Last season, after joining the Nationals, Gio Gonzalez threw 3,198 pitches in the regular season, plus 209 more in the playoffs. That is an awful lot of pitches, but this article isn’t about that sort of pitcher abuse. It’s about a different sort of pitcher abuse to which the headline can also misleadingly refer. Of those thousands and thousands of pitches thrown by Gonzalez in 2012, many were thrown to opposing pitchers. It is on those pitches that we’re going to focus.

Pitchers have a lot of success when they’re pitching against opposing pitchers as batters. This is because pitchers are pitchers and not batters, and pitchers who are better at batting than pitching tend to become batters instead. Last season, pitchers struck out in 37% of their plate appearances. They struck out in nearly 42% of their plate appearances that didn’t result in sacrifice bunts. Collectively, they posted a .162 OBP. Collectively, they posted a .165 slugging percentage. Pitchers suck at hitting! You come to FanGraphs for the cutting-edge analysis.

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This week, Randy Galloway of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that there’s been a major power struggle in Arlington. Here’s what happened: back in November, the Rangers decided to give Jon Daniels a promotion to CEO — Nolan Ryan’s current title. Daniels declined, and so Daniels took a promotion to president of baseball operations.

Maury Brown notes that the promotion is a way of giving Daniels more job security: “Ask yourself when the last time a President of Baseball Operations was fired? With the exception of Tal Smith of the Astros (which was about a new owner coming in and putting his stamp on the club), you just don’t see it.”

But within the last few days matters have come to a head. Ryan apparently feels shunted aside, and that appears to be because he partly is being shunted aside. Ryan has received a lot of public credit for the Rangers’ resurgence since he was hired as president in 2008 and became a minority owner in 2010. According to Galloway, Ryan has also seriously meddled in Daniels’s affairs, as Ryan directly hired bench coach Jackie Moore and pitching coach Mike Maddux. Galloway doesn’t report on whether Daniels took personal offense, but “it’s been a heavy sticking point for some of Daniels’ assistants,” and when underlings are unhappy that usually means the boss is unhappy. This is a nasty little power struggle. What happened?
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Nolan Arenado’s development has been a roller coaster ride. From prospect with major helium, to disappointment with maturity issues, the third baseman lost his luster this off-season.

With four home runs in his first 17 at bats this spring, Arenado is all the rage again as he attempts to wrangle the third base job away from the combo of Chris Nelson and Jordan Pacheco.

Of course arbitration clocks, service time and other internal decisions will be a part of the decision making process, but what about the production? Will 150 game of Nolan Arenado have more on field value than Nelson/Pacheco? I’m not so sure.

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When I originally published my findings around CLIFFORD — my metric for predicting players that are at a higher risk of experiencing a collapse in their wOBA (defined as a drop of at least .30 points of wOBA) — I presented a limited number of players for 2013. The list only included six players that qualified under the criteria. As a reminder, players that experienced a significant decline in three out of four metrics (Z-Contact%, FA%, UBR, Spd) were tagged as CLIFFORD candidates. These players had 3.4 times the odds of collapse (53% versus 25% for non-CLIFFORD players).

The single largest driver of collapse was change in Z-Contact% — the percent of pitches in the strike zone that a batter swings and makes contact with. Hitters who saw their Z-Contact% decline by at least 1.4% had 1.68 times the odds of collapsing than those that did not experience such a decline. Since there were far more players that qualified with their Z-Contact% than the full CLIFFORD criteria I thought it would be helpful to share that data with everyone.

Behold!

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From the esteemed Dan Hayes of CSN Chicago:

White Sox pitcher Chris Sale confirmed Tuesday his representatives have had discussions with the club about a contract extension.

(snip)

“We’ve been kind of back and forth but nothing too crazy right now,” Sale said Tuesday when asked about extension talks.

Think of the headline potential. “Sale Extended: Now Through 2018!” That is SEO gold right there.

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Already without Alex Rodriguez for an extended period of time, the Yankees have been given a double-whammy of unfortunate injury news still early in camp. Curtis Granderson got one of his bones broken, and he will be missing for several weeks. Now Mark Teixeira’s got one of his tendons bothered, and he will be missing for several weeks. For at least a little more than a month, the Yankees are going to have a lot of money and a lot of star power sitting helplessly on the disabled list. The Yankees still stand to contend in the American League East and the wild card race. Despite everything, now isn’t the time to abandon all hope. Nor is now the time to abandon all baseball hope as it pertains to the New York Yankees.

It would be easy to dismiss this as an argument that the Yankees are going to be okay because they’re the Yankees. Given how often the Yankees have wound up in the postseason, I understand the sentiment, but that isn’t the main point, here. The Yankees won’t be okay because they’re the Yankees — the Yankees look like they’ll be okay because they still have quality players, and neither Granderson nor Teixeira should be out all season long.

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Table of Contents
Today’s edition of the Daily Notes has no table of contents, it appears.

A Brief Guide to Pools C and D of the Classic
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic began last Friday in Japan and Taiwan, respectively, and have already produced four qualifiers for the tournament’s second round: Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei.

Starting today (Thursday), play starts among teams in Pools C and D. And while many of the competition’s earliest games took place under cover of darkness for those in the Western Hemisphere, the forthcoming set of games is decidedly more amendable to “television coverage” for “North Americans.”

What follows is a brief guide to Pools C and D of the Classic.

Participants
As noted above, first-round play begins on Thursday in Pools C and D — which day is also marked by the beginning of second-round games between the four qualifiers from Pool A and B (Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei).

Below are the eight teams scheduled to commence first-round play starting today and Friday — and those same teams’ most notable players.

