The Deadspin photos of Josh Hamilton are pretty killer, and the shot-glass in the fly trick is A-PLUS in my book but this is an article about pitching.

Who’s Getting Lucky?

Matt Cain (2.44 ERA & 3.92 FIP) — Cain loves to party and he’s got the numbers to show it.  Cain comes in with a .260 BABIP and a ridiculous 0.87 LOB%.

J.A. Happ (2.74 ERA & 4.01 FIP) — For some reason the Blue Jays wanted this Pitching STUD! Number 3 starter in the Roy Halladay deal.  Much like Cain, J.A. Happ’s leaving an insane amount of runners on base (0.87 LOB%.)  Pitching in Philly, Happ and his 0.251 BABIP is going to kill you very, very, very, soon.

Edwin Jackson (2.62 ERA & 3.85 FIP) — There’s no debating Jackson has put it together, but he’s had a good chunk of luck, too.  I started out the season claiming that the Rays’ pwned the Tigers by nabbing Matt Joyce, but it appears as though I may have been wrong.  Jackson’s another guy with a BABIP under .260 and a LOB% of over 80%.  Unlike the previous two however, Edwin Jackson’s genuinely improved.  The key to Jackson has always been control, and a 2.86 BB/9 is incredibly solid.

Kevin Millwood should not have an ERA below 4.00 ever, and hopefully he’s not owned in your league.  Jarrod Washburn is indeed the bane of my existence.

Wandy Rodriguez (2.51 ERA & 3.65 FIP) — I’m a proud owner of Wandy, and I love trotting him out there, but there’s no point in acquiring him now.  Wandy’s left-on-base percentage is a pretty hefty 83%, while he’s BABIP is a solid .290 — be wary.  I love Wandy’s strike-out rate, but get the “fading fast feeling” when it comes to the final 2 or 3 weeks of the season.

Chris Carpenter (2.26 ERA & 2.99 FIP) — I missed out on the Carpenter boat, mainly because I’m uber-injury-paranoid, but so it goes. Carpenter’s making it work with 6.33 K/9 and a beautiful 4.58 K/BB rate.  Unfortunately, Carpenter’s sub-1.00 WHIP probably won’t last as his BABIP numbers start to trend towards at least .285ish, rather than his current .264 BABIP. Carpenter’s leaving ‘em on base with the best of ‘em at an 81% clip.  I was wrong on Carpenter, but at this point I’d be acquiring him as a 1.20-WHIP, 3.00 ERA guy.

Clayton Kershaw (2.73 ERA, 3.21 FIP) — I’m a Kershaw guy, but his current 5BB/9 is worrisome with his current .261 BABIP and 78% LOB.  Most of Kershaw’s statistics are maintainable, but I definitely wouldn’t be acquiring him at his current price.

Ricky Romero (3.66 ERA, 4.23 FIP) — There’s a lot of talk up ‘ere in Canada about Romero winning rookie of the year, but he’s still fairly bland in fantasy circles — and for good reason.  Romero’s probably a 4.00 ERA – 4.25 ERA pitcher the rest of the way home, and with the departure of Alex Rios the outfield defense isn’t getting any prettier.  A few more runs are probably going to start crossing the plate, and Romero’s 80% LOB will suffer.

A few other guys that I feel the need to mention,

Adam Wainwright could be pushing the envelope and a neat little quarter o’ run increase the rest of the way home in his ERA should probably be expected.  The same goes for Jered Weaver — expect a little bump, and if you can get someone to buy him dollar-for-dollar, I’d pull the trigger.

Last, but not least, Matt Garza’s (3.63 ERA, 4.23 FIP) got some regressing to do with his current .263 BABIP and 78% LOB. I think Garza has it in ‘em the rest of the way home though, so if you’re trying to deal with a stat nerd — I’d be targeting Garza and bringing up his “luck.”

