We’ve got a little more than a week of baseball in the books, and while the samples are too small to make any meaningful conclusions, we’ve still seen some interesting things in the last seven days. So, let’s cover what we learned in week one.

The Astros are terribly impatient.

I don’t think anyone thought Houston would be good this year when they saw the roster that had been put together. We placed them dead last in the organization rankings for a reason, after all. But in their seven games, they’ve been a total and utter disaster.

It’s bad enough that their offense isn’t hitting, but perhaps most shocking is their remarkable insistence on swinging at everything. Through seven games, Houston has drawn just six walks while striking out 50 times. The Angels have drawn the second fewest walks, but they have 17. The Astros are in a class by themselves in terms of hacking away.

They’ve swung at 33.4 percent of pitches outside the strike, easily leading the league. They’re tied with the Rangers for the highest overall swing percentage, except that Texas’ hitters are actually, you know, talented. Houston won’t have much of an offensive threat until Lance Berkman returns from the disabled list, but at least they could make pitchers throw strikes. The current approach is obviously not working.

The Orioles outfielders are going to get a workout this year.

Here are the GB% for Baltimore starters so far:

Kevin Millwood: 37.5%
Jeremy Guthrie: 34.1%
Brad Bergesen: 42.1%
Brian Matusz: 0.0%
David Hernandez: 11.8%

Matusz and Hernandez continued their trend established in 2009 of being extreme flyball pitchers in their 2010 debuts. Chris Tillman is also an extreme flyball guy, so interestingly, the Orioles crop of young arms is made up almost entirely of guys who ptich up in the zone and give up balls in the air. Millwood and Guthrie are about average groundball guys for their careers, so the outfield will only get to rest on days when Bergsen takes the hill.

Kelly Johnson should have gathered more interest this winter.

Not that we should overreact to his hot start, but Johnson settled for just a one year, $2.35 million contract from Arizona after he was non-tendered by the Braves. He’s quickly reminding the rest of the National League that he’s a pretty good offensive second baseman, showing both power (five extra base hits) and bat control (four walks, one strikeout) in his first 23 plate appearances. But this isn’t anything new, really – ZIPS had Johnson projected to hit .279/.352/.472 before the season even started, and his career wOBA is .343.

He’s not a great defender at second base, but a 28-year-old who can hit like that and at least fake it at a middle infield spot should not be settling for the contract that Johnson got. Even better for Arizona is that they retain his rights beyond 2010, because he’s not going to have enough service time to qualify for free agency until after the 2011 season.

The cutback in winter spending led to some necessary market corrections, but it also led to Arizona getting a new second baseman for a fraction of what he’s worth. Kudos to the D’Backs for taking advantage of a market that failed to realize that Johnson is still a quality player.

It didn’t take Texas long to come to the conclusion that Frank Francisco was no longer their best relief pitcher. After two blown saves by Francisco, Neftali Feliz is in as the new ninth inning relief ace for the Rangers.

Over the years, we’ve talked a lot about the relative value of starters and relievers. Even the best relief pitchers in the game are only worth about as much as an average starting pitcher, due to the drastic quantity difference in innings pitched. So, in general, we usually feel like a pitcher should be given as many chances as possible to stick in the rotation before he gets pigeonholed as a full time reliever.

However, there are situations where it makes sense to take a high quality arm and stick him in the bullpen, and I think this is one of those situations.

As Jeremy Greenhouse just showed, not every pitcher responds the same way when shifted to the bullpen. There are pitchers whose stuff plays up in relief more than the average, and they get a significant velocity (and performance) boost when throwing shorter outings.

For this class of pitcher, the relative difference between what they can be as a starter and a reliever is significant enough to overcome the drop in innings pitched. Joe Nathan is the classic example, as he went from a middling back of the rotation prospect to one of the best relievers in baseball after the move.

There are quite a few reasons to think Feliz may be one of these guys. He’s had trouble sustaining his velocity before, and his questionable command of strikeout stuff make it unlikely that he’d be able to work more than five or six innings in most starts before he ran his pitch count up. In his entire professional career, he’s pitched into the seventh inning just once in 53 starts (though, to be fair, Atlanta and Texas were both actively keeping his workload down).

If Feliz is one of these pitchers whose stuff is significantly better in relief than as a starter, then Texas made the right move. They’re a contender in 2010, and the value of a marginal win to them this year is extremely high. Meanwhile, they actually have significant rotation depth, with Derek Holland hanging out in Triple-A waiting for an opening among their starting five. Given his current state of development, Feliz wouldn’t be a significant improvement over what the Rangers already have in the rotation, but there’s a very good chance that he’s their best reliever right now.

