walking less than he did when he was better protected. In fact, even with Fielder now in Detroit, Braun has yet to draw an intentional walk this season, and his .323/.393/.621 line is the best mark he’s ever posted. The idea that Fielder’s presence was getting Braun better pitches to hit is harder to swallow when Braun gets more strikes and hits even better after Fielder switches leagues.

Or, for another example, simply look to another team within the NL Central, where Joey Votto is mashing the baseball for the Reds but regularly getting stranded by an anemic collection of cleanup hitters behind him. The combination of Brandon Phillips and Scott Rolen (along with a couple of appearances from Jay Bruce and Ryan Ludwick) have combined to post a .648 OPS in the #4 spot in the batting order, 50 points lower than what the Reds #8 hitters have combined for. Votto is perhaps the game’s best left-handed hitter, but despite being protected by a second baseman whose primary value comes from his defense, he’s seen no change in the rate of strikes he’s been thrown. In fact, over the last four years, Votto’s Zone% has hardly moved at all, coming in between 44.4 and 44.9 percent in each season since 2009.

If the protection theory was true, we’d have expected Braun’s walk rate to spike, McCutchen to be leading the league in free passes, and Votto’s performance to fall off once the Reds had to move a middle infielder into the cleanup spot. We haven’t seen any of those things, and it’s worth noting that Miguel Cabrera – the guy now benefiting from the intimidating on-deck presence of Prince Fielder – is having his worst offensive season since 2008.

The protection theory sounds true enough, but it begins to break down once you look at the evidence and think through the conclusions it forces you to draw. After all, the basic premise of the theory is that pitchers are going to change their approach in such a way that it benefits the hitter at the plate who is being protected, making it more likely that they reach base. However, that is the result that the pitcher is supposedly trying to prevent, so the protection theory forces us to believe that pitchers intentionally choose to throw pitches that make it more likely that they have to face the scary on-deck hitter with a man on.

If the protection theory held true in real life, it would be in prominent display in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati right now. The evidence suggests that pitchers simply aren’t pitching McCutchen, Braun, and Votto any differently now than they were when they were better protected, and all three are carrying their teams despite a lack of firepower behind them.

It’s no secret that offense in baseball is down across the game, as the days of guys launching 60 home runs in a season seems to be a thing of the past. The modern game more closely resembles the brand of baseball played in the late 1980s, and once again, four runs is enough to get you a win on most nights. We’re going on year three of the Year of the Pitcher, so at this point, it’s time just retire the moniker and note that the game has changed.

Despite the fact that most of the focus has been on the downturn in home runs, however, that’s actually just a small part of the downturn in offense over the last decade. The drop in home run rate has coincided with a continued increase in strikeout rate and, perhaps more importantly, a continued decline on the rate at which batters get hits when they put the ball in play.

In 2007, the league BABIP was .299, the second highest season total in the last 100 years – the only time it had ever cracked .300 was 1930. While home run rates began declining in the earlier part of the decade, the league was still offense-oriented due to the amount of hits that were falling in when batters did make contact. However, league BABIP has declined in each year since 2007:

2007: .299
2008: .296
2009: .295
2010: .293
2011: .291
2012: .288

An 11 point drop in league BABIP might not sound like a big deal, but considering the amount of plays in a baseball season, it adds up fast. For instance, if league BABIP in 2007 had been .288 instead of .299, the difference would have been 1,470 hits over the course of the season. Even small changes in league BABIP can have a significant impact on run scoring.

And, with the league shifting back towards an environment where pitching to contact is rewarded with outs more frequently, there’s one group of pitchers that are reaping the rewards more than others – soft-tossing lefties.

Over the last three years, there have been eight left-handed starters who have consistently pitched with a fastball that averages below 88.0 MPH or below – Mark Buehrle, Chris Capuano, Bruce Chen, Ted Lilly, Paul Maholm, Jamie Moyer, Jason Vargas, and Barry Zito. There are other slow pitch southpaws floating around the league, but these eight are the ones who have been regular members of starting rotations over the last four years. As a group, those eight threw over 1,000 innings in each year from 2009-2011, and they’ve already thrown 375 innings this year.

