By now, most if not all you have seen that terrible moment from last night when Brett Lawrie threw his helmet down after a couple questionable calls by the ump -- and it either hit or grazed the ump when he did so. Check it out:

(h/t to reddit)

As far as I know, he hasn't been suspended yet, but he should be. And outside of the most outrageous, unacceptably violent and/or intolerant behavior by the ump preceding the scene shown in the .gif, the tirade is beneath the dignity of Major League Baseball and arguments to the contrary can be dismissed. Which isn't to say the ump is without fault, of course.

But then Peter Gammons tweeted this lil' doozy out this afternoon:

If Delmon Young had done what Brett Lawrie did...

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) May 16, 2012

I think I'll just leave this here without further comment. Feel free to finish the sentence.

1. Derek Lowe is the 2012 MLB leader in ERA.
2. Derek Lowe pitched a shutout last night, May 15th, 2012.
3. Nobody expected either of the above. What gives?

Our friend Harry Pavlidis of The Hardball Times takes a look at Lowe's pitch types vs. contact rates and concludes that Lowe is "pitching to contact" (shudder). But there are several quick lessons that can help us answer the question posed above.

First, we know ERA is suspect because it fails to include (exclude) defense, and a closer look shows that he's benefiting from his defense this season while actually pitching much the same as seasons past. Here's a good, simple lesson on why ERA is flawed:

One might expect Lowe's ERA to regress to the mean.

Note that Harry's analysis is still essentially correct -- Lowe just isn't getting whiffs at all this season compared to his career marks:

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There are currently two position players in baseball that are younger than 21: one of them, Mike Trout, is 20 years old; the other, Bryce Harper, is 19. Harper and Trout came in at #1 and #3, respectively, on Baseball America's top 100 prospects for 2012, as well as Minor League Ball's top 120 prospects. I need not explain that these are two extremely talented players who -- if they live up to the hype -- have marvelous careers ahead of them.

But it's worth noting that they've already accomplished a lot, just being in the majors already. In fact, if they can continue to be moderately productive for the rest of the season, they'll both put their names up alongside some pretty rare and special company.

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It certainly has been surprising that Jake Peavy has seemed to have found his 2007-self, the one who pitched 223.1 and a career best 2.24 FIP (not to mention, this was his Cy Young-winning season). Last Thursday, David Schoenfield proclaimed Peavy as the best pitcher in baseball, and while only 7 starts into the season he's laying claim to the title of the best pitcher in the AL. Always hard to judge this early into the season, is this just a hot start, or is he set to drop off sometime soon?

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MLB debuts are awesome to see, for a ton of reasons. One of the more obscure reasons for pitchers is that we get to see them under the PITCHf/x microscope and dissect their arsenal scientifically rather than relying on secondhand information. In many cases, the consensus doesn’t match up well with the Pitch F/X information.

To give just one example, let’s take a look at what Baseball America said about Zach Stewart in its past few Prospect Handbooks:

2009: "[His] 93-96 mph fastball and 82-85 mph slider give him a pair of potential out pitches."

2010: "Stewart’s bread and butter is his hard sinker, which sits at 92-94 mph and touches 95. He also offers a sharp 82-85 mph slider."

2011: "His fastball sits in the low 90s and routinely reaches 95-96 mph, featuring above-average sink. His mid-80s slider has depth and misses bats."

Zach Stewart finally made his debut in late 2011, and he averaged 90.8 mph on his fastball that season. This year, moved to the bullpen, he’s seen his velocity decline to 89.4 mph, while his slider has just sat at 82.

Therefore, Stewart has arrived in the majors with significantly less velocity than advertised, which significantly affects how he projects going forward. Long considered a high-upside player, his current incarnation appears to just be a generic sinker-slider pitcher who could be a fifth starter or middle reliever.

With that in mind, I’m going to take a look at eight starting pitchers that have recently debuted and see what pitches they’ve arrived in the major leagues with.

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When you think of Carl Yastrzemski, you think of 1967. When you think of Steve Carlton, you think of 1972.

You should—those were by far their best seasons.

In 1967, Yaz was worth 12.0 WAR as he captured the AL's Triple Crown. He hit .326/.418/.622 with 44 homers and 121 RBI in an offensively depressed era. He was even worth 23 runs in the field (which looks questionable until you see he had 22 the year before and 25 the year after. In 1967, Yaz was simply legit. His next-best season was 1968 with 10.0 WAR. Interestingly, that's the year he won the batting title with a .301 average. Now there's a lesson in era adjustments.

Steve Carlton's 1972 season was special because he won 27 games for a 59-win team. Beyond the wins, he led the league with a 1.97 ERA, 310 Ks and a 182 ERA+. He was worth 11.7 WAR (actually 12.1 if you add his offensive value). His next-best season was 1980, when he again led the league in wins, innings, and strikeouts while accumulating 9.9 WAR (9.8 with offense).

When you think of Roger Maris, what season pops into your mind? How about Babe Ruth? Lefty Grove? Ted Williams? Sometimes a player's iconic year does not match up with his most valuable one.

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Last year's World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Texas Rangers was an undeniably memorable seven-game showdown, easily the most entertaining Fall Classic since 2001's Yankees/DBacks Series. But what we saw between these two teams in October was perhaps just a taste of the next several years, as both teams have put themselves in positions to dominate for the next few years -- and potentially longer than that.

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Following up on my posts last week about 4-pitch (unintentional) walk rate, I thought I'd do something similar this week and look at the pitchers and hitters who have the highest (and lowest) rates of 3-pitch strikeouts.

I used for my sample the 304 pitchers and 331 hitters who had at least 50 strikeouts since the start of the 2011 season (through the games of Friday, May 11th). Then I simply divided the number of 3-pitch strikeouts by the number of total strikeouts to find 3-Pitch Strikeout Rate (3PK%). Here are the top 10 and bottom 10 hitters and pitchers in this stat:

For hitters, it seems like two factors mostly determine whether they rank at the top or the bottom of the list. First, a player who likes to work the count will tend to rank near the bottom; Thome, Youkilis, and Barton are prime examples of this. On the opposite end, free-swingers who don't take a lot of pitches, like Hardy, Cabrera, and Molina, will of course have a higher 3PK%.

The other main factor that I can see is the ability to make contact. Vladimir Guerrero is of course the king of this. Players who are able to avoid whiffs, even when swinging at bad pitches, are more likely to extend at-bats with fouls. Having higher whiff rates would then lead to slightly more 3-pitch Ks.

For the pitchers, sheer dominance seems to be a factor, as some of the best relievers in the game make the top 10 (Venters, Romo, Adams, and Papelbon). But that's clearly not all, as several of the bottom 10 are pretty darn good themselves.

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