Earlier this offseason, the Rays signed the player who served as last year’s starting catcher for the Washington Nationals, Wilson Ramos. Ramos & Co. produced 4.4 WAR from the catcher spot last season for the Nats, the position’s second-most production.

Over the weekend, the Rays reportedly agreed to terms with Derek Norris, a player with whom the Nationals recently cut ties for an arguably inferior catcher: Matt Wieters. (Wieters projects to produce 0.7 bWARP — a metric that includes framing value — in 2017, Norris 1.1 bWARP.) As to why Washington might make such a curious decision, there are a number of theories. One possible explanation, however, is the relative chumminess of Wieters’ agent with Nationals ownership.

So, in summary, the Rays now have the Nationals’ starting catcher from a year ago, and one of Nats’ top replacement options for Ramos as recently as a month ago.

The Rays’ interest in Norris was one of the more seemingly inevitable news items in recent weeks, as the devoutly analytical club otherwise appeared ready to enter the season with only inexperienced catchers — a combination of Curt Casali, Luke Maile and Jesus Sucre — from which to choose as they patiently wait for Ramos to return from the torn ACL he suffered last September.

Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the one-year deal is worth “less than $2 million.”

Writes Topkin:

Signing Norris gives the Rays a more experienced option behind the plate …. Norris has made 446 big-league starts for Oakland and San Diego, Casali has made 116, Sucre 77 and Maile 43.

He chose the Rays over several other teams based on the opportunity for more playing time.

Perhaps the signing also speaks to the team becoming more conservative — or pessimistic, perhaps — regarding Ramos’s timetable to return behind the plate. MLB.com reported last month that Ramos might not be able to catch until August.

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The positional power rankings continue with an entry that should be most strongly correlated to regular season, and postseason, success: the top-15 starting pitching depth charts. Paul Sporer began the starting pitching countdown with rotations No. 16-30 here, and we now advance from the Toyota Corolla to Cadillac class with this post.

The distribution of projected WAR is not much different than a year ago, with seven instead of six teams predicted to receive more than 16 WAR from their starting pitchers. The Dodgers, Mets, Nationals, Indians and Cubs again project to rank among the top six of starting-pitcher production, with the Dodgers and Mets flip-flopping positions.

While there’s been a lot of focus on the home-run spike that began in the second half of 2015 and carried over to last season (starters allowed a record 13.3% HR/FB rate last year) and while run-scoring has increased across the league and while we’ve focused this offseason on the new swing philosophies of some players who might further increase offense, there’s still plenty of quality starting pitch. Starting pitchers produced record strikeout rates and strikeout- and walk-rate differentials (K-BB%) last season, and our forecasts call for starting pitchers to produce record collective WAR totals in 2017. Much of that value resides in the following depth charts.

1. Dodgers

Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Clayton Kershaw	208.0	11.0	1.5	0.7	.302	79.6 %	2.33	2.34	7.4
Rich Hill	140.0	10.0	3.3	0.9	.298	76.6 %	3.21	3.48	2.8
Kenta Maeda	154.0	8.5	2.3	1.0	.303	73.8 %	3.57	3.64	2.8
Brandon McCarthy	121.0	7.2	2.3	1.1	.305	72.7 %	3.95	4.09	1.5
Alex Wood	94.0	8.0	2.7	1.0	.306	73.1 %	3.77	3.82	1.4
Julio Urias	102.0	9.1	3.1	0.9	.307	74.9 %	3.49	3.61	1.9
Scott Kazmir	73.0	8.4	2.8	1.1	.301	73.3 %	3.91	4.00	1.1
Hyun-Jin Ryu	47.0	7.2	2.1	1.0	.309	71.7 %	3.83	3.74	0.7
Brock Stewart	19.0	8.5	2.5	1.3	.305	72.3 %	4.07	4.06	0.3
Ross Stripling	9.0	7.3	2.7	1.1	.306	70.4 %	4.21	4.11	0.1
Total	967.0	9.0	2.4	1.0	.303	74.9 %	3.36	3.45	20.0

