Well, the Rusney Castillo era in Boston appears to be over before it ever really began. Signed to a six year, $72 million contract back in August of 2014, Castillo didn’t impress in his rookie season, and now, he appears to not have a job in Boston.

Brock Holt will start season as Red Sox primary LF against righties.

— Ian Browne (@IanMBrowne) March 29, 2016

With Chris Young around as an obvious platoon partner for Holt, the decision to start Holt in left field leaves Castillo without a path to any real playing time, as Mookie Betts and Jackie Bradley are both very good defenders in their own right, and so the team won’t even be in need of a late-game defensive replacement. And with Andrew Benintendi looking like the team’s left fielder of the future, this was going to be Castillo’s shot at holding down a regular job; he’s unlikely to ever get another real crack at it in Boston now, barring an unforeseen injury.

So it’s probably time Castillo to get a change of scenery. The Red Sox don’t need a $10 million fifth outfielder, Castillo won’t benefit from sitting on the bench, and while he has minor league options remaining, sending him to Triple-A apparently isn’t in the plans.

Holt starting again in LF, and could get nod Opening Day. But for those thinking Rusney might begin in minors was told 'not going to happen'

— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) March 27, 2016

That leaves a trade as the obvious solution, though Castillo’s contract — he’s due $56 million over the next five years — will be an obstacle for teams pushing up against their budgetary constraints. The Red Sox will likely have to eat some of the money or take back an overpriced contract to offset the money, but that should be doable. So with that said, let’s look at the best options to find Castillo a new home before Opening Day.

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Last week, I ran a little crowdsourcing project in which I asked you all to assign some made-up risk points – between one and five of them — to each and every roster in the major leagues. It was inspired by a passing comment from my weekly Tuesday chat, and it got me thinking about overall team volatility.

And, perhaps volatility is the word I should’ve used, rather than risk. I asked people to consider factors like average age of the team, proven vs. unproven players, injury risks in key contributors, and organizational depth. But risk implies you’ve got something to lose, and so even though I included a disclaimer that read, “This isn’t about how good or bad a team is. The Braves shouldn’t automatically be more risky than the Cubs just because they’re a worse baseball team. Try and think of each team’s amount of risk in a vacuum, relative to its own general skill level,” I should’ve known that, since the Braves aren’t really risking anything this year, they’d show up with a low risk rating no matter what.

So I probably screwed up my own project with a poor word choice and skewed the results a little bit, but we can still talk about some pretty interesting nuggets of information that came out of the results, and if you’re interested in reading that, well, you’ve come to the right place.

Getting back to that projected performance vs. projected team risk topic, here’s a graph plotting the two against one another:

The average risk rating was exactly 3.0. Definitely, worse teams were given lower risk ratings, and better teams were given higher risk ratings. Only three teams projected for a record better than .500 had significantly below-average risk ratings. The six worst projected teams in baseball had risk ratings barely above 2.0.

You see that dot way out on the right, though, and that’s the dot that was at the heart of this whole project. The point was to find the team you all found most risky, and no matter what the results were, there was always going to be a team. That team was the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, with a weighted risk rating of 4.3.

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I’m an optimistic player evaluator, and I recognize that. I try to see the good in what players can do, so I liked the Orioles’ idea of signing Hyun-soo Kim out of Korea. Now, Kim has not had a good spring training to this point, so he hasn’t made the best first impression. He also probably hasn’t made his last impression, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to see this headline from Ken Rosenthal:

This is something the Orioles have done before. A headline on Orioles.com says the team dismissed the report, but this post from Eduardo A. Encina makes it sound like Kim is indeed on the outside looking in. The Orioles might at least try to send Kim to the minors. In part, that’s because Kim hasn’t looked good, and he was hitless through his first 23 at-bats. Kim has to know he hasn’t yet been impressive. But there’s another factor — a surprising one — and that factor goes by the name of Joey Rickard. Rickard came to camp just hoping to make the roster, but based on the circumstances, he might become an outfield starter.

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We continue the 2016 Positional Power Rankings — finish them, in fact — by looking at the sometimes difficult-to-project bullpens of each of the 30 major-league franchises. Here, in this article, we will examine the bottom half of baseball’s relief-pitching corps, with Craig Edwards handling the better half of the bullpen marriage. If this is your first go around, here’s an introduction to help you out. Now here’s a graphic detailing where each of the bullpens stand:

Some really good teams on that graph. Some not-so-good teams on that graph. We turn our attention to the not-so-good ones, who, even though they may have vastly improved (hey, Rockies!), still find themselves performing the metaphorical mop-up duties of the 2016 bullpen power rankings.

Onto the relievers!

