A hundred and fifty-four days. That’s how long we’ve been wandering in the wilderness. That’s a long time, and especially so when you remember that the wilderness isn’t acres and acres of trees but basketball and hockey. But now we have found civilization because baseball has returned and we are all happy and excited at the prospect of a new season. The dawn of a new season always brings with it questions. Who will be the best team? Who will be the best player? Who will win in the playoffs? What unlikely events will occur? We don’t know, which is why this is so fun. If you could flip to the back of the book and find the answer, you know you would, and but then, when June and July came around, you’d be forced to find something else to do with your life. It’s like that book that lists all the World Series winners from Back to the Future. Screw that book.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take guess on how things will go. You know we love to take guesses and you love it when we take guesses. In fact, listen to any sports radio now or read any baseball article on the internet and you’ll find guesses as to what will happen this season. Because people love guesses! Some will be grounded in numerics and hard data; others will be pulled, to put it politely, from the darkest of regions. But all are, at their core, guesses. So let’s do some more guessing.

The first baseball game of the season just took place on Sunday. It featured the Pittsburgh Pirates hosting the St. Louis Cardinals. What can that game teach us about the season that is to come here?

Even More Strikeouts

Strikeouts are going up. We know this. We’ve seen graphs and pie charts and other representational forms of data showing how more and more batters are striking out. What’s more, as was pointed out by Steve Treder at The Hardball Times, this isn’t anything new. What is new is the heights to which strikeouts have ascended. Last season, there were over 15 strikeouts per game played (an average of 7.76 per team times two). That means 28% of the total outs in games during the 2015 season came by strikeout. That’s a lot.

Much has been written about this trend, what to do about it, or if it’s even a problem. Perhaps it’ll eventually even out? Not if the first game of the season had anything to say about it. The Pirates struck out just five times against Cardinal pitching including Adam Wainwright, but the Cardinals made up for it by striking out 15 times against Pirate pitching. That’s a total of 19 strikeouts. Divide that by the 51 outs in the game (the Pirates were leading at home so they didn’t bat in the ninth inning) and we can see that 37% of the outs made in the game came on strikeouts. Of course, one game doesn’t dictate an entire season and the strikeout rate in baseball has taken a dip at times over the decades. But strikeouts. Yeesh.

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If you made it to Opening Day and wondered why there hadn’t been a greater number of contract extensions signed this spring, you weren’t alone. Just a few days ago, Dave Cameron wondered that very thing, noting that Kolten Wong was the only player to sign an extension, opting for the promise of guaranteed money rather than betting on the arbitration process and hitting free agency. Over the weekend the number of recent extensions doubled, or increased by one, as Gregory Polanco and the Pirates came to terms on a contract extension worth $35 million over five years — with two team options for another $25 million total — according to Ken Rosenthal after Jeff Passan first reported the deal. Polanco only has one year of service time, and with the extension not kicking in until next year so this contract has the potential to buy out three free-agent seasons, but given Polanco’s lack of production thus far, the team is making a bet that Polanco will be better than what he has shown.

The past few springs have seen quite a few contract extensions, and this year is certainly a down year in that regard. Here are position-player extensions from the past few years, including Polanco and Wong. The statistics included here are those produced during the player’s last season prior to the extension.

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It’s difficult to write about the bigger picture when there have been precisely three games played in the regular season. The picture, as it stands now, is microscopically small. So we focus on the little things. We observe, but we try not to draw conclusions. Mostly, we wonder and speculate about the upcoming year, just like we have been throughout the entire offseason, except now, we do so with a tiny bit of knowledge about what that year actually entails.

One of the things I’m interested to watch this year is the development of an eight-year trend of pitchers throwing fewer and fewer pitches in the strike zone while getting batters to chase more and more balls. Most specifically, I’m interested in watching Francisco Liriano, the leader of the “throw strikes never” movement. The last couple years, Liriano has simultaneously thrown the fewest percentage of pitches inside the zone while also generating one of the highest chase rates.

