It’s not uncommon for a pitcher to experience difficulty as a starter, move to the bullpen, and benefit from almost immediate success. That’s a story we’ve heard plenty. We’re seeing it in Arizona right now, for example — with both Archie Bradley and Jorge de la Rosa — but they’re hardly the only cases. Bullpens are littered with failed starters. The best relief pitcher ever began his major-league career with a collection of uninspiring starts.

In Anaheim, though, we might possibly be witnessing a more rare type of story. Right-hander JC Ramirez is working as a a starter right now — for the first time since Double-A in 2011, actually — and, well, there are plenty of reasons to think he’ll be a good at it. Dude’s posting the best strikeout rate of his career, and it makes sense when you look under the hood.

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Projections. Do you not like reading that word? Don’t worry about it. I don’t particularly like writing that word, and I know full well that it can be a major turn-off. It doesn’t help that there’s not a great alternative way to express the same idea. When you’re talking about projections, you typically have to say “projections” somewhere. It’s inelegant, but it is what it is.

Some people don’t like projections because projections aren’t always right. Perfectly legitimate, even if it holds the model to an impossible standard. That being said, overall, the better projections are better than human guesswork. I’ve never seen convincing evidence that people are better at seeing the baseball future than projections are, and so the projections live on, referred to constantly. This has all been a long way of getting to the point that, hey, I’m about to build a post around our team projections. I want to compare projections today to the projections we had the morning of the first day of the season.

It’s not that hard to do, using the information readily available on our Playoff Odds page. You could do it yourself! But you don’t have to. Because, look below. When we start getting games under our collective belt, fans and readers ask us which of our ideas have changed. We all have our own individual ideas about players and teams, but changes in the projections tend to be closely linked. So let’s quickly examine changes at either end of the spectrum.

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By the middle of their game on Tuesday, the Rangers were getting blown out. It hasn’t been a great start, overall, for the ballclub. But as Joey Gallo stepped up to the plate, the broadcast kicked it over to reporter Emily Jones, who talked about how Gallo had been a more than capable fill-in for the injured Adrian Beltre. The broadcast put up a nearly screen-wide graphic of some of Gallo’s impressive early statistics, and then they cut away just in time to see Gallo charge up another hack.

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Yandy Diaz was already interesting before the 2017 season began. His combination of offensive and defensive skills compelled Carson Cistulli to include him often as a member of the Fringe Five, a group that’s building quite a track record.

He became more interesting early this season, however, when he made the Indians’ 25-man roster and filled in at third base (while Jose Ramirez shifted to second base) in the absence of an injured Jason Kipnis. While with the major-league club, Diaz had an Eric Thames-like out-of-zone swing rate (16.1%), demonstrated a discerning eye, and recorded a swinging-strike rate of just 8.0%. Of the first 42 major-league pitches he saw, he swung and missed only twice.

Now that Kipnis has been activated from the disabled list, Diaz is back in Triple-A. But Diaz continues to offer some interest and remains worthy of attention even as a member of the Columbus Clippers — not just because he has a Jose Ramirez starter kit (contact and on-base skills plus defensive versatility), but because perhaps no professional player could benefit more from adding lift to his swing.

Despite a career minor-league slash line of .307/.406/.411 and the ability to play on the left side of the infield, Diaz was an overlooked prospect — partly because he was a relatively older and lower-budget signing out of Cuba in 2011, but also because of his lack of power.

Diaz is a strong man. Here’s a photo to prove it:

And here’s the Statcast data to prove it: Diaz’s average exit velocity as a major leaguer was 95.2 mph over a sample of 42 batted balls. That’s elite, ranking ninth in the sport.

But despite those guns and that exit velo, Diaz has never reached double-digit home-run totals at any minor-league stop. Last season, he hit seven home runs over 416 Triple-A plate appearances.

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With Andre Ethier, Logan Forsythe, Franklin Gutierrez, Joc Pederson, Rob Segedin all on the DL — and both Chase Utley and Scott Van Slyke struggling to do much of anything — the Dodgers have called up Cody Bellinger to strengthen their lineup. Bellinger is a powerful first-baseman-turned-outfielder who spent the past few weeks mashing .343/.429/.627 at Triple-A at the tender age of 21. Like most first basemen, Bellinger’s power is his biggest asset. He belted 26 homers between Double- and Triple-A last year and has amassed a remarkable 120 extra-base hits since the start of 2015. He’s already hit five out this year, tying him for third among Triple-A hitters.

