Over the last month, a lot of players have elected to forego participation in future free agent classes by signing contract extensions. Ten players within two years of free agency have signed contracts worth more than $50 million, totaling over one billion dollars in future guarantees. The list includes the best player in baseball, two of the very best pitchers in the game, and multiple other MVP candidates. It’s hard to get a sense how much of signing these contracts is due to players trying to avoid free agency, and much is due to teams simply having boatloads of cash and happily paying their star players to stick around. Earlier today, we published Opening Day payroll numbers showing another decline, with these extensions having little effect on current salaries. To help make some sense of all these extensions, there is a survey below that might help answer some of our questions.

The survey is relatively simple one, asking two basic questions about each of the 10 players who signed extensions, as well as one other rumored to have been in talks. The first question gets at how good the player is now by asking what type of contract he would have received had he been on the open market this past offseason. While I could ask how the player did with his extension, the answer can be kind of mushy. Instead, I’ll ask you to project in the future, and based on what you know about the player now, estimate what the player would receive in free agency when he would have become eligible. For all but the the last three extensions, that period is after the current season.

The relevant player pages with projections are linked below, with the survey to follow.

• • Nolan Arenado
  • Paul Goldschmidt
  • Aaron Hicks
  • Miles Mikolas
  • Chris Sale
  • Justin Verlander
  • Anthony Rendon
  • Mike Trout
  • Jacob deGrom
  • Kyle Hendricks
  • Xander Bogaerts

Thanks for your help.

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for Yusei Kikuchi. Not only did he see his first action as a major leaguer, a well-documented dream of his since his high school days, but his father passed away after a long battle against cancer. He is staying in the United States in accordance with his father’s wish that he concentrate on baseball. It is quite hard to imagine what the young pitcher must be feeling, and we wish for the best for him and his family in this difficult time.

Kikuchi has made two starts for the Mariners. While some data exists from his days in the NPB, MLB presents a new challenge. We can’t reach any grand conclusions about him as a major leaguer yet, but we can make observations and possibly, some extrapolations. At this moment, here are the basic numbers: 10.2 innings pitched, five hits, three earned runs, two home runs, eight strikeouts, and one walk. Kikuchi currently has a 2.53 ERA and a 4.25 FIP. It’s too early to make any calls, but Seattle has got to be pleased with the return so far.

Our analysis of this limited sample becomes trickier because we only have Statcast data for one of his starts. His Tokyo start – you know, the one where Ichiro announced his retirement mid-game – is not registered there because the Tokyo Dome isn’t equipped with Trackman or PITCHf/x cameras. So, we have his 91-pitch start against the Red Sox on March 29, which is quite a small sample to work with. Kikuchi’s tendencies could change as he pitches in the majors and adjusts to either his strengths or hitters’ weaknesses (or both). With those the caveats understood, his early efforts still merit examination.

Let’s start with the obvious here: the fastball. Since he was an acclaimed prospect at the Hanamaki Higashi High, Kikuchi has been known in Japan for his fastball velocity. In 2017, he set what was then an NPB record for the fastest pitch recorded by a left-handed pitcher with a 158 kmph (roughly 98 mph), though it should be noted that his average fastball velocity was 148.6 kmph (around 92.3 mph). In 2018, his velocity slipped a bit. According to Delta, an NPB sabermetrics site, it went down to 147.3 kmph (around 91.5 mph) last year. He suffered shoulder tightness that was later diagnosed as decreased functionality of shoulder last year, so that seems to have played a part in the decline in velocity. Of all his pitches, the fastball is the only one that Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel did not describe as above average in their write up of Kikuchi for in this year’s top 100.

Against the Red Sox, Kikuchi averaged at 93.1 mph. Statcast had him as high as 95.4 mph. It is not Ohtani-esque big velocity, but it is a range that should work in the majors, especially if he can maintain it through starts consistently locate it like this:

By average velocity, he’s comparable to the likes of David Price and Sean Newcomb. Maybe he’ll gain a tick or two as the season goes on or maybe he’ll get worn down. I don’t know. But as far as the velocity goes, Kikuchi can say he belongs in the majors. One thing of note is that his fastball only induced a whiff once out of the 43 times he threw the pitch. Statcast measured the pitch’s average spin rate at 2,173 rpm. According to Travis Sawchik, an average fastball around 93-94 mph measures out to 2,240 to 2,300 rpm. At least for that one start, his fastball was not seen to be a swing-and-miss weapon, as his velocity would indicate. Obviously, Kikuchi has arm strength, but not all 93 mph fastballs are created equally. Luckily for him, he has another tool in his toolbox that drew many more swings-and-misses: his slider.

