I recognize that this is a sensitive subject at a lousy time. I mean, the Mariners are winning, winning on a fairly sustained basis, and Felix Hernandez owns a lower ERA than Stephen Strasburg and Noah Syndergaard. According to our playoff odds page, the Mariners have a better than 50% chance of getting to the postseason, which for Felix would be his first-ever taste of those stakes. Mariners fans aren’t looking to be worried. Not now, not when they have circumstances to appreciate.

So I know this post might be interpreted as a bit of a bummer. It’s not meant that way; these are just observations. And no part of me presently thinks that Felix is toast. It’s just, there are things to talk about. What Felix has been doing, he’s never before done quite like this. It’s looking like he could be beginning a new chapter.

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You’ve read articles like this before. That’s because Taijuan Walker has been a somebody for years, and we’ve all been waiting for him to kick it up. When you know a player is already hyped, you’re predisposed to think the most of any encouraging performances. It’s a bias, is what it is, leading observers to get ahead of themselves. I think, in the past, it’s been easy to get too excited about Walker. He needed to show more. But that’s why this is a post now. He’s showing more. Taijuan Walker is showing signs that he might be almost complete.

You remember that something seemed to click for Walker toward the end of last May. Through nine starts, he had 23 walks and 39 strikeouts. Through the remaining 20 starts, he had 17 walks and 118 strikeouts. That got people excited, and rightfully so, because those are tremendous indicators of improvement. But something was missing. Something was just a little bit off — over those 20 starts, Walker ran a near-average ERA. He had the strikes, and he had the whiffs, but he didn’t have the contact management. He was tantalizing, but unfinished.

I’m not declaring that Walker now is finished. That’ll take more proof. But Walker, this year, has carried over the walks and the strikeouts. In that sense, he looks exactly the same. Yet he’s allowed just one home run. He’s giving up far less solid contact, having dramatically increased his rate of grounders. Coming in, Walker was missing one thing. It seems he could be finding it.

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Maybe it was the fact that she spent her formative years in Germany, while I spent most of mine in Jamaica and America’s South, but my mother and I have always disagreed about a fundamental thing when it comes to the weather. For her, she wants the sun. It doesn’t matter if it’s bitter cold and dry; if the sun’s out, she’s fine. I’d rather it was warm. Don’t care if there’s a drizzle or humidity or whatever.

It turns out, when we were disagreeing about these things, we were really talking about pitching. Mostly because life is pitching and pitching is life.

But also because the temperature, and the temperature alone, does not tell the story of pitching in the cold. It’ll make sense, just stick with it.

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Baseball can be slow to change. We’ve had this idea for decades that certain pitch types have platoon splits, and that you should avoid them in certain situations because of it. Righties, don’t throw sliders to lefties! It’s Baseball 101.

Think of the changeup, too. “Does he have a changeup?” or some variation on the theme is the first question uttered of any prospect on the way up. It’s shorthand for “can he be a starter?” because we think of changeups as weapons against the opposite hand. A righty will need one to get lefties out and turn the lineup over, back to the other righties, who will be dispatched using breaking balls.

As with all conventional wisdom, this notion of handedness and pitch types should be rife for manipulation. Say you could use your changeup effectively against same-handed hitters, for example. You could have a fastball/changeup starter that was equally effective against both hands, despite the history of platoon splits on the pitch.

To the innovators go the spoils. And we’re starting to see some innovators.

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Did you, like many others, come into this season wondering what to expect out of Robinson Cano? Did you believe that reports of his demise might be greatly exaggerated? Well, if three games are any indication, wonder no longer. He’s hit four home runs in 14 plate appearances! I don’t really need to dive too deep into his wRC+ (it’s 340), or many other stats at this point in the season, because they’ll simply reinforce for you that he’s been pretty impossibly good in 27 innings of baseball. The “I don’t need to hit the ball in the field of play” second baseman has a BABIP of .000. The point of this piece, then, is to tell you how and why Cano has been good, and the specific parts of his plate approach that are assuaging some of the fears people had about him last season.

Cano’s 2015 featured, at root, two halves. Every season of every player’s career features two halves, but Cano’s were relevant in that his production was starkly divided between the two of them. There was pre-July 1st Cano, he of the .105 ISO and 71 wRC+. And then there was post-July 1st Cano, he of the .209 ISO and 157 wRC+. Second-half Cano was literally 100% better than first-half Cano when compared to league average.

If you’re reading this, you probably know that everyone was trying to figure out what was wrong in that first half. Here’s Jeff mainly talking about him hitting too many ground balls. Here’s Dan going in-depth on how his hitting mechanics were a little messed-up. Here’s an interview in which Cano says a stomach parasite sapped his strength. There was obviously a lot going on, and his first-half performance was probably all of those negative forces coming together in the form of terrible baseballing.

The second half of 2015 was a complete turnaround, however. He started to hit more line drives and fly balls. He went to the opposite field at something closer to his career rates. His home run/fly ball rate and BABIP regressed toward (and surpassed) his career norms. His first half probably wasn’t as bad as it looked, but his second half was a pretty effective inversion of that. Players in their early 30s who play poorly for extended periods while on massive contracts tend to be placed under a microscope, however, so questions about Cano’s partial 2015 failures followed him into 2016.