There’s much more to Bellinger than his homers, however. He’s also a 45 runner who already has seven steals to his name in 2017 and has played all three outfield positions as recently as last year. That same athleticism earned him a 60/70 fielding grade from Eric Longenhagen over the winter. Clay Davenport’s defensive numbers graded him out as a +8 defender across 78 games at first last year.

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Rich Hill is in the midst of a blister problem. It’s been going on since his breakout season last year. Since only three pitchers in 2016 threw more curveballs than Hill, it makes sense to blame the curve. Maybe there’s more at work, but also maybe not. It’s a pretty reasonable hypothesis.

I mean, for one, the pitcher himself believes it. “It’s right there, on the pad of my finger, where it touches the seams on my curveball,” said Hill on Tuesday night. Curious about the condition of his digit, I pushed: could I take a picture of the pad on his middle finger pad? “Nobody’s taking a picture of my finger,” he laughed. I didn’t pursue the matter any further.

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Those who witnessed Eric Thames play in South Korea aren’t so surprised about his exploits in the States this April. After all, he was dubbed “God” there while playing for the NC Dinos in the southeastern port of Changwon.

Over the last couple of weeks my colleagues at FanGraphs have written about the scary, scarier, and scariest feats and underlying performance metrics of Thames.

On Tuesday, FanGraphs editor Dave Cameron asked the people what they would now pay for Thames. (FWIW, I chose to pay Thames $11-15 million of my make-believe dollars per annum. You can still vote!)

Thames continued to mash Tuesday evening…

And Thames continues to be drug tested…

Even if the Reds’ staff remains mostly equivalent to KBO pitching — kidding (kind of)! — Thames has been Bonds-ian over the first few weeks of the season.

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Two weeks ago, Eno Sarris wrote about how Alex Cobb’s split-change has gone missing. The Tampa Bay Rays righty had a very good one before undergoing Tommy John surgery in May of 2015, but the arduous road back extracted a heavy toll. The changeup is a feel pitch, and — cue up some Righteous Brothers blue-eyed soul — Cobb lost that loving feeling.

Fortunately for the 29-year-old hurler, it’s not gone, gone, gone. As a matter of fact, his relationship with his signature offering is already being rekindled. Cobb threw his split-change just 10 times in the game about which Eno wrote. In ensuing outings that number has climbed to 13, and most recently to 23.

I haven’t spoken to Cobb since he last pitched, but I did talk to him after he faced Boston on April 16. That was the game where he threw 13 split-changes, along with 36 curveballs and 44 fastballs. He wasn’t particularly pleased with his performance, but he was thinking positive thoughts. Rather than feeling forlorn, he was looking forward to an inevitable reunion with a pitch he holds dear to his heart.

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Cobb on why his changeup went missing: “If I had that answer, it would be here. But I do have ideas. Going into Tommy John surgery, you hear that the overall feel of pitches comes back slowly, and the changeup is usually the last one to come back.

“It has nothing to do with [flexor-group muscles, as Eno theorized]. I feel completely normal. When people say ‘feel on a pitch’ — especially a changeup — it’s usually a mechanical thing. Feel isn’t what the ball feels like. It’s not a literal term. It’s the way your body feels, in rhythm, over the rubber. We’re talking about inches, even fractions of inches, of changes that impact the flight of the ball.

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If you’re in the Washington D.C. metro area and aren’t otherwise occupied on Monday night, join me and a bunch of local scribes at the Howard Theatre for Pitch Talks DC.

We’ll spend a few hours talking Nationals baseball and baseball in general, and it should be a good time. You can purchase tickets for just $20, or $15 if you use the promo code “NATS”. Going to be tough to find a better deal in town.

Additionally, Kevin has five pairs of tickets he’s going to give away to FanGraphs readers, so if you’d like to attend but don’t have $15 to spare, you can fill out this form and hope to land a pair of complimentary tickets to the show.

I’m excited to see you all there, and look forward to hanging out on Monday night.

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Oakland Athletics farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
AL West (HOU, LAA, SEA, TEX)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Has recorded .295 career batting average.

Scouting Report
Barreto was signed by Toronto for $1.45 million back in 2012 and then traded to Oakland — along with Kendall Graveman, Brett Lawrie, and Sean Nolin — in exchange for Josh Donaldson. Bay Area sports talk radio still discusses the deal with frequency and bile, and largely considers Barreto the last hope for salvaging it, though Graveman and his sinker appear to be breaking out this year.

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