As a faithful reader, you’re probably aware that a number of authors have written about the fly-ball revolution at FanGraphs this winter, examining the potential for a sea change in batted-ball profiles. If you’ve missed some or all of our posts you can read them, or revisit them here, here, here and here.

As I toured the central region and Gulf coast of Florida for FanGraphs this spring, a couple comments were particularly memorable. One was from this piece on Tampa Bay’s sharing of changeup knowledge, a success that Jim Hickey attributed less to organizational philosophy and more to pitchers with excellent changeups, like James Shields and Alex Cobb, sharing their craft and skills.

“It’s not so much a philosophy as it is a lineage,” Hickey said.

That struck me as quite interesting: the power of peers and word of mouth to have such a profound influence on the fortunes of a club. I also thought it was interesting when J.D. Martinez noted that more players have approached him this spring, curious about his loft-generating swing plane. Martinez is one of the notable early adopters of the uppercut, joining the likes of Justin Turner, Daniel Murphy and Josh Donaldson. They are not only excelling but espousing the philosophy.

So just as the Rays have handed down quality changeup grips from one generation to the next, and have led baseball in the value produced by changeups since 2006 — when Shields debuted with modest overall stuff but an excellent changeup — shouldn’t teams benefit by having early adopters of fly-ball philosophy? While most coaches in the game still seem to be subscribing to conventional hitting techniques, even if more coaches in the game spoke like private instructors like Doug Latta outside of the game, it stands to reason that players’ peers — trusted teammates, that is — might hold more influence when electing to made a radical adjustment.

The Rays have a changeup lineage. Are some teams creating the foundation of an uppercut lineage?

Maybe.

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Brady Anderson was a fascinating – and curious – player, most notably for his outlying 1996 season when he hit 50 home runs, a number he never before or again approached in his career. While the performance came under a cloud of suspicion, there was no evidence tying him PED usage.

He now has a fascinating and curious presence in the Baltimore clubhouse, as documented in an excellent profile by Ken Rosenthal .

Anderson is a controversial figure this spring. He holds an unusual sort of hybrid role with the Orioles. Technically employed as a high-ranking member of the front office, Anderson also has a locker in the clubhouse, wears a jersey, and plays roles in coaching, dealing with agents, and in strength and conditioning

The story is well worth a read, but I took away two main points — namely, that (a) we might see more hybrid-type roles in the future, further blurring lines and testing clubhouse sovereignty, and (b) Anderson is yet another voice challenging conventional coaching practices.

It’s true Anderson’s situation is an unusual one due to his cozy relationship with ownership. He operates with little oversight or constraint. But what has become less unusual is the practice of a front office infiltrating integrating itself in the clubhouse. As front offices have trended in a more analytical direction, they’ve hired more like-minded managers. They’ve hired forward-thinking strength and conditioning staffs. And in Pittsburgh, a quantitative analyst — Mike Fitzgerald — was believed to be the first such employee to be freed of the shackles of an office cubicle in order to travel with a club, complete with his own locker in road clubhouses (although he didn’t wear a jersey). The Pirates viewed Fitzgerald’s role as significant enough that they have hired a former Amherst College shortstop and pitcher, Bob Cook, to fill the role after Fitzgerald departed for Arizona, as MLB.com’s Adam Berry reported.

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Who’s going to have the better season: Bryce Harper or Manny Machado? That’s the question posed to you at the end of this post. Which means this is a poll post. Poll post!

Years ago, the debate used to be about Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Mike Trout. It’s safe to say Trout is now excluded from the conversation, on account of having become too good. That leaves Harper and Machado to battle, and while they’re not actually in direct competition with one another, what’s the downside here of matching them up? Below, I’ll present the respective cases, before getting to the question. This does not mean I think these are the only great players. Kris Bryant is great. Mookie Betts is great. Corey Seager and several others are great. But Harper vs. Machado is a fun one, and I think we’ll be able to learn from whatever these poll results might be.

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The conversation began a bit clunky, then it turned a little nerdy. Not in a numbers-crunching way, but rather in a bat-path way. Danny Espinosa, it turns out, wasn’t too loopy after all.

