FanGraphs uses Slack in order to keep all the writers in communication, and it’s in there that we claim post topics so that we don’t accidentally overlap. A couple days ago, I made a soft commitment to write about Aaron Sanchez’s secondary stuff, regardless of how he actually did on Tuesday. The way I figured, one way or the other, it was going to be worth an article. Now, what I didn’t know was that the Rays/Blue Jays game would end with a very 2016 type of controversial call. That’s overshadowed everything else, and few care anymore about how Sanchez did in the earlier innings. But I’m here to fulfill my commitment. And, guess what: I’ve long been a Sanchez skeptic, as his being a starter is concerned, but he had a wonderful, wonderful outing, before the Jose Bautista slide. He made it very easy to be encouraged.

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Let’s talk about the King. Felix Hernandez lost his start on opening day. In one sense, it was just the same old Mariners — Felix allowed one earned run, and literally just one hit, a fly-ball blooper into the shallow outfield. So, that makes it sound crazy, but Felix also walked five batters in six innings, and put a sixth on base by hitting him. Fewer than 60% of his pitches were strikes, which would be a bad mark for anyone, and Felix acknowledged he wasn’t working like himself. The plus side, naturally, is that he still wasn’t hittable. But he was kind of wild, and — and — his velocity was down.

It was down a full couple ticks. This follows a string of appearances in spring when Felix was below his previous velocity. That wasn’t a big deal then, but it’s a bigger deal now, with the season underway. According to PITCHf/x, Felix threw just two pitches at at least 91 miles per hour. Last year’s average fastball was 91.8. Every so often, there can be these blips — in one April start in 2013, Felix threw just one pitch north of 91 — yet this could be a developing pattern. And it’s worth taking a step back to consider just how far Felix’s velocity has fallen.

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The Angels lost to the Cubs 9-0 on Monday. Garrett Richards didn’t allow all of those runs, but he did allow more than zero runs, so he took the loss. He needed 97 pitches to go five innings, and he allowed six hits and three walks, so it’s not like Richards just had the game of his life. If I were most people, I’d probably take this opportunity to write some happy words about Jake Arrieta. But I’m not most people, and I’m particularly enthusiastic about Richards’ changeup. Yesterday kicked off the slate of games that matter, and Richards threw nine changeups. Why is that important? Last season, Richards threw one changeup. The season before, he threw all of 15. This is a legitimate thing, now. Richards is going to try to throw changeups. Now we’re going to watch all of Monday’s.

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The Orioles had to wait through a rainless rain delay, and then later through a more rainful rain delay, but in the end, they did walk off to victory over the Twins, on a Matt Wieters RBI single. Ordinarily you’d think the win was the most important thing. Every individual win matters — the Orioles’ playoff odds have now gone up — so it’s nice to have that to celebrate after a day that simply dragged on. It was a well-earned win, following a game that in no way went according to plan.

Yet for my taste, it’s not the win that’s most encouraging. One win is the result of one game. There was a positive sign in there that could mean something over another 30-odd games. There are questions everywhere in the Orioles’ rotation, and their Monday starter faced just six batters before rain forced him out, but Chris Tillman showed something before his appearance was over. He whiffed five of the six batters, but even more importantly, there’s significance in what he was pitching.

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I know this goes against the spirit of opening day, when anything can happen and everyone’s tied for first place. Opening day is a magical time precisely because no one’s yet been mathematically eliminated. The season hasn’t started to go down any path, which means the season could still go down any path conceivable. On opening day, everyone’s supposed to be happy; everyone’s supposed to be jazzed about baseball, because there’s not yet any reason not to be. Baseball’s back! It’s been a long time. The Royals just proved the numbers wrong the last time around. Maybe now it’s another team’s turn.

If you’re a fan in New York, you’re excited about baseball. If you’re a fan in Atlanta, you’re excited about baseball. If you’re a fan in Arizona, you’re excited about baseball. But: One of the dominant spring-training storylines was that the Dodgers were being undone by injury after injury. And it’s true; The Dodgers have already had their depth challenged, because they’ve got a busy disabled list. Yet, the Dodgers came equipped with reinforcements, so it seems like they should be able to handle this. Right at the end of spring training, the Diamondbacks lost A.J. Pollock. They might’ve lost him for the entire season. With one blow, Arizona has probably been hurt more than Los Angeles, and while anything is still able to happen, it’s a devastating turn of events. Their season hasn’t started yet, and the Diamondbacks might well be screwed.

