Many people had probably heard of Sean Manaea before Saturday. He was a consensus top-100 prospect before the 2015 and 2016 seasons. He was involved in a trade-deadline deal for Ben Zobrist as the Royals went on to win the World Series back in 2015. That sort of stuff is going to make him well known among those who follow baseball closely; however, even relatively committed fans might not have been paying attention to Manaea’s last two seasons in Oakland. A lot more people are likely to have heard of Manaea now that he’s pitched a no-hitter, the first one by an American League pitcher in nearly three seasons.

Manaea has made good on his pedigree — and Oakland’s decision to trade for him — with two successful seasons. He’s one of just 40 pitchers with at least 300 innings and an above average ERA and FIP across 2016 and 2017. The only pitchers as young or younger than Manaea on that list are and Zach Davies, Michael Fulmer, Carlos Martinez, and Robbie Ray. Manaea isn’t yet anybody’s version of an ace, but his 4.3 WAR from 2016 to 2017 represents the most of any Athletics pitcher. The A’s have averaged 90 losses over the past two seasons, and a roughly average pitcher on a bad team isn’t going to garner a lot off attention. There have been some signs, though — even before the no-hitter against the Red Sox this past weekend — that Manaea had taken a step forward this season.

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You know about Matt Chapman. Right? Of course you know about him. You’re a smart, literate baseball fan. You’re even pretty sure that Matt Chapman is on the A’s these days, and that he’s good with the glove. He is good with the glove. And, in fact, he’s only ever been on the A’s, because he’s only 24 years old and was born the year before they started the O.J. murder trial. But you knew that. Didn’t you?

Anyway, if you know those things about Matt Chapman, you know, probably, about the same amount of things about Matt Chapman as the average baseball fan knew before oh, about two weeks ago. And that’s because in the last two weeks, Matt Chapman has hit as many major-league home runs as anybody not named Charlie Blackmon, Bryce Harper, or Mike Trout, and gotten on base more than 40% of the time to boot. We’re just about 10% of the way through the 2018 big-league schedule, and Matt Chapman is leading the major leagues in WAR.

This won’t last, probably. So this isn’t a piece about how, because we’re already X plate appearances into the season, A’s fans should believe that Chapman is going to sustain the .650 slugging percentage he’s put up so far and become the second coming of Sal Bando but with more power, or whatever. This is a piece about how Chapman has already had an extremely good 16 days at work, and about what he’s been doing differently during those 16 days. If you’d like to make this piece about the future, go for it. That’s on you, though. This is a piece about what Matt Chapman’s doing now.

First, the past. That’s a video of Matt Chapman hitting his 14th and final home run of 2017, against the Gallopin’ Guadalajaran, Miguel González, who tried to locate a second fastball right where he’d put the first one and instead ended up locating it somewhere over the wall in dead center field. I’m showing this to you now to demonstrate that Matt Chapman’s power didn’t come out of nowhere, exactly. Big-league hitters with power are meant to hit fastballs like that one out to dead center field, and Chapman did. He hit 30 home runs last year, between the big leagues and two different minor-league stops. He’s always had very good power. The thing was, he wasn’t as good at putting the power into action in a game setting as he could have been.

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On a Bay Area edition of EW’s season-preview series, Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the resolution of their free-agent-contracts draft, the Lance Lynn, Neil Walker, and Jake Arrieta signings, the offseason market in review, and a Stephen Hawking baseball connection, then preview the 2018 Giants (32:07) with SB Nation’s Grant Brisbee, and the 2018 Athletics (1:07:20) with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser.

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The A’s are signing Jonathan Lucroy for one year and $6.5 million. Why are they doing that? Because Lucroy has been good before, and, other than Lucroy, the A’s catchers are Bruce Maxwell, Josh Phegley, and Dustin Garneau. It’s not so much that Lucroy is sure to be a massive improvement. But, he ought to help, and the A’s had some money to move, and this season, the A’s also happen to look like a half-decent wild-card contender. Everything makes sense. This move was almost painfully obvious.