The present value of using Feliz as a reliever is quite high. Given that the other option is to have him in Triple-A attempting to develop into a long term starting pitcher, a proposition that is questionable to begin with, I think the Rangers are properly weighing present and future value here. Feliz is a big time talent, but there were good reasons to think his future was in the bullpen regardless of where he pitched this year, and he’ll most help the Rangers try to win the AL West by closing games in 2010.

In his first start with the Angels last night, Joel Pineiro showed that the sinker he learned from Dave Duncan traveled with him to Anaheim, getting 15 groundballs in 6 innings of work. While he gave up three runs, he’ll pitch well for the Angels as long as that two-seam fastball is still diving, and there’s no indication that he lost it in the transition back to the AL.

However, this post isn’t really about Joel Pineiro. It’s about GB/FB ratio. Pineiro’s 15.00 GB/FB ratio tied with Felix Hernandez for the best of any pitcher to throw so far. However, if you sort by GB%, rather than GB/FB, you will notice that Ryan Dempster actually posted a higher groundball rate than Pineiro. Dempster ran a 75 percent GB% in his first start, compared to 71 percent for Pineiro, though his GB/FB ratio is a more pedestrian 4.50.

The difference, of course, is line drives. Dempster only gave up one, while Pineiro gave up five, and those don’t go in the GB/FB calculation. If the Twins had hit Pineiro less effectively, and those line drives had been converted into fly balls, his GB/FB ratio would have gone down, even though he would have pitched better and likely allowed fewer runs.

In other words, in this case, a higher GB/FB ratio is actually a bad thing.

Now, over a full season, this mostly evens out, and the correlation between GB% and GB/FB is pretty darn high. However, given that we have GB%, FB%, and LD%, I’d like to see GB/FB go by the wayside. It doesn’t serve any purpose, really. Why evaluate a pitcher on just two of the three batted ball types, rewarding him for giving up more of the most harmful kind?

GB% gives you all of the good information of GB/FB without any of the bad assumptions about line drive rates being equal. When describing a pitcher’s batted ball tendencies, you’re better off with GB% than GB/FB.

One of the things that I don’t think I did all that well during the organizational rankings series is communicate how the three different sections (current talent, future talent, and management/ownership) were weighted. I should have been more clear about the relative importance of each, so, with that in mind, let’s talk about what makes a healthy organization.

To me, it starts at the top. Even if you have a talented team with a strong farm system, having executives in place who don’t value talent well or evaluate it well is a pretty significant hindrance. I don’t want to pick on the Mets too much, but let’s use them as an example.

A year ago, I rated them #5 in baseball on the strength of a roster that looked to be one of the best in the game. With Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, David Wright, and Johan Santana, they had four legitimate franchise players to build around, and they regularly run one of the highest payrolls in the game. I’ve never been much of an Omar Minaya fan, but that kind of talent and access to resources overwhelmed what I felt were shortcomings in the front office. I weighted the talent on the team more highly than the people putting the roster together. Whoops.

Players get hurt. Or, sometimes, they have bad years. A good management team can insulate a roster so that a couple of tough breaks don’t ruin a team, or at least make some solid moves to help the team recover when those bad breaks occur. The Mets didn’t do any of that. They threw a lot of money at bad baseball players, then stared in disbelief as the team fell apart. Their answer this winter? Throw a lot more money at a decent player who probably won’t age very well. And now, the Mets are a mess, despite the fact that they have some good players and some legitimate prospects.

Meanwhile, other teams without as much talent or money are building winning teams by finding value players and putting together rosters with depth to overcome injuries. They have front offices that understand where to find value in the market, and can put together a roster that can contend, even without four superstars or a $150 million payroll.

It isn’t just the current Mets; The Yankees didn’t win very often when they were poorly ran, even though they always had a lot of talent and a lot of money to spend. It’s easy to look around the game and find talented underachievers whose organizations are wallowing in the bottom of the standings because of poor management.

You don’t have to do things The FanGraphs Way, as I hope the respect we gave the Twins shows. But, it’s nearly impossible to win on a consistent basis without a front office that excels at creating value for their franchise. The teams that sustain success are the ones who are well run and have a process that leads to future development of players and the ability to acquire useful pieces to put together a roster. More than what you have on the field now, or in the farm system for later, it’s the people in the front office who determine how successful the organization will be.

In terms of how the three areas were weighted for the rankings series, it was roughly something like 45 percent management, 35 percent current talent, and 20 percent future talent. Having a roster full of good players, or a stocked farm system, only takes you so far. Without a front office that knows what they’re doing, it won’t last.