Their overall results in the core pitching categories have been remarkably consistent in each year:

2009: 6.9% BB%, 15.4% K%, 41.3% GB%
2010: 7.0% BB%, 15.2% K%, 40.1% GB%
2011: 6.7% BB%, 16.2% K%, 40.4% GB%
2012: 7.1% BB%, 15.8% K%, 43.2% GB%

They get just over twice as many strikeouts as walks, but they’re mostly contact pitchers and succeed by throwing strikes, hoping that their defense converts those balls in play into outs. Only now, their hopes are being answered more often than before. After posting a .293 BABIP as a group in 2009, it fell to .284 in each of the last two seasons, and is down to an unconscionably low .252 so far in 2012. In fact, Lilly (.196, lowest in the league), Vargas, Zito, and Maholm are all in the top 10 in batting average on balls in play to begin the 2012 season, while Capuano comes in at #12. 41.7 percent of the dozen lowest BABIPs so far this year belong to left-handers who throw about as hard as a high-school kid.

All these in play outs are helping these eight pitchers post strong results for their respective teams. Their overall ERA is just 3.29, so their composite run prevention puts them in the company of guys like Roy Halladay (3.22 ERA) so far this year. They won’t keep preventing hits on balls in play at the rate they are now, but they are the pitchers who stand to benefit the most from the changing environment of baseball.

Since these guys rarely issue walks, the only way for opposing hitters to mount a rally is to string together a couple of hits and then hope for a home run. However, with fewer batters getting singles and doubles, the home runs they allow don’t do as much harm as they did in previous years. Between them, these eight pitchers have allowed 40 home runs, but 25 of those have been solo homers. Not only does the reduction in hits on balls in play lead to fewer rallies, it leads to fewer runs scoring when one of those 88 MPH fastballs catches too much of the plate and sails over the fence.

The characteristics of baseball in this day and age offers a larger benefit for pitch-to-contact flyball starters than for any other type of pitcher, and perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that young pitchers such as Tommy Milone are enjoying some early success. While Milone wasn’t a highly thought of prospect due to his lack of velocity, don’t be surprised if more teams start placing a higher value on pitchers like Milone, as their stuff simply plays better in today’s game than it did 10 years ago.

This is not how the season was supposed to begin for the Angels. As Mike Scioscia’s club takes the field for their 33rd game of the year, they will stare at a Texas ballclub that has already established a seven game lead in the AL West. Despite their lavish off-season spending, the Angels stand just 14-18, and the struggles of star free agent signing Albert Pujols are the primary reason why. Pujols is embroiled in the longest slump of his career, and by Wins Above Replacement, only Brennan Boesch has been less productive so far this season.

However, lost in the cloud of discussion surrounding what is wrong with their first baseman is the underreported success of the other guy that the Angels pursued this winter – C.J. Wilson.

Lured away from the Rangers with a five year, $77.5 million contract, Wilson’s deal was viewed with skepticism after he struggled to throw strikes in the postseason. Since his command can be shaky and he lacks top shelf velocity, many people have been waiting for Wilson to go off track, and his postseason struggles were offered up as evidence that he wasn’t actually the frontline starter that his numbers suggested.

Based on early returns, we can put many of those concerns to rest – Wilson is continuing to prove that he is a legitimate high-end starter. In fact, his 2012 numbers are almost a dead ringer for his 2011 regular season performance:

2011 – 8.1% BB%, 22.5% K%, 49.3% GB%, 2.94 ERA, 3.24 FIP, 3.41 xFIP
2012 – 8.9% BB%, 23.1% K%, 51.3% GB%, 2.61 ERA, 3.24 FIP, 3.44 xFIP

Rather than wearing down after carrying the largest workload of his career – including the playoffs, he threw 4,118 pitches over 251 1/3 innings – Wilson is actually looking stronger than ever. After averaging 90.8 MPH on his fastball a year ago, his velocity is actually up to 91.5 MPH this year, and that gap actually undersells the velocity improvement, as average velocity is at its lowest point early in the season. Last April, Wilson’s fastball averaged just 90.0 MPH before climbing to a high of 91.5 in September. Wilson has started 2012 throwing as hard as he did at the end of 2011, and if the usual trend of velocity picking up as the weather gets warmer holds, then Wilson might be sitting around 93 by years end.

