On July 7th, 2006, a 23-year-old righty made his major league debut against the Tigers. He entered the game in relief and immediately began putting up 99s on the radar gun. It wasn’t enough, however, to prevent Chris Shelton from singling to shortstop and beating out the throw. Brandon Inge also wasn’t afraid of the velocity, as he hit a ground-rule double to center. The young righty was now flustered. He hit Curtis Granderson to load the bases. He paced around the mound, gathered himself, and then rallied to strike out Placido Polanco, get a weak grounder from Ivan Rodriguez, and strike out Magglio Ordonez to end the threat.

On that day, Mark Lowe began a journey that started with the Mariners and continued on to the Rangers (in the Cliff Lee deal), and then the Dodgers, Angels, Nationals, Rays, Indians, Mariners (again), and Blue Jays. And now, almost ten years later, the Tigers have signed him with a two-year deal to be their setup man. It’s been quite a trip for him.

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Jon Lester became a talking point during last year’s postseason for all the wrong reasons. For all the good things Lester can do on a pitcher’s mound, he has this one glaring weakness, and last October, that glaring weakness was exposed on a national stage. In the American League Wild Card game, the Royals ran all over Lester, taking full advantage of his inability to make pickoff throws to first base. The Royals stole five bases on Lester and a record seven in the game, and the stolen bases, of course, played a huge role in the team’s comeback victory

Plenty of time was spent in the offseason discussing Lester’s weakness and whether it would be exploited in the upcoming season. Curiously, runners hadn’t taken advantage of Lester before the Royals game the way one might expect, but with the weakness exposed on such a large scale, it seemed inevitable that things would change in the future. And they did. This year, in Chicago, Lester allowed a league-high 44 steals. He had the second-highest rate of steals attempted. He allowed the fifth-highest pitcher-isolated success rate. This season, Lester was exploited in the way we’d all imagined.

Though it didn’t receive anywhere near the same level of attention, the same thing happened to Hank Conger.

A brief aside: I just want to admit that it feels kind of dirty to keep bringing up Lester’s problem with the run game, because despite that very real shortcoming, Lester still does plenty of things well and his weakness doesn’t prevent him from being a valuable player. Before we dive into Conger’s weakness, it’s worth pointing out that he does plenty of things well, too. It’s also worth pointing out why we’re talking about Conger in the first place. If you missed it, Conger was a non-tender candidate in Houston, and late Wednesday night, he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays for cold hard cash.

Now, for what Tampa Bay’s new catcher does well. Firstly: the robot. He does that very well. Also: pitch framing. Conger’s been one of the game’s best pitch framers, and that’s probably the most important skill for a catcher to have! He wasn’t quite elite last year, with BaseballProspectus’ framing metric grading him at roughly +4 runs, but the year before that he led all catchers with +25 framing runs. Lastly: Conger can hit a little. He’s a switch-hitter, which is a rare luxury in a catcher, and over the last three years he’s been about a league-average hitter, running a 96 wRC+. That’s not great, but for a catcher, it’s just fine. That’s the same as Salvador Perez, Matt Wieters and Jason Castro.

Considering the robot, the framing, and the bat, you could do a lot worse in a backup catcher. But there’s this part of Conger’s game where you can’t do a lot worse. You can’t do any worse, in fact, because in this one area of catching — a pretty major area — Hank Conger just had the worst season in recorded history.

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“I had a good year last year, but this year I wanted to separate myself,” Kevin Kiermaier told me in August before a game with the Athletics. And separate himself he did, since he just won a Gold Glove after leading all defensive players in the SABR Defensive Index rankings, UZR/150, and Defensive Runs Saved. We talked about how he honed his craft on the way to the defensive triple crown, and it’s a little bit instincts, a little bit scouting, and a little bit athleticism.

This year, Kiermaier he’s one of the few outfielders to have had a nearly-perfect route (99% efficiency) according to Statcast. Some of that is just gut. “I just let my instincts take over out there, as well,” the Rays’ center fielder said. “That’s something I’ve always been blessed with, I just feel like I have a really good idea of where the ball’s going to be hit.”

But press him a little on that, and there are a few things he does in order to help get into the right routes. He reads the catcher’s signs, for one, so that he can anticipate better where the ball is going. “I can see them usually from center field, since I have good vision,” he said. “I can see what pitches are going to be thrown, and I feel like I can get a head start on what direction that ball is going to be hit.”

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Baseball’s hot stove season got off to an uncharacteristically early start this time around, as the Rays and Mariners made a “challenge” type of trade, centering around two young, inexpensive players with plenty of years of control remaining, shortstop Brad Miller and starting pitcher Nate Karns. I agree with most of Dave Cameron’s thoughts in the immediate wake the trade: one’s opinion of this deal largely depends on whether one believes Miller is truly a regular shortstop, and whether ones believe Karns is a long-term rotation fixture.

