Baseball provides its audience with great data. We’re blessed with a large number of observations and very high-quality record keeping. Even before MLB announced a radar and video tracking system designed to capture seven terabytes of data per game, we had box scores going back a century and 40 years of play-by-play logs. Thanks to organizations like Retrosheet, SABR, and Baseball-Reference, baseball’s data is also very accessible.

Unsurprisingly, baseball fans are excited about the full implementation of Statcast because the system brings with it the promise of new and exciting data. Exit velocity! Time to the plate! Route tracking! While I share some of that excitement, Statcast has my attention because of something else it promises to offer: completeness.

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In 2017, I am probably more interested in Adam Eaton than I am any other player in baseball. As the centerpiece of a controversial blockbuster, coming off a monster season where a lot of his value was tied a huge swing in his defensive value, Eaton was always going to be a fascinating experiment for paying a perceived premium price for outfield defense. But it gets even more interesting, because the Nationals are switching him from right field back to center field, so we throw a position switch in the mix as well, and get another data point on whether his weird splits between RF and CF actually mean anything.

So when the MLBAM guys released their outfield catch probability leaderboard last weekend, Eaton was naturally one of the first players to examine. And when Jeff took an early look at the published 2015-2016 data, he found that Eaton ranked seventh in Catch+, or whatever we might want to call plays made above the averages of the buckets they had opportunities in. And when he looked at the catch data relative to the range portions of UZR and DRS, he actually found that the Statcast data showed that Eaton had the largest positive difference, suggesting that, by hang time and distance traveled variables, Eaton may have been even better defensively than the public defensive metrics thought.

So yeah, Eaton is really interesting. But the more I dig into Eaton’s defensive data, the more remarkable it all gets.

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Remember Vintage Matt Harvey? He sat 96 and didn’t walk anyone and could go to any of three plus secondary pitches. Sigh. That Matt Harvey was sweet. And it was only 2015 when we last saw him. We all had hope that thoracic-outlet surgery would bring that Matt Harvey back, but we’re hearing some bad news on that front recently.

“Harvey’s velocity hovered in the 92-mph range — just as it has in all three of his spring starts — as he got roughed up in a 6-2 loss to the Marlins,” wrote Marc Carig on Wednesday before a grumpy Harvey did his best to assuage concerns with the press afterwards. Given his rough season last year, however — when he was down to 94 from 96 the years before — those fears are justified.

“It’s going to be there or it’s not, and I have to go out and pitch,” Harvey told Carig. “And I think after today I feel really confident going into my next outing and moving forward.” He’s right to assert that he has to pitch with whatever he has, and the underlying assumption, that others have been fine at similar velocities, is also correct. But will this righty, with this fastball, be just as well off as, say, two other righties who averaged 92 on their fastballs last year like a Tanner Roark or an Ian Kennedy? What will his work look like if he’s healthy all year?

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Sandy Leon was one of the more remarkable stories last season. As Jeff chronicled back in August, Leon took over for the Sox when they really needed a hero. He was that hero, at least for a brief time. He was nothing if not fresh — although that was mostly the result of not having played much at the major-league level previously. Now, he might be one of the most important members of the 2017 Red Sox team.

There are a couple of reasons Leon has become so important. The first and most important is that he has one of the highest (if not the highest) betas on his probable outcomes this season. Is Leon the guy who ran a 158 wRC+ from June to August, or the guy who ran a 44 wRC+ in September (and a 53 wRC+ over the first 107 plate appearances of his career, from 2012 to 2014)? The consensus seems to be something in between, but toward the lower end of that range. ZiPS has him pegged for a 78 wRC+; Steamer, a 74 wRC+ mark. Our depth charts split the difference at 76. The FANS projections are usually wildly optimistic, and that can be useful for players who have odd or small samples or some other manner of extenuating circumstance that might throw off those mean old algorithms. But even the FANS aren’t that optimistic: they have Leon down for just an 80 wRC+.

On the other hand, Leon told Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald recently that when he was signed as a professional, he was signed “because I could hit.” He said that defense was the thing on which he needed to work the most. It’s probably fair to say that, when he was signed, he needed to work on everything. Neither Baseball America nor John Sickels placed Leon among their top-10 Nationals prospect for 2008 — Sickels didn’t have him in his top 20. (Leon signed in 2007, but after both had compiled their Washington lists.) The same was true for the 2009 lists, and by that time, Derek Norris and Adrian Nieto were popping up on the Nats’ lists, so we can’t say that Leon was even the most highly rated catcher in the system.

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Mike Trout’s the best. You didn’t need the reminder, but there you go. He’s the best that there is. He won’t always be the best that there is, and maybe even in this coming season someone will emerge to be better, but given what we know right now, it’s Trout, then it’s the others. Spring training is a time for universal optimism. It’s a time for seeing the best in developing players. Take a young player on your favorite team. Imagine that player at his ceiling. Mike Trout is almost certainly better than that, and he has been for five years.

Trout is insanely talented, and that’s his foundation. But to be this good and stay this good, players also need to be able to adjust. They need to see weaknesses and work to eliminate them. Trout’s done that! He used to have a high-fastball problem. Been addressed. Relatedly, he used to have a strikeout problem. Been addressed. A couple years back he didn’t do enough on the bases. Been addressed. He used to run below-average arm ratings in the outfield. Been addressed. He’s so good.

Yet I’m a professional digger, in a sense. I’m always on the hunt for unknown strengths or weaknesses, and I’ve stumbled upon something I didn’t realize. There is an area where Mike Trout was bad. Last season, I mean. Who could’ve known? Even the best have their blemishes.

