This Week in Baseball: 4/6-4/11

Don't Forget about Jose Abreu: Easy to forget in all this Puig mess that there's another Cuban super prospect named Jose Abreu with the Chicago White Sox. His first week in the season was a mixed bag as Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs points out. Basically pitchers are trying to find his weakness and so far Abreu has shown he isn't pull happy but has some problems around his hands. Abreu might not be a shooting star like Puig, but he'll be a really good hitter.

Mountie Votto: Votto did an interview with Intentional Talk on Tuesday dressed like this.



An Appreciation of Joey Votto: Wait I'm not done with Votto. Is their a more polarizing player in terms of numbers in baseball than Joey Votto? The nerds love Votto because he knows advance stats and gets on base. Harold Reynolds and his ilk don't appreciate him because he's a first baseman that doesn't put up big home run or RBI numbers. Hardball Times appreciates Votto for another reason, he doesn't hit infield flies. Seriously Votto has only hit 3 infield flies in 4 years. That's incredible.


Who is Chris Colabello?: When Chris Colabello was announced as the AL Player of the Week for last week, a lot of people including myself went "who?". Well Colabello is from something called Assumption College in Massachutches. He was undrafted and never signed out of college. He played in something called the Cam-Am league with Oil Can Boyd. Signed with the Twins and played so badly last season he was almost sold to a Korean League. Now he's a bright spot for what's going to be a woeful Twins team.

TOOTBLAN Tracker: Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop or TOOTBLAN is one of my favorite stats in baseball. It was created for Ryan Theriot who did manage to get himself thrown out a lot on the basepaths. Now there's a tracker for TOOTBLAN and you're not going to believe it but Yasiel Puig is one of the leaders.

Billy Hamilton is Amazing: Pretty much everyone is in love with Billy Hamilton of the Cincinnati Reds. And with good reason, he's incredibly fast. Like Usain Bolt fast. Like he can tag up at third and score on a infield fly fast. Yeah he's that fast.

Quality Starts: Mariners broadcasters Dave Sims and Mike Blowers brought up an interesting concept when describing how dominate Felix Hernandez is. They brought up "Ultra Quality Start" for when a pitcher goes 7 innings giving up no more than 2 ER and the "Mega Quality Start" when a pitcher goes 8 innings giving up no more than 1 ER. Beyond the Boxscore crunched the numbers and learned that poor AJ Burnett has 9 "mega quality starts" and 3 losses in those games.

Best of the Weekend: A look at the best games and pitching matchups of the weekend.

Friday, Houston at Texas, Feldman vs Darvish: Darvish is always a must watch because he can strike out anyone. Scott Feldman actually makes the Astros a must watch because he's a pretty good pitcher who keeps teams in the game.

Saturday, Los Angeles at Arizona, Miley vs Greinke: A must watch game because of the history between these two teams. Especially with Greinke pitching, I fully expect a brawl because of the red ass nature of the Diamondbacks.

Sunday, Tampa Bay at Cincinnati, Archer vs Cingrani: Archer is now expected to be the 2nd man in the rotation for Tampa since Matt Moore is done for the year. One thing to take a look at is Cingrani's walks. He's averaging more this year than last year.