After ranking second a year ago in these preseason rankings, the Dodgers advance to the No. 1 spot. Not only do the Dodgers have the top starting pitcher in the game to lead their rotation, they have the deepest rotation in the majors. Arms like Hyun-Jin Ryu and Scott Kazmir might not be able to crack the Dodgers’ starting rotation — Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said on Sunday that Kazmir would not begin the season in the rotation — but they would start for just about any other club. The Dodgers are eight deep with quality options, eight pitchers that project to produce sub-4.00 ERAs. Finding places for them is a good problem to solve, and it’s in part why the Dodgers top FanGraphs’ projected wins forecast. Not only are they talented but they have margin for error.

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TAMPA, Fla. — Aaron Judge knew what his offseason objective must be. Everyone did. While his power is obviously rare among even major-league players — Jeff Sullivan recently detailed how difficult it is to exaggerate — so are his contact issues. Over his first 95 plate appearances with the Yankees, he posted a Joey Gallo-like strikeout rate (44.2%).

As the table below illustrates, Judge also recorded one of the lowest in-zone contact rates among players with 90-plus plate appearances.

While Judge posted these numbers in a relatively small sample, some of the players who accompany him here illustrate the challenges a batter faces when he has trouble making in-zone contact. His plus-plus raw power won’t matter if it doesn’t translate to game action.

So this winter, Judge did what many 25-year-olds do: he spent much of the day staring at his phone, and spent much of that time searching through videos. But unlike most 25-year-olds, this YouTube-ing (mostly YouTube research, he said) was done with a professional purpose in mind: to find ways to better keep his bat in a position to make quality contact.

“I was usually on my phone before bed or before I went to hit. It could be anytime, anywhere,” Judge said of his video research.

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According to a Naver Sports report out of South Korea, Pirates third baseman Jung Ho Kang has been denied a visa to enter the United States putting his 2017 season and future with the Pirates very much in doubt.

Kang has had a myriad off-the-field troubles. After a Dec. 2 incident in Seoul in which Kang fled the scene of a crash, Kang was convicted of a third DUI this winter in South Korea. The two previous DUIs came before he was signed by the Pirates prior to the 2015 season, and the club claims to have had no knowledge of those incidents. For his most recent DUI, Kang was sentenced to eight months in prison, but Kang has appealed the sentence. He has missed the entire spring due to his legal issues. There was also a sexual assault claim made against Kang last year, alleged to have occurred in a Chicago hotel. But Kang was not charged and Chicago Police said last fall they have not been able to locate his accuser.

Off-the-field, Kang has his troubles and now the Pirates have on-the-field issues at third base.

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Jay Bruce is not going to win any popularity contests in New York’s largest borough when the season opens next month.

Through no fault of his own, the Mets exercised his $13 million option this winter, ostensibly as insurance in case Yoenis Cespedes fled elsewhere. With the return of Cespedes, though, Bruce is now regarded primarily as an impediment to promising young outfielder Michael Conforto’s ability to receive more playing time. This is not a post arguing that Confroto shouldn’t be the recipient of more playing time. I would like to see a full season from Conforto, too. This is a post about Bruce independent of playing-time issues in New York.

This is a post, in part, about a player using batted-ball data to rethink his ideas about lifting the ball, a subject we’ve detailed exhaustively at FanGraphs this offseason and spring. This is also a post about a player who’s running out of time to live up to his lofty prospect pedigree. While Bruce’s 111 wRC+ last season and 107 mark for his career continues to render him employable, his declining defense has him pushed him near replacement-level the last two seasons, when he has combined for one unit of WAR. This is a player who must get more out of his bat to secure another lucrative contract, and to secure steady playing time.

But what’s a little different about this story is that Bruce already hits more fly balls than ground balls. This is a fly-ball hitter who wants to become an extreme fly-ball hitter, as James Wagner details in a recent, excellent New York Times feature.

