Men

Q.  Where does Vargas stand, going into 2012?

A.  Assuming that you go by the WAR paradigm, which uses theoretical ERA "should have beens" rather than actual ERA's ... he has posted WAR totals of 2.4 and 2.6 the last two seasons, totalling $21.0 million worth of on-field performance in 2010-11.  His actual ERA's have been a little better than that.

Vargas was red-hot in September 2011, of course -- he started doing the Bedard Twist and he gained a good 1-2 mph out of it.  It made a huge difference.  In 31 September innings, he fanned 27 men and allowed only 1 homer.  If only we could see another 7 IP and 6 K's tonight, picking up where he left off last season.

In fact, his last game of 2011 was a 10-strikeout detonation of the A's on Sept. 26.

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Q.  What's the basis of his success?  In what pitcher family is he?

A.   He's a soft tossing (low-K, low-BB) finesse lefty, not in the Tommy John groundball family, but in the flyball family. 

He throws a lot of flyballs, but has a very low HR/F rate and a very low BABIP rate.

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Q.  The HR/F and BABIP rates are luck, or a skill?

A.  Mike Fast showed that one starting pitcher might average 67 mph on his batted balls, and another average 75 mph - all season long.  Here's our summary of that finding.

Three basic things I know of that consistently cause weak swings:  a great change-speed game ... consistently precise location ... and great velocity.  Jason Vargas is excellent at two of those things, weak at the other.  The sum total seems to be in his favor.  As with Jamie Moyer, batters just can't seem to plant the back foot and load up on Vargas' pitches.

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Q.  One walk and 9 strikeouts!  That makes him a saber sweetie!

A.  Haven't seen him pitch.  Everybody says he's 86-88 mph with the fastball, but does have a Luke French curve ball.  And that he has Luke French's assortment of changes, sliders, and scuffballs.  Everybody says he has Luke French's pitchability.  I'll guarantee you that he has Luke French's first name.  We spend money on research around here.

L. Ron Hubbard invented Dianetics on a bet, *in my opinion* you CIA-spook wannabes googling this, and his "religion" was based on the sales shtick that when you are unconscious, spoken words plant "engrams" on your subconscious.  I got audited downtown, because as you may have heard, I'm a comparative religion kinda guy.  The Dianetics auditor thought I was far too open-minded and told me that my main problem was that I had the engram "Listen!" on the broken record of my subconscious.  My stepdad probably yelled that at my mom while I was asleep in my crib.  True story.

Back on point:  Considering Jarrod Washburn for Luke French, considering his scouting director for Josh Leuke, and considering an 87-mph lefty reliever this year, can there be any doubt about Jay-Z's engram?  You got it.  "He's a LuLu!"

::Pauses, acknowledges general applause::

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=== Ichiro!'s New Swing! ===

Isn't.

He evidently could not get comfortable with Dustin Ackley's swing, and he has simply reverted to his lifelong way of swinging.  His front foot is probably closer to his back foot than it used to be, and he's not hinging his wrists on the backswing.

My son went, "That's kind of lame, that he would try to be able to hit another way, and not be able to."  Oh, I dunno.  The old swing is a 20-year work of art, precision-honed to generate 400-foot power from a 155-pound man.  To just trade it in for another swing is to risk losing the dynamic torsion he's worked so hard to maximize.

He does indeed draw the front knee in farther now, though.  The front shin is almost angled at the pitcher.  And he does load the bat a little bit more.  Certainly he swings noticeably harder.  

This is all a throwback to his Orix days, in which he used to pick his left foot up off the ground, swinging it back, and using a "leg kick" to hit 20-25 home runs in a short season.  Ichiro came to the U.S., became mesmerized with the 200-hit goal, and abandoned the leg kick.  I'd love to see the 25-homer version of Ichiro, and on March 13, he was swinging that way.

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=== March 13, 2012 ===

We cross-checked Vinnie's defense and, to the general surprise, it clears the bar with ease.  

The bat?  Earlier we had waxed ecstatic about his aiki-esque quick, compact power.  Like a 19-year-old Ken Griffey Jr., Vinnie Catricala does things with a baseball bat that most other major league players are not capable of doing.  Such as, in this case, hitting an inside fastball over the center field fence.  On a 1-2 count.

How does Vinnie look, in a whole game, as opposed to on the highlight reel?  That was the question.  The answer:  better than he does on the highlights.  If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'.

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=== See Ball, Hit Ball ===

On the morning of March 14th, SSI readers got to the point long before Dr. D got there.  Catricala can take the ball all over the field -- in his second at-bat, he first lasered a foul ball double down the line, and then instantly fought another pitch off the handle down the RF line.  There were 89 degrees' difference between the two "hits," this occurring in one AB.

Catricala had another RF hit fall in, and in his single out, he rifled a frozen rope out to the right fielder, again.  That Batted Ball In Play (BABIP) had approximately a .500, .600 chance of being another hit, with about a .350 chance of being a double.

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