Nation: Canada
Notable Players: Young and talented Blue Jays third baseman Brett Lawrie, less young but not completely hopeless Twins first baseman Justin Morneau, and Reds uber-batsman Joey Votto. Also notable is this: among the pitchers on the Canadian roster is well-regarded Pirates right-handed prospect Jameson Taillon.

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On Tuesday, Fox Sports Media Group announced the creation of a new multi-sports cable network with programming beginning on August 17. The new network — named Fox Sports 1 — is a re-branding of the Fox-owned Speed Network. Speed is already in 90 million homes through myriad cable and satellite operators, so Fox Sports 1 will launch with a substantial potential audience. Industry experts are calling it the biggest challenge yet to ESPN’s sports-programming dominance.

Starting in 2014, much of Fox’s baseball programming will shift from the network TV channel to Fox Sports 1. Under the new national TV contracts MLB signed with Fox Sports, ESPN and TBS last summer, Fox will get a bigger piece of the baseball-on-TV pie. And that bigger piece will no longer be available for free.

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There truly is no off-season for prospect watchers. The first Top 15 list at FanGraphs — the Toronto Blue Jays — hit the Web in early November 2012. The 30th, and final, Top 15 list — the New York Yankees — published on March 6, 2013. It’s a huge task that I love doing, but it’s exhausting at times.

The prospecting industry is currrently in a Gold Age period with high-quality work being done by numerous other writers and publications, including the Baseball America crew, Keith Law at ESPN, the Baseball Prospectus crew, Jonathan Mayo at MLB.com, and John Sickels at SB Nation, as well as some of the newer kids on the block like Bullpen Banter.

I want to publically thank the many contacts in the industry that assisted me in compiling these lists and reports. It’s amazing that so many people, in such important (and busy) positions, were willing to donate their time and knowledge to the process. I also want to thank fellow FanGraphers who helped out: David Laurila, Mike Newman and J.D. Sussman, an up-and-coming top prospect himself.

Keep your eyes peeled for the FanGraphs Top 100 prospects list on Monday, March 11.

***Click on the team name to see the full Top 15 lists with scouting reports.

Baltimore Orioles
The Top 3
1. Dylan Bundy
2. Kevin Gausman
3. Jonathan Schoop

Boston Red Sox
The Top 3
1. Xander Bogaerts
2. Matt Barnes
3. Jackie Bradley

New York Yankees
The Top 3
1. Mason Williams
2. Gary Sanchez
3. Slade Heathcott

Tampa Bay Rays
The Top 3
1. Wil Myers
2. Chris Archer
3. Hak-Ju Lee

Toronto Blue Jays
The Top 3 (Updated)
1. Aaron Sanchez
2. Roberto Osuna
3. D.J. Davis

Chicago White Sox
The Top 3
1. Courtney Hawkins
2. Carlos Sanchez
3. Erik Johnson

Cleveland Indians
The Top 3
1. Francisco Lindor
2. Trevor Bauer
3. Dorssys Paulino

Detroit Tigers
The Top 3
1. Nick Castellanos
2. Bruce Rondon
3. Jake Thompson

Kansas City Royals
The Top 3 (Updated)
1. Kyle Zimmer
2. Yordano Ventura
3. Bubba Starling

Minnesota Twins
The Top 3
1. Byron Buxton
2. Miguel Sano
3. Aaron Hicks

Houston Astros
The Top 3
1. Jonathan Singleton
2. Carlos Correa
3. Delino DeShields Jr.

Los Angeles Angels
The Top 3
1. Kaleb Cowart
2. Nick Maronde
3. C.J. Cron

Oakland Athletics
The Top 3
1. Addison Russell
2. Sonny Gray
3. Dan Straily

Seattle Mariners
The Top 3
1. Mike Zunino
2. Taijuan Walker
3. Danny Hultzen

Texas Rangers
The Top 3
1. Jurickson Profar
2. Mike Olt
3. Martin Perez

Atlanta Braves
The Top 3
1. Julio Teheran
2. J.R. Graham
3. Christian Bethancourt

Miami Marlins
The Top 3
1. Jose Fernandez
2. Christian Yelich
3. Andrew Heaney

New York Mets
The Top 3
1. Zack Wheeler
2. Travis d’Arnaud
3. Noah Syndergaard

Philadelphia Phillies
The Top 3
1. Jesse Biddle
2. Adam Morgan
3. Roman Quinn

Washington Nationals
The Top 3
1. Brian Goodwin
2. Anthony Rendon
3. Lucas Giolito

Chicago Cubs
The Top 3
1. Javier Baez
2. Albert Almora
3. Jorge Soler

Cincinnati Reds
The Top 3
1. Billy Hamilton
2. Robert Stephenson
3. Tony Cingrani

Milwaukee Brewers
The Top 3
1. Tyler Thornburg
2. Taylor Jungmann
3. Wily Peralta

Pittsburgh Pirates
The Top 3
1. Gerrit Cole
2. Jameson Taillon
3. Alen Hanson

St. Louis Cardinals
The Top 3
1. Oscar Taveras
2. Michael Wacha
3. Shelby Miller

Arizona Diamondbacks
The Top 3
1. Tyler Skaggs
2. Archie Bradley
3. Matt Davidson

Colorado Rockies
The Top 3
1. Nolan Arenado
2. Trevor Story
3. David Dahl

Los Angeles Dodgers
The Top 3
1. Zach Lee
2. Chris Reed
3. Corey Seager

San Diego Padres
The Top 3
1. Austin Hedges
2. Jedd Gyorko
3. Max Fried

San Francisco Giants
The Top 3
1. Kyle Crick
2. Clayton Blackburn
3. Chris Stratton