Major League Baseball would never root for its own players to be injured, but sometimes the timing of certain injuries can be convenient. We spent a chunk of 2015 talking about whether Carter Capps‘ throwing motion should be allowed. Parallels were drawn to Jordan Walden, who has his own unorthodox delivery. Nothing was approaching the level of a crisis, but Capps was drawing a lot of attention, and he was dominating all the while. Then he got hurt, and he didn’t pitch in 2016. Walden also didn’t pitch in 2016. Baseball didn’t have to deal with anything, here, because nothing was happening. The deliveries were out of sight and out of mind.

Walden is still working his way back. There’s a chance he might never return to the majors. But, Capps? Capps has recovered from his elbow surgery. He’s been throwing in Padres camp, and based on early looks, he has made a mechanical change. Yet it still seems to be against the rules. Once more, this could turn into an issue.

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The Astros’ 2015 season ended because of a total bullpen meltdown. Before that, the bullpen had been fairly steady, but the Astros made damn sure there wouldn’t be a repeat. And so, last year, the Astros led all of major-league baseball in bullpen WAR. They finished fourth in bullpen WPA, and they project to be strong as a unit once again. There’s Michael Feliz, coming off an FIP- of 76. Luke Gregerson is coming off an FIP- of 70. Ken Giles finished last year at 62. Will Harris finished last year at 55. Even Christopher Devenski finished last year at 55, having thrown maybe the quietest 100-odd excellent innings I can recall. And then, as you read down the depth chart, you come across the name James Hoyt. Let me tell you about James Hoyt.

Hoyt is 30 years old, and only last year did he make his big-league debut. That usually isn’t a promising sign. Hoyt came to the Astros from the Braves in the Evan Gattis trade, and you’ll remember that Gattis has an incredible backstory, involving rehab, depression, going undrafted, and being a janitor. When Gattis was first emerging, consensus was that he was one of the best stories in the game. Now, I don’t know if Hoyt’s story is as good as his teammate’s. To my knowledge, Hoyt has never been an inpatient in a psychiatric facility. But in the deal, there were two amazing stories packaged together. And Hoyt might now be on the verge of making a name for himself.

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Felix Hernandez looks like a new man. He’s created a new self because he wants to more closely resemble his old self, the self that ranked consistently among the best pitchers in baseball. There are many different ways to tell the story of his decline, but I could note that he was most recently a one-win pitcher, where he used to be a six-win pitcher. The season before last, he was a three-win pitcher. That’s one way to put it all simply. Here’s another:

You don’t have to know anything about baseball to spot those directional changes, and you don’t have to know much about baseball to know those directional changes are bad. This is an easy thing to discuss: Over the past couple years, Felix has lost his command, and he’s become more hittable. Now that he’s almost 31 years old, we could say, well, yeah, this is how players decline, and his age is pretty decline-y. Felix, though, has worked to reverse all this. As with Noah Syndergaard, you could say Felix is presently in the best shape of his life. The whole point is to be hopeful.

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Last week, Travis Sawchik wrote an outstanding article titled “Can More MLB Hitters Get Off the Ground?” The article went in depth about the optimal swing plane, and about the resistance it can face within the game when a player’s thinking about trying to hit the ball in the air. Players have been instructed for decades to swing down on the ball in an attempt to generate backspin. Recent breakouts like Josh Donaldson and Justin Turner, however, can vouch for simply letting it fly. They’ve found their success from always swinging up.

For the most part, right now, the conversation is built upon anecdotes. There have been players who have changed their swings, but we haven’t seen anything reflected in the overall league numbers. Last year, the average ground-ball rate was 45%. Five years ago, the average ground-ball rate was 45%. That number seldom budges, and it does in part speak to baseball’s consistency. We aren’t seeing a reflection of a whole bunch of guys suddenly adopting uppercuts.

But then, it all depends on how you dig. It turns out there is something. A sign, if a small one, that we’ve entered a period of transition.

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Monday afternoon, I put up an InstaGraphs post titled “The Least Intimidating Hitter in Baseball.” The idea was to use a formula including fastball rate and zone rate, because, the way I figure, the more aggressively a hitter gets pitched, the less the pitchers are afraid of. I combined a couple z-scores to get a number I’ll refer to today as the Aggressiveness Index, and many of the players in the linked post are unsurprising. Turns out pitchers go after Ben Revere aggressively. Ditto Nori Aoki and Billy Burns. There’s nothing weird there.