That added velocity can help Wilson keep right-handed batters at bay, but he doesn’t need the help against left-handers. Due to the arm slot from where Wilson releases the ball, he is already one of the toughest left-on-left match-ups in all of baseball. In fact, since the start of the 2010 season, Wilson’s held left-handed batters to a .197/.273/.259 slash line, second only to David Price in terms of dominance against LHBs. Like with Price, a large part of Wilson’s success against lefties has come from keeping the ball in the park, as he’s faced 419 left-handed hitters and only allowed three home runs over the last two years and change.

Wilson’s been more vulnerable to right-handed batters who get a better view of the ball coming out of his hand, but to combat this weakness, Wilson is relying a bit more on his change-up so far this year. While it’s not a drastic change as of yet – he’s throwing about three additional change-ups per game this year – the change-up is the pitch that best neutralizes opposite handed hitters, and he’s going to see a lot of strong right-handed bats every time he matches up with his former teammates. The right-handed heavy Texas line-up could present Wilson with a chance to really test out his change-up, as Josh Hamilton may very well be the only lefty he sees tonight.

While he hasn’t received the attention that Yu Darvish – the man who replaced him in the Rangers rotation and will oppose him on the mound in this evening’s match-up – has generated, it’s Wilson who has been the better pitcher to start the 2012 season. With his dominance against lefties and his improving arsenal against righties, Wilson shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. While the Angels may be wishing there was a return policy for their $240 million first baseman, Wilson has been worth every dime so far.

Despite being two games under .500 through the first week of May, the Philadelphia Phillies are still projected to make the playoffs. Their rotation boasts five effective pitchers, with three elite starters at the front, and they employ the best active closer in baseball. Pitching was always going to be their ticket to the post-season this year, as the team would go as far as its pitching carried it.

That sentiment rings true now more than ever, as the offense is scoring only 3.6 runs per game. Runs are much tougher to come by without Chase Utley and Ryan Howard in the lineup, but slow starts from counted on contributors like Jimmy Rollins, Hunter Pence and Shane Victorino have rendered the offense anemic quite often through their first 28 games. The Phillies 100 runs ranks 8th in the National League, but their per-game rate ranks 11th.

Obviously, scoring runs and winning games are strongly correlated – the more runs scored, the better the odds are of winning the game. However, this Phillies team is interesting in the sense that their starting rotation is so effective that they could still make the playoffs with a poor offense, which leads to the million-dollar question:

If the offense doesn’t improve and the Phillies make the playoffs, where would they rank among historically low-scoring playoff teams?

The inclusion of extra wild card teams muddies these waters a bit, as there is now a greater chance for everyone to make the playoffs, let alone low-scoring squads. This doesn’t skew our look through history insofar as what has actually happened. With that in mind, it’s imperative to remember that context is key. The Phillies 3.6 RPG average is meaningless without introducing the league average of 4.07 RPG for the senior circuit. Their RPG+, if you will, suggests they are scoring runs at 88 percent of the league rate. Numbers below 100 imply the offense is below average.

That adjusted rate is what we need to make accurate comparisons across various eras and scoring environments. Teams can have lower averages than the Phillies 3.6 RPG but a higher normalized rate given how frequently the league scored as a whole. I went ahead and normalized scoring rates by league and year, throughout history, and found these five teams as the lowest-scoring playoff contenders:

The Phillies, at 88.15, would top this list if they and the league continued scoring at the same rate, and they managed to make the playoffs. What’s even more noteworthy is that the NL East-leading Washington Nationals have scored fewer runs – just 93 over 27 games – and with an RPG+ of just 84.17, are the third lowest-scoring team in the National League.

Most of the teams above were from past eras, so what does the table look like if restricted to the Wild Card era of 1995-2011?

Again, both the Phillies and Nationals would rank as the lowest scoring teams, relative to their scoring environment, to make the playoffs if all applicable assumptions were realized. While the Phillies aren’t currently in the playoffs if the season ended today, the Nationals are 18-9 and lead the division. While much has been made about the Phillies rotation and offensive woes, the Nationals are essentially in the same boat, albeit with far better overall results.

