It’s the seventh inning of the first game in the opening series of the year. At about 55 degrees, the clear Palo Alto night is brisk but comfortable. Top prospect Mark Appel has held No. 10 Vanderbilt to one run on two hits so far, including four no-hit innings to start his season on the right foot. His top-rated Stanford squad is ahead comfortably after a home run by fellow Major-League prospect Stephen Piscotty and an inside-the-park home run from infielder-turned-catcher Eric Smith. With one out, an Appel changeup gets taken all the way to the wall for a long out.

Coach Mark Marquess heads to the mound for a conversation — his pitcher looks a little gassed. His Friday Night Starter shakes his head repeatedly, affirming that he’s fine. Marquess makes his way back to the dugout.

A groan erupts on social networks and in the crowd of scouts behind home plate. Even after a few more long fly-ball outs, the sentiment remains. Why should the Cardinal leave their ace out there in a game that is well in hand?

Because it was important to the Stanford ace.

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Chris Carpenter has been shut down with a bulging disc in his neck. He’s likely to open up the season on the disabled list, and the Cardinals may have to turn to Lance Lynn for help in the starting rotation. This continues a disturbing trend in his surgery-speckled career, but using past players that have suffered this rarer injury as a guidepost can be problematic.

Over the past two years, Carpenter has been healthier than he’s ever been. The 472.1 innings he logged in 2010 and 2011 — not counting the postseason — is about ten innings more than he managed in 2005 and 2006. What happened in 2007? Tommy John surgery. The third-most productive two-year stretch had him put up 391 innings between 2000 and 2001. 2002 then brought SLAP surgery on his labrum, and follow-up surgical scar tissue removal.

Of course the “n” on this is tiny. He has just five instances of managing more than 375 innings over two consecutive seasons in his career, and major surgery or injury followed three of them. But we aren’t trying to predict how all players perform after 375 innings, we’re just observing how this one specific player has held up to larger work loads. The answer seems plain.

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The Wilpons and Madoff trustee Irving Picard reached a settlement today. Though both sides might try to spin the case as a win, it’s the Wilpons that should be happier about how this case came to an end.

Irving Picard might choose to focus on the fact that the settlement required of the Wilpons that they pay $162 million to his clients, those that lost money in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzy scheme. It’s true that this $162 million number is impressive in some ways. It’s almost twice the $83 million that Judge Jed Rakoff basically guaranteed the trustee in his first landmark ruling in the case. It also represents the profits that the Wilpons’ many Madoff accounts made in a six-year window — settling the debate about two- and six-year windows that has been prevalent in this clawback case.

But it’s still an almost un-mitigated win for the Wilpons.

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Yu Darvish saw his first live Major League Baseball action today. Even if the game didn’t count, the results were impressive.

In a live look-in provided by a partnership between MLB.com and NHK television, Darvish showed great velocity. His fastball hit 151 KM/H (or 94 MPH) by the in-game gun, and 95 MPH on PITCH f/x broadcast. A high fastball tied up legitimate slugger Carlos Quentin, and another blew by Cameron Maybin. The hardest hit balls may have been on the fastball, but one was a less-than-ringing double that Michael Young could have snared, and the other was a booming drive to center from Will Venable — moments after he had looked silly whiffing on both a 70 MPH looping curve and a tighter ~90 MPH slider.

What made the outing so exciting for Rangers fans — and fans of good pitching — was probably the movement Darvish exhibited, though.

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Here’s the introduction to the series from Dave Cameron, and here are some caveats: we’re doing our best to guesstimate, the WARs are approximate, there are tiers here that we will try to identify, and the season is a souffle that might rise or might not for any particular team. And yet, the result of all this might be a decent understanding of how the teams stand in comparison to the rest of the league at each position. Surely, at the very least, it will spawn some discussion.

Perhaps we should rethink the defensive spectrum! Perhaps third base is the hardest position! Last year, third baseman had a .707 OPS — worsted only by catchers… and still shortstops. But the .252/.317/.390 collective batting line at the hot corner was just barely better than the shortstops with their .263/.317/.380 ways. That’s not usual.

Still, the decline of the third base position may just have been temporary. There’s a new infusion of youth on the way, and there’s also a fair chance that some veterans bounce back and make the position look more palatable. And don’t forget a couple key position switches coming our way this year — the inclusion of these new offensive third basemen will boost the offensive numbers, and their bad defense may hurt less than it might seem.

Could this year represent a renaissance at the position?

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Brett Myers is headed back to the closer’s role in Houston. He should be a decent closer. But why, from a team standpoint, would the building Astros shift a capable 200-inning resource into a 70-inning role?

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Joel Zumaya has torn his UCL and will miss the season. At some point, we have to ask if his career is threatened. And, even when that prospect saddens us, if there is something unnatural about throwing as fast as he has.

Since he debuted in 2006, “Zoom Zoom” has pitched in 171 games. He debuted with an incredible 97 strikeouts in 83.1 innings over 62 games that rookie year, and he hasn’t managed more than half of any of those totals in any year since. He missed 2011 completely. In fact, he’s been ineligible for over 600 games due to injury since 2006. His team has only played 1,134 games since 2006.

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Score one for those who reserved judgment: Ryan Braun has seen his positive test overturned by the independent panel headed by arbiter Shyam Das.

Braun put out a statement that this was a “first step in restoring my good name and reputation,” but if this had gone differently, there would have no need for redemption.

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He’s not an outfielder any more. He might not even be a cutoff man any more. He can’t play in the field, in other words. He hasn’t played pro baseball in over 300 days. Even if he makes the team, he’ll have to serve at least a fifty-game suspension before shaking off the game-speed rust. He turns 40 this year. So what is there to like about the Athletics’ signing Manny Ramirez to a Minor League deal?

Something. There is something to like about it.

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Our braintrust is hard at work identifying the game’s best pitches for all of your February needs. Now it’s time to uncover some of the worst pitches in the game — with as little snark as possible. Because even the worst pitch in the big leagues is way, way better than most of us can manage. And if a pitcher owns a pitch on this list, they must be doing something else right in order to remain in the big leagues. Either that, or they’re not long for the bigs.

At least identifying poor pitches can be a useful and enjoyable exercise. And you’re supposed to do thirty minutes of that every day, so that’s an extra benefit for us.

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