Brandon Workman, a 24-year-old Texan, dominated an undermanned New Britain Rockcats lineup over six frigid innings last week. In 2010, he was selected out of the University of Texas by the Red Sox in second round of the Rule 4 Draft. In his first two full seasons he’s posted strong peripherals, striking out more than eight batters per nine innings and walking fewer than two. Early in 2013, he sits near the top of Carson Cistulli’s Eastern League SCOUT Leaderboard (see bottom of this post); but Workman’s statistics are misleading. He profiles as a reliever or as a spot-starter.

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Chris Getz hit his first home run in 1,144 plate appearances against Atlanta last night. It was rather overshadowed when the Braves smacked three home runs off of Kelvin Herrera in the eighth inning as if they had a whole lineup full of Chris Getzes. Getz does not have much power, but he does make up for it with other skills. Yeah, right. Getz is off to a pretty hot start (for him, certainly) this year, but he is a pretty terrible hitter. Over 1351 career plate appearances, he has a .258/.314/.323 (.286 wOBA) line. His utter lack of power is only part of the problem.

There have been hitters who have excelled without much power, of course. Even before Getz’s shot off of Kris Medlen, I had been thinking about looking at hitters who managed big numbers without much power. Baseball fans like benchmarks: 500 home runs, .300 batting average, 100 runs batted in, 20 wins. Some of them may be more telling regarding a player’s actual value than others, but we understandably like those standard numbers. So I decided to look at .400 hitters — well, .400 wOBA hitters. I think of a .400 on-base percentage as an “awesomeness benchmark,” and since wOBA is scaled on on-base percentage, it works well enough.

For the sake of historical curiosity, here are some of the .400 wOBA seasons with the fewest home runs.

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As a rule, Mondays suck, but as Mondays go, this is always a good one, as the Red Sox play a frightfully early home baseball game. On 2013’s Patriots’ Day, the Red Sox hosted the Rays, and it was 2-1 Boston in the top of the sixth when Evan Longoria batted with two down and runners on the corners. In a full count against Ryan Dempster, Longoria returned a grounder up the middle, but Stephen Drew made a diving stop and threw to Mike Napoli for the out. The inning was over, the Rays didn’t score, and the Rays would end up losing by a run a few innings later.

Things were that simple, and things were also a hell of a lot more complicated. Longoria was upset with the call at first base, because the play was close, and had Longoria been ruled safe, the game would’ve been tied. This was one of the higher-leverage moments of the game. Below, you can see it all for yourself:

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One of the great subplots of every Major League season is the rookies that come up and show a glimpse of baseball’s future. It’s what had us enthralled by Jackie Bradley Jr. all spring, what has us dutifully analyzing Julio Teheran appearances, and what has us so eagerly waiting for Jurickson Profar and Wil Myers. This season, we will track rookies, both the prospects and suspects, as they make adjustments to playing in the bigs. This bi-weekly list will highlight rookies who have accomplished the most in 2013, regardless of future projection (though that will always be discussed). These are the players whose week one performances deserve recognition.

1. Dan Straily, RH SP, Athletics

If we’ve learned anything from Yu Darvish this season, it’s that success pitching against the Astros is not exactly analogous to pitching against baseball’s other 29 teams. The Athletics know this, why is probably why just one day after an 11 strikeout, 0 walk performance (a start worth an unofficial 0.6 WAR by our metrics), the A’s were comfortable sending Straily back to Triple-A. As sixth starters go, Straily is an excellent one, with a fastball at 90-93 mph, 83-86 mph slider, and 82-85 mph change (let’s agree to ignore that low 70s curveball, please). He showed great command against the Astros, the best he’s had in all 8 starts at the Major League level.

But, I don’t want to get too wrapped up in Straily’s success. The Astros, as we’re finding out, are a historically swing-and-miss team. All 11 of Straily’s strikeouts were of the swinging variety, and amazingly, nine were against left-handed hitters. Brett Wallace and Rick Ankiel struck out a combined 6 times, all on Straily fastballs. While Baseball America’s scouting report of him, as the A’s #6 prospect, reads “[His] slider and change up are his two best offerings and account for the bulk of his strikeouts,” that wasn’t true against Houston. Eight of the 11 strikeouts were from the fastball, and a remarkable number of them looked like this to Jason Castro — right down the heart of the plate. If you want to see why we simply can’t get too excited about Straily yet, consider the caliber of competition:

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Sunday was the beginning of the 2013 MLB regular season, and it kicked off with a bang, as the Astros bombed the Rangers and we all learned a lesson about the real value of a one-game playoff. Not like the stakes were the same, so the game was managed differently from how it could’ve been, but in any one given game, a team like the Houston Astros can beat a team unlike the Houston Astros. Of course, it should be noted that the difference between the Astros and the best team in baseball might be like the difference between a city’s best restaurant and a city’s 29th or 30th best restaurant. That 29th or 30th best restaurant is probably still a very good restaurant! It’s just outclassed relative to the elite. It still beats the hell out of Hardee’s.

Monday is more of a baseball extravaganza, with several games on the schedule, none of which involve the Astros. Monday feels more like a true opening day, and below, I’ve assembled some quick thoughts based on some of the early games. I didn’t watch a single inning from spring training so, for me personally, baseball couldn’t feel more fresh. It will feel like this for the rest of the day, and then tomorrow, it will feel like baseball as usual. Savor the feeling of today, or tomorrow.

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Unless you make it a habit to read FanGraphs only on Fridays (and if you do, what’s up with that?), you’ve likely read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. So you know the score. We’re taking a look at team financial health as we head into the 2013 season. You also the know which teams are in the top tier, because you’re smart and can figure that out for yourself. But we’ve come this far, so we’re going to complete the exercise. We’re nothing if not true to our word.

The top tier teams, in alphabetical order by team name.

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, the data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Third base is a little deeper than it used to be, and only a handful of teams have little to no hope of being productive at the position. The devil is in the details at the hot corner, as there has been very little turnover among the top 20 teams here. Teams that have quality reserves or prospects coming up the pipeline see a bump here, as we’re looking holistically at the position and not just at the nominal starter. This is an important consideration across the diamond, but particularly so at third given how physically demanding the position is. Only six third basemen suited up in 150 or more games last year. Compare that to 13 at second base and 11 at first base and shortstop, and it becomes clear that depth is important at third base. Unfortunately, most teams don’t have adequate depth, hence the bump for the teams that do.

Let’s get on to the rankings!

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I’ve been a little tardy in picking up the ball for the fifth part of this series, and for that I apologize. I hope it was worth the wait. In case you’re new to the series, here are parts one, two, three and four.

Vetoed trade: December 2003, the Texas Rangers send Alex Rodriguez to the Boston Red Sox for Manny Ramirez and Jon Lester.
Completed trade: February 2004, the Rangers send Alex Rodriguez and cash to the New York Yankees for Alfonso Soriano and player to be named later (Joaquin Arias).
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Part four. Live free or veto hard. You can find parts one, two and three here, here and here.

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After the Braves acquired Justin Upton, uniting him and brother B.J. Upton on the same team, our very own Jeff Sullivan got curious about brothers playing together, and presented some salient information on the brother effect. Or more to the point, the lack thereof. I became curious about it much after that (I’m slow), and while Jeff already did the pertinent research, nobody has ever accused me of doing pertinent research, so I thought today we could look at the best seasons put together by brothers on the same team.

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