Hopefully this quick piece serves useful to someone.  If you haven’t jumped on the fangraphs.com train, please do so –  all the statistics are exportable into Excel or Open Office and easily sortable.  Basically, all you’ve gotta do is pull a formula out of your ass, or a text book, and let Excel do the work.

During my injury induced hiatus, Washington Nationals’ super-shortstop Christian Guzman did the impossible: Christian Guzman took a walk, actually two walks!

In back-to-back games against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Guzman took a base on balls in each game.  Unfortunately, his On-Base Percentage (.382) no longer matches his batting average (.373)

Walk? No!

As I lamented in the pre-season, Guzman blows my mind with his turn-around since missing the entire 2006 season with a shoulder injury.  A .260 hitter prior to the injury, Guzman has posted two straight seasons of a .300 batting average, and is well on his way to his third consecutive .300+ season.  The ZiPS projection system has Guzman hitting .315 for the rest of the 2009 season, which would give him a year-end batting average of .332!

Christian Guzman’s currently sporting a .422 batting average on balls in play, and is only hitting 12% of pitches for line-drives; so we’d expect his batting average to come down.  Although I’d also expect his Line-Drive Rate to increase as his Hamstring heals.  Historically Guzman’s always sported a high BABIP, and .350-to-.360 on balls in play isn’t out of the question.

Guzman’s plate discipline statistics do not suggest a change in approach, but rather a return to health.  Since his 2006 surgery, Guzman’s seeing less pitches inside of the zone and he’s swinging at more pitches outside of the zone.  This is not a recipe for success, but if he continues to make solid contact when he hits the ball, there’s probably no reason to worry.

Guzman’s simply refusing to hit fly-balls, and insisting on using his plus-speed to leg out groundballs and line-drives.  Guzman may no longer steal 28 bases like he did in his Minnesota years, but he’ll use that speed to get on base.  When the Nationals are healthy, Guzman will score plenty of runs.  Assuming Guzman hikes his BB% rate up towards his career-norm of 5 or 6 percent rather than his current 1.5%, his OPS will continue to astound and float around the .800 mark.

If you’re in a league that counts hits, Guzman’s definitely your man. I still cannot fully get behind Guzman’s ridiculous approach, but going into the season he was available for dirt cheap and he’s probably still out there in a good chunk of standard leagues.

Carlos Quentin

Just like Mark Teixeira, Carlos Quentin’s having some rather serious BABIP issues hitting just .207 on balls in play.  Unfortunately if you’re trying to acquire Quentin, he has something else in common with Mark Teixeira and that’s power.  Carlos Quentin’s 8 home-runs make him more difficult to pry away than your typical batter hitting .237 over the first month of the season.

Unlike Teixeira however, Carlos Quentin has actually managed to improve his line-drive rate and decrease his ground-ball rate.  Quentin’s also striking out 4% less than he did last year, even if he’s regressed to his career-walk rate of 8%.  In 2008, Quentin was an OPS-Monster as he drastically increased his BB-Rate nearly 5% from his previous years. The good news is that Carlos Quentin’s simply being more aggressive on pitches inside the zone.  Quentin’s not chasing pitches outside of the zone, as his O-Swing’s remained around his career average of 26.5%.  Quentin’s Z-Swing (swings at pitches inside of the zone) has risen almost 8 percent from last year, and he’s actually making slightly better contact on those pitches.

This is one of the better cases of using BABIP to evaluate a player’s luck.  I was originally skeptical of Carlos Quentin maintaining a 20% Home Run per Fly Ball rate, but thus far he’s kept it up and I see no reason to believe it’ll drop below 16 or 17 percent.  Quentin looks healthy, and I’d be buying fairly close to full-value.  I don’t think Quentin ever comes close to replicating the non-counting stats of 2008, but he’s a spectacular player who’s finally cashing in on his potential.  Update: Quentin apparently has hurt his foot and I have no clue as to how serious it is quite yet — if it’s not serious, now might be the perfect time to buy low.

