I met Aaron Judge in Tampa, Florida, this spring near his locker in the corner of the Yankees clubhouse. Prior to the interview we shook hands, that most culturally traditional way of greeting a stranger. He engulfed my right hand with a catcher’s mitt of an appendage, and a grip something like a vice tightening. Thankfully for the structural integrity of my metacarpals, he relaxed the grip.

Judge is a strong man. He is a giant among men. This is only a slight exaggeration:

It should come as no surprise that he has as much raw power as any player in the game. It should come as little surprise that he already holds the Statast record for exit velocity of a batted baseball (119.4 mph), surpassing that of Giancarlo Stanton (119.2 mph), whom is his most commonly cited, best-case comp, and a fellow could-have-been Division I tight end.

Judge, of course, is off to a tremendous start — a start documented yesterday by FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards, who notes that the young outfielder has enjoyed one of the most power-laden Aprils on record. Judge is one of the most compelling young assets Yankees general manager Brian Cashman has accumulated, a player who could be part of the next Yankee dynasty. While few expect Judge to continue his torrid pace, he has answered questions about his ability to serve as a quality regular, and he’s reduced the distance from the floor to his considerable ceiling.

The question with Judge — as with Stanton or any hulk of a player — has been clear: can he make enough contact? Can he translate more of his raw power into game power?

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Over the winter, FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote the equivalent of a novel in the form of 30 organizational prospect lists. Each list included a writeup and scouting grades for every prospect receiving a FV grade of at least 40 — that is, the equivalent of a bench player or middle reliever. For each team, roughly 20-25 prospects (give or take) met this criteria.

Of course, every organization features many more than just 20-25 minor leaguers. What about them? Using my KATOH projection system, I attempted to find the best of the rest. Just as I did last year, I’ve identified the players with the most promising statistical profiles who missed Eric’s 40 FV cutoff.

I think this goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: these are non-prospects of the worst kind. They were ranked below the future utility players, below the future middle relievers, below the toolsy teenagers who were overmatched in Rookie ball, and below the flame-throwing relievers with hideous walk rates. I’m scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel here.

Why am I writing about them, then? Well, because nobody else is, and my math suggests they’re at least worth keeping an eye on. So I decided to round them all up and put them all in an article that will generate an embarrassingly low number of page views. The sad reality is that most of these players will never amount to much. Just about the entire baseball industry has looked at them and said “org guy,” and the baseball industry is usually right about these things. But every so often, an org guy grinds his way to the majors, and the players listed below seem like decent bets to do so.

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First, there is the fact of this Monday home run:

That is a very good home run, hit against a very bad pitch. Every hitter deserves credit for every home run, but some home runs come easier than others do. Anyway.

Using Baseball Savant, I’ve created the following plot, showing Manny Machado’s rolling 50-batted-ball averages since 2015. As usual, you can see average exit velocities, and average launch angles.

Machado is at an exit velocity career high. The last time he was particularly close to this, he was hitting the ball with less loft. Home runs come from power and loft.

Machado ranks third in all of baseball in 2017 in average exit velocity. He’s behind only Miguel Sano and Khris Davis. If you prefer, he’s fifth in hard-hit rate, north of 50%. He’s in the upper sixth of all players in average launch angle. If you prefer, he has a very low ground-ball rate, about tied with Chris Davis.

Machado, in April, had the highest walk rate he’s ever had in a single month. He had just two more strikeouts than walks. Compared to last year, his swing rate is down seven points, and his out-of-zone swing rate is down nine points. His plate-discipline numbers look similar to where they were in 2015, except now Machado is swinging through a few more pitches, but giving his batted balls more loft. Machado is trying to kill everything, 118 wRC+ be damned. It’s a 118 wRC+, but it comes with the appearance of upside.

Interpret everything how you will. There’s nothing for us to know for certain yet — there are only some promising signs.

When asked recently about his post-retirement plans, the fabulous Ichiro Suzuki provided a response as memorable as his career: “I think I’ll just die,” he told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. It’s possible that he might just play forever. So it’s premature to call this remarkable at-bat in Seattle on April 19th his last in Seattle, as many did when it occurred.

But it does remind us of another great response Ichiro provided — one that gave life to the idea that he would be a great Home Run Derby entrant. “If I’m allowed to hit .220, I could probably hit 40 [homers],” he told Bob Nightengale back in 2007. “But nobody wants that.”