While there are no absolutes in the projection of either player’s future, and there are other players in the deal who will eventually impact the net result, this trade will likely come down to Miller vs. Karns. What does the weight of the evidence suggest at this point in time regarding those two players?

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No, we aren’t just going to do a leaderboard sort for best movement in each direction and call it a day. It’s a little bit more complicated to figure out the best changeups by shape and speed, mostly because it’s all relative. The changeup, as the name implies, functions off of the fastball, as a change of pace and movement. So we need to define anything the changeup does relative to the pitcher’s fastball.

Then we can do a sort and call it a day.

In order to define fastball movement, let’s just group together all of the fastballs thrown by a pitcher. It’s probably more nuanced than that; the concept of tunneling or sequencing shows that pitchers can pair their changeup with one fastball or the other for different results. But some of this comes out in the wash: by averaging movement across fastballs, their selection of different fastballs will weight the movement in the direction of the pitcher’s usage.

So then our x and y movement, and velocity, are defined against this average fastball for each pitcher. Using a minimum of 50 changeups thrown, and z-scores to sum up the values, we can get a list of best changeups quickly.

First, the relievers.

Best Reliever Changeups by Movement, Velocity

Pitcher	FB (pfx_x)	FB (pfx_z)	FB (velo)	CH (pfx_x)	CH (pfx_y)	CH (velo)	Sum Z	CH swSTR%
Brad Boxberger	-3.3	10.6	92.6	-7.8	2.0	79.8	6.7	14%
Shawn Tolleson	-2.6	11.0	92.9	-4.8	4.0	79.8	4.9	15%
Josh Fields	0.1	11.5	94.1	-0.6	3.7	81.4	4.5	8%
Roberto Osuna	-4.2	10.7	95.5	-8.0	6.9	82.3	4.0	16%
Josh Smith	-4.1	7.6	89.9	-8.4	1.9	79.4	4.0	8%
Chasen Shreve	7.3	10.6	91.4	6.3	1.5	82.6	3.5	18%
A.J. Ramos	-3.0	8.6	92.4	-7.5	1.0	85.5	3.5	35%
Jeff Ferrell	-4.1	10.2	93.0	-7.4	4.9	82.4	3.5	20%
Danny Farquhar	-5.0	8.5	92.7	-7.5	1.0	84.5	3.2	24%
Fernando Rodney	-6.7	7.1	94.7	-9.6	3.3	82.7	3.1	17%
Andrew Schugel	-7.9	7.8	91.6	-9.6	2.3	80.5	3.1	23%
Joaquin Benoit	-6.5	8.9	94.2	-7.5	1.9	84.1	3.1	24%
Tyler Thornburg	-0.8	11.1	92.2	-5.8	6.3	83.8	3.0	19%
Arnold Leon	-5.1	9.8	91.6	-4.6	2.8	80.2	2.9	22%
Pat Neshek	-8.5	4.9	89.9	-4.6	3.7	68.4	2.9	9%
Tommy Kahnle	-1.9	7.4	94.8	-7.6	2.8	87.2	2.8	23%
Mike Morin	-4.7	8.9	92.3	-0.5	6.8	71.7	2.8	25%
Deolis Guerra	-5.1	10.0	90.8	-6.7	4.0	80.7	2.8	15%
Daniel Hudson	-6.6	8.3	96.0	-9.9	4.9	84.8	2.7	18%
Erik Goeddel	-3.9	9.2	93.0	-4.7	2.0	84.3	2.5	32%

SOURCE: PITCHf/x

pfx_x = horizontal movement
pfx_z = vertical movement
Sum Z = sum of the z-scores for the differentials between fastball and changeups in x, y movement and velocity
swSTR% = swinging strikes over pitches for the changeup
Minumum 50 changeups thrown in 2015

If you listen to The Sleeper and The Bust, you know I talk about this all the time and do the math in my head. Now the math is there for us on the sheet of paper.

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Four days. It took MLB all of four days to bring us the first transaction of the off-season, as the Mariners and Rays got together on a six player trade that ships some interesting players in both directions. The full trade, as announced on Thursday evening.

Tampa Bay receives:

SS Brad Miller
1B Logan Morrison
RHP Danny Farquhar

Seattle receives:

RHP Nate Karns
OF Boog Powell
LHP C.J. Riefenhauser

While this is a six player deal, for simplicity, we can mostly break this down into three one-for-ones.

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On Aug. 22, Tampa Bay left-hander Matt Moore reminded everyone of how excellent he can be. Once a consensus top-three prospect (alongside Bryce Harper and Mike Trout), Moore was dominant. In six innings, he recorded 16 strikeouts — 13 of which came in a stretch of just 15 batters. He allowed a single run. But there’s one problem: Moore was pitching for the Durham Bulls, in a game against the Columbus Clippers.

Sad puppies.

