If you head over to the Wall Street Journal, you can find out the best hitters in each region of the zone. Just a little something we here at Beyond the Boxscore cooked up for our friends over there. While the season-and-a-half snapshot we took for the WSJ came up with a list of established players, when we restrict ourselves to 2010 a few less familiar names float to the top.

The stat we're using is pwOBA, check-out the original article for how that's figured out (basically rv100a converted to wOBA). We'll use the same regions but we'll go beyond the top player in each.

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We received 130 votes last week, and we'll be taking your votes again. I'm adding some write-in candidates, like Sergio Santos. Here's why -- if a pitcher has PITCHf/x data prior to his Major League debut in 2010, he's not making it through my filter. If you see a pitcher, like Santos, slip through the cracks, just leave a comment or shoot me an email or a tweet or a smoke signal. Carrier pigeons, no thanks. Rats with wings.

Last week's opening batch included John Ely, Kanekoa Texeira, Bobby Cassevah and Hisanori Takahashi. 

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The first few months of MLB action have yielded a bounty of new pitchers to check out. By "check out" I mean explore via PITCHf/x. The flood comes from two sources: your standard run of the mill rookies playing in the show and (non-)prospects pitching in preseason baseball. Exhibition ball in big league parks in early April is a standard source, but the PITCHf/x installations in Peoria, AZ and Surprise, AZ are the new goldmine.

You may recall the influx of prospect PITCHf/x reports from this past autumn out of the Arizona Fall League when two teams called Surprise home and one Peoria. The Cactus League featured a pair of clubs in both locations, so the pace picked-up in the new year.

The tip of the new arm ice berg includes four interesting pitchers, selected with input from other Beyond the Box Score writers and editors. The rest of them will be selected with your input. Hopefully I'll get to them all (over 80 so far).

Cast your vote(s) for the next round. Today we'll look at Kanekoa Texeira, Bobby Cassevah, John Ely and Hisanori Takahashi.

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Francisco Liriano just helped Escogido win the Domincan Winter League championship. Aaron Gleeman has more on Liriano's fine playoff run. In short, he was awesome. Check out Aaron's piece for more on that.

Liriano didn't pitch the full season, but got plenty of work in the playoffs. Along the way, he racked up a lot of strikeouts, and not much else. This has the strange effect of prompting me to post something using counting stats. It should also have two other effects -- exciting Twins fans and pushing-up his fantasy draft positions.

Across all four 2009 winter leagues (Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico) only five pitchers got more Ks than Liriano, and it puts the lefty's run in some context. There are a few playoff games remaining in the other three leagues, so this isn't a final set of numbers. Pitcher performance is totaled across teams and leagues.

Schmidt managed to hit 13 batters, which I feel is worth mentioning (no one else on the list had more than 5, Liriano had 2).

Escogido now represents the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Series. If the Twins let Liriano pitch, they might just win that, too.

Think fast. The deadline to tender unsigned players a contract is approaching. A key member of your bullpen is coming off a down season. What will you do?

If you're Pittsburgh Pirates GM Neil Huntington, such decisions are part of your job. 

If you're talking about the Matt Capps of '07 or '08, that would be very, very difficult to replace. He's probably not somebody we non-tender. The second half of '08 and into '09 ... it's not that hard to replace a reliever with a 5.00 or 6.00 ERA.

With Matt Capps, it seemed to come down to marketability. Seems that the market was impacted by some news leaks.

In that event, Huntington was asked, why was Capps not traded before that, given that the team surely had its internal valuations on him well before the past week or so: "We were working on it, and we had multiple conversations that disappeared when the media report came out.

