Kuzul

Who needs peace when we’ve got WAR?

Wins Above Replacement, that is.

With sites like Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus making all sorts of statistics easily accessible and readily available, there’s no shortage of interesting, intriguing, intelligent—even fun—metrics to consider.

But in the battle to be baseball’s best stat, WAR wins.

While the advanced metric may be a bit perplexing to some and certainly isn’t as popular or widespread as ol‘ reliables like batting average, or runs batted in or even more new-age numbers like on-base percentage, WAR has it over all of them.

Here’s why…

One Stat Fits All

The biggest notch in WAR’s belt is that it’s one of the few stats that actually encompasses all aspects of any and all player performance.

By comparison, on-base percentage (OBP) is an offense-only number.

Defensive Runs Saved (DRS), for instance, expresses solely how good a player is on defense.

Ultimate Baserunning Runs (UBR) meanwhile, measures a player’s proficiency on the basepaths alone.

And Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) puts a pitcher’s performance into context.

WAR, on the other hand, is one-stop shopping for rating baseball players in all of the above: offense, defense, baserunning and pitching.

The fine folks at FanGraphs explain it as well as anyone:

Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic. You should always use more than one metric at a time when evaluating players, but WAR is pretty darn all-inclusive and provides a handy reference point. WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?” This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth +6.3 wins to their team while Player Y is only worth +3.5 wins.

A Unified WAR

While the two sources for WAR, FanGraphs (a.k.a. fWAR) and Baseball Reference (a.k.a., rWAR), previously had slightly different methods of calculation that caused frustration and confusion, there’s now a unified replacement level, as Dave Cameron of FanGraphs wrote back in March.

In other words, it’s another win for WAR, as HardballTalk’s Craig Calcaterra wrote:

[The separate methods] led to at least some confusion among more casual observers and led to a lot of potshots from the fans and the press looking to take issue with any stat more complicated than batting average. “Hey, why should we care about WAR if you guys can’t even agree what it is,” they would say…

Basically, baseball’s best stat just got even better.

Don’t Get Caught Up

The blank looks one gets while trying to explain Wins Above Replacement are understandable, because the metric inherently raises the question: “What the heck is replacement level?”

Here’s a quick-and-dirty answer from Baseball Prospectus’ Sam Miller, who wrote a piece on WAR for ESPN The Magazine‘s March issue:

A measure of the average production of a bench or minor league player who can be acquired freely at minimum cost. Used as the baseline for calculating WAR.

If that still leaves you scratching your head, the important thing is not to get caught up in the concept and construct of the statistic—if you want more on those aspects, though, feel free to click any of the links we’ve included to this point and read through. Instead, focus on how to use it.

What WAR Is Good For

This is where WAR really shines.

You see, WAR puts a number to the amount of wins a player adds to his team’s win total, and well, what’s a more basic stat than a “W?”

Let’s put it in simple terms with a player everyone can agree is great: Ryan Braun.

In 2011, Braun posted a 7.3 WAR (per FanGraphs)—meaning he was worth seven wins more than a run-of-the-mill waiver-wire player or minor leaguer. That year, Braun ranked fifth-best in FanGraphs‘ WAR and second-best in the NL to Matt Kemp’s 8.4.

You’ll remember that the 2011 NL MVP race was a heated battle between—no real surprise here—Braun and Kemp, which Braun ultimately won in an extremely close vote.

Point being, regardless of which of the two you think the winner should have been, WAR pretty much told us who the top two players were.

Putting WAR in Context

So Kemp’s 8.4 WAR and Braun’s 7.3 WAR in 2011 were great, but let’s put those numbers in context.

For this, once again, we’ll turn to FanGraphs, which breaks down the general guidelines for what each range of WAR translates to in terms of performance in a single season:

That shows just how great Braun and Kemp were in 2011.

Comparisons Made Easy

Another reason WAR is fun—if you’ll pardon the pun…and the rhyme?

“WAR is context, league, and park neutral. This means you can use WAR to compare players between years, leagues, and teams,” as the FanGraphs glossary page points out.