Kikuchi’s slider features a nasty 10-5 tilt. He used it as a swing-and-miss pitch in Japan, and he’s used it as one in his early going in the majors as well. Against Boston, he generated seven whiffs from 22 sliders used, which is pretty good! Here’s one to Xander Bogaerts that I feel is representative of how he likes to use the pitch.

And here’s one to Sam Travis that had a particularly vicious bite.

Looking at Kikuchi’s slider heatmap from that game, we see a lot of low and inside pitches to the right-handed heavy Sox lineup. Being aware of his pitch tendencies from the NPB, I’d assume he meant to locate them that way as well. It’s hard to draw a conclusion at this moment, but Kikuchi’s slider has been rated above-average, as noted by Eric and Kiley. Future value grades don’t always come to fruition, but I would say that Kikuchi’s slider could forecast well in the majors.

As for the bad, Kikuchi did not necessarily avoid the meat of the zone. Here is his pitch heatmap:

The good here is that Kikuchi located well to the inside edge versus right-handed hitters, and away versus left-handed hitters. However, there’s that big dark and red circle towards the middle-up part of the strike zone that indicates that he was also prone to leaving pitches “up there.” FanGraphs rated his command as a 45-grade, which is just below major league average. As of this moment, Kikuchi has thrown 64% of his pitches for strikes and allowed only one walk in 10.2 innings pitched. Those are good control numbers. Command is a different thing. The Red Sox hitters were much less than forgiving on Kikuchi’s mistake pitches.

Here’s J.D. Martinez going yard on a fastball right down the middle. The catcher had his glove up and in, but the ball missed the spot and Martinez drove it over the center field fence.

Here’s another home run allowed, this time against Xander Bogaerts. The explanation is simple – the catcher appears to have wanted it down and away but the fastball went right down the middle, which is likely to be punished by many major league hitters.

Pitching is extremely hard. You must stand a mark and locate each pitch into a glove size smaller than a pie tin from 60 feet 6 inches away. But it’s also the nature of the business – if you miss even so slightly, major league-caliber hitters can hit it a long way. It is worth noting that every pitcher makes mistakes. It’s the matter of minimizing the amount of them. There will be days when Kikuchi will makes fewer mistakes, and there will probably be days he makes more.

What’s curious for now is that Kikuchi has noticeably bumped up his curveball usage. Here’s the chart of his March 29 start versus his 2018 pitch data with the Seibu Lions, thanks to the NPB sabermetric website Delta.

It’s an interesting bump. He never threw his curve more than 11.1% in a season with the Seibu Lions. He was known for his fastball/slider mix in Japan. The curveball, according to multiple scouting reports, was a third pitch that he would use to give different looks. And it’s not just his start against the Red Sox either. Over at Lookout Landing, Jake Mailhot recorded Kikuchi’s pitch data by hand during the Athletics game in the Tokyo Dome. The chart below indicates that Kikuchi has shown very similar pitch mix for his first two starts as a big leaguer.

One theory on why Kikuchi increased his curveball usage lies in data. Last June, Jim Allen of Kyodo News wrote on how Kikuchi relies on data to make adjustments to things like his release point and extension. I’m not sure how much attention he puts on his pitch metrics, but his curveball does grade out well on Statcast. Take a look at his pitch data from Baseball Savant:

Not only does an effective curveball give hitters another thing to worry about, but the velocity difference can also make his heater stand out more. Here’s a curveball that he threw to the reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts. Betts reacted like he was not expecting this pitch. He held up a for a microsecond and got his bat head out, but made weak contact that ended up being a groundout.

