It’s obvious, now, that Taijuan Walker is going to enter the season as a member of the Mariners’ rotation. He survived an offseason of trade rumors and beat out the recently-demoted Roenis Elias, and this is the kind of thing that can happen when you’re a pitcher who allows but a single run in 25 spring innings. There was, though, a point at which it looked like Walker and Elias might share an intense competition. So Walker came out guns a’blazing, immediately throwing a fastball at 95 – 96. Some pitchers use spring training to build up arm strength. Walker began it strong.

Which makes him an interesting guy to analyze. And that, in turn, is facilitated by Walker throwing a lot of spring innings before PITCHf/x cameras. Over those innings, Walker’s allowed nine hits and four walks, to go with 24 strikeouts. It seems like it’s been something of an early breakthrough, with Walker refining his mechanics and adding some depth to a slider. It’s been clear from the day he was drafted that Walker would have a big-league-caliber fastball. Of greater importance has been a changeup, an offspeed weapon for Walker to use against lefties. It just so happens Walker has thrown plenty of changeups this month. It’s been a clear priority, for obvious reasons. What, then, is there to be learned from the evidence?

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For the second year in a row, the Blue Jays headed into spring training with no clear second baseman. Last year, their second base competition featured Ryan Goins, Maicer Izturis, Munenori Kawasaki, Chris Getz and Steve Tolleson. Unsurprisingly, this quintet ranked last in our preseason, second base positional power rankings with a collective projection of 0.1 WAR. Nonetheless, the Jays rolled with this group all season, and things got ugly. Real ugly. Blue Jays second basemen combined for 0.3 WAR last year, and 0.7 of that WAR came from Brett Lawrie, who was supposed to be the team’s third baseman, but filled at second for 32 games.

A year later, not much has changed. Goins, Izturis, Kawasaki and Tolleson are all still on the team’s depth chart, and once again, the Blue Jays checked in at number 30 in our second base power rankings. For the second consecutive year, Toronto’s outlook at at the keystone looks pretty dismal. But unlike last year, there’s reason for hope for Blue Jays fans. While last year’s cast of characters is still around, the team’s opening day second baseman will be someone new: 24-year-old rookie Devon Travis, who secured the job by hitting .352/.397/.463 this spring. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve already previewed the two western divisions, the NL and the AL. Today, we move into the middle of the country, and look at perhaps the most interesting division in baseball.

The Projected Standings

It’s a three team race at the top, with a couple of teams not quite willing to rebuild but also probably not good enough to contend. Let’s go team by team.

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Opening Day is now less than a week away, and we are compiling many pieces related to the final moves and decisions by teams before the season starts. This is also our last chance to cover the players who probably aren’t going to make it: the ones we might not see again until later in the season, next spring training, or at worst, ever again. The denouement of spring training builds excitement, yes, but it also brings disappointment for a whole group of players that are on the outside looking in when the cuts come.

Pat Venditte is likely to be one of those players. You’ve probably heard of him, because he’s a switch pitcher, and there aren’t many of those. By “aren’t many,” I mean effectively none. They are the equivalent of a religious miracle, talking cat, or a hot dog sandwich. Switch pitching may be the rarest of baseball skills, in fact: looking through the history books, it’s hard to find more than a handful of switch pitchers over the past 150 years. There were four documented in the late 19th-century, and only one in the 20th: Greg Harris pitched from both sides during an inning in 1995 for the Montreal Expos.

Harris actually pitched for 15 years as a right-hander before he decided to try being a left-hander in the second-to-last game he ever pitched in, because why not. For Harris, it was probably more of a case of him being able to throw a baseball left-handed rather than him actually being able to pitch left-handed.

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R.A. Dickey’s entire career has, essentially, been one giant experiment. You know the story by now. Dickey was drafted by the Texas Rangers back in 1996, and took a signing bonus for nearly $800,000 less than what was originally offered after team doctors discovered he just didn’t even have an ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow. Dickey scuffled through the minor and major leagues for more than a decade before reinventing himself as a knuckleballer and promptly becoming one of baseball’s best pitchers, winning a Cy Young Award in the process.

Dickey’s experiment, obviously, was the knuckleball. But around Dickey, other experiments followed. Like the Mets giving light-hitting catcher Josh Thole regular playing time due in large part to his ability to catch Dickey’s knuckleball. Catching a knuckleball is quite hard, you see. But Thole could do it, and the two built a strong rapport together.

Then, the Blue Jays took over the experiment by trading top prospects Travis d’Arnaud and Noah Syndergaard for Dickey, and, of course, his personal catcher, Thole. In Toronto, Thole’s position was reduced to exclusively serving as Dickey’s catcher. He couldn’t hit worth a lick, but he could catch Dickey’s dancing knuckler, and that was enough to keep him on the roster.

