Matt Stairs loves to teach hitting, and he has plenty of teaching to do. The 49-year-old former slugger is in his first season as Philadelphia’s hitting coach, and given the youthfulness of the Phillies lineup, he’s got his hands full. Raw talent dots the roster, but that’s essentially what it is. Finished products are in short supply.

Stairs isn’t heavy-handed with his approach — he wants his hitters to be themselves — but at the same time, he knows what does and doesn’t work. With 19 big-league seasons as a player under his belt, he understands the nuts and bolts of the craft as well as anyone. So while he’s being entrusted to mold and shape young Phillies, he’s not doing so in a cookie-cutter way. For Stairs, it’s all about doing what you do, but in a more efficient, and more productive, manner.

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Stairs on exit velocity and launch angle: “I think it’s mostly just different terminology now. Hitters have always thought about exit velocity, just not in those words. Our thought process was hitting the ball hard and getting the proper angle to the baseball.

“You’re not creating exit velocity by swinging harder. It’s about making solid contact. It’s about being short to the baseball with a quick, compact swing. We have guys like Tommy Joseph, and Cameron Rupp — their swings are so short that, at times, when the ball comes off their bat, it accelerates. You create bat speed and exit velocity by using your top hand and driving your bat through the zone.

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If you’re reading this post on FanGraphs, it’s probably safe to assume that you enjoy participating in baseball discussions, even the nerdy variety. And if you enjoy nerdy baseball discussions, the Saber Seminar is your dream weekend.

Officially titled Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball, the conference is the best event of the year for learning about what is happening in baseball research and development right now, as well as interacting with many of the people on the leading edge of baseball analysis. I’ve been attending for each of the last four years, and it’s a can’t-miss part of my annual calendar.

And this year is shaping up to be even better than most years. With the White Sox in town, GM Rick Hahn will be speaking, and while front office personnel can be somewhat boring, Hahn is one of the exceptions; we’ve had him speak at prior FanGraphs events, and he’s generally the funniest person in the room. Additionally, Yankees AGM Jean Afterman will also be speaking, and you know the Red Sox front office will be well represented as always, with pitching coordinator Brian Bannister already on the confirmed list.

Toss in a bunch of folks with advanced degrees in about every field you can imagine, and this conference is loaded with experts in their fields, ranging from the medical side to physics and beyond. Alan Nathan’s talks are always one of the most informative presentations, and given the ongoing discussion about whether the ball is a factor in MLB’s home run surge, I’m pretty sure you’re going to want to hear what he has to say this year as well.

And this year, we’re bringing most of the FanGraphs crew to Boston as well. Eno Sarris, Jeff Sullivan, and Travis Sawchik will all be making their debuts at the conference, and I’ll be presenting this year as well. We’re looking forward to helping make this the best Saber Seminar yet, despite the high bar past conferences have set.

The event takes place at Boston University on August 5th and 6th, and while we’re still seven weeks out, you’ll definitely want to get your tickets sooner than later. Early admission pricing ($140 per ticket) is in effect through June 22nd, after which the price will rise to $185 through July 15th. After July 15th, the price will go up to $225 per ticket, so you’ll save a lot of money by purchasing them now.

If you’re a student, the Saber Seminar is the best deal of your life, as early student admission is just $65 per ticket. That is a spectacular price for a conference of this quality.

And, as always, the entire event is put on to raise money for charity. This year, The Angioma Alliance will receive 100% of the proceeds raised to help in their fight against brain tumors. All the speakers donate their time and we pay our own cost of travel and lodging to help put on this great event. So the cost of admission will go directly to helping The Angioma Alliance support patients and families dealing with these issues.

Come to Boston the first weekend in August and hang out with us as we talk baseball and raise money for a great cause. I hope to see you there.

Last night, the Red Sox started Pablo Sandoval at third base, the first time in four games he’d been in the starting line-up. He responded by singling to lead off the second inning and miraculously drew a walk in the third inning, which should tell you how sharp Jeremy Hellickson was last night. In the 8th inning, he was replaced by Josh Rutledge for defensive purposes, despite the fact that Rutledge has regularly graded out as one of the worst defensive infielders in baseball. But for Sandoval, this was a pretty successful night, reaching base twice and handling all four balls that he fielded.

But the fact that this is what constitutes a successful game for a player on a team trying to win is why the Red Sox should realize it’s time to just move on.

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On Tuesday, I published a post projecting the players taken on day one of the draft. Yesterday, I did the same for the players taken on day two. Let’s take a look at what my math says about the players taken on the third and final day of the draft.

Below, you’ll find some quick thoughts on KATOH’s top-five hitters and top-five pitchers selected in rounds 11-40. Below that, you’ll find by a giant, sortable table with projections for all drafted players for whom I have projections. As a reminder, I only have projections for college players who logged at least 100 plate appearances or batters faced in a Division 1 conference. I do not have projections for JuCo or high-school players. Note: WAR figures are projected totals for the relevant player’s first six years in the majors.