Wanna know how great Mike Trout’s rookie season was? Try all-time great: It was the 31st-best year ever at 10.0 WAR.

How about comparing two of the best center fielders in MLB history? In their careers, the Say Hey Kid was worth almost twice as many wins as The Kid.

Curious about where Justin Verlander—who’s widely considered the best pitcher in the game—actually ranks among all active pitchers for his career? Try 12th-best and rising quickly.

We should point out here that WAR is a cumulative metric, both over the course of a single season and over a career, and Verlander has dozens or even hundreds of fewer career starts than the 11 hurlers ahead of him.

Not Perfect, But Pretty Close

So is WAR the perfect baseball statistic? Of course not.

There are so many aspects, layers and underlying statistics that get rolled into one single, solitary number—and depending on whether you use FanGraphs‘ WAR or Baseball Reference’s WAR, even that one number is different for any given player in any given season or career.

Put another way: WAR is neat, but it isn’t always tidy.

Still, the concept of Wins Above Replacement and all that goes into it—especially the metric itself—makes for a pretty remarkable stat.

If you were already familiar with WAR before reading this, then hopefully you learned something or at least appreciated the journey.

If you hadn’t really paid attention to or even heard of WAR prior to this, well, here’s hoping you’ll at least do one thing going forward:

Give WAR a chance.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The San Francisco Giants have a reputation for winning with pitching and defense. They’ve had four straight winning seasons and won two out of the last three World Series by allowing the fewest runs in baseball since 2009.

However, thus far in 2013, the Giants are leading the National League West with a great offense. Giants position players currently lead all of baseball in wins above replacement (WAR), according to FanGraphs. 

The strength of the Giants’ lineup is its ability to make contact. They are tied with the Texas Rangers for the lowest strikeout rate in baseball.

Marco Scutaro (6.5 percent strikeout rate), Pablo Sandoval (9.8 percent), Angel Pagan (12 percent) and Buster Posey (13.5 percent) are the best hitters on the squad at putting the ball in play.

That consistent ability to get the bat on the ball is why the Giants lead the National League with a .269 team batting average. The Giants are also the best team in the National League at hitting with runners in scoring position, according to ESPN. They’re hitting .298/.379/.474 in those clutch situations.

The club’s clutch hitting has made up for its lack of home run power. The Giants are near the bottom of the National League in home runs. However, they are fifth in slugging percentage, third in doubles and fourth in triples.

The middle of the Giants’ lineup is extremely difficult to get through. Sandoval, Posey and Pence—the three-through-five hitters—have combined for 19 home runs and 77 RBI. They are the top three qualified hitters on the team in on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS).

Brandon Crawford has provided tremendous production from the bottom of the order. He’s put up an .819 OPS with 16 extra-base hits thus far in 2013. He entered the season with a reputation as a defense-only player, but he’s quickly shattering that notion.

Crawford’s double-play partner Marco Scutaro got off to a slow start to the season due to a back injury. He’s gotten healthier, and he now leads the team with a .318 batting average. He’s currently in the midst of a 15-game hitting streak.

Even light-hitting left fielder Gregor Blanco has gotten in on the offensive action. He doesn’t hit for the type of power normally associated with the left field position. However, he’s hitting .280 with a robust .351 on-base percentage to more than make up for his lack of home run pop.

First baseman Brandon Belt is tied for third on the team in home runs and is fourth in RBI. He’s hitting only .248 due to a slow start in April. However, he’s picked it up by hitting .275/.383/.575 thus far in May.

General manager Brian Sabean told Andrew Baggarly of CSN Bay Area that Belt is the key to the success of the lineup. Sabean told Baggarly:

And it [the platoon in left field] wouldn’t be that much of an eyesore statistically from a run production standpoint if we had a bona fide six hitter, which should be Belt…The more quality at-bats he [Belt] can create, the better he’ll be equipped to be what we need him to do, and that’s be a run producer as a six hitter. 

Those pitching-and-defense-oriented Giants from yesteryear no longer exist. The new version of the two-time champion Giants is getting it done with one of the game’s best lineups.

