We don’t really know what to make of hitting coaches, but we know what to make of hitters, and we know what to make of Barry Bonds, so Bonds linking up with the Marlins is at least greatly intriguing. If you let yourself get carried away by your own imagination, you can see Giancarlo Stanton breaking Bonds’ own dinger record. Perhaps more realistically, it’s going to be interesting to see whether Bonds can tap into Marcell Ozuna’s considerable offensive reserves. With Ozuna sticking around in Miami after an active stretch of rumors, which way he goes will play a big role in which way the Marlins go.

For my taste, though, I’m the most captivated by Christian Yelich. It doesn’t need to have anything to do with Bonds, necessarily; I’d be equally captivated if Bonds were somewhere else. But, I think we know about and have observed Giancarlo Stanton’s ceiling. Marcell Ozuna has been good before, but I get the sense he’ll always be streaky. Christian Yelich seems steady, and he seems like he is what he is, yet I think his upside is massive. And I think Yelich stands a good chance of getting there. Quietly, Yelich has hinted at a star-level future.

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The 2010 Mariners were a dreadful baseball team, and an unexpectedly dreadful baseball team at that. They were designed to be competitive — they should’ve been competitive — and from a fan’s perspective, I’m not sure I’ve witnessed a bigger letdown. It was a difficult season for countless different reasons, but what’s been most upsetting, both now and back at the time, is that the Mariners being terrible cost me the opportunity to watch more Cliff Lee on my favorite team. I knew he was awesome when he was first brought in, but I didn’t appreciate the extent until I got to watch him every five days.

I bring this up because Lee is in the news:

Sounds like Cliff Lee’s career is over. His agent, Darek Braunecker, told me, “We don’t anticipate him playing at this point.”

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 23, 2016

Lee hasn’t officially retired, and you never know when someone might have a change of heart. Yet it’s never been less likely that Lee will return, so I want to take this chance to offer a quick retrospective. Not everyone is deserving of the treatment, because not everyone is equally interesting, but Lee developed into the perfect pitcher. It took him some time, and he’s not going to end up in Cooperstown, but for a good six-year stretch, there was nothing else you could’ve wanted Cliff Lee to be.

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Over the past few days you may have noticed about a billion pieces on Lonn Trost’s recent comments. In fact, I wrote one, too, and you’re reading it now. The difference is I’m less concerned about Trost and his clear disdain for the — let’s call them the “non-rich” — and more concerned about what this means for baseball as a whole.

But let’s back up a second. In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, Lonn Trost is COO of the New York Yankees. Last week he was answering a question about the Yankees’ new ticket policy, a policy which is designed to do two things: first, force people who intended to purchase Yankees tickets by way of StubHub to use the Yankees after-market website instead, and second, make more money for the Yankees.

Of course, Trost couldn’t come out and say that. Nobody wants to hear how the New York Yankees are going to make more money off the sales of tickets they’d already sold once before. So, while attempting to justify the unjustifiable, Trost did what what most adults do. Namely, he lied. Or, if you’re being more charitable, he was disingenuous. But it wasn’t the lie (or the disingenuousness) that was particularly notable. What was notable was how Trost explained the reason for the new policy.

The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It’s not that we don’t want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for their ticket and [a different] fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it frustrates the purchaser of the full amount. And quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.

Did you catch that? Let’s cut out the fat and run it again.

And quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.

Hello! That statement has been called elitist and vaguely racist by some and you sure won’t catch me blocking the way of anyone making such a claim. Part of the joy of sitting in a “very premium” seat at Yankee Stadium is apparently not having to sit next to a poor person, and having to do so would compromise the quality of the seat and the ticket and, wow, that’s a disgusting sentiment. It occurs to me, though, that Trost might not be the biggest problem here.

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Yesterday, Jose Bautista addressed his contract situation, and he didn’t exactly mince words.

“I did not go to them. They asked me a question, ‘What would it take to get it done?’ and I gave them an answer. It’s not an adamant, drawn lines in the sand or anything. Simply questions were asked, I felt like for this process to go down smoothly there didn’t need to be any time wasted and efforts wasted for either party. If this is going to happen, they should know what it takes, and I told them the number because they asked me,” he told ESPN’s Britt McHenry.

In comments to reporters Monday, Bautista said the Blue Jays came to him with their question two weeks ago. He said he is “not willing to negotiate.”

“I’m not going to sit here and bargain for a couple of dollars,” he said, adding later, “They either meet it or it is what it is.”

So, what is Jose Bautista’s magic number? Well, according to TSN, it’s five years, $150 million.