Conor Jackson

Ouch, Jackson’s hitting .182 AVG on a .207 Batting Average On Balls In Play. Jackson has been hitting the ball hard for an 18% Line-Drive Rate, even if he’s getting under the ball for a 26.5% Infield Fly Ball Percentage. While I’m not seeing Jackson top .300, he should get close to batting .290 – .295 for the remainder of the season. Unfortunately we’re going to have to wait on Jackson, as he’s just been placed on the Disabled List.  In deeper leagues, Jackson’s a terrific smash and grab target, as he’ll contribute across the board. While I’m not Conor Jackson flag-waver, he’ll contribute nicely if you’re stacked up with power-hitting middle infielders. Like….

Dan Uggla

Dan Uggla’s a powder keg of a second baseman. A Powder Keg that’s batting .189 on a .211 BABIP. Uggla hit .323 on balls in play last year, but expecting slight regression to the league average .300-range seems reasonable.  You didn’t draft Uggla for his Batting Average though, you just assumed he’d post somewhere in the .250-.260 range and you’d eat it and offset it elsewhere.  Unfortunately, Uggla’s been on a bit of a power-outage and has only hit 4 HR in 2009.  If you were expecting a repeat of last year’s insane pace, think again.  In 2008, Uggla was hitting 18.4% of his fly-balls for home-runs after consistently posting somewhere around 13%.  This is how you one-up your HR total from the previous year in 100 less AB.

Given a full-season, Uggla should still top 25 home runs but he’ll have to go on a tear to top 30 for the third straight year.  Luckily, when it comes to his other counting stats and batting average, all of them should increase with a bit of luck.  Uggla’s actually increased his BB% which’ll make him pretty useful in leagues that use OBP rather than BA for the rest of the season.  I’m not sure if Uggla’s value has dropped enough at this point to warrant recommending him as trade bait.  Obviously, if the Uggla-Owner in your league looks at Uggla’s HR per AB, then he probably still believes Uggla will continue his ridiculous pace.  If your Uggla-Owner just sees two straight 30-HR seasons, then I’d try and acquire the pop that Uggla brings to the MI position.

The Jays and Yankees in a tight one right now, Roy Halladay looks great and my girlfriend’s cookin’ up some potato-salmon friend fish cakes she found in a Jamie Oliver cookbook.  Forty-Three Thousand apparently made it out to the Rogers Centre tonite.

The mental part of the game always blows my mind, and Mark Teixeira got me thinkin’ about BABIP and more specifically how hitters remain sane when the balls just aren’t dropping.

Teixeira’s currently hitting  .184 on balls in play or BABIP.  Teixeira’s career average BABIP is .309 , and his previous two years have been .344 and .321. Absolutely nothing is dropping for Teixeira, and it blows my mind that he hasn’t over-reacted and started forcing it. Teixeira’s still striking out around his career average of 20% and he’s actually increased his walk-rate a few percentage-points up to 16%.  His discipline hasn’t changed, but the numbers say that his swing may have.  Teixeira is only hitting 10% of his hits for line-drives which is painful considering Teixeira hasn’t finished the season with a LD% lower than 19.8%.

Where are all these line-drives going, you ask? Straight to fly-balls at a 57.1% rate– Which may well indicate Mr. Teixeira’s aimin’ for the fences, and may actually be pressing.  However, it’s not like Teixeira’s swinging at more pitches, inside or outside of the zone.  Teixeira’s making contact at a career-average rate — so what gives?

Well, he’s just in a funk.  I’m going to take six year’s worth of All-Star calibre production over a bad April when evaluating a player, Every Single Time!

There’s no reason to believe that Teixeira will continue hitting fly-balls at a 60 percent clip, as he’s one of the better pure hitters in the game.  Teixeira’s 7 Home Runs might make it difficult to acquire him, but he’s still very close to top-10 talent which is saying a lot considering the depth at first base.