Darren McCaughan, RHP, Seattle, 2.3 WAR

McCaughan allowed just 20 walks across 120 innings with Long Beach State this season, finishing up with a sparkling 2.50 ERA. He doesn’t rack up the strikeouts like many of the pitchers drafted before him but has three years of strong performance in the Big West to his name.

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“Grips are meaningless,” Oakland A’s starting pitcher Sonny Gray once told me. Maybe that’s why we haven’t yet had a good talk, despite calling the same clubhouse home half the time. He didn’t quite mean “meaningless,” it occurred to me, when we finally discussed his repertoire. But there’s another reason he’s found it difficult to talk the way pitchers often talk to me: He’s changing things from pitch to pitch, according to what he sees. That includes grips, finger pressure and pitching mix. It’s hard to say he’s been doing something different when he’s always doing something different.

It’s difficult to figure out the righty. His breaking balls, for example: One classifying system says he’s currently throwing more sliders than ever. One says he’s in a three-year high for curveballs. A third says he’s right about where he’s always been, but that his recent good stretch may have coincided with an increased use of his slider.

Is he throwing more sliders now that he’s healthy? Gray shrugs. “Even before I got hurt, I was throwing sliders, and I was throwing them at 88, 89 mph,” he says. No system has him throwing a breaking ball that hard. “Whatever people call the pitch is what they are going to call it. It’s a hard curveball, I guess. The grip is a little bit different, but it does have a curveball action.”

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Near the end of spring training in 2013, just days before the Cleveland Indians were to travel north, then-middle-infield prospect Tony Wolters was called into the manager’s office at the club’s complex in Goodyear, Ariz.

There, Terry Francona and a number of front-office members awaited. They offered Wolters a choice. One option was that he could remain a middle infielder, even though he might be unable to stick at shortstop and even though his .260/.320/.404 line the year earlier at High-A hinted at insufficient offensive production for second base. Furthermore, with Francisco Lindor and Jason Kipnis in the organization, his opportunities would be limited. The other option? He could try his hand at catching.

Wolter’s experience behind the plate, to that point, had been limited to catching one game at Rancho Buena Vista High, from which school the Indians had selected him in the third round of the 2010 draft. He was to turn 21 in June. He had not risen above A-ball.

“They gave me a day to think about it,” Wolters said. “It was kind of the end of spring, so I had to tell them. I couldn’t say ‘No’ to Tito [Francona]… The main thing was, I just wanted to do what they wanted me to do and I felt I could do it.”

Thus, one of the more unusual position changes — at least as measured by successful outcomes — in recent professional baseball began. A reverse Craig Biggio, a move from the middle infield to catcher. The Indians gave Wolters a brief tutorial. He borrowed a glove and caught his first bullpen. Who pitched? Pre-breakout Corey Kluber. “He was pretty good,” Wolters responded. “That day he wasn’t spotting up, so I kind of got messed up a little bit.”

As the Indians’ major- and minor-league teams departed to begin their respective seasons, the club held Wolters back for one week to receive a crash course in catching at their Arizona complex. After a week of experience, he was sent off to High-A ball to become the Carolina Mudcats’ starting catcher. Along the way, he worked with coaches like former major leaguer Sandy Alomar to learn some intricacies of the craft.

Now fast forward three years. Last season, as a member of the Rockies, Wolters ranked as the ninth-best framer and 10th-best overall defensive catcher in the majors, according to Baseball Prospectus’s catching metrics. Ever since Colorado claimed him off waivers on Feb. 16, 2016, Wolters has become one of the better values and under-the-radar additions in the majors. He entered play on Wednesday with a batting line just 10% shy of league average at one of the game’s weakest offensive positions. In 111 career games, he’s accumulated 1.5 fWAR and 2.2 bWARP. He’s helped the Rockies to a 42-26 mark, percentage points behind the Dodgers, entering Thursday.

But what is most interesting about the Wolters story, at least to this author, is how quickly he acquired the skills necessary to become one of the better defensive catchers in the game (even if he’s rated as more of a league-average catcher to date in 2017). Whatever the precise level of his skills, average or better than that, he reached that level quickly. It raises the question of how many other position players could have benefited themselves and their teams by making the move to catcher where the position’s collective wOBA (.307) is above only that of shortstop (.304) this season.

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Yesterday, toward the end of an absolute thrashing at the hands of the Twins, the Mariners sent Carlos Ruiz to the mound. That’s notable for the fact that Ruiz is a catcher, and not a pitcher, and yet Ruiz pitched, and he even registered a strikeout! He also walked two guys and coughed up a homer. Not supposed to pitch. Did pitch. It happens.