Ben Lindbergh once looked at the hypothetical shift in Ichiro’s outcomes if the player had attempted to hit for power, but now that we have even better batted-ball data, we can maybe take a look and see if he could have even been that 40-homer hitter at all.

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We spend so much of our time talking about players making changes. One could argue, too much of our time. I get it! The stories can blend together. But the analysis we’re capable of now is so much better than it used to be. The public tools and information have opened doors we never could’ve dreamed of. So all the different insights have shaped the way people on the outside cover the game on the field. One thing we understand better than ever is how players might forever evolve.

Changes everywhere. Which hitters have made changes? Taylor Motter has made changes. Miguel Sano? He’s made changes. Travis Shaw, Elvis Andrus, Xander Bogaerts — they’re all making changes. I wanted to take a step away from focusing on any given individual in particular. Which hitters seem the most changed, compared to 2017? I assembled a spreadsheet. There’s a table below, with 10 names. Let me explain this real quick.

I decided to focus on four traits that I think reflect a hitter’s profile. Those four traits: swing rate and contact rate (from FanGraphs), and average exit velocity and launch angle (from Baseball Savant). A hitter is mostly, if not entirely, how often he swings, and what happens after he swings. I gathered all four data points for hitters who played in both 2016 and 2017. So I guess that makes it eight data points. For each data point for each year for each hitter, I figured out the standard deviations above or below the league average. Then I calculated the absolute value of the change in standard deviations between 2016 and 2017. I wound up with four absolute values, for every hitter. I added them up to yield what I’ll call the “Change Index.” The larger the number, the more changed the hitter.

That was an unpleasant paragraph. Here’s the fun part! Behold, the changed hitters! I set arbitrary minimums of 75 plate appearances in each season. Don’t complain about that, please, because I don’t care.

Compared to last year, the most-changed hitter in baseball is Mike Moustakas. In fact, it’s Moustakas by a healthy margin. Now, Moustakas had his own 2016 season cut short by injury, but as we see him now, he’s swinging a lot more, and he’s making a lot less contact. While his exit velocity is down, his launch angle is up, and Moustakas has focused on pulling the ball for power. Maybe he’s felt some pressure, getting so little support from the rest of the lineup around him.

Moustakas will be a name to watch. Unsurprisingly, Aaron Judge makes it in here, thanks in large part to his dramatic contact-rate improvement. He’s also cut down on his launch angle, and although we normally associate launch-angle increases with power, Judge has more of that flat Giancarlo Stanton attack path. Don’t complain while it’s working.

There are a couple A’s on here — one who’s always hit for power, and one who’s learning. What I think I love about Trevor Story here is that he already had an extreme launch angle, and now he’s practically Schimpf-ing. Not that Story should want to keep this up; 2017 has not been a success. You can turn it up to 11, but don’t turn it up to 12. Things get broken at 12.

That’s where I’ll leave it for now. Remember that most-changed doesn’t automatically mean most-changed for the better. Consider, say, Story, or Alex Gordon. Changes are changes. Just because we often focus on the successful adjustments doesn’t mean there aren’t always bad things happening, too.

I didn’t realize the Royals have lost nine games in a row. When it’s come to disappointing baseball, most of my attention was focused on teams like the Blue Jays, Giants, Mets, and Mariners. Every team mentioned here has under-performed, but sure enough, the Royals stand at 7-16, with baseball’s worst record. The upside, I suppose, is that they were once 7-7, but that’s damning with faint praise, since losing nine straight can derail even a wonderful season. The Royals have had a horrible week and a half.

As you examine things, it’s not like the Royals have experienced some kind of team-wide collapse. The defensive metrics paint a confusing picture, and the rotation has been better than the bullpen, but the Royals’ run prevention has surprisingly been a tiny bit better than average. The Royals aren’t out there just constantly getting smoked. Nearly the entirety of the problem is captured by the headline just above. Hitting. Teams need to hit. The Royals haven’t hit. It’s not unreasonable to suggest they’ve actually hit worse than ever.

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Remember last August when Gary Sanchez hit a ton of home runs and put up a .442 isolated-power figure for the New York Yankees? It was amazing. It was also special, so far as exhibitions of power are concerned. Consider: only four batters produced a higher single-month ISO last year than Sanchez. It wasn’t just improbable for a rookie; it was improbable for a major leaguer.

