Cole Hamels carved up the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night. The lefty punched out nine batters and walked none in eight shutout innings, lowering his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) to 2.31 in the process. Even considering the lower run-scoring environment in baseball right now, Hamels is in the midst of his best season in the majors. His FIP is 38 percent better than the league average in 2011 (68 FIP-), which ranks second only to teammate Roy Halladay among qualified starting pitchers.

The already-elite Hamels has raised his game to a new level this year by keeping the ball on the ground more often. That, in turn, has significantly cut his home run rate and limited other types of extra base-hits for the opposition.

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With Rafael Furcal (oblique) back on the DL for the Dodgers and Oakland’s Mark Ellis leaving Monday night’s game with a right hamstring injury, a pair of top middle infield prospects are primed to get plenty of big league playing time over the next few weeks, and possibly much longer.

Shortstop Dee Gordon made his debut for L.A. last night as a pinch-runner. Manager Don Mattingly intends to start him most nights as the increasingly fragile Furcal heals, according to a Tweet by Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. Second baseman Jemile Weeks hasn’t officially gotten the call to the majors yet, but the move is expected with Ellis possibly landing on the DL. Here’s a quick look at what to expect from Weeks and Gordon.

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The Chicago White Sox ponied up $56 million this past winter to secure Adam Dunn’s thunderous bat for four seasons. The move looked like a winner for fantasy owners. While Dunn would transition to the American League, he would get to take his hacks at U.S. Cellular Field, which increases home run production for lefty hitters by 23 percent. When you consider that Dunn deposited 38 balls in the bleachers in both 2009 and 2010 despite playing home games at Nationals Park (94 Home Run Park Factor for lefties), another 40-plus homer reason in 2011 seemed within reach. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projection system called for Dunn to blast 39 home runs, with an Isolated Power of nearly .290.

It’s now early June, and Dunn has taken a slow trot around the bases just five times. His .145 ISO is just slightly above the .138 major league average this season. The 31 year-old did have an emergency appendectomy in early April, and his performance did trend in the right direction in May after a ghastly opening month. But even so, Dunn — whose bat has been 30 percent better than average during the course of his career, once park and league factors are accounted for — has been 15 percent below average offensively this season. The main reason for Dunn’s downturn at the plate is that he isn’t crushing fastballs near as much as in years past.

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Relievers are a notoriously fickle bunch. But few closers have beaten opposing batters into submission more frequently than Joakim Soria since he became Kansas City’s stopper in 2007. Soria ranked fourth in the majors among relievers in Wins Above Replacement from ’07 to 2010, trailing only Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon and Jonathan Broxton. The only real concern with The Mexicutioner heading into the 2011 season was health, as shoulder problems put him on the DL in 2007 and 2009. But Soria appeared in a career-high 66 games last year and looked poised to dominate once again.

Instead, the 26-year-old has gotten torched. Soria blew his third consecutive save chance yesterday versus the Angels, as Torii Hunter hammered a 90 MPH pitch over the left field fence at Kauffman Stadium to put L.A. on top. In 22 innings pitched this season, the right-hander has -0.3 WAR. And for the time being, Soria has been booted from the closer role in favor of rookie Aaron Crow. What’s going on with Soria?

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The Detroit Tigers traded INF Scott Sizemore to the Oakland Athletics for LHP David Purcey.

Sizemore, 26, holds a career .315/.392/.487 line in 764 plate appearances at the Triple-A level. The Virginia Commonwealth product has shown pretty good patience (9.4% walk rate) and power (.172 Isolated Power) in the International League. He was never considered a premium prospect — Baseball America ranked him tenth in the Tigers’ system prior to last season — but BA did say he possessed a “compact swing and a knack for putting the barrel on the ball.”

Detroit didn’t give Sizemore much time to translate that swing to major league success, though, making him the starter at second base for brief periods of time over the past two seasons and then abandoning ship after he didn’t hit in small sample sizes. In 237 career major league plate appearances, the righty batter has a .223/.306/.306 triple-slash. Sizemore has managed a 10.5% walk rate, but he has struck out in 28.6% of his at-bats while rarely ripping the ball into the gaps or over the fence (.083 ISO, 3 HR).

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Entering the 2011 season, Wilson Ramos had three main obstacles standing between him and the Washington Nationals’ starting catcher job.

One was Ivan Rodriguez. Though Pudge hasn’t possessed offensive punch in years, Nationals manager Jim Riggleman dubbed the 39-year-old the main man behind the plate. Ramos’ other two obstacles were health and his tendency to hack at nearly everything thrown his way.

The 23-year-old broke the tip of his left middle finger and injured his hamstring in 2009, and he dealt with an oblique injury in 2010. Though he held his own in a short 82 plate appearance stint in the majors last year (.278/.305/.405), Ramos walked just 2.4% of the time while swinging at 38.2% of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone (the MLB average is around 29 percent). Swinging early and often was nothing new for the backstop whom the Nats picked up from the Twins last July in exchange for Matt Capps — Ramos’ career walk rate in the minors sits at 5.5 percent.