He didn’t generate any whiff with the pitch, but it induced two bits of weak contact for an overall .124 xBA. He also used it to get ahead in counts. Out of 18 curves thrown, nine of them were called strikes. Here’s one of them to Betts.

Kikuchi has had two decent starts and the pitch has worked well, so I don’t anticipate him making drastic changes anytime soon. It will be something to monitor, though. History has shown that many successful pitchers – Tanaka, for instance – have demonstrated the ability to modify their approach to survive in the majors. As time goes on, major league teams will have a book on how to approach Kikuchi. Once they know better what to expect, I don’t know how successful they’ll hit against him, but surviving in the majors involves series of adjustments. If Kikuchi runs into a harder time getting hitters out, I would expect him to take a different approach.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Kikuchi seemed to struggle when facing the order the third time around. In a very small sample, Kikuchi faced five batters a third time through the order between the A’s and Red Sox games, and allowed two hits, including that aforementioned JD Martinez home run. Again, it is hard to draw conclusions out of five-batter sample, but the concern is not unfounded. The lack of a big fastball could become a problem late in games in instances where he struggles to give hitters different looks. As Bill Petti has written for FanGraphs about how pitchers with a big fastball — who can maintain that velocity late in games — are more likely to pitch deeper.

There will be so much more Kikuchi to watch. Personally, I’ve waited for awhile for him to arrive to the majors, as I’ve written about the lefty a couple of times in the past. Two starts in, Kikuchi gave his team a real chance to win on both occasions. For a starting pitcher, there’s not a lot more you can ask for.

Earlier this offseason, I wrote that even if everything broke right for the free agents who remained on the market, we’d see a roughly one percent increase in Opening Day payrolls compared to last year. At the time, I cautioned that things were not likely to break right for the remaining free agents, and that a similar exercise the year prior ended with a one percent drop on Opening Day. Even worse for the players, that one percent drop last season turned into a 2.5% drop by season’s end. Opening Day payrolls are down again in 2019 by roughly the same amount as last year. If last season’s scenario were to repeat itself, the players will be looking at a half-billion dollar swing in revenues to owners in 2019 alone even if we assume that the split between players and owners was 50/50 two seasons ago.

As we begin the 2019 season, here’s a look at every team’s Opening Day payroll, per Cot’s Contracts, which includes a team’s 25-man roster plus whatever other obligations they’ve accrued to players who are on the injured list or no longer with the club.

The Red Sox, coming off their World Series win and the highest major league payroll in 2018, look poised to repeat at least one of those designations this season with a decent shot at both. The Yankees appear just above $200 million this season after a major decline last season, though the team first crossed the $200 million barrier back in 2005, so it is hardly heady territory for them. The Cubs have seen their payroll rise as they try to augment their World Series-winning core with free agents, though they sat this winter out. The Nationals kept up spending after Bryce Harper’s departure, and Los Angeles looks to be trying to stay under the competitive balance tax for the second straight season after averaging a figure more than $50 million higher the previous three seasons. At the lower end of the spectrum, we see the usual suspects of smaller-market teams and traditionally weak-spenders. Read the rest of this entry »

As you’ve no doubt heard, we’re living in a golden age for position players pitching. Don’t believe me? Read the copious articles written about it in the past few years. At this point, you know the broad strokes of the genre. You know that position players are pitching a lot more often these days. You know that it’s funny because they’re not that good at pitching, but also funny because they’re not as bad as you’d think.

It’s gotten so common, so normal, that less than a week into the 2019 season, we’ve already had a game where position players pitched on both sides. That game had a little bit of everything: John Ryan Murphy was terrible, allowing seven runs in two innings. Russell Martin was perplexingly effective, setting the side down in order in his one inning of work to close out the Dodgers 18-5 win over the Diamondbacks. He was the first full-time position player to close out the ninth inning of a game since 1963.

There was one thing missing from that game, though — neither “pitcher” recorded a strikeout, and strikeouts have been, in my opinion, criminally under-reported in all the coverage of position-player pitchers. Those embarrassing-but-not-that-embarrassing pitching lines? They were compiled against real, honest-to-god major league hitters (and also occasionally pitchers pretending to be major league batters). We all know that position players pitch well enough to occasionally get strikeouts, and that’s a pretty great fact. Take a minute, though, to consider this: the pseudo-pitcher’s small triumph is also the batter’s great failure. He just struck out, the most miserable feeling in baseball, and he did it against a guy who’s out there goofing around.

