Back in December, Bryan Price opined in these pages that young pitchers should throw more, not less. The Cincinnati Reds manager was referring to the minor leagues — youthful amateurs are a different story — which is essentially finishing school for up-and-coming hurlers. In Price’s view, “throwing is the only way for them to learn the craft.” For that reason, they should “carry a heavier workload.”

Price uttered those words at a winter-meetings media session, which limited his ability to elaborate on, and clarify, certain salient opinions. With that in mind, I recently followed up with the former pitching coach to give him that opportunity. Injuries and causation was the first subject he addressed.

“I don’t see anything in our baseball community — our pitching community — that suggests protecting these kids by decreasing their workload leads to a lessening of the number of injuries that require surgery,” said Price. “We have yet to put a finger on how we’re going to cure, and completely avoid, the Tommy John issues, the ulnar collateral ligament issues. Perhaps it’s training methods, and kids playing year round now, as opposed to playing seasonal sports. That would be my guess, but I don’t know that as a fact.

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Personally, I prefer the DH-less game. I like when managers are forced to make more in-game decisions — in particular, when they must decide whether to allow a starting pitcher to take one last at-bat before exiting. I like that starting pitchers who are perhaps pitching too aggressively up-and-in are held accountable by stepping into the batter’s box. In an age of elevated pitching injuries, I like that the pitching spot allows pitchers a breather when working through the lineup multiple times. I like that each player who wields a bat must also wear a glove. And as a former beat writer, and as a fan of the game, I like that the game moves a little more quickly without the DH.

But it seems the adoption of the DH by the NL is inevitable, having become part of the game at the amateur level and every professional level besides the NL. Entering the most recent collective-bargaining cycle, it seemed like the DH-to-the-NL could be in play.

I bring up the DH today because Pedro Alvarez is still available. I bring up the DH today because the NL’s leading home-run hitters last season, Chris Carter, had so little appeal on the market this offseason that he considered playing in Japan before agreeing to a one-year, $3-million deal with the Yankees. I bring up the DH because Adam Lind (142 wRC+ in 2014, 119 wRC+ in 2015) settled for a one-year, $1.5-million deal with the Nationals in mid-February. I bring up the DH because, as Dave Cameron wrote earlier this offseason, the industry is not valuing bat-only players.

The players seemed to have largely kicked the can down the road in the most recent CBA. Their objectives seemed modest in nature, focused primarily on the qualifying offer. And the changes to QO compensation did mark a small victory for the union. Despite a declining share of revenues, players are nevertheless enjoying record average salaries. Perhaps the status is quo is good enough for the majority of players.

But if the union is seeking small victories, it’s a little surprising the DH wasn’t more of a focus. It didn’t seem to be a significant negotiating topic in CBA talks despite indications from Rob Manfred that there was growing interest from his perspective, and with Tony Clark suggesting that he was open to the idea when speaking with the St. Louis Post Dispatch back in 2015.

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Baseball America recently published their top-100 list of prospects, as have Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law and MLB Pipeline. Eric Longenhagen will be putting out his top-100 this spring, too. I submitted my contribution on Tuesday, when I put out KATOH’s top-100 prospects. All of these lists attempt to accomplish the very same goal: identifying and ranking the best prospects. But KATOH goes about it in a very different way than the others. While most others rely heavily on scouting, KATOH focuses on statistical performance.

On the whole, there’s a good deal of agreement between KATOH and the more traditional rankings. Many of KATOH’s favorite prospects have also received praise from rea- live human beings who’ve watched them play. Andrew Benintendi, J.P. Crawford, Michael Kopech, and Austin Meadows all fall within this group. However, there are other KATOH favorites who’ve received very little attention from prospect rankers. The purpose of this article is to give these prospects a little bit of attention.

For each position, I’ve identified the player, among those excluded from all top-100 lists, who’s best acquitted by KATOH. These players have performed in the minors in a way that usually portends big-league success. Yet, for one reason or another, each has been overlooked by prospect evaluators.

Of course, the fact that these players missed every top-100 list suggests that their physical tools are probably underwhelming. That’s very important information! Often times, the outlook for players like this is much worse than their minor-league stats would lead you to believe. There’s a reason people in the industry always say “don’t scout the stat line.” Although KATOH scouts the stat line in an intuitive fashion, it still overlooks the non-numerical attributes that can predict big-league success.

