There’s a revolution happening in the batting cage. We’ve noticed that batted-ball data is changing slightly and that hitters are saying different things about the intentions of their swings. But on the ground, where these hitters are training to improve, a few new tools have appeared that are helping those hitters to realize their intentions with better results. Those tools make a link between hitting and pitching that may open our eyes to the possibility of better development practices in both places.

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Last year, only one team improved their exit velocity in the second half as much as the Brewers did, when they went from 17th in the league to fifth. That might not surprise you, because you’ve read often about the young power duo on that team — Keon Broxton and Domingo Santana — and those two were at their healthiest and most dynamic in the second half. And yet the team was 20th in park- and league-adjusted weighted run creation during that same period. There’s always something else that requires attention, both players agreed in camp this week.

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In the Orioles’ opening game last season, Mark Trumbo stole a base. It was his first stolen base since 2014, but anyway, as of that point in time, the Orioles had one steal, and the Brewers had zero steals. The Orioles would hold that 1-0 advantage until April 8, when Keon Broxton stole a bag. The teams remained tied until April 12, when Ryan Flaherty put the Orioles back in front 2-1. That held until April 15, when the Brewers got steals from Broxton, Jonathan Villar, and Aaron Hill. At that point, the Brewers surged ahead, and they never looked back. The gap would shortly reach double digits.

At the end of this post, I’m going to ask you a question about steals. There are no stakes, and this isn’t even all that important. While the Brewers are more athletic than the Orioles are, the Orioles are better than the Brewers are, and that’s the way the Orioles like it. So, don’t think too hard. But you’re probably going to have to think a little bit. And, given the question, even that much is ridiculous.

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Here’s the thing about bunting: it can be a good idea if the third baseman is playing too far back. The chance of a hit goes up in that case, and a successful bunt often causes the third baseman to play more shallow in future plate appearances, so future balls in play receive a benefit. That’s one of those games within a game we see all the time in baseball: once the positioning deviates from “normal” by a certain degree, the batter receives a benefit. Then the defender has to change his approach.

This tension created by the bunt illustrates how offenses and defenses react to each other’s tendencies. That same sort of balance between fielder and hitter might be playing out on an even broader scale, however, when it comes to the shift in general.

Too many shifts in the game, and the players begin to adjust. They develop more of a two-strike approach, they find a way to put the ball in play on the ground the other way, or they make sure that they lift the ball if they’re going to pull it. There’s evidence that players are already working on lifting the ball more as a group, pulling the ball in the air more often than they have in five years, and have improved on hitting opposite-field ground balls. So maybe this next table is no surprise.

The league has improved against the shift! The shift is dead! Or, wait: the league has actually improved as a whole over this timeframe, and the difference between the two is still about the same. And every team would take a .292 wOBA against over a .297 number. Long live the shift.

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It’s exciting to have so many statistics available to us when we’re trying to evaluate our favorite players. From the players’ perspective, though, it’s probably more exciting when those statistics allow them to improve themselves. From that point of view, metrics like launch angle and spin rate probably have a certain appeal that some others don’t: they provide a measurement of something that might help a player understand his game and get better.

There’s one problem, though — with spin rate, at least. Indications are that it’s difficult for a pitcher to change his in any material way. Still, as Jeremy Jeffress may have found, it can provide a window into betterment.

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The bad news is that we have the Padres projected for baseball’s worst record. The good news is that’s not really surprising to the Padres, and Keith Law recently ranked their farm system at No. 3. They tried the whole go-for-it thing, and it blew up, so they reversed course. To this point, it’s gone well, and probably better than was expected. You can look at the Padres and see how they could eventually return to being competitive.

What that doesn’t mean is that the rebuild is complete. The Padres will have more selling to do, and as I look at their roster, I see a team poised to do one of the things the Brewers have done. Milwaukee has done well to sell off parts of its bullpen, bringing real prospect value back in exchange for Jeremy Jeffress, Will Smith, and Tyler Thornburg. They’re all effective pitchers, but they don’t mean much to a could-be cellar-dweller. You might know the Padres for having a suspect pitching staff, but the bullpen should be of considerable interest. And if events go well enough, then come July, the Padres might end up in charge of the late-inning reliever market.

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“I’m a completely different hitter from each side of the plate,” Hank Conger told me one time. He went on to describe how he had more loft in his swing from one side. Switch-hitter Billy Burns said about the same thing, speculating that his relative lack of experience hitting from the left side was the cause for his lack of power on contact from that side. “My muscles aren’t as strong there,” he told me in July of 2015. Even if a player is capable of hitting — even hitting well — from both sides of the plate, that doesn’t mean he’s the same type of hitter from both sides. Subtle differences are bound to be present.

