On Monday, Craig Edwards began our positional power rankings series by evaluating the catchers. If you’re unfamiliar with the process or concept, Jeff explained the series yesterday, too. Today, we tackle first base.

First base is at an interesting place. There remains plenty of familiar star power at the top of FanGraphs position rankings here, from Paul Goldschmidt to Anthony Rizzo to Joey Votto, the type of lineup-anchoring sluggers you expect to find at a position that is typically a run-production workhorse. There are also emerging young stars like Cody Bellinger and perhaps Matt Olson.

And first base has become home to a growing number of fly-ball revolutionaries, players attempting to make swing changes to get under the ball and save or extend careers standing by improving their overall offensive efficiency. It makes sense that players like Yonder Alonso, Logan Morrison and Ryan Zimmerman would be among those motivated to launch more pitches into the air since they don’t have much defensive versatility to fall back upon.

First base, from a production standpoint, also appears to be a healthy place. First basemen led all position groups with a 113 wRC+ last season, their second-highest mark of the last decade. First basemen also produced their collective second-highest WAR total (80.7) of the last 10 years.

But the position has become crowded and so loaded with offensive sources that free-agent first basemen were having trouble finding work this winter. Power has become so common, so easy to find, it’s become devalued. For instance, Morrison hit 38 home runs last season and posted a 130 wRC+ but had to settle for a one-year, $2.5-million deal.

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PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Rays starter Chris Archer is one of the better pitchers in the game. He’s one of the more thoughtful and intelligent players in the game, too. Besides those distinctions, Archer might also be prescient. He has a sense of what the future will look like for a major-league pitcher. He’s going to be part of an experiment this season in Tampa Bay that could impact what the future looks like for many arms.

“If you don’t have that high-end stuff as a starter, it’s going to get a little blurry,” Archer said to FanGraphs with regard to the future of pitching roles.

The Rays are committed to a four-man rotation this season, although it’s more of a hybrid plan. While it will include only four traditional starting pitchers, the Rays will use bullpen games and a high volume of off-days early in the season to keep their four starters on regular intervals of rest.

MLB.com Bill Chastain reported on the plan a couple weeks ago:

“We’re going to try to stay at four,” [Rays manager Kevin] Cash said. “We’re going to have some bullpen days in there. We’re going to try and do that for a long period of time. We’re going to learn a lot in the first six weeks.

“We’re going to schedule in a bullpen day as our fifth starter. That’s kind of our hope — going past six weeks.”

An evolution from the traditional five-man rotation might be inevitable. Saber-minded voices have screamed for years that starting pitchers are less effective each time they work through a batting order. Pitching labels are blurring. Relievers accounted for an MLB-record 38.1% of total innings thrown last season, up three percentage points (35.2%) and 1,200 innings from just 10 years earlier. The game warps even more toward the bullpen in the postseason. Last October, relievers accounted for 46.4% of innings.

“The playoffs make it appear to be sexy, but over the course of 162, it’s hard to sustain,” Archer said of radical pitching-staff construction.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Archer is an unwilling participant in the Rays’ plan. “The concept makes sense,” says Archer of the four-man rotation as a theory. But he has his doubts about it as a full-season practice. The questions include whether the plan can extend to and succeed over the course of a full season, what it means for player development, and how the club will adapt to inevitable challenges, whether they be in-game or longer-term in nature.

Archer has shared his questions with the front office, which he says extends to him an open line of communication.

“Our front office is open. They talk to me about a lot of different scenarios: ‘How do you feel about this, what do you think about this?… Do you think you could bounce back if you pitch like this?’” Archer said. “I do like that they are asking someone actually doing it as opposed to drawing their own conclusions.”

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“What are you trying to ask me? About launch angle?”

– Eric Hosmer

PEORIA, Ariz. — We’ve written quite a bit about Eric Hosmer this offseason.

Former FanGraphs manager editor and current Padres front-office official, Dave Cameron, ranked Hosmer as his No. 1 free-agent land mine of the offseason. Not long before that, I’d identified Carlos Santana as a superior free-agent option at first base.

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PEORIA, Ariz. — Dee Gordon is in demand.

On a Tuesday morning, the slight 29-year-old enters the Mariners’ spring clubhouse wearing a black T-shirt, sweats, and — after exchanging words with teammates en route to his locker — a grin, as well. Before even having an opportunity to shed his street clothes, though, he’s pulled away by a Mariners public-relations staffer. Given a cell phone, he’s ushered out of the clubhouse. The reason: a radio request he has agreed to fulfill. He returns some 20 minutes later and, almost immediately, another reporter — this very FanGraphs dot com employee — intercepts him.

