When I first started getting into sabermetrics, there were a lot of people writing about the stupidity of the bunt. That’s one of the first lessons everyone learns, and, not coincidentally, we’re seeing bunts on the decline, league-wide. More recently, analysts have come to celebrate the bunt. But not the sacrifice bunt — what we want to see more of are bunts against the shift. You could say the play itself is fine; it just requires a certain set of circumstances. Bunting against the shift inspired a whole recurring column at Baseball Prospectus by Ben Lindbergh. It’s a seemingly obvious tactic, that’s also seemingly under-utilized. For now.

So, there are times when it’s smart to bunt. The bunt shouldn’t be eliminated from the game entirely. Sometimes, it’s smart to bunt against the shift. Sometimes, it’s smart to bunt not against the shift, if you’re quick. Sometimes, yes, it’s smart to drop down a sacrifice. And Tuesday night, Kyle Seager demonstrated another sort of intelligent bunt. It didn’t work, but since when do we get wrapped up in the results?

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Wednesday afternoon in Tampa Bay, Felix Hernandez wrapped up a complete-game shutout. It was just his second in the past three seasons, but you shouldn’t let that fool you. He’s one of the best pitchers in baseball — pitching at his peak — and he’s one of those guys where a single underwhelming outing is enough to make people wonder if something might be wrong. People don’t wonder very much these days, though. The two greatest challenges are hitting Felix and not taking Felix for granted.

For the most part, Felix is well understood. Among all of his strengths, the changeup stands out for its movement, for its velocity and for its location. It’s one of the best changeups in the world, and Felix is comfortable throwing it in any count to any hitter. It can be difficult to distinguish from his fastball, which is faster by only a handful of ticks. Everyone, therefore, is familiar with Felix’s main weapon. Fewer people think about another weapon. Felix’s slowest weapon. But he’s going to it with increasing frequency.

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If you just look selectively at some of the names, it doesn’t seem so bad. So far this year, through a little more than a quarter of the season, Robinson Cano has hit about as well as Matt Kemp. He’s hit a little better than Troy Tulowitzki, and a lot better than Carlos Gonzalez and Chase Utley. Those are all names of proven star players! The problem being, they’re star players who’ve sucked. On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see these names near the bottom of the wRC+ list — it’s a good reminder that struggles can be perfectly normal — but that doesn’t make the struggles themselves any easier to tolerate, and in the case of Cano, his problems are among the factors contributing to the Mariners being a disappointment. It’s not that they’ve wasted a month and a half of Nelson Cruz hitting for Barry Bonds power, but they’ve accomplished less than you’d think.

Because of the team expectations, there’s more pressure than there usually is. Because of the enormity of Cano’s contract, there are more eyes on him than there usually are. And because of Cano’s age, there’s a bit more fear than you’d usually figure. The good news is there’s potentially good news. The bad news is we don’t know what to make of it yet.

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From the standpoint of physics, muscle begets bat speed, which begets power.

That part is simple, as physicist Alan Nathan has shown. “A 10% increase in muscle mass can lead to about a 3.8% increase in bat speed,” Nathan found, and that sort of bat speed increase can lead to an increase of 4.3% in batted ball distance.

And so this year, Mariners shortstop Brad Miller decided to put on more weight. Was it about the power? “Oh yeah. I want to get as physical as I can,” Miller admitted before a game with the Athletics this year. So he put on 15 pounds in the offseason and came into the season weighing 220, instead of the 205 he weighed to finish the season in 2014.

We don’t have yearly heights and weights for players, but we do have *a* listed height and weight for each player. Despite being of dubious quality, let’s see how Body Mass Index is related to power factors. Turns out, it is significantly related to many power stats, with Home Runs per Fly Ball providing the cleanest look:

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Coming into the season, you might have had a three-part checklist for Mariners’ lefty James Paxton. Can he throw more high fastballs, can he improve his changeup, and can he hold his velocity and command? We know his curve is good, and most years, he has the big velocity that has turned our attention to him. But these three items sum up the healthy skepticism that still remains, and the pitcher knows all about them.

Jeff Sullivan recommended high fastballs for Paxton because his fastball has rise but he throws it low. Currently the Seattle lefty is showing almost exactly the same whiff and strikeout rates as he showed last year, so maybe he wasn’t listening.

Except that he was! “I do utilize the high fastball, to work off of it, and have the curveball drop off it,” Paxton said of the fact that high fastball release points can help mask a high curveball release point.

