Josh Johnson’s fastball is very good. But against the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday, it was nearly unhittable — and this was against the eighth-best fastball hitting team in the majors.

FanGraphs’ pitch type run values had Johnson racking up 1.42 runs for every 100 fastballs thrown (a career-best ratio). And though he wouldn’t throw 100 heaters on Sunday — only 61 four-seamers — he was every bit as dominant as that number suggests, and perhaps more.

Johnson’s final line on the day included eight innings, six hits, one earned run on a Carl Crawford home run, zero walks, and nine strikeouts on 117 pitches — 87 of which were strikes (74 percent). Each of Johnson’s main pitches were whiffed at least 10 percent of the time: 13.3 percent of his 30 sliders; 17.7 percent of his 17 change-ups; and 21.3 percent of his 61 four-seam fastballs. He also threw a handful of two-seam fastballs, but the story of the day was Johnson’s four-seamer which averaged 95 miles per hour and topped out just shy of 98 MPH.

In Johnson’s prior 14 starts, batters were swinging and missing at his four-seam fastballs a little less than 10 percent. Sunday was different: Johnson usually throws the pitch for strikes 65 percent of the time, but on Sunday, more than 80 percent of his four-seamers were a strike of any variety. Johnson pounded the zone with heat and the Rays simply couldn’t do much with the pitch all day, either missing or fouling them off. The most egregious offender was Jason Bartlett, who in one plate appearance facing Johnson managed four swings and whiffed on three of them.

Of course it’s hard to blame Bartlett for such struggles as he was essentially fed to a roaring lion. Evan Longoria and Carlos Pena both missed on four Johnson pitches, but they saw nine and seven pitches apiece. In fact, only two Rays who faced Johnson managed to make contact on every swing — those being Reid Brignac and John Jaso on a combined 10 swings. That may not seem like a big accomplishment, but on Sunday it was one worthy of enshrinement.

Like so many young pitchers, Jeremy Bonderman’s significant promise was hampered by the injury bug. He caught it in 2007, starting with blisters and ending with pinched lateral cartilage in his right elbow that cost him most of September. In 2008 matters got worse. After 12 largely ineffective starts he hit the DL again, this time requiring shoulder surgery. His 2009 comeback didn’t quite work out, leaving concerns about his ability to recover and become the pitcher scouts once envisioned he could be. But in 2010, he has started to change some of those negative opinions.

Last night’s start ranked among his best of the season. Facing the Washington Nationals, Bonderman pitched seven innings, requiring just 95 pitches to record those 21 outs. He allowed just five hits and walked none. His biggest, and perhaps only, mistake came in the seventh, when Adam Dunn hit one over the wall in right-center. With the score then 7-2 it didn’t much matter. Bonderman went on to retire three of the next four hitters, ending his night in a strong fashion. He ended the night with seven strikeouts, giving him 59 in his 75 1/3 innings .

What stood out about Bonderman’s night was his slider usage. In 2006 and 2007, the best years of his career, he went to his slider about 35 percent of the time. That level of usage was justified because it was clearly his best pitch. But pitchers who throw a high percentage of sliders appear to be at risk for arm injury. Bill Bray, Kiko Calero, Brad Lidge, and Mike Wuertz are recent examples of slider-heavy pitchers who have spent time on the DL with arm injuries. Bonderman, it appears, understands how the usage affected his arm. He threw it just over 20 percent of the time last year, and is at around 25 percent this year, still a significant drop from his 2006-07 usage.

The 26 he threw last night was right in line with that percentage, and as usual Bonderman used the pitch effectively. He generated three swings and misses, all of which came on strike three. The only mistake he made with it was hanging one to Dunn in the seventh after throwing him two earlier in the at-bat. The slider might not be all the way back, as hitters laid off it half the time. When Bonderman’s slider is at its best hitters will chase it more often, either making weak contact or swinging and missing.

To compensate for the lower slider usage, Bonderman has employed a two-seamer, and with much success. It has been an effective, if not slower, pitch this season. In 2006 he averaged 93 miles per hour with the fastball, and in 2007 that was still at 92. This year he’s averaging just over 90 mph with the fastball. Last night, though, he averaged 91.7 mph and maxed out right under 94. Hitters had trouble with the pitch, too, as they swung and missed seven times in 55 pitches. That made for an overall 11.7 percent whiff rate, 2.5 points better than his season average.