Given that six of the team’s starting eight position players are 30 years old or younger, expect this offensive trend to continue.

The only question facing the Giants this year is whether or not the starting rotation will round back into shape. If it does, the Giants will run away with the National League West once again.

All statistics in this article are courtesy of ESPN.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It’s been said, by no less an authority than the great Ted Williams himself, that hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sport.

And Mr. Williams never even had to face Matt Harvey.

Harvey, of course, is the New York Mets‘ ace right-hander. He’s also one of the biggest stories in baseball this year, as the 24-year-old former first-round pick has become one of the best pitchers in the game—in about the same amount of time it takes one of his 98 mph fastballs to leave his hand and arrive in the catcher’s mitt, having missed the hitter’s bat along the way, no doubt.

But just how “unhittable” is Harvey, and how is he doing it?

For the Record

At 4.31, Harvey’s hits per nine rate so far this season looks more like the time it might take Mike Trout to moonwalk to first base. It’s also easily the best in MLB and almost a full hit per nine better than Yu Darvish’s.

Additionally, Harvey currently sports a batting average against of (ahem) .141, tops in the game by more than 20 points for the year.

If Harvey were to maintain those two statistics through 2013’s end—he won’t, but just play along—he would beat both Nolan Ryan’s hits per nine record (5.26 in 1972) and Pedro Martinez’s batting average against mark (.166 in 2000).

The chart at right shows the top 10 seasons in those two categories.

Here’s where we pause to remind you the season is barely a month-and-a-half old. While Harvey is proving to be record-setting so far, well, so is Darvish (5.13 H/9, .163 BAA) and his fellow countryman Hisashi Iwakuma (5.23, .165).

In other words, even in this day and age of pitching domination, don’t expect Harvey’s rates to last to this extent. Sorry if that bursts your bubble.

Still, when a hitter stands in the batter’s box against Harvey right now, he’s basically attempting to do the single most difficult thing in sport—against the single best person at preventing the hitter from doing that very thing.

More Whiffs, Fewer Hits

So we know the “how,” as in how hard it is to hit Harvey. But what about the “why?”

First, let’s take a look at Harvey’s plate discipline section on FanGraphs, which measures how often hitters swing and how often they make contact against him.

We could bore you with more numbers (that’s what the chart at right is for), but suffice it to say that it doesn’t take long to interpret the data. Not only is Harvey getting batters to swing more than the average pitcher, especially on pitches outside the strike zone, he’s also making them swing and miss much more than average, again especially on stuff that wouldn’t be a strike if they didn’t chase.

In other words, Harvey’s stuff is hard both hard to hit and hard to lay off.

By the way, the above goes for 2013 and 2012, so it’s not exactly a flukish eight-start outlier limited to this season alone.

All of this jibes with the fact that Harvey has a nasty 12.7 swinging strike rate, which ranks third-best in the majors, and is striking out a crazy 30.1 percent of the hitters he faces—sixth-best overall.

Simply put, Harvey is registering so many swings and misses and so many strikeouts, that hitters are putting fewer balls in play, which of course, means fewer hits.

Play Ball

But what about when hitters actually do make contact and put balls in play? Because, believe it or not, that does occasionally happen against Harvey.

For this, we turn to FanGraphs’ batted ball data, which shows that Harvey has been inducing a combination of weak contact and fly balls.

Harvey’s allowing line drives on only 14.8 percent of balls put in play against him, which is seventh-fewest. As we know, of all types of batted balls, liners become base hits most often, so Harvey is limiting hits that way, too.

He’s also in the top 20 in both fly ball percentage (40.6 percent, No. 20) and infield fly ball percentage (15.4, No. 11), and fly balls are easier to convert into outs than ground balls, especially when hitters are having so much trouble squaring them up.

Finding Faults

At this stage, it’s fair to question that whole “squaring up” concept.

It’s true that certain pitchers are capable of limiting hard-hit balls, and thus maintaining BABIPs (batting average on balls in play) well below the typical league average (usually around .295 to .300). In general terms, these hurlers are the types who induce either an extreme amount of fly balls or ground balls and/or throw hard enough to result in weak contact. As we’ve established, Harvey falls more into the latter category.

