This post begins with a friendly reminder — specifically, that there are five teams in each of baseball’s six divisions. Given the noise around baseball for much of the offseason, one could be forgiven for thinking there were only four clubs in the American League East. Much of the chatter regarding the AL East this winter has centered around the formidability of the Yankees’ roster, the Red Sox’ (now successful) pursuit of J.D. Martinez, the imminent close of Baltimore’s competitive window, and the Rays’ sort of, kind of, not really teardown. It isn’t that the Blue Jays have done nothing — they’ve made several good trades and taken low-cost risks — it’s just that there have been a few more prominent stories and louder fanbases.

The most recent move out of Toronto continues the club’s offseason trend of reasonable, low-cost acquisitions. For a price of just $2.5 million, the signing of Seung-Hwan Oh — a player who, in 2016, recorded nearly three wins out of the bullpen — seems like a potential bargain.

Of course, he would not be available at this time of the offseason and at this price if he didn’t have some warts. He is coming off of a mediocre 2017 campaign, falling from one of the leauge’s top-10 relievers to barely replacement level. Of possibly greater concern is the fact that the Rangers nixed a potential deal after expressing concerns with Oh’s physical. Despite these warning signs, there is reasonable optimism for an Oh turnaround, one that would benefit the Blue Jays in either a playoff chase or as a deadline trade chip.

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Last spring, I detailed how the Rays had, over the years, created a cult of the high fastball. Nor did their commitment to the pitch waver at all during the 2017 regular season. The club’s pitchers remained fully invested in throwing fastballs up last year — despite some of the negative side effects (notably, the home run) suffered by an arm like Jake Odorizzi, whom they have since dispatched to Minnesota.

Interestingly, at least to this author, the Rays now appear to be paying closer attention to fastball performance on the other side of the ball — that is, with regard to their hitters. If you are among that class of hitter who has difficulty with the fastball, the Rays seem increasingly less likely to employ you. Tampa Bay ranked 28th in performance against fastballs last season, according to linear weights. This offseason, however, they have shed some of their weakest fastballs hitters.

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Remember how the world never expressly needed a taxonomy of ejections? Well, good. Here is Part I. Now, appreciating your refusal to clamor for a Part II, here’s an entire second post dedicated to a taxonomy of ejections. Enjoy!

I’m Going to Throw Stuff at You Now
Home-plate umpire Quinn Wolcott ejects Ryan Braun.
Date: April 29
Ejection No.: 30

Humans enjoy power, but normal people don’t get to wield it very often. Clerks can make you wait, and TSA agents can subject you to additional screening, and sometimes umpires eject players when they complain about a strike a little too loudly but not actually too loudly. They have power on the field, and sometimes they exercise it arbitrarily because they can’t use it at all other places. Sometimes. Sometimes, though, Ryan Braun throws his elbow guard at them. Pretty rude.

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Or they experience I’m Going to Throw Stuff at You Now’s related but distinct variant, Kicking Stuff at You. Also rude.

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Throwing Stuff, God Bless America Edition
Home-plate umpire Shane Livensparger ejects Scooter Gennett.
Date: September 10
Ejection No.: 168

Look, whatever, Scooter threw stuff. He tossed around his work tools. You’ve seen that before. You’ve watched baseball, and when you were a kid in the school yard, you saw other kids chuck balls and sticks at their enemies. You just watched Ryan Braun and Yuli Gurriel misbehave. That’s not the point of this. The point is the power of ritual. The umpires and manager are standing there grousing at each other, arguing baseball stuff, and then they are stopped dead in their tracks by “God Bless America.”

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You can see Jerry Layne on the far right mouthing “Where’s the flag?” before realizing it’s off to his right and helpfully nudging Bryan Price to face the right way. Price and Layne are adversaries. They’re grumpy with each other. They’re observing ejections’ rituals. But the game presented another, more potent tradition to mind. Perhaps they all saw The Power of Myth at a particularly formative age.

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On Tuesday, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance against four major-league teams: Miami, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay. Specifically, the MLBPA contends that these four teams are violating the collective bargaining agreement by misusing their revenue-sharing money.

To understand the implications of the union’s grievance, we have to begin with the language of the CBA itself. Article XXIV(A) of the CBA states that “[a]ny Club seeking a distribution from the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund [that is, the revenue-sharing money] shall submit a request in writing to the Commissioner. The written request must include, but need not be limited to: (i) the amount requested; (ii) the use(s) to which the Club intends to put the requested distribution; and (iii) an explanation of how, in the Club’s view, the requested distribution should improve the Club’s performance on the field” (emphasis mine).