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KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Atlanta Braves president John Hart sports a tan this spring, which in itself isn’t particularly strange for someone in the baseball industry. In Hart’s case, the cause is the time he’s spent on the back fields, perhaps his favorite spot in the organization’s Disney-based complex. He rose to front-office prominence via an unorthodox path, having started on a managerial track in Baltimore until Hank Peters identified him as an executive candidate and brought him to Cleveland. He’s spent countless hours evaluating, coaching and encouraging on chain-link fields. It’s where the future is this time of year. But he also loves the back fields of the Braves’ complex this spring because of what he sees. It’s there where a small army of tall, lanky, projectable pitchers resides.

The Braves are the third franchise Hart is attempting to transform into a winner, and this rebuilding approach has been more pitching focused than his previous efforts in Cleveland and Texas. The Braves have four pitching prospects ranked in Baseball America’s top-100 rankings, five among Eric Longenhagen’s top 100, where two more just missed the cut in Sean Newcomb and Joey Wentz.

While the Braves have top-end positional prospects like Dansby Swanson (acquired via trade) and Ozzie Albies (signed by the previous regime), prospect talent acquired under Hart and general manager John Coppolella — particularly through the draft — has been pitching heavy.

I was curious to ask Hart about the subject after having interviewed him previously on the topic of the risk/reward dilemma presented by pitching prospects — particularly those drafted out of high school — back when Hart was an MLB Network analyst and I was a beat reporter covering the Pirates. At that time, I’d asked him about Pittsburgh’s Pitch-22 philosophy — i.e. the notion that most pitching prospects fail, but small- and mid-market teams must develop their own pitching.

The Pirates had made a historic commitment to pitching at the time. In three drafts from 2009 to -11, Pittsburgh expended 22 of their first 30 picks on pitchers. Seventeen were prep pitchers. The Pirates signed 18 of them to bonuses totaling $25.6 million.

Said Hart at the time:

“A truism is if you have 10, you can really count on two of them making it,” Hart said. “I came up in the (1980s) and never believed it. I said, ‘Come on, there can’t be that much attrition.’ Then bang: This guy gets hurt. This guy doesn’t develop a third pitch. … You can never have enough pitching.”

Hart’s estimate is pretty much in line with the success rate for pitchers rated as 100 prospects.

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As a faithful reader, you’re probably aware that a number of authors have written about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this winter, examining the potential for a sea change in batted-ball profiles. If you’ve missed some or all of our posts you can read them, or revisit them here, here, here and here.

As I toured the central region and Gulf coast of Florida for FanGraphs this spring, a couple comments were particularly memorable. One was from this piece on Tampa Bay’s sharing of changeup knowledge, a success that Jim Hickey attributed less to organizational philosophy and more to pitchers with excellent changeups, like James Shields and Alex Cobb, sharing their craft and skills.

“It’s not so much a philosophy as it is a lineage,” Hickey said.

That struck me as quite interesting: the power of peers and word of mouth to have such a profound influence on the fortunes of a club. I also thought it was interesting when J.D. Martinez noted that more players have approached him this spring, curious about his loft-generating swing plane. Martinez is one of the notable early adopters of the uppercut, joining the likes of Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy and Josh Donaldson. They are not only excelling but espousing the philosophy.

So just as the Rays have handed down quality changeup grips from one generation to the next, and have led baseball in the value produced by changeups since 2006 — when Shields debuted with modest overall stuff but an excellent changeup — shouldn’t teams benefit by having early adopters of fly-ball philosophy? While most coaches in the game still seem to be subscribing to conventional hitting techniques, even if more coaches in the game spoke like private instructors like Doug Latta outside of the game, it stands to reason that players’ peers — trusted teammates, that is — might hold more influence when electing to made a radical adjustment.

The Rays have a changeup lineage. Are some teams creating the foundation of an uppercut lineage?

