Last year’s playoffs were seen as a win not only for the Cubs and their fans, but also for proponents of the relief ace. On a national stage, Terry Francona used Andrew Miller early and often to put out fires almost regardless of inning. He’d been doing it ever since Cleveland acquired Miller in the summer, of course, but here was a manager deploying the strategy on the game’s largest stage.

Not every team can be blessed with having both Miller and Cody Allen on their roster, though, nor can every team have both Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman. Most teams are lucky enough to have a good closer, and most of those teams employ the traditional strategy of waiting until the ninth inning to use their best reliever. Much has been made of the strategic merit of that, but it’s a system that helps players know their roles on the team, and that has value, too. But if a team isn’t blessed with a Miller-type player, then they need a sturdy bridge to arrive at that closer. Even Cleveland and New York need help from guys without well-known names.

We’ve been fixated on the idea of the relief ace. The idea is so tantalizing and so intoxicating. Not only is it awesome to see Miller jump in and melt faces whenever Tito desires, but it’s a bit of a high for sabermetric types to see something for which they’ve argued so strenuously actually getting implemented in games. And this isn’t to say that the relief ace is a bad idea! It’s an exceedingly good idea, if the usage of the pitcher is properly managed. But the relief ace, and the closer, don’t matter a ton if the rest of the guys in the bullpen aren’t effective.

Take the Giants’ opener on Sunday, for instance. Madison Bumgarner went seven innings. Bruce Bochy needed just two innings from his bullpen to hold a one-run lead. A lot of teams have a setup man to serve as an opening act for the closer, and indeed, the Giants were supposed to have Will Smith out there. He’s out for the year with Tommy John surgery, though. So the duty fell to Derek Law, who promptly coughed up the lead, and the Diamondbacks walked it off against Mark Melancon in the ninth.

San Francisco’s bullpen, outside of  Melancon, looks almost entirely the same as it did last year. They appeared in the bottom half of our bullpen power rankings for a reason. There just isn’t enough firepower there, even if they likely aren’t as disastrously bad as they were down the stretch last year, from a true talent perspective. They may have replaced Santiago Casilla with Melancon, but the relief corps isn’t strong enough to compensate when a starter only goes five.

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Jameson Taillon will be throwing a lot of two-seamers when he takes the mound tonight for the Pirates at Fenway Park. It’s become his main course of attack. According to the 25-year-old right-hander, 70% of his fastballs are now twos, and that’s the pitch he prefers to go with “in any action count.”

It fits his team’s recent philosophy. Pittsburgh pitchers have been baseball’s best ground-ball hunters, putting up MLB’s highest ground-ball rate over the past six seasons. With a modus operandi of down, down, down, they’ve lived at the bottom of the strike zone with almost religious fervor.

Expect that to change somewhat in 2017 — even for two-seam purveyors like Taillon. The Bucs aren’t suddenly all about up, up, up, but kneecaps and ankles are no longer exclusive territory. Per pitching coach Ray Searage, increased elevation is in the offing.

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There have always been those who have doubted the merits of the shift in Pittsburgh.

Back in the summer of 2013, after a Pirates’ shift was beat by a well-placed ground ball that resulted in a Texas run, A.J. Burnett exchanged words with shortstop Clint Barmes on the field and later in the dugout. Later approached by a television reporter in the clubhouse, Burnett explained, with emphasis, his frustration.

“Listen, I did not have a problem with Clint! I do not have a problem with Clint! I had a problem with the fucking shift! We play people in the wrong spot!”

Of course, that was also the season the Pirates increased their shift usage by 400%, their staff produced an MLB-record ground-ball rate, opponents hit an anemic .207 against the shift, and the club dramatically improved its defensive efficiency en route to its first winning season and playoff berth since 1992.

Despite the general success of the shift for the Pirates, there were those once again bemoaning it in Pittsburgh (where I still keep a primary residence) — in the media and the public forums — after Sandy Leon beat the shift with a well-placed bunt on Monday.

As one can see, Leon’s bunt is followed by what appears to be a rather unpleasant gaze from Gerrit Cole into the visiting dugout, ostensibly in response to the club’s positioning.

And one batter later, Andrew Benintendi was able to cover an elevated-and-in 98 mph fastball.

Said Cole to reporters afterward: “They just hit them where we weren’t.”

Indeed.

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After winning the Cy Young award in 2015, Dallas Keuchel had a follow-up campaign that really can only be described as disappointing. His ERA ballooned from 2.48 – good for second in the AL that year – to 4.55, 32nd in the AL out of 39 qualified pitchers.

A glance at Keuchel’s peripherals indicates that his fall may not have been as dramatic as it seemed, as his xFIP was a solid 3.53 — the second-best mark of his career, actually, after adjusting for league and park. But a pitcher who sees his ERA rise by over two runs certainly isn’t content to rely on things to right themselves. So Keuchel took matters into his own hands.