The added wild card spot throws a wrinkle into this equation, as it’s entirely possible that some teams that just missed the playoffs from 1995-2011 would have qualified for the table above. I looked through the standings in each season of the Wild Card era, identified the teams that would have been the second wild card had it existed at the time, and compared their RPG+ to the five low-scoring teams above. Two teams – the 2009 Giants and 2010 Padres – would stake a claim as belonging on that low-scoring list if two wild cards were in play throughout the entire era.

In fact, the 2009 Giants would have actually been the lowest-scoring team to make the playoffs, as they posted a 91.49 RPG+ that season. They missed the Wild Card by four games – the Rockies won it at 92-70 – while scoring 4.06 runs in a 4.43 run league.

From 1995-2011, of all the teams that made the playoffs or would have made the playoffs if two wild cards were in play, the lowest-scoring team was the 2009 Giants and their 91.49 RPG+. The Nationals are currently at 84.51 while the Phillies are at 88.50. It’s still very early in the season, and both teams could see substantial shifts in their run scoring and prevention, but this is what they are up against. It is very possible that one of these teams will become the lowest-scoring playoff team in history.

When Ryan Zimmerman went on the disabled list last week, the Washington Nationals didn’t call up a third baseman to replace him on the roster – instead, they called up super prospect Bryce Harper and installed him in the outfield. The Nationals knew they didn’t have any legitimate alternatives to replace Zimmerman and keep their offense afloat, so they did the next best thing, promoting their best hitting prospect to inject some life into their offense. Harper has been nothing short of a revelation for the Nationals, and his strong start suggests that he’ll remain a part of the roster even after Zimmerman returns.

The Nationals didn’t replace Ryan Zimmerman – they offset his loss. And two other franchises should take a page out of Washington’s playbook and make similar acquisitions to offset recent injuries.

On Tuesday, Evan Longoria suffered a partially torn hamstring and will be on the shelf from 4-8 weeks. On Wednesday, Pablo Sandoval broke his right hamate bone, and the same injury to his left hand last year cost him six weeks of the season, plus rendered him ineffective for the first three weeks following his return. In both Tampa and San Francisco, the loss of a star third baseman is a significant blow, but due the temporary nature of both injuries, the Rays and Giants are unlikely to pursue replacements from outside the organization. After all, it is hard to justify giving up legitimate talent to acquire a player who will need to move to the bench for the stretch run.

However, that doesn’t mean that teams that lose a star player for a significant chunk of the season should just accept their fate and let their playoff chances slip away. While most trades are made as a response to fill a certain need, teams can offset the temporary loss of a star player by upgrading at another position. Having a better stopgap might not be worth giving up a quality prospect, but often times, teams have another position of weakness that can be upgraded as a response to maintain the overall talent level on the roster and balance out the negative effects of the injury.

Neither the Giants nor the Rays have a large enough margin for error that they can afford to accept downgrades of even one or two wins from their expected final tally. As the Rays witnessed first hand last year, one game in the standings can mean everything at season’s end.

Tampa Bay: Catcher (Jose Molina/Chris Gimenez)

With Longoria on the shelf, the Rays can no longer continue to punt offense from the catching position. Molina’s lack of offensive ability has made him a career backup, and Gimenez doesn’t offer any potential with the bat either. With a combined line of .217/.278/.289, the pair have simply not produced at an acceptable level. Molina’s pitch framing might be enough reason to keep him on the roster as a reserve, but a championship contender shouldn’t be giving him regular playing time.

While there aren’t a lot of good hitting catchers on the market, Kurt Suzuki seems the most logical player to target. The 28-year-old is off to a slow start himself, but has been a consistently above average catcher since 2008. Suzuki would represent approximately a two win upgrade over the Molina/Gimenez tandem over the rest of the season, which is the same deficit created by having to replace Longoria with a collection of utility infielders for a couple of months. Additionally, Suzuki offers value not just for 2012 but also for 2013, as he’s under contract for the next two seasons at a budget friendly price of just $11.5 million. With Derek Norris hitting .315/.330/.539 in the PCL, the A’s have a replacement in waiting, so a deal that sends Suzuki to the Rays could be a win for everyone involved.

San Francisco: Shortstop (Brandon Crawford)

Given his minor league track record, the Giants shouldn’t be overly surprised that Crawford is struggling to hit against Major League pitching, and with Sandoval out of the line-up, they’re going to have to get more production from his spot in the line-up. Luckily for the Giants, there are a few players in the game who could act as a hybrid acquisition, both providing depth at third base while Sandoval is on the shelf and a potential replacement at shortstop after Sandoval returns.

