During Ned Colletti’s tenure as the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a hallmark of the franchise was lavish spending on relief pitchers. A year ago, their Opening Day bullpen combined to make $33 million, by far the most of any team in baseball. To pitch in front of All-Star closer Kenley Jansen, Colletti shelled out big money to sign former All-Star closers Brian Wilson and Brandon League; even his idea of a bargain signing was signing injured former All-Star closer Chris Perez and hoping he returned to his prior form.

Colletti valued experience and track record, going after guys who were on the downsides of their careers, but had been effective ninth inning guys in the past. Unfortunately for him and the Dodgers, he routinely overestimated the shelf life of a relief pitcher, and ended up with expensive, ineffective setup guys incapable of getting the ball to Kenley Jansen with a lead. Last year, those three combined to give the Dodgers 158 mediocre innings, posting a 3.71 ERA and a miserable 4.17 FIP; they also combined to make $20 million between them, a total higher than 25 other MLB teams spent on their relief corps.

Last winter, the Dodgers replaced Colletti with Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi, poaching two analytically-inclined executives from the Rays and A’s respectively. Those two franchises have spent years building bullpens on the cheap, and not surprisingly, the Dodgers 2015 bullpen looks a lot different than their 2014 bullpen.

Gone is Brian Wilson, released despite the fact that he exercised his $9 million player option for the 2015 season; the new-look Dodgers decided they’d rather pay him that money to sit at home rather than let him take the mound. League is on the disabled list with a shoulder problem and won’t be joining the team any time soon. Perez signed a minor league deal with the Brewers this winter, and currently has a 9.00 ERA in Triple-A. Even Kenley Jansen, the team’s one actual good reliever from a year ago, has yet to throw an inning for the team in the regular season, as he had surgery to remove a growth from his foot during spring training.

From four closers to no closers in a year’s time, the Dodgers bullpen couldn’t possibly be any different than it was a year ago. And despite their lack of anything resembling a proven ninth-inning workhorse, LA’s bullpen has been nothing short of amazing so far.

The current group, listed with their 2015 walk, strikeout, and groundball rates, are included in the table below.

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On Friday, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Chicago Cubs promoted Kris Bryant to the big leagues. With the service time shenanigans out of the way, it was abundantly clear that Bryant that he was their best third baseman, so they summoned him from Iowa to help their team win. Today, the Cubs have also pulled shortstop Addison Russell up from Triple-A, where he’ll join Bryant, Starlin Castro, and Anthony Rizzo to form something close to the infield of their dreams.

Unlike with Bryant’s promotion, however, this one didn’t appear imminent, nor has Russell necessarily forced his way into the big leagues. While everyone agrees that he’s one of the best prospects in baseball, it’s less clear that he’s finished developing in the minor leagues, and is ready to step in and produce from day one the way Bryant is. In total, Russell has just under 1,100 minor league plate appearances, and only 321 of those have come above A-ball.

He was excellent in Double-A last year, hitting for power and making contact, but his walk rate eroded, a perfectly natural thing to expect from a 20-year-old facing advanced pitching for the first time. That trend has continued in the first few weeks in Triple-A this year, as he’s drawn just one walk in his first 47 plate appearances. Of course, a middle infielder who can hit for some power and avoid striking out already does enough to justify his spot in the line-up, so even if Russell is still in the overly-aggressive phase of his development, that doesn’t immediately preclude him from being a productive player in 2015.

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As it stands this morning, there are five teams in the National League that have at least a 50% chance of reaching the postseason, according to our Playoff Odds forecasts. The three top teams are the same three that everyone had winning their divisions before the year began; the Dodgers, Cardinals, and Nationals. The fourth team — or first Wild Card, if you want to make it sound a little better — is the Padres, whose winter moves made the largest splash the world has seen since Noah decided to build an ark. And finally, as you’ve likely surmised from reading the headline, there’s the New York Mets, currently given exactly a 50/50 chance of reaching the postseason this year.

Yep, that puts the Mets ahead of the Pirates and Cubs, the two young darlings of the Central, each with rosters more stacked with young talent. It also puts the Mets well ahead of the Marlins, a trendy pre-season pick to make a run this year, but instead are a team that is reportedly considering firing their manager after getting their clocks cleaned in Queens over the weekend. After that four game sweep, the Marlins now find themselves seven games behind the Mets; it’s the largest gap between any two division rivals in baseball.

Of course, it’s still really early. It’s April 19th, and because the season started a week later this year, that date is even more deceiving than usual. We’re two weeks into a 26 week race. After 13 games last year, the Brewers were 10-3, standing with the best record in baseball; they went 72-77 after that point and finished six games behind the two Wild Card teams. While the games that have been played still count and can’t be taken away, a 10-3 start doesn’t mean the Mets are really a great team.