This year, the Mets righty has—and here’s where the cold water comes in—the lowest BABIP in the sport at .190. That’s a full 100 points below the league-average BABIP of .290 for 2013, according to FanGraphs.

Now, Harvey’s BABIP as a rookie was .262, so through his first 18 big league starts, it looks like he could be one of the low-BABIP electric arms noted above.

Still, Even though batters are hitting lower than normal on balls in play overall, and even though Harvey has shown so far he can keep his BABIP below league average, his current .190 is absolutely unsustainably low.

There may not be quite as large a regression as some might expect, but unless Harvey is going to put up an all-time BABIP (see chart), he’ll start surrendering more hits. Which is why it’s pretty much guaranteed we won’t be seeing Harvey establish a new record in either hits per nine or batting average against.

In Control

Now that we’ve cut him down a peg, let’s leave on a positive note.

What’s scary about Harvey is that he’s getting better in one extremely important aspect of his approach that has helped him subdue hitters—the first-pitch strike.

While his walks per nine rate improved in each of his three seasons at UNC, Harvey did average 4.7 BB/8, so there was at least some concern over his control and efficiency at the outset.

Those issues remained, at least to an extent, as he made his way up through the minors and during his first taste of the majors, as the chart to the right shows.

Through eight starts this season, though, Harvey has dramatically improved in those two areas. The reason? He’s throwing strike one 65.1 percent of the time, per FanGraphs, which is five percent better than league average—as well as his 2012 rate.

This shows Harvey is more than capable of adjusting. And if he can continue to throw a first-pitch strike that frequently, well, it’s only going to be that much harder for hitters to do much of anything when they’re behind in the count. Which means more leverage for Harvey to generate more feeble swings and allow fewer hard hit balls—and hits.

Beyond the Stats

We could spend all day looking at the stats (too late!), but there are also factors like repertoire, mechanics and delivery. No surprise, Harvey has made noteworthy advancements in those, too.

Following the 2010 draft, Baseball America had this to say about Harvey (subscription required):  

Scouts agree that Harvey’s arm action is longer now than it was in 2007 but they aren’t sure why. It affects his command, as it’s harder for him to repeat his delivery and find the same release point. When he does, Harvey has explosive stuff, and he has worked harder than ever, thanks to improved maturity, to improve his balance and tempo.

Combined with that, here’s video of Harvey’s delivery from his UNC days:

Harvey’s mechanics were relatively fluid even in college, but he’s certainly polished up certain aspects. He gets better extension and is a much smoother today. Go back and click the video of Harvey owning the White Sox, and you can see how much easier the upper-90s heat looks coming out of his hand. 

Again, this is yet another example of how Harvey has the ability to adapt, adjust and learn as he progresses.

Harvey’s combination of stuff, mentality and drive makes him fun to watch.

And almost impossible to hit.

All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

As we near the quarter-mark of the season, the minor league affiliates of the Baltimore Orioles have been good as a whole.

The two most successful affiliates have been the Norfolk Tides of Triple-A, who currently lead their division with a record of 23-12, and the Frederick Keys of Single-A, who also lead theirs with a 18-14 record.

While much of Norfolk’s success has been helped by their influx of former major leaguers, the other affiliates’ successes are based completely on prospects.

The following list is an update on each of the Orioles’ top 10 prospects and how they’ve performed so far in the 2013 season. The ranking is based off the ranking of Orioles’ prospects over at MLB.com.

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Detroit Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera is one of the most cerebral hitters the game of baseball has ever seen.

A career .320 hitter, Cabrera is a superstar heavyweight boxer, champion chess player and big kid wrapped into a 6’4”, 240-pound frame.

MLB pitchers who stare into the batter’s box at Cabrera know they have to outsmart the Triple Crown winner.  While some pitching staffs do have success against this 30-year-old Venezuela native, most find themselves kicking dirt in disgust. 

