There was plenty about Clayton Kershaw’s Opening Day start that was predictable. He sat between 92 and 93 on that straight, riding fastball. He showed command of the pitch and didn’t walk anyone. He threw a fastball on his lone 3-1 count. The box score says he threw 27 sliders and got five whiffs — an excellent rate. His 15 curves got two whiffs and two outs on five swings. So a lot of Monday’s start was just vintage Kershaw. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t show us something a bit different.

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There was a post I intended to write sometime last month. The post was going to be about Kendall Graveman, and his future, and it was going to be based around the fact that Graveman went and had his best spring training to date. What’s more, there were some unconfirmed reports floating around that Graveman was occasionally pushing his sinker up into the high 90s. Ultimately, I sat on the idea, because Graveman didn’t throw any spring-training pitches in front of instrumentation that spits out useful data. He had a good March, and that was all.

On account of Sonny Gray’s injury, Graveman just got the nod to start for the A’s against the Angels on Monday’s opening day. Here is the Graveman post I was thinking about. It took one inning for me to know what I was going to do.

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Yesterday, I wrote about Madison Bumgarner looking like he might have been throwing harder than usual on Sunday. Then Jeff chimed in, noting that most everyone in that game had increased velocity, and so perhaps there was something going on with Arizona’s radar calibration. In the comments of those pieces, several people noted that the ESPN broadcasters had mentioned that MLB was changing the way velocity was tracked this year, and thus we should expect higher readings in general this year than we’ve seen in the past.

Now that we’ve had the second “Opening Day” of the season, we now have data from 14 parks instead of just three, which gives us a chance to look at whether Arizona was an abnormality on Sunday, and whether the broadcasters were correct that we’re going to be seeing higher velocity numbers this year than in the past. And while we’re still dealing with small samples, if there was a systematic measurement change, it should show up pretty quickly. So let’s take a look at some numbers.

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TAMPA, Fla. — Even if Shohei Otani is not the next Babe Ruth, even if baseball has to settle for welcoming the next Madison Bumgarner some time in the not-too-distant future, some team will be quite happy.

You’re probably familiar with Otani. In case you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese star, however, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the resume.

As a 21-year-old last season, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. Oh, he also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs over 323 at-bats in 104 games. He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

The following exhibits from 2016 are visual evidence of this player’s existence.

Let’s start with the fastball that sits in the mid- to upper 90s and that has touched 102 mph…

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays 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)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .270/.360/.450 as 17-year-old in Appy League.

Scouting Report
The Blue Jays traded for international-bonus slots and were able to avoid completely blowing out their bonus pool to sign Guerrero in 2015, instead spending in a range that only benched them from big international spending for one year instead of two. While most 17-year-old international signees spend their first pro season in the Dominican, Guerrero was advanced enough to come stateside. Not only that, but after spending time in extended spring training (and often hanging around and attentively watching Jays’ Florida State League games at night in April and May), Guerrero skipped the GCL and was sent to the Appalachian League, where he was dominant.

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Joc Pederson hit a home run on Monday. It was a grand slam. It was, further, a tie-breaking grand slam, but it wound up a little bit lost, because Yasmani Grandal also hit a home run. And Grandal hit an additional home run. And Corey Seager hit a home run, too. The Dodgers beat the Padres by 11, and although no one is ever favored to defeat another club by 11 runs, Monday felt almost like a foregone conclusion. The Padres got whooped, and Joc Pederson was just a part of that.

But, this — this is the time to over-analyze. So let’s do that! As far as I’m concerned, personally, Pederson’s grand slam made an impression, and I’d like to keep thinking about it. For Pederson, it was a new kind of pitch to take deep, and it speaks to how far he’s already come.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the difficulty of keeping perspective on Opening Day events, the lone disagreement between their preseason predictions, and a common reader misconception about prediction “groupthink.” Then they talk to Astros Double-A catching prospect and trampoline survivor Garrett Stubbs about his childhood trampoline injury and still-crooked finger, his dramatically different rankings on stats-based and scouting-based prospect lists, how size affects his future as a catcher, how he learned to hit for power, how he and the Astros focus on pitch framing, and more.

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Christian Bethancourt made the Padres! This is exciting, because he’s making the team as a catcher and a reliever at the same time. His existence challenges norms in a sport that’s known for the specialized roles of its participants. That said, we’ll have to see if he’s more Brooks Kieschnick or more Kenley Jansen eventually. Because hitter-slash-pitcher Kieschnick was nearly a unicorn, while Jansen — though a special reliever since abandoning his work as a catcher — has a story that’s been told in baseball’s history before.

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Since people take us for experts for some reason, we’re commonly asked what we consider important in the season’s very early going. What’s most important — and this should be abundantly clear — is that there’s active baseball in the first place. At the very least, there’s spring-training baseball, and as of just yesterday, there’s meaningful baseball. That’s it! That’s the whole point. Everything else is a detail.

But since we all get worked up over the details, we’re asked which details are most important early on. Statistically, the answer is, not much. A high or low batting average isn’t too suggestive. A high or low ERA isn’t too suggestive. A win or loss here or there are but ones of dozens. The more important things are the measurements that take less time than others to stabilize. Changes in, say, power. Changes in contact. Or changes in velocity. There are few things that stabilize in less time than how fast a pitcher throws. This is why so many of our March and April stories and tweets are about unusually fast or slow fastballs. This all brings us to Zack Greinke, the Diamondbacks’ opening-day starter.

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