Making wholesale role changes two weeks into the season is not likely a sound strategy, as the decisions leading up to Opening Day take in much more reliable information with considerably more history than a few appearances in April. Likewise, taking promising starters who have yet to prove they cannot start and sending them to the bullpen where they will pitch considerably fewer innings is not ideal either. Yet that is where the Toronto Blue Jays sit heading into the third week of the season. The Blue Jays were dealt a blow in Spring Training when Marcus Stroman was lost for the year after a knee injury that required surgery, and they are still reeling from that loss.

A battle for the fifth spot in the rotation between Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez, and Marco Estrada shifted as the Blue Jays anointed two of their top three prospects as starters to begin the season. With Aaron Sanchez struggling, Daniel Norris beginning the season with a dead arm, and a young bullpen that has already switched closers, the Blue Jays pitching staff has provided more questions than answers.

In five starts this season, Norris and Sanchez have combined for 22 innings and 15 strikeouts while giving up 12 walks and five home runs. The poor performance and low innings totals thus far have put a strain on an inexperienced bullpen. The Blue Jays 47 2/3 innings pitched out of the bullpen are tied for fourth Major League Baseball, but they’re not getting worked so much because they’re dominating when called upon; those innings have come with a 4.16 FIP, ranking 26th in MLB. The Blue Jays bullpen is both performing poorly and getting overworked, never a good combination for mid-April.
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As Kris Bryant heads to North Side of Chicago to make his debut, the lack of movement on the South Side has merited much less attention. Carlos Rodon remains a starting pitcher in Charlotte as the White Sox use two currently inferior pitchers in the rotation. Much of the same arguments for keeping Kris Bryant down apply to Rodon. By keeping him in the minor leagues, the team can gain an extra year of service time. A couple starts during the course of the season is not likely to make a huge difference for the White Sox’s season.

Whether those arguments are valid as they apply to Rodon are moot now. The time needed to keep Rodon down is over, and the White Sox still haven’t named a starter for Sunday afternoon, but they have eliminated one name:
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The Arizona Diamondbacks generated a fair amount of excitement yesterday when they promoted Yasmany Tomas. After the experiment to play Tomas at third base had failed, or at least been tabled for awhile, during Spring Training, Tomas was sent to Triple-A Reno where he had been playing right field. With A.J. Pollock in center field, Mark Trumbo in right field, and Ender Inciarte off to a fast start in left field, there did not appear to be a spot for immediate playing time for Tomas, fueling speculation that perhaps another move was in the offing. Excitement and speculation soon yielded to confusion as Tomas was not in the starting lineup and news that Tomas had been brought up as a bench bat.

The Diamondbacks called up their $68 million investment to sit on the bench, the problem arising due to an unusual roster construction and injuries to two of the three catchers on their 40-man roster with significant experience at the position. When the season started, Arizona put 12 pitchers and 13 position players on the 25-man roster. After Gerald Laird hit the disabled list, the Diamondbacks chose to supplement the bullpen with an additional arm for a few games, calling up A.J. Schugel.

After a few games with the loaded bullpen and shorthanded bench, the Diamondbacks decided to move back to the more traditional setup of having 13 position players and 12 pitchers on their active roster. Due to injuries at catcher, the Diamondbacks were faced with a difficult decision on their roster. Prior to making a move the active roster looked like this (Players on the disabled list in italics):
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The Houston Astros are well known for swinging, missing, and striking out at an extremely high rate. It should come as no surprise the Astros are currently leading the American League in strikeout rate, even in the early going, striking out 26.2% of the time. However, the Astros are not first in Major League Baseball in strikeout rate. That honor goes to the Pittsburgh Pirates who have struck out 26.8% of the time so far this season. Excluding pitchers, the Astros still hold the lead (26.2% to 26.0%), but the Pirates have swung and missed a lot to start the year.

The Pirates have struggled a little out of the gate, getting swept by the Cincinnati Reds to begin the season on their way to winning three out of their first eight games. The pitching has been mostly solid, with a 3.55 ERA and 3.21 FIP, although the bullpen has been credited with the loss in three of the five Pirates losses. In the early-going the Pirates have hit just .221/.270/.366 with a wRC+ of 80. Those numbers are not all that concerning this early, but the Pirates lack of patience is surprising even as strikeout rates across MLB continue to move upwards.

A deviation in the Pirates strikeout numbers in April is not unusual for the team. While the Pirates have switched out Russell Martin for Francisco Cervelli and given Gregory Polanco a full-time role, most of the team is similar to last season. The Pirates struck out more last April than any other month in 2014. As the chart below shows, the same was true throughout MLB last year, although the effect was not as pronounced for MLB as a whole.
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In seven innings this season, including six in his start on Sunday, Carlos Martinez has faced 10 right-handed hitters. None of them has reached base and four hitters have struck out. Martinez’s early season dominance against righties is not altogether surprising. Splitting time between the bullpen and the rotation last season, Martinez faced 215 right-handers and struck out more than 30% of them while walking just shy of 7% and giving up only one home run for a 1.94 FIP.

