J-Hay, Rejuvenated

I've written a lot about Andrew McCutchen's slow start this year. And, as I've noted, he turned things around in May:

Month	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
April	72	12	14	2	1	2	13	0	1	9	15	.194	.302	.333	.636	81
May	106	16	35	10	0	5	17	3	1	14	15	.330	.419	.566	.985	175

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com

(Recall that OPS+ is on base plus slugging, adjusted for ballpark, scaled to 100. So McCutchen's OPS+ of 81 in April means he was 19% worse than the league average, while his 175 in May means he was 75% better.)

I haven't obsessed as much about his teammate, Josh Harrison, who had an even worse April, as measured by OPS:

Year	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
April	80	11	17	6	0	2	5	0	1	2	16	.213	.250	.363	.613	72
May	102	15	31	7	0	2	13	4	2	4	11	.304	.333	.431	.765	114

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com

It's hard to get as alarmed about a bad month from Josh Harrison as a bad month from McCutchen. McCutchen is one of the game's top players, arguably the best all-around talent in the National League, finishing in the top three in the MVP vote each of the past three seasons. The Pirates are paying him $10 million this year, a contract widely viewed as one of the greatest bargains in baseball, to be their fixture in center field.

Harrison, by contrast, was, until last year, a utility player, bouncing between the majors and minors, never coming close to a minimal on base percentage of .300. Then, last year, he suddenly became one of the team's top hitters. Here's his career batting record, through last season:

Year	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	SB	CS	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	OPS+
2011	65	195	21	53	13	2	1	16	4	1	3	24	.272	.281	.374	.656	83
2012	104	249	34	58	9	5	3	16	7	3	10	37	.233	.279	.345	.624	73
2013	60	88	10	22	1	2	3	14	2	0	2	10	.250	.290	.409	.699	96
2014	143	520	77	164	38	7	13	52	18	7	22	81	.315	.347	.490	.837	132

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/2/2015.

He signed a contract in April that pays him $2.8 million this year, rising to $10.25 million in 2018 and, at the Pirates' option, $10.5 million in 2019 and $11.5 million in 2020. The contract is viewed as a risk on the Pirates' part, given his lack of performance until 2014.

So, what's going on with Harrison this year? Did he just have a bad April, or is there something going on that's new? I'll try to answer that by answering three other questions.

1. Is he being pitched differently?

For purposes of these analyses, I'm going to look at three periods: Harrison's breakout 2014, April 2015, and May 2015.

First, repertoire: Have pitchers discovered certain pitches are more or less effective against Harrison, resulting in a change in the pitches he's seen?

	Four-seam	Two-seam	Slider	Curve	Change	Cutter	Other
2014	36%	20%	17%	10%	8%	8%	2%
April 15	32%	21%	21%	8%	10%	7%	0%
May 15	38%	19%	19%	8%	8%	8%	1%

Source: Brooks Baseball

I wouldn't read much into what we're seeing here. Compared to 2014, he's seeing a few more sliders, and does struggle against the pitch, whiffing on 17% of the sliders he faced in 2014 and 18% in April and May this year, slugging just .330 when he made contact in 2014 and .323 in April and May this year. But we're not talking big numbers: the increase from 17% sliders in 2014 to 21% in April is equal to 12 pitches, or fewer than one per game. Yes, there's a weakness, but pitchers aren't exploiting it a lot.

How about where they're pitching him? The next table is going to show where pitches to Harrison went. Some definitions: In Zone means in the strike zone, Out Zone means outside the strike zone. Inside means any pitch, strike or ball, on the inner third of the plate, while Outside is the outer third of the plate. Similarly, Low means a pitch in the lower third of Harrison's strike zone or below, and High is a pitch in or above the upper third of his strike zone or above.

	In Zone	Out Zone	Inside	Outside	Low	High
2014	41%	59%	30%	47%	47%	28%
April 15	41%	59%	33%	57%	48%	26%
May 15	39%	61%	28%	49%	42%	32%

Source: Brooks Baseball

The book on Harrison, as you can see, is down and away - the plurality of the pitches he sees are outside and low. Pitchers are throwing more pitches to him outside the strike zone than they did in 2014.