Ramos has since leapfrogged Pudge on the depth chart, drawing the majority of starts. He has also stayed out of the trainer’s room and is showing a more refined approach at the plate. If you’re in need of catching help, it’s time to start taking this guy seriously.

In 122 trips to the plate this season, Ramos has a .262/.336/.430 triple slash. His .327 Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) places him squarely in the middle of the pack among catchers with at least 100 PA. Ramos’ pop — he’s got a .168 Isolated Power that is comfortably above the .137 major league average — isn’t shocking, given that Baseball America said before the season that he “has good loft and leverage in his swing, giving him a chance to hit for solid-average or slightly better power in time.” Ramos’ patience, on the other hand, has been a pleasant surprise.

Batting mostly out of the fifth slot in Washington’s lineup, Ramos has jumped after pitches thrown out of the zone just 26.8% of the time. That, in turn, has allowed him to draw a walk in 9.8% of his plate appearances, above the 8.6% MLB average. Laying off those junk pitches means more hitter’s counts and chances for Ramos to utilize his power.

While changes in a hitter’s power production take a large sample size to become meaningful, that’s typically not the case with changes in plate discipline. Swing rates for batters become reliable after about 50 plate appearances, a mark that Ramos is well past at this point. Chances are Ramos’ increased patience in 2011 is more than a mere blip on the radar.

Despite the positive chances in Ramos’ plate discipline, he’s still on the waiver wire in 97-98 percent of ESPN leagues. This is a great time to add him to your roster on the cheap, before more people start taking notice of his quality bat. Ramos isn’t a top-tier catcher. But it’s a far better idea to take a chance on a maturing 23-year-old with a prospect pedigree than it is to settle for the A.J. Pierzynskis of the world.

Injury information courtesy of Baseball Prospectus’ Corey Dawkins.

This past week, the CDC issued guidelines on how to survive a Zombie Apocalypse. “In such a scenario,” the CDC warns, “zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way.”

Scoff at your own peril — the living dead are already in our midst. In the Pacific Northwest, Erik Bedard is feasting on the flesh of AL hitters.

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At 24-17, the Florida Marlins are in the thick of the NL East race. The Fish sit just a game and a half back of the division-leading Phillies, thanks to middle-of-the-pack pitching and hitting and superb defense. Florida’s staff collectively ranks sixth in the NL in xFIP, its offense is sixth in runs scored, and Marlins fielders pace the Senior Circuit in runs saved, according to Ultimate Zone Rating.

The Marlins’ offense would no doubt rank toward the top of the league if Hanley Ramirez weren’t mired in a season-long batting slump during which his power production has been downright Ecksteinian. The perennial first-round pick, projected by ZiPS to hit .309/.388/.512 in 2011, has instead slogged his way to a .211/.294/.309 triple-slash through 170 plate appearances.

Some unlucky bounces have played a part in Ramirez’s anemic start — his batting average on balls in play is .242, compared to a .329 expected BABIP and a career .341 BABIP. But there’s no doubt that Hanley hasn’t been his usual, powerful self at the plate. Projected for a .203 Isolated Power by ZiPS, Ramirez has a .099 ISO in 2011 that trails the mark posted by slap-hitting teammate Emilio Bonifacio. What in the name of ottoneu is going on here?

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Last year, the Texas Rangers shifted lefty C.J. Wilson from the bullpen to the starting rotation. The results were superb: Wilson racked up 4.4 Wins Above Replacement, playing a prominent role for the 2010 AL West Division title winner and Junior Circuit representative in the World Series.

This past spring, the Rangers made another ‘pen arm a starter. No, not Neftali Feliz. Texas didn’t change its closer’s role, but rather decided to see how Alexi Ogando’s power fastball/slider combo played while facing lineups multiple times. Through seven starts, Ogando’s results look spectacular. He’s got a 2.06 ERA in 43.2 innings pitched, making the Rangers’ brass look like geniuses.

Ogando has enjoyed more breaks and friendly bounces than perhaps any other pitcher in the game this season, and he still must answer questions about how he’ll handle a starter’s workload and combat opposite-handed hitters. That said, his underlying performance is strong enough to suggest that Texas could have another successful bullpen convert on its hands.

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With Kendrys Morales‘ recovery from last May’s grand slam, walk-off celebration of doom taking longer than expected, Mark Trumbo began the 2011 season as the Angels’ starter at first base. This past week, it was revealed that Morales will have a second surgery to remove scar tissue from his damaged left ankle, knocking him out for the entire year.

While that unfortunate news is a tough blow to L.A.’s offense and Morales’ career prospects, it does open up an opportunity for Trumbo to prove himself as a capable everyday player. Is he up to the task?

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