I don’t know if you just watched the Royals and the Tigers. Probably not. Neither team is very good. The Royals won 1-0. Jakob Junis was terrific. The teams combined for just eight hits, and seven of them were singles. Somewhat more notably, the teams combined for a ground-ball rate of 32%. The average launch angle in the game, according to Baseball Savant, was a hair over 22 degrees. What does it mean? By itself, hardly anything. The game, however, was not by itself.

Nothing that follows ought to come as much of a surprise. We’ve been talking about air balls and launch angle for a couple of years. It’s not just fan sentiment, either; we know that more and more players are buying in. And, based on the data from this most recent spring training, it seemed as if something was going to happen. More balls were being hit in the air in the spring, suggesting we could see the same when the games started to count. There have been hints. We know that hitters are less fond of grounders than ever.

Even so, I didn’t expect quite the numbers we have. You don’t need to remind me of how early it is. Yet, already, there’s evidence of a significant batted-ball shift.

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With this generation’s Mariano Rivera on the mound last night in Arizona, and the Dodgers holding a three-run lead in the ninth, the game was over, right?

baseball: there are two outs, the Dodgers are up three runs, and Kenley Jansen is on the mound. the game is over

also baseball: nah pic.twitter.com/538JZnNCTe

— Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) April 3, 2018

Well, it’s baseball and Chris Owings had other ideas.

https://gfycat.com/ForsakenCleanAlbacoretuna

Yes, it’s really early. Alarm on April 2nd is often folly. Perhaps we will look back and laugh at all this hand-wringing. But Kenley Jansen has not looked like Kenley Jansen. And unlike a batter off to a slow start, a pitcher who has a velocity decline, who has changed his release point, who seems defensive in fielding questions this early — that all combines to raise some legitimate alarm.

Jansen didn’t walk a batter until June 25th last season. He began last season by striking out 51 batters without issuing a walk, setting an MLB record. Jansen has already conceded two walks, recording no strikeouts. Jansen allowed five home runs in the 2017 campaign. He’s allowed two in two innings this season.

Jansen seemed invincible for much of 2017, so he’s provided a dramatic contrast early this year. When a pitcher that untouchable struggles to such a degree — even in a small sample — it raises reasonable questions.

Jansen is regarded by many as the best reliever in the NL, an opinion supported by FanGraphs’ projections. So what’s going on here?

Let’s start with the velocity.

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Personally, I find that, at the start of the season, I can hardly contain myself. It’s completely unsustainable, and I know I’ll feel different in June or July, but right now, I’m trying to keep up with as many damn baseball games as possible. I try to follow baseball in the morning, I try to follow baseball in the afternoon, and last night I was following the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks until they stopped playing around midnight. My situation is different — I’m not coming at this from a single-team perspective — but I know a lot of you feel the same way. Baseball is back, and we feel compelled to gorge ourselves on it, after too long of an absence.

I ran a polling project last week, asking you all about your excitement levels. In one way, it was a silly thing to do, because we all agree that having baseball is better than not having baseball. It’s pleasing to have actual action to observe, discuss, and analyze. In the post, though, all the polls were broken down by team, so that different fans could vote in different ways. I know we’re all happy, but I’m always interested in how the baseball fan landscape breaks down. With your participation, we can see who’s most excited, relatively speaking, and who’s the opposite of that. I think I’ve waited long enough. And so here are the 2018 fan excitement ratings, according to the FanGraphs community. Make as much or as little of this as you want.

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One could argue that the first great, widespread data-based departure from tradition this century was the infield defensive shift. Based upon opponents’ batted-ball tendencies, teams more and more began to align their infielders where opposing hitters directed baseballs.

And while one defensive alignment trend, infield shifts, might have peaked, another radical alignment phenomenon seems poised to be adopted more widely.

During the opening week, we saw the Astros give us this alignment versus Joey Gallo:

Over the last decade, we’ve seen four-man outfields on a rare occasion. But I’m not sure there has ever been a defensive alignment where only one non-pitcher or non-catcher was standing on the infield dirt. Only Astros first baseman Marwin Gonzalez had his cleats in the Arlington, Texas infield skin. Now that’s extreme.