After spending the last three years in Miami, Gordon is not accustomed to regular media attention. But he’s a man of interest this spring because the Mariners are asking him to change positions. He was not caught off guard by the move: Marlins executive Michael Hill had alerted Gordon to the possibility of the trade and position change several weeks before the deal was finalized. And when he returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic in early December, Gordon was awoken by a call informing him he was traded. Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto then called to talk about the position change.

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At least 236 major-league players will earn more than Neil Walker in 2018.

Among second basemen alone, 18 are expected to receive something better than the $4 million the New York Yankees guaranteed to pay Walker, who remained available into the middle of March.

Walker has produced seven straight seasons of at least two wins. He ranks 61st amongst position players in WAR (11.7) since the start of the 2014 season. He was ranked by former FanGraphs manager editor Dave Cameron as 11th-best free agent available this winter.

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GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Right before the start of spring training, Cincinnati prospect Nick Senzel received a phone call at his home in Knoxville, Tenn. It was from Reds headquarters. The club had a question for its top rookie-eligible player: could he handle shortstop?

“I said, ‘Yeah,’” Senzel told FanGraphs recently in Arizona. “And they got me there now.”

Even before taking the call, the No. 2 pick of the 2016 June draft was taking ground balls at third, second, and shortstop — and even fly balls in the outfield — on the playing surface of Lindsey Nelson Stadium, the baseball home of his alma mater, the University of Tennessee. A third baseman in college, Senzel wanted to make himself as versatile as possible entering this season.

It was prescient planning, as the Reds have since begun one of the great experiments of the spring.

As players advance through professional baseball, as they age at the major-league level, they typically move down the defensive spectrum. What is so interesting about Senzel playing shortstop, even if it’s short-lived, is that it represntns a case of a player moving up the spectrum.

There is an argument to be made that more teams should be identifying players who can move to more challenging positions. Why? Because over the last decade, about 20% of defensive opportunities — as in batted balls in play — have evaporated. In this three-true-outcomes environment, it’s easier to hide a bat, to trade some glove for bat, when the ball is less of a threat to reach the field of play.

There were 60,249 “plays” by defenders in 2007, according to FanGraphs data. Last season, there were just 49,809 — or roughly 10,000 fewer.

Consider opportunity trends by position:

It’s not just Senzel. Paul DeJong, who appeared at a variety of positions during his junior campaign at Illinois State, received over half the Cardinals’ starts at shortstop last season. Lonnie Chisenhall and Jason Kipnis were deployed in center at times in 2017, aided by a staff that recorded the highest strikeout rate of all time. Dee Gordon is transitioning to center field in Seattle.

Could it work? Could teams benefit from more aggressive defensive assignments? Could it be the next big thing? Or at least a little thing at no cost to clubs ever in search of efficiency and hidden value?

***

Senzel believes he can stick at short and has ambitions to make the team as the club’s starter out of spring training, although the realities of how clubs manipulate service time make that all but impossible. Still, Senzel reported early to camp. He’s worked with Barry Larkin. He’s participated every day in a particular drill where rubber balls are thrown off a wall, forcing Senzel to quickly reset his feet and transfer the ball into throwing positions.

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TEMPE, Ariz. — The center-field fence at the Angels’ spring-training home sits 420 feet away from home plate. Beyond it are craggy, red-rock hills, and nearer but still beyond the playing field, a green, aluminum batter’s eye that has a height perhaps around 30 feet.

At Angels camp last week, I asked the club’s hitting coach, Eric Hinske, if he’s experienced any “Wow,” slack-jawed moments while observing the early days of Shohei Ohtani as a major-league hitter.

All the time, Hinske says.

“He hits the ball over the batting eye like with every swing in batting practice,” Hinske said.

To get a sense of what that swing looks like at its best, here’s footage of all Ohtani’s NPB home runs:

The power — at least the BP variety — is real.

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One of the most remarkable news items of the offseason — is it still the offseason? — emerged towards the end of last week, as the calendar melted from February to March.

Neil Walker has produced seven straight seasons of 2.1 WAR or greater and ranks 61st in position-player WAR (11.7) since 2014. He also remains among the notable unsigned free agents in this slowest of offseasons. Last week, the Royals offered Walker what has to be the most insulting of deals for an unemployed player of his stature: a non-roster invitation to spring training. Our depth charts project Walker for a 2.6 WAR campaign and a 111 wRC+ — if he finds a job. Jay is trying to find him. He could help a number of teams. That he’s not employed as of March 6 is somewhat remarkable.

With Yu Darvish and Eric Hosmer having finally signed for relatively handsome sums, with spring camps opening and games being played, some of the claims of collusion and talk of the direst of offseasons for the MLBPA have quieted.

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