Liriano already walks a ton of batters, and knowing those two facts, the logical question one asks oneself is, “Why do batters keep swinging?” Seems it should be easy to let Liriano beat himself. Spoiler alert: nothing about baseball is easy.

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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 / Minnesota / Milwaukee / New York (NL) / New York (AL) / Oakland / Philadelphia.

Yesterday, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In this companion piece, I look at that same Pittsburgh farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. The Pirates have the 10th-best farm system in baseball according to KATOH.

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The Pirates have put together a stunning collection of players who possess strong hit-tool projections, sort of reminiscent of the strategy attributed to the Cardinals’ scouting and development heads in the last 5-10 years. Even just looking at the last three drafts, they have taken five hitters in the various first rounds – Kevin Newman, Ke’Bryan Hayes, Cole Tucker, Austin Meadows and Reese McGuire – and all but Tucker project for average-or-better hit tools as their likely future grades. In fairness, there’s a case to be made that Tucker deserves a 50 as well.

In recent years the Pirates’ player-development system has not been able to get the most out of many of their positional players’ power potentials, a trend that a number of their current prospects will have to hope changes course. You could throw pitcher injuries into the mix as well, but that may only be more apparent because of the dramatic focus on acquiring top-tier hitters over pitchers in the draft and international markets.

There shouldn’t be a ton of surprise rankings on this list, except for perhaps Reese McGuire. He looked like a totally different player in the Arizona Fall League, and it was substantial enough to buy into more of his offensive potential than I have before. Overall, this is just a solid system with plenty of front-line talent and a great mix of upside and floor filling out the next two tiers. It’s an exciting time to watch Pirates’ prospects.

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Adam LaRoche may or may not be retiring. It certainly seems as though he is, and it seems as though his decision was made abruptly. While that may not be 100 percent certain, now seems like a good time to look back on his career. On one hand, LaRoche was sort of a letdown, in that he never really took off the way it seemed like he might. On the other hand, LaRoche was a huge success, and should be celebrated as such.
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In a spring-training game on Wednesday afternoon, Juan Nicasio struck out 10 Orioles. In fairness, everybody who pitched in the game for the Pirates struck out 10 Orioles, and I just struck out 10 Orioles while I was writing this sentence, but Nicasio is opening some eyes after what was a pretty quiet arrival in Pittsburgh. When he was brought in, the thought was he’d serve as a possible long reliever. Now there’s even talk about him starting.

It’s the middle of March, and Nicasio has racked up exactly zero regular-season innings, so it’s not like we know how this is going to play out. Pitchers open eyes in spring training all the time before coming apart when the games start to mean something. Nicasio, however, clearly has the stuff, and the narrative is building. After Wednesday, there’s a distinct feeling that Juan Nicasio is the Pirates’ latest pitching success story.

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One of the things people enjoy about sports is the role they role they play in starting conversations and debates. People enjoy arguing, especially about trivial matters like “who was the best hitter of all time?” and “who’s the best shortstop in the game right now?” These exchanges satisfy one’s desire to engage in battles of wits without challenging someone’s moral character, which is what often happens when debates turn to more sensitive topics such as politics or religion.

Sports allows for fierce debate with extraordinary low stakes. Think about how much time we’ve spent arguing about the difference between Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera! While you might think those conversations were tremendously unproductive, I would submit that they provided many people with a confrontational, emotional, and intellectual outlet. We’re a species blessed with language and reason, but cursed with imperfections in both. Arguing about the performance of athletes allows us to exercise those muscles without inadvertently causing real damage to society.

In that realm, I would like to present a baseball question to which you have probably devoted almost no attention. If you could take the best attributes of baseball’s backup catchers and fuse them into a single, lovable backstop, what components would you choose and how valuable would the resulting Frankenstein Catcher be?