All of this may explain a strange thing that happened to Jonathan Villar last year.

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Over 450 innings into his major-league career, Kyle Hendricks possesses both an ERA under 3.00 and a third-place finish in Cy Young voting. That’s impressive. Even after accounting for the regression he’s likely to experience in the future, he’s nevertheless proven himself to be an apt pitcher at the major-league level, something that we didn’t see coming as he ascended the ranks as a prospect. He’s done enough to wonder why we missed on him, and what he can teach us about other young pitchers out there.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Milwaukee Brewers 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 thes 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)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .382/.387/.618 at Triple-A Colorado Springs after trade.

Scouting Report
A physical freak who has undergone a half-decade of physical growth and mechanical adjustments to reach the doorstep of the majors, Brinson headlined the package sent to Milwaukee for Jonathan Lucroy ahead of the trade deadline. He had been struggling through the first few months of the season and missed several weeks with a shoulder injury. Injuries have been a prevalent aspect of Brinson’s pro career and he’s missed substantial playing time during each of the last three years with various ailments, including quad and hamstring issues.

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Spring training has gotten surprisingly close, and — in terms of significant activity — the offseason is mostly complete. Just about every team around has a pretty good idea what the opening-day roster is going to look like, which means we’re coming up on projection season. Now, you could argue it’s always projection season, at least here on FanGraphs, but the team projections should, in theory, be better than they’ve been all winter. So let’s work with that.

Right now, all we have available is Steamer. We’re still a little while away from ZiPS getting folded in. But Steamer isn’t stupid, so, looking at that, we see the following teams projected to bring up the MLB rear: the Padres (66 wins), the Brewers (67 wins), and the Reds (69 wins). No one else is projected right now for a win total in the 60s, and while the White Sox would end up down there if they sold Jose Quintana, that hasn’t yet happened, so we shouldn’t assume anything.

You could argue the three worst teams are on the right tracks. All of them are openly rebuilding, and none of them think they’re going to win in 2017. Keith Law just ranked the Padres’ farm system No. 3 in the game. He ranked the Brewers at No. 6, and he ranked the Reds at No. 8. I don’t think many people thought the Reds would come in so high! There they are, though. Lots to hope for in the future.

But what about the near-term future? How good could these teams be in the year just ahead? None of them plan to win, but, miracles happen. To get to the point: I consulted my spreadsheet of team projections going back to 2005. That’s 12 years, and over that span, I found 26 teams projected to win no more than 70 games. Here’s a big (sortable) table of how all those teams did:

On average, the teams were projected to win 68 games. On average, they actually won 68 games, with an average BaseRuns win total of 68. Pretty good, all in all, by which I mean, pretty bad. The medians are also in agreement.

Of note: The worst projected team was even worse than expected. Of greater note, though, is that three of these 26 teams finished over .500. That’s about a 12% success rate, if that means anything to you. The 2012 Orioles are the greatest success story included, because they outdid their projected win total by an unbelievable 23. They made the playoffs! Their win totals leading up to the season in question: 69, 66, 64, 68, 69, 70. Between 2007 – 2011, no team in the American League won fewer games than the Orioles. Between 2012 – 2016, no team in the American League has won more games than the Orioles. That year in 2012 was when the whole story of the organization was flipped on its head.

The 2010 Blue Jays were only a little outdone. They beat their projection by 20 wins, and just looking at BaseRuns, they finished better than the 2012 Orioles. Those Jays were thought to be somewhat rebuilding, after ridding themselves of J.P. Ricciardi, and no team would expect to win after trading away Roy Halladay. The Jays played just one month that year with a sub-.500 record.

And then you’ve got the 2008 Marlins, before they decided to identify just with Miami. What the 2008 projections knew was that, in December 2007, the Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera to the Tigers. But the projections didn’t think the run prevention would improve by 124. It wasn’t a playoff season, but it was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been.

In all, 26 projected bad teams. Of those, 23 were at least mostly bad. Odds are, the Padres, Brewers, and Reds will be bad, too. But let’s just say, for simplicity, there’s a 3-in-26 chance for each given team to do better than .500. It would follow there’s about a 30% shot for at least one of these teams to do better than .500. Wouldn’t that be something? I’ll pick the Brewers, and live with it.