In the offseason, the Blue Jays signed Russell Martin to a contract worth $82 million, which, alongside incumbent Dioner Navarro, gave the Blue Jays something of a logjam at catcher if they wanted to continue carrying Dickey’s personal backstop on the roster.

Then, on Tuesday, some news:

Thole was sent to Buffalo today, so Russ Martin will catch the knuckleball. #bluejays

— Brendan Kennedy (@BKennedyStar) March 31, 2015

In 2015, a new R.A. Dickey experiment begins. Maybe you’d prefer to call it a Russell Martin experiment, because Dickey’s largely going to continue throwing his knuckler the same as he ever has. Martin is the one learning something new.
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Kris Bryant has been the talk of the baseball world this spring. Following Monday’s news that the Cubs had officially reassigned Bryant to the team’s minor league camp, speculation shifted from focusing on whether Bryant would make the Cubs’ opening day roster to whether Bryant or the Major League Baseball Players Association will challenge the demotion.

For its part, the MLBPA helped fuel this speculation in an official statement released on Monday following Bryant’s demotion:

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“I call him ‘Little Cutch,’” Victorino said, referring to Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen, the reigning NL MVP. “Watch him out there. His movements, everything, he’s like a little McCutchen.”

Shane Victorino on Mookie Betts, spoken in an interview last July.

Mookie-mania has taken over the Grapefruit League, as the Red Sox new centerfielder is #2 among all hitters this spring in batting average (.467), on-base percentage (.500), and slugging percentage (.867), causing others to see Victorino’s comparison as a lot less crazy than it sounded last summer.

On Monday, Ken Rosenthal asked a number of evaluators and many of Betts’ teammates about the comparison, and no one really pushed back too hard; David Ortiz even pushed the comparison further.

“I’d even go further,” Ortiz said. “He’s better than McCutchen at that time in McCutchen’s career. Go and double-check that.”

Ortiz isn’t wrong.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.

Carlos Carrasco is probably not the first to pull off the Carlos Carrasco, so perhaps I shouldn’t be terming it as such, but, recency wins over everything. Carrasco, for quite some time, was a frustrating and incomplete potential starting pitcher. Early last year, he worked out of the Indians’ rotation. He was subsequently moved to the bullpen, where his game unsurprisingly picked up. Then he moved back to the rotation, where his game more surprisingly maintained. Early as a starter, Carrasco’s fastball averaged about 93. Out of the bullpen, it averaged almost 96. Back in the rotation, it averaged about 96. Carrasco is now a sleeper who might be way too good to actually qualify as a sleeper.

Topically, Carrasco has this teammate, named Zach McAllister. Like Carrasco, McAllister has worked out of the Indians’ rotation in the past. Like Carrasco, he’s also been bumped to the bullpen. McAllister was just recently named the Indians’ No. 4 starting pitcher for 2015, prevailing over guys like Danny Salazar and the re-injured Gavin Floyd. Salazar’s the one with all the hype, on account of his extraordinarily electric arm. McAllister, though, might be something more than you figured. His assignment might not be only temporary, as there are signs he, too, is pulling off the Carrasco.

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Making the Phillies outfield isn’t exactly a challenge these days, especially with Domonic Brown slated to start the season on the disabled list. Herrera will likely be flanked by Ben Revere in left and some combination of Darin Ruff and Grady Sizemore in right. Cesar Hernandez is also in the mix, but he’s probably less consequential than any of the players I’ve already named. It comes as no surprise that the Phillies ranked in the bottom four for all three outfield spots in this year’s positional power rankings.

Even so, Herrera didn’t have his roster spot handed to him. He’s earned it with a strong spring. The 23-year-old has hit .321/.356/.339 this spring with 6 steals. He didn’t just beat up on A-Ball pitchers either. According to Baseball-Reference’s opponent quality metric, his average opponent has been a Quad-A pitcher, on average. Spring numbers aren’t all that predictive, but they also aren’t entirely useless. And for players like Herrera with such a limited track record against quality pitching, even the smallest piece of data helps. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Cubs made big news yesterday when they demoted Kris Bryant as he is clearly better than other players remaining on the major league roster. Leaving Bryant aside, there are several other prospects throughout the majors who will not get starting roles with their teams who might already be better than the players ahead of them, including fellow Cubs prospect Javier Baez. There are myriad reasons to keep a player in the minors, some related to service time, some related to player readiness, some related to lack of urgency to win, and some due to sunk costs already on the major league roster.

Below are four players who could help their team now, with three players on teams that could contend, but will likely not make the major league roster. Other players who were considered, but not discussed in depth below are Rob Refsnyder on the New York Yankees, Alex Meyer and Miguel Sano of the Minnesota Twins, Archie Bradley of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Joey Gallo of the Texas Rangers and potentially Micah Johnson of the Chicago White Sox. The numbers below come from the FanGraphs Depth Charts. All plate appearances are prorated to 600 and all innings pitched are prorated to 180.
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