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Getting better at something can open you up to new risks. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that getting better at something can make you realize that you have to get even better at it. Addison Russell has worked hard to become a decent breaking-ball hitter. He’s made strides. Pitchers have responded, though — and used his confidence against him. So he’ll have to take another step forward to keep pace.

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This positional power ranking won’t be like the others. Take a look at the graph. In particular, note the right side of the graph.

You’ll notice that a number of the clubs with the poorest first-base situations simultaneously possess strong clubs overall. Seattle, Texas, Toronto, Washington: they’re all supposed to be competitive this year. They’ve punted the position, it seems. Maybe with the ubiquity of high-powered low-defense sluggers on the market, teams have decided just to take the cheapest one. What the reason, it makes for a weird fun-house version of the first-base depth charts we used to know and love.

I say all that and then the first spot up features a vintage first baseman. Anthony Rizzo can hit for power (15th-best isolated slugging percentage in the league) while striking out like it was the 90s (third-best strikeout rate in the top 15 for ISO). He even stole some bases one year. What more is there to say except that the book on Rizzo has been out for years — throw the plate-crowder inside, where he had the 12th-most pitches in baseball last year — and yet Rizzo keeps ticking like a metronome when it comes to power, patience, and contact.

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Remember Vintage Matt Harvey? He sat 96 and didn’t walk anyone and could go to any of three plus secondary pitches. Sigh. That Matt Harvey was sweet. And it was only 2015 when we last saw him. We all had hope that thoracic-outlet surgery would bring that Matt Harvey back, but we’re hearing some bad news on that front recently.

“Harvey’s velocity hovered in the 92-mph range — just as it has in all three of his spring starts — as he got roughed up in a 6-2 loss to the Marlins,” wrote Marc Carig on Wednesday before a grumpy Harvey did his best to assuage concerns with the press afterwards. Given his rough season last year, however — when he was down to 94 from 96 the years before — those fears are justified.

“It’s going to be there or it’s not, and I have to go out and pitch,” Harvey told Carig. “And I think after today I feel really confident going into my next outing and moving forward.” He’s right to assert that he has to pitch with whatever he has, and the underlying assumption, that others have been fine at similar velocities, is also correct. But will this righty, with this fastball, be just as well off as, say, two other righties who averaged 92 on their fastballs last year like a Tanner Roark or an Ian Kennedy? What will his work look like if he’s healthy all year?

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There’s a revolution happening in the batting cage. We’ve noticed that batted-ball data is changing slightly and that hitters are saying different things about the intentions of their swings. But on the ground, where these hitters are training to improve, a few new tools have appeared that are helping those hitters to realize their intentions with better results. Those tools make a link between hitting and pitching that may open our eyes to the possibility of better development practices in both places.

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Have you seen what Yonder Alonso is doing this spring? You might not recognize it. If he qualified, his .421/.560/.789 line would the third-best in baseball. While it’s easy to dismiss a spring fling from an established player, this player spent the offseason thinking differently. Now he’s moving differently at the plate, too.

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The Mariners are trying something that has never been attempted before. In Jarrod Dyson, Mitch Haniger, and Leonys Martin they’re rolling out three legitimate center fielders that were center fielders last year. We’re in love with fly balls right now, but fly balls will not love Seattle this season.

There’s obviously some precedent for strong defensive outfields. The Cubs and Royals, for example, have both appeared in the World Series recently thanks, in no small part, to their ability to take away hits. But even if you stretch the definition of center fielder, something approximating Seattle’s current experiment appears to have been attempted only three times previously. And even then, it doesn’t appear to have happened exactly this way. While the three outfielders themselves don’t think it’s a big deal, there might be a few reasons no other teams have tried this.

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Last year, only one team improved their exit velocity in the second half as much as the Brewers did, when they went from 17th in the league to fifth. That might not surprise you, because you’ve read often about the young power duo on that team — Keon Broxton and Domingo Santana — and those two were at their healthiest and most dynamic in the second half. And yet the team was 20th in park- and league-adjusted weighted run creation during that same period. There’s always something else that requires attention, both players agreed in camp this week.

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