Before we start rolling out our list on Monday, we figured it’d be fun to give you guys a chance to weigh in. I’ve taken the spreadsheet that we gave to our authors and put it in a viewable Google Doc, so you can simply export it to Excel and fill in the grades for each team yourself, and see what your personal organizational rankings would look like.

The document can be found here. Our methodology is explained here, and as I noted in that post, we’re using the 20-80 scale for grading. Keep in mind that you want your average grade for each category to come out to 50 (or something very close to it), and each 10 point increment represents one standard deviation from the mean. 60 is above average, 70 is excellent, and 80 is historically great. Grades above 70 and below 30 are pretty special, and shouldn’t just be handed out easily.

If you’d like to share your rankings with the world, feel free to do so in the comments section.

Update: Sky Kalkman has agreed to act as the compiler of ballots, so if you’d like your ballot counted in a composite ranking, simply use this link and submit your ballot there. You’re still welcome to post them in the comments here for pride and glory as well.

On Monday, we’ll roll out the beginning of our annual Organizational Rankings series – the plan is to do three teams a day for 10 days, concluding with the top three teams on April 4th. Before we begin discussing each franchise, however, I thought it’d be helpful to explain some of the changes we’ve made to the system this year.

Last year, we made one key change that we’re carrying over, and will likely remain in place going forward: our authors were asked to grade individual inputs rather than overall organizational strength. Grading by components adds a layer of transparency that is important, as you can see exactly why a team ended up placing in the specific spot they land.

However, we’re upgrading the implementation of that grading scale this year. Last year, I asked all of our authors to assign letter grades to each organization in three categories: Present Talent, Financial Resources, and Baseball Operations, and then had the three guys on staff who specialized in prospect analysis grade them out in terms of Future Talent as well. We then converted the letter grades for those four variables into scores, assigned weights to the individual categories, and used the weighted averages to create a total score.

There were a few problems that arose by doing things that way, however, and we’re doing our best to fix those issues this year. Here’s how:

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There probably hasn’t been a bigger story in any camp this spring than Michael Pineda’s missing velocity. After throwing 94-97 in Seattle last year, he’s been 89-93 so far this spring, though he did pump a few 94 MPH fastballs in his most recent start on Tuesday. While it’s still important to realize that this reduced velocity isn’t entirely new, you also would have expected Pineda to throw harder by now if he was physically able to do it at this point.

Once his velocity became such a big story, it would have been fairly simple for Pineda to calm everyone’s nerves by tossing out a 96 or 97 MPH fastball if he was just holding back and not throwing at full effort. That he’s only been up to 94 suggests that, whether due to conditioning or some other factor, he’s probably not able to throw as hard at the moment as he did last year. That doesn’t mean he won’t be able to again, but it does create some questions about what the Yankees should do with Pineda now that the season is just a couple of weeks away.

My suggestion – follow the Madison Bumgarner model and have him begin the season in Triple-A.

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One of the things we’re going to try to do more of at FanGraphs going forward is highlight good work from around the web. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, and if we can help more people see the work that’s being done, everyone wins. We’re still going to be doing our normal amount of original content, but we’ll add in some posts here and there that link out to pieces we think are worth reading. This is the first of those posts.

We’ve long known that Jered Weaver got a significant boost from pitching in Anaheim. It’s a park that significantly deflates home runs to right field, and Weaver gives up a ton of fly balls while facing a lot of left-handed hitters. The synergy between his skillset and his home park is one of the best in baseball.

Well, Jeff Sullivan pointed out this morning that there might be more to what’s going on than just a nice alignment of skills and outfield space.

I went through Weaver’s career game logs and identified 16 home starts made in the day time. One was at 3:30pm, and all the others were at or around 1:00pm. I assumed that the weather was always nice, the sun always bright.

That left 68 other home starts, almost all of which started around 7:00pm. The sample sizes here are different, but I think we have enough to make a comparison. When I put the numbers next to each other, my eyes opened wide. The numbers back up the anonymous Mariners player, and then some.

Time	Innings	Batters	ERA	BB%	K%	HR%	Contact%
Day	113	444	1.51	6.5%	28%	1.1%	71%
Night	444	1807	3.00	5.9%	21%	2.4%	79%

The fact that the data lines up with what an opposing hitter noticed instinctively by facing him in a certain situation lends some credence to the belief that this isn’t just small sample noise. It could be, of course, but it could also be that Weaver’s specific arm angle and the position of the rock pile in Anaheim combine to make it very, very hard to see the ball coming out of his hand.

It’s something to keep an eye on going forward, especially if we notice that the Angels suddenly begin to lead the league in afternoon home games.

Texas fans, its breath-holding time – according to Richard Durrett of ESPN Dallas, Neftali Feliz left today’s game after three innings because of “right shoulder stiffness.” Feliz was scheduled to pitch the fourth, but was replaced by Neal Cotts instead.