But the pitcher also admitted that the high fastball was “probably something I could work into my game a little more effectively.” He’s been trying, as you can see from the fastball heat maps below from Baseball Savant (2014 on the left, 2015 on the right). If you prefer numbers, Paxton has thrown 29% of his fastballs in the top third of the zone this year, up from 25% last year. And his rank with respect to his peers has changed, as he used to be in the 41st percentile for high fastballs, and so far this year, he’s in the 31st percentile.

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Just as I was beginning to work this up, I got an email saying Nelson Cruz had been named the American League Player of the Week, which provides for a very convenient introductory sentence. Over the past seven days, Cruz has posted the highest wRC+ in baseball, by 85 points. Over the past seven days, Cruz has driven in 10 runs, while the Indians have driven in 11. Eight days ago, Cruz slugged a home run. Nine days ago, Cruz slugged a home run, and a couple of singles. All he’s hit have been singles and dingers, and he has almost as many dingers as singles. It’s been a good start for Nelson Cruz.

Which means analysis is obligatory. What’s gotten into Nelson Cruz? The answer is pretty much always “nothing sustainable,” but that’s never stopped us before. Nor does that mean there’s nothing to analyze. Cruz has been almost the entirety of the Mariners’ offense, and lately he’s been hotter than everyone else. Yet, how true is that? And is there anything else going on?

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As baseball fans who happily allow themselves to be consumed by information, we know, automatically, what certain number sequences refer to. Take, for example, 40-40. That’s homers and steals, applying to the rare player both speedy and powerful. 30-100? Homers and RBI, which, whatever, don’t act like you didn’t know. 6-4-3? That’s a run-of-the-mill double play. 2-1? Padres game. It’s all a different language, and we’re fluent in it, even if it isn’t the sort of fluency you’re comfortable declaring on a resume.

But numbers are just numbers, and they can refer to anything. I mean, it’s possible that 6-4-3 could also mean six runs on four hits, with three errors. You just can’t be sure right away. Now, baseball makes this promise: any day at the ballpark, you might see something you’ve never seen before. It’s an element that helps to keep the game fresh, despite 162 repetitions. Not everyone, granted, might appreciate something rare, something historical. Kind of depends what we’re talking about. In this case, we have something appealing only to dorks. Sunday afternoon in Oakland, Mike Zunino and Felix Hernandez of the Mariners turned a 2-1 double play.

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It’s obvious, now, that Taijuan Walker is going to enter the season as a member of the Mariners’ rotation. He survived an offseason of trade rumors and beat out the recently-demoted Roenis Elias, and this is the kind of thing that can happen when you’re a pitcher who allows but a single run in 25 spring innings. There was, though, a point at which it looked like Walker and Elias might share an intense competition. So Walker came out guns a’blazing, immediately throwing a fastball at 95 – 96. Some pitchers use spring training to build up arm strength. Walker began it strong.

Which makes him an interesting guy to analyze. And that, in turn, is facilitated by Walker throwing a lot of spring innings before PITCHf/x cameras. Over those innings, Walker’s allowed nine hits and four walks, to go with 24 strikeouts. It seems like it’s been something of an early breakthrough, with Walker refining his mechanics and adding some depth to a slider. It’s been clear from the day he was drafted that Walker would have a big-league-caliber fastball. Of greater importance has been a changeup, an offspeed weapon for Walker to use against lefties. It just so happens Walker has thrown plenty of changeups this month. It’s been a clear priority, for obvious reasons. What, then, is there to be learned from the evidence?

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Yesterday, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Seattle Mariners. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Seattle’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Mariners system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Seattle system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

t5. John Hicks, C (Profile)

Between Hicks and Tyler Marlette (below), the latter is probably the overall more impressive prospect. Marlette was drafted out of high school (Hicks, college); received a signing bonus of about $650 thousand (Hicks, about $250 thousand); and earned a promotion to Double-A in just his age-21 season (while Hicks only first appeared there as a 23-year-old). For 2015, however, they profile as almost the same player, projected by Steamer to produce roughly identical offensive lines while both benefiting — deservedly so, it would appear based on McDaniel’s analysis — from the catcher positional adjustment. Should something happen to Jesus Sucre, Hicks would be an entirely acceptable replacement. Even if something doesn’t happen to Sucre, that might still be the case.

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Yesterday, we kicked off our look at each division by going through the NL West. Today, we’ll do the AL version from the land of pitcher’s parks.

The Projected Standings

There are two pretty strong contenders at the top, two somewhat interesting teams hanging around the middle, and a likely also-ran. The top of the AL West is unlikely to be as strong this year as it was a year ago, but the low-end of the division should be somewhat better, and the race is open enough to remain interesting all year long. Let’s take a look at the teams.

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