While pitcher wins and losses have been abandoned by many as a means to assess a pitcher’s effectively, the traditional measurement of performance from a bygone era is still attached to every pitcher in the game. And even though pitchers have limited control over the ability to win and lose games, Chris Archer’s 19 losses last season do tell a story. They tell a tale of frustration, of an uneven campaign, and of poor luck on balls in play (and out of play) even as his underlying skills and fielding-independent numbers were suggestive of a pitcher who deserved a better fate.

Despite Archer’s 27.4% strikeout rate and the 19.5-point differential between his strikeout and walk rates (K-BB%), the Rays still managed to lose 23 of the 33 games Archer started.

But his Opening Day start against the Yankees suggested that Archer might be poised not only to bounce back by traditional measurements, but that he might be ready to leap to a new level of underlying performance thanks to an improved pitch.

After working as a top-of-the rotation arm mostly via a fastball-slider combo, Archer might have a new important variable for opponents to consider: an improved changeup.

Archer threw 13 changeups in the season opener versus the Yankees, and many of them were of the fading-, diving-, bat-missing, lefty-neutralizing variety.

An Archer change against Jacoby Ellsbury…

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There have always been those who have doubted the merits of the shift in Pittsburgh.

Back in the summer of 2013, after a Pirates’ shift was beat by a well-placed ground ball that resulted in a Texas run, A.J. Burnett exchanged words with shortstop Clint Barmes on the field and later in the dugout. Later approached by a television reporter in the clubhouse, Burnett explained, with emphasis, his frustration.

“Listen, I did not have a problem with Clint! I do not have a problem with Clint! I had a problem with the fucking shift! We play people in the wrong spot!”

Of course, that was also the season the Pirates increased their shift usage by 400%, their staff produced an MLB-record ground-ball rate, opponents hit an anemic .207 against the shift, and the club dramatically improved its defensive efficiency en route to its first winning season and playoff berth since 1992.

Despite the general success of the shift for the Pirates, there were those once again bemoaning it in Pittsburgh (where I still keep a primary residence) — in the media and the public forums — after Sandy Leon beat the shift with a well-placed bunt on Monday.

As one can see, Leon’s bunt is followed by what appears to be a rather unpleasant gaze from Gerrit Cole into the visiting dugout, ostensibly in response to the club’s positioning.

And one batter later, Andrew Benintendi was able to cover an elevated-and-in 98 mph fastball.

Said Cole to reporters afterward: “They just hit them where we weren’t.”

Indeed.

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During our marathon Opening Day chat at FanGraphs on Monday — you can revisit all 27,000 words here — I was tasked with following the 4 p.m. ET games. That slate of games featured an unfair fight between Clayton Kershaw and the Padres, the entrance of Zach Britton into a tie game against the Blue Jays, and the Twins against the Royals. While I flipped between games trying to maximize the use of the one available television in my living room, I tried to take in most of Byron Buxton’s day at the plate.

As you’re probably aware, Buxton was once the consensus No. 1 prospect in the game. He, unfairly, drew Mike Trout comps. While he’s certainly not anywhere near Trout the batter, Buxton is one of the premier athletes in the game. He made the first five-star catch of the season Monday as MLB.com documented both with video and Statcast data.

But Buxton will never fully unlock his potential, his considerable potential, until he cuts down on the swing and miss in his game.

Even during his excellent September, when he offered hope of a turnaround, a .287/.357/.653 slash line, and nine home runs over the final 29 games of the season — exhibiting burgeoning power to go with his plus-plus speed — Buxton still struck out in 33.6% of his plate appearances. He finished with a 35.6% strikeout rate for the year, a mark that was largely responsible — along with a healthy dose of infield pop ups — for his unsightly .225/.284/.430 slash line and 86 wRC+. His strikeout rate increased four points from his brief exposure to major-league pitching in 2015. And he even struck out 28% of the time during his demotion to Triple-A last season, covering 209 plate appearances.

Judging from my weekly chats here, Buxton is of some interest to many this year given a strong finish to 2016 that coincided with swing adjustments, including a return to the leg kick he used in high school but which was originally phased out by the Twins. He struck out in 20% of his at-bats this spring. While perhaps not ultimately significant, it was preferable to striking out in more than a third of his plate appearances.

This time of year always carries a small-sample disclaimer. It’s April. We don’t want to make too much of performance. But I was curious to see if Buxton, on Day One, would seem different, improved — as far as his approach goes — from the Buxton of 2015 and 2016. I was in search of compelling anecdotal evidence.

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TAMPA, Fla. — Even if Shohei Otani is not the next Babe Ruth, even if baseball has to settle for welcoming the next Madison Bumgarner some time in the not-too-distant future, some team will be quite happy.

You’re probably familiar with Otani. In case you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese star, however, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the resume.

