Nolan Arenado leaves Friday’s game with a left mallet finger fracture

By Bill BaerMay 23, 2014, 9:37 PM EDT
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Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado left Friday night’s game against the Braves after doubling and scoring in the top of the second inning with what the Rockies have diagnosed as a “left mallet finger fracture”. Arenado appeared to have suffered the injury sliding into second base on his double. Charlie Culberson replaced him at third base in the bottom of the second inning.

Via Patrick Saunders of the Denver Post, it sounds like Arenado could miss six to eight weeks:

Josh Rutledge was pulled from tonight’s game between the Colorado Springs Sky Sox and the Iowa Cubs. It appears that Rutledge will take Arenado’s spot on the roster.

Arenado has been a big contributor for the Rockies, slashing .305/.333/.489 while playing Gold Glove-caliber defense at third base.

No one pounds the zone anymore

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By Craig CalcaterraApr 20, 2018, 12:51 PM EDT
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“Work fast and throw strikes” has long been the top conventional wisdom for those preaching pitching success. The “work fast” part of that has increasingly gone by the wayside, however, as pitchers take more and more time to throw pitches in an effort to max out their effort and, thus, their velocity with each pitch.

Now, as Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer reports, the “throw strikes” part of it is going out of style too:

Pitchers are throwing fewer pitches inside the strike zone than ever previously recorded . . . A decade ago, more than half of all pitches ended up in the strike zone. Today, that rate has fallen below 47 percent.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Most notable among them, Lindbergh says, being pitchers’ increasing reliance on curves, sliders and splitters as primary pitches, with said pitches not being in the zone by design. Lindbergh doesn’t mention it, but I’d guess that an increased emphasis on catchers’ framing plays a role too, with teams increasingly selecting for catchers who can turn balls that are actually out of the zone into strikes. If you have one of those beasts, why bother throwing something directly over the plate?

There is an unintended downside to all of this: a lack of action. As Lindbergh notes — and as you’ve not doubt noticed while watching games — there are more walks and strikeouts, there is more weak contact from guys chasing bad pitches and, as a result, games and at bats are going longer.

As always, such insights are interesting. As is so often the case these days, however, such insights serve as an unpleasant reminder of why the on-field product is so unsatisfying in so many ways in recent years.