The qualifying-offer system has created considerable discussion this offseason. After Dexter Fowler took smaller deal than expected and Ian Desmond ended up receiving only about half the qualifying-offer amount, there has been talk about changing the system in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. Dave Cameron discussed a sensible solution that could help the system. The issue has been around in the past, but the CBA discussions combined with the sheer number of qualifying offers extended have increased the exposure this year. While it’s pretty well acknowledged that the QO system is designed to dampen free-agent prices, it’s important to recognize what the system is not: a reward for drafting and developing young talent.

A record 20 players were extended qualifying offers this offseason — this after, 34 offers total were made over the first three years of the system. If nothing else, the sheer quantity of offers led to three acceptances — by Colby Rasmus, Matt Wieters, and Brett Anderson — the first year in which any player had accepted an offer.

In a dreamy view of Major League Baseball, the qualifying offer helps those teams which have experienced success both drafting and developing players, but which also lack the requisite funds to prevent homegrown players from departing by way of free agency. A benevolent qualifying-offer system gifts those teams with draft picks so that they can further develop talent to help their club.

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Over at ESPN today, they published a feature on Bryce Harper. It’s really good, and you should read the whole thing, but there’s one section that stands out; the part where the story shifts from the view of Harper as a person or a player, and to his view of baseball needs to evolve.

He wants to change the game. He wants to change the perception of baseball players, to become a single-name icon like LeBron and Beckham and Cam. “I don’t know much about Bryce,” says his new manager, Dusty Baker, “but I know he’s one of the hippest kids around.” Harper wants to elevate his sport’s profile through his play, through his fashion, through the charisma of his personality, maybe even through the fascination with the size of the first free agent contract ($400 million? $500 million?) that he’ll sign shortly after his 26th birthday. Is this a prodigy’s natural urge to innovate or a sign of youthful hubris?

“Endorsements, fashion — it’s something baseball doesn’t see,” he says. “In soccer, it’s Beckham or Ronaldo. In basketball, it’s Curry and LeBron. In football, it’s Cam. Football and basketball have such good fashion.”

There are impediments endemic to the sport. Everyone knows about Russell Westbrook’s unique couture because he’s wearing it in an interview room. The baseball player, on the other hand, is interviewed at his locker, often shirtless and sporting a hat head that can ruin even Harper’s unique follicle landscaping. As Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman says, “We’re uniformed personnel.”

And then there’s the larger obstacle: the game’s stern code. Case in point: Papelbon vs. Harper. It started when Orioles third baseman Manny Machado hit a home run against the Nationals last September and reacted with too much excitement, so Jonathan Papelbon drilled him the next time Machado came to bat, which caused Harper to suggest to reporters that baseball’s code is “tired,” which led to Papelbon berating and then choking Harper four days later after the closer found his teammate’s hustle lacking — a Rube Goldberg display of baseball’s grim underside.

Harper has admitted fault in going to reporters instead of speaking to Papelbon directly (“If I had a problem with Pap, I should have gone up to Pap,” he says), and both men say it didn’t last beyond that day. But that’s not what Harper wants to talk about now.

“Baseball’s tired,” he says. “It’s a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair. If that’s Matt Harvey or Jacob deGrom or Manny Machado or Joc Pederson or Andrew McCutchen or Yasiel Puig — there’s so many guys in the game now who are so much fun.

“Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernandez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn’t care. Because you got him. That’s part of the game. It’s not the old feeling — hoorah … if you pimp a homer, I’m going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot … I mean — sorry.”

He stops, looks around. The hell with it, he’s all in.

“If a guy pumps his fist at me on the mound, I’m going to go, ‘Yeah, you got me. Good for you. Hopefully I get you next time.’ That’s what makes the game fun. You want kids to play the game, right? What are kids playing these days? Football, basketball. Look at those players — Steph Curry, LeBron James. It’s exciting to see those players in those sports. Cam Newton — I love the way Cam goes about it. He smiles, he laughs. It’s that flair. The dramatic.”

