This morning, Jeff Sullivan posted the results of his team projection polls, and not surprisingly, you guys don’t buy into the 77-win forecast that our Playoff Odds are currently giving the Royals. The aggregate projection from the readers in Jeff’s poll put the Royals at 83 wins, and 71 percent of the people who voted believed that our forecast was at least four wins too low. Which is perfectly understandable, given that they just won the World Series and all, and it is no easy task trying to justify why a team that has won the AL pennant two years in a row might now be the worst team in the league.

So I want to follow up on Jeff’s poll, because while he collected the expected win total, he didn’t gather any information about how they’re going to get there. And the how is one of the most interesting parts of the Royals. Last year, they won 95 games, but their BaseRuns expected record was only 84-78, which is one of the primary reasons the projections are down on their 2016 chances. Forecasting systems only project context-neutral performance, and assume that the timing of events — which is what drives the difference from BaseRuns expected record — will be equal for all teams.

Since you guys believe the Royals are significantly better than ZIPS and Steamer believe, I’m curious how much of that is due to the belief that the projections are simply incorrectly forecasting individual performance, or whether you believe the Royals roster has inherent traits that will allow it to beat context-neutral expectations. Because looking at the difference between the forecasts and the FANS projections — created by the collective balloting of readers here on FanGraphs — doesn’t necessarily support the idea of the projections badly missing on the individual performances.

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Billy Hamilton did last year what we all were afraid he’d do: not hit. Somehow, despite a .274 on-base percentage, Hamilton managed to steal 57 bases, which is exactly why his shortcomings at the plate can be so frustrating — think of what he could be if he just hit a little. Despite missing some time to a shoulder injury and being one of the 10 or so worst hitters in baseball, Hamilton managed to be worth two Wins Above Replacement, so it’s not like he wasn’t still a productive player for the Reds, what with his elite speed and center field defense. It’s just, a guy can’t run a .226/.274/.289 slash line forever. That will eventually wear thin with any team, regardless of the player’s contributions outside the batter’s box.

So of course, Hamilton wants to get better at the plate — he needs to get better at the plate — and with Hamilton, it seems like it starts with the approach. These last two years, Hamilton’s put the ball in the air more often than Nelson Cruz. He’s put the ball in the air more often than Josh Donaldson, Albert Pujols, Matt Kemp, Evan Gattis and plenty more sluggers whose fly-ball rates, ideally, should dwarf Hamilton’s. Yet, his swing plane seemingly disagrees with his speed and strength (or lack thereof), and Hamilton has mastered the unbecoming art of the harmless fly out.

Jeff Sullivan wrote last year about this phenomenon, and concluded, understandably, that Hamilton needs to do a better job of putting the ball on the ground, and maximizing his strengths. Now, Hamilton has seemingly come around to that idea, and here’s an excerpt from a recent C. Trent Rosecrans article in the Cincinnati Enquirer to support that idea:

Hamilton said he and [third base coach] Hatcher not only worked on the physical approach — his hands, bunting and such — but also the mental side. Hatcher showed him just how many times he hit the ball where, how many times he popped up and to where and why he was and wasn’t being successful.

“We really sat down and went over all that stuff,” Hamilton said. “I have a plan and I just have to put it together.”

And a remarkably candid quote, from later on:

“I’m going to bunt way more than I did last year.”

Hamilton desperately wants to be Cincinnati’s leadoff hitter, and understands that he’ll have to raise the OBP in order to remain at the top of the lineup. To raise the OBP, he’ll have to change his game, and the way to achieve that goal seems to be clear: more balls on the ground.

Except, here’s a quote from a Mark Sheldon piece during Spring Training last year:

Price would also like to see Hamilton take advantage of his speed by hitting more line drives and balls on the ground instead of lifting them into the air. That would include more bunting.

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Of all the polling projects I run here, this is the one I like the most. I’ve only done it for a couple years, now, but for me, this is the perfect kind of crowdsourcing. We’ve got our team depth charts, and we’ve got our Steamer and ZiPS projections that get blended together. So after a whole bunch of math takes place, the depth charts and the player projections get converted into projected standings. Everybody loves to look at and analyze projected standings, but sometimes there are numbers people really don’t understand or support. So I poll.

On Tuesday, I asked the FanGraphs community to evaluate the projected American League standings. On Wednesday, I asked the community to evaluate the projected National League standings. Votes have come in by the thousands, and while it’s not particularly fun to create the initial polling posts, this is when it’s all worth it. I gathered all the numbers to see what people think about the whole projected MLB landscape. Hot tip: the Royals are projected here to finish 77-85. And you guys hate that.

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Plenty of people over the years have questioned Alex Wood’s ability to remain a starting pitcher, but what you at least couldn’t question, for a time, was how Wood as a starter performed. He was effective as a rookie in 2013, and then the next year, he posted numbers that, from an objective perspective, looked like they could’ve belonged to Cole Hamels. Wood struck out a quarter of the batters he faced, and while he’s never going to totally escape the skepticism, Wood looked like he was on to something. Then 2015 happened, and everything got worse. Wood found himself on the outside of the Dodgers’ rotation, looking in.

There’s a reason the Dodgers assembled so much depth, though — they knew they might run into injury problems, and already, it looks like Wood is going to be needed. That would be a good opportunity for anyone, but Wood feels like this is a chance to show off some adjustments he’s made. Everyone who shows up to spring training has a path to get better. Yet Wood isn’t trying to do anything new. If anything, he’s worked to be more like the Wood of old.