This includes staffs from the AL Central Division.  Per Baseball-Reference statistics, Cabrera has batted .320 (463-for-1,445) with 88 home runs, 89 doubles and 293 RBI in 380 career games against teams in this division.

While impressive, Cabrera has given five other teams outside the AL Central absolute fits in his 10-year career.  These victims of Cabrera’s brute wrath (minimum 150 plate appearances), are the subject of this slideshow. 

Source of Stats: Baseball-Reference.com and MLB.com

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MLB stat lines distort in bizarre directions while the season is young. Due to small sample sizes, slugger Rick Ankiel and several other prominent players have posted fascinating numbers in 2013 that you wouldn’t believe.

Is it possible, for example, that a starting infielder literally never walks? And can a veteran pitcher ride his unsightly walk total to an All-Star selection?

Inevitably, these outliers will normalize, thus making our experience a bit less enjoyable.

Let’s have fun while we can and tease five unusual individuals.

*All stats provided by Baseball-Reference.com and are current as of April 26.

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Who’s the hottest pitcher in the majors? There’s Yu Darvish, the Texas Rangers right-hander who nearly threw a perfect game his first time out. Or maybe it’s Atlanta Braves lefty Paul Maholm, who is 3-0 and has thrown 20.1 scoreless innings.

But we can’t forget about Matt Harvey, the New York Mets righty who’s the first pitcher since 1900 to win each of his first three starts while notching 25 strikeouts and allowing six or fewer hits, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

Indeed, no pitcher in baseball is off to a hotter start right now—or maybe ever—than Harvey.

Each of those three hurlers has been Cy Young-worthy so far, but frankly, it seems way too early for any award discussion. Or is it?

Which brings us to the question: Do Cy Young winners always get off to hot starts?

When we explored whether Most Valuable Players always get off to hot starts, the answer was a resounding yes. But let’s analyze the arms and see what we can find out.

First, let’s refresh your memory with a list of the Cy Young winners since 2000:

*For the purposes of this research, we’ll ignore Eric Gagne’s 2003 because comparing starters to relievers is more or less futile. For the record, though, Gagne did pitch extremely well that April: In 14.1 innings, the Dodgers closer allowed no runs on six hits and three walks with 24 whiffs. Oh, and he tallied eight saves.

From 2000 through 2012, there were 25 individual Cy Young seasons by starting pitchers, and here are their average stats for the month of April:

That translates to a 3-1 record with a 2.85 ERA, 1.12 WHIP and a 37-10 strikeout-to-walk ratio over 37 innings in the season’s first month.

Pretty nasty.

But what’s interesting is that not all Cy Young winners are created equal when it comes to April performances.

Focusing on ERA and WHIP, 11 of the 25 individual seasons (or nearly half) actually have been worse than “Cy Young average”—again, a 2.85 ERA and 1.12 WHIP—in both stats through April:

Granted, neither stat provides a perfect measure of just how good—or in this case, ungood—a pitcher has been, but taken together, ERA and WHIP give us at least some indication.

What do you notice about the table above? How ’bout the fact that in just about every season since 2000, at least one eventual Cy Young winner has had a so-so (or worse) first month? In fact, 10 of the past 12 seasons featured an award-winning arm who got off on the wrong foot.

But if that’s the case—if a hot start isn’t necessary—then how do these Cy Young winners manage to, well, win the Cy Young exactly?

By getting better as the season progresses, silly.

Let’s shift gears to another statistic: OPS allowed (on base-plus-slugging percentage). You may recall our old metric friends, sOPS+ and tOPS+, from the MVP study. In short…

• sOPS+ is a version of OPS that is weighted to league average, which is 100; for pitchers, an sOPS+ below 100 is better than league average (i.e., good)
• tOPS+ is a version of OPS that is weighted to compare a pitcher’s OPS allowed in a given period of time against his OPS allowed for the entirety of that same season; similarly, a tOPS+ below 100 means a pitcher’s OPS allowed was better in that time frame than it was compared to the season as a whole.