Huntington was more explicit in his reasoning during a recent MLB.com chat:

The decision to not tender Matt Capps was a difficult decision. While it is obvious Matt's 2009 performance was not his best, we did feel there were indicators that he would have a better season in 2010. The arbitration process aggressively rewards saves, home runs and wins while not always properly accounting for the metrics behind those numbers. Despite wanting to retain Matt and making an aggressive offer that we believed would be at or near his free-agent value prior to the tender deadline, we felt that the risk of an arbitration award at a substantially higher amount was not a good business decision for us. We may be right or wrong on Matt's free-agent value (and his 2010 performance), and we may be right or wrong on the performance of the pitcher(s) and/or player(s) we re-allocate the money toward, but we felt that it was the right move for us. Obviously, we would have preferred to get something of value in trade for Matt, but given his track record beginning in the second half of 2008, his trade value was limited throughout the summer and again this offseason. We wish the best for Matt and are certainly open to retaining him if we are able to find a common ground with his agent.

Emphasis my own. Note Huntington avoids putting blame on the media this time around. At least directly.

I think they made a mistake, and Capps will be valued relief pitcher somewhere in 2010. Why am I so confident that a pitcher the Pirates had no use for is in line for a good job with another club? First, the list of teams in on Capps is quite long. Second, he's not pitching any better or worse now than he was a couple years ago.

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The White Sox just signed J.J. Putz for 2010 at $3 million. They're getting closer turned set-up man. Putz had some elbow clean-up done recently, but I gather there were no structural issues.

Putz used to throw in the upper 90s, which complemented a nasty splitter. And not only were those fastballs very fast (they still are), but he mixed two- and four-seamers. A hot riser and a hard sinker. Niiice. Putz also throws a hard slider (upper 80s) and a slow-ish curve (mid-upper 70s), but not very often -- particularly the curve.

Take a look at his speed charts, going back to 2007 (seasons divided by vertical white lines).

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After pitching for the Giants in 2007, Scott Atchison became a free agent signed a minor-league deal with the Boston Red Sox. The Sox sold Atchison's contract to the Hanshin Tigers and he pitched the last two seasons in Japan.

The Sox signed Atchison today, this time a one-year deal with two options. Looks like decent middle relief.

Back in 2007, Atchison was throwing his fastball just above 90, with a sluttery slider and a curveball. He also threw two change-ups in his 280 pitches captured by PITCHf/x. With the exception of his four-seamer, Atchison got quite a few ground balls. He also threw a lot of strikes, but didn't miss many bats.

Using NPB's pitch tool (PITCHf/x light), it looks like Atchison is throwing the same stuff at the same speeds. That's a handy tool, showing pitch types and speeds (and a little more detail) for Japanese pro ball.

Not a major signing, but interesting based on their past history together, and the fact that Boston could keep the now 34-year old righty for three years, if they pick-up the options.

Tim Lincecum eeked out his second straight Cy Young on Thursday. While the voting was close and, to some, controversial, he's a deserving winner.

The Giants eeked everything out of Lincecum's campaign, with its 225 innings ranking 3rd in the NL and 8th overall. He didn't exceed his workload from 2008 (by two innings) but he did show some wear-and-tear, starting as early as a missed start in September. That extra rest was needed to recover from back spasms.

Following Lincecum's penultimate start of 2009 (against the Cubs on 9/25), I posted about a sudden drop in velocity, coming in his third start following the brief shutdown.

Should the Giants Back Off Tim Lincecum? - Beyond the Box Score
Zambrano peaked at 96.3, Zambrano was strong, just outside the top third of his peak range. His average fastball speed (93.8, with or without sinkers) was 7th out of 73 starts in average fastball speed (two- and four-seam combined). It was also he best average fastball velocity of 2009. So, there was probably nothing "in the air" that night pushing The Freak's speed numbers down. Lincecum topped out at 94.3 - that's his lowest peak on record. He averaged 91.4 mph. Throw out the two-seamers and he's at 91.6. Out of Lincecum's 77 PITCHf/x starts, that's dead last.

Lincecum's Cy Young campaign had one more stop on October 1. Hardly a stop, seeing how each of his final two starts were in AT&T Park. Another thing that didn't stop was that decline in velocity.