#16 Rockies

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Name	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	BABIP	LOB%	ERA	FIP	WAR
Jake McGee	65.0	10.3	2.8	0.9	.310	76.8 %	3.15	3.14	1.5
Jason Motte	65.0	7.3	2.6	1.3	.307	72.5 %	4.33	4.33	0.2
Chad Qualls	55.0	7.5	2.1	0.9	.314	71.5 %	3.78	3.56	0.7
Justin Miller	55.0	8.7	3.2	1.0	.309	72.9 %	3.87	3.85	0.4
Boone Logan	45.0	9.9	3.6	1.0	.319	72.9 %	3.91	3.73	0.3
Miguel Castro	40.0	8.3	3.9	1.0	.315	71.3 %	4.38	4.19	0.1
Chris Rusin	35.0	5.4	2.6	1.2	.316	69.0 %	4.81	4.62	0.0
Jason Gurka	30.0	7.3	3.1	1.0	.312	71.2 %	4.27	4.19	0.0
Christian Bergman	25.0	5.3	2.1	1.5	.312	68.4 %	5.10	4.95	-0.1
Scott Oberg	20.0	7.5	4.0	1.1	.309	71.2 %	4.46	4.51	0.0
Adam Ottavino	15.0	9.5	3.1	0.9	.312	74.3 %	3.51	3.51	0.0
Jeff Hoffman	10.0	6.9	3.3	1.2	.312	71.2 %	4.57	4.57	0.0
Carlos Estevez	10.0	8.2	3.1	1.1	.314	71.8 %	4.13	4.01	0.0
The Others	55.0	8.2	4.0	1.2	.322	69.5 %	4.73	4.50	0.0
Total	525.0	8.1	3.0	1.1	.313	71.9 %	4.13	4.03	3.0

What a difference a year makes! Last March, we had this bullpen projected for 0.5 WAR and 28th place. This year, they’ve made it up to 3.0 and 16th. Team sports represent one of the few arenas in which an entity could make so drastic a transformation in one calendar year, and the process, dear readers, was quite simple: fire most everyone and hire new people! It seems primed to work, at least on paper, and before anything has actually happened. That is confidence.

As with anything that happens in relation to pitching half of a season’s games at Coors Field, however, the outcomes of this bullpen could be quite volatile. With a completely revamped back end of Jake McGee, Jason Motte, and Chad Qualls, the Rockies would appear to have three very solid end-of-game options. But that papers over the fact that only one of these pitchers (Qualls) is a solid ground-ball pitcher, and even he has always had his share of home-run issues (career 13.1% HR/FB rate). Even if the batted-ball outcomes might appear slightly scary on the surface in relation to homer-happy Coors Field, the Rockies should at least have a solid bullpen this coming season, and a vastly improved one from 2015.

None of this mentions the hopeful return of Adam Ottavino, one of the darlings of the first month of the 2015 season. Should he return to full health sometime around the All-Star break (he’s just started a throwing program on his way back from Tommy John surgery), he could provide a serious shot in the arm that could elevate the overall production of this bullpen.

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Tyler Duffey will soon learn if he’ll begin the season in Minnesota or with Triple-A Rochester. The 25-year-old right-hander has been competing with Ricky Nolasco for the final spot in the Twins starting rotation, and that decision is expected to be announced today.

Duffey hasn’t pitched especially well this spring — his ERA is 7.30 — but he was excellent last year in his first taste of big-league action. In 10 starts, the former Rice Owl won five of six decisions and posted a 3.10 ERA and a 3.24 FIP. He did so throwing almost exclusively fastballs (58.1%) and curveballs (39.8%).

He doesn’t view himself as a two-pitch pitcher. Duffey throws both a two- and a four-seam fastball, and his curveball isn’t always the same shape and velocity. He’ll also show hitters a changeup, although the pitch spends more time in his back pocket than anywhere else. Turning it into a more-usable weapon could be the key to his future success.

Duffey talked about his repertoire, and his approach to pitching, earlier this spring.

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Duffey on his arm slot: “In high school, I was almost parallel to the ground, or maybe a little higher than that. I was very low three-quarters. I had a sinking fastball and I threw my same curveball from there, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Previous editions: Arizona / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL) / New York (AL) / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego.

Last week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the San Francisco Giants. In this companion piece, I look at that same San Francisco farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Giants have the 26th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

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While the Mariners won’t officially confirm the news until later today, Jesus Montero is currently on waivers, free to any team who wants to pay the $20,000 waiver fee and is willing to put Montero on their roster. This is quite the downfall for a guy who, not that long ago, was drawing comparisons to some of the best hitters in baseball.

“In terms of hitting ability, Montero can be a Manny Ramirez or a Miguel Cabrera,” [New York Yankees general manager Brian] Cashman told ESPN New York’s Ian O’Connor. “As a catcher, he’s got a cannon for an arm. As far as everything and what I want him to be, I want him to be Jorge Posada.”

Cashman added, “He has a chance to bat third or fourth. He has the potential to be a beast in the middle of our lineup.”

And before you start thinking that Cashman was simply participating in the Yankee-prospect hype machine, this is what he said about him after he traded him to Seattle for Michael Pineda.