Probably the most available 3B/SS in baseball is Juan Uribe, and while he’s been a bust with the Dodgers, he was an important part of the Giants team that won it all in 2010. Uribe is no longer the three win player that he was two years ago, but ZIPS still projects him to be worth 1.5 wins above a replacement level player over the remainder of the season, and even with Crawford’s defensive abilities, he represents about a potential one win upgrade for the Giants. Having a guy like Uribe around would give the team the flexibility to play the match-ups with Crawford and Conor Gillaspie without relying on either of them as everyday players, and if Uribe is rejuvenated upon his return to San Francisco, the Giants would finally have a shortstop with enough power to produce runs at the plate.

As we head into the final days of April, there is no question which team has looked like the best club in baseball so far – the Texas Rangers are 15-4 and have scored more than twice as many runs (107) as they’ve allowed (52). Both their offense (26.5 runs above average) and their bullpen (14.3 RAA) have been the best in baseball, while their starting pitching (28.5 RAA) has been the second best in the sport. They’ve been nothing short of dominant, and given how well they’ve played, you might very well have concluded that they’re the best team in baseball.

They very well may be, but history suggests that an outstanding win-loss record in April is often not a sign of things to come, and even the best starts to the season don’t suggest that a team is truly set for a strong finish.

In order to come up with a list of teams began the season as impressively as the Rangers, we looked at every instance since 1974 where a team posted a winning percentage of .700 or better in at least 15 games. In total, there were 45 such instances, so it’s fair to say that you’d expect at least one team per year to win 70 percent of their games during the first month of the season.

The best start any team has had over this span is the 1984 Detroit Tigers, who began the year 18-2, outscoring their opponents 120 to 63 in the process. They went on to win 60.6% of their remaining 142 games and then won seven of their playoff games in route to a World Series championship. So, certainly, a hot start can be indicative of a team that is on its way to greatness.

The second best start since 1974 throws a little rain on that parade, however. The 1987 Brewers were nearly as good as those ’84 Tigers, going 18-3 in their first 21 games to start the year. They would then proceed to win just 73 of their remaining 141 games and ended the year in third place in the National League East. After posting an .857 winning percentage in April, their May-September mark was just .518.

There are more stories like the ’87 Brewers than you might expect. If we look at the combined totals for all of the 48 teams that won at least 70 percent or their games in April, we get a combined first month record of 765-264, or an average winning percentage of .743. Those same teams combined for a 3,598-2,990 record over the remainder of the season, which works out to just a .549 winning percentage. Or, to put it another way, the average team in this sample went 16-6 in April and then just 77-63 the rest of the way.

In fact, eight of the 45 teams that won at least 70 percent of their April contests would go on to lose more games than they won the rest of the year. No team had a more significant crash than the 1978 Athletics, who went 16-5 in April and then 53-88 the rest of the year. They had the best record in baseball in the first month of the season, and then followed it up with the third worst record in baseball over the final five months of the year. They stand as the only team of the group to manage a 90 loss season in the same year that they dominated in April.

We know wins and losses can be highly variable based on things that may not continue over the course of a full season, so I also decided to look at how these teams performed in terms of runs scored and runs allowed. I broke the 45 teams into quartiles based on their ratio of runs scored to runs allowed.

First quartile: 1.81 RS/RA, .584 May-September Winning Percentage
Second quartile: 1.49 RS/RA, .516 May-September Winning Percentage
Third quartile: 1.37 RS/RA, .527 May-September Winning Percentage
Fourth quartile: 1.24 RS/RA, .573 May-September Winning Percentage

The top 11 teams by RS/RA did perform the best of the four groups, winning 58.4 percent of their May-September games, but note that the teams with the worst run differential actually performed nearly as well, and significantly better than both groups ahead of them by ratio of runs scored to runs allowed. In fact, the correlation between April RS/RA and rest-of-season winning percentage is even lower (.19) than the correlation between April win-loss record and rest-of-season winning percentage, and in reality, both correlations are pretty weak.