Maybe.

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Brady Anderson was a fascinating – and curious – player, most notably for his outlying 1996 season when he hit 50 home runs, a number he never before or again approached in his career. While the performance came under a cloud of suspicion, there was no evidence tying him PED usage.

He now has a fascinating and curious presence in the Baltimore clubhouse, as documented in an excellent profile by Ken Rosenthal .

Anderson is a controversial figure this spring. He holds an unusual sort of hybrid role with the Orioles. Technically employed as a high-ranking member of the front office, Anderson also has a locker in the clubhouse, wears a jersey, and plays roles in coaching, dealing with agents, and in strength and conditioning

The story is well worth a read, but I took away two main points — namely, that (a) we might see more hybrid-type roles in the future, further blurring lines and testing clubhouse sovereignty, and (b) Anderson is yet another voice challenging conventional coaching practices.

It’s true Anderson’s situation is an unusual one due to his cozy relationship with ownership. He operates with little oversight or constraint. But what has become less unusual is the practice of a front office infiltrating integrating itself in the clubhouse. As front offices have trended in a more analytical direction, they’ve hired more like-minded managers. They’ve hired forward-thinking strength and conditioning staffs. And in Pittsburgh, a quantitative analyst — Mike Fitzgerald — was believed to be the first such employee to be freed of the shackles of an office cubicle in order to travel with a club, complete with his own locker in road clubhouses (although he didn’t wear a jersey). The Pirates viewed Fitzgerald’s role as significant enough that they have hired a former Amherst College shortstop and pitcher, Bob Cook, to fill the role after Fitzgerald departed for Arizona, as MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported.

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Welcome back to our annual positional power rankings, which Dave Cameron kicked off this morning with his introductory post. You’re probably familiar with these rankings and series of posts, but if you’re a first-timer, we endeavor to take you through the projected strength of each position in the majors by team — ranking each club from No. 1 to 30 — based upon FanGraphs WAR forecasts. We also provide commentary that hopefully provides some invaluable insights and light-hearted moments. We begin with the catching position.

As you can see in the chart above, the Giants, perhaps unsurprisingly, again pace the field in WAR thanks to Buster Posey. And that advantage is not insignificant in what is again projected to be the weakest position in the major leagues. Major-league catchers combined to slash .242/.310/.391 last season with a wRC+ of 87. So if your team has a Posey, if Gary Sanchez’s second half is indicative of who he might be for 2017, then those players stake their respective teams to significant relative advantages. Only five teams — the Giants, Rangers, Yankees, Dodgers and Astros — project to earn three wins or better from the position, though it is important to remember pitch framing isn’t factored into FanGraphs’ WAR formula.

There isn’t expected to be much change in relative power: the Giants, Nationals, Rangers, and Yankees comprised four of the top-six teams last year. Still, there are players like Travis d’Arnaud, Austin Hedges, and Mike Zunino who contain upside and could perhaps reach new levels of performance. As for an addition of new, young, star power, only two catchers — and Jorge Alfaro at No. 32 and Francisco Mejia at No. 37 — ranked in top 50 of Eric Longenhagen’s top 100 prospects. Mejia is not expected to contribute at the major-league level. So, let’s rank some catching depth charts, shall we?

There are some whispers that Buster Posey’s best days are behind him. Yes, his isolated slugging diminished for a second consecutive season. Yes, he posted his lowest wRC+ (116) in a full season. Yes, he’s logged a lot of innings behind the plate. Yes, he’s going to turn 30 years of age on March 27. But Posey’s average exit velocity was actually up last season (91.2 mph) from 2015 (89.6), his walk rate increased, and his elite bat-to-ball skills remained in place. He ranked as the game’s best framer, according to Baseball Prospectus, and he matched a career best by throwing out 37% of base-stealers. So, Posey should be just fine in 2017. Even if we’ve already witnessed peak Posey, he stands a good chance to again be the game’s most valuable catcher.

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