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After an arbitrator ruled ten days ago that Josh Hamilton had not violated his drug treatment program following an alleged drug relapse, it looked like the Angels would be forced to pay him the rest of the roughly $83 million he is owed over the last three years of his contract. Now, however, it appears that the Angels are determined to do whatever they can to try to escape from the rest of Hamilton’s contract.

Before the Angels’ home opener on Friday evening, the team’s owner, Arte Moreno, spoke with the media. As one might expect, the discussion eventually turned to Hamilton, with a reporter asking Moreno whether the Angels would welcome Hamilton back to the team when he had recovered from his shoulder injury. Somewhat surprisingly, Moreno responded, “I will not say that.”

Instead, Moreno suggested that the team was exploring the possibility of cancelling the rest of Hamilton’s contract. As Moreno explained to reporters, “We have a contract with Hamilton and that contract has specific language, that he signed and that was approved, that said he could not drink or use drugs.”

The Major League Baseball Players Association quickly responded to Moreno’s comments on Friday evening:

“The MLBPA emphatically denies Los Angeles Angels owner Arte Moreno’s assertions from earlier today that the Angels had requested and received the approval of the Union to insert language into Josh Hamilton’s contract that would supersede the provisions of the Joint Drug Agreement and/or the Basic Agreement. To the contrary, the collectively bargained provisions of the JDA and the Basic Agreement supersede all other player contract provisions and explicitly prevent Clubs from exactly the type of action Mr. Moreno alluded to in his press comments today.”

So who is right? And what are the odds that the Angels could terminate the rest of Hamilton’s contract?

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In Monday’s “Opening Day Staff Survey,” Dave said the storyline he was most looking forward to this season was, “Breaking in young pitching prospects as relievers.” This was a little bit vague, but he elucidated on it further later that day when he recorded his weekly podcast with Carson. If you skip to the 30-minute mark, we get to the heart of the issue:

“Earl Weaver used to do this all the time with his relievers back in the 70s, but he broke them in as long relievers; we didn’t really have these one-inning specialists that they have today. So you’d break in these young pitchers, but they’d go two, three, four innings. They’d have to face hitters multiple times, they’d have to work on multiple pitches, they’d have to pace themselves a little bit. To me, that’s a little bit different than breaking in a guy as a ninth-inning guy or as an eighth-inning guy and telling him to throw as hard as possible for 15 pitches.”

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You’ve already read about the stuff being tried in an effort to improve baseball’s pace of play. You’ve already read so much of it you’re probably already tired of reading it. Sorry. Pace of play is a relatively boring subject, when compared to everything that happens in between the various delays and stoppages (i.e. baseball). But, hey, here’s something: last year, the median game duration was 3:07. So far this year, 2:58. Maybe that means something. Maybe all that means is it’s been just a few days. Don’t know, but, forget the macro. This is about the micro.

Among the new rules implemented: batters must keep one foot in the box. A candid Bud Selig:

“A guy gets in the batter’s box, ball one, and now he’s adjusting all this crap he has on,” Selig said. “And I’m thinking to myself watching the game, ‘What is he adjusting? He hasn’t swung the bat.’ ”

Bud Selig is very old, but that’s something I myself would’ve said, with the same terminology. Baseball has been littered with hitters who have to meditate between every pitch, and perhaps the worst offender has been Troy Tulowitzki. Back in 2008, Tulowitzki averaged 20.5 seconds between pitches. That subsequently rose every year, to last season’s 27.9. Tulo, like other hitters, would explain it as a habit. Part superstition, part taking a breather, part thinking things through. But Tulo wasn’t always like this. He grew into it. When he worked faster, he was an excellent player. He’s always been an excellent player, but his is a frustrating trend.

So how has he been changed? How has Tulowitzki responded to a new rule that addresses one of his quirks? We’ve got games, now. Games mean data.

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Over the winter, the Padres changed over almost their entire roster, turning an also-ran into a contender with a flurry of moves that borrowed heavily from the team’s future. The current roster is good enough to be a legitimate Wild Card threat, but despite some big name pieces at the top of the roster, San Diego is still rolling with a tandem of Alexi Amarista and Clint Barmes at shortstop. Unsurprisingly, A.J. Preller is looking to change that.

The #Padres and aggressive A.J Preller still aren't done dealing. They are now scouring the shortstop market, teams say.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) April 7, 2015

Significant trades are pretty rare in April, but Preller already defied the odds by getting the Braves to surrender the best closer in baseball on the eve of Opening Day, so let’s put aside the fact that most teams aren’t likely going to want to move a quality shortstop right now and see if we can find a fit for the Padres. After all, we don’t need to look for an All-Star to find someone better than what San Diego has at the moment.

The Options

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Look at this nonsense:

I should probably explain this nonsense: That’s Ryan Zimmerman. He’s swinging at a pitch from Jacob deGrom. As you can tell, that’s Zimmerman making contact with a pitch from Jacob deGrom. And that contact resulted in a dinger. It put the Nats up in the first inning. Washington wouldn’t score again. They’d win anyway.