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As teams begin full workouts in Spring Training, they get the opportunity to make sure that all of their players arrive healthy and in good shape to start the season. While they likely pay attention to all players, of particular interest are those players who their second or third years in the big leagues. These players are still making the major league minimum salary and, as a result, are the best candidates to approach regarding a long-term extension. Such deals offer players with their first real shot at big-time money, and often pay off down the line for teams: indeed, as my research indicates, teams saved more than half a billion dollars on long-term extensions signed from 2008 to 2011. While the number of candidates for contract extensions isn’t as numerous as in previous seasons, there are a few potential stars.

While players and clubs certainly can agree on contract extensions during the winter, it’s less common for players who have yet to reach arbitration. The only long-term extensions signed this past offseason were between Dee Gordon and the Miami Marlins and Brandon Crawford and the San Francsisco Giants — and, in both cases, the relevant player was entering his second year of arbitration. Last year around this time, I discussed potential position-player candidates for extensions, and named eight players. Of those eight, four agreed to extensions: Brian Dozier, Juan Lagares, Adam Eaton, and Christian Yelich, although Dozier’s deal did not cover any free agent seasons. Adding Lagares, Eaton, and Yelich to the list from last year, here are the players who’ve been extended in the recent past.

Recent Pre-Arbitration Contract Extensions

Name	Team	OBP	SLG	wRC+	WAR	Contract (Year/$M)	Service Time
Mike Trout	Angels	.432	.557	176	10.5	6/144.5	2.070
Matt Carpenter	Cardinals	.392	.481	146	6.9	6/52.0	2.012
Andrelton Simmons	Braves	.296	.396	91	4.6	7/58.0	1.125
Starling Marte	Pirates	.343	.441	122	4.6	5/35.0	1.070
Jason Kipnis	Indians	.366	.452	129	4.4	6/52.5	2.075
Christian Yelich	Marlins	.362	.402	117	4.4	7/49.6	1.069
Juan Lagares	Mets	.321	.382	101	4.0	4/23.0	1.160
Yan Gomes	Indians	.345	.481	130	3.6	6/23.0	1.083
Adam Eaton	White Sox	.362	.401	117	3.0	5/23.5	2.030
Paul Goldschmidt	Diamondback	.359	.490	124	2.9	5/32.0	1.059
Allen Craig	Cardinals	.354	.522	137	2.7	5/31.0	2.077
Jedd Gyorko	Padres	.301	.444	111	2.5	5/35.0	1.016
Anthony Rizzo	Cubs	.342	.463	117	1.8	7/41.0	1.040

While the Allen Craig contract has not worked out, and Jedd Gyorko was unloaded to the Cardinals this offseason, the above contracts are some of the very best (for clubs) in the majors. Dan Szymborksi recently listed his 25 most team-friendly contract situations, and Marte, Rizzo, and Trout all made the list. In his most recent edition of the trade-value series, Dave Cameron ranked Trout first among all players, while Goldschmidt was third, Rizzo was seventh, and Marte, Simmons, and Yelich all cracked the top 30. Yan Gomes and Jason Kipnis also appeared on that list. Matt Carpenter, meanwhile, has worked out well for the Cardinals and Eaton put in a solid season for the White Sox, while Lagares struggled through injuries and will begin this season as the fourth outfielder for the New York Mets.

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The Pirates have a lot of talented players. This is a good thing. But one of the issues with having a lot of good players is that you run out of spots for them. This happened to some degree last season after the team re-acquired Aramis Ramirez. Ramirez, despite possessing starter-type talent, was forced to contend with a crowded third-base depth chart. Now the club might have similar crowding on the other side of the age spectrum — in this case, with the rise of prospect Alen Hanson.

Hanson has been a prospect for a little while now, and his star has dimmed somewhat since he moved to second base. Or so you might have thought. How you feel about second-base prospect Alen Hanson may depend on how you view your prospects, in general. Both Chris Mitchell’s KATOH and Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS rate Hanson as a top-40 prospect (22nd by KATOH, 38th by ZiPS). Scouts aren’t as bullish on him, however, even if they like him fine. Last year, Kiley McDaniel palced him toward the bottom of his top 200 list, and Baseball America more or less would have had him in the same position this year. In other words, many see him as a top-10 prospect on a team, but not a top-100 prospect in the game.
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