Martinez featured a four-seam and a two-seam sinking fastball with his slider as his out pitch. The slider worked particularly well against righties, generating over a 25% whiff rate, per Brooks Baseball. Of the 87 plate appearances against right-handers that ended on a slider, 41 were strikeouts and five were walks. Martinez had the slider going against the Reds on Sunday, striking out four of the seven right-handed hitters he faced — three of whom he finished off with the slider. Against seven right-handers, Martinez made 31 pitches and threw 25 strikes. As a reminder, here is what the slider looked like against Zach Cozart.
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When the Reds signed Aroldis Chapman out of Cuba, a brief attempt was made to make him a starter in the minors, but in the majors, he has pitched exclusively out of the bullpen. Raisel Iglesias, a fellow Cuban import who has been ticketed by some for the bullpen, has already made one more start than Chapman with his debut on Sunday against the Cardinals. Iglesias made it through five innings, giving up three runs while striking out four and walking two. There are still some concerns that could cause him to end in the bullpen, but he showed an impressive fastball that fooled Cardinals hitters when he dropped his arm angle.

Iglesias pitched as a reliever in Cuba and has not been seen too often since signing with the Reds last July for seven years and $27 million. In Kiley McDaniel’s write-up on the Reds prospects, he had this to say about his performance in the Arizona Fall League:

He sat 91-95 and hit 97 mph in these outings, with his stuff varying a bit in each outing. Iglesias is about to turn 25 and there’s some east/west, inconsistency and effort to his delivery, but scouts see the elements of average command in the tank. Iglesias has a four pitch mix and his slider will flash plus every now and then, so there’s mid-rotation upside.

Iglesias’ slider performed well, striking out Jason Heyward in the first inning.
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Performances are magnified in October and April. Everyone watches the playoffs with greater focus, and in April everyone is starved for baseball leading to massive consumption and potential over-analysis. Carlos Beltran has had little difficulty delivering in October, with 16 home runs and a .333/.445/.683 line in 219 postseason plate appearances, but this April, coming off his worst season in 15 years, increased scrutiny is coming for the soon-to-be 38-year-old. In the second year of his three-year, $45 million contract, whether Carlos Beltran will be able to produce is a question without an easy answer.

In each of the last two games, Carlos Beltran has come to the plate for the New York Yankees late in the game, trailing by one or two runs with runners in scoring position. On Wednesday, with the Yankees down 3-1, Beltran came to the plate with the bases loaded against Brett Cecil with nobody out. A wild pitch advanced all the runners a base leaving men on second and third. He could not check his swing on a 2-2 offspeed offering.
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When discussing contract extensions like the four-year $27 million deal with two team options the Pirates signed with Josh Harrison, especially for those players three years or more away from free agency much of the focus is on how many free agent seasons a team has purchased by offering a substantial guarantee. The Miami Marlins and Chicago White Sox each received three free agent years from Christian Yelich and Adam Eaton, respectively. The New York Mets received one free agent season from Juan Lagares, and the Minnesota Twins did not receive any free agent years from Brian Dozier when they signed his extension. The Pirates have bought potentially three years of free agency with a relatively small guarantee, but given Harrison’s age and track record prior to 2014, those years will not likely be as valuable as those for teammates Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte.

The recent contract extensions for players with between three and four years and in their first year of arbitration have incredibly wide variance.
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Signing a pitcher to a long-term extension when that pitcher has completed just one season in Major League Baseball and had elbow troubles in that one season is not an ideal scenario for a franchise. For the Royals, who have seen the best young arms of this generation lost to injury and a failure to develop, locking up Yordano Ventura to a five-year deal guaranteeing $23 million covering all of his arbitration seasons with two options potentially covering his first two years of free agency, the move is a necessary risk.

Signed for $28,000 out of the Dominican Republic in 2008, Ventura has a slight frame and an electric fastball leads to two unfortunate conclusions, one unfair and one undetermined. Like fellow countryman Carlos Martinez, Ventura has drawn comparisons to all-time great Pedro Martinez, who pumped a great array of pitches including a fantastic fastball over a long, Hall of Fame career. The other conclusion, that Ventura will eventually have to go to the bullpen, is perhaps a more realistic option given the impossibility of reaching Pedro, but is mostly unfair until he has actually failed as a starter.

Ventura’s contract lines up nicely with the last three extension signed by players with under two years of service time.
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Beating the rest of the league to the punch with a large contract extension for Rick Porcello when much better players await in free agency is not going to garner excitement or plaudits, but the Red Sox are anticipating an expensive free agent market in 2016 and providing themselves a safety net. Boston resorted to Plan B before they knew if Plan A would work, but the Red Sox can still implement Plan A and sign a big-name free agent while simultaneously providing depth for their rotation. Five years and $95 million is a lot of money for a player without a world-beating track record, but Porcello has been good and reliable and he is still just 26 years old. This contract is not all that surprising as Mike Petriello predicted a similar contract in February.

Last year, three pitchers signed extensions just a year away from free agency and one of them is apt for Porcello. Clayton Kershaw’s seven-year, $215 million contract is way too big, Charlie Morton’s three-year, $21 million contract is too light, but Homer Bailey’s six-year, $105 million contract (with an option for a seventh year) is right in the same range as Porcello. Bailey was two years older and only twice pitched over 150 innings while Porcello has exceeded that mark in six straight seasons. Bailey was coming off the better season, with around four wins in 2013, but he also received more money with greater risk of injury. According to Jeff Zimmerman’s disabled list projections, Porcello is the second most likely starter to make it through the season without a stint on the disabled list.

Even if we treat Bailey as an outlier for an extension, last year’s free agent class has a pretty close contract to Porcello’s: James Shields, who signed for four years and $72 million with the Padres. Shields has the better track record, but he’s headed into his decline years while Porcello is headed into his mid-20s. While Shields’ deal ends when he’s 36, the Red Sox have only committed to Porcello up to age-30.
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