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Zack Greinke earned the 2009 Cy Young Award earlier today. It was well deserved, and not much of a surprise. I've covered Greinke via PITCHf/x on a few occasions* (here, here, here, here and here), so I'm taking this opportunity to look at Greinke's curveball -- which is thrown at a wide range of speeds.

*If you check out those links, you'll see some flight paths, learn about his sinker, compare his

fastball locations to Rich Harden's and explore head-to-head match-ups against Kevin Milwood and John Lackey.

Greinke's best pitch is his slider. It's one of the best pitches in baseball, and he complements it with two above average fastballs (four- and two-seam varieties), a change-up and the aforementioned curveballs. For starters, Greinke can vary his pitch speeds by nearly 40 mph -- high 90s fastball and a low 60s curveball.

But Greinke's curve is thrown anywhere from the lower 60s up to the lower 80s.

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I like the Arizona Fall League. I've been tracking and classifying a lot pitches, thanks to the PITCHf/x installations in Peoria and Surprise. Nearly 10,000 pitches through Saturday's Rising Stars Game.

Let's take a look-see at some of my favorite stats. These are based only on PITCHf/x data. Some, such as ground ball rates, can be expanded to cover the non-PITCHf/x games, too. But I'm not. I'm also collapsing across pitch types due to sample size issues and a lack of finality on many of those classifications.

Anyway, on with the Strasburg. I mean Storen. I mean show.

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Stephen Strasburg's fastball is raising some interesting questions. While Strasburg was on the mound on Monday, a Tweet and an email (so old fashioned) came in asking about the Surprise, AZ, PITCHf/x data. Was it hot?

Strasburg throwing 101 was a surprise to many, and seeing him sit near 98 for a few innings raised more questions. I took a look at the two PITCHf/x installations in the Arizona Fall Leauge (Surprise and Peoria) this morning at the Hardball Times.

The basic conclusion was, no, the system in Surprise isn't hot. Relative to Peoria, that is.

Assuming the two systems are pretty much on par, the opportunity came up to compare AFL pitchers to themselves as MLB pitchers. Using release speed (55 ft. from home plate) I was able to compare data from 14 pitchers.

Nothing fancy and statistical, but, as you browse the baker's dozen + 1 set of images below, I think you'll probably reach the same conclusion I did.

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Stephen Strasburg made his second Arizona Fall League start this afternoon. Gameday, as they do with many rookies, had some troubles with his pitch types. The fact that he threw 90 mph change-ups didn't help either.

My own classifications are somewhat tentative, as this is one game from one park. And there are differences between the Peoria installation and Surprise. There's three or four inch difference in release point height, so I'll wait until a game in Surprise for the 2009 first rounder before doing these up in full detail.

Fastballs

Strasburg threw 36 heaters in today's outing. I'm not sure of the two- and four-seam split yet -- right now I think he threw five sinkers, but that's not for sure. In any case, the fastballs from Strasburg came out of his hand at no less than 95, maxing out around 99.6. He sat around 97/98, which is nasty.

This was clearly an off day for Strasburg, so don't make too much of this. Only 48% of his fastballs found the strike zone. Even though hitters took a lot of fastballs in the zone (53% !) his B:CS ratio landed at a hefty (for a fastball) 2.7.

Despite control issues, the whiff rate of .143 against his fastball (swing rate .389) was pretty good, and he got the ball in play on the ground (.667). Still, each ball in play resulted in one base, on average, for an even SLGCON of 1.000.

Off-Speed and Breaking Pitches

Strasburg throws a curveball and a change-up, with the latter not getting much action in college ball (IIRC). Thursday's game saw 10 change-ups and 14 curveballs out of Strasburg. The changes ran from 88 to 92, which is often the fastball range for some starters.