Yesterday, every Braves fan on earth had a I-know-where-I-was-when-that-happened moment, when Jason Heyward destroyed a Carlos Zambrano fastball in his first major league at-bat. For anyone who even casually enjoys the game, it was a great moment. The crowd going insane, his parents jumping around and hugging everyone they can find, and Heyward rounding the bases on Opening Day in Atlanta – it was just a lot of fun to watch.

Meanwhile, up in the capital city, the Nationals got pounded 11-1 at home, as John Lannan and Miguel Batista made the first Washington game of the season a thoroughly miserable affair. Stephen Strasburg was nowhere to be seen.

This is a problem for Major League Baseball. The rules of the game currently incentivize teams to take the Nationals path. Washington is going to retain Strasburg’s services for 2016 by keeping him out of the big leagues in April, and everyone understands why they’re doing it. But, realistically, is it in the best interests of baseball to make their product worse every April by setting up a system that encourages teams to start the season with inferior rosters? Does MLB want to really continue a system where most organizations willingly choose to give up the moment that Heyward had yesterday? Does anyone want less of those?

Baseball needs to be in the business of promoting goosebumps and memories that will live forever. They need to fix the service time issue so that teams like Washington have no reason to send their best pitcher to the minor leagues for a month.

In yesterday’s chat, when this came up, I suggested one possible alternative; reduce the amount of days needed to count as a full year of service towards free agency. Right now, the number is 172, which means that a player has to be on the active roster or the disabled list for about 95 percent of the season in order to accumulate enough days for one full year. A player who is on the roster for 90 percent of the season will not get enough days of service to count it as a full season, which makes no sense whatsoever.

If you lower that number to, say, 100 days of service, now you’re making teams hold players back until July if they want to get that extra year of club control. That is a much tougher sacrifice to make when you’re staring at a big league ready prospect at the end of March. Would the Nationals have been willing to keep Strasburg in the minors until July? I really doubt it. Given the shifted incentives, he would almost certainly have broken camp with their big league team, and Washington fans could have had a Heyward moment of their own to look forward to.

Lowering the days of service causes some other issues that would have to be addressed, and it’s not a perfect solution, but at least it addresses the point of MLB actively discouraging teams from giving their fans once-in-a-lifetime memories. If baseball wants kids to grow up loving the game, they need more moments like what happened in Atlanta yesterday. It’s time for the rules to change.

We’re a week one day away from Opening Day (yes, I know there’s a night game on Sunday, but no one cares about those two teams), and here at FanGraphs, we’ve decided to kick off the season in style. We’re going to host an all day chat session with various FanGraphs and RotoGraphs authors and, if I may say so, a ridiculously awesome panel of guests. Scheduled to attend (all Eastern times):

Will Leitch, New York Magazine – 10am
Dan Szymobrski, Baseball Think Factory – 11am
Jonah Keri, Bloomberg Sports – 12pm
Mitchel Lichtman, Inside The Book – 1pm
Pete Abraham, Boston Globe – 2pm
Tim Marchman, Everywhere – 3pm
Dave Studemund, Hardball Times – 4pm
Sky Kalkman, Beyond The Box Score

Plus, a couple others may show up, depending on scheduling. It’s going to be a day full of baseball and conversation, and there won’t be a better place to discuss opening day than right here on the blog.

Welcome to the best day of the year. The 2010 season is upon us, and we’re almost to the point where we can stop speculating and start reacting. Before we move on to writing about the happenings on the field, one last speculative exercise – my 2010 predictions. I have no special ability to see the future, of course, but given the information available today, this is what I would guess.

Playoff Teams, AL: New York-Minnesota-Texas-Boston
Playoff Teams, NL: Philadelphia-St. Louis-Colorado-Los Angeles

WS: Minnesota over Colorado

AL MVP: Josh Hamilton
NL MVP: Albert Pujols

AL Position Player WAR Leader: Alex Rodriguez
NL Position Player WAR Leader: Hanley Ramirez

AL Cy Young: James Shields
NL Cy Young: Roy Halladay

AL Pitcher WAR Leader: CC Sabathia
NL Pitcher WAR Leader: Roy Halladay

AL Rookie of the Year: Neftali Feliz
NL Rookie of the Year: Stephen Strasburg

AL Rookie WAR Leader: Brian Matusz
NL Rookie WAR Leader: Stephen Strasburg

Five Random Guesses About 2010:

1. The Braves will take the Phillies down to the wire in the NL East.

2. The Brewers will make the NL Central far more interesting than most people expect.

3. Omar Minaya will be fired before the season ends.

4. Jacoby Ellsbury, Adam Jones, and Mark Teixeira will all post positive UZRs and be among the league leaders in defensive value at their respective positions.