But a certain name showed up in eighth place. Last year, pitchers didn’t show any significant fear of facing DJ LeMahieu. That makes sense if you weren’t paying attention, but LeMahieu played every day, and finished with a 128 wRC+. LeMahieu, ever so quietly, had himself a breakout, four-win season, yet it looks like pitchers just didn’t care.

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When you play in the majors long enough, and when you stick with one team for a while, you’re granted certain leverage. Brandon Phillips used his well-earned no-trade protection to block moves that would’ve sent him to Washington, Arizona, and Atlanta. That last decision took place in November, while the Braves were also talking with Sean Rodriguez. They signed Rodriguez, and the Phillips talks went cold. There wasn’t anything more to discuss.

Yet while Phillips was given more leverage, he wasn’t given *all of* the leverage. The situation in Cincinnati threatened to turn ugly, with the team clearly ready to move on and play younger players. Phillips faced the possibility of being benched or released, moves from which he couldn’t protect himself. Talks with the Braves picked back up in the aftermath of Rodriguez getting into a car accident. This time, Phillips acquiesced. The Reds aren’t getting much in return; they’re hardly even getting salary relief. What the Reds do get to do, now, is play Jose Peraza without things being uncomfortable. And, coincidentally enough, Peraza looks an awful lot like another Brandon Phillips.

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Usually, these things tend to go in one direction. We talk about a player who seems underrated, and then, in time, that player becomes rated more or less appropriately. We’ve seen this happen with, say, Jose Quintana, who used to be considered a nobody even while he was pitching out of his mind. A lot more people now know how good Kyle Seager is. People know how good Starling Marte is. People have even figured out how good Kevin Kiermaier is, basically. Obligatory Ben Zobrist mention. Great players don’t stay hidden too long. I should note that I’m open to the argument Mike Trout remains underrated, but that’s different, because his ability is impossible for humans to understand.

You don’t see many players go from underrated to understood to underrated again. Such a sequence ordinarily wouldn’t make any sense. Yet, sometimes, there are just atypical circumstances. Of course there’s no infallible metric for underratedness. I know that I can’t prove anything, so we can get that out of the way up front. But I’m just here to remind you about A.J. Pollock. Pollock was once criminally underrated, and then, as time passed, he was recognized as one of the greats. Then he missed almost an entire baseball season. Out of sight, out of mind — that is how we work. So Pollock is back to where he was, preparing for camp as Arizona’s neglected star.

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Matt Wieters is a free agent right now, but he won’t be for long. Spring training is right around the corner, and Wieters is a legitimate big-league backstop, so at some point his expectations and a team’s open-mindedness will come into alignment. These things can drag out sometimes. A few years ago, people thought Prince Fielder was screwed. He signed for $214 million in the last week of January. Scott Boras is good. He should pretty much always get the benefit of the doubt.

Yet in the case of Wieters, you can see why he’s still out there. This is all prompted by a Ken Rosenthal article titled: “Why is veteran catcher Matt Wieters still on the free-agent market?” Boras is quoted within, and, what the hell, let’s just get right to it. Boras obviously has his agenda, but it isn’t hard to pull his argument apart.

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If the Pirates are going to make it back into the playoffs, it stands to reason they could need a hell of a bullpen. It’s something they’ve leveraged before — between 2013 and 2015, when the Pirates made the playoffs in all three years, they had the highest bullpen WPA in baseball. It was one of their various subtle strengths, and it made them tougher than many predicted.

Of course, the Pirates no longer have one of the major pieces that lifted them up. Mark Melancon is on the Giants now, by way of the Nationals, who received him last July in exchange for two players. It was almost inevitable the Pirates would sell him, and many compared the move unfavorably to the haul the Yankees got for Aroldis Chapman. Yet, for one thing, look — Mark Melancon isn’t Aroldis Chapman. Don’t be ridiculous. And also, don’t sell Felipe Rivero short. Taylor Hearn is a moderately interesting prospect, but Rivero is interesting as a relief pitcher now, and he might be primed to be the Pirates’ next big thing.

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