I can confirm I have brought at least three new readers to FanGraphs: my mom, my dad and my neighborhood crossing guard, Damon.

I live seven miles south of downtown Pittsburgh in the suburb of Mt. Lebanon, which counts Mark Cuban (let’s get him an MLB team) as one of its more successful high-school graduates. For western Pennsylvania, it’s a dense community, 33,000 living in six square miles. The suburb grew along a trolley line that took commuters into the city. It’s a walking community. You can travel by foot to coffee shops, the post office, boutiques, restaurants, bars, and every school in the district. There are no school buses, but there are crossing guards.

For nearly the last two years, since my routine began of taking – or rather, pushing – my two-year-old on a daily stroll to our Main St., I have spoken nearly daily with Damon, a retired gentleman who is perhaps the top crossing guard on the planet. He has been kind to my two-year-old, and he is also an enthusiastic baseball fan. When I was covering the Pirates, we spoke often of the team. He’s has been kind enough to follow me on my new adventure here, and our baseball discussions have broadened beyond the local Pittsburgh club. Damon cordially disagreed with my my post Monday asserting this is the Golden Age of shortstops.

Damon saw Clemente throw. He attended games at Forbes Field. He knew a local scout who signed Ken Griffey, who saw Josh Gibson hit. His father took him via train to see the Yankees play in Cleveland. He saw shortstops contending with a Forbes Field infield that was much poorer than the Augusta National-like playing surfaces today’s players enjoy. Damon has watched much more baseball than I have, and he believes previous generations produced superior defensive players.

There is no argument I have to refute those observations. We can only imagine how efficient Dick Groat would have been on a modern playing surface. Our defensive metrics today are imperfect. It’s difficult to compare different generations of players. And using WAR to compare is also imperfect as it’s comparing contemporaries against contemporaries. While it seems like there is rare amount of talent congregated at shortstop in today’s game, that does not necessarily tell us how Francisco Lindor compares to Honus Wagner. How do you compare past generations that did not have the benefit of modern strength training and conditioning practices?

But I think what is true is that the type of athlete playing the position is changing.

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One of the most interesting aspects of the Rich Hill story was his decision to break from convention and make his curveball – one of the game’s most effective pitches – his primary offering, a decision about which I wrote earlier this week.

That decision was one of a number of factors that has led to Hill’s late-career resurgence. As you’re probably aware, Hill led all major-league pitchers in curveball usage (49.7%) last season, throwing it more often than his fastball (47.2%). By this standard, Hill is an outlier. Conventional wisdom in baseball stipulates that the fastball should be the primary pitch for just about every arm. Rejecting that wisdom allowed Hill to become one of the most productive per-inning pitchers last season — and to receive a three-year, $48-million contract this offseason despite a limited track record of success.

The only regret Hill might have is that he didn’t change things earlier. What would Hill wish he had told a younger version of himself?

It’s that question which brings me to talented young Phillies starting pitcher Aaron Nola. Nola isn’t left-handed like Hill. His curveball doesn’t have quite the same shape. It is, perhaps, the next best thing to Hill’s curveball among major-league starters, however, depending upon how you judge performance and aesthetic beauty. It’s certainly part of a small group and a candidate in the discussion.

The curve tracks so well horizontally it made Jose Bautista flinch:

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The Angels, Mariners, and Rangers are all situated within a game of each other in FanGraphs’ projected standings.

The Blue Jays, Orioles, Royals, Tigers, and Yankees are also all bunched together with the those AL West clubs, all situated within in just three games of each other, suggesting there could be a crowded and parity-laden AL Wild Card race.

Any added value could be significant. For the Texas Rangers, there might be good news on that front. A full season of Jonathan Lucroy – who was acquired last summer – could offer additional benefits for Texas beyond the 3.7 WAR projected for him in the ZiPS forecasts.

Earlier this week, Texas Rangers manager Jeff Banister was asked by the Dallas Morning News about the benefits of Lucroy having a full season to work with the Rangers pitching staff.