Jeremy Bonderman might never be the pitcher that scouts envisioned when he was a first-round pick in 2001. It appears, however, that he is far from done. Not only has he pitched well so far this season, but he has demonstrated improvement, especially in his last few starts. His two-seamer, slider combination has been an effective one. He is well on his way to a solid season, no small accomplishment for a pitcher who missed the bulk of two years after undergoing shoulder surgery.

Anyone that has ever been to — or even seen — a game at Petco Park knows that it kills home runs. Opened in 2004, the home of the San Diego Padres consistently ranks as the toughest park in which to hit a home run. While some may see this as a disadvantage, an extreme park factor can be used to a team’s advantage if their front office keeps it in mind while building their roster. And while the Padres are a surprising success this year, it’s not because they’ve built a team catered to their park.

San Diego’s pitchers currently allow the third fewest fly balls of any pitching staff in the majors, at just 33.5 percent of the time. Instead, the Padres’ pitching staff is right up there with Cleveland and St. Louis as one of the more ground ball-heavy staffs in the game. Ground balls, of course, are not subject to the dynamics of a particular stadium nearly as much as fly balls are.

One reason a team might attempt to keep balls out of the air is poor outfield defense. If you don’t have great defenders in the outfield, it makes sense to keep the ball away from them as much as possible. However, according to the fielding metric UZR, the Padres have had the third best defensive outfield this year, posting a mark of plus-12.7 runs so far. While the sample size is small, the Padres are starting three outfielders (Will Venable, Tony Gwynn Jr. and Scott Hairston) with a history of above-average defense, all of whom run well.

Telling a pitcher to induce fly balls is tricky, because you run the risk of giving up more home runs. But since fly balls typically produce the lowest batting average compared to line drives and grounders, and since Petco reduces the risk of homers, the Padres can feel more comfortable than a usual team when balls are flying through the air. Ground balls are good, but for the Padres they may not always be the best option. They may have the most wins in the National League, but it doesn’t mean San Diego is doing everything right. The Friars should try to utilize the vastness of Petco Park, as it could pay dividends in the near future.

Tuesday night offered baseball fans a rare opportunity: not only the chance to see a rematch of last year’s World Series participants, the Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees, but also the chance to see each team send its respective ace to the Yankee Stadium mound, Philly’s Roy Halladay and New York’s CC Sabathia.

Unfortunately, no pitchers’ duel materialized. Halladay conceded three home runs, Sabathia wasn’t exactly at his sharpest (walking three in seven innings) and the Yankees won by a distinctly unduelish score of 8-3.

Meanwhile, in a less publicized (and considerably less attended) affair, C.J. Wilson of the Texas Rangers and Josh Johnson of the Florida Marlins gave us the game we might have expected from Halladay and Sabathia, allowing only six hits and three runs between them over 13 collective innings.

Yet, despite the cosmetic difference in run total (11 on the one hand, five on the other), these two games help demonstrate that simple runs-allowed numbers are hardly the best way to determine whether a pitcher has truly “shut down” the opposition.

More on that in a second. But first, let’s consider the Wilson-Johnson matchup.

Again, in terms of superficial returns, we see Wilson allowed two earned runs and Johnson allowed only a single earned run. But even a casual glance at the box score reveals that while Johnson struck out seven and allowed only one walk, Wilson struck out six but also walked six. Intuitively, we understand that Johnson controlled the opposition’s batters better than Wilson. The question is: How much better?

Luckily, we can find out. Graham MacAree of StatCorner has done work that gives us the expected run values for every event within a pitcher’s control. Those events and their respective run values are as follows. (Note: In the version below, the expected run value for home runs has been integrated into the outfield fly ball run value according to the principle that home runs occur on approximately 11 percent of outfield flies.)

Of course, it’s not as if every time a pitcher records a strikeout, it takes 0.105 runs from the other team’s score. Anyone who’s watched a game knows that striking out the opposing pitcher with two outs in the bottom of the third is a lot different than striking out the other team’s cleanup hitter with the bases loaded, no outs, etc. Still, these events are generally the things over which a pitcher has control, and all of them stabilize pretty quickly.