In a tweet Friday night, Bergen Record columnist Bob Klapisch quoted Yankees general manager Brian Cashman saying, “To me, Montero is Mike Piazza. He’s Miguel Cabrera.”

To this point in his career, Montero has 865 plate appearances and a 92 wRC+, which puts him in the Orlando-to-Asdrubal tier of Cabreras, rather than the Miguel tier for which Cashman hoped. A guy who hits like a shortstop but can’t run or play the field isn’t much of a big leaguer, which is why the Mariners are willing to give Montero away to anyone who wants him. And why Montero serves as a reminder about how little certainty we should have when it comes to forecasting the future performance of hitters.

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August has already walked you through the rest. Now let us together take a walk through the best! The best, according to our preseason projections. It sounds better to leave out that last part, though. Always gotta remember to think about marketing. By the way, here’s a reminder of what we’re doing. It should be easy enough to figure out even without that link, but I just wanted to cover all my bases, which is a baseball expression. Here are the starting rotations, ranked:

Below, the Mets get the coveted #1. Not that they don’t deserve it, but as you’ll see, or as you can see in that plot, the Mets and the Dodgers are tied. So maybe that’s kind of a bummer, because it’s more fun to have ties broken, but this does leave the door open to arguments. Nothing quite as healthy for a person as Internet arguments. Especially about statistical projections of the unknowable future.

Mainly, the right thing to do here is think about tiers, and less about specific ranks. The Mets and Dodgers are separated from third place by more than a full win. There’s more than a win between fifth and sixth, and there’s a win between sixth and seventh. Then there’s one win between eighth and 14th. There’s a half-win between ninth and 14th. Many of these teams are close to one another, so don’t fret too much about how this is organized. Really, don’t fret too much at all, about anything. I know I just encouraged you to argue earlier in this introduction, but I’ve had a change of heart. Don’t: do that. Do: read what follows! Let’s talk about the 15 best rotations, as we see them.

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For two seasons, Time Warner Cable, owners of SportsNet LA, the exclusive local television home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, have failed to get their network into more than half of the cable homes in Los Angeles. With losses mounting (a reported $100 million of them last season), Time Warner has offered a significant cut in prices in hopes of luring DirecTV, Verizon, and Cox into carrying the network for the 2016 season. The Dodgers and the mayor have gotten involved, invoking Vin Scully’s last season in what appears to be a desperate public-relations move to broadcast Dodgers games throughout all of Los Angeles. A closer look at the offer shows that Time Warner is not yet in desperation mode.

Using Dodgers like A.J. Ellis and Joc Pederson in order to curry favor with the fans in this dispute — and attempting to leverage legendary icon Vin Scully’s last season into greater public interest — certainly looks like a plea for help, a final Hail Mary to get the Dodgers on television. Publicizing a 30% price drop, from $4.90 to around $3.50 per subscriber per month, reinforces the perception of desperation that Time Warner has lost and that they are finally ready to give in. That is not the case.

Upon further examination, one finds that the aforementioned discount currently being offered by Time Warner applies only to the 2016 season. DirecTv (and Verizon) would pay $3.50 per month per subscriber in 2016 (around $75 million based on 1.8 million subscribers), but next year would be faced either with paying a higher price for the channel or once again removing it from their lineups. From DirecTv’s perspective, it would be far easier, in terms of customer relations, never to have the channel in the first place as people are more likely to complain, or perhaps even switch carriers, if a channel is taken away.

Jeff Passan called the Time Warner-Dodgers deal an “unmitigated disaster,” and for the most part, he is correct. Time Warner’s loss of $100 million last year on the channel is a big misstep for them, and the company has made big mistakes since launching two years ago. But the channel is also not so far away from being a success.

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Over the last few weeks in this space, we took a position-by-position look at the ball-in-play (BIP) profiles of 2015 regulars and semi-regulars to gain some insight into their potential performance moving forward. As I wrote the following, snow fell outside my window in blatant disregard for the dawn of baseball season. Regardless, we continue our similar BIP-centric analysis of qualifying 2015 starting pitchers, division by division. We began with NL East starters. Today’s second installment focuses on the NL Central.

First, some ground rules. To come up with an overall player population roughly equal to one starting rotation per team, the minimum number of batted balls allowed with Statcast readings was set at 243. Pitchers are listed with their 2015 division mates; those who were traded during the season will appear in the division in which they compiled the most innings. Pitchers are listed in “tru” ERA order. For those who have not read my previous articles on the topic, “tru” ERA is the ERA pitchers “should” have compiled based on the actual BIP frequency and authority they allowed relative to the league. Here we go:

Most of the column headers are self-explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and traditional ERA-, FIP-, and “tru” ERA-. Each pitchers’ Adjusted Contact Score (ADJ C) is also listed. Again, for those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Unadjusted Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from opposing hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100. Adjusted Contact Score applies league-average production to each pitchers’ individual actual BIP type and velocity mix, and compares it to league average of 100.

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