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This is Joe Sheehan’s’s second piece as part of his April residency at FanGraphs. A founding member of Baseball Prospectus, Joe currently publishes an eponymous Baseball Newsletter. You can find him on Twitter, as well. Read all our residency posts here.

Two pieces ran at FanGraphs earlier this week that addressed critical issues facing Major League Baseball. Dave Cameron pointed out that, with walk rates ticking back up in the season’s early days, that the Three True Outcomes (walks, strikeouts, home runs) accounted for over a third of all plate appearances. Jeff Sullivan then wrote that early-season games were averaging a snappy 3:11, with lag time between pitches jumping by more than a second.

Scores of smart people have taken aim at both issues raised by the Wonder Twins of FanGraphs. Pace of play has replaced PEDs as Baseball’s Big Issue. What I’m not sure we’ve discussed sufficiently is how those two things — TTO baseball and lag time between pitches — are correlated, and how the style of baseball being played in 2017 directly affects the pace at which baseball is being played in 2017.

Let’s back up. Baseball, as evolved from various stick-and-ball games in the 19th century, was originally a contest in which the pitcher’s role was similar to that of a slow-pitch softball hurler. His job was to kick things off by offering up a ball that the batter could whack into the field of play, where the real business of playing baseball happened: running and throwing and fielding and even throwing the ball at a baserunner to record an out. The pitcher was the least important player on the field in the game’s early days. There were, in fact, no mechanisms to force the pitcher to give the batter hittable pitches; it was just considered his job to do so. Batters were even able to request high or low pitches, the better to fit their swing.

As the game became professionalized and more competitive at the highest levels, pitchers started trying to exercise more control over their deliveries so as to keep the batter from making solid, or even any, contact. This led to the creation of the strike zone and, subsequently, walks. Pitchers pushed the rules that mandated underhand deliveries, so as to generate more speed on the ball, and pushed them some more, until the game gave up and let pitchers throw overhand in 1884. This was a key moment in the evolution of baseball, the moment the game stopped being a battle between the batter and the defense, and became a battle between the pitcher and the batter. It also gave us this graph:

It’s not a perfectly clean line, as the deadball era saw a jump in whiffs that disappeared during World War I, but the long-term trend is clear: strikeout rates have risen throughout baseball history, and you can trace it all back to 1884, when baseball turned pitchers into the most important players in the game. So now, 133 years later, in a 7-1 game in the ninth, you have to watch some 27-year-old failed starter huff and puff for 23 seconds, catching his breath while deciding between his fastball and his fastball, all because Pud Galvin and his ilk cheated so effectively that the game gave up trying to stop them.

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It’s early. Like, early early. The Cincinnati Reds and Arizona Diamondbacks are tied for the best record in the National League. The Angels’ best hitter has been Yunel Escobar, not Mike Trout. Mike Leake has been among the most dominant starting pitchers in baseball. Because most teams have played eight or nine games, the standings and the leaderboards look weird. They’ll look more normal in the not-too-distant future.

But for all the wisdom that’s contained within calls not to overreact to early-season performance, the reality is that games in April count, too, and if a team digs a deep enough hole, it stops being early pretty quickly. The Blue Jays, who lost again last night to fall to 1-7, aren’t quite there yet, but they’ve certainly cleared a path towards a potentially very difficult set of decisions this summer.

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How could you know that Aaron Judge is strong? If you have access to Baseball Savant, you could see he’s one of just four players in Statcast’s limited history to hit at least three batted balls in the air at 115+ miles per hour. You could see he ranks tied for fifth in average exit velocity on non-grounders. If you have access to Aaron Judge himself, you could ask him to help you move furniture. The simplest thing is to probably just look at him. Look at him in person. Look at him on TV or on the Internet. He’s strong. Not surprisingly strong, like some world-class little rock climber. Obviously strong, like a man who spends his free time mindlessly juggling crates.

Because of what he is, Judge is capable of extraordinary feats of strength. In that way, he’s similar to Giancarlo Stanton, who once used a home run to destroy part of a scoreboard. When Judge makes perfect contact, with a perfect swing, he can send a baseball farther than almost anyone else. Judge achieved a more subtle feat of strength on Wednesday afternoon. Look at this stupid impossible dinger.

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Over the winter, Eric Longenhagen had very nice things to say about Padres outfield prospect Manny Margot. He ranked Margot and 23rd overall in baseball. He also gave four of Margot’s five tools a grade of 60 or higher. Margot’s power was the only tool that didn’t receive a plus grade. Eric assigned Margot’s game power a present grade of 30 (or three to five homers per year) and a future grade of 40 (10-12 homers per year). In sum, he projected Margot to do everything but hit for power.

Nine games into the season, Margot has not adhered to those power grades. He already has three dingers to his name, tying him for eighth in baseball. His .343/.396/.686 batting line works out to a 182 wRC+. The guy who was supposed to do everything but hit for power is hitting for power. Eric said the following in his write-up of Margot, which is starting to look prescient.

It’s possible Margot may learn to elevate the ball more regularly as he matures, and if he does he’ll become a star-level player.

Yes, it’s only nine games. And, yes, punchless hitters sometimes bunch a few homers together by pure chance. Noted bunt machine Mallex Smith hit two in one game, for example, but few noticed because it didn’t happen in the first week of the season. But Margot is doing something very different than what he’s done in the past, and if he keeps doing it, he could be a bonafide star.

