I’m never really sure how much to review recent articles. Last week I wrote a lot about pitch comps. Compared Henderson Alvarez‘s changeup to Felix Hernandez‘s changeup. Compared guys to certain signature pitches like Aroldis Chapman‘s fastball and Clayton Kershaw‘s slider. Wound up with this Marcus Stroman absurdity, in which Stroman is flattered by some of the strongest comps in the game. The basic idea: Stroman’s regular fastball shares the same traits with Johnny Cueto‘s. His sinker shares the same traits with Roy Halladay‘s. His curveball shares the same traits with Jose Fernandez’s. And so on. The whole idea was comparing pitches to other pitches based on average velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement. It’s a little informative, and sometimes a lot of fun.

I wanted to put together this follow-up, which serves to caution you not to make too much of a good comp. There’s more that goes into a pitch than how it moves, and how fast it moves. There’s definitely more than that, when it comes to how a pitch works within a given repertoire of many pitches. And, our examples: Cole Hamels and J.A. Happ. Last week, when I ran some pitch comps, I found that Happ’s changeup compares the strongest with Hamels’ changeup. For one thing, we know Happ’s changeup isn’t as good as Hamels’ changeup. For another thing, it goes deeper than this.

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Felix Hernandez’s changeup is one of the best pitches in baseball. How can we actually know this? You could, if you wanted, look at the assigned run values. Those’ll tell you what happened on Felix’s changeups, specifically. But, those run values get complicated, since all pitches are inter-related. One pitch has an effect on another pitch, even if it’s of a different type. Yet there’s a very simple solution to this. How do we know Felix’s changeup is amazing? Felix is amazing, and he uses his changeup a third of the time. So it stands to reason the latter has a lot to do with the former.

A year ago, I was talking to a major leaguer, and when we somehow got to the topic of Henderson Alvarez, the player remarked that Alvarez seemed like he was one little tweak away from becoming a superstar. That much is easy to understand — Alvarez is still very young and he still throws very hard, and all of his pitches have life. It’s easy to see the upside in Alvarez’s repertoire. Maybe he’ll never reach his ceiling, but because of his ability, his ceiling is higher than almost all others.

I was reminded in my chat earlier today that Alvarez has something in common with Felix. Actually, he has a lot of things in common with Felix. That would be another indication of Alvarez’s upside. If you’ve watched Alvarez, and thought to yourself he has an ace’s arsenal of pitches, you haven’t been wrong. He just hasn’t yet made the most of it.

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Understand that I’m not a pitching coach. I’ve never played one on TV, and if I were asked to serve as one for an actual team, I’d be wildly out of my element. Pitching is complicated, and pitchers in the major leagues are impossibly good, and pitchers in the major leagues also have reasons for doing what they do however they do it. I don’t know if what follows is good advice for Kevin Gausman and James Paxton, or garbage. It’s just, there’s at least enough here that we can have a conversation.

Thursday, I wrote about the Rays and collecting and encouraging high fastballs. I’m interested in this high-fastball thing — it’s an intuitively sensible way to attack hitters who are increasingly prepared to hit down low. The Rays have talked about this idea. The Astros have talked about this idea. Brandon McCarthy has talked about this idea, during an interview for the Hardball Times Annual. It’s a trend, seemingly, to counter a different trend. But it’s worth noting, not just any fastball should be thrown high. You need to have some command, and you need to be able to generate the right kind of spin. You want to have a fastball — a four-seamer — with a high PITCHf/x vertical-movement reading. That’s not the way pitchers themselves think about it, but that’s how we can understand it.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / Oakland / San Diego / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington

Batters
In the first year of his 10-year and $240 million contract with the M’s, Robinson Cano served as a one-man illustration of park effects, recording almost precisely the same batting-average and on-base figures as the previous season with the Yankees, but producing only half the home runs. (We’ll ignore for the moment that he actually hit more homers at Safeco than on the road, as that would disturb the narrative.) The result was a park-adjusted offensive line roughly approximating 2013’s. ZiPS calls for another five-win season in 2015 despite a home-run total somewhere below 20.

On the topic of park effects, offseason acquisition Nelson Cruz moves from a home field that inflates right-handed homers by roughly 8% to one that suppresses them by about 6%. That move plus age plus mere regression conspire to produce a forecast of 29 home runs for Cruz in 2015 after last season’s total of 40.

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International baseball has been in the news often lately with the ongoing saga of Yoan Moncada (he’s in America now), the signing of Yasmany Tomas and yesterday’s news that Cuba-U.S. relations could be getting much better.  In recent news, at the yearly international scouting directors’ meeting at the Winter Meetings last week, sources tell me there was no talk about the recent controversial rule change and no talk about an international draft, as expected.

So much has been happening lately that you may have temporarily forgotten about last summer, when the Yankees obliterated the international amateur spending record (and recently added another prospect). If the early rumors and innuendo are any indication, the rest of baseball isn’t going to let the Yankees have the last word.

I already mentioned the Cubs as one of multiple teams expected to spend well past their bonus pool starting on July 2nd, 2015.  I had heard rumors of other clubs planning to get in the act when I wrote that, but the group keeps growing with each call I make, so I decided to survey the industry and see where we stand.  After surveying about a dozen international sources, here are the dozen clubs that scouts either are sure, pretty sure or at least very suspicious will be spending past their bonus pool, ranked in order of likelihood:

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There’s a current story, that Ken Rosenthal has reported and written about. Bryce Harper and the Nationals are butting heads, trying to figure out the specifics of Harper’s arbitration eligibility. At stake are several millions of dollars, now and down the road, and it seems like a situation that could cause there to be bitterness between the player and the team. But, probably, the business side will be separated from the baseball side, and they’ll go on to get along fine. People thought there might be an issue with Mike Trout, too, when the Angels renewed his contract that one time near the league minimum. It seemed like the wrong thing to do to a superstar, and then later on Trout signed maybe the most team-friendly contract extension ever. Sometimes there are feelings, and often those feelings pass.