If your eyes just glazed over, these tables will make it easier to digest. This one shows the April sOPS+ for each Cy Young winner over the past 13 seasons:

Basically, the boxes that are shaded green indicate that the pitcher’s OPS allowed in April was better than league average, whereas any boxes shaded red indicate worse than league average. While only four eventual Cy Young winners posted a below-average OPS allowed in April, there also were a handful of others that were only slightly above-average (i.e., Johan Santana in 2004).

In other words, on the whole, these pitchers were very good compared to the league, but they weren’t immune to slow starts.

By the way: What Cliff Lee did in April of 2008 (.361 OPS against), as well as what Pedro Martinez (.475) and Randy Johnson did in April of 2000 (.431), should be illegal.

This next table shows their tOPS+ in April:

Same story: Green is good (above-average), but red is bad (below-average). Except this time, we’re comparing each pitcher’s April OPS allowed to his OPS allowed for the full season in which he won the Cy Young.

You’ll notice a lot more red. In fact, 16 of the 25 Aprils are crimson, meaning a majority of the Cy Young winners since 2000 actually were below-average—for them—as far as OPS allowed in the first month of their award-winning campaign.

What does this all mean? Well, for one thing, it proves that just because Yu Darvish, Paul Maholm and Matt Harvey are in line for crazy-good Aprils, it doesn’t guarantee that some slower-starting ace isn’t lying in wait to pitch his way to the 2013 Cy Young Award.

Because for starters, it’s not always how you start.

All stats come from Baseball Reference.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

If your stat line reads four home runs in four games to start the season, that’s good, right? Well, it doesn’t if that stat line is pitcher John Axford’s stats after his first four appearances in the 2013 season.

Axford has lost his closer role after surrendering four home runs and losing two games of the four he pitched in so far this season. Similar to the bump in the road he experienced last season, we’ll see if Axford can regain his stuff and become the effective closer that he was in 2011.

Last season Axford gave up 10 home runs, making him the 20th Brewers pitcher who did not start a game to give up 10 or more home runs in a season (note: the Brewers record for most home runs allowed by a pitcher who did not start a game in a season is 16 by Luis Vizcaino in 2003. Eric Plunk in 1999 and Doug Jones in 1998 each surrendered 15 in a season).

Looking at Axford’s numbers got me thinking about home runs given up by pitchers. We all know that Barry Bonds has the most career home runs with 762. But do we know who holds the career mark for most career home runs given up by a pitcher?

Jamie Moyer tops that list with 522. He is one of only two pitchers who has given up 500 or more career HR’s. The other? Robin Roberts, who allowed 505 four-baggers.

Here’s a look at the pitchers who gave up 400 or more homers in their career.

Pitcher, Home Runs allowed

Jamie Moyer, 522
Robin Roberts, 505
Fergie Jenkins, 484
Phil Niekro, 482
Don Sutton, 472
Frank Tanana, 448
Warren Spahn, 434
Bert Blyleven, 430
Tim Wakefield, 418
Steve Carlton, 414
Randy Johnson, 411
David Wells, 407

Mark Buehrle leads the active pitchers with 302 home runs surrendered. Bartolo Colon follows with 296.

Getting back to the Brewers, Jim Slaton holds the franchise record with 192 home runs allowed. He is followed by Bill Wegman (187), Mike Caldwell (161), Ben Sheets (160) and Moose Haas (151). Braden Looper holds the team single-season mark; he surrendered 39 HR in 2009.

While it highly unlikely Axford with jump into the Brewers’ career list in home runs allowed (he has given up 19 in his career), he is making his way up the ladder on the list of most career HR allowed by a Brewers pitcher with no starts. As I stated before, Axford has given up 19 home runs. That places his 10th on the list of most HRs allowed by a pitcher with no starts. Vizcaino holds the team mark with 34.

Follow Jerry on Twitter @StatsonTapp

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Friday’s 1-0 loss to the Cleveland Indians might be as worse as it gets for Chicago White Sox fans this season—or this may only be the start. 

It’s not often a starter can go seven innings, give up one hit and end up without a victory, but White Sox starter Jose Quintana felt that pain Friday.