So what happens if we look at the Wilson-Johnson game in the context of expected runs? This:

Here, we see the degree to which Wilson’s walks penalized him — to the tune of roughly two runs. All told, we should have expected Wilson to allow three runs over his six innings pitched. That’s not a huge difference from the two he actually allowed, but it’s still noteworthy.

Now here’s what happens if we do the same thing for the Halladay-Sabathia game:

Two notes here. First, look at Halladay’s expected runs: a hair under four. Why so much lower than the six he actually gave up? Because Halladay allowed three homers, but he did so on only eight balls to the outfield. Again, these expected run totals don’t take into account Halladay’s opposition (in this case, the heavily armed Yankees), but still: Three home runs on eight fly balls is bad luck any way you slice it.

The careful reader will note a second something as well: Although he allowed more actual runs than Wilson (three to two), Sabathia conceded fewer expected runs. And it makes sense, too. Just look at Sabathia’s line compared to Wilson’s. More strikeouts? Check. Fewer walks? Check. More grounders and fewer flies? Double-check. Sabathia controlled the game better than Wilson, even if the results don’t reveal such a thing.

In a season that has seen two perfect games and a should-have-been perfecto, it’s important to recognize that sometimes luck isn’t on a pitcher’s side. On Tuesday, Wilson benefited from luck. Halladay? Not so much.

Despite the generally accepted wisdom, a team’s win-loss record is not always the best measurement for how well it has been performing during a season, especially early on. Statisticians prefer to do whatever they can to increase the sample sizes of their measurements, and while each game yields just one win and loss, it involves roughly 75 plate appearances and hundreds of pitches. Therefore, a team’s record is more prone to fluctuation than its overall hitting and pitching stats are. Evaluating teams based on the more numerous plate appearances provides a more sound measure of a team’s performance to date.

One such method of evaluation along those lines is BaseRuns, which is a formula used to predict how many runs scored and allowed a team should incur based on the number of hits, walks, home runs, stolen bases and total bases. Those predicted run totals can then be put into another well-tested equation, called Pythagorean Record, to produce how may wins and losses a team should have based on those more stable predictors.

We can compare that predicted record to a team’s actual record to find out which teams have been especially lucky or unlucky. Three teams stick out from these results as being especially lucky, Pittsburgh being one. It probably is surprising to hear Pittsburgh regarded as lucky, given its 23-40 record, but consider that the Pirates’ run differential is minus-140 runs, by far the worst in baseball. The Pirates should hold MLB’s worst overall record, but instead, they sit six games ahead of the Orioles. The Astros have similar benefits, having MLB’s third worst run differential but a record about six games better than expected. Trumping all teams, however, the Los Angeles Angels sit as baseball’s luckiest team by this measure.

It is not atypical to find the Angels considered a “lucky” team by analysts. Quite often, their difference in actual wins over predicted wins is chalked up to savvy baserunning, a reliable bullpen and steady guidance from manager Mike Scioscia. Skeptics of these write-offs have extra reason to scoff this season, as the Angels have been successful on just 40 of 61 stolen base attempts (66 percent) and their bullpen has a 4.79 ERA, which is third worst in the AL.

Projected over a full 162-game season, the Angels are on pace to win a whopping 16 more games than BaseRuns indicates they deserve. As it stands now, they are 36-30 and own a .545 winning percentage, which would be good for about 88 wins. Yet they’ve scored exactly as many runs as they’ve allowed, and based on their overall profile, BaseRuns says the Angels would be lucky to even be .500 and that their record should be 29-37, which would give them 72 wins over a full season. Angels fans might be flying high right now with their team’s recent success, but they would do well to exercise cautious optimism for the rest of 2010.

Old Johan Santana, he ain’t what he used to be, ain’t what he used to be. Oh sure, it’s tempting to look at his 2.96 ERA and 1.20 WHIP and say he’s still the same old dominant Santana, maybe with a tiny bit missing off of his fastball. But that’s just not the case.

At FanGraphs, we have a “dashboard” where you can select the stats you’d like to see for each player. Let’s recreate a dashboard for Santana here so his decline can come into stark focus. We’ll start in Minnesota in 2006, just because that was seemingly the beginning of the downward turn for him.