In 2018, position-player pitchers struck out 22 batters. On the one hand, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but on the other hand — that’s a lot! Still, though, not all of these strikeouts were created equal. There’s a lot of distance between Gerrit Cole striking out against a utility infielder and Eugenio Suarez going down on strikes against a backup catcher. I wanted to chronicle this, because in a year there might be too many strikeouts for it to be interesting or too few to devote an article to. I sat down and watched all 22 strikeouts and separated them into tiers of embarrassment. These guys might be multi-millionaires. They might be unfathomably strong and coordinated baseball machines, but sometimes they mess up the easiest tasks. They’re just like us. Who couldn’t relate to that?
Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Corbin Burnes, Ty Buttrey, and Steve Cishek — on how they learned and developed their sliders.

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Corbin Burnes, Milwaukee Brewers

“Coming out of high school I was mainly fastball-curveball-changeup. When I got to college, my coach approached me and said, ‘Hey, what do you think about throwing a slider?’ I was all for it. My fastball had a little bit of cutting action, so if we could kind of extend that cut, it would make for a good deception pitch off my fastball.

“I’ve tinkered with grips a little over the years. What I’ve come to is basically … it’s like my four-seam fastball, but with a little pressure adjustment. Originally it was going to be more of an extended cutter — we were going to try to keep it hard — but the more I threw it, the more it turned into a slider. That was more natural for me. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers came within one win of a trip to the World Series last year thanks in part to the performance of a dominant bullpen that helped to offset a shaky, injury-wracked rotation. Thus far this spring, however, that bullpen has borne the brunt of the Brewers’ injuries. With Jeremy Jeffress having already started the season on the injury list due to shoulder weakness, the team just suffered an even bigger loss, as Corey Knebel revealed on Friday that he will undergo Tommy John surgery.

The 27-year-old Knebel originally suffered a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in 2014, while pitching for the Rangers’ Triple-A Round Rock affiliate. He was just over a year into his professional career at that point, having been chosen as a supplemental first-round pick by the Tigers out of the University of Texas in 2013, then dealt to the Rangers in a July 2014 trade involving Joakim Soria. The injury wasn’t severe enough to require TJS, so he rehabbed it and kept pitching, establishing himself in the majors after being traded to the Brewers in the Yovani Gallardo deal in 2015, then taking over closer duties from the struggling Neftali Feliz in 2017. That year, he earned All-Star honors while saving 39 games, making an NL-high 76 appearances, and pitching to a 1.78 ERA, 2.53 FIP, and 2.7 WAR; the last mark ranked fourth in the majors among relievers with at least 50 innings.

The 2018 season was a different story for Knebel. He made just three appearances before missing a month due to a left hamstring strain, and pitched so erratically that he was sent back to Triple-A Colorado Springs with a 5.08 ERA and 4.29 FIP in late August. Fortunately for the Brewers, he was thoroughly dominant upon returning, holding batters to a .096/.175/.135 line while striking out 33 of the 57 he faced in 16.1 scoreless innings through the end of the regular season, then striking out 14 out of 33 hitters over 10 postseason innings while allowing just one run. Overall, his 3.58 ERA was more than double his 2017 mark, though his 3.03 FIP wasn’t so far removed; in both seasons, he posted top-five strikeout rates (40.8% in 2017, 39.5% last year) and top 10 K-BB% (27.8% and 29.6%, respectively), with a jump in home run rate (from 0.71 per nine to 1.14) the big difference. Still, between that and a lesser workload (from 76 innings to 55.1), his WAR dropped from 2.7 to 1.0. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring training numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt, but there’s no denying that Ryan McMahon has been a monster in the month of March. In 59 Cactus League at bats, the Colorado Rockies infielder banged out 25 hits while slashing a behemothic .424/.470/.763. His 1.233 OPS led the leaderboards in Arizona and Florida alike.