Of course, in order for this move to go down, Lucroy had to accept. You know how free agency works. And the A’s have had some problems here, in terms of getting players to take their money. Sure, the A’s have run low payrolls in large part because they’ve intended for payroll to be low, but they’ve also often been turned down, even when they’ve had the high offer. This offseason, for example, the A’s offered the biggest contract to Brian Duensing, who re-signed with the Cubs. Maybe Lucroy is fond of the A’s. Maybe he’s excited to go there. But, it’s the middle of spring training. The market decided Lucroy wasn’t worth being enthusiastic about. The A’s came calling with a job.

As I write this, Lucroy is 31 years old. Not even very long ago, he was considered one of baseball’s best catchers. How did his free agency end up in this place? Lucroy, like Carlos Gonzalez, is coming off a bad season. And it’s not at all clear what anyone should make of him at this point. What skills he still has are fair to question.

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In my weekly chats or in the comments section of certain posts, readers often ask a question like, “Does Pitcher X have ace potential?” or some variant of it. While it makes sense that people would be curious about such a thing, the answer is (by definition) almost always “No.” Because there are so few aces in the majors, the probability that any prospect would develop into one is necessarily low.

When I’m at games — and especially when I’m at spring-training games — I’ll occasionally run into someone like Corey Kluber, though. And while I realize nobody’s wondering if Kluber has a chance of succeeding in the majors, there’s some value in writing up guys like this as an exercise, to illustrate what an ace looks like on paper. So that’s what I’ve done here. (Note, as well: context is important when reading the following, as it’s the product of an abbreviated spring look.)

Kluber was 90-92 in my viewing, with enough movement on his fastball to merit a half-grade bump. That’s about 1.5 ticks slower than his average fastball velocity from last year, but this is typical of early-spring Kluber. I put a 55 on his fastball while observing im and imagine it’s plus during the season when he’s throwing harder.

He mixed in a cutter, slider, changeup, and a curveball. The cutter was 86-88 with tight, late movement. It was consistently plus, flashing plus-plus, and Kluber put it where he wanted to when he wanted to. It’s likely that the slider and curveball are the same pitch and that Kluber can just manipulate the shape and depth of the pitch, but the ball acts differently enough when Kluber does this that he functionally has both, even if the catcher puts down the same sign for both. When his breaking ball behaved more like a curveball, it was a 50, a deep, but blunt, 80-82 mph curveball. The slider was one of the best I’ve ever seen, and Kluber threw a few 80-grade sliders in the outing, while most were 70s in the 83-85 mph range. These had more horizontal movement and, like everything else Kluber does, located with precision. I saw a few changeups that I thought were average.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Oakland Athletics. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

55 FV Prospects

Puk had back issues in college and scouts weren’t enamored with his conditioning, but he also featured premium velocity and a plus slider while performing against SEC hitters. He somewhat surprisingly fell to Oakland’s sixth overall selection in the 2016 draft. Reports were even stronger in 2017.

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On Tuesday, the Major League Baseball Players Association filed a grievance against four major-league teams: Miami, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay. Specifically, the MLBPA contends that these four teams are violating the collective bargaining agreement by misusing their revenue-sharing money.

To understand the implications of the union’s grievance, we have to begin with the language of the CBA itself. Article XXIV(A) of the CBA states that “[a]ny Club seeking a distribution from the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund [that is, the revenue-sharing money] shall submit a request in writing to the Commissioner. The written request must include, but need not be limited to: (i) the amount requested; (ii) the use(s) to which the Club intends to put the requested distribution; and (iii) an explanation of how, in the Club’s view, the requested distribution should improve the Club’s performance on the field” (emphasis mine).

Later on, the CBA is even more explicit:

[E]ach Club shall use its revenue sharing receipts (including any distributions from the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund) in an effort to improve its performance on the field. The following uses of revenue sharing receipts are not consistent with a Club’s obligation . . . to improve its performance on the field: payments to service acquisition debt or any other debt that is unrelated to past or future efforts to improve performance on the field; payments to individuals other than on-field personnel or personnel related to player development; payments to entities that do not have a direct role in improving on-field performance; and distributions to ownership that are not intended to offset tax obligations resulting from Club operations.

It’s that language on which the MLBPA is hanging its hat.