While a strong start is certainly preferable to stumbling out of the gates, history suggests that we simply shouldn’t draw too many conclusions based on how a team looks in the first month of the season. Even with how dominant the Rangers have been so far, other teams have looked just as good and fallen on their faces as soon as the calendar turned to May.

Derek Jeter is off to a scorching start this season, hitting .382/.411/.618 through his first 74 plate appearances. His .432 wOBA currently ranks among the league’s best, and is almost 40 points higher than the next best shortstop in baseball.

For Jeter, this is simply a continuation of his torrid second half to the 2011 season. Over his last 388 plate appearances, dating back to July 2011, Jeter has a .379 wOBA. The sample is small enough that we can’t conclude he is currently that great of a hitter, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise if he continues to rake this year.

His wOBA since the second half of last season is made even more impressive by his age, as Jeter produced those numbers after turning 37 years old. And even if he finishes in the .340-.345 range he’ll still find himself in limited company, historically, relative to his age and position.

At a time when most shortstops have moved onto easier positions or have been relegated to part-time duty, Jeter is not only still chugging along, but producing quite effectively. In addition to hitting well, Jeter has also settled into the -5 fielding runs range recently, which, while below average, is far from poor.

But perhaps what is most interesting about Jeter is his eventual place in history given his tremendous career and the opportunities the Yankees have afforded him. Most 38 year olds don’t continue to start 140+ games at the infield’s toughest position, but what started as a courtesy to a homegrown legend has become a justifiable decision given Jeter’s 2.5-3.5 WAR level productivity.

Only 22 shortstops have tallied 600 or more plate appearances after turning 37 years old, indicative of the inherent selection bias at work: by that age, most former shortstops are replaced by younger, more agile defenders, or better hitters capable of playing similar defense.

With a .343 wOBA since the start of the 2011 season, Jeter ranks third among those 22 shortstops, behind Hall of Famers Luke Appling (.375) and Honus Wagner (.368). After Jeter there is a steep drop in production to Barry Larkin (.317) and Ozzie Smith (.314). Everyone in the top five is either in the Hall of Fame, or in Jeter’s case, will be enshrined five years after his career ends.

When exactly will his career end?

If he sustains some semblance of his July 2011-April 2012 production over the remainder of the season, he will not only play shortstop in 2013, but he may be able to turn down his 2014 option and obtain another multi-year deal to remain in the infield.

While that’s far into the future, it’s impossible to discuss the hypothetical without also considering what those extra years will do to his career hits total. By virtue of that, his rank among the all-time greats would also improve, which speaks volumes for a guy who looked finished just two years ago.

ZiPS projects another 139 hits this season, which would give Jeter 165 for the season and 3,253 for his career.

That total would move him up from 18th to 13th on the all-time hits list. He would finish the season two hits behind Eddie Murray for 12th, 30 hits behind Willie Mays for 11th, 62 hits behind Eddie Collins for 10th, and 66 hits behind Paul Molitor for 9th.

Barring injuries, he will pass all of those players next year. If he puts together a fantastic 2013 season, then Honus Wagner is also in reach at 162 hits away. Jeter would also fall 165 hits behind Cap Anson for 7th and 166 hits behind Carl Yastrzemski for 6th. Assuming he plays through 2014, at the very least, meets his 2012 projection of 165 hits and then averages 145 hits over 2013-14, he would end that campaign with 3,543 hits. That total would push him ahead of Tris Speaker for fifth place. Not to get carried away, but even a mediocre 2015 season would push him ahead of Stan Musial for 4th.

Jeter has already won five World Series titles and achieved practically all the success a major leaguer can ever hope to achieve. But in his case, the valid question must be asked — given this rarified air, is it worth it to continue playing to rise up one of the more prestigious charts? Would Jeter be so prideful to retire a shortstop and finish 6th or 7th on the all-time hits list than to move to LF or DH for a few years to move up to fourth or even third all-time?

Then again, if he continues to produce the way he has lately, in the 2.5-3.5 WAR range, he might not have to move off of shortstop and would remain a productive member of the lineup instead of a novelty act. Two years ago, the Yankees entered negotiations with Jeter with the understanding that this would probably be his final deal as a shortstop with the team. While the 2012 sample is still small, his seeming resurgence and defiance against natural aging curves suggest he has something left in the tank and may yet get another lucrative deal to captain an infield.