5. The first time Stephen Strasburg and Jason Heyward face each other, time will stand still.

Welcome back, baseball.

Three weeks and one mildly controversial ranking later, we’re finished with the 2010 organizational rankings series. You can find links to all the recap posts below. Next week, when we’re not talking about what’s actually happening on the field, I’ll do some posts on the questions raised during the series. But now, it’s your turn. If you want to weigh in with what you think the order should have been, you can fill up the comments thread with your thoughts.

#1 – New York Yankees
#2 – Boston Red Sox
#3 – Tampa Bay Rays
#4 – Texas Rangers
#5 – Minnesota Twins
#6 – Seattle Mariners
#7 – Colorado Rockies
#8 – Atlanta Braves
#9 – Philadelphia Phillies
#10 – St. Louis Cardinals
#11 – Anaheim Angels
#12 – Milwaukee Brewers
#13 – Cleveland Indians
#14 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#15 – New York Mets
#16 – Arizona Diamondbacks
#17 – Baltimore Orioles
#18 – Chicago Cubs
#19 – Oakland Athletics
#20 – Cincinnati Reds
#21 – Detroit Tigers
#22 – Florida Marlins
#23 – San Francisco Giants
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#25 – Pittsburgh Pirates
#26 – Toronto Blue Jays
#27 – San Diego Padres
#28 – Washington Nationals
#29 – Kansas City Royals
#30 – Houston Astros

I have a lot of respect for Brian Cashman, and I think he’s tremendously under-appreciated as a GM. Under his watch, the Yankees went from an erratic money pit into a dominant machine, and he’s put processes in place to ensure that the team is permanently good. Everything I said about the Red Sox is also true about the Yankees now. They do everything well.

And, yes, they’re disgustingly rich. They outspent the #2 team in 2009 opening day payroll by $52 million. They outspent the Red Sox by $80 million, or, essentially, they spent as much on their 2009 team as the Boston and Milwaukee combined, and the Brewers have a league-average payroll. It’s just a monstrous advantage, and they take full advantage of it.

This isn’t to say that the Yankees haven’t earned their championships. The Mets have access to the same media market and spend money like drunken sailors, but they don’t win, because they’re not using their resources well. The Yankees are using their resources very well, and there is no reason to disrespect their accomplishments simply because they have access to more capital than every other MLB team.

But there’s a reason I said that the Red Sox were the model franchise for a big market team. The Yankees aren’t, because they don’t fit into that category. They’re a you-can’t-build-a-market-like-this team, and there’s no point for anyone trying to recreate what they’re doing, because it’s impossible. You can’t recreate 100 years of history. You can’t fix your organization’s past and make sure it includes Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Yogi Berra. The Yankees have a tie to the roots of the game itself that no other club ever will.

It’s not just the size of the Big Apple that gives the Yankees the advantage they enjoy. It’s their place in the history of the game, and how well they’ve leveraged that into developing a fan base that perpetuates itself constantly. The combination of the market, the nostalgia, and the winning have created a perfect storm, and the result is a franchise that towers over the rest. The Red Sox do everything right, and they still aren’t the Yankees. They can’t be. No one can.

We talk about dominant eras in sports history. The Brian Cashman-era Yankees are going to take their spot someday, because with the way the organization is structured, they’re going to be scary good for the foreseeable future. This is what happens when you spend $200 million really, really well.

I’d pull out the old “always the bridesmaid” cliche, except the Red Sox have won two World Series titles in the the last six years, so it doesn’t really fit anymore.

The Red Sox have essentially become a model organization for a big market club. They don’t waste much of their financial advantage, but instead have used to increase their international presence, spend significant dollars in the draft, load the front office with smart people, and leave enough left to put consistently good teams on the field every year.

They don’t have any real weaknesses as an organization. The front office understands how to build a winning team, and their player development system is one of the best in the game. They lock up their homegrown talent early, allowing them to use the rest of their budget to fill out the roster with good veterans who don’t require long term commitments. The players love the manager, and he works well with a stat-savvy front office.

Really, I don’t have a bad thing to say about the organization. They do a great job. Every team in baseball should try to be more like the Red Sox. That makes for a rather uninteresting commentary, but I feel like I’d be nitpicking to the nth degree to try and find a problem worth discussing here.

So, congratulations Boston, you’ve got a great franchise. It will pay off for years to come. Rather than expecting the team to find a way to lose, you can expect to win, and win a lot.