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There’s a revolution happening in the batting cage. We’ve noticed that batted-ball data is changing slightly and that hitters are saying different things about the intentions of their swings. But on the ground, where these hitters are training to improve, a few new tools have appeared that are helping those hitters to realize their intentions with better results. Those tools make a link between hitting and pitching that may open our eyes to the possibility of better development practices in both places.

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Alan Zinter has a challenging job. The 48-year-old former first baseman is San Diego’s hitting coach, and the position players on the Padres roster are, with few exceptions, young and inexperienced. There is a plenty of raw talent, but there are also plenty of learning curves. Works-in-progress abound.

Zinter embraces the challenge, in large part because he enjoys teaching. By all accounts, he is very good at it. Prior to joining the Padres a little over a year ago, he served as assistant hitting coach in Houston, and before that he was Cleveland’s minor-league hitting coordinator. He began his coaching career in the Diamondbacks system.

He’s anything but old-fashioned in his understanding of the craft. Zinter is well-versed in launch angles and exit velocities, and as a result, he’s not interested in seeing his hitters — not even the speedy ones — slap balls on the ground and run. He wants them driving through the baseball with a swing plane that opens up a window and results in gap shots. From his perspective, it all starts from the launch position.

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Zinter on teaching proper swing mechanics: “With technology being what it is today, with the slo-mo cameras — the ability to slow down the swing — we can actually see what a good swing looks like. A lot of times, what’s taught is ‘chop wood, swing down on the ball, knob to the ball’ — things like that, which make for a shorter compact swing. But some guys who feel they’re doing that end up swinging improperly.

“A lot of hitters, when they try to swing down, lead with their hands. They’re too steep into the zone. Other hitters, for whatever reason, think the same thing and do it properly.

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The World Baseball Classic is, of course, its own tournament, fully enjoyable all by itself. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll concede that we think of the regular season first. So we watch the WBC with the year ahead very much in mind. The Seattle area had particular interest in Wednesday night’s game between Venezuela and the United States, in San Diego. The US was scheduled to open with Mariners starter Drew Smyly. Venezuela was scheduled to open with Mariners starter Felix Hernandez.

Felix, at this point, is among baseball’s more intriguing unknowns. One of the best pitchers in the world is coming off the most disappointing season of his career, a season in which all the numbers went in the wrong direction. That’s typically a sign of decline, but Felix spent the winter working hard to try to regain his strength. His outing was sure to be monitored closely, and he wound up spinning five shutout innings, without a single walk. The public is forever keeping track of Felix’s velocity, and on a few occasions, he pushed his fastball past 92. There were reasons to be encouraged, as Felix blanked a strong lineup.

And yet maybe that’s missing the point. So many times, the story has been about Felix Hernandez’s fastball. In this case, the story should probably be about Drew Smyly’s fastball.

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Previous editions: AL East / NL East.

Opening Day is just over the horizon, though we have to navigate the remainder of the World Baseball Classic and the entirety of March Madness first. In the meantime, let’s continue our look at the upcoming season, with the third of our six divisional previews.

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A half-dozen years ago, the Yankees developed a plan. As a team that had consistently exceeded the luxury-tax threshold, the Yankees were paying an extra 50% on every dollar over Major League Baseball’s competitive-balance tax rate. Their financial commitments also made them ineligible to recoup some of their revenue-sharing money. As a response, the club resolved to reduce spending ahead of the 2014 season, aiming for a payroll figure below the $189-million threshold. That would reset their tax rate to less than 20% in 2015 and reduce their commitments to revenue sharing.

That never happened, though. In 2013, the team failed to make the playoffs and, despite the major gift of having Alex Rodriguez’s salary removed from the books, the plan was scrapped and a massive spending spree undertaken. Four years after the plan was discarded, the Yankees will once again have that same opportunity. This time, they’re in a much better position to execute it.

While the prospect of saving a lot of money in salaries and taxes is enticing even for a team with as much money as the Yankees, the prospect of reaching the playoffs and driving up attendance is also financially beneficial — and probably more enjoyable, too. That’s likely the logic that informed the Yankees’ offseason spree a few years ago. After the club had Alex Rodriguez’s salary removed by suspension, the team went out and signed Carlos Beltran, Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Masahiro Tanaka for Derek Jeter’s final year. The result: a payroll once again over $200 million. The team drew more fans, but fell a bit shy of the playoffs. They secured a Wild Card spot in 2015 but promptly lost to the Astros.

Fast forward to the present, and the Yankees once again have a payroll that will exceed $200 million by season’s end — well above the $195 million competitive-balance tax amount for this season. They also don’t have a great shot at the playoffs according to our projections, which forecast them for 79 wins and a 14% chance of qualifying for the postseason. Just how long of a rebuild the Yankees can stomach remains to be seen, but here are the contracts coming off the books next season.

Among the players listed here, only Pineda figures to be worth the money he’s owed this season. The departure of Tanaka might hurt, too, even with a $22 million salary attached. In 2018, the Yankees will owe Ellsbury, Tanaka, Starlin Castro, Aroldis Chapman, Brett Gardner, Chase Headley and Brian McCann (a portion of his salary with the Houston Astros) a total of $101.2 million. Raises in arbitration to players like Didi Gregorious, Dellin Betances, Aaron Hicks, Austin Romine and Adam Warren might add another $20 million. If we conservatively figure another $15 million for player benefits, that places the club’s post-2017 commitments at something like $135 million, meaning the Yankees have about $60 million to make improvements while still remaining under the competitive-balance tax.

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