I performed this exact same exercise last year, as well, and I’m proud to say there were some successes. This time last year, Edwin Diaz was a KATOH guy who was unanimously omitted from top-100 lists due to his high-effort delivery and lack of a viable third pitch. Now, he’s coming off of one of the best reliever seasons we’ve ever seen. Zach Davies also appeared on this list last year as a soft-tossing righty. He promptly posted a 2.8 WAR season as a 23-year-old. He was especially effective in last year’s second half, posting a 3.40 FIP after July 1st.

Of course, I also touted Ramon Flores, Clayton Blackburn and Zach Lee in this space last year. One year later, those guys are flirting with non-prospect-dom. But let’s try to remain optimistic and not think about them right now. There will be hits, and there will be misses.

Bear in mind that this exercise excludes the KATOH darlings who still wound up on top-100 lists. For example, KATOH loves Jake Bauers, Manny Margot and Thomas Szapucki way more than most. Even though KATOH’s assessment of these prospects is more optimistic than most, they’re ineligible for this list because at least one well-respected outlet ranked those same prospects among the top-100 rookie-eligible players on the planet. The players below are the ones who are a bit further off the radar.

*****
C – Garrett Stubbs, Houston (Profile)

Why KATOH loves him:

Stubbs hit a slick .309/.397/.472 between High-A and Double-A last year while walking nearly as much as he struck out. For a catcher, that’s amazing, especially considering he opened the year as a 22-year-old. He also swiped 15 bases, which suggests he’ll provide additional value with his legs. Though he’s mastered Double-A, he’s still just 23, which is relatively young for a college bat.

Why scouts don’t (per Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook):

He projects as a near-average hitter with well below-average power… Stubbs’ size is the biggest impediment to him becoming a big league regular. No regular backstop today weighs as little as Stubbs, but he could still be a solid contributor even if limited to a part-time role behind the plate.

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Literally just an hour or two ago, Travis published this article, titled “Has the Fly-Ball Revolution Begun?” It was his latest piece in what’s unofficially a series, but I can’t help myself but piggyback, because it’s a fascinating subject.

A few years back, for the Hardball Times Annual, I wrote about how the information age had handed the advantage to the side of run prevention. Pitchers could better hone in on hitter weaknesses, and defenses could better prepare themselves for expected batted balls. Back then, I wasn’t sure how hitters could fight back. It seemed like theirs would be a losing battle, since their very job is to respond to whatever the pitcher is wanting to do.

Now we have Statcast. Even before Statcast, there was HITf/x, but there’s more and more accessible information than ever about exit velocities and launch angles. So the collective hitter response seems to be trying to hit more balls in the air. This is the developing push-back. This is how hitters are making up ground.

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The spring-training games have begun in earnest, all of the top-50 free agents have been signed, and a new page has flipped over on the calendar. This seems to be a good time to simultaneously look backward and forward to get a feel as to what might transpire during the regular season.

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Last month, I explored whether more MLB hitters will get off the ground to improve their offensive numbers. As background for that piece, I asked private hitting instructor Doug Latta, who believes in lifting the ball, why there has been resistance to the the uppercut swing. Latta’s philosophy helped two of his clients, Justin Turner and Marlon Byrd, become dramatically better hitters.

We know fly balls are much more valuable than ground balls. In 2016, batters hit .241 with a .715 slugging mark and a wRC+ of 139 on fly balls versus a .238 average, .258 slugging mark and of wRC+ of 27 on ground balls.

“You see a (Josh) Donaldson, you see a Turner, you hear people talking a little more. Now you can quantify [quality of contact]… But it’s still a small movement,” Latta told me. “The results speak for themselves, but you are taking on 100 years of thought.”

Latta noted how slow the game is to move from conventional thought, and there appears to be little change in GB/FB tendencies league wide.

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Baseball announced a handful of rule modifications today. For the most part, they’re concerning pace-of-play adjustments — there’s the modification about the new, automatic intentional walk, and there’s a line in there about a two-minute guideline for determinations on replay reviews. There’s nothing in there that should cause too much of a stir. We were given plenty of warning about the intentional walks. Yet one bullet point stands out from the others:

• An addition to Rule 5.07 stipulates that a pitcher may not take a second step toward home plate with either foot or otherwise reset his pivot foot in his delivery of the pitch. If there is at least one runner on base, such an action will be called a balk under Rule 6.02(a). If the bases are unoccupied, then it will be considered an illegal pitch under Rule 6.02(b).