It can be hard to write about baseball early in the season. So much of what gets written tries to use stuff observed in small samples in an attempt to figure out what’s going to happen the rest of the way. I do it myself. This isn’t that. This is just, whoa, weird dinger. Forget what Zimmerman’s future holds. Let’s talk about this home run, and Zimmerman’s present and past. Because, I mean:

This means something.

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Last night, Brett Lawrie went 0-for-4, making the game’s last out as the potential tying run. Worse, he had four strikeouts. Worse, he saw 12 pitches. It was the perfect golden sombrero, and, seldom am I given a more obvious article topic. Indeed, seldom is the Internet given a more obvious article topic, and this has already shown up everywhere. As such, I want to begin with an anecdote that isn’t showing up everywhere. Phillies fans already know about this, but you probably aren’t a Phillies fan, so this is probably new.

1983. Mike Schmidt is 33, and one of the best players in baseball. He’ll eventually finish third in MVP voting, and he’ll be worth 7 WAR. He’ll lead the league in dingers. On May 28, he starts at third in a game against the Expos. Montreal’s started Charlie Lea. The Phillies counter with John Denny. That part doesn’t matter.

Up in the first with men on the corners, Schmidt strikes out on three pitches. Up in the third with a man on first, Schmidt strikes out on three pitches. Up in the fifth with men on first and second, Schmidt strikes out on three pitches. Up in the seventh with a man on first, Schmidt strikes out on three pitches. Word gets around. Schmidt’s being taunted even by fans of his own team.

Goes to the ninth, 3-3. Montreal turns to Jeff Reardon. Schmidt comes up with two down and the winning run on second. The homer is Schmidt’s eighth of the year. The Phillies move a game north of .500, and go on to win the division and lose the World Series. Schmidt’s game was by no means forgotten — it’s now a minor part of Phillies franchise lore.

What happened to Brett Lawrie happened to someone as outstanding as Mike Schmidt. All Lawrie was missing was the dramatic walk-off dinger.

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You already know what I’m going to say — this early in the year, we don’t really care about results so much as we care about what goes into those results. Maybe that’s a new pitch, or a new batting stance, or our first look at a guy trying to come back from an injury. Sometimes, though, you can’t help but start with the results. In Mat Latos‘ Miami debut, there were certainly results:

So that’s pretty bad, and generally you’d let it go by as just one of those things, in the same way that no one really thinks that Cole Hamels‘ lousy first start means anything more than a very good pitcher having a very bad day. But like with the interest in seeing what kind of pitcher Masahiro Tanaka would be, there’s interest in Latos. After several good seasons, his 2014 was ruined by left knee surgery and right elbow soreness, after which the Reds flipped him to to a Miami team that plans on contending for a decent enough pitching prospect in Anthony DeSclafani and minor league catcher Chad Wallach’s intriguing offensive profile. Read the rest of this entry »

While I ran through my thoughts on all 30 teams in the division previews, I had a few stray things that didn’t fit into the capsule format, so I’m tackling them here. A year ago, I wrote this same post, including gems like this one:

2. I believe the Royals are being overrated.

Let’s see if I can do better this year. On to the five things I believe about the 2015 season. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s far too early to put serious weight on just about anything (save for injuries, or growing concern about those injuries) you see in the first 36 hours of a baseball season. It’s far too early to do much of anything other than say, “hey, baseball’s back, isn’t that great?” I mean, Buddy Carlyle and Chris Hatcher are on pace for 162 saves. The Red Sox are on pace for 810 homers. Probably not going to happen. Could happen. Won’t happen.

So we know not to look at the in-season numbers for at least a few weeks, lest we forget what Charlie Blackmon and Dee Gordon did last April as compared to the rest of the season. But it’s not like we’re simply not going to talk about baseball until then, and it’s not like there aren’t takeaways we can make from what we’re seeing right now. Like this one, for example: Seemingly years after most smart baseball team gave up on the save rule, why are we still seeing managers risk victories in service of it? Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, Brandon McCarthy threw out a question that baseball Twitter scrambled to research: how often do Opening Day starting pitchers throw a first-pitch non-fastball? Suggested is that first-pitch fastballs, here, are extremely common and extremely predictable, and the results fell in line. It wasn’t clear there had been any first-pitch non-fastballs, and if there had been, there hadn’t been more than one or two, excepting, of course, the occasional knuckler. Baseball season has started. How does baseball season usually start for every team? With a fastball. It’s almost like a ceremonial first pitch, after the ceremonial first pitch, and before the actual baseball stuff.

Monday afternoon, baseball season started for the Yankees and the Blue Jays. In the top of the first, Masahiro Tanaka opened things by pitching to Jose Reyes. That season-opening pitch of 2015: a low slider, for a called strike, at 81 miles per hour. No mystery — it was a certain first-pitch breaking ball. The next pitch was a splitter. The following pitch was also a splitter. Reyes went down on three strikes, and Tanaka was off to the best of all starts.

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