No, he isn’t about to approach those numbers in games that count — this isn’t Ty Cobb we’re talking about — but the 24-year-old is being counted on to provide value to the Rockies lineup. Three games into the regular season, he’s done just that. McMahon has four hits, including a pair of doubles, plus two walks, in a dozen plate appearances. Lilliputian sample size? Sure, but it’s nonetheless a nice start for the 2013 second-round pick.

His 2018 rookie season was a disappointment. In 202 big-league PAS, he fanned 64 times, and logged a .683 OPS. That came on the heels of spring training numbers which, while not as heady as this year’s, suggested he was ready to rake at the highest level. Instead, he scuffled.

McMahon is self-aware enough not to have forgotten last year. Asked a few weeks ago about his scorching spring, he reminded reporters that it had only been a few dozen at bats — spring training at bats, no less — and that “Baseball is a very humbling game. You never have it all the way figured out.” Read the rest of this entry »

Phillies third baseman Maikel Franco has been with the Phillies since signing as an international free agent in 2010, and since he made his major league debut in 2014, the Phillies haven’t had a winning season. Before this season, he had only 59 career plate appearances batting eighth in the order. During the Phillies’ rebuild, Franco was a middle-of-the-order bat, despite never truly evolving into one. Of his career 2,115 plate appearances, over half of them (1,068) came in either the No. 3 or No. 4 hole.

On Thursday, Franco batted eighth, not because of any personal struggles on his part, but because of the Phillies’ depth up and down their lineup. In the sixth inning, in a 3-2 count (and on the seventh pitch of the at-bat), Franco turned on a Shane Carle fastball and drove a three-run home run into the left field seats. With one swing of the bat, the Phillies’ 3-1 lead became 6-1, with this at-bat serving as the icing on the cake in the Phillies’ eventual 10-4 win.

“Our eight-hole guy hit a three-run homer,” Phillies outfielder Andrew McCutchen told MLB.com. “It just shows you how deep the lineup is. Franco, he’s not an eight-hole hitter. Not the typical one. It just shows you what we can do, one through eight. Yeah, we can do it on a daily basis. It’s not going to be one or two guys that’s picking the team up, we’re going to picking each other up because we have that type of lineup to do it.”

Why did this one at-bat in this one Opening Day game pique my interest? It’s because this at-bat might foreshadow one of the key themes of the 2019 Phillies season: depth. Read the rest of this entry »

Yasiel Puig may or may not have been swinging a Birdman in yesterday’s opener. The Cincinnati Reds slugger — according to Birdman Bat founder Gary Malec — is “one of those guys who’ll you see go back and forth” with bat models over the course of a season. Last year, several of the minus-twos and minus-threes Puig wielded were supplied by Malec’s Bay-Area company.

If you’re not a player yourself, “minus-two” and “minus-three” are likely unfamiliar terms. How bats are manufactured, regulated by MLB, and typically purchased are probably also foreign to you. Frankly, there’s a decent chance you haven’t even put any thought into those things. You simply know that players swing bats, and sometimes those bats propel baseballs far distances.

Two members of the Birdman crew — Lars Anderson and Cody Silveria — were pleased to inform me that Puig’s longest 2018 home run came off the barrel of one of their bats. Ditto the ball Puig hit with the highest exit velocity, and San Francisco Giants outfielder Chris Shaw’s first big-league homer. More importantly — at least in terms of the purpose of this article — they explained how the bat business works.

With continuity and flow in mind, Anderson’s and Silveria’s voices aren’t differentiated within the text of this interview. The conversation itself took place during the Winter Meetings.

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Anderson and Silveria: “There are currently 35 licensed bat companies — Birdman was licensed in January 2018 — and to get certified you have to go through a process. You pay a fee. You do a blanket insurance policy. You send two test bats to the TECO test lab in Wisconsin. Then you’re sent to a test course — this is one 12-hour day — where they show you how to do the slope-of-grain test, which is the ink dots you see on all major league bats. This is to make sure the safety of the wood is good. Read the rest of this entry »

The 2019 baseball season is already officially underway, though what transpired at the Tokyo Dome last week between the A’s and Mariners barely registered to these bleary eyes beyond Ichiro Suzuki’s stirring farewell, what with the time difference. As the stateside version of Opening Day has approached, I’ve been asked, again and again while doing radio spots, variants of the question, “What are you most looking forward to about this season?” Some of my answers have already vanished into the ether, but I figured it would be worthwhile to take a break from squinting at depth charts and contract extensions long enough to jot down a set for posterity.

