Yesterday, Lyle Spencer of MLB.com published some fascinating results to a question he posed to “18 Major League executives and managers from 12 clubs in Arizona.” That question: “You are starting a franchise with a focus on the future, not one season. Which three players, excluding those on your own team, would be your top choices?”

Unsurprisingly, the top two vote getters in Spencer’s poll were the reigning MVPs of each league, Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. Trout’s the best player in baseball. Kershaw’s the best pitcher in baseball. In both cases, there isn’t really an argument about those designations. These guys are the cream of their crop, and both are still young enough to be considered at the beginning of their careers.

After those two, though, opinions started to diverge, with no player being mentioned by more than four of the sources polled; including Trout and Kershaw, 15 different players were named as a guy these front office members said they would want to build their team around. While I will admit that a few of the names on the list caused me to scratch my head, I figured that rather than criticizing other’s selections, I’d take a stab at this myself. So let’s try and answer this question from a data-driven perspective.

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Tony Cingrani is going to the Reds bullpen, having already been ruled out of the Cincinnati starting competition. If that’s a surprise, it’s only because after they shed Alfredo Simon and Mat Latos over the winter, the team might now actually start the season with one (or both!) of Paul Maholm and Jason Marquis in the rotation. As Dave Cameron laid out yesterday, that’s absolutely no way for a team on the fringes of contention to be operating.

Cingrani isn’t pleased about it, but let’s be honest and admit that he seemed like a future reliever from the day he set foot in the big leagues. In a short cameo at the end of 2012, he threw 90% fastballs. In 104.1 innings in 2013, he threw 81% fastballs, trying desperately to find a useable second pitch. Last year, he got that down to 73%, but he also missed a considerable portion of the season with a shoulder injury, not pitching at all after June 19.

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It has one grip, and one sign, but Jake Arrieta’s slider has many shapes. Ask him if it’s a slider or a cutter, and he says it’s both, and more. As much as anything was the secret to his breakout last year, the slider — in its many forms — might be the best answer.

“I can manipulate the velocity, I can manipulate the break, depending on the situation, depending on the hitter, depending on the count,” the pitcher said last week in Spring Training. Look at the movement and velocity of all the balls labeled slider or cutter by PITCHf/x over the past two years, and it just leaps out at you: it looks like he has three sliders.

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This past Sunday, I wrote about how Adam Ottavino is studying Garrett Richards‘ pitch usage in hopes of improving his performance against left-handed hitters. Not included in the article were details about his signature pitch, which is actually three pitches in one. The Colorado Rockies reliever throws his slider from two arm angles and with two different grips. As a result, the shape varies, as does the velocity, from 80 to 87 mph. Ottavino explained this to me – and touched on related subjects – last week in Phoenix.

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Adam Ottavino on release points: “I was recently looking at my release point charts on Brooks Baseball – all four years of data they have on me – and it’s interesting to see that the data is consistent with the mechanical adjustments I’ve made. You can see when I’ve moved over on the rubber. It’s interesting to look at how I’ve evolved over the last three years, and how the things I tried to do, I actually did do.

“On both axis, my release point was the most consistent in 2013, which is actually the year I had the most success. Last year it was a little less consistent, but that’s partially because I was changing my arm angle slightly on breaking balls. I was doing that intentionally to affect some sort of different view from the hitter’s perspective.”

On his slider variations: “I throw sliders multiple ways. They all read the same – they read as sliders on PITCHf/x — but they are three different pitches. There’s more of an up-and-down, more of a slurve, and one with more of a straight lateral break. I do that with two different grips. As a pitcher who throws such a high percentage of breaking balls (47.3% in 2014), I don’t want to make them all exactly the same, Even if the hitter reads slider out of my hand, he can’t be totally sure where it will end up.” Read the rest of this entry »

Ben, Sam, and guest Jake Silverman banter about Tommy Lasorda and franchise players, then answer listener emails about interviews, ejections, and MLB information-sharing.

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Episode 539
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses multiple injured pitchers, the wide-ranging effects of their injuries, and also Cubs prospect Kris Bryant for reasons that are manifest.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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Ben and Sam preview the Athletics’ season with Philip Michaels, and Sahadev talks to Bay Area News Group A’s beat writer John Hickey (at 22:50).

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Even with almost unlimited resources, assembling a good rotation can be a difficult task. The best rotation in Major League Baseball this season is expected to be the Washington Nationals. The Nationals signed Max Scherzer to a huge free agent contract. The franchise drafted Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmerman and both players have missed seasons due to Tommy John surgery. They traded prospects to get Gio Gonzalez and Doug Fister. The Nationals have put together an incredible rotation, but it took a lot of money and prospects to create and the result will be fleeting. Zimmerman and Fister are pending free agents with Strasburg just a year behind them.

Moving pieces around to create a rotation was not easy for the Nationals, and for those with considerably less resources, a cost-effective rotation that looks good on the field is a difficult proposition. There are a few ways to measure the effectiveness of a rotation. The way that matters most is the play on the field. In that regard, the Nationals are the best in baseball with the Los Angeles Dodgers coming in second. The graph below uses the data taken from the FanGraphs Depth Charts for starting pitching.

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