The Texas Rangers have two good middle infielders, so the best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The St. Louis Cardinals have three good outfielders, so the second best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The Cardinals one glaring weakness is at shortstop. The Rangers spent all winter trying to trade for a young power hitting outfielder, only to fall short at the end.

So, naturally, there’s seemingly constant speculation about a possible trade between the two franchises. This speculation got pushed to the forefront on Tuesday, when Cardinals GM John Mozeliak was asked about the idea by Jim Bowden:

Mozeliak Cards GM just told us on Sirius 209/XM 89that if Jon Daniels calls him & offers him Profar for Tavares he would think about it

— JIM BOWDEN (@JimBowdenESPNxm) April 1, 2013

Mozeliak’s comment essentially boils down to “yes, I’d consider acquiring a 20-year-old potential superstar shortstop if I had the chance”, which, well, of course he would. There’s nothing there to suggest that the deal has been actually discussed by either organization, or that this hypothetical trade has any chance of happening. Even with Elvis Andrus signing his long term extension today, the Rangers still have plenty of options to keep Profar, and the Cardinals have other shortstop options that won’t require them to give up Taveras.

There’s a reason the #1 prospect in baseball — per Baseball America’s rankings, anyway — has never been traded in the season that he was considered be the best overall prospect in the game. A swap of the #1 and #2 prospects — technically, BA rated Taveras #3 this year, but given that Dylan Bundy is starting the season on the DL with elbow issues, we’ll just give them credit for flipping those two to better account for pitcher attrition — would be historically unique. It’s probably not going to happen. But, let’s just say it was on the table… does either side say no?

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Drafted 10th overall about nine months after some little-known guy named Peyton Manning unseated him as the starting quarterback at the University of Tennessee, Todd Helton has seen it all during his time in Colorado. He has not, however, aged very gracefully. At the age of 39 — and coming off a year in which he hit .238 in 69 games — he is once again tasked with proving there is still life in his aging bat. It will probably be his final season in a major league uniform.

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Know first that this began as a far more ambitious project. But the ambitious project didn’t pan out, and though ambition is noble, it isn’t something to be celebrated on its own. One cannot succeed without ambition, but at the same time, one cannot succeed without more than just ambition. What we’ve been left with, in the ruins of my attempt, is a little grab-bag of fun facts. I still find this stuff interesting, and it isn’t stuff you run across every day, but this could’ve been more. It probably never will be more.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make a huge difference how quickly a player can run from home to first. It does make some difference, but most hits will be hits no matter what. Yet it’s better to have speed than to not have speed, and one can’t really improve how quickly he runs. Not by the time he’s a professional baseball player, not when he’s trying to go 90 feet. I’ve recently become somewhat interested in timing players from the moment of contact to the first-base bag. More specifically, I was interested in timing Jesus Montero, but it turns out this isn’t very complicated to do. And we shouldn’t need a big sample size, because a player should run somewhere around his “true talent”, so to speak. The key is to isolate close plays. There will always be some variation, depending on any stumbles and on where the pitch was located and on so many things, but, scouts time players to the base. Why don’t we share in the fun? (The fun of knowledge)

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Some time ago, Brandon McCarthy asked a question about first pitches of seasons. McCarthy is neat and fun and smart and good and he recently dropped a FanGraphs reference in an article, so we pay attention to McCarthy, and to his question we issued a response. McCarthy was asking about offspeed frequency with the first pitch of a season. Turns out offspeed pitches are almost never thrown to begin a year, or at least that’s been the case during the PITCHf/x era. Things might’ve been the opposite before and we’d have no way of knowing because all that information is inaccessible if not unavailable and/or non-existent. It stands to reason that the fastball has always been the popular pick to kick things off.

McCarthy’s question got me interested in McCarthy’s question, but it also got me personally interested in first pitches of seasons in general. What gets thrown, where does it get thrown, and what do hitters do? As of Tuesday, every team in baseball has now played at least one game of the 2013 regular season. So every season is underway, so we can assemble a complete record of 2013’s first pitches. Are you also curious about these things? Are you not at all curious, but can you not pull yourself away from this article? Below, please find a thorough table, followed by more stuff commenting directly or indirectly on the table.

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With the closest Padres affiliate nearly 10 hours away from the Atlanta area, spring training is my only opportunity to scout Padres prospects. Last week, Dave Laurila and I tag teamed a piece on top catching prospect Austin Hedges. And while he was the most impressive position prospect in the organization, a pair of right handers ruled the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack did a good job this morning dissecting the adjustments Yu Darvish has made and how those have paid off in a big way, but there was one thing he didn’t mention that Darvish is also doing now – throwing harder.

Here are the average velocities for Darvish’s pitches from 2012 and then last night, per PitchF/x:

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Prospect lists are one of the best parts of the off-season. Marc Hulet published his top 100 yesterday as the culmination of several months of work, and Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, John Sickels and a plethora of websites have published others. Each group puts myriad hours into analyzing, calling, writing, editing, re-analyzing and finally publishing their work. But even after all that, they usually come to several different conclusions. I decided — instead of focusing on a specific list — to generate a list that combined each of these lists into one.

The idea of community or consensus lists isn’t new. Sites have done it before, but I’ve added some wrinkles:

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Marwin Gonzalez earned his hit to break up Yu Darvish’s perfect game last night. Darvish left a 90 MPH four-seam fastball out over the plate, and Gonzalez hit it hard back up the middle, just under Darvish’s glove. It was a mistake pitch. It was the only one from the 26-year-old Darvish last night in Houston.

For 26 batters, Darvish carved through the Astros lineup in his best start since his much-anticipated MLB debut last season. The 6-foot-5 righty struck out 14 of those 26 before Gonzalez finally managed to reach base safely. Darvish created lofty expectations with a tremendous run in his last eight starts of 2012 — 57.1 innings with a 2.35 ERA and 67-to-15 strikeout-to-walk ratio — and the adjustments he made late last year were present in his masterpiece last night.

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I nearly began this post with a story of how I arrived at the topic, involving Dave Cameron and email and Lucas Duda. Instead, I’ve chosen to begin this post by simply alluding to the story and moving on to the meat, because the story is irrelevant and uninteresting.

On Monday, the Brewers opened at home against the Rockies. Some familiar problems popped up — John Axford blew a save in the top of the ninth — but the Brewers ultimately emerged victorious, with Jonathan Lucroy making headlines by driving in the winning run. A walk-off sac fly doesn’t feel the same as a walk-off single or a walk-off dinger, but no one would ever accuse Lucroy of being the most electrifying player in baseball. He’s just a pretty good player on a pretty good team, and on Monday they happened to win together.

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