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Cam Bedrosian features a fastball with velocity and jump. The 24-year-old right-hander’s four-seamer averaged 94.4 mph last year. What he lacks is consistency and command. He fanned more a batter per inning in 34 appearances out of the Angels bullpen, but his ERA was an unseemly 5.40.

The son of former All-Star closer Steve Bedrosian, and the 29th-overall pick in the 2010 draft, Bedrosian augments his heater with sliders and a modicum of changeups. The former flashes plus, but doesn’t always break as planned. The latter — a pitch he’s considered scrapping — has been a minus.

Bedrosian discussed his repertoire, and where he needs to locate in order to be effective, at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

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Bedrosian on having a high four-seam spin rate: “The first time I heard that was last year. I’d heard about spin rate, but didn’t really know much about it. A couple guys on our team were talking about it, and I guess I was one of the leaders. I knew what my ball did, but I never put the two together and assumed I had a high spin rate. I know there are team that look at that.

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How much can a one-dollar bill buy? Well, one dollar’s worth, right? But, what happens to that dollar after you spend it? It goes to someone else and then they spend it and it goes to someone else and they spend it and on and on down the line. In 2014, the average one-dollar bill had bought $638 worth of goods and services by the time it was removed from circulation. There’s even a term for this phenomenon — one with which, as a baseball fan, you’re likely familiar, although in a different context. It’s called the “velocity of money,” and you can see how this might tell us something useful about the economy.

Of course, it tells us nothing useful about baseball players. But what about baseball players themselves? Do ballplayers have a velocity? Some do, it would seem.

Unlike dollar bills, ballplayers are all a little bit different from each other in ways that alter their value. But like dollar bills, baseball players are used as currency to make trades for other baseball players. To figure out a player’s “velocity,” we could add up the total value of all the players teams acquired in exchange for him since the time they were traded for each other. We’re not concerned for which team that value was generated or how much the player was paid at the time. The only issue here is how much value an individual player has generated in terms of total career value in return.

Take, for example, the case of Mark Teixeira. Despite having now spent over half his career with the New York Yankees, Teixeira was integral not merely to one, but two, relatively high-profile deals — first for Casey Kotchman and then, in a second deal, Elvis Andrus, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia. Kotchman has been worth a total of -0.1 WAR since he was dealt for Teixeira, while Andrus, Feliz, Harrison, and Saltalamacchia have been worth 18.7, 4.7, 7.5, and 8.9, respectively. Thus, Teixeira has bought 39.7 WAR over the life of his career. That figure, just under 40 wins, represents his “velocity.”

When I first came up with this idea, I thought the thing to do was to explain the concept and then apply it to a comprehensive list of all transactions and develop a list of players who’ve produced the highest velocity in their careers. Sounds vaguely interesting, right? Okay, let’s do this!

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Last season, major-league baseball teams, on average, used 23 different position players throughout the course of the year. On Opening Day, most every club will carry 13, and it’s easy to just think of that as this year’s team. Those 13 guys are the team that’s there on Opening Day, that’s the team that will be there at the All-Star break, and, God willing, that’s the team that will be there come playoff time.

Of course, that isn’t ever the case, and I don’t mean to question your intelligence by assuming you might actually believe the New York Yankees were only going to use 13 position players this year. It’s just, sometimes, when you start mapping out a season in your head for a certain team with World Series aspirations, it’s easy to forget in March that, “Oh yeah, Pete Kozma is probably going to have to play for the Yankees at some point this year.”

Backups are going to play, and, like any player, backups are going to have to try and make an impact for some contending ballclubs. Most won’t. But some will! Some of these guys are really going to matter. And it’s probably worth exploring who might stand the best chance.

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Now that all the possible arbitration cases have been settled and all the offseason’s major free agents signed (apologies to David Freese and Austin Jackson), teams can turn their respective attentions towards locking up young players to contract extensions that buy out potentially expensive free-agent seasons. Earlier this week, the Royals and Salvador Perez agreed to a deal, although that amounted more to the restructuring of a previous deal and less a typical extension. Rather, the first standard pre-arbitration extension of the spring comes from the St. Louis Cardinals, who could get a decent bargain in Kolten Wong despite the second baseman’s lack of huge upside.

Wong’s service-time situation made him an ideal candidate for a contract extension. Wong is one year away from arbitration, so he was looking at the Major League Baseball minimum salary (or something very close to it) this season, with three seasons of arbitration to follow before he could hit free agency. The contract with the Cardinals is for five years and $24.5 million, with a $12.5 million option with a $1 million dollar buyout for the sixth season, making the guarantee $25.5 million. The guarantee is fairly low and has the potential to buy out two seasons of free agency when Wong will be 29 and 30 years old, respectively. Wong has shown himself to be an average player in his two full seasons in the big leagues and continuing to be average will make this deal a worthwhile one for the Cardinals — although Wong has shown some potential for more.

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Maybe you remember, but a couple of years ago, Bill James went on a rant about ground-ball pitchers. It started with a bang:

Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball. Make a list of the best pitchers in baseball, in any era, and what you will find is that 80% of them are not ground ball pitchers. They’re fly ball pitchers.

And it got louder. James felt that they got injured often, and flamed out. “They’re great for two years, and then they blow up,” he wrote. “Always.”

The response was swift.

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL).

Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Miami Marlins. In this companion piece, I look at that same Miami farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Marlins have the worst farm system in baseball according to KATOH. They’re even worse than the Angels. As you’ll see below, there isn’t much to get excited about in Miami’s system, especially from a statistical standpoint.

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