2. Is he swinging differently?

Harrison's a free swinger. In 2014, he swung at 52% of the pitches he saw: 66% of the pitches in the strike zone and 38% of pitches outside the zone. The major league averages last year were 46%, 63%, and 30%, respectively. He gets away with it because he's good at making contact. Last year he whiffed on 13% of his swings in the strike zone, the same as the league average. He missed on 30% of this swings outside the zone, well below the league average of 37%. This year, he's been even better, whiffing on just 12% of pitches in the strike zone and 26% outside the zone. He struck out in 15% of his plate appearances last year; that's dropped to 13% this year. So if anything, he appears to be more disciplined this year.

But during April, he whiffed on 29% of his swings outside the the strike zone. That's dropped to 22% in May. That's a key difference. You know how I said the strategy with Harrison is to pitch low and away?  In May, he whiffed on 36% of swings outside the strike zone low and outside, a big improvement from 45% in April. He's curbed his aggressiveness, and that's helped. 

3. Is he hitting differently?

Was he hitting everything on the ground in April, and is hitting balls in the air more in May? Nope: Of his batted balls, 37% were grounders in 2014, 39% in April, and 41% in May. He's hitting more on the ground.

Was he making weak contact at the beginning of the year, and now hitting with more authority? Nope again: FanGraphs classified (based on batted ball velocity off the bat) 15% of his contact as soft and 32% as hard in 2014, 17% soft and 30% hard in April, and 22% soft/28% hard in May. He's hitting the ball less hard.

How about where the ball's getting hit? Ah, now there's a change. In 2014, he pulled (hit to left field) 45% of batted balls. That dropped to 38% in April and 28% in May. This is a big change. In 2014, Harrison pulled batted the 9th most frequently among 65 National League batting qualifiers. This year, he's pulled the 12th least frequently among 79 qualifiers. He's hit to the opposite (right) field the fifth most frequently in the league this year; he went the other way the 24th least often last year.

So what does it all mean? There seem to be a couple big-picture trends going on. First, pitchers, realizing that he's vulnerable to the slider, are throwing Harrison a few more sliders. At the same time, Harrison's been changing his approach at the plate, going from a pull hitter to using the whole field. Given this, it looks as if April may have been a transition month, rather than a harbinger of troubles to come. That being said, note that his rebound in May was still below his All-Star production of last year. We may not see that level again. But the .300/.339/.418 slash line he's put up since April is plenty good enough.

Today's a Getaway Day. This Could Be a Problem.

There's a subtle change in major league schedules this year. On getaway days--i.e., the day that one or both teams must play a game and then fly to a new city for a game the following day--the starting times are earlier. For example, today the Pirates (game tomorrow in Phoenix) host the Cubs (game tomorrow in Cincinnati) at 12:35 PM, the Giants (game tomorrow in Denver) host the Dodgers (game tomorrow in San Diego) at 12:45 PM, the Phillies host the Marlins (game tomorrow in Miami) at 1:05 PM, the Tigers host the Yankees (game tomorrow in New York) at 1:08 PM, and the Mets host the Braves (game tomorrow in Philadelphia) at 1:10 PM. I can't find a copy of last year's schedule, but some of those starting times are earlier than last year. Thursdays are big for getaways, so it's a good afternoon to clear your schedule of meetings and have your computer set to mlb.tv or whatever you prefer for watching games on your employer's dime.

There's a problem, though, with today's Pirates game, per MLB.com Cubs beat writer Carrie Muskat:

Not sure if you can tell but it's snowing. #Cubs pic.twitter.com/nLZsAjkbu3
— Carrie Muskat (@CarrieMuskat) April 23, 2015

(Accuweather calls for a high of 48 with sun at PNC Park today, so presumably the snow will have melted by gametime.)

This sort of thing inevitably leads to fans asking why early-season games are played in northern cities with dome-less stadia. Why not move games out of Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Minnesota, New York, Boston, Denver et al to the warm climates of Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California, and the ballparks in Milwaukee, Seattle, and Toronto that have retractable roofs?

The answer is, as is so often the case in baseball and in life, money. Opening Day is a big deal, but other than that, April and May games are duds in terms of attendance. The weather is often lousy, kids are still in school, families aren't on summer vacations. The Pirates' average attendance was about 23,000 in April and 25,500 in May. It was north of 30,000 every other month. No team wants a lot of April/May games on its schedule, for good reason. So fans and players will have to endure weather like this morning's.

This is also why articles saying that baseball's in trouble because average attendance in April is below the prior year's seasonlong average by x%. That's always going to be the case, because April attendance is the lowest of the year. The right way to look at it to compare attendance per game per stadium, given an equal number of games in 2014 and 2015. That's what baseball-reference.com does here, and the conclusion is that attendance this year is up slightly.

