Thomas Pannone was almost an outfielder in the Cubs system. Instead, he’s baffling batters and racking up zeroes for the Lynchburg Hillcats. The 22-year-old left-hander has made four starts for Cleveland’s High-A affiliate and has yet to be charged with an earned run. Stingy to a fault, he’s fanned 31 batters and allowed just seven hits in 20.2 innings.

His scoreless streak — save for one unearned marker on April 12 — is even more impressive when you go back to last year. Counting his final three appearances in 2016, Pannone has now gone 38 consecutive innings without blemishing his ERA.

The Indians drafted Pannone out of the College of Southern Nevada in the ninth round of the 2013 draft. A year earlier, he’d bypassed an opportunity to sign with a team which liked him more for his bat than for his arm.

“I was going to be an outfielder,” explained Pannone, who was selected by Chicago’s NL club in the 33rd round out of a Rhode Island high school. “But between how late in the draft it was, and not being sure I was fully ready to start a pro career, I went to a junior college instead. One thing led to another, and I was drafted as a pitcher the following summer.”

That wasn’t what Pannone had in mind when he went west.

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On Tuesday, I ran a poll, asking what you would pay Eric Thames now, given what he’s done to MLB pitching — and the Reds — over the first three weeks of the season. When asked what kind of annual salary you’d agree to under the same three year term that he signed this winter, a majority of the responders (56%) selected $11-$15 million per year. The weighted average of all the votes came out to just under $15 million, so the crowd estimated that a fair three-year contract for Thames now would be something like $45 million.

And while I think there are valid concerns about the lack of information we have concerning how Thames will adjust as the league adjusts to him, I still think that number is overly conservative. If I were tasked with crafting an offer for Thames at this point, and followed the same constraint that he was only accepting three year offers to put it on the same scale as the one he signed this winter, I’d offer him the Edwin Encarnacion deal: $60 million over three years.

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PITTSBURGH — Nearly 20 years ago, in the back yard of his half-acre lot in suburban Las Vegas, Mike Bryant completed what has became a crucial construction project for his family and the Chicago Cubs. Foundational holes were dug, and concrete was poured, to support three metal frames from which nylon netting was draped. The result: a spartan batting cage within feet of his home.

Kris Bryant often waited until the evenings, when his father had completed his private hitting instruction, to enter the cage.

“We had some lights that weren’t very good, but they did the job,” said Bryant of evening hitting sessions. “[The cage] was just a net and some dirt on the ground. The net had holes everywhere. You’d be hitting baseballs across the street and into other houses… But I was fortunate to have it at my finger tips and swing whenever I wanted. Other guys had to go to a local batting cage and find time to hit.”

Bryant hit balls across the street and against neighbors’ homes because he hit the ball in the air. In the cage, Mike Bryant taught his son to elevate the ball. He would create targets in the upper part of the netting and challenge Bryant to direct the ball there. The targets were always raised above the ground.

“It would be like, ‘Try to hit in the back right-hand corner of the cage. Try to hit it right there.’ It’s almost something I practiced when I was younger and didn’t know,” said Bryant of his uppercut plane. “Being young, you are not as focused on your swing, you are just out there hitting. But my dad would do certain games in the cage where I would hit targets in the air and I would practice it.”

While it’s probably unnecessary to remind our loyal readers that we’ve written often about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this offseason and spring, you can read some of our musings here, here, and here.

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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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