PHOENIX, Ariz. – You are probably aware of Rich Hill’s story.

You are probably aware of his remarkable comeback and the excellent second act of his career. You probably know he is something of a sabermetric darling, having challenged conventional wisdom with his pitch usage. The A’s and Dodgers were willing to invest in his small sample of success in 2015 and 2016 thanks, in part, to spin rate, which has become newly measurable. Hill also appealed to traditional scouting eyes due to the deception of his delivery and his ability to make his curveball look like two or three pitches by mixing speeds, arm slots, and shapes.

This author certainly finds Hill to be of great interest. So when I visited Dodgers spring-training camp earlier this month, Hill was one of the players I was hoping to interview.

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There are three types of baseball. One is regular ol’ baseball. The second is extra-inning baseball, which is sometimes referred to as “#freebaseball”. And then finally, there’s Weird Baseball, stylized by the youths as “#weirdbaseball”.

Extra-inning baseball is like regular baseball, except — even more often than usual — batters are trying too hard to hit home runs. This leads occasionally to Weird Baseball. Scientists change their mind about what constitutes Weird Baseball once a month, during breaks when determining who is a millennial and who is not. Weird Baseball, at the moment, is technically denoted as baseball occurring in the 16th inning and onward.

I’m not the first to say it, but I’m the only to say in this blog post, that baseball is unlike other sports in that each team is tasked with playing basically every day. The result is a metronome-like effect, a dependable presence that lends order to life. But just like in life, chaos sometimes emerges from the order that baseball has created. Sometimes the chaos is a joyful sort; other times, it brings grief. In either case, it’s difficult to ignore. The chaos of #weirdbaseball is difficult to ignore.

Major League Baseball is trying to eliminate the chaos.

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I think I say the same thing every year, but, I suppose, tradition is tradition. I run a lot of polling projects, crowdsourcing the FanGraphs audience, but out of all the polling projects, I enjoy this one the most. I don’t enjoy the first post; I enjoy analyzing the results. This is the results-analysis post. So often, our site supplies projections, and that’s that. If you see a projection you don’t like, you might say something in the comments or post something on Twitter, but that’s the end of it. Here, you get to have a collective voice. Not that we’re going to adjust our team projections based on this, mind you, but this is a chance to see community feedback.

Here is where you can see our best projected standings, taking schedule into account. As always, those are based on ZiPS projections, Steamer projections, and manually-maintained team depth charts. Those standings have been available now for a little while, but that doesn’t mean you have to think they’re correct. So last week, I ran a post with 30 polls, asking for your input. Is a given projection too optimistic? Is a given projection too pessimistic? I’ve got everything you said in a spreadsheet. This community is more fond of the Brewers, and it’s not so fond of the Blue Jays. That probably doesn’t surprise you. After all, you, the reader, are a part of the voting community.

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Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Here, I thought it virtually inevitable that Alex Cobb would settle for something similar to the Lance Lynn contract. The pitchers have similar ages, strengths, and profiles, and both Cobb and Lynn happen to have turned down qualifying offers. A week and a half ago, Lynn signed with the Twins for a year and $12 million, after spending the offseason aiming much higher. In my head, I figured that would be Cobb’s fate, too. There are worse things. Yet Cobb has emerged with something much stronger, something more lucrative. Seemingly despite the odds, Cobb now has more or less the contract he wanted all along, agreeing to terms with the Orioles for four years and $57 million.

In the bigger picture, it’s not surprising, since Cobb was expected to get something like this back in December. In the smaller picture, it is surprising, given how the market played out. And it’s additionally surprising, given the Orioles’ reluctance to sign pitchers to long-term deals. I don’t think this was ever the likelihood, which helps to explain why it took so long in the first place. But for Cobb, he’s got a home, in a familiar division. And for the Orioles, they’ve patched another rotation together, after appearing shorthanded. While they might be the East’s worst team, we’ve heard that before. They’re going to give this another shot.

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As Opening Day approaches, many team’s rosters have rounded into place. However, there is some slight tinkering to be done. With this in mind, let’s consider the careers of two players, blindly — one of whom is a mainstay for his team and the other who used to be.

Both players converted from shortstop to center field. They’re almost the same age. Player A was once a top-25 prospect, however, while Player B was a relatively unheralded signing out of the Dominican. Now, Player A is his team’s unquestioned starting center fielder, while Player B is on the trading block.

Player A is Billy Hamilton, noted speedster, while Player B is Juan Lagares. Recent reports suggest that the Mets have received interest in Lagares and that the club is motivated to move him.

Now, this could be the case for a variety of reasons. Lagares hasn’t hit particularly well this spring, going just 7 for 36 so far with 13 strikeouts. While spring stats only correlate so well to regular season, Lagares hasn’t made an overwhelming case for an expanded role. Lagares also makes $6.5 million this year and $9 million next year, and the Mets have supposedly been interested in shedding some payroll. Finally, there’s the fact that Lagares — one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball — is buried on the Mets’ outfield depth chart by a bevy of corner outfielders masquerading as center fielders. The fact that he is available should pique the interest of many teams, just as much if Billy Hamilton was available.