Vote Tim Raines

As some of you know, I have sponsored the Baseball Reference page for Tim Raines for several years. The sponsorship reads:

Amy's Husband sponsor(s) this page.

Our first baseball game together was Rock's first game back from the '87 collusion - 4 for 5, grand slam in the 10th to beat the Mets. She had a hero for life, and a year later, we were married. He remains her favorite; she remains mine.

As of today (and with Amy's permission), I changed it to:

Amy's Husband sponsor(s) this page.

Dear BBWAA member: Thanks for stopping here and at raines30.com. Tim Raines has only two more years of HOF eligibility. We hope you’ll agree that he is one of the top ten LFs of all time and deserving of the Hall. Thank you for your consideration. 

Tim Raines really, really should be in the Hall of Fame. He has been, as I've mentioned, screwed by the ten-vote ballot limitation, and also by the Hall's arbitrary get-those-steroid-guys-out-of-our-sight policy change last year cutting players' eligibility for election from 15 years to 10. (He's been on the ballot eight years.)

His last year of eligibility will be 2016. It pains me to think how many people are going to be focused on other elections that year.

What's Going On With: A.J. Burnett

Phillies starter A.J. Burnett had a bad year in 2014. He took $4.25 million less from the Phillies to sign with the Pirates, with whom he had good years in 2012 and 2013. Can he be reasonably expected to return to that form?

He's had an interesting career. He was drafted by the Mets in 1995 then traded to the Marlins in 1998 for Al Leiter during one of the their hey-we-won-the-World-Series-let's-blow-up-the-team purges following the 1997 season. (Mission accomplished: the team went from 92-70 in 1997 to 54-108 in 1998.) Burnett was a 22-year-old rookie when he got seven starts in 1999. After seven years with the Marlins, he became a free agent and signed a three-year contract with Toronto for $28.6 million after the 2005 season. He went 38-26 with a 3.94 ERA over 80 starts for the Blue Jays and became a free agent again, signing with the Yankees for five years at $16.5 million per year in December 2008. That didn't go so well. He was OK his first year in the Bronx, going 13-9 with a 4.04 ERA in 2009, below the league average of 4.45, and getting a win in the second game of the World Series that year. It spiraled downhill from there, with ERAs of 5.26 in 2010 and 5.15 in 2011. The Yankees gave up on him, sending him and most of the cash needed to pay his salary to Pittsburgh for two minor leaguers who've never appeared in the majors.

In Pittsburgh, he had a renaissance, going 16-10 with a 3.51 ERA in 2012 and 10-11 with a 3.30 ERA in 2013. Going into the 2014 season, when he'd be 37, a lot of folks figured he's re-sign with the Pirates, but the Pirates didn't offer what he wanted, there were stories of hurt feelings, and he signed a contract with Philadelphia that paid him $15 million last year. His contract gave him a $12.75 million option for 2015, but he declined it and instructed his agent to negotiate a deal with the Pirates, saying, "I've got one more [season] in me. There's no other place I'd rather be to finish my career," and "I want to be in a place where I'm really happy...this is where I belong." He signed for $8.5 million, effectively taking a $4.25 million pay cut to go back to Pittsburgh.

Here are the stats for Burnett's past five seasons: Two with the Yankees, two with the Pirates, one with the Phillies.

Year	Age	Tm	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	HBP	WP	ERA+
2010	33	NYY	10	15	.400	5.26	33	33	186.2	204	118	109	25	78	145	19	16	82
2011	34	NYY	11	11	.500	5.15	33	32	190.1	190	115	109	31	83	173	9	25	83
2012	35	PIT	16	10	.615	3.51	31	31	202.1	189	86	79	18	62	180	9	10	107
2013	36	PIT	10	11	.476	3.30	30	30	191.0	165	79	70	11	67	209	9	12	108
2014	37	PHI	8	18	.308	4.59	34	34	213.2	205	122	109	20	96	190	16	9	81

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 11/21/2014.

ERA+ measures ERA relative to the league average, adjusted for home park. So Burnett's 108 in 2013 means he was 8% better than average. His 81 in 2014 means he was 19% worse.

The key question for the Pirates and their fans is whether Burnett can return to his 2012-2013 form. Over at Gammons Daily, David Gobiewski wrote a great piece summarizing Burnett's prospects in general. I want to focus on what went right in Pittsburgh and what went wrong in Philadelphia.