Later on, the CBA is even more explicit:

[E]ach Club shall use its revenue sharing receipts (including any distributions from the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund) in an effort to improve its performance on the field. The following uses of revenue sharing receipts are not consistent with a Club’s obligation . . . to improve its performance on the field: payments to service acquisition debt or any other debt that is unrelated to past or future efforts to improve performance on the field; payments to individuals other than on-field personnel or personnel related to player development; payments to entities that do not have a direct role in improving on-field performance; and distributions to ownership that are not intended to offset tax obligations resulting from Club operations.

It’s that language on which the MLBPA is hanging its hat.

Now the MLBPA’s grievance will go before an arbitration panel, not a court. The rules of private arbitrations like this are generally set by the parties themselves. That can lead to some interesting quirks, like the fact that the commissioner himself serves as arbitrator in certain proceedings that are appeals from his own decisions (the interest-of-the-game clause and the like). In this case, the grievance hearing will be conducted in accordance with the Rules of Procedure laid out in Appendix B of the CBA.

Those Rules are pretty lengthy, so here are the pertinent bits: the legal rules of evidence don’t apply, the arbitration panel sets its own standard of proof (in other words, how much evidence one side needs to present to win), and it’s possible to avoid a hearing altogether just by both sides agreeing to submit legal briefs. Also, there are three arbitrators: one selected by the MLBPA, one selected by MLB, and a neutral third party who is usually a lawyer with some experience in conflict resolution and who serves as the panel chair. That means that, as a practical matter, it’s the panel chair who decides these cases.

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Felix Hernandez will play a crucial role in determining the fate of the Mariners’ season. Felix isn’t what he used to be, and no one expects him to return to that level, but we at least know that he should still have the stuff. The changeup and curveball are there, if he wants to miss bats. The issues have been more mechanical. Felix hasn’t had the command he needs to succeed at his velocity. There’s much attention, then, being paid to his delivery. A week and a half ago, he threw for the first time in spring training. He said the following about his session.

“I threw everything, curveball, changeup, sinker and one slider,” he said. “It was OK. I was better from the stretch than from the windup.”

Why?

“I was more balanced from the stretch,” he said. “I was moving all over the place from the windup.”

Perfectly standard, unremarkable quote from early spring. Felix had some rust to knock off. He felt better out of one of his deliveries than out of the other. But, well, hold on. Why does he have two deliveries? Why do so many pitchers have two deliveries? You’d think that maintaining one would be complicated enough.

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Pardon our inconsistency. On the one hand, we love having projections. Projections allow us to have an idea of what the future could bring. Projections let us think we know what’s going to happen, and we believe in them because they’ve proven themselves. On the other hand, we love the exceptional. That which doesn’t follow, that which takes us by surprise. We don’t want to actually know the future. We want for the world to mostly make sense, I suppose, but no one wants to close the door on the unpredictable. It’s the surprises that bring life to the living.

Tim Lincecum is back. Tim Lincecum is signing a major-league contract, having been inked by the Rangers. When Lincecum last pitched in the bigs, he might’ve been the very worst pitcher at the level. His ERA soared over 9, and the Angels couldn’t bring themselves to give him ten starts. If you want to get right down to it, the last year Lincecum was an effective major-league pitcher was 2011. That year’s best players by WAR were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. It’s been a long time since Lincecum was Lincecum, but hope blows on the embers of a dying fire. Baseball is better with Lincecum in it. There’s renewed reason to think he could surprise.

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Recently, Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen rolled out a bunch of original content as the core of FanGraphs Prospects Week, and the highlight was probably their 2018 top-100 prospect list. Baseball America has also been rolling out its own prospect lists, and toward the end of January they published their organizational rankings, running down which teams have the most and least talent on the farm. It’s obviously important to have an idea what’s going on below the majors, because that’s where the next wave is stationed. Teams are going to need their young reinforcements. It’s hard for a team to be sustainably good if it’s thin on young, high-level talent.

I don’t have much to add to the organizational reports. All I’d like to say is this: Young players already in the majors are also important. When a prospect graduates and establishes himself in the majors, he disappears from the prospect lists, as he ought to. But that very same player is still immensely valuable, because he’s proven himself to be of major-league quality. To get to the point, I’d like to try something. Below, I’ve ranked every team in baseball, based on all their players 25 and younger. This is something of an experiment, but I’m still satisfied with the results.

