As far as health is concerned, the Orioles have had something of a middle-infield catastrophe, with injuries to J.J. Hardy, Ryan Flaherty, and Jonathan Schoop. Injuries sometimes force teams to do creative things, and what we saw Buck Showalter do was push Steve Pearce to second base on the fly. Pearce had never played the position before, but Showalter liked his potential over the somewhat defensively-challenged Jimmy Paredes, even though Paredes had experience. That wasn’t the whole story, though: Paredes remained at DH. Showalter said he still wanted to keep that bat in the lineup.

Which is a funny thing to say about a guy who’s been a terrible hitter for most of his big-league career. Granted, it’s not like Paredes has a decade-long track record, but through his first four years, when he batted almost 500 times, his wRC+ ranked right between Yuniesky Betancourt and Freddy Galvis. There are reasons why Paredes was dumped by the Astros, when the Astros couldn’t afford to be liberal with their dumps. Showalter, though, has been a believer. You could say he’s seen some things. And right now, if you sort by wRC+, with at least 100 trips to the plate, Paredes finds himself sandwiched by Paul Goldschmidt and Miguel Cabrera. What those players have in common with Betancourt and Galvis is that they’re players in major-league baseball.

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Monday afternoon, I participated in an Orioles-centric podcast, where one of the things I was supposed to talk about was Manny Machado. I wrote about Machado a couple of weeks ago, and more specifically, I wrote about him suddenly exercising a lot more patience at the plate. From what we understand about plate-discipline statistics, they find themselves pretty fast. It’s unusual when they move around, so Machado’s change was unusual and worth some attention. He seems to be doing the thing we all want prospects to do, but that they only infrequently pull off.

In advance of the podcast, I thought it would be smart to do a little Orioles research. I know some things about them, but I do not know everything about them, since I’m supposed to keep aware of 30 teams until the passing of the deadline renders a few of them irrelevant. Nobody wants to sound unprepared. I checked in on Machado, to make sure things were still keeping up. I checked in on Steve Pearce, out of offensive and defensive curiosity. And it was while scrolling through pages I noticed something about Adam Jones. Machado, as noted, is showing some weird changes in his plate discipline. Jones is, too, in a different way.

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Understand that no one’s Plan A would be putting Steve Pearce into the lineup at second base. It would be nobody’s Plan B, either. Understand that the Orioles have been forced into a position, with J.J. Hardy hurt, and with Jonathan Schoop hurt, and with Ryan Flaherty hurt. What the Orioles have been confronted with is a situation in which the middle infield is in dire need of at least temporary help. Under these specific circumstances, Pearce at second base has become Plan A. Even that feels strange, like the sort of thing no other team would dare attempt.

Pearce, as it happens, is actually out of the lineup Tuesday, because he’s feeling under the weather. But that’s not a performance concern. Over the weekend, Baltimore played three home games in a city that isn’t its home, and in all three games, Pearce started at second. There’s a graphic for it and everything.

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Let’s watch a little MLB Gameday, you and I. I’ll select Saturday’s matchup between the Rays and the Orioles. Below, you’re going to see all four of Manny Machado’s plate appearances. Note that I could’ve selected Sunday’s game instead and demonstrated the same thing, but on Saturday, Machado faced more pitches. Four simple .gifs:

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Before this post gets published, the White Sox and Orioles will begin a baseball game in Baltimore played before no one. The few scouts in attendance will keep to themselves, and those watching from elsewhere will be unheard. There will probably be birds, and birds are always making noise, but we’re generally pretty good at tuning them out, because they never shut up. Two things, before going further:

(1) Of course, what’s going on in the rest of Baltimore is of far greater significance than what’s going on inside Camden Yards. For every one thought about the baseball game, there ought to be ten million thoughts about the civil unrest, and what it means and what’s to learn. My job, though, is to write about baseball, and so this is a post about baseball. I am qualified to do very few other things.

(2) The game will be played under extraordinary circumstances, but it’s also one game. A sample of one is, for all intents and purposes, no better than a sample of zero, so we’re not going to learn much today. We’d need a few thousand of these to really research and establish some conclusions. The post basically concerns the hypothetical, inspired by what’s taking place.

Home-field advantage exists in all sports. It’s a known thing, to varying degrees. The first thing that occurs to most people, as far as an explanation is concerned, is that the team at home has people yelling in support of it. The team on the road, meanwhile, has people yelling other things at it. The average person prefers support over mean and critical remarks. Now, consider the game in Baltimore. Strip the crowd effect away completely. What could that do? What might we expect of the home-field advantage of a team that plays with no fans?

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There’s a lot going on with Kevin Gausman right now. He’s throwing a curveball, instead of a slider. I learned that from another baseball writer earlier today in my email. He’s working out of the bullpen, instead of the rotation. I learned that from general news, and from all the people who complain in our weekly chats. And, all of a sudden, he’s throwing high fastballs. I learned that accidentally through research of other stuff. This is of particular interest to me.

In January, I asked a simple question: should Kevin Gausman and James Paxton throw more high fastballs? The thinking was this: the Rays have been prioritizing high fastballs. An effective high fastball has a particular movement, with lots of rise as observed on PITCHf/x. Gausman and Paxton throw fastballs that qualify, but they also threw the bulk of those fastballs low. What if they didn’t do that? Could more strikeouts and success follow? I didn’t know, but I thought it at least worth wondering.

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And now the final division preview, just in time for Opening Day. If you missed them, here are the first five:

NL West
AL West
NL Central
AL Central
NL East

Now, wrapping things up with the AL East.

The Projected Standings

The only division in baseball where all five teams have a legitimate shot at winning; the projected spread between first and last place in the AL East is smaller than the gap between first and second place in the NL East. The forecasts have a favorite, but this division is wide open, and nearly any order of finish could be reasonable. On to the teams themselves.

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In 2011, Brian Matusz had one of the worst seasons imaginable as a pitcher. At the end of Spring Training, he suffered an intercostal strain and missed the first three months of the season. In his first start back, he gave up one run in 5 2/3 innings pitched, struck out three and walked none. In his next eleven starts, broken up by a stint in the minor leagues, he pitched 44 innings, struck out 35, walked 24 and gave up 18 home runs. There have been roughly 7,000 pitcher seasons over 40 innings in the last 20 years. Brian Matusz’ 3.26 HR/9 is the highest of all of them. Matusz was given another shot to start the next season, but was sent to the minors in July and when he returned, it was as a reliever, the role he has had ever since.

There have been some discussions about moving him back into a starting role. Baltimore does not currently have an opening for him, but there have been rumors that another team could trade for him and try to recapture the talent that once made him Baseball America’s number five prospect in all of baseball. In his recent Sunday Notes column, David Laurilia asked him if he enjoyed starting more and he answered, “Absolutely. No question.” The Orioles had been ramping up Matusz with starter innings, getting up to four innings on March 20th, but have since limited him to one inning performances, readying him for the role he has held the last two seasons for the Orioles.
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The Orioles are projected to have the seventh-best offense this season, and they had the seventh-best offense last season. Yet looking at the offenses projected to be better and slightly worse than the Orioles reveals something interesting about Baltimore, and how you can take it one of two ways. We’ll get to that part later.

First, let’s go through and examine just how many players on each team are projected to have a positive and negative batting runs above average.
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Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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