“I think that it’s definitely going to be a benefit. He’s going to be able to learn the core guys that were here last year a little better. Obviously there’s some new guys coming in, but just to put his stamp and his brand on what he likes to do behind the plate and how he likes to call a guy. But we had a guy in Robinson Chirinos behind the plate that was a quality catcher too that helped these guys out. But I think the addition of Lucroy and what he’ll be able to do, just him as a hitter but also his game planning and our overall philosophy all year long will be a plus.”

To quantify all the ways Lucroy and the Rangers might benefit from Lucroy’s ability to work with his pitchers in February rather than on the fly in August is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. Last season, was a different kind of year for Lucroy.

Consider: from 2011 to 2015, Lucroy never caught more than 22 different pitchers in any given season. In 2016, meanwhile, Lucroy caught 40 different pitchers, including 18 new Rangers teammates after coming over from the deadline.

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Many of the relatively well known — and relatively expensive — imported bats from foreign pro leagues have adapted quickly and proficiently to major-league pitching in recent years.

We’re familiar with what Yoenis Cespedes and Jose Abreu have accomplished. Jung Ho Kang, when he’s on the field, has silenced questions about his ability to hit velocity. Dae-Ho Lee arrived with more modest expectations but was still a league-average bat (102 wRC+) last year in his first year in the majors, and Hyun Soo Kim posted a .382 on-base mark and 119 wRC+ in his first season in transitioning from the KBO to the majors.

Which brings us to Byung-ho Park. Park came advertised with 80-grade power, according to some evalutors, and he demonstrated last year that the power was very, very real.

Of course, Park didn’t display that power very often, because he didn’t make contact often enough.

Park struck out a lot.

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Baseball has an obsession with velocity.

Most scouts employ radar guns which are particularly useful on the amateur trail, at minor league ballparks, and in spring training.

Since PITCHf/x went online in every MLB stadium in 2008, baseball, for the first time, enjoyed a uniform standard in velocity measurement. At places like FanGraphs, we often search for increases and decreases in velocity to explain something about a player’s performance.

Some teams like the Yankees and Pirates have placed a premium on velocity relative to other clubs, as I wrote earlier this month.

Velocity has increased at the MLB level every year since PITCHf/x has tracked pitches with average fastball velocity reaching 92.6 mph last season. At the amateur level there is a focus on velocity at showcase events and in travel ball, velocity is what in part allows pitchers to be drafted in the early rounds of the June draft. When visiting a pitcher’s profile page at Perfect Game, velocity readings are displayed and placed in the context of a player’s peer group. For an example, here is Dylan Bundy’s PG profile.

So perhaps it is no surprise that on the eve of February, the month in which equipment trucks depart for southern spring training destinations and pitchers and catchers report, that of the free agent pitchers that remain unsigned – and there are a number of them – the majority are soft-tossing pitchers.

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The Dodgers and Rich Hill announced their agreement at a ballroom podium in a sprawling Marriott hotel property in National Harbor, Maryland, in December. Hill fought back emotion through the press conference after signing a three-year, $48 million agreement at the winter meetings.

“I told myself I wasn’t going to do this… There’s a lot of emotion up here,” said Hill to reporters, explaining the reason for his pauses. “It’s been an incredible journey to get to this point.”

This was a player who had been through much professionally (nearly losing a career) and personally (losing an infant son in 2014), the latter event placing life and the game in perspective.

Hill’s unlikely and unusual success story has multiple layers. There’s the work he did to strengthen his body and arm. There was the counsel of Red Sox pitching guru Brian Bannister, who helped him with his pitch mix and philosophy. There’s the bet he made on himself, believing he could return to a rotation despite having not started a major-league game since 2009, showcasing himself starter with the independent Long Island Ducks in the summer of ’15 to prove it.

But another compelling aspect of Hill’s reclamation story is the process of sorting through what’s effective and what isn’t in the midst of failure. What’s so interesting is the process Hill took in climbing from the nadir of a career to become one of the most effective pitchers per inning last season. In a sport that deals so much with failure, Hill’s story is perhaps an instructional one.

Hill described himself as “a role model for failure” in an excellent L.A. Times feature by Andy McCullough.