But that’s the thing about baseball in 2015; they don’t really need to be. They don’t even need to be particularly good, because in this day and age, a hot start and a roster that doesn’t suck makes you a contender.

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Merry Krismas, Chicago; Kris Bryant’s defense magically improved in the exact amount of minor league games it took for the Cubs to delay his free agency by a year. With that remarkable coincidence act of theatre out of the way, the Cubs can now acknowledge that Bryant is not only their best third baseman, but one of their best big league players. And so today begins the Kris Bryant Era in Chicago.

Chris Mitchell has already written up the KATOH system’s expectations for Bryant, and as you’d expect, a model based on Bryant’s minor league performances think he’s going to be quite good. After all, few players have torn up minor league hitting the way Bryant has; including his stint in the AFL, Bryant has hit .331/.430/.671, good for a 195 wRC+. Kris Bryant can hit, and when he hits, the baseball goes a long way.

That profile is why he’s the consensus top prospect in baseball, and why there’s so much hype surrounding his call-up. Bryant isn’t some toolsy athlete in low-A ball that could be great in three years, or a flame-throwing ace who could rack up the strikeouts until his arm explodes; he’s a college-polished slugger who already projects as one of the best third baseman in baseball, even before he plays a big league game. As prospects go, Bryant is a very low-risk talent, as it would take a minor disaster for him to not be at least reasonably productive for the Cubs in 2015 and beyond.

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Last year, Dellin Betances was one of baseball’s elite relievers, throwing 90 dominant innings out of the Yankees bullpen. He was a young bright spot on a team full of old disappointments, flashing the kind of stuff and command that gave the Yankees confidence to let David Robertson leave via free agency. With a 97 mph fastball and a nearly unhittable breaking ball coming from a 6’8 guy, it was pretty easy to imagine Betances becoming the next great Yankee closer.

But right now, Dellin Betances is a mess. In his first three appearances of 2015, he’s walked six batters, only two fewer than his entire total from the second half of 2014. The control problems could be attributable to a larger problem, however, as his fastball is down under 95 mph, and his curveball is off last year’s mark by the same amount. He’s simply not throwing the same stuff now that he was a year ago, and he’s certainly not locating what he is throwing, giving hitters an easy plan when he’s on the mound: don’t swing.

Among pitchers who have faced at least 10 batters this year, no pitcher has seen opponents swing less often than they have against Betances; they’ve only gone after 24 of his 81 pitches, a 29.6% swing rate. Opponents have recognized that Betances doesn’t know where the ball is going, and they’re letting him dig his own grave. So far, he’s done just that.

This isn’t just an April problem, either; Betances struggled to find the strike zone in Spring Training, walking six batters in just 8 1/3 innings during the month of March. Clearly, opponents noticed his Grapefruit League troubles, and they’ve now carried over to the start of the regular season. So, how concerned should the Yankees be about their young former-flamethrower?

Maybe less than you’d think.

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Yesterday, the Marlins called up Carter Capps from the minors, and Capps went on to make his season debut in last night’s game against the Braves. He pitched well, getting all three batters he faced out, one of them by strikeout. But a reliever getting called up and throwing a scoreless inning isn’t worthy of a post, so you know there has to be more to the story. And there is, because here’s what Carter Capps throwing the ball looks like.

legal pitch or nah? pic.twitter.com/sdNI4dXrky

— nick pants (@nick_pants) April 14, 2015

lol pic.twitter.com/mxSOdNGQbk

— nick pants (@nick_pants) April 14, 2015

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We’re a week into the Major League season, which means most regular hitters have roughly 20 to 25 at-bats, and each team’s best pitcher has maybe thrown 13 or 14 innings. These are the smallest of small samples, and almost anything is possible over the course of five or six games. Right now, we have things like Jose Iglesias leading the American League in Batting Average and Kevin Kiermaier leading the AL in Slugging (.941). Among the many dominant pitching performance from the first week, you’ll find names like Aaron Harang, Tommy Milone, and Jason Marquis.

For years, the analytical community has strongly advised against reading anything into early-season results, making the phrase “Small Sample Size” into a term you’ll even hear on broadcasts. We have an entire entry in the FanGraphs Library devoted to sample size, and another on regression to the mean, which is a related concept. If you’re reading FanGraphs, odds are you’re probably aware of the fact that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on a week’s worth of data. The Braves are not the best team in the National League. The Tigers aren’t the ’27 Yankees. Over any given week, weird stuff is going to happen, and we just notice it more at the start of the season because it’s the only thing that has happened yet; if you look at any seven day stretch throughout the year, you’ll find similarly odd results.

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