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Nothing in this life is certain but death, taxes, and major league baseball players reporting to Spring Training in the best shape of their life, as the old saying goes. That’s how the old saying goes, right? Well, the old saying needs an update. Sorry, Gramps. This ain’t your father’s Spring Training. May I propose: Nothing in this life is certain but death, taxes, and major league baseball players reporting to Spring Training in the best shape of their life and then vowing to use that newfound fitness to become more aggressive on the basepaths in the following year and steal more bases than ever?

A touch lengthy, but consider it proposed.

Every year, players show up to Spring Training and claim that they, as professional athletes who are older now than they’ve ever been before, are suddenly in the best shape of their life. Pro-tip: they aren’t. Turns out, they just as often claim they’re going to steal more bases that year. What’s the pro-tip on that one? We’ll just have to find out.

* * *

2013

Mike Trout

• Claim: “I just go and play my game. But if I get a chance to steal, I’m going to go. I’m going to be more aggressive than last year … Last year there were some chances where I could have gone. This year I’m going to take more chances.”
• Career: 53-58 (91%)
  
• Prior year: 49-54 (91%)
  
• Ensuing year: 33-40 (83%)
  

Trout was his league’s most prolific basestealer in 2012, but it wasn’t enough. The next year, he was going to take more chances. Except he didn’t. He took 14 fewer chances, and did a worse job of taking those chances. Maybe it was because his “main goal” was to “score some runs this year.” He did lead the league in runs.

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A few weeks ago, I used some basic PITCHf/x information to note that Rick Porcello‘s curveball started to look a lot like Adam Wainwright’s curveball by the end of last season. That’s the kind of thing that’s interesting to me, even if it isn’t particularly interesting to anyone else, and then later it was revealed that Porcello actually used Wainwright’s curve as an inspiration. I wasn’t expecting that. Even though, I suppose, the data had already made the case. But it was a cool nugget to read in the news.

Now I’m going right back to the well, because once I start thinking about pitch comps again, I have a difficult time focusing on anything else. One thing that’s true is that Rick Porcello now throws a curveball that resembles Wainwright’s. Another thing that’s true is that Porcello isn’t the only one. This is all relatively new to Porcello, but there’s a pitcher in Oakland who’s had this kind of pitch in his back pocket for years.

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Other clubs: Angels, Astros, Braves, Brewers, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Marlins, Mets, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, Twins, White Sox.

You might not know it by listening to talk radio or television discussions about the club, but it’s an awesome time to be a Dodgers fan right now. They continue to use their financial might to bring in a plethora of international and domestic amateur prospects, then proceed to pawn off their international bonus slots for even more prospects. While they’ve gotten a lot of criticism for letting Zack Greinke go and not dishing out any of the bigger contracts this offseason, the reinforcements they have available in their minor-league system are at least a part of the reason why. Not only do they boast one of the deepest major-league rosters, they have ready-made replacements within a couple levels of their parent club, particularly on the pitching side. On top of that, they keep making shrewd mid-level trades and taking some of my favorite upside talents in the amateur draft. At every turn, their process has been consistent and on point.

You could make a case that they’re light on impact offensive prospects outside of the guys who’ll be starting the year in Los Angeles and first baseman Cody Bellinger, but they have enough depth in the next tier down. Outfielders Johan Mieses, Jacob Scavuzzo and Alex Verdugo are close in the outfield, while Willie Calhoun and hopefully a return to form by Micah Johnson give them options in the infield should multiple position players falter this year. Julio Urias and Jose De Leon are two of the top pitching prospects in all of baseball, and could handle a promotion in the near future if pressed into duty.

Austin Barnes and Trayce Thompson are in the 50+ FV group here, despite how Barnes is only the club’s second or third option at catcher, and Thompson’s reputation in recent years as a questionable bat who might not make it in the big leagues. Thompson is quicker to explain: I really like the changes he made to his swing and approach. No one ever denied the tools and overall athletic ability, and barring a step back for some reason, he’s positioned to develop into a legitimate starting option in the outfield.

Barnes is much farther out there compared to perception, I’m well aware. He’s not a big power guy, and he doesn’t have big arm strength, both tools that historically are typical of catching prospects. His atypical profile is probably why he didn’t get more of an opportunity in the Marlins organization. Perhaps it’s telling, however, that one of the smartest front offices in baseball targeted him. As a professional, all he’s done is hit, flirt with an on-base percentage over .400, steal some bases and be one of the best pitch framers in the minor leagues — for years now. He makes enough contact and has a good swing, so there’s no reason I can find that he won’t continue to do it against big-league pitching. I don’t see any reason to discount his receiving behind the plate. Watch a Dodgers spring-training game and you’ll quickly notice what makes him so special back there.

