To his eternal credit, Jeremy Guthrie is having a very unusual season. Unusual for Jeremy Guthrie in that he’s pitched very well and Jeremy Guthrie is the human embodiment of serviceable. He has a very low ERA and a sparkling 5-1 won/loss record. Before last night, it was a 5-0 record.
Last night, Jeremy Guthrie posted one of the weirdest pitching lines you’ll ever see. It was the anti-FIP start for the ages. And that was tip of Guthrie’s weirdness iceberg.
Chase Utley, in the teeniest of sample sizes, has typically handled Barry Zito fairly well in past meetings. The left-handed hitting Phillies second baseman is 7-for-20 vs. the Giants lefty with a .350/.350/.700 triple slash line since the two first became acquainted in 2005. Prior to yesterday afternoon, Utley had stuck out versus Zito just once before, in 2007.
Utley hasn’t fared as well versus left-handers over the last few seasons as he did earlier in his career, but he’s still matched up well versus Zito with three hits (including a triple and home run) in his last six plate appearances. Zito turned the tables on Utley on Wednesday afternoon, holding him hitless in three at-bats.
While it’s not overly remarkable that Zito sat down Utley on four pitches in the seventh inning yesterday, it warrants an examination based on the pitch selection and sheer goofiness of the hurler’s stuff.
Extending Paul Goldschmidt was a pretty smart move made by the Arizona Diamondbacks. While he might not be an “elite” first baseman, he is at the very least knocking on the door of elite, with a bouquet of flowers in his hand ready to join the party.
Not many thought this would be true of Paul Goldschimdt as he climbed through the minor league ranks. His all-or-nothing approach was bound to catch up with him, they said as he crushed pitching at every turn.
For his career in the big leagues, Goldschmidt has a .283/.363/.496 line with 35 home runs in less than 1000 plate appearances. Pretty good, no? Far from bad, that much I know for sure.
All batters have pitchers they just see well. Guys the seem to have figured out and guys against whom they take good swings and get some good luck. Paul Goldschmidt might play in a tough pitching, low scoring division but there are two pitchers he sees really well. Insanely well, in fact.
Paul Goldschmidt sees Tim Lincecum and Chris Capuano so well that it, perhaps, distorts his entire career line.
There is nothing better than the early days of the season for statistical oddities. Though the season isn’t exactly young (right, Blue Jays/Angels fans) it is still too early for many commonly referenced stats to have normalized – and for each slump or hot streak send the numbers swinging wildly.
It’s a time where a bad start still lords over the season line and makes for some odd stat lines. Not real representations of the present and future of these players but weird snapshots of this moment in time.
Today: the unsluggers.
Every good reliever needs a nickname. It’s a requirement, a legacy to carry with them after their playing days are done. This is especially important for relievers, who have a much shorter lifespan than most other players.
A good nickname, an exploding scoreboard/fire and brimstone/mall metal intro and you’re set. For now, too many good relievers don’t have good nicknames or gimmicks. We here at Getting Blanked need to address this injustice.
Let’s start with the man seen above, Mark Melancon.
Far too often in the early days of the season, you can head over to your favorite baseball blogsite and read the fateful words “small sample size but” in many different forms. It isn’t exactly high treason to base a blogpost on less than stable information but, especially among true stat folks (read: not me) it goes against the entire nature of the beast.
In the early days of the season, it is usually more telling and more informative to look for dynamic differences rather than statistical differences. Things that stand out as changes in process, rather than result.
Jeff Sullivan wrote a very interesting post on Ryan Dempster’s early season strikeout swell for Fangraphs earlier this week. It is Sullivan-ian in its quality and depth of research, keying on many dynamic differences in what Ryan Dempster‘s done since joining the Red Sox.
Ryan Dempster is doing things slightly differently in 2013 but his results are vastly different from previous years. A result of this tinkering and adapting? Perhaps. The product of good fortune in key moments? Absolutely.
If we look back at any of the wealth of preseason projections and informed fantasy themed predictions on Anthony Rizzo, they all sing a similar refrain: expect an impact hitter.
ZiPS projected the 23-year old Chicago Cubs first baseman to hit .279/.349/.503 (.362 wOBA), with 31 home runs. While the returns on the power numbers have been impressive, Rizzo has seen his K% take a sharp spike upwards to 26.5% in the first month of the 2013 season. The increase in strikeouts and some early contact issues have rendered a .211/.304/.511 (.353 wOBA) in 102 plate appearances.
Sample size? Sample size.