Bryce Harper and Manny Machado changing the conversation

As this pair of generational talents explored free agency in pursuit of record-setting paydays, we heard endless speculation about each player’s destination, endless excuses about why certain teams were not interested, and far more about the pair’s flaws than their virtues. The critiques came from all directions. Some of them were diatribes of the get-off-my-lawn variety, or declarations about how they wouldn’t fit with this team or that because reasons. Some of them were the usual, often misinformed, talk radio-fueled blather about how higher salaries will drive up ticket prices (nope), how these two can’t possibly be worth $300 million, and how their occasional failures to hustle portend the downfall of America. That said, some of the critiques were legitimate, pointing out Harper’s difficulties with the shift, his struggles to stay healthy, and his curiously bad defensive metrics, or Machado’s suspect work in his return to shortstop and his longstanding penchant for finding mischief on the field in the form of questionable plays.

Enough already. As Reggie Jackson once said, “When you have the bat in your hand, you can always change the story.” At long last, Harper and Machado can take the field for their new teams, and let their bats, and the rest of their play, do the talking.

Mike Trout climbing the JAWS rankings

Like any baseball fan with a pulse, I always want to see what Trout does, as he’s a perennial MVP candidate who’s capable of towering homers, dazzling speed on the bases, and spectacular catches in the outfield. And while I don’t intend to bury my nose in a spreadsheet every time he comes to bat, with an eye towards history, I’m especially enjoying Trout’s progress when it comes to my JAWS metric.

Trout began last season ranked 10th among center fielders, with his career WAR, seven-year peak WAR, and JAWS all at 55.2 (using Baseball-Reference’s numbers). Despite some minor adjustments to his body of work that erased about one win across the board, by May 22 of his seventh full major league season, he surpassed the JAWS standard at the position, the average of each Hall of Fame center fielder’s career and peak bWARs. By season’s end, Trout leapfrogged Kenny Lofton, Carlos Beltran, and Duke Snider to climb to seventh in JAWS (64.0) and fourth in peak (63.8). He should be able to climb two spots in JAWS this year. Joe DiMaggio (78.1/51.0/64.5) is just half a point ahead of Trout; around the time he gets to 1.0 WAR, he’ll move into sixth. With an 8.2 bWAR season — which would be his sixth-best — he would tie fifth-ranked Ken Griffey in JAWS (68.9) and overtake Mickey Mantle (64.8) for third in peak, behind only Willie Mays (73.7) and Ty Cobb (69.2). All this can be done before Trout completes his ninth major league season, one short of officially qualifying for the Hall of Fame.

Meanwhile, I can’t believe it’s taken me nearly a decade to figure this out, but Trout will be fully qualified for the Hall, reaching 10 seasons in the majors, in 2020, which will mark my 10th year as a BBWAA member and thus my eligibility to vote in that winter’s Hall of Fame election (the 2021 ballot).

A potential four-team race in the NL East

With four teams forecast for at least 84 wins, this division is the deepest as far as contenders go, and it offers so many story lines as well as the potential for plenty of #TeamEntropy fun. The Phillies added Harper, Andrew McCutchen, J.T. Realmuto, David Robertson, and Jean Segura to a team that spent five months of the 2018 season contending and one month stinking on ice. The Nationals lost Harper but added Patrick Corbin, Brian Dozier, Yan Gomes, Trevor Rosenthal, and Anibal Sanchez, plus they can look forward to full seasons of Juan Soto and Victor Robles, and hopefully better health for Stephen Strasburg and Sean Doolittle as well. The Mets brought in a new, unorthodox general manager in former agent Brodie Van Wagenin and added Robinson Cano, Edwin Diaz, Jed Lowrie, and Wilson Ramos, plus they finally nailed down that much-needed Jacob deGrom extension. The Braves, who broke a streak of four straight losing seasons to win the division last year, had a relatively quiet and perhaps counterproductive winter, with Josh Donaldson practically their only addition of note besides prodigal son Brian McCann, but they’ll get a full season of Ronald Acuna Jr. I can’t wait to see how this all plays out.