As a 21-year-old last season, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. Oh, he also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs over 323 at-bats in 104 games. He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

The following exhibits from 2016 are visual evidence of this player’s existence.

Let’s start with the fastball that sits in the mid- to upper 90s and that has touched 102 mph…

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TAMPA, Fla. — In the fourth week of July last year, while hosting Baltimore, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman reached an agreement to send Aroldis Chapman to the Chicago Cubs. It would be the first move in a partial dismantling of the club, a rebuild in New York representing one of the rarest roster-construction projects in baseball. But Cashman, and Cubs president Theo Esptein, had to wait. They had to wait for approval from Yankees ownership.

With the framework having been agreed upon, Chapman was still a Yankee as he entered a game on July 23rd against the San Francisco Giants at Yankee Stadium. He pitched the ninth and 10th innings.

“Chapman went two-plus innings, not something normally [that occurs] if you are going to execute a trade” Cashman told FanGraphs. “[Steinbrenner] waited 72 hours to green light it as he discussed it with his family. It was not an easy decision. I was keeping Theo on hold, essentially. I told him ‘I will let you know if ownership says ‘yes’.’ I said ‘I am recommending it. We’ll see what happens.’”

Chapman was still a Yankee as the club boarded a charter flight on July 24th to play a series in Houston. When the Yankees arrived in Houston, ownership had OK’d a type of plan rarely seen in New York. In a rare tactical retreat, the Yankees traded instant gratification — the hope of sneaking into the playoffs as a Wild Card — for the delayed variety. The Yankees had passed the Stanford marshmallow experiment. For Cashman, it had taken more than a year to lobby to adopt such a strategy, an approach that some believe has positioned the Yankees for their next sustained run of excellence.

The Yankees enjoy a No. 2 ranking in Baseball America’s recently released organizational talent rankings, after ranking 17, 18, and 18 in the three previous seasons, respectively. And the Yankees should have plenty of financial flexibility in the 2018-19 offseason, with a relatively paltry sum of $70 million in guaranteed salary on the books for ’19.

“It’s not the first time I’ve suggested that,” Cashman said of retooling. “It’s the first time ownership actually agreed to do it.”

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TAMPA, Fla. — From the outside looking in, it doesn’t seem like the Yankees are having all that much fun. This spring Yankees manager Joe Girardi said the voluminous red mane of Clint Frazier had become a “distraction” so the Yankees made the problem disappear.

Good morning, @Yankees fans. The Yankees barbershop is open for business…first customer, @clintfrazier. pic.twitter.com/9dM8r5bVwa

— Yankees PR Dept. (@YankeesPR) March 10, 2017

FanGraphs’ own Nicolas Stellini wrote about the Yankees’ “War on Fun” several weeks ago.

So a couple weeks back when I was in Yankees camp, I was curious to enter clubhouse and get a sense if these guys are having any fun or if the volume of media, the franchise’s tradition and expectations, and the military-style grooming standards prevent light-heartedness.

While I suspect the industry is a long ways away from quantifying the value of clubhouse chemistry and culture, it was interesting that the Cubs and Indians seemed to have a lot of fun en route to capturing league pennants last season. And in college football, all-about-fun Clemson beat serious-all-time Alabama in the championship game. Maybe fun is making a comeback. Back in January I wrote about that time Dabo Swinney met Joe Maddon and how they learned they were more similar than they were different.

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Back when I was a beat writer covering the Pirates, manager Clint Hurdle had a practice each spring camp when he and front office staffers would identify one area that was a weakness a season earlier and try to improve upon it. Rather than focus on many things, Hurdle would try to sharpen one area. One year it was defensive alignment, another year it was pitcher’s hitting ability and in 2014 it was the club’s two-strike approach.

In 2013, the season when the Pirates returned to the postseason and ended a run of 20 consecutive losing seasons, the Pirates pitched well, shifted often, and used an MVP season from Andrew McCutchen to record 94 wins. One thing the club didn’t do well is hit with two strikes. The club finished 26th in the game with a .474 two-strike OPS.

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Earlier this week, Jon Heyman reported that the Cardinals and Yadier Molina were “getting close” on a contract extension. With Molina, 34, years seem to be as much as an issue as the dollars involved. Heyman reports that Molina was initially seeking a four-year extension, while the club countered with a two-year deal. Can they find common ground on a three-year contract?

Molina is entering the final year of his current deal, which features a mutual option for next season. He’s given the club a deadline of Opening Day to reach an agreement, though if the club offered him Russell Martin-money in mid-April, I suspect he would consider it.

Molina told MLB.com on Tuesday that the clock on extension talks is “running.” Said Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak: “We understand there is a deadline. I think everyone is going to roll up their sleeves and continue to work at it.”

But is the clock running out on Molina?