Year	K/9	BB/9	GB%	SwStr%	FB MPH	xFIP
2006	9.44	1.81	40.60%	13.20%	93.1	3.12
2007	9.66	2.14	38.00%	14.00%	91.7	3.43
2008	7.91	2.42	41.20%	11.40%	91.2	3.66
2009	7.88	2.48	35.70%	11.30%	90.5	4.13
2010	6.55	2.76	35.80%	 9.40%	89.2	4.49

The table sort of pulls it all together, doesn’t it? Since 2006, so many key indicators have gone the wrong way. The starkest of the group is Santana’s strikeout rate, which has gone from elite (9.66 K/9 would have been fifth among qualified starters last year) to below-average (so far this year, 7.01 K/9 is the league average). While his walk rate is still above-average (3.47 BB/9 is the league average this year), it’s certainly not the elite rate it once was.

Santana has never been a ground-ball guy, but now he’s sporting the eighth-worst ground-ball rate in baseball among qualified starters. He used to get swinging strikes on that nasty changeup to offset the fly-ball part of his game, but even that is slipping recently. Also, his fastball velocity is degrading slowly and now doesn’t crack 90 mph on average.
The last stat, xFIP, is a number on the ERA scale that attempts to strip out batted-ball luck and corrects for home run rates. It’s an expected fielding-independent pitching number, in other words, and it sums up Santana’s entire slow decline in one place. It may be tough to believe, but Santana is, in many ways, an average starting pitcher right now.

Recently, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon has employed an unorthodox strategy against pitchers with great change-ups. Ever since Dallas Braden and his nasty change threw a perfect game against the Rays, Maddon has stacked his lineups with players who bat with the same hand as the starting pitcher in order to neutralize that pitch. The change-up is a pitch that is typically used to neutralize opposite-handed hitters, and so Maddon is attempting to take away this advantage from pitchers with great change-ups by reducing the number of opposite-handed hitters in the lineup. So far, the strategy has worked pretty well.

Most notably, on May 29, the Rays torched White Sox lefty John Danks for eight runs with a lineup that included four left-handed hitters. On Wednesday night, the Rays faced right handed change-up specialist Shaun Marcum of the Toronto Blue Jays, who had a 2.77 ERA entering the gme. The Rays lineup still included three left-handed hitters, as it’s essentially impossible for the Rays to remove Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, and Reid Brignac from their line-up at this point. However, the Rays sent up switch-hitters Ben Zobrist and Dioner Navarro to bat right handed against Marcum, and even more telling was that they not only used right-handed catcher Kelly Shoppach as the DH, but they hit him clean-up.

Did it work? Marcum’s line — four innings, 10 hits and seven earned runs — certainly suggests it did. Shoppach, Navarro, and Zobrist were a combined 3-for-6 against Marcum, including a home run by Navarro.

A look at the Pitch F/X data suggests that Marcum still threw his change-up as often as he normally does, so he didn’t alter his game plan much. In his 12 previous starts, Marcum threw 21.1 percent change-ups, and 14 of his 67 pitches (20.9 percent) were change-ups on Wednesday night. It was still effective, as he threw 10 of the 14 (71.4 percent) for strikes and drew swinging strikes on three (21.4 percent) of them, both marks well above the league average. However, that swinging strike mark is five points below his average for the season, suggesting that hitters weren’t fooled quite as often by the pitch.

Despite the early success, Joe Maddon may not exactly be on solid ground with these decisions. In their careers, both Marcum and Danks aren’t significantly better against opposite-handed battters. Instead, they have performed at roughly the same level against these hitters, showing no real platoon split. The “Danks Theory,” as some are calling the strategy, has worked, but it may take switch hitters out of their comfort zones, and it’s possible that neutralizing the change-up may come at the cost of making a pitcher’s fastball or curveball more effective. It will be interesting to see whether the Rays continue to trot this odd strategy out there even if they get shut down a few times.