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It’s possible you haven’t had the opportunity to watch every single game over the first few days of the 2017 season. For those games you’ve missed — say, Pittsburgh against Boston on Monday — you’re likely to have glanced at the box score to see how certain players performed. In the case of that Pirates-Red Sox game, you find that Andrew Benintendi hit a homer, Rick Porcello pitched six solid innings, and that the home team won by a score of 5-3.

If you looked at the line of Pittsburgh starter Gerrit Cole, you’d see a flawed five innings, with just two strikeouts, one walk, that homer to Benintendi, and all five of Boston’s runs. That’s not how Cole wanted the season to start, but the stat line isn’t quite as bad as it would appear.

Gerrit Cole has been successful in the major leagues primarily due to a great four-seam fastball. When he complemented the fastball with increased slider usage, he started dominating. There had been some talk earlier in the spring about an increased use of the changeup, as well, but when he spoke with Travis Sawchik, Cole indicated he was prioritizing his health and returning to what made him successful.

This spring Cole is not trying to re-invent himself. He has a modest goal: a healthy season. While he’s toyed with the idea of throwing more changeups the last couple of springs, he has rarely thrown the pitch in the regular season. He says he plans on continuing to be “me,” which indicates he will lean on a fastball that has averaged 95.2 mph or better in each of his first four major-league seasons — he threw it 66.7% of the time last year in line with his career (66.5%) usage — and the slider as a put-away offering.

For Cole, being “me” would suggest a combination of heavy fastball usage with the slider for whiffs. Did he stick to that plan against Boston, though? Not so much, actually. Cole did throw that fastball roughly 70% of the time, which is right in line with his established levels. As for the non-fastball offerings, however, he actually didn’t return to the slider that had made him so successful, ultimately throwing the pitch just six times.

As for explanations, we could chalk it up to efficiency. Cole threw just 76 pitches total. Through four innings, he’d thrown just 50 pitches to 13 batters. Cole wasn’t striking batters out. If hitters were putting the ball in play early in the count, then it’s possible he just arrived in fewer situations where the slider made sense. That wasn’t the case, however.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Los Angeles Angels farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

50 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .302/.379/.422 in 2016.

Scouting Report
Jones had already asserted himself as the organization’s best prospect by the fall after he was drafted, impressing scouts not only with his as-advertised athleticism and speed but with a surprisingly polished feel to hit and noticeable work ethic.

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As the season approached, I found myself intrigued by the Oakland starting rotation. That being said, among the starters, I was least interested in Kendall Graveman. Andrew Triggs? I’m all over that. Jharel Cotton? You better believe it. Kendall Graveman? Ehh. He didn’t do much for me. That was my mistake.

This is today’s second Graveman post on FanGraphs. I wrote the first one a few hours ago, wherein I discussed that Graveman seems to be experiencing a velocity spike, on the heels of a 2016 velocity spike. That fascinates the hell out of me, but something still felt incomplete. So here I’d like to revisit what Graveman has going on, because I’ve found a fun point of comparison. Why care about Kendall Graveman’s velocity? Because you could say his sinker has leveled up.

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During our marathon Opening Day chat at FanGraphs on Monday — you can revisit all 27,000 words here — I was tasked with following the 4 p.m. ET games. That slate of games featured an unfair fight between Clayton Kershaw and the Padres, the entrance of Zach Britton into a tie game against the Blue Jays, and the Twins against the Royals. While I flipped between games trying to maximize the use of the one available television in my living room, I tried to take in most of Byron Buxton’s day at the plate.

As you’re probably aware, Buxton was once the consensus No. 1 prospect in the game. He, unfairly, drew Mike Trout comps. While he’s certainly not anywhere near Trout the batter, Buxton is one of the premier athletes in the game. He made the first five-star catch of the season Monday as MLB.com documented both with video and Statcast data.

But Buxton will never fully unlock his potential, his considerable potential, until he cuts down on the swing and miss in his game.

Even during his excellent September, when he offered hope of a turnaround, a .287/.357/.653 slash line, and nine home runs over the final 29 games of the season — exhibiting burgeoning power to go with his plus-plus speed — Buxton still struck out in 33.6% of his plate appearances. He finished with a 35.6% strikeout rate for the year, a mark that was largely responsible — along with a healthy dose of infield pop ups — for his unsightly .225/.284/.430 slash line and 86 wRC+. His strikeout rate increased four points from his brief exposure to major-league pitching in 2015. And he even struck out 28% of the time during his demotion to Triple-A last season, covering 209 plate appearances.

Judging from my weekly chats here, Buxton is of some interest to many this year given a strong finish to 2016 that coincided with swing adjustments, including a return to the leg kick he used in high school but which was originally phased out by the Twins. He struck out in 20% of his at-bats this spring. While perhaps not ultimately significant, it was preferable to striking out in more than a third of his plate appearances.

This time of year always carries a small-sample disclaimer. It’s April. We don’t want to make too much of performance. But I was curious to see if Buxton, on Day One, would seem different, improved — as far as his approach goes — from the Buxton of 2015 and 2016. I was in search of compelling anecdotal evidence.

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