The Opening Day arrivals of Peter Alonso, Eloy Jimenez, and Fernando Tatis Jr.

In an industry where service time manipulation has become all too common, it’s refreshing to see the Mets, White Sox, and Padres break camp with their highly touted rookies —respectively 48th, eighth, and third on our most recent Top 100 Prospects list — instead of fumfering about defense, early-season playing time, checklists, conditioning, and long-term plans. Granted, both Alonso and Jimenez should have debuted last season, but we can chalk up at least some of the responsibility for the former’s non-promotion to the mess of the Mets front office during Sandy Alderson’s health-related leave of absence. And yes, it took the latter agreeing to an extension that may limit his earning power in the long run to make this happen. But at a time when too few teams are doing their best to win in 2019, it’s good to see these players’ respective teams declaring that these kids are among their best 25 players, and their time is now — even if, as is the case for the White Sox and Padres, this may not be a year in which they contend for a playoff spot.

Yes, the kids might take their lumps at the big league level initially, as just about every rookie does. There are legitimate questions about defense for both Alonso and Jimenez, and about the strikeout rate of Tatis, who’s making the jump after a total of 102 games at Double-A and none at Triple-A; his 2018 campaign ended in late July, when he fractured his left thumb and needed season-ending surgery. At some point, however, the learning at the big league level has to begin. These youngsters have very little to gain by riding more buses and beating more bushes, and likewise for their teams when it comes to answering the questions about “When is ____ coming?”

The eventual arrival of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.

Like Alonso and Jimenez, the number one prospect on our list should have debuted last year, given that he hit a combined .381/.437/.636 with 20 homers in 408 PA at four minor league stops last year (mostly at Double-A and Triple-A). The Blue Jays lead the league in shoveling horse manure concerning why he hasn’t arrived, and they’ve very clearly done their best to game his service clock, though last year’s left knee injury and this spring’s oblique strain have given them some cover. The situation stinks, and it will continue to stink even after Guerrero arrives, presumably sometime in April, because he’s being taken advantage of — within the rules, perhaps, but that’s not to excuse the practice — and he’ll feel the financial hit down the road.

But oh, will the 20-year-old son of a Hall of Famer be a treat to watch given his 80-grade raw power, his 70-grade hit tool, and a youthful exuberance that radiates through the highlight clips. This kid is going to be a whole lot of fun.

The return of Corey Seager

Seager sometimes gets overlooked in cataloging the game’s brightest young stars, but thanks to his prowess on both sides of the ball — his power, his penchant for getting on base, his glovework — he led all shortstops in WAR in both 2016 (7.0) and ’17 (5.9), his age-22 and -23 seasons. After being bothered by a right elbow problem in late 2017, he played just 26 games last year before a torn UCL necessitated Tommy John surgery, and in August, he needed surgery to repair a torn left hip labrum. The Dodgers managed to make it back to the World Series without him, a testament to their depth, and major league shortstops turned in their best offensive showing on record (97 wRC+), a testament to the wealth of talent at the position. Yet everybody will be better off with the soon-to-be-25-year-old back where he belongs.

The last stand of CC Sabathia

After mulling retirement for most of last year, the big man decided to give it one more go, though he’s starting the year on the disabled list as he recovers from an offseason heart procedure and yet another knee surgery. At 38 years old, the former Cy Young winner is no longer the dominant power pitcher that he once was, but between swapping out his four-seam fastball for a cutter, and his use of a brace to support a right knee hobbled by bone-on-bone arthritis, he’s undergone a fascinating reinvention. What he’s lost in velocity, he’s gained in wiliness, and in fact, he’s become an expert at generating soft contact; his average exit velo of 84.4 mph placed him in the 98th percentile last year, and he’s been in the 96th percentile or better in his past three seasons.