He’s answered those questions pretty effectively in the early going. And, while we shouldn’t take anything away from what Cano’s done so far, we also need to ask some questions of how the Rangers approached him in their just-concluded opening series. Sure, we should remind ourselves that it’s just three games, but the very obvious way Texas pitched to him could act as a bit of a warning for those teams about to face him. So how did the Rangers approach him? The answer was, unequivocally, “witin the zone.” Take a look at Cano’s in-zone rate and rate of first-pitch strikes from 2013 to 2015 as compared to the series against the Rangers:

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Let’s talk about the King. Felix Hernandez lost his start on opening day. In one sense, it was just the same old Mariners — Felix allowed one earned run, and literally just one hit, a fly-ball blooper into the shallow outfield. So, that makes it sound crazy, but Felix also walked five batters in six innings, and put a sixth on base by hitting him. Fewer than 60% of his pitches were strikes, which would be a bad mark for anyone, and Felix acknowledged he wasn’t working like himself. The plus side, naturally, is that he still wasn’t hittable. But he was kind of wild, and — and — his velocity was down.

It was down a full couple ticks. This follows a string of appearances in spring when Felix was below his previous velocity. That wasn’t a big deal then, but it’s a bigger deal now, with the season underway. According to PITCHf/x, Felix threw just two pitches at at least 91 miles per hour. Last year’s average fastball was 91.8. Every so often, there can be these blips — in one April start in 2013, Felix threw just one pitch north of 91 — yet this could be a developing pattern. And it’s worth taking a step back to consider just how far Felix’s velocity has fallen.

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Previous editions: Arizona / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles (AL) / Los Angeles (NL) / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York (AL) / New York (NL) / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / San Francisco.

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Seattle Mariners. In this companion piece, I look at that same Seattle farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Mariners have the 24th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

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The Mariners organization won’t be confused for having one of the top farm systems in baseball, but the developments of the past year help bring some legitimate optimism for its future contributions to the big-league product. A number of low- and medium-level trades have bolstered the middle of the pack, with guys like Boog Powell and Nick Wells providing some high-floor, moderate-upside additions to a prospect pool that has seen better years.

On top of that, and maybe most excitingly, the 2015 draft class is already proving to be a kickstart for the organization. Though it’s way too early to anoint a lot of their fresh faces as sure big leaguers, it’s hard to have a better start than what they have put together so far. Drew Jackson and Braden Bishop were both known as excellent defenders, but it was their hitting performances that were the story of the post-draft months. Nick Neidert and Andrew Moore lead a list of 2015 draftees who are quality contenders for at least upper-minors success as pitchers, and both have a reasonable chance of eventually being starters for a major-league team.

The very recent success of the prospect class couldn’t come at a better time, when less recent high draft picks like Alex Jackson and Austin Wilson have seen their stocks plummet in a very short time. Jackson is particularly troubling for me: although you can still see similarities to the hitter he was before being in conversation for a first-overall pick, nearly everything has gone south for him statistically and physically. Though the player development and scouting staffs still have their work cut out for them, new management under Jerry Dipoto promises to at least add some fresh voices to the fold. If you buy into momentum, they have plenty of it heading into the 2016 season and this June’s draft.

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Nathan Karns is currently competing with James Paxton for a spot at the back end of Seattle’s starting rotation. The 28-year-old right-hander has the potential to be more than a No. 5, however. Acquired by the Mariners from Tampa Bay in November, Karns has a big fastball, a power curveball and a much-improved changeup. In 27 games last year, he logged a 3.67 ERA and struck out 145 batters in 147 innings.

Karns has a studious approach to go with his raw stuff. That much was evident when the Texas Tech product broke down his repertoire and his pitching philosophy earlier this week.

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Karns on his approach: “I focus my pitching on the lineup I’m facing. I kind of preplan. I identify weaknesses and strengths, so that I can go in with a plan for each hitter. I’ll get their numbers. First-pitch swinging is one. Do they swing at first-pitch curveballs? I’ll keep little things like that in the back of my mind.

“The count and runners on base come into play. So does what I’m working with on a given day. For instance, if I can’t throw my curveball in the bullpen before a game, I’m not necessarily going to run away from it, but it might not be my No. 2 pitch that day. What I’m executing may cause me to adjust.

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Retirement announcements are seldom surprising, because even from the outside it’s pretty simple to tell when a player has outlived his utility. Willie Bloomquist is 38, now, and after spending the offseason making up his mind, he tweeted the following last Friday:

Make your last swing your BEST swing. Farewell @MLB. Thank you for 14 amazing seasons. It’s been an incredible ride. pic.twitter.com/VuImzqOrSl

— Willie Bloomquist (@williebloom) March 11, 2016

Bloomquist is hanging them up, which means Bloomquist articles on analytical websites must also hang them up. In a way it’s amazing Bloomquist achieved such Internet fame in the first place, being a career reserve, but his name meant a little something over the years, and here, for one last time, I want to talk about what Willie Bloomquist was.

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