Stephen Strasburg’s first start Tuesday exceeded all expectations, especially in terms of dominance: He racked up 14 strikeouts without a walk, throwing just 94 pitches over seven innings. That electrifying stuff (displayed with 17 swinging strikes) combined with pinpoint command is what makes the 21-year-old so extraordinary. For Strasburg, everything builds off his high-90s fastball; he throws both a four-seamer and a two-seamer, which he blew past batters Tuesday for eight of his swinging strikes. And his secondary pitches are great as well. He has a high-80s circle change that he locates low in the zone, and a low-80s, knee-bending curve.

On Tuesday, he had everything working. Using the pitch f/x data, and focusing on the location, pitch type and results broken up by batter handedness, let’s take a closer look at just what kind of craziness the Pirates were trying to hit.

In the graphs below, the pitches are color-coded: Taken pitches are faded, and those that are swung at are in full color. Whiffed pitches (swinging strikes) are marked with an x, and hits are circled. This leaves foul balls or outs as full color with no markings. The images are from the catcher’s perspective.

Strasburg was beyond nasty against righties. A full 50 percent of the pitches they swung at were missed, well above the league average of less than 20 percent. The two hits were opposite-field singles to shallow right, as Andy LaRoche and Lastings Milledge desperately did all they could with a pair of outside high-90s fastballs. But mostly it is tons of whiffs, on fastballs up in the zone and on changeups and curves low in the zone. Also, notice how everything is near the zone –- when he misses, it’s not by much. That demonstrates Strasburg’s amazing command; the fact that he can pitch at those velocities and with that much movement and still be so tightly around the zone with his pitches is astounding.

Against lefties Strasburg expertly keeps the ball low and away, which is where lefties typically do the least damage. The home run allowed to Delwyn Young, a change low in the zone, was an exception, and a mistake he will certainly learn from. Still, even facing opposite-handed hitters, he got a ton of whiffs on fastballs up-and-away and on curves and changeups down-and-in.

Anyone who watched the performance knows that he put on a clinic. These images tell some of the story, but he really has to be seen to be believed. It isn’t always going to go this well for Strasburg, but in his major league debut he, impossibly, exceeded the hype. This kid is special.

For your surprising statistic of the day, check out who leads the National League in batting average. Recognize the name on top — Martin Prado? If you don’t, it’s not a big deal. Not even the prospect experts at Baseball America noticed Prado’s ascension until it was obvious to anyone paying attention. Only now, in the midst of his third straight quality season is the Braves second baseman starting to get his due.

Prado, 26, never made a Braves Top 10 Prospects list at Baseball America. When he broke camp with the team in 2008, after cups of coffee during the two previous seasons, he was supposed to be just a utility infielder, someone who could play in place of Chipper Jones at third, Yunel Escobar at short, and Kelly Johnson at second. Yet despite a sprained thumb that kept him out for 59 days, the Braves still managed to get Prado 254 plate appearances in which he hit .320/.377/.461. Those are impressive numbers for anyone, much less a reserve.

In 2009 Prado again broke camp as the primary utility man. But when Kelly Johnson started to struggle, Prado found his name on the starting lineup more frequently. By July he was the regular starter at second base. The Braves nearly doubled his playing time in 2009, giving him 503 plate appearances, and hit .307/.358/.464. That’s when people started to take notice.

The Braves took a gamble on Prado this winter. Johnson was up for salary arbitration, but rather than pay him an increased salary after a year during which he struggled, the Braves decided not to tender him a contract, implicitly handing the job to Prado full-time. Once again Prado has rewarded their confidence. In addition to leading the NL in hitting (.325), he ranks fourth among senior circuit second basemen in OPS (.819). (Of course the leader in that category is Kelly Johnson, so let’s not give Atlanta too much credit.)

After a slow start, the Braves are now in first place in the NL East, in no small part because of contributions from two players making around the league minimum, Prado and Jason Heyward. While Heyward gets the hype because of his age and prodigious power, Prado, because he plays a premium defensive position, has contributed equally to the Braves record. He has been worth 1.7 Wins Above Replacement, while Heyward is just a fraction better at 1.8.

Prado is still under-appreciated and he probably always will be. But Martin Prado has made the most of his opportunity and is a big part of why the Braves currently sit in first place, even if he’s overshadowed by his teammates. For years, Martin Prado was overlooked, but given how well he’s played in the big leagues, it’s time to give him his due — the man is one of the better second baseman in baseball.

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

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

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

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

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