What’s more, Sabathia’s confrontation with his alcoholism has further humanized his transformation while underscoring his status as a pillar of the Yankees’ clubhouse, a mentor to so many young players, and an all-around mensch. I’ve had a soft spot for the pitcher and the man since forever, particularly while watching him carry the 2008 Brewers and 2009 Yankees on his back, and I look forward to watching him celebrate both his 250th win (he’s at 246) and 3,000th strikeout (he’s at 2,986). It’s a statistical quirk that only two other southpaws (Steve Carlton and Randy Johnson) have gotten to that milestone, but it’s fine company nonetheless, and it certainly won’t hurt in his quest to reach Cooperstown.

Michael Lorenzen’s two-way experiment

Tommy John surgery has robbed us of Shohei Ohtani’s presence on the mound in 2019, but the majors won’t be entirely devoid of two-way players thanks chiefly to Lorenzen, the only member of the quartet I highlighted last month (Kaleb Cowart, Matt Davidson, and Jared Walsh were the others) to make an Opening Day roster. A solid righty reliever for the Reds, Lorenzen has more than a little pop in his bat; last year, he clubbed four homers in 34 PA while batting .290/.333/.710, and he’s belted six homers and maintained a 101 wRC+ through 92 PA during his four-year career. The Reds have given him reps in center field (his natural position at Cal State Fullerton) this spring, and intend to do so during the regular season, setting up a compelling experiment.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out, in part because it may require tweaking one of the rule changes that MLB announced for the 2020 season, namely an official designation for two-way players based upon pitching at least 20 innings and starting at least 20 games as a position player or designated hitter, with at least three plate appearances in each of those games. Barring injury, Lorenzen should easily meet the former requirement, but the latter is probably a stretch even with Nick Senzel starting the year on the injured list. What’s more, the new rule would also affect Ohtani, who won’t pitch at all this year. More flexibility is needed with the definition in order to prevent the stifling of innovation. Speaking of rules…

The Atlantic League’s experiments

Thanks to an unprecedented working agreement between MLB and the independent Atlantic League, the latter has introduced some rule changes for 2019 that may carry ramifications for future changes in MLB. The most radical, a midseason change of the pitching distance from 60-foot-6 to 62-foot-6, seems destined for disaster or near-immediate reconsideration, and I can’t blame Atlantic League pitchers for resenting the possibility of becoming guinea pigs. The rule changes also include the use of TrackMan radar to assist the home plate umpire in calling balls and strikes — yes, we’re getting Robot Umps Now, and we’ll see how the limitations of the technology play out — larger bases, the three-batter minimum for pitchers (something MLB plans for 2020), a prohibition of infield shifts (blech) and mound visits except for the case of injury (hmmm), reduced time between innings (to 1:45, 15 seconds shorter than MLB’s changes for this year).

The stated goal is to “create more balls in play, defensive action, baserunning, and improve player safety,” which seems worthwhile. Aside from the mound distance change, I’m eager to see how it all plays out, not because I believe all of these changes should be enacted but because the rule book is not sacrosanct. It’s beneficial for baseball to have a means of experimenting its way out of this current action-suppressed cul de sac rather than remaining static.

A new fan in the family

With a FanGraphs senior writer and an Athletic managing editor for parents, our daughter Robin has received plenty of exposure to baseball in her first 2 1/2 years, and she’s largely enjoyed it, particularly when she got to watch a Cape Cod League game from behind the backstop last summer and coined the phrase “baseball run away!” for a home run. That was a heartwarming moment, but nothing melted us more than when she pulled up on the couch one evening last week and asked, “Can we watch some baseball?” Hell yeah, we obliged.

Robin has already visited Yankee Stadium (2017) and MCU Park (home of the Brooklyn Cyclones) last summer. This year, with an afternoon nap no longer an obstacle, we’re planning to take her to Citi Field (a better ballpark experience than Yankee Stadium, regardless of age) and to Richmond County Bank Ballpark (home of the Staten Island Yankees) to complete her collection of New York City ballparks, as well as more Cape Cod League games. She doesn’t understand the rules yet, but she loves watching players run around and balls soar. While the odds are that someday she’ll rebel against whatever mom and dad hold dear, we’re determined to savor this time.