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My two-year-old is in love with reading books right now, which is awesome. Our current favorite is The Day the Crayons Quit, which is affectionately known as “the crayon book” around here. Unfortunately, some books have made their way into our house which I don’t enjoy reading, with my least favorite being Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I regularly move the book to random locations where it can’t accidentally be found, since I hope to never read it again.

That’s probably how Byron Buxton feels right now. Whenever his career is over, it’s now going to include a record of the start of his 2017 season, and I’d imagine he’d like to take the record of his first seven games and shove them in a corner where they will never be found.

The Twins lost yesterday 2-1 to the Tigers, but because they have a 2.07 ERA through their first seven games, Minnesota is still 5-2, a surprisingly strong start for a team not expected to contend this year. But despite making a few fantastic defensive plays, they’re winning in spite of Byron Buxton, not because of him.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Seattle Mariners farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
NL West (HOU, LAA)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .395/.535/.731 with 20 home runs as junior at Mercer.

Scouting Report
Lewis crashed the national party on the Cape in 2015, distinguishing himself as the most talented prospect and youngest regular on an Orleans roster teeming with talent. (Half of the Firebirds roster were honest-to-god prospects.) His junior year at Mercer included 20 home runs, a Golden Spikes award, and questions about the quality of pitching he faced in the Southern Conference.

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Mike Trout is the best baseball player, so he’s automatically interesting. Felix Hernandez is probably not one of the best baseball players, but he has been recently enough that he remains interesting. On Saturday, Felix pitched and Trout hit, and as we all learned in school, Interesting * Interesting = Interesting^2. That’s extremely interesting! In this post, we’ll review the game’s first at-bat between the two. It was the kind of at-bat that leaves you thinking and talking about it days later, which, well, yeah, that’s what we’re doing here.

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Writing about baseball in April can be difficult. Things are happening, and the natural inclination is to want to talk about those things, but for most players, we’re talking about 20 or 30 plate appearances. A bunch of starters have pitched one game. Besides changes in velocity, there’s not much we can say about what has happened so far. The Diamondbacks and Twins are the best two teams in baseball right now, so yeah, it’s early.

But while samples are still tiny for players and teams, things tend to stabilize pretty quickly at the league level. And, not surprisingly, the first week of the season was filled with the two things MLB games are becoming known for; strikeouts and home runs.

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KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Everyone wants to speak with John Hart.

On a sunny day in late March at the Braves’ spring-training facility, Hart is seated in the driver’s seat of an E-Z-GO golf cart near the nylon netting of the on-field cage during batting practice. He employs the cart to travel around the sprawling facility. He loves spending time at its back fields, where the game’s No. 1 farm system, according to Baseball America, resided this spring. But at the big-league field his ability to watch pre-game work is compromised by a constant flow of visitors.

Bo Porter, a front-office assistant, is seated next to Hart in the passenger seat of the cart when Charlie Leibrandt approaches and speaks with Hart about a recent golf outing. Several current Braves players approach, as does a reporter (me). He makes time for everyone. No one is hesitant to greet the club president. There’s no halo of space — or a sense of need for space — around him.

“I like people. I’m an encourager by nature,” Hart says. “I really am.”

Perhaps that’s the foundation of his success: availability and amiability. I spoke with Hart this spring in the midst of his third rebuild project as an executive. His first, in Cleveland, was a major success, and he later put pieces in place for a turnaround in Texas. All that eludes him in a professional career spanning nearly four decades is a World Series ring.

It’s quite possible that encouraging, enjoying people, listening, being approachable — that they’re all keys to fostering the sort of collaborative environment and innovation for which Hart is responsible. It was under Hart that pre-arbitration contracts were pioneered, along with the modern front-office structure, in the early and mid-1990s in Cleveland. The game’s first proprietary database was built there, and all those Ivy League GMs who are running the show these days? Hart started that trend, too. He’s the creator of something akin to baseball’s version of the Bill Parcells Coaching Tree, having hired an unparalleled number of front-office staffers who became general managers.

Said Braves general manager John Coppolella, whom Hart hired in Atlanta: “I think you can very easily make a case for John Hart to be in the Hall of Fame. If you think about the influence he’s had. There are, what, 10 GMs who have worked for him? He can really hand power to people.”

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Houston Astros farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
NL West (LAA)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded strikeout and walk rates of 25% and 9%, respectively, at Double-A.

Scouting Report
The story of Martes’s acquisition is well told. The effects of the deal are obviously still resonating atop Houston’s prospect list, but perhaps more significant is the way that deal changed the way complex-level ball is scouted. Since Martes was unearthed in the GCL, more and more scouts are being assigned to rookie ball in Florida and Arizona. Some clubs have scout(s) here every year, others tailor their coverage based on where they are on the competitive spectrum, with rebuilding clubs more likely to have scouts here than ones who, if they make a trade, are hunting big leaguers instead of teenage lottery tickets. So while Martes has a chance to make a significant impact on an Astros club poised to compete for their division and, maybe, a World Series, the ripples through the industry created by his acquisition are arguably more significant. Okay, on to Martes as a prospect…

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