With that, baseball has moved to clarify and formalize its position on Carter Capps‘ delivery.

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Adam Ottavino is a cerebral pitcher. You probably already know that, especially if you’re a regular reader of FanGraphs. Eno Sarris and I have both talked to, and written about, the Rockies reliever multiple times in recent seasons. From spin rates to spin axis to release points, he digs deep into data in search of any and all advantages he can find.

Last week, I approached Ottavino at Colorado’s spring-training facility — the scenic-and-pristine Salt River Fields at Talking Stick — to get a pitcher’s view of how launch-angle studies could end up impacting the game. His answer, studious as always, segued into the optimization of his own offerings.

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Adam Ottavino: “It’s going to be a natural, evolutionary process. People are going to change what they’re doing at the plate and, as pitchers, we’re going to have to change in response to that. They’re trying to get on plane and create fly balls, staying through it really well. I think we’re seeing more guys now with the ability to lift lower pitches. In years past, the swing wasn’t really designed to do that. They were trying to hit the ball on the ground, hard, and run.

“I think we’re going to continue to see pitchers elevating. We’re going to continue to see pitches designed to turn those fly balls into weak fly balls. But I think until it’s fully embraced — the uppercut swing, and all that — until it’s prevalent throughout all of baseball, it’s hard to imagine we’ll see a major trend on the pitching side in response to that.

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Heading into spring training, it looked as though there were five clear favorites for division titles plus the prospect of an interesting battle in the American League West. As in any year, injuries were always likely to have some kind of influence on those various divisional races. Now, still at the beginning of March, it’s possible that such an injury has already occurred: according to Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe, Red Sox left-hander David Price is seeking a second opinion on his elbow from Dr. James Andrews. The phrase “second opinion” combined with “James Andrews” isn’t frequently associated with ideal outcomes, and the Red Sox “are not optimistic” about the situation, per Jeff Passan.

If Price does indeed undergo Tommy John surgery and misses the 2017 season, the big advantage possessed by the Red Sox over the rest of the division would diminish considerably. Looking at the projections that include Price, the Red Sox profile as one of the very best teams in baseball, according to our Depth Chart Projections.

These are the top-17 teams by projected WAR — a group that includes all five AL East teams. Unsurprisingly, Jeff Sullivan noted just yesterday that the AL East looks to be the toughest division in baseball. David Price is currently projected for 4.7 WAR, seventh-highest total in baseball, although not highest on his team, as the Red Sox’ trade for Chris Sale would still leave the Red Sox with a clear ace and front-of-the-rotation starter. Entering the spring, Boston’s staff was heavy on the top and very light on depth. When Eno Sarris examined starting pitching depth recently, the Red Sox were near the bottom of the league.

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Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher on the planet.

You’re probably aware of his ability, and his hardware, which includes three Cy Young Awards, six straight top-five Cy Young finishes and an NL MVP trophy. But here’s the thing: he could be better.

Consider this fascinating nugget unearthed by Daren Willman:

Kershaw, as Willman notes, never threw a curveball when behind in the count last season. And that’s not all: as Jeff Zimmerman discovered in a December post at RotoGraphs, Kershaw has also been reluctant to employ his other breaking pitch, the slider, in hitter’s counts. A visualization made by Zimmerman of Kershaw’s pitch mix by count reveals the difference between it and the balanced approach utilized by Johnny Cueto. Cueto is willing to throw almost any pitch in any count. Kershaw, on the other hand, becomes extremely reliant on his fastball when he falls behind.

Overall, Kerhsaw threw curveballs at a 15.6% rate last season and at 13.2% rate for his career. It’s his third pitch, but it is also his greatest velocity-separation offering. He rarely throws a changeup. But while Kershaw rarely throws his slider in hitter’s count, he never throws his curveball.

And it’s not just fluky, one-year, phenomenon. Here are the total number of curveballs Kershaw has thrown in his career when facing a 1-0 count…

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