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Indians’ starter Trevor Bauer prepares to collect data at Driveline Baseball.

Kyle Boddy spent years getting it wrong. “There were years of inconclusive results that led to more questions,” Boddy told me about his past work at his Driveline Baseball facility in Kent, Washington.

He had the best intentions. After years of day jobs, and coaching youth baseball with some competitive weightlifting sprinkled in, he started writing at The Hardball Times and studying injuries with Josh Kalk, now a member of the Tampa Bay Rays’ front office. They had some success using neural networks on PITCHf/x data in order to spot injuries earlier than usual.

In the end, though, the Seattle-based mechanics analyst wanted to take a look at pitcher development under the same data-based lens that he and Kalk had used to spot existing injury.

So he built a biomechanics lab, complete with high-speed cameras and objects of known size. (That object, known as the Cube, is a square box built of tubing that helps calibrate the cameras so that the video created is all comparable.) It was a lot of work with an uncertain reward. “We got a lot of great kinetic data,” said Boddy of that time. “Then we realized that there was a huge amount of noise.”

Helping Boddy with the realization was Dr. Murray Maitland in the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Washington. When approached with analysis based on limb movement and pitchers’ physical tendencies and the link to injury, Dr. Maitland smiled and dropped what might have been a bombshell to Boddy that day. “Just because the joint or limb moves in this direction doesn’t mean the underlying muscle is doing that,” said Maitland in Boddy’s recollection. “The movement could be due to inertia, it could be due to whatever. You can’t infer muscle activity.”

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At this point it’s safe to call it a spring tradition: Eyebrows get raised in response to Jered Weaver’s underwhelming velocity, and Weaver tells the media he doesn’t care. There’s nothing wrong with Weaver’s reaction, because he is more of a command pitcher, and he knows he’ll be fine if he locates. I’m sure he’s beyond tired of this repeating conversation. But from the outside, it’s significant that Weaver’s fastball continues to surprise, because it just keeps getting slower, more quickly than it probably ought to. The public is velocity-obsessed, yeah. That doesn’t mean this doesn’t warrant attention:

The league-average fastball has gotten harder over time. You know that. But while we expect velocity to decline for pitchers as they age, Weaver’s curve has gotten weird. He lost more than a mile between 2011 and 2012. He lost more than a mile again between 2012 and 2013. And then last year, he lost three miles. He lost even more after returning from a DL stint. This isn’t the kind of thing people just shrug off. This is kind of a big deal, whether Weaver wants to admit it or not.

Now there’s another season coming. Weaver is a healthy member of the Angels rotation. The league will probably continue to throw harder, and based on recent historical trends, we might expect its average at about 91.9 mph. As for Weaver? Weaver isn’t going to average that.

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Ben and Sam preview the Cardinals’ season with Dayn Perry of CBS Sports, and Jeff talks to The Cardinals Way author Howard Megdal (at 22:29).

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In my earlier blogging days, many of my arguments were a little less, shall we say, nuanced. I was a man with opinions and a man with a platform, and I would frequently use my platform to express my opinion that players shouldn’t try to play through injury. The way I figured, while the players’ hearts were in the right place, someone needed to step in, because playing through pain is bad for performance, and playing through pain is bad for health. I identified it as a problem for the team and for the player, and it was something that always drove me nuts.

Speaking of nuts, in 2009 I watched Adrian Beltre remain in an extra-inning game and eventually score the winning run, even though he’d suffered a damaged testicle that he later estimated became the size of a grapefruit.

As the years have passed, my opinion has somewhat matured. Though I still don’t think players should push themselves too hard, since they’d be doing themselves a disservice, I do understand that you can’t always play at 100%. There are injuries you could make worse and there are injuries you might just have to deal with, and as clubhouse dynamics go, teammates respond to players they perceive to be warriors. This is when we get back to Beltre, who might be the ultimate baseball-playing warrior of his generation. He just last season won another battle against his own pain receptors.

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