Quintana bounced back in a big way from a mediocre first start to have one of the best starts of his young career. The 24-year-old stifled the Indians, striking out seven along the way with his only blemish being a Michael Brantley double. 

Of course, that wasn’t enough as the anemic and downright pathetic White Sox offense continued its struggles. 

The Sox managed only two runners in scoring position, but it’s hard to believe that would have mattered. The Sox are 29th in the MLB with runners in scoring position (.145/219/.306). The only team worse? The uber-disappointing Los Angeles Angels. Small victories, right? 

The early season concerns about a team devoid of consistent hitters were not unfounded. This year’s White Sox team simply makes far too many outs. Currently, they rank 28th in the league in team on-base percentage with a scary .280 figure. That’s simply not going to cut it for a team that had hopes of a division crown. 

A majority of the struggles lie with a few of the White Sox higher profile players. Designated hitter Adam Dunn continues to disappoint as his .162/.184/.351, 53 OPS+ start has a lot of fans hoping this isn’t a repeat of Dunn’s career-worst 2011 season.  

Dunn’s problems lie mostly with his inability to consistently draw walks anymore.

You can live with Dunn’s 200 strikeouts when you’re getting consistent walks and home runs. This year Dunn hasn’t provided any of that value. Instead, he’s shown a new-found ability to break away from his three-outcome (home run, strikeout or walk) past and into the realm of the groundout. 

Dunn’s strikeout percentage of 32.4 percent (via FanGraphs.com) is actually the lowest of his White Sox career, instead he’s replaced those strikeouts with groundouts. Thus far, 20.59 percent of Dunn’s at-bats have resulted in a groundout. That’s a stunning number for a player like Dunn. To put it into perceptive, Dunn only grounded out 11 percent of the time in 2012 and 10.46 percent of the time during his miserable 2011 campaign.

A player like Dunn simply cannot ground out at the rate he does without providing consistent power and walks like he has in his past. There was some hope that Dunn had rediscovered some of his stroke last season, but it’s beginning to look like last season was the outlier and 2011 is the new norm. 

Free-agent acquisition Jeff Keppinger has been a super sub of sorts, filling in at numerous positions (3B, 1B, 2B) this season, but he’s somehow forgot to hit along the way.

Keppinger had a career year last year, and while White Sox fans certainly didn’t expect to see a .325/.367/.439 season from the 30-year-old, they expected better than the line (.154/.154/.154, -9 OPS+) they’ve received thus far. 

Keppinger‘s problem appears to be a complete inability to drive the ball. Keppinger has never been a power hitter, but he was at least able to drive the ball to all fields. This year, Keppinger‘s only hits have come on dead pull hits to left field while his outs have either been weak groundouts or short fly balls. 

Keppinger, like Dunn, seems to have also forgotten the benefit of drawing a walk considering he hasn’t drawn one yet. His .188 BABIP seems to indicate he’s been especially unlucky so far, but for those watching the games, it’s not as if Keppinger‘s balls in play have been driven with any force.

He appears to be a player completely over-matched in the first few weeks of the season. This is especially concerning given his stellar spring training numbers. 

There’s a few White Sox that deserve some scorn, but I’ll spare you the depression and cover just one more, left fielder Dayan Viciedo. 

White Sox fans have waited a number of years for Viciedo‘s true breakout season and while his 97 OPS+ 2012 appeared to be a precursor to bigger and better things, the young outfielder has struggled mightly in 2013. 

Never one to embrace the walk, Viciedo has completely abandoned it from his game (are you seeing a trend here?). Like Keppinger, Viciedo has yet to draw a walk in 23 plate appearances. 

That’s not Viciedo‘s game, so it’s understandable, but if you aren’t going to feign interest in drawing walks, the least you could do is not strike out at a career-high 39.1 percent. Viciedo should count his blessings 2013 has been the year of the strikeout so far as his nearly 40 percent K-rate is only ninth among MLB outfielders. Thanks, Rick Ankiel! 

Whereas Keppinger has provided the White Sox some defensive value in the short year, Viciedo‘s mediocre defense and pathetic offensive showings has brought the younger to a negative wins above replacement (-0.8). A really disappointing figure for a player who many thought was ready to make the leap into a consistent, everyday player for the White Sox. 