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The history of baseball is littered with different proposals designed for making the game more fun, exciting, and accessible. A quick perusal of the careers of Bill Veeck and Charlie Finley will tell you that Major League Baseball used to experiment a lot more than it does today. Letting fans manage a game, using yellow baseballs, printing nicknames on jerseys, and launching fireworks after home runs: this is merely a brief list of the gimmicks that have been tried. Some of them still remain, or at least resurface periodically.

Recently, MLB has turned its focus to pace of play, tinkering with the rules and enforcement of rules to speed up the game. At their heart, these changes have been proposed to make the sport more enjoyable for fans without fundamentally altering it.

A recent suggestion has made the rounds and received some attention. Rich Eisen introduced the idea on his show — apparently as it was related to him by a league executive. This particular proposal? To allow any batter to hit in the ninth inning of a game.

On its face, the idea is ridiculous, representing a massive change in the way we understand and watch the game. On the other hand, it might make the game more a little more exciting, particularly in its latter stages, and might keep fans at the ballpark a little longer. Ultimately, it probably isn’t worth changing the fabric of the sport for a little extra excitement; plus, the end of most contests features a certain amount of excitement already. That said, consider the following graph, which depicts offense by inning relative to average.

In the first inning of games last year, hitters put up a 106 wRC+, or roughly the 2017 equivalent of Kyle Seager. In the ninth inning, batters recorded an 82 wRC+, or more like Freddy Galvis. The reasons for this are relatively simple: in the first inning, teams begin with the first three hitters in their lineup, and the pitcher almost never bats. Managers usually put their best hitters at the top of the lineup. If we removed pitchers, the numbers in innings two through five would all get a decent bump. The 109 wRC+ in innings three to five in that case is actually better than in the first inning.

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In 2016, catcher Gary Sanchez packed a season’s worth of production into the final two months of the campaign, recording more than three wins during that brief period. Last year, it was Aaron Judge who broke out — to such a degree that he nearly won the AL MVP, in fact. Sanchez wasn’t half-bad himself, building on his rookie season with four more wins.

At this time a year ago, though, neither Sanchez nor Judge was the story of Yankees camp. Rather, it was Greg Bird. In Grapefruit League play last spring, Bird hit eight home runs and posted a 1.654 OPS over 51 at-bats. He appeared poised to build upon 178 promising plate appearances as a rookie when he slashed .261/.343/.529 (137 wRC+) in 2015. But after missing all of 2016 with a labrum tear, the first half of Bird’s 2017 season was again derailed — in this case by a foot injury.

The first baseman’s numbers were ultimately pretty ugly, as he slashed just .190/.288/.422 in 170 PAs.

Upon his return from injury, however, Bird managed to show some life. In 29 second-half games, he recorded a .253/.316/.575 slash line and 126 wRC+. And his underlying batted-ball tendencies are even more encouraging.

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When we last saw the Dodgers’ rotation, Yu Darvish was being lit up like a pinball machine in Game 7 of the World Series due to a pitch-tipping issue that the organization somehow failed to identify. Though the Dodgers made a serious run at retaining the 31-year-old righty, the team was limited by its financial constraints, and Darvish opted to sign a six-year, $126 million deal with the Cubs instead. With exhibition season now underway, the defending NL champions’ rotation still appears as though it could use fortification.

Darvish, a July 31 deadline acquisition from the Rangers, isn’t the only starter gone from the fold. In a mid-December move designed to give them more financial flexibility, the Dodgers dealt the injury-prone Brandon McCarthy (16 starts, 3.98 ERA, 3.28 FIP, 2.4 WAR) and Scott Kazmir (a mere 12 minor-league innings due to hip and arm issues), two other players, and cash to the Braves in exchange for Matt Kemp. The trade has helped them shimmy under the $197 million competitive-balance-tax threshold, but their subsequent failure to offload Kemp and some portion of his remaining $43 million salary for 2018-19 doomed their pursuit of Darvish.

Nobody’s weeping for a wealthy team that’s lost 25 starts while retaining eight of the 10 members from a unit that compiled the majors’ third-best ERA- (82) and FIP- (88). Compared to 2015, when they used an MLB-high 16 starters, and -16, when they tied for second with 15 starters, that counts as stability, and yet in each of the past two years, just one Dodger has reached the 162-inning threshold to qualify for the ERA title. The Andrew Friedman/Farhan Zaidi regime has actively used the team’s depth and financial might to lighten the workloads of all of their starters. Not only did the unit’s 885 innings rank 10th in the NL last year, but only 742 times did a Dodger starter face a batter for the third time in a game, the majors’ lowest total.

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