High & Inside: 4/23/11

Baseball links from around the sabersphere...

• Matt "Captain Trips" LaPorta | The Hardball Times
  

  If LaPorta adjusts to the breaking pitches, then we can think about projecting his major league career based on his minor league numbers. He has a .296/.362/.563 career minor league triple-slash mark. This may not project superstar production, but this may hint of an Aubrey Huff-like player.

• Is Kyle Davies Really That Bad? | Royals Review
  

  The problem for Davies this year is that he's allowed a zillion hits thanks to an insane .420 BABIP. Somehow, I don't think that's going to last, unless there's some Ted Williams or George Brett cloning program going on that I'm not aware of.

• Sam Fuld's Selective Aggressiveness | Baseball Analytics Blog
  

  Since he doesn't have much major league experience at the age of 28, the opposition rightly assumes he's not that good a hitter. Rather than pitch him carefully, they challenge Fuld. With a long minor league career behind him, Sam is experienced, and that is paying off with him killing the fastballs pumped into the strike zone.

• Ryan Braun’s New Contract Is Not The Ryan Howard Contract | Disciples of Uecker
  

  . However, Braun is a player still on the rise who has the body and athleticism to age well. He’s not Ryan Howard — a power hitter who has already shown signs of losing his power and has the plodding body that screams early aging. The comparisons to the Howard contract are exaggerated; this contract is a risk, not throwing money down the toilet.

• Is Dillon Gee the Next Shaun Marcum? | Amazin' Avenue

  The profiles certainly do look alike. But as similar as they are, Mets fans shouldn't go expecting Gee to match Marcum's 3.5 2010 WAR just yet. There are differences between these two; in addition to Gee's four-pitch mix, Marcum also features a relatively effective cutter which he throws fairly often. Marcum also cleary showed a lot of improvement in his core skills as he adjusted to the majors -- and the AL East -- between '06 and '08 that we can't just assume will happen for Gee.

More links after the jump...

• Will FIELDf/x Go Public? Should It? | Fangraphs
  Albert Lyu gives three reasons why Field F/X might not go public.
• Not yet 25: Pablo Sandoval | Bay City Ball
  

  Here’s what I do know: Pablo is a career .306 hitter with a .358 OBP and .489 slugging percentage (.846 OPS, .359 wOBA). He’s done that in less than two and a half seasons – one of which was superb and the other utterly miserable. Please listen up, because this, I think, is also really important: he’s done this before even turning 25.

• Is Curtis Granderson’s power sustainable? | River Avenue Blues
  Like Jose Bautista in 2009, Granderson had a late-season power surge last year.
• Braves Stat Of The Day: Craig Kimbrel Is In Elite Company | Talking Chop
  

  Between the at-bats when those runs scored, Kimbrel faced 101 batters and struck out 48 of them. Those 48 strikeouts between earned runs are very nearly the all-time record.

• The Return of Josh Beckett | Fangraphs
  

  Yes, it’s only been four starts, and there are some signs that point to regression (his HR/FB rate, BABIP, and LOB%), but Beckett’s early season success is more reminiscent of the 2007-2009 Beckett than the 2010 version.