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Kerry Wood is set to announce his retirement, either today or after his next appearance. We all knew it was coming -- it had to with his recent struggles:

In the nine games he did manage to appear in this year, he was ineffective, walking 11 hitters in 8⅓ innings with an 8.64 ERA. Continuing to pitch with the injuries and ineffectiveness was apparently too much for Wood, so he is expected to announce his retirement from baseball Friday, about a month short of his 35th birthday.

Wood was the No. 1 pick of the Cubs in 1995, and was wildly popular among Cubs fans for the 20-K game, the 2003 playoff push, and his stand-up-guy attitude. It's sad that his performance never measured up to his popularity. He retires with an 86-75 won-lost record and 63 saves over 445 games (178 starts).

But sometimes it helps to see why a player like Kerry Wood decides to hang 'em up, does it not? Enjoy:

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about whether or not Zack Greinke's focus on FIP was actually hurting him as a pitcher, especially in terms of BABIP. The results were fairly inconclusive, mainly because of small sample size (only about three seasons) and the lackluster defense that has been played behind Greinke in his career.

Greinke's high BABIP's despite his ability to combine a lot of strikeouts, while allowing few walks and home runs, was enough to inspire Tom Tango, the inventor of FIP, to write a response to my original post, on insidethebook.com. Tango brought up two interesting points, in his response. His first point was about "last generation's version of Greinke" (in a sense, of course), Curt Schilling.

Schilling sports an incredible career K/BB rate of 4.38 and gave up less home runs than the average pitcher over his career (0.96 HR/9, despite playing in some home run-friendly parks), yet his career BABIP is .293. In the 11 seasons in which Schilling was a qualified starter (162+ IP) he lead the league in K/BB-rate three times (2001-02,2006), finished in the top-5 six times, and finished seventh one other time; thus, he was in the league's top-10 in seven out of the 11 seasons.

Yet, Schilling finished with a BABIP that was among the top-20 highest in baseball four times, three of which came in the seasons that he lead the league in K/BB. This is the interesting aspect of Schilling's career that Tango refers to, " there is a modest relationship between a low-BABIP and a high-K rate. So, Curt really bucks the trend here." Schilling seems to display all of the qualities that I was attempting to claim Greinke had, but are these two pitchers really that similar? I listed their career numbers below:

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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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