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Episode 807
Travis Sawchik recounts three conversations from his tour of camps this spring: Joey Votto on aging, Chris Archer on four-man rotations, and Eric Hosmer on how Sawchik might very well be an idiot.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 35 min play time.)

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Before we begin in earnest, here is a table showing the hardest thrown pitches of this young baseball season through Sunday’s games.

Right now, St. Louis right-hander Jordan Hicks is throwing harder than Aroldis Chapman. When he did it the first time, it drew some attention, but he repeated that performance on Sunday.

His hold on the title might not last, of course: Chapman could begin throwing harder, and Hicks might not be able to maintain this level of velocity all season. For example, the 21-year-old righty averaged only 98 mph on his fastball in his performance yesterday, getting four outs in what was the first appearance of his professional career without a day of rest.

Hicks was a starter throughout the minors, during which he recorded only 165.1 innings and never worked above High-A. There were indications during spring training that he might have the talent to deal with major-league hitters, but the team sent him to the minors after some issues with tardiness. Despite that, he made his way back to major-league camp and was added to the Opening Day roster even though it required the Cardinals to place Josh Lucas on waivers. Jeff Zimmerman discussed Hicks’ talent and scouting reports after Hicks made the team. We are beginning to see why the Cardinals believed he could impact the club at the highest level in potentially important spots.

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The 2017 season was a disheartening one for the Blue Jays. After back-to-back trips to the ALCS in 2015-16 — their first two postseason appearances since 1993 — they faceplanted out of the gate, losing 11 of their first 13 games. They never reached .500, going an improbable, Sisyphean 0-8 in games that would have evened their record. Amid injuries to Josh Donaldson, Russell Martin, Aaron Sanchez, Troy Tulowitzki and others, not to mention the collapse of Jose Bautista, they finished fourth in the AL East with a 76-86 record, their worst showing since 2013. This winter, they stayed out of the deep end of the free-agent pool, making a few low-cost additions plus a handful of trades that hardly qualified as blockbusters. Yet as of Opening Day, they were projected for 84 wins, the league’s fifth-highest total. What in the name of Cito Gaston is going on?

To these eyes, the Blue Jays’ projection is like the flip side of the Brewers’ one that raised my eyebrows a few weeks ago. Recall that the Brew Crew quickly turned around from their rebuilding effort and won 86 games last year while remaining in the NL Wild Card hunt until the season’s final weekend. They added Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich over the winter, and didn’t lose anyone of importance save August acquisition Neil Walker, yet their projection called for just 78 wins.

As for the Blue Jays, when one considers that they had the majors’ oldest lineup (weighted average age of 30.9 years according to Baseball-Reference), and that even with the jettisoning of Bautista, all of this year’s projected regulars save two are on the wrong side of 30, it’s at least worth wondering why our projection system (which is driven by Steamer and ZiPS but with manual judgment in terms of distributing playing time) is so keen on them.

As I did for the Brewers, here’s a position-by-position comparison between our Depth Charts (as of March 29, Opening Day) and last year’s splits. All rankings are AL-only:

The first thing to note is how distressingly godawful the Jays were at so many positions last year. In terms of WAR, they ranked among the league’s bottom four teams at five positions, including dead last at catcher and shortstop, and received 0.5 WAR or less from six different positions including DH, with a net of 0.1 WAR for those half-dozen spots. Only at first base (Justin Smoak) and third base (Donaldson) did they receive significantly above-average work; in the latter case, that was despite the majors’ top third baseman playing just 104 games at the position due to a calf strain. Thankfully, they also received above-average production from their pitching staff, without which they might have been relegated to the independent Canadian-American League.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about returning to the regular-season routine, between-innings highlights on MLB.TV, Shohei Ohtani’s Angels debut, Gerrit Cole’s Astros debut, Ichiro’s home-run robbery, Kevin Pillar’s base-stealing exploits, Mike Trout’s rapid resurgence, the first (and possibly the silliest) unwritten-rules controversy of the season, the early evidence that swings (and batted balls) are changing, two potential fun facts, the week-one criticism of rookie managers Gabe Kapler and Aaron Boone, and the Rays’ first bullpen day.

Audio intro: First Aid Kit, "This Old Routine"
Audio outro: Lucy Dacus, "Night Shift"

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