It’s actually been happening kind of a lot. The day before, the tables were turned, and as the Mariners were maiming the Twins, the Twins sent out Chris Gimenez to pitch. A few days before, the Padres used Erick Aybar. The day before that, the Phillies used Andres Blanco. The day before that, the Twins used…Chris Gimenez. A week before that, the Twins used Chris Gimenez. And on, and on. It used to feel special when a non-pitcher would pitch. It’s still more fun in a blowout than the alternative, but some of the shine has come off the apple.

It’s not too hard to figure out why. These appearances were special because they were rare. They’re still not common, but they’ve become more common than they’ve been. Baseball right now finds itself within a number of eras, but among them, this is the era of position players pitching.

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Last week, we took a look at the hitters who have been the most productive on balls in play in both leagues, and peeled back a layer or two of batted-ball data to see how much of it was real. This week and next, we’re going to do the same with pitchers. Today, the AL.

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Brad Ausmus is hard to label. Many see him as an old-school manager — and, based on some of his beliefs and actions, that’s perfectly understandable. On the other hand, he’s Ivy League-educated and well versed on most analytic concepts. From a knowledge standpoint, the manager of the Detroit Tigers is far from a troglodyte.

This interview doesn’t add much clarity to Ausmus’s identity. For one thing, it’s narrow in scope. While other subjects are touched upon, closer usage and pitch-framing comprise the bulk of the conversation.

Of note: this material actually comes from three separate conversations. The first two were in group settings with Detroit beat writers (with my questions eliciting most of these responses) on back-to-back days. I then had a shorter, one-on-one conversation with Ausmus to fill in a few blanks. Because of the manner in which these quotes were obtained, some have been resequenced for continuity.

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Ausmus on analytics (intro): “Analytics are ubiquitous. I think the dangerous mistake people make — some member of the media make — is believing that they can’t be flawed, because they’re based on numbers. That’s absolutely false. Numbers do not always tell us the whole story. And there are certain things in baseball, because it’s played by humans, that numbers will never be able to put a value on.”

On leverage and closer mentality: “A lot of people in the analytics world think you should bring in your best pitcher in the biggest point of the game. Well, excuse my French, but who the (bleep) knows when the biggest point in the game is until the game is over? You don’t know. It may be the sixth. It may be the ninth. The problem is, if it’s the sixth and you use your closer, and all of a sudden you have a one-run lead in the ninth, who is going to close? You don’t have that guy anymore, because you burned him.

“Anyone who says you have to bring your closer in early, or in the biggest point in the game, has a crystal ball. That argument goes out the window for me. I don’t mind second-guessing, but second-guessing the biggest point of the game after the game? It’s easy to tell then. It’s not easy to tell in the seventh inning.

“If you’ve got another guy who is a closer, you’re fine [bringing your closer into a high-leverage situation early and not having him pitch the ninth inning]. But if you don’t have another guy who is a closer… closing a game in the ninth inning is not the same as pitching the eighth inning, or the seventh inning.

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It’s quite a title to throw on someone, “most patient.” It’s rewarding someone for not doing instead of doing. And, as a singular skill, unless you’re Eddie Gaedel, “not swinging” isn’t quite enough to make a major-league career. So maybe it’s not that surprising that the name here — Robbie Grossman, an outfielder for the Twins — isn’t particularly well known. And that he’s struggled to scratch out an everyday role. And that some of his good work this year has come from being more aggressive, even.

Nobody reaches at pitches outside the zone less than Grossman. Not this year, at least. And if you relax the requirements (1000 plate appearances minimum), he’s among the five best by out-of-zone swing rate since he entered the league in 2013. He knows the zone.

Let’s call him elite at that fundamental skill and admit that he has it. To the player, it’s no big deal. “A walk is a pitcher’s inability to throw three strikes,” pointed out Grossman. “That’s the biggest thing I’m trying to teach the young guys, that they can stand there and the pitcher couldn’t throw three straight strikes.”

But for a guy with an elite skill, it’s taken him a long time to get a regular role. Even on the way up, he wasn’t mentioned as a prospect, even if Carson Cistulli featured him in a series that served as a precursor to the Fringe Five. “I’ve always been that guy on the outside looking in, trying to prove myself,” confirmed the Twins outfielder, “and I’ve always used it as a chip on my shoulder, to kind of prove myself, that I belong among the best baseball players in the world.”

To provide a greater understanding of his approach, he discussed specifically a difficult lefty he’d recently faced, James Paxton. “I had an at-bat against Paxton the other day and I didn’t swing once,” he remembered. “He can’t throw three strikes in… He’s trying to throw the ball in to right-handed hitters, but he can’t consistently do it, so you look for the pitch away and get that pitch, because the one in is a low-percentage play for him and for you.”

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