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Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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It’s not a stretch to say that Hanley Ramirez’s four-year, $88 million contract with the Red Sox hasn’t worked out well through its first three years. He’s moved off of shortstop to unfamiliar positions at which he’s struggled, namely left field (2015) and first base (2016). He’s battled injuries — particularly problems with both shoulders — to the point of averaging just 128 games per year. And in two of his three seasons, he’s finished with a sub-zero WAR (-1.7 in 2015, -0.4 last year). With the addition of J.D. Martinez to the crowded Boston roster, he stands to lose playing time. Even so, his chipper disposition in this Boston Herald piece earlier this week was eye-catching, even if it marks the 34-year-old slugger’s entry into the “Best Shape of His Life” genre.

After hitting just .242/.320/.429 with 23 homers and a 93 wRC+ last year, Ramirez underwent surgery to debride his left shoulder (the one that required season-ending surgery in 2011) in November. He spent the winter working out with Martinez in Miami, reported to camp (allegedly) 15 pounds lighter thanks to a new diet and fitness regimen, and has been playing first base in Grapefruit League games with no reported difficulties. Via the Herald’s Mike Silverman, Ramirez has been telling reporters he’ll go 30-30 this year — 30 homers and 30 steals, a pairing he achieved in 2008 after missing by one homer the year before. It certainly seems unlikely given that he stole just one base last year and has needed the past four seasons to total exactly 30.

Nobody’s about to bet on that. The big question is how much playing time he’ll get under new manager Alex Cora, who will have his hands full. With an outfield of 23-year-old Andrew Benintendi in left, 28-year-old Jackie Bradley in center, and 25-year-old Mookie Betts in right — a defensively adept group that combined for 48 DRS and 26 UZR last year — it’s not like it makes a ton of sense to shoehorn Martinez (-8 UZR in rightfield last year, -5.8 per 150 games in the two corners career-wise) into an outfield corner instead of DH-ing him. Perhaps the lefty-swinging Benintendi’s struggles against same-side pitching (60 wRC+ in 140 career PA) provide an opening, albeit at the risk of impeding the younger player’s development and forcing Martinez to play the Green Monster. The Red Sox have discussed what amounts to a home-road platoon with Martinez-Bradley-Betts at Fenway and Benintendi-Betts-Martinez elsewhere, but that’s a lot of time riding pine for Bradley as well as Benintendi, who just a year ago was touted as a Rookie of the Year candidate.

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It’s not actually all that clear how many pitchers have had Tommy John surgery three or more times. According to some sources, Jose Rijo counts. According to some sources, Jason Isringhausen counts. Baseball Reference includes Scott Williamson, Jarrod Parker, Josh Johnson, and Chad Fox. On the other hand, we have the list provided by Jon Roegele. Among the repeats, there’s only one three-time survivor. Anthony Castrovince provides a partial explanation.

How many pitchers have made it back to the big leagues after their third Tommy John? Technically, none. Though Jose Rijo and Jason Isringhausen are often cited to have had at least three Tommy Johns apiece, Jon Roegele’s oft-cited Tommy John database does not recognize either pitcher as a three-time recipient of the surgery, because, for each guy, at least one of the surgeries addressed a flexor tendon tear, not a UCL tear.

I can’t speak to the exact history of the procedure. I can’t tell you exactly how many pitchers have had it three times. I can tell you that, whatever the answer is, it’s an absurdly low number. It’s a number that includes Jonny Venters. Not only has Venters been through Tommy John three times; more recently, he’s been through another elbow operation. Right now, he’s in camp with the Rays. Just yesterday, he pitched. And when he pitched on February 25 against the Twins, it was his first spring action since 2013.

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This slow offseason has many fans and teams already looking toward — and maybe salivating over — next year’s free-agent class. The star power available next season is incredible. Josh Donaldson, Bryce Harper, and Manny Machado are among the top-nine position players on our Depth Chart Projections. All three will be free agents in November. With Charlie Blackmon, A.J. Pollock, Brian Dozier, Clayton Kershaw, Daniel Murphy, and Andrew McCutchen also set to hit the market, the class boasts quality depth, as well.

Those are certainly some impressive names. Notably, however, almost all of them belong to position players. While next year’s free-agent class could be unrivaled in terms of overall talent, it’s possible that the glow of the top hitters has obscured how lopsided that class is likely to be. Kershaw is great, but there’s only one of him. Multiple teams, meanwhile, will be searching for pitching upgrades next winter. A preliminary glance at things reveals that their options could be limited.

Before getting to next year’s crop of pitchers, let’s perform a brief refresher on the one wrapping up. We had Yu Darvish at the top of the class, with Jake Arrieta a rung below followed by Lance Lynn, Alex Cobb, Tyler Chatwood, Jhoulys Chacin, and Jaime Garcia. This year’s group of free-agent starting pitchers lacked both firepower and quality depth, an unexpected development considering how things looked heading into last season. In December 2016, I naively believed in this year’s crop of starters. The projections backed me up, too: at that time, three pitchers appeared likely to produce four-win seasons, six to top three wins, and eight pitchers total to put up at least 2.5 WAR. By November, only Yu Darvish hit free agency with a season above 2.5 WAR, and even he missed his projection by a full win.

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