All in all, it hasn’t been good for the White Sox offense this year. The good news? Gordon Beckham was hitting well. Naturally, he’ll miss the next six to eight weeks after fracturing a bone in his wrist. Oh boy. 

The year is still young, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a ton of positives in this early White Sox season. The team just does not preserve its outs like a successful major league team must. The pathetic on-base percentage and the resistance or inability to generate walks or hit consistently with runners in scoring positions are very troubling. 

There’s still a lot of time left in the season and they very well could turn it around, but I’m not holding my breath. 

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You might’ve heard Bryce Harper’s season got off to quite a start.

The Washington Nationals outfielder—whom many consider a Most Valuable Player candidate in only his second season and at the ripe old age of 20—smashed a pair of homers in the season opener.

The performance already has triggered all sorts of talk about what’s to come in 2013 for Mr. Harper, including a piece by fellow Bleacher Report MLB Lead Writer Zachary D. Rymer on why Harper’s hot start is just the beginning of what will be an MVP campaign.

But do MVPs actually need to start hot in order to get the hardware?

A review of the first-month production* of past MVPs dating back to the turn of the century revealed some impressive results.

From 2000 through 2012, there were 25 total MVP-hitter seasons. (For the purposes of this research, we’ll ignore Justin Verlander’s 2011 because, comparing hitters to pitchers is like comparing apples to, well, you know.)

Here are the average triple-slash stats (average/on-base/slugging) for the first month of those 25 seasons: .321/.415/.633.

Pretty darn good, huh?

In chart form, it looks like this:

But what about some other key MVP numbers? You know, the ones that get voters all hot and bothered?

Again, that’s dynamite production in the first month: seven home runs, 20 RBI and 18 runs scored.

Where things get even crazier, though, is with OPS (on-base plus slugging). Or, more specifically, sOPS+, which is a version of OPS that scales the stat to league average, which is 100 (anything above 100 is better than league average). Get it?

But before we look at that, let’s consider comparing these MVPs to themselves.

Sounds tricky, right? But it can be done by using a fun little metric called tOPS+. While it looks intimidating, all that tOPS+ does is allow us to compare Miguel Cabrera against…Miguel Cabrera.

Say whaaat?

To simplify, let’s focus on Cabrera’s 2012 Triple Crown—and MVP—season. In April of last year, Cabrera posted an OPS of .940. Now, his sOPS+ for that month was 157, meaning Cabrera’s April OPS was 57 percent better than league average. That’s the stuff of an MVP.

But the tOPS+ of Cabrera’s April was just 88, meaning it was below average…when compared to Cabrera’s overall 2012 OPS of .999. In other words, Miguel Cabrera’s OPS in April of 2012 was below-average for Miguel Cabrera’s OPS in the entirety of the 2012 season.

If you’re still with me, maybe this graph will make more sense:

As for the grand scale, which includes Cabrera along with all of his MVP brethren, here’s the average sOPS+ and tOPS+ figures:

Here’s the takeaway from that: The average first-month sOPS+ of the past 25 individual MVP seasons was 177—or 77 percent better than league average. The average tOPS+, though, was just 97—or actually three percent worse when compared to the MVPs’ OPS for their entire award-winning season.

Put another way: A hot start is a necessary part of an MVP season, as Justin Morneau, who posted an sOPS+ of 78 in April 2006, was the only winner since 2000 to have an OPS below the league average in his first month.

But it just may be even more important for a player with MVP aspirations to get better as the season progresses, as 15 of the 25 most recent winners had a below-average OPS—for them—in their first month.

To bring this back around to Mr. Harper, while his Opening Day showing was mighty impressive, Bryce might want to keep hitting this month—and beyond—if he hopes to have his name on the award at season’s end.

All stats come from Baseball-Reference.com.

*Note: In 2009, Joe Mauer actually missed all of April, which makes his MVP performance that season even more impressive. It’s also the reason why these stats are based on “first-month” production, rather than April performance.

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