Hill is indeed a model to follow — for how he employed all the tools available to him and for the curiosity and purpose he exhibited along the way.

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There was much focus, understandably, on the Dodgers’ addition of Logan Forsythe to their club. He’s a valuable player who fills a large-market NL contender’s most glaring need.

There was less attention on the small-market Rays and where they go in 2017 after trading Forsythe, who projected to be their third most valuable position player this coming season. They are a team that projects to be in the postseason picture in 2017.

The Rays continue to be opportunistic, as they have to be, and continue to trade some of today for more of tomorrow. They didn’t really need Mallex Smith, at least not immediately, but they acquired him as the headline piece in the Drew Smyly deal. Smith adds controllable years and surplus value. They don’t really need Jose De Leon, not immediately, but he offers more future surplus value and controllable years. And it’s possible he’s one of the Rays’ top-five starting options in 2017. According to Steamer, he will be just that.

Dave Cameron wrote last week that the Rays did well in the trade. When a team can land a pitcher who has six years of control — and who’s projected by Steamer to record 2.4 WAR as a starter — for a second baseman who’s more of a useful short-term asset (Forsythe has a club option for 2018) than a franchise building block, it’s generally a value-adding transaction.

But my purpose in writing this piece is not to argue the logic or rationale of those transactions, rather to look at the remaining opportunity for the Rays in regard to 2017.

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You probably are already aware last season was a good one for shortstops but here are a few refreshers …

Not bad …

That’s a shortstop?

Now you’re just showing off …

It was a good year for shortstops. Actually, it was a great year. In fact, according to FanGraphs WAR leaderboards, it was the best year ever for major-league shortstops. Shortstops combined for 81.7 WAR, the first time the group has crossed the 80-win threshold.

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A humorous anecdote from the Pirates’ offseason CARE-a-van tour to share with you by way of Stephen Nesbitt from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Recently, the Pirates’ top pitching prospect, Tyler Glasnow, heard something pretty funny. He was at a bowling event for Pirates Charities, and one fan piped up with this wisecrack, something about how it would be cool if Glasnow could throw strikes on the baseball field, too.

“Touche,” Glasnow said, laughing, as he retold [last month]. “It’s all right.”

Whether or not Glasnow is able to consistently repeat his delivery and throw strikes, challenging given his 6-foot-8 frame, is of great interest and importance to the Pirates.

It could determine whether he ultimately resides in a major-league rotation or bullpen. It will determine whether he is a successful major-league pitcher. After having been rated as a consensus top-50 prospect for three straight years since he burst on the scene with a plus-plus fastball at Low-A West Virginia in 2013, Glasnow experienced a rocky start to his major-league career last season. He walked 12% of batters faced – in line with his minor-league rate – and allowed quite a bit of solid contact during his small-sample debut of 23 innings.

Glasnow is of interest at the moment for two reasons. For starters, the Pirates’ ZiPS forecasts were published earlier this week and were optimistic about two players who have quite a bit of uncertainty in their 2017 forecasts: Andrew McCutchen and Glasnow. ZiPS calls for Glasnow to produce the second-most wins among Pittsburgh starting pitchers in 2017, more than Jameson Taillon and Ivan Nova, who are locks for the rotation, and Chad Kuhl, who probably has the inside track on another spot entering spring.

As MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported in the fall, Glasnow is not guaranteed a rotation spot.

“The ceiling is so high, but there’s clearly some work that remains,” general manager Neal Huntington said at the General Managers Meetings. “If he pitches the way he’s capable of, that’s a very exciting addition to the rotation. He’s absolutely in the mix.”

Glasnow is one of the great wild cards to watch this spring.

He must tighten up his command and address his issues with the running game. Base-stealers were successful 81% of the time against Glasnow in the minors and stole nine bases in nine attempts at the MLB level last season. If he gets those issues under control, then his history of missing bats could vault him near the top of the rotation. Indeed, ZiPS forecasts an elite 27% strikeout rate and 3.60 ERA. Glasnow struck out 22% percent of batters he faced in 23.1 innings last season.

Glasnow is also interesting because of a mechanical issue, which might help his development.

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