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The 2015 season represented something of a banner year for position players pitching. That viewpoint assumes, of course, that you, as a baseball fan and reader of this website, consider position players pitching to be a good thing. For me, there’s also the sense, when a left fielder or second baseman — or any position player — takes the mound, that the game has reverted to a time and place when baseball was actually just a game. For some, that state might be viewed as an affront to those players who are seriously trying to win a spot in the big leagues. For others, it’s a time when the sport can shed its heavy cloak of seriousness and indulge in a rare bit of goofy self-deprecation. While I tend to align with the latter viewpoint, I respect and understand the former.

What can’t be argued is the increase in position players pitching over the past couple of years. With Cliff Pennington taking the mound in Game 4 of the ALCS last season, baseball logged its very first instance of a position player pitching in the playoffs, and it actually looked pretty good. In terms of raw appearances, 2015 was something of an apex for the non-pitcher pitching phenomenon. Jeff noted in June that 2015 was projected to equal 2014’s single-season record for the number of non-pitcher appearances on the mound; at the end of the season, 2015 had actually smashed the record (20 in 2014 vs. 27 in 2015).

What we’re after today, however, is how those non-pitcher pitching appearances actually went: what were the highlights? The lowlights? Who seems like he actually might be able to pitch? It behooves us, with the appearance of a new and fabulously interesting trend in major league baseball, to undertake a thorough review of said trend’s 2015 installment, with all the grace and seriousness we might give to potentially far more important subjects. What follows below is an attempt to do just that.

To begin with, let’s look at the overall stat line for the year in non-pitchers pitching compared to all of the “real” starters and relievers in 2015:

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Well, a new team, for starters. What Jay Bruce is missing is a new team. Rather, a new team is missing Jay Bruce. Twice now, the Reds have reportedly been on the verge of trading Bruce. First, to the Mets at last year’s trade deadline, more recently to the Blue Jays, just last night. Twice, Bruce has reportedly been on the verge of being dealt, and twice, the deal has fallen apart.

Maybe that tells you something about Jay Bruce. Or maybe it tells you something about the other players in the deal, as both deals collapsed due to medical hangups concerning the players whom the Reds were attempting to acquire. In July, it was the Reds who backed out of the proposed deal that could have netted them Zack Wheeler, in the midst of his recovery from Tommy John Surgery. Last night, it wasn’t even Michael Saunders‘ bum knee that gave the Reds pause.

Neither proposal fell apart because of Bruce, specifically, but that doesn’t mean the failed deals don’t tell us something about Bruce, because they do. What they tell us about Bruce is this: thus far, teams have only appeared willing to give up already-injured players for him.

Which is shocking, given where Bruce’s career was just two years ago. Just two years ago, he was a 26-year-old Gold Glove-caliber right fielder who doubled as one of the game’s most prolific home run hitters. Now, the Reds are struggling to rid themselves of his salary for anything more than damaged goods.

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Ben and Sam preview the Angels’ season with Vice Sports contributing editor David Roth, and George talks to Los Angeles Times Angels beat writer Pedro Moura (at 27:42).

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Let’s cover some old ground, and let’s cover some new ground. Chris Iannetta is going to catch pretty often for the Mariners. The previous four years, he caught pretty often for the Angels. Last year, offensively speaking, was mostly bad. Yet last year, defensively speaking, was mostly good. I wrote in April about how there were signs Iannetta had gotten significantly better in terms of framing pitches, and though I didn’t later re-visit that, I guess I didn’t need to — John Dewan just highlighted Iannetta in a post entitled “The Most Improved Pitch Framers.” The early indications held up; between 2014 and 2015, Iannetta took a leap forward.

Iannetta now is all aboard the framing train, and there seems to be a pretty simple explanation for his improvement. In short: he didn’t realize he was doing anything wrong, and then all of a sudden he learned what to change. Inspired in part by this Tangotiger post, I think it’s worth discussing two things that Iannetta’s step forward means.

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Other clubs: Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Tigers, White Sox.

The Royals’ farm system has taken a lot of hits in the past couple years as the organization sought to augment the parent club with pieces for a pair of postseason runs. Though there’s a lack of sure-fire impact talent, they have a nice group of prospects who possess the floor of a nice complementary player and reasonable upside. At the end of writing this list, I came away more impressed with their minor league players than I thought I would. There’s a lot to like on the pitching side in particular, though they have a lot of bats who could be excellent additions to their big league lineup. Overall, you can see the influence their big league philosophy has on the types of players they target, with a lot of solid defensive talents who possess good speed.

Some surprises on the list include keeping Kyle Zimmer at the top. The reports I’ve heard give Zimmer a great chance at getting a full, healthy season in this year, and his potential as a frontline starter hasn’t gone away. Raul Adalberto Mondesi slips into the 45+ FV group for me because I want to see him turn his tools into in-game production before totally buying in, but the potential there is as good as anyone in the system. I project Foster Griffin and Ryan O’Hearn higher than most, as I like a lot of what they both bring to the table, though Griffin is much more unproven at this stage.

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