Since people take us for experts for some reason, we’re commonly asked what we consider important in the season’s very early going. What’s most important — and this should be abundantly clear — is that there’s active baseball in the first place. At the very least, there’s spring-training baseball, and as of just yesterday, there’s meaningful baseball. That’s it! That’s the whole point. Everything else is a detail.

But since we all get worked up over the details, we’re asked which details are most important early on. Statistically, the answer is, not much. A high or low batting average isn’t too suggestive. A high or low ERA isn’t too suggestive. A win or loss here or there are but ones of dozens. The more important things are the measurements that take less time than others to stabilize. Changes in, say, power. Changes in contact. Or changes in velocity. There are few things that stabilize in less time than how fast a pitcher throws. This is why so many of our March and April stories and tweets are about unusually fast or slow fastballs. This all brings us to Zack Greinke, the Diamondbacks’ opening-day starter.

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Here’s an excerpted note from the top of a FanGraphs player page you’ve presumably never visited:

RotoWire News: Pruitt has made the Opening Day roster for Tampa Bay, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports. (3/30/2017)

Here’s Topkin, writing a little about Pruitt. Here’s Bill Chastain, also writing a little about Pruitt. I should tell you that the specific Pruitt here is Austin Pruitt, who is a 27-year-old right-handed pitcher. A quote from the team:

“We’ve got unique situations where guys can provide lengthier innings,” [manager Kevin] Cash said. “I think looking at it, Austin will be used as a multi-inning [guy]. But those multi-inning roles could come in a 2-1 ballgame. We wouldn’t hesitate to do that with him.”

Pruitt has been a starter, in the minors. He’s about to be a reliever. A particular kind of reliever, a kind of reliever that might be becoming increasingly prevalent. I like Austin Pruitt a lot, and so, allow me to try to sell you on him.

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At points, it looked like the next Nationals closer would be Koda Glover. At other points, it looked like it would be Shawn Kelley, and at other points, it looked like it would be David Robertson, or someone else belonging to another team. But now we can say that the next Nationals closer will be Blake Treinen. That is, at least, in the nearest-term future, barring a change or a trade, which could happen within any given matter of minutes.

For the Nationals, what this is is a resolution. It’s an answer, and all the other bullpen roles fall out of this assignment. For me, it’s a chance to write about Blake Treinen again. I’ve been on the Treinen bandwagon for a few years, mostly just because of his sinker. I’ve been somewhat obsessed with drawing parallels between Treinen and Zach Britton, another power-sinker reliever who converted from the rotation. Their sinkers behave similarly, thrown at similar speeds, and although there’s the clear difference of handedness, I have to go back to the well. Time to think about Treinen and Britton one more time.

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It feels like things with the Phillies should be a little more settled than they are. That could just be my own impatience, but even on the pitching side, we have to see if Aaron Nola and Vince Velasquez can stay healthy. And as for the young position players, Odubel Herrera might be the lone sure thing, and he’s bizarre. Maikel Franco still needs to prove that he’s valuable. J.P. Crawford needs to step up his own game. There’s been progress, but the actual core here is still being built.

Thinking about that led me to think about Aaron Altherr. Wednesday’s spring-training highlights also led me to think about Aaron Altherr.

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The Diamondbacks are one of two potential NL West sleepers. One thing they have going for them is that, this year, they should get something like a full season from A.J. Pollock. But then, beyond him, there’s the potentially electric starting rotation. Although there are more questions every day about the well-being of Zack Greinke, he’s followed by names like Shelby Miller, Taijuan Walker, Patrick Corbin, and Robbie Ray. Inconsistent, the lot of them. But they’ve all been well-regarded before, and you never know when a young pitcher could have everything click.

One mission for the team, then, is to try to squeeze everything it can from the pitchers it has. You can try to get the pitchers in better shape, and you can try to work out kinks in their mechanics. Every pitcher on the planet wants greater release-point consistency. But how about just changing how pitchers pitch? It’s early, but there’s a sign something could be changing down in the desert.

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Some background: Last May, baseball floated the ideas of eliminating the four-pitch intentional walk, and also raising the strike zone’s lower boundary. This past February, there was a formal proposal. Everything was subject to the union’s agreement, and as you know, the union signed off on the intentional-walk part. But it didn’t agree to other stuff, including the strike-zone change. Although MLB is free to implement changes unilaterally, that can’t happen for a year after initially giving notice.

You’d think, then, that the strike zone is safe, for now. That nothing should look very different in the nearer-term future. After all, that’s how the agreement is supposed to work. But what if that isn’t how the agreement is working? Brace yourself as I make too much of what’s entirely too little data.

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The Rays just traded for Peter Bourjos, a soon-to-be 30-year-old worth zero WAR over the past two seasons. The Rays are giving up basically nothing, because just a couple months ago, Bourjos signed a minor-league contract with a go-nowhere team. You don’t want to read a blog post about Peter Bourjos. I don’t want to write a blog post about Peter Bourjos. But he’s one part of a bigger-picture collection — the Rays are assembling another fantastic outfield.