Because the game was in Mesa, which is not one of the parks that has Pitch F/x installed in Arizona, we can’t compare his velocity in today’s start to his prior spring training outings. However, Durrett notes that the stadium gun had him sitting between 93-95, and his performance seemed okay, as he struck out two batters in three scoreless innings. Both of those are good signs, and this could be nothing more than general spring training aches and pains from a guy getting stretched out after spending last year in the bullpen.

However, the Rangers have the ability to be cautious here. They have the deepest starting staff in baseball, and it wouldn’t be overly challenging for them to let Alexi Ogando or Scott Feldman begin the year in the rotation if Feliz needed more time to get stretched out. The Rangers schedule in April will require them to have a fifth starter from the beginning of the season, but their alternatives mean that Feliz doesn’t necessarily have to be one of those five. They were planning on limiting his innings this season anyway, so giving him some time off at the beginning of the season might not be a bad idea anyway.

Even if this turns out to be nothing, the Rangers have the ability to take it easy with Feliz. They should probably take advantage of their depth, because if Feliz turns out to not be able to handle a full time rotation job, they’ll need guys like Ogando and Feldman to make some starts during the season anyway.

This afternoon, the Padres announced that they had agreed to a three year contract with catcher Nick Hundley. If you’re wondering why they would lock up their starting catcher now when they just traded for top prospect Yasmani Grandal over the winter, wait until you see the terms of the deal.

The deal is essentially a two year extension, since it leaves his already negotiated $2 million salary for 2012 in place. It simply adds a guaranteed $3 million salary for 2013, a $4 million salary for 2014, and a $5 million team option (with no buyout attached) for 2015, which would have been Hundley’s first year of free agent eligibility. So, in essence, Hundley converted his final two years of arbitration eligibility into guaranteed money, but did so at the price of taking minimal raises and pushing his first bite at free agency back a year.

This deal makes all the sense in the world for San Diego, but I’m not sure why Hundley agreed to this contract, to be honest. Over the last three years, Hundley has been a well above average player even while splitting time behind the plate – he’s hit .259/.323/.435 in 904 plate appearances, which is even more impressive when you consider that he’s been playing half his games in San Diego. From 2009 to 2011, his wRC+ is 109, putting him pretty much square in line with Miguel Montero. In fact, Montero is the best comp around for Hundley.

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The recent spat of injury news continued this morning, when the Braves announced that RHP Arodys Vizcaino was undergoing Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire 2012 season. Vizciano was rated the #2 prospect in the Braves system by Marc Hulet, and despite being just 21-years-old, he was in the mix for a Major League job at some point in 2012. While the Braves certainly have the pitching depth to deal with not having him on the mound this year, this is still a blow to the organization.

And, while no decision will likely be made on this until after Vizcaino rehabs, there’s a decent chance that this answers the lingering “starter or reliever” question that has followed Vizciano around. His two-pitch repertoire and big time fastball suggested a career in the bullpen may be in his future, but the Braves continued to let him start in Double-A last season before having him pitch in relief in Triple-A and the Majors. Even putting aside any durability questions this injury raises – in conjunction with the elbow soreness he experienced in 2010, his long term health has to be a concern – the lost year of development probably tips the scales towards a career in relief. He’s a guy who needed as much time on the mound as possible to continue developing his repertoire if he was going to stick as a starter, but losing the entire 2012 season is going to make it difficult for the Braves to keep him in that role.

More likely, Vizciano will return to the mound next year and be told to just prepare for a career of 15 pitch outings. Hopefully, for his sake, that task proves less strenuous on his arm.

I’m still pretty wiped out after a long travel day yesterday that saw me get home at 2:30 in the morning, so I’m not going to manage a full recap, but I did want to point you towards some relevant links about the just completed SABR Analytics Conference that we participated in over the weekend.

The easiest place to start is SABR’s site, where their page about the conference has links to various things, including audio files of several of the panel discussions and interviews. If you didn’t attend the conference, that’s probably a good place to start catching up on what you missed.

Also, David Fung of Beyond the Box Score has a pretty thorough post up, including pictures and links to the specific audio files available. David was the first person in the room for my Saturday morning presentation, so he gets bonus points for that.

Finally, I’ve uploaded the slides of the presentation I did on Scrap Heap Starting Pitchers on Saturday. The slides really just feature the highlights of what we talked about, but do illustrate some of the points I tried to make in discussing whether teams can get value by signing pitchers coming off of seasons where they spent time on the disabled list. As I noted at the talk, there are a lot of caveats that need to be applied here, and this is not an extensive study of the issue, but I do think the failure of reclamation project starters from 2007-2010 produced a market correction that may have gone too far the last few offseasons.

If you know of any other write-ups about the conference, feel free to link to them in the comments. I’ll have a more thorough report on my thoughts from the panels and presentations tomorrow.