And then, sometimes, they don’t. At the end of the year, Mariners officials made some pointed remarks about Michael Saunders‘ preparedness and durability. They were unusually specific, and they hadn’t bothered to talk to Saunders first, and so Saunders’ side shot back. There was a rift, and while there was a chance things could be patched over, it seemed likely that the Mariners would send Saunders away so he could try to thrive somewhere else. Jerry Crasnick had reported that Saunders was being shopped at the GM meetings, and, at last, Saunders has been traded, from a team that didn’t value him to a team that could badly use him.

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It’s beyond evident the Seattle Mariners are trying to win in 2015. That’s the only reason you’d commit $58 million to a guy like Nelson Cruz, and even after that acquisition, the Mariners continue to look to add another bat. If they find one, it’s probably going to be an outfielder, and as the Mariners explore the trade market, some names keep popping up. Names of people to be traded for, but also names of people to be traded away. It seems unlikely the Mariners will elect to move James Paxton. Yet there’s also Taijuan Walker, whose inclusion in a trade could open a lot of doors. Walker might be best described as not unavailable, so it’s worth thinking about how much value he might possess at the moment.

There’s obviously a lot to like. Walker’s young, and a year ago, he was ranked by Baseball America as the No. 11 prospect in the game. As a starter in the bigs in 2014, over limited time, Walker showed his usual great velocity, averaging a fastball almost as fast as Stephen Strasburg’s. Walker was sidelined by a shoulder issue, but he recovered and resumed pitching, so that seems like a thing of the past. Those who evaluate young players by their ceilings see in Walker a potential future ace. That’s also not a great way to evaluate young players.

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The winner’s curse can often be used to describe the free-agent market. Generally speaking, a free agent will sign with the team that offers the most, and the team that offers the most will generally be the team that most overrates the given free agent. After Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox, I found myself wondering whether the winner’s curse would apply, since according to reports, the Giants and Padres more or less made the same offer. Sandoval didn’t necessarily go to the high bidder. Nelson Cruz? Nelson Cruz went to the high bidder.

That high bidder being the Seattle Mariners, who are giving Cruz four years and $57 million. The Orioles wanted Cruz back, but they weren’t willing to match the Mariners’ aggressiveness. The Orioles didn’t want to go from three to four years, and the Orioles are reportedly interested in giving four years to Nick Markakis. It’s the Mariners who most highly valued Cruz, making for a pretty significant immediate overpay. It’s never really fun to analyze contract terms, but that’s the natural starting point, as Cruz has landed the contract he’s wanted for more than a year.

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The Boston Red Sox, as you might have heard, currently have an outfield glut. There is ten pounds of outfield meat in their five pound bag. Something has to give, and that something is likely Yoenis Cespedes.

When the Sox acquired Cespedes from Oakland in the Jon Lester trade, it felt more like a rental than a long-term investment in the player. Cespedes’ unique contract allows him to become a free agent at the end of the 2015 season, so Boston put themselves in an enviable position. They received an established big leaguer in exchange for their walk-year ace and got an up-close and personal look at a potential big free agent bat.

Whether or not a look under Cespedes’ hood informed their decision to sign both Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, that’s the route they went down. Now Cespedes is trade bait, the precious “right-handed power” commodity in a marketplace clambering for those skills. He’s headed into his age-29 season, he’s owed $10.5 million this year, and there’s going to be a line around the block to bid for his services. Where might he land?

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Heading into the 2009 draft, Baseball America wrote the following about Kyle Seager’s future while rating him as the 97th best prospect in the draft.

A three-year starter for North Carolina, Seager is an area scout favorite, not to mention a player opposing coaches respect immensely. National evaluators have a harder time pegging him because he doesn’t fit a neat profile. His best tool is his bat. He has a smooth, balanced swing and makes consistent contact with gap power. He ranked third in the nation in 2008 with 30 doubles and was on a similar pace in 2009. He has a patient approach but doesn’t project to hit for much home run power because of his modest bat speed and flat swing plane. While he’s a fringy runner, he’s a fine baserunner.

Seager played second base for his first two seasons and moved to third this year, where he has played good defense. Featuring an average arm and impressive agility, he’s an average defender at third, if not a tick above. Scouts who like him see a Bill Mueller type who doesn’t fit the profile but grinds out at-bats and outs in the field. His detractors see him as a safe pick with low upside and a future reserve or utility player.

Major League teams agreed with the assessment, and Seager went 82nd overall, sandwiched between Trevor Holder and Jerry Sullivan. He was a classic low upside guy, taken because he looked like he could provide some value with minimal risk, but no one expected Seager to turn into a star.

After three seasons (and some change) in the big leagues, though, it’s probably time to throw that profile out the window. In 2,200 big league plate appearances, Seager has now launched 70 home runs, or an average of 19 longballs per 600 plate appearances. For comparison, Pablo Sandoval has averaged 20 home runs per 600 plate appearances through his career, and has been the focus of a pretty significant bidding war for his services. The market recognizes Sandoval as a significant offensive force, and is paying him as such; given that, we probably have to recognize Seager as a legitimate asset at the plate as well.

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