I’d never formally met the Angels infielder prior to approaching him in Tempe earlier this spring. We had interacted, albeit briefly. That was last September, when he was in Pittsburgh as a member of the Washington Nationals, and I was interviewing Trea Turner. Sidling up from the adjoining locker, Espinosa raised an imaginary microphone and asked his then teammate: “Are you the best player in the National League?” He then walked away, bemused, as I claimed that was going to be my next question. (It wasn’t.)

Fast forward to our recent, and more expansive, exchange. The first thing I asked Espinosa, who was acquired by Anaheim over the offseason, was why he was so inconsistent with the bat as a Nat. After a quizzical look that led me to rephrase my question, he suggested he’s happy to be in the American League.

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At the end of January, I observed that the Astros projected to get a lot better at making contact. Making contact, of course, is not the primary goal for any hitter in the box, since some kinds of contact are hardly worth making, but we still think of certain lineups as being strikeout-prone, and I think we’d all prefer more contact, if we had our druthers.

Anyway, that post was done when we had end-of-January depth charts. More importantly, that post was done when all we had were the Steamer projections. Now we have the blended Steamer and ZiPS projections, so, long story short, here are all 30 projected team offensive strikeout rates, for non-pitchers. (We don’t project pitchers batting.) (Why would we?) (Ugh)

The lowest projected rate belongs to the Red Sox, barely. The highest projected rate belongs to the Brewers, less barely. This order of teams might not tell you very much — I don’t know — so for another look, here are the projected changes in strikeout rate, relative to last year’s numbers. A negative here means more contact, because a lower strikeout rate minus a higher strikeout rate yields a negative result.

This confirms what the original post already said: The Astros should make plenty more contact this time around. Projections can be wrong, and hitters can make adjustments, but strikeouts tend to be one of those “sticky” things year-to-year. Coming up behind the Astros, the Padres also project to make a lot more contact than they just did. Good for them! There’s a difference of more than a percentage point between the Astros and the Padres, but then between the Padres and the Indians, there are almost two percentage points. The Angels and Giants bring up the rear, even though they still project to have team strikeout rates within the best 10. They should be both good at contact and worse at contact. If the projections hold, which, you know, they often don’t. That’s baseball!

Late last September, in this very space, I put up a short post entitled “Clayton Kershaw Experimented On the Rockies.” The idea: Two times, in low-leverage situations, Kershaw showed Rockies hitters a new twist. Specifically, the over-the-top southpaw dropped his arm angle to deliver what was more of a tailing fastball. It’s weird whenever a high-profile pitcher does anything different, and it was fair to wonder whether Kershaw might bring the tweak into the playoffs. He did! Take a look.

Borrowing from Texas Leaguers, here are Kershaw’s release points last year, before and then beginning from the Rockies start.

It’s easy to spot the exceptional pitches. When Kershaw dropped down — which he apparently did a total of 25 times — his release point dropped a half-foot, and it shifted over roughly a foot and a half. That’s a significantly different throwing motion, and you could see from Kershaw’s follow-throughs that nothing about it was ordinary. The lower slot was supposedly how Kershaw used to throw in high school. He was inspired to bring it into game action by teammate Rich Hill.

Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the world. Therefore, one should always be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. You’d think that whatever Kershaw touches should turn to gold. But how did this experiment actually do? I’ll note that, of Kershaw’s 25 lower-slot pitches, all of them were fastballs. They averaged two inches more drop than Kershaw’s normal four-seamer, and six inches more horizontal break. Over the games in which Kershaw dropped down, his regular fastball averaged 93.9 miles per hour, and his drop-down fastballs averaged 95.3. Hey, that’s pretty good!

Yet there is more information. All but one of the drop-down fastballs were thrown in one-strike or two-strike counts. Of the fastballs, 16 counted as strikes, and there were three whiffs. There were also 15 swings, and eight of those hit a ball fair. Based on that last part, Kershaw wasn’t exactly successful in screwing with the hitters’ timing. Here’s the last drop-down fastball of Kershaw’s 2016:

From earlier in the same game:

And, I showed you the Anthony Rizzo home run. The start before, Kershaw tried the same thing on Rizzo, and Rizzo *almost* went deep. Or, I guess he did go deep, but just not the right kind of deep.