I'll start with a table. GB% is the percentage of the balls in play off Burnett that were ground balls. GB/FB is the ratio of ground balls to fly balls. HR%, SO%, and BB% is the percentage of batters who hit home runs, struck out, or walked against him. HR/FB% is the percentage of the fly balls he allowed that went over the fence. The last four columns are pitch mix: FB% is fastballs, SI% is sinkers, CH% is changeups, and CU% is curveballs.

Year	Age	Tm	GB%	GB/FB	HR%	SO%	BB%	HR/FB%	FB%	SI%	CH%	CU%
2010	33	NYY	44.9%	1.20	3.0%	17.5%	9.4%	11.6%	49,5%	19.9%	3.2%	27.4%
2011	34	NYY	49.2%	1.52	3.7%	20.7%	9.9%	17.0%	41.8%	13.9%	11.2%	33.1%
2012	35	PIT	56.9%	2.35	2.1%	21.2%	7.3%	12.7%	24.6%	35.6%	5.7%	34.1%
2013	36	PIT	56.5%	2.33	1.4%	26.1%	8.4%	9.1%	21.8%	36.7%	6.1%	35.4%
2014	37	PHI	50.9%	1.78	2.1%	20.3%	10.3%	11.3%	14.9%	44.5%	7.3%	33.0%

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com (HR%, SO%, BB%), FanGraphs (GB%, GB/FB, HR/FB%), Brooks Baseball (FB%, SI%, CH%, CU%)

It's pretty clear what happened in 2012 when Burnett came over from the Yankees: The Pirates had him ditch is four-seam fastball in favor of his two-seam sinking fastball. They've done that before. As a result, he went from being a moderate ground ball pitche (21st of 43 ERA qualifiers in GB%, 19th in GB/FB in 2010 with the Yankees) to a ground ball machine (fourth of 46 ERA qualifiers in in both GB% and GB/FB in 2012). With the Phillies, he produced fewer ground balls. 

Additionally, the Pirates have one of the more analytically-oriented front offices, and they shifted their infielders 500 times in 2013, usually moving them to the right of second base when a lefty swinger who tended to pull was at the plate. Shifting helps ground ball pitchers record outs. When Burnett joined the Phillies, he went to a team that shifted only 45 in times to 2013. They bumped that up to 291 in 2014, sixth in the league, but still well below the Pirates. So it's reasonable to think that he lost some ground ball outs when he moved across Pennsylvania.

Plus, the Pirates play in one of the toughest parks in the majors in which to hit home runs. PNC Park depressed home runs by 30% in 2014. The Phillies play in Citizens Bank Park, which boosted homers by 18%.

So that's what happened to Burnett: He generated fewer ground balls, which were hit into an infield that was less well-positioned to field them, in a home park that helped homers.

That doesn't really tell the whole story, though. He relied on his sinker more in Philadelphia than he ever had before, which should have kept his ground ball rate up. Instead, it fell. And while his home run rate rose from 2013 to 2014, it was lower than it was in 2012, when he was good.

I think there were two problems. First, his sinker failed to generate the same results: 13.2% of his sinkers resulted in ground balls in Pittsburgh, and just 9.7% in Philadelphia. As a result, it became easier to hit, as he allowed 29 doubles, three triples, and 11 homers off the pitch in 2014 after allowing 30 doubles, four triples, and 14 homers in 2012 and 2013 combined. 

Second, he had problems with the strike zone. His percentage of pitches in the strike zone fell from 51% in 2012 to 49% in 2013 to 47% in 2014. More importantly, batters stopped chasing his pitches outside the strike zone, as his percentage of swings on pitches outside the strike zone fell from 29% in 2012 and 31% in 2013 to 27% in 2014. That resulted in a big boost in his walks (he led the league in walks allowed), and more baserunners resulted in more runs scoring.

So I wouldn't expect anything magical from Burnett's return to Pittsburgh. Yes, he'll benefit from being a tougher park in which to hit a home run. And playing with a shifted infield behind him (the Pirates led the league in shifts last year) will take away some of those base hits. But pitching coach Ray Searage's focus won't be on changing the pitches that Burnett throws as much as changing their effectiveness--specifically, throwing more of them in the strike zone and locating them in order to induce more ground balls. Doing that with a pitcher who turns 38 in January won't be easy. I expect an improvement but not a return to Burnett's 2012-13 heyday.