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Paul Sporer and I were responsible for providing the starting-rotation installments of last week’s positional power rankings, posts which you can access here and here. One of the interesting things I took from the exercise was the absence of the Toronto Blue Jays from the top 15 of those rankings.

Blue Jays starters led the American League in ERA (3.64) last season. If you prefer more advanced measures, the Blue Jays’ rotation led the AL with 15.3 WAR and finished second in FIP (4.07) to Cleveland. This season, all of Toronto’s starting pitchers of significance return save for R.A. Dickey.

But despite finishing as the AL’s most productive rotation last season and despite losing arguably its weakest link in Dickey, the Jays’ rotation appeared in last week’s positional rankings as just the eighth-best staff in the AL and the 16th-best such group in the game. FanGraphs projections have the Blue Jays staff ranked behind the Red Sox and the Yankees in the AL East, and if that holds, it could be damaging to Toronto’s postseason aspirations.

Our 2017 forecasts for the Blue Jays’ likely starting pitchers…

16. Blue Jays

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Aaron Sanchez	205.0	7.9	3.2	0.9	.302	73.7 %	3.69	3.86	3.4
J.A. Happ	181.0	7.8	2.8	1.2	.303	72.5 %	4.11	4.15	2.6
Marcus Stroman	169.0	7.5	2.4	0.9	.313	71.3 %	3.85	3.64	3.2
Marco Estrada	167.0	7.0	2.9	1.4	.277	71.6 %	4.31	4.62	1.9
Francisco Liriano	149.0	9.6	4.1	1.2	.310	74.3 %	4.11	4.22	1.8
Casey Lawrence	37.0	5.1	2.4	1.5	.312	67.9 %	5.20	5.04	0.2
Mat Latos	38.0	6.6	3.0	1.3	.309	70.2 %	4.77	4.69	0.3
Mike Bolsinger	9.0	8.5	3.5	1.3	.317	71.7 %	4.51	4.36	0.1
Conner Greene	9.0	5.8	4.6	1.4	.311	67.6 %	5.77	5.63	0.0
Ryan Borucki	9.0	5.8	3.8	1.6	.310	68.3 %	5.59	5.54	0.0
Total	973.0	7.7	3.0	1.1	.302	72.3 %	4.11	4.18	13.4

So what’s going on here?

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Maybe not all of us will admit to it, but I think many of us have been curious to watch Tim Tebow’s foray into professional baseball.

When I was in the Pittsburgh clubhouse in Bradenton, Florida, earlier this spring, MLB Network chose to broadcast a Mets’ game in which Tebow was participating. MLB clubhouses have become more and more like your area Buffalo Wild Wings location, with multiple, large flat-screens usually adorning their interior to help pass the significant amount of stagnant time players spend there.

On this day, I entered the clubhouse shortly after the Pirates made a call to the bullpen. (It’s standard practice in spring for a team to permit media following the removal of the starting pitcher.) Several Pirates lingered in the mostly vacant room, including reliever Tony Watson, who turned his attention toward a television.

“Is that Tebow?” Watson asked aloud.

Even major-league players are curious how Tebow performs. A large part of that interest is probably tied to celebrity. Tebow was an ESPN favorite. It was difficult not to be aware of him. And not many Heisman winners quit football to give baseball a shot. If this were Brandon Weeden, or another failed pro quarterback, making an attempt at a baseball career, few would be paying attention. But part of this curiosity, I suspect, is also tied to this question: just how far away is an elite athlete with no professional baseball experience — and far removed from his amateur playing days — from being a passable major-league hitter? Essentially, how does (a very athletic) man off the street perform when thrown into a professional lineup?

I think we can all agree that Tebow isn’t a prospect, that he’s not likely to have a major-league career unless the Mets are desperate for an attendance bump. Eric Longenhagen saw Tebow last fall and quickly dismissed him as a prospect. From Longenhagen:

The crowds he draws, which, aside from the parking conditions they create, have been generally harmless. Last night’s game in Scottsdale was an unusually crowded mid-week affair with most of the fans raucously cheering for Tebow in a setting that is usually quite bookish. It created a unique environment in which to watch baseball, that’s for sure. Tools-wise, Tebow takes big, fun, aggressive hacks and he has some bat speed and power but his hand-eye is lacking and his swing is very long in the back. Several times he swung through hittable 89-91 mph fastballs because he couldn’t get there in time to punish them. His routes in left are raw, he has a 40 arm and is an average runner underway but below average from home to first. He isn’t a prospect, but he’s been gracious with the media and patient with the fans and autograph lines. It was weird watching a baseball game in which fan excitement was most palpable during a semi-routine fly ball to left field and not when a Yankees shortstop prospect hit one 380 feet the opposite way.

But Tebow gives us a different context, a different lens with which to understand how difficult it is to hit at the professional level, let alone advance to the major leagues.

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