At a point earlier in his career, Matt Moore had been an All Star; now he was in Triple-A. Why? Well, since returning from a Tommy John procedure that limited him to just two appearances in 2014, he had been, to put it not nicely but succinctly, putrid. Moore made his season debut in Tampa on July 2. Since (and including) that time, he’d made six major league starts, giving up 26 runs (all earned) in 26.2 innings. Lest you think this was a function merely of batted ball luck, consider: over those 26.2 innings, Moore had struck out 17, walked 13, and gave up four homers as well. The Rays sent him to Durham.

Moore had been an ace starter before having the surgery two starts into the 2014 season, but six starts into his return he hardly looked the part (and two starts following his return from the majors haven’t offered any counterarguments to that point). I’m not sure what Tampa’s expectations were for him, but the often less-grounded expectations of fans and media were that he’d step back into his previous role in front of the Tampa rotation, thereby forming an unbeatable duo of awesomeness (potentially with capes!) with Chris Archer. But so far it hasn’t happened. Can Matt Moore be an ace again? Was Matt Moore ever an ace? Do capes help you pitch? Why questions? How about answers!

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Talking to Erasmo Ramirez is refreshing. He always has a smile on his face. Life is fun for him — especially now. He’s having the best season of his career in Tampa Bay. It turns out that changing the use of his slider has been a big part of that success. And certain aspects of his slider may provide a roadmap for other pitchers that should make the same move.

His best pitch is his changeup — “it’s the best one to take me out of troubles,” the pitcher admitted to me — but it’s not good enough to throw every single time. “I try to stay away from it, and show the hitters I’m going to throw every pitch I have in my arsenal,” Ramirez said of his pitching mix.

The grip for the change thrown by Erasmo Ramirez, which has the seventh-best swinging strike rate in baseball (min. 400).

The breaking balls haven’t been great. Even as Tony Blengino waxed positively on the pitcher recently, he admitted that “his breaking balls needed reps” coming up. Ramirez this year has been using his curve less (“I’ve been trying to stay away from it, unless I have it rolling.”) but a key change in his slider usage has been huge.

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Just in case, let’s get this out of the way early: Kevin Kiermaier is the Rays’ center fielder. You probably already knew that, but you can never be too safe. Kiermaier is considered by everyone to be something of a defensive whiz. They say you’re supposed to open with a joke. Here’s a funny picture that proves even a defensive whiz can end up in a humiliating screenshot:

There’s a perfectly good explanation for what happened that relieves Kiermaier of pretty much all blame, but it’s more fun if you don’t know. Look at that guy! What a silly person.

Realistically, for the hitter, it’s probably a good thing that what happened happened. Spoiler alert: By rule, the hitter was awarded a home run. Had a physical structure not interrupted the flight of the baseball, there’s a decent chance Kevin Kiermaier would have, a few seconds later.

Major League Baseball fans were first introduced to Kiermaier late in 2013, when the Rays called him up for tiebreaker game 163, and the AL Wild Card Game. Kiermaier wasn’t promoted to serve as some sort of dangerous slugger off the bench. Nor was he around to be a potential pinch runner. Kiermaier was brought up specifically for his outfield defense. The Rays knew it was a little crazy, but they thought Kiermaier was the best defensive outfielder in the organization, so it wasn’t hard to talk themselves into it. Kiermaier played an inning in the first game. He played two in the second. That was it. Over the winter, Baseball America called Kiermaier the No. 10 prospect in the system.

Some prospects go away. Some hype proves to be unjustified. I don’t think it would’ve been a shock had Kiermaier never shown up again, or had he been limited to a bench role. But he wound up playing 108 games last year as a rookie, and he’s already close to 130 as a sophomore. Kiermaier’s bat has developed enough for him to play nearly every day. And because he’s played so often, we’ve seen ample evidence of his defensive skill. The Rays, back then, were on to something. I’m obligated to share some defensive highlights. The hardest thing is picking.

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Two seasons ago, I ranked the job security of each general manager and listed GM prospects. I think I did a pretty good job with both lists given what we knew at the time, and may do it again as Opening Day 2016 closes in. We’ve had less executive movement in the last few off-seasons than usual and it looks like the regression is happening this year, with four GM jobs currently open and a likely fifth coming soon. This seemed like a good time to cover each of the situations in flux and target some possible changes in the near future, along with some names to keep in mind as candidates to fill these openings.

The Open GM Spots
We have two teams without a top baseball decision-making executive, in Seattle and Milwaukee:

Mariners
The Mariners moved on from (now former) GM Jack Zduriencik recently, a long-rumored move that club president Kevin Mather admitted he waited too long to execute. Mather has said they’re looking for a replacement sooner than later (likely eliminating execs from playoff teams), with GM experience (eliminating most of the GM prospects you’ll see below), and that the team doesn’t require a rebuild (meaning a shorter leash and higher expectations from day one). This should prove to narrow the pool of candidates a good bit, but this is still seen as the best of the currently open jobs.

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