Another fantastic defensive outfield, I should say. Heaven knows if Bourjos is going to actually hit. As you know, it all begins with Kevin Kiermaier, who might be the best defensive outfielder in the world. And the Rays are no strangers to having good defense out there; they were fifth by both DRS and UZR last season, and they were first by both measures the season before. Kiermaier is good enough to carry a group by himself. This year, though, he won’t have to do that.

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And so we come to the end of our team-by-team positional reviews, with a topic near and dear to my heart: bullpens. In this case, specifically the top 15 projected bullpens, after Craig Edwards already examined the bottom 15. You can find his post linked above, if you haven’t seen it. You can find an introduction to this whole series linked above, if you haven’t seen that. I love to write about relievers, because just about every team has an underrated reliever in the upper system somewhere. In here we can think about some underrated relievers, as well as some relievers who are more properly rated. A plot, now, of the projected landscape:

There are some places where it’s clear that one team is the best in baseball at a certain position. Like, it’s obvious, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that no team is as set in center field as the Angels. This is not one of those places. Sure, we have all the bullpens ranked, and you can see those projections above and below, but think about the margins here, and various other factors. There’s a handful of teams out there that might claim to have baseball’s best bullpen. Maybe two handfuls! There are convincing arguments to be made, even beyond general reliever unpredictability. A good and deep bullpen might be more valued now than ever before, and it’s just my luck I get to write about a bunch of good and deep bullpens. Don’t fret too much about certain rankings. Plenty of bullpens here could be great. Let’s begin!

1. Dodgers

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Kenley Jansen	65.0	13.2	2.1	0.9	.302	80.6 %	2.38	2.22	2.6
Grant Dayton	65.0	11.7	2.7	1.0	.305	78.3 %	2.92	3.02	1.5
Pedro Baez	55.0	9.8	2.7	1.1	.299	74.8 %	3.44	3.49	0.7
Sergio Romo	55.0	9.5	2.1	1.3	.301	76.5 %	3.48	3.61	0.5
Ross Stripling	45.0	7.3	2.7	1.1	.306	70.4 %	4.21	4.11	0.0
Chris Hatcher	40.0	9.6	2.9	1.0	.305	75.4 %	3.49	3.53	0.3
Josh Fields	35.0	10.5	3.0	0.9	.311	73.3 %	3.45	3.21	0.1
Luis Avilan	30.0	8.5	3.4	1.0	.302	74.9 %	3.66	3.98	0.0
Adam Liberatore	25.0	9.8	3.2	0.9	.302	75.2 %	3.44	3.49	0.1
Alex Wood	20.0	8.0	2.7	1.0	.306	73.1 %	3.77	3.82	0.0
Brock Stewart	15.0	8.5	2.5	1.3	.305	72.3 %	4.07	4.06	0.0
Josh Ravin	10.0	10.9	4.0	1.3	.299	75.0 %	3.89	4.02	0.0
Jacob Rhame	10.0	9.8	3.7	1.0	.306	73.3 %	3.86	3.83	0.0
The Others	21.0	8.3	4.2	1.3	.324	69.1 %	5.10	4.74	0.0
Total	491.0	10.0	2.7	1.0	.305	75.0 %	3.45	3.45	5.9

I don’t know how many people would pick the Dodgers as having baseball’s best bullpen. I don’t even know if the Dodgers would pick the Dodgers as having baseball’s best bullpen. As shown here, though, there’s at least a strong argument to be made, and it has to begin with Kenley Jansen, who — do I even need to tell you what he’s about?

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Any day now, the Rangers and Rougned Odor should finalize a six-year contract extension worth about $49.5 million. A club option at the end could boost the maximum value up to $62 million, and the deal would be effective immediately, buying out two or possibly three of what would’ve been Odor’s free-agent years. Even when it’s all over, Odor would be going into his age-30 season, so he could conceivably make another splash. Jon Heyman was the first person I saw with reports.

This time of year counts as extension season, as teams and players try to avoid having negotiations spill into the summer. And as a general rule, long-term extensions for young players tend to be more team-friendly than player-friendly. That is, at least, relative to what might count as “fair” terms. This is in part a consequence of differing incentives — teams are trying to save future money, while players are eager to sign their first impact agreement. The first millions of dollars for a player mean more than subsequent millions, for a variety of reasons, and Evan Grant highlighted what this contract should mean for Odor’s family. The MLBPA is no fan of these deals, but you can understand why they exist.

For business reasons, the Rangers are probably going to like this. They’ll get to keep Odor’s costs down even beyond those first six years. I also don’t think Odor is going to find himself regretting a $50-million contract. Just like that, he’s a massive success story, as a guy who just turned 23. There’s nothing atypical about this arrangement. What’s most atypical here is simply Odor himself. His is a very unusual profile.

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