But the improbable is different than the impossible. Now another power-hitting Yankees prospect, Aaron Judge, has just finished his first real month as a starting outfielder in New York and has recorded a .447 ISO in the process — or slightly higher than Sanchez’s mark. The power is as large as Judge himself.

And while Judge has been the most impressive hitter for the Yankees, the club has received quite a few pleasant surprises. Starlin Castro, Chase Headley, Aaron Hicks, Matt Holliday, Austin Romine, and Ronald Torreyes have all exceeded expectations.

The result? A very successful first month of the season, leading to a 15-8 record. And while some of the club’s surprising performances won’t last — Judge included — the Yankees have banked some wins, increased their projections, and significantly improved their playoff odds, as the chart below shows.

The Yankees entered the 2017 season with playoff odds of 15.9%, the worst of any team in the AL East. Their strong April has put them over the 50% mark the rest of the way, however. At the start of the season, the Yankees were projected to have a .488 win percentage. Going forward, that number is already up to .509. Add in the wins they’ve already received, and their projected end-of-season winning percentage is up to .529.

Largely responsible for that positive trend is Judge himself. As with the club itself, his own personal projections now appear more optimistic.

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When Noah Syndergaard showed up to spring training having indulged in “Bowls of Doom” to gain 17 pounds with a view towards throwing even harder — this, after a season in which his fastball averaged 98 mph — alarm bells began clanging around the country. Among those waving red flags was the present author.

Here’s what I wrote on Feb. 13, 2017:

As exciting as all this [added strength] sounds, perhaps someone should pump the breaks. For a pitcher who threw harder than any other starter, who threw a variant of a fastball on 60% of his offerings, more velocity might not be such a great development. While we don’t have a full understanding of why so many pitchers are breaking down, perhaps the body is being pushed beyond its physical limits with the strength and velocity increases in the game. No one, among starter pitchers, is pushing limits like Syndergaard.

After pushing the limits in 2016, Syndergaard was attempting to push even harder against them this year. Perhaps he pushed too hard, flew too close to the sun, etc. Pitchers’ ligaments and soft tissue aren’t unlike wax wings; velocity, not unlike the sun. Record pitch speeds have wrought a record numbers of injuries. That Syndergaard is on the DL is, sadly, one of the least surprising developments early this season.

Sports-injury expert Will Carroll told FanGraphs on Monday that Syndergaard’s offseason work was likely unhelpful.

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CLEVELAND – Like so many others, Chris Devenski watched in fascination last October. He observed, on the flat-screen television of his offseason home in San Diego, as Cleveland continuously elected not to save their best arm, Andrew Miller, for the ninth inning, but rather to utilize him in high-leverage situations earlier in the game.

Unlike the many other major-league pitchers watching, however, Devenski recognized the part Miller was playing: he himself had already assumed a similar new-age bullpen role in the second half of the season with Houston. He had, in fact, become accustomed to entering games at unlikely spots much earlier than that, from his experience as a piggy-back tandem starter in the Astros’ farm system. As Cleveland advanced through the playoffs, Devenski watched as the movement to rethink bullpen usage and role — a movement of which he’s a part — advanced. The revolution was televised.

“I saw my role, man,” Devenski told FanGraphs last week. “I saw what they were doing with Miller here [in Cleveland] and [Aroldis] Chapman with the Cubs, it seems like that is what is coming about now in the game. It’s changing a little bit. I saw [in Miller] what I do. It was pretty cool. It’s big-time situations there. It’s important.”

But Devenski is arguably more of a revolutionary, more of disruptive figure than Miller. Since joining the Indians, Miller has pitched in high-leverage situations often, but he’s only recorded two or more innings in an outing three times in the regular season. He’s never recorded more than six outs in an appearance. Devenski had 18 such outings last season alone, including nine in August and September when the then-rookie was thrust into more high-leverage situations.

Devenski has recorded six or more outs in seven of his nine appearances this season and has an absurd 49.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%) and 22% swinging-strike rate. He has become a unique weapon in an unusual role.

Devenski said his wide range of experiences — from starting to relieving to tandem-starting — made the job a natural fit. While most pitchers would rather start or rack up saves, Devenski seems to have embraced his work in a hybrid capacity.

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