Now the MLBPA’s grievance will go before an arbitration panel, not a court. The rules of private arbitrations like this are generally set by the parties themselves. That can lead to some interesting quirks, like the fact that the commissioner himself serves as arbitrator in certain proceedings that are appeals from his own decisions (the interest-of-the-game clause and the like). In this case, the grievance hearing will be conducted in accordance with the Rules of Procedure laid out in Appendix B of the CBA.

Those Rules are pretty lengthy, so here are the pertinent bits: the legal rules of evidence don’t apply, the arbitration panel sets its own standard of proof (in other words, how much evidence one side needs to present to win), and it’s possible to avoid a hearing altogether just by both sides agreeing to submit legal briefs. Also, there are three arbitrators: one selected by the MLBPA, one selected by MLB, and a neutral third party who is usually a lawyer with some experience in conflict resolution and who serves as the panel chair. That means that, as a practical matter, it’s the panel chair who decides these cases.

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Me, I’m kind of sick of hearing about J.D. Martinez. I’m sick of hearing about all the free agents. All I want is for the ones who’ll get jobs to get jobs so that we can move on with all our affairs. Seems like Martinez is destined to end up in Boston. Arizona is reportedly trying to stay involved by playing with what present and future money they have, but you can never really tell what information is just out there because Scott Boras wants it to be. It would remain surprising if Martinez doesn’t spend 2018 in a Red Sox uniform. Someone will simply have to give in.

To Martinez’s credit, a lot of us probably do take him for granted. When you talk about free agency, you talk about the future, but Martinez has put together a remarkable past. At least as far as the recent era goes, Martinez is among the original so-called swing-changers. He’s a daily reminder that even the Astros don’t get everything right. And, since 2014, 289 players have batted in the majors at least 1,000 times, and Martinez has ranked fifth in wRC+, between Bryce Harper and Paul Goldschmidt. Martinez isn’t much of a runner, and he isn’t much of a defender, and he turned 30 years old in August. Guy can hit, though. He was perfect for the home-run era, even before the era began.

That’s an introduction about J.D. Martinez. Now let’s use him to talk about somebody else.

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Monday afternoon, the Royals and A’s exchanged four players, and the most recognizable among them is also the least valuable. It’s one of those multiplayer trades that tends to be easy to ignore, and that’s made all the more true by the fact that the Royals have entered a down period, and the A’s might not yet have emerged from their own. But as I’ve repeated lately, every major-league move is interesting if you look at it long enough. And in this case, there are two notable players in particular. Two players who might be considered analytical standouts. Here’s the breakdown:

A’s get

• Ryan Buchter
• Brandon Moss
• $3.25 million

Royals get

• Jesse Hahn
• Heath Fillmyer

At first, you could interpret this as the A’s reuniting with a beloved slugger. It’s not so. Moss is likely to be dropped or flipped, and he’s only in here for the purposes of the Royals shedding about $5 million. From the A’s perspective, this is about landing Buchter, a much-needed lefty for the bullpen. For the Royals, they get to roll the dice on some pitchers. Fillmyer is the prospect. Hahn is arguably the more intriguing one.

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The moderator, MLBNetwork’s Jon Morosi, suggested slyly at one point that if any of the panelists cared to consummate a trade, the event could be paused in order for them to do so. He then proposed that maybe “Miami could spin Christian Yelich to the Rockies.”

Amid appreciative laughter from the audience, the question “What would it take?” rang out. Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill, sitting immediately to Morosi’s left, responded with a smile: “Back up the truck.”

———

Held this past Monday at the Harvard Club of Boston, the “MLB Executive Panel Q&A” was organized by the Friends of Harvard Baseball and the Harvard Varsity Club. Along with Hill, the panelists included Colorado Rockies VP/general manager Jeff Bridich, Oakland A’s general manager David Forst, Boston Red Sox VP of player development Ben Crockett, and Peter Woodfork, a senior VP of baseball operations in the commissioner’s office. All are former members of the Harvard baseball team, while Morosi, a self-described “slap-hitting second baseman on a team of slap-hitting second basemen” — played on the junior varsity.

Not everything said on Monday night was on the record, but several of the stories that were shared can be repeated to the population at large. Along with the aforementioned exchange, here are some of them.

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