Beyond the speed gap of 7 or 8 mph (very nice), Strasburg's change "sank" about six inches relative to the fastball, which is brutal. If he's hiding that thing at all, yikes. If today was any indication, he was. He kept it out of the zone (30%), but every one he threw for a strike yielded a swing. Two of the seven balls were chased. Of the five total swings, three found nothing but air. Two made contact, on the ground, which still didn't work out well. Both were singles.

Strasburg's curveball isn't a big yakker, but has much as five inches of top-spin induced sink, resulting in a one foot difference from the fastball. It's also thrown in the low 80s, making it pretty vicious.

So, it has good enough snap, above average velocity and, my favorite, he threw 11 of 14 in the strike zone. Six of the 11 were watched by the batters (B:CS ratio of 0.6) and half the swings (six) resulted in whiffs. But, two were left up and in the middle of the plate, and were subsequently sent out of the ballpark for home runs.

Just a Bad Day

Strasburg had bad luck, which he actually made on his own. He hung two curveballs, and paid the price. But not every hung curve is hit, and it remains to be seen if he continues to do that with any regularity. The ground balls that turned into hits were probably more or less out of his hands (relatively speaking). The fastball command was clearly a problem.

So, next time out (hopefully in Surprise), I'll be looking for four things:

1. Distinguishing sinkers from fastballs
2. Fastball control
3. Curveball command
4. Outcomes of balls in play

And I'll also be enjoying one of the most exciting pitching prospects of recent memory.

No, I won't do this everyday (maybe). Yes, I have a huge back-log of New Arms. More on that below...

Today was opening day in Arizona, as top prospects in the Arizona Fall League started their short season. Thanks to MLBAM, PITCHf/x will be running in Peoria and Surprise (home to 3 of the 6 teams in the league).

The Gameday IDs will be pretty good as things progress, as the MLBAM team is getting more information on the lesser known pitchers in the league. They already have weightings in the system for pitchers who have seen big league time and some from the higher minor leagues, according to Cory Schwartz, Director of Stats for MLBAM.

I quickly classified the pitches from today's game myself, without splitting two- and four-seam fastballs. I want more data from the pitchers, and the new installations, before I get too fancy. All that's after the jump...first, a teaser.

I've got the ALDS and NLDS all tidied up and classified. I'll share some of the numbers tomorrow night.The bigger effort is nearly done ... classifying all pitches thrown in 2009 by rookies. And position players. I've completed initial classifications for all 120-something of them, and I'm in the process of reviewing and revising. Or in the process of getting ready to review and revise. Dang AFL distracted me .... oh yeah, read on for the pitch classifications from today's action in Peoria.

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Cliff Lee's post-season debut turned into a complete game gem. Losing a shutout in the 9th was not completely Lee's fault, but, as it goes with baseball, your success as a pitcher isn't your own, either. Lee's finesse game matched-up against Ubaldo Jimenez and his power game, and came out ahead. While the game started as a pitcher's dual, the Phillies blew it open

Age and handedness aside, there is one stark difference from Game 1 of the 2009 post-season - velocity. Jimenez broke 100 six times, 101 twice (101.4 max) and never fell below 95. Lee, meanwhile, only hit 95 twice (95.2 on the sinker and 95.1 on the four-seam).

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Last night, Tim Lincecum pitched well but got beat by Carlos Zambrano. What struck me was a difference in peak and overall velocity - Big Z was throwing harder than The Freak.

Zambrano peaked at 96.3, Zambrano was strong, just outside the top third of his peak range. His average fastball speed (93.8, with or without sinkers) was 7th out of 73 starts in average fastball speed (two- and four-seam combined). It was also he best average fastball velocity of 2009.

So, there was probably nothing "in the air" that night pushing The Freak's speed numbers down. Lincecum topped out at 94.3 - that's his lowest peak on record. He averaged 91.4 mph. Throw out the two-seamers and he's at 91.6. Out of Lincecum's 77 PITCHf/x starts, that's dead last.

Pretty impressive for a guy without his best stuff. As the Wild Card slips away, it may be time to protect the franchise's most valuable asset.