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The other day, in a spring-training game against the Braves, Miguel Gonzalez was basically pitching for his rotation slot. That might’ve been surprising enough, given how much Gonzalez has meant to the Orioles in the past, but he did have a rough 2015 and a rougher month of March. Anyhow, Gonzalez went five innings, allowing a run with no walks and four strikeouts. The results were solid, even if they could’ve been worse. Yet Gonzalez still got released. Something just wasn’t good enough, and the Orioles decided to go with other options.

Maybe “stunning” would be too strong, but the reality of Gonzalez getting released is unexpected. The Orioles are anything but deep in the rotation, and apparently Gonzalez’s former teammates are less than ecstatic. It’s a hard thing to wrap your head around, given Gonzalez’s presence, but it seems to me there are three ways to think about this. One of them, I prefer over the others.

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Perhaps you already thought it inevitable, but now it’s official: Out of the gate, Travis Shaw will be starting for the Red Sox at third base, over Pablo Sandoval. Through the end of his contract, Sandoval is owed more than seventy-five million dollars. Shaw, meanwhile, is owed an amount of money you could actually imagine in your own bank account. This is surprising, because of the commitment the Red Sox made to Sandoval the previous offseason. But this is not surprising, because Sandoval was a disaster. Hanley Ramirez might’ve been a more conspicuous disaster, but Sandoval managed to beat him, ever so slightly, in negative WAR.

There are just a few things that have to be said in response to the news. The first, which is critical, is this is non-binding. I mean, Shaw will start on opening day, but beyond that, no one’s really said anything. It stands to reason Sandoval is going to play; he’s not going to be a full-year pinch-hitter. It is legitimately unusual for a team to rule against its own financial commitments, at least this soon. And then — well, this decision was probably easy. This is the right time to give Shaw his chance. He might just be a better baseball player than Sandoval is, and after back-to-back seasons of misery, the Red Sox are in the business of maximizing wins.

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For an awfully consistent hitter, Jason Heyward is considered an awfully frustrating hitter. Over the last four years, he hasn’t had a wRC+ under 110 or over 121, but there’s so clearly the potential for so much more than that too few people have come away satisfied. And it’s easy to identify the problem: Observers wish that Heyward would hit for more power. He clearly can — the man stands 6’5. He clobbered 27 homers when he was 22. He’s hit 24 homers the last two years combined. It doesn’t matter that Heyward has still been productive; he looks like he should be a beast of a hitter, so it’s odd to see him hit singles and doubles.

Let’s focus on Heyward and power for a minute, then. Forget about everything else. Throw caution to the wind, even. What follows is going to lean upon some spring-training data. One spring of spring-training data. The headline raises the red flag right off the bat — I’m probably making too much of too little. But just looking at how Heyward has hit the ball, there are early signs that he’s concentrating on pop. As can always be said when writing about a small sample: What we have here is something to monitor.

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It’s the annual exercise: Every year, right before the baseball that counts, there are six weeks of baseball that doesn’t count, but still many of us watch it closely. As we do so, we’re always trying to figure out which indications might be of something real, and which might be misleading. Predicting baseball is impossible work. Projecting baseball is near-impossible work. But we have just enough successes to keep doing it, each time trying to be better. At the end of the day, even when you get something wrong as you think about spring training, at least you’re thinking about baseball. That’s basically the point.

Study after study after study has shown that individual spring-training stats are unreliable. You know all the reasons why, and this is why the most interesting stuff usually has to do with, say, velocity changes. Hits, you can luck into. Higher velocity, you either can reach or you can’t. So we don’t talk all that often about spring-training statistics. Not on the player level, and not on the team level. But there’s a funny thing about league-wide numbers. There’s real signal in there. When you put all the spring numbers together, you really can get a glimpse of the future.

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