We’re talking about 25 pitches. One can reach no firm conclusions. Encouragingly, Kershaw’s drop-down fastballs were fast. Discouragingly, they didn’t seem to screw with hitters that much. Encouragingly, Kershaw had the confidence to drop down in playoff situations in the first place. Discouragingly, his motion was weird and his command of the fastball was lacking. Kershaw’s average drop-down fastball was higher than his average normal fastball, even though the movement would dictate putting in lower zones. More than a few times, the pitch was left up.

I don’t know if we’ll see Kershaw do this anymore. Maybe the experiment is over. Maybe, like the changeup, Kershaw will work at this without ever perfecting it. Maybe, like the slider, Kershaw will perfect it, and the best pitcher in the world will get even better. Plenty still to find out! I would suggest that, if this is something Kershaw does intend to keep up, he learn a second lesson from Hill.

Hill, you see, throws both fastballs and breaking balls from his lower slot. Kershaw didn’t do that, and so one could interpret his drop-down as something of a tell. It’s worth keeping in mind. Kershaw’s experiment, in its first run, was nothing fantastic. Maybe there’ll still be more trials.

Just today we kicked off our annual Positional Power Rankings series, which means that, before too long, we’ll get a couple of posts about individual bullpens, looking at every single group. I’ll even be responsible for writing one of those posts, meaning maybe it works to our disadvantage to put this post up now, focusing on one bullpen in particular. But I’ve had a note here for a while, and I’m not one to let a topic go uncovered. The Rockies bullpen is of particular interest, especially at a time when the larger narrative around the team has responded negatively to recent news.

Let’s rewind. Yes, the last week or two have not been kind to the Rockies organization. The outlook for the season ahead has certainly gotten worse. Yet going back to last season, you know which team’s bullpen had — easily — the league’s worst WPA? That would be the Rockies, who made even the Reds feel proud of themselves. Although the Rockies finished at 75-87, their BaseRuns record was a more decent 80-82. With a stronger bullpen, last year’s Rockies would’ve been an average team. Their bullpen this year has the potential to be unusually dominant.

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Welcome back to our annual positional power rankings, which Dave Cameron kicked off this morning with his introductory post. You’re probably familiar with these rankings and series of posts, but if you’re a first-timer, we endeavor to take you through the projected strength of each position in the majors by team — ranking each club from No. 1 to 30 — based upon FanGraphs WAR forecasts. We also provide commentary that hopefully provides some invaluable insights and light-hearted moments. We begin with the catching position.

As you can see in the chart above, the Giants, perhaps unsurprisingly, again pace the field in WAR thanks to Buster Posey. And that advantage is not insignificant in what is again projected to be the weakest position in the major leagues. Major-league catchers combined to slash .242/.310/.391 last season with a wRC+ of 87. So if your team has a Posey, if Gary Sanchez’s second half is indicative of who he might be for 2017, then those players stake their respective teams to significant relative advantages. Only five teams — the Giants, Rangers, Yankees, Dodgers and Astros — project to earn three wins or better from the position, though it is important to remember pitch framing isn’t factored into FanGraphs’ WAR formula.

There isn’t expected to be much change in relative power: the Giants, Nationals, Rangers, and Yankees comprised four of the top-six teams last year. Still, there are players like Travis d’Arnaud, Austin Hedges, and Mike Zunino who contain upside and could perhaps reach new levels of performance. As for an addition of new, young, star power, only two catchers — and Jorge Alfaro at No. 32 and Francisco Mejia at No. 37 — ranked in top 50 of Eric Longenhagen’s top 100 prospects. Mejia is not expected to contribute at the major-league level. So, let’s rank some catching depth charts, shall we?

There are some whispers that Buster Posey’s best days are behind him. Yes, his isolated slugging diminished for a second consecutive season. Yes, he posted his lowest wRC+ (116) in a full season. Yes, he’s logged a lot of innings behind the plate. Yes, he’s going to turn 30 years of age on March 27. But Posey’s average exit velocity was actually up last season (91.2 mph) from 2015 (89.6), his walk rate increased, and his elite bat-to-ball skills remained in place. He ranked as the game’s best framer, according to Baseball Prospectus, and he matched a career best by throwing out 37% of base-stealers. So, Posey should be just fine in 2017. Even if we’ve already witnessed peak Posey, he stands a good chance to again be the game’s most valuable catcher.

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