It’s still too early to know much of anything. That’s going to stay true for a while. So we’re still going to look for indicators that ought to stabilize quickly, which means fastball velocities remain of interest. Have you grown tired of reading articles about changes in fastball velocity? I have, too! But here is another one of them, just to bring 30 names to your attention. The subject might be tiresome, but the data’s still relevant.

You’ll find two tables. One shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest gains in average fastball velocity since 2016. The other shows the 15 pitchers with the biggest losses in average fastball velocity. I could’ve cut off at 10, instead of 15, since that’s more conventional, but I think stretching to 15 brings more pitchers of interest into the fold. To gather this information, I ignored the FanGraphs leaderboards and went for the PITCHf/x leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus, powered by Brooks Baseball. That’s because the Brooks Baseball numbers have been calculated in the same way year over year, while the numbers on the FanGraphs pages have had a change in source, from PITCHf/x to Trackman. According to Brooks, the average fastball right now is down about half a tick, which is what we’d expect in early April. OK. Onward!

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Mike Trout is the best baseball player, so he’s automatically interesting. Felix Hernandez is probably not one of the best baseball players, but he has been recently enough that he remains interesting. On Saturday, Felix pitched and Trout hit, and as we all learned in school, Interesting * Interesting = Interesting^2. That’s extremely interesting! In this post, we’ll review the game’s first at-bat between the two. It was the kind of at-bat that leaves you thinking and talking about it days later, which, well, yeah, that’s what we’re doing here.

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A couple weeks ago, Zach Buchanan wrote an article with the following headline:

Can Michael Lorenzen be a two-way player?

Spring training is full of headlines that begin with words like “can” or “will” and that end with a question mark. The regular season is for settling. It’s still that early part of the regular season where people will watch a game between the Phillies and the Reds on purpose, and, because I was doing that, myself, let me give you an update, by switching some words and punctuation.

Michael Lorenzen can be a two-way player.

It’s happening. And I can say that because it happened.

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It’s not a question of whether the Astros are good. There’s near-unanimous agreement that the Astros are good, and the only people who disagree haven’t been paying attention. It’s more a question of how good the Astros really are. Are they as good as a wild-card contender? Are they as good as a runaway division favorite? I don’t know! Nobody does. But like any team, the Astros could be improved. And over the past several months, rumors circled around a similar theme: The Astros could use an ace.

Reports linked them to Chris Archer. Reports linked them — and continue to link them! — to Jose Quintana. Reports linked them to Chris Sale. And so on, and so on. A great starting pitcher could improve any team, but the idea implied has been that the Astros pitching staff could be some kind of vulnerability. The offensive depth is there. The group of pitchers? More question marks.

The Astros haven’t pulled the trigger on a pitching trade. They still could, and any number of things could go wrong. But the team has steadfastly believed its pitching is just fine. In the early going, there have been four positive signs in particular. Or, if not that, four positive reminders. Let’s run through some big reasons why the Astros probably count as one of the best teams around.

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Tuesday was a good day for the Cubs. Most of them are good days for the Cubs, but on Tuesday, they earned their first win of 2017, edging out the Cardinals 2-1. Jason Heyward and Javier Baez drove in the runs, but the star was Jake Arrieta, who spun six innings with just an unearned run going against him. He piled up six whiffs, and it was a good way for him to get things going. If the Cubs have any potential vulnerability, it has to do with rotation depth. As long as Arrieta and the other guys are clicking, the Cubs are at least as good as anyone else.

On TV, Arrieta looked effective. In the box score, Arrieta looks effective. But what was the deal with his fastball? This is an open question. I don’t have an answer. I just have evidence that makes me think thoughts.

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On opening day, the Padres lost to the Dodgers by 11 runs, and the score makes the game seem closer than it was. It was more or less how the game was expected to go, and half the postgame stories revolved around the same narrative: It’s going to be a long season for San Diego. And, you know what, it probably will be a long season for San Diego. But after game number two, the Padres and Dodgers are even at .500. The Dodgers didn’t just lose on Tuesday — they got blanked, 4-0.

Yangervis Solarte hit a home run. That was a big deal. Erick Aybar went 3-for-3 with two doubles and a walk. That was a big deal. Wil Myers scored on a pop-up to short. That was a big deal. But the biggest deal of all was Clayton Richard, and his eight shutout innings. Richard threw 69% strikes and induced four double plays, and he wound up with a game score of 75, tied for the second-best mark of his career. His only better game came in 2012. Clayton Richard isn’t supposed to turn in these outings.

He won’t make a habit of it. Nobody could. But that isn’t the point. The larger point is that Richard is back, he’s healthy, and he’s rebuilt. He’s 33 years old and he’s part of a rotation many expect to be the worst in the league, but you have to give Richard some credit. He possesses a true 80 skill.

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As the season approached, I found myself intrigued by the Oakland starting rotation. That being said, among the starters, I was least interested in Kendall Graveman. Andrew Triggs? I’m all over that. Jharel Cotton? You better believe it. Kendall Graveman? Ehh. He didn’t do much for me. That was my mistake.

This is today’s second Graveman post on FanGraphs. I wrote the first one a few hours ago, wherein I discussed that Graveman seems to be experiencing a velocity spike, on the heels of a 2016 velocity spike. That fascinates the hell out of me, but something still felt incomplete. So here I’d like to revisit what Graveman has going on, because I’ve found a fun point of comparison. Why care about Kendall Graveman’s velocity? Because you could say his sinker has leveled up.

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There was a post I intended to write sometime last month. The post was going to be about Kendall Graveman, and his future, and it was going to be based around the fact that Graveman went and had his best spring training to date. What’s more, there were some unconfirmed reports floating around that Graveman was occasionally pushing his sinker up into the high 90s. Ultimately, I sat on the idea, because Graveman didn’t throw any spring-training pitches in front of instrumentation that spits out useful data. He had a good March, and that was all.

On account of Sonny Gray’s injury, Graveman just got the nod to start for the A’s against the Angels on Monday’s opening day. Here is the Graveman post I was thinking about. It took one inning for me to know what I was going to do.

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Joc Pederson hit a home run on Monday. It was a grand slam. It was, further, a tie-breaking grand slam, but it wound up a little bit lost, because Yasmani Grandal also hit a home run. And Grandal hit an additional home run. And Corey Seager hit a home run, too. The Dodgers beat the Padres by 11, and although no one is ever favored to defeat another club by 11 runs, Monday felt almost like a foregone conclusion. The Padres got whooped, and Joc Pederson was just a part of that.

But, this — this is the time to over-analyze. So let’s do that! As far as I’m concerned, personally, Pederson’s grand slam made an impression, and I’d like to keep thinking about it. For Pederson, it was a new kind of pitch to take deep, and it speaks to how far he’s already come.

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