And just like that, the winter of our discontent is almost over. Tomorrow, all 30 teams celebrate Opening Day, and their fans with them. But before play begins, we at FanGraphs will observe our annual tradition of attempting to predict what will happen this year, before we commence our other annual tradition of getting some things wrong. Last year was a mixed bag. Astros? Nailed it. Cubs and Dodgers? Aren’t our moms proud! Aaron Judge and Cody Bellinger, Rookie of the Year winners? Can’t say we saw that coming.

We gathered predictions from writers across our family of blogs; what follows are the results.

The American League

The American League predictions are marked by their overwhelming sameness. Of the 40 ballots cast, a full 29 have the Astros, Indians, and Yankees sitting atop their divisions come the season’s end. Eight others feature the Astros and Indians but swap in the Red Sox for the Yankees. That isn’t so surprising: we currently project Houston to win 100 games, while New York, Cleveland, and Boston check in at 95, 94, and 93 wins, respectively.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Philadelphia Phillies. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

60 FV Prospects

Hitters like to shorten up against Sixto after he’s blown well-placed, sinking, upper-90s gas past them for strikes one and two, which leaves them vulnerable to any of his three viable secondary offerings later in at-bats. Sanchez sits 95-99, has touched 102, and possesses advanced command. He has a long, cutting slider in the mid-80s and a two-plane curveball, both of which flash above-average, but his best secondary is a ghosting, mid-80s changeup which embarrassed hitters five years older than him at Hi-A last year.

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The Marlins are probably the worst team right now in the majors. Independent of schedule, they project for the worst record. Taking the schedule into consideration, they still project for the worst record. Taking community input into consideration, also, they still project for the worst record. Of course, this isn’t surprising. This is kind of the plan. The Marlins are bad now on purpose, because they didn’t see the sense in trying to push for a competitive window. And, you know, there’s a chance the Marlins overachieve. Maybe they finish with a better record than the White Sox. Maybe they win more games than the Tigers. But, the season will be rough. It’ll be a season of development and ugly results.

Tuesday, the Marlins played a game against the University of Miami. These kinds of games happen from time to time every spring, as practice for the pros, and as fun opportunities for the amateurs. What kind of 20-year-old wouldn’t get up for the chance to play some major-leaguers on the field? For the Marlins, obviously, there was nothing to play for. I guess a little bit of pride. But the Marlins were just saying goodbye to another long spring training. The exhibition ended after the top of the seventh.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about an update on the fate of the indy leagues, their rapid playoff predictions for 2018, the inaugural journey of the Diamondbacks’ bullpen cart, juiced-ball precedents from the 1920s and 1930s, what spring stats are saying about the season to come, and a Dennis Sarfate extension. Then they talk to Brewers minor-league pitcher Jonathan Perrin (18:30) about the so-called Save America’s Pastime Act, minor-league pay and working conditions, what teams could and should do to improve minor-league development, what major leaguers could do to help the minor leaguers’ cause, his legal aspirations and investment advice, having interests outside of baseball, his first professional hit, and more.

Audio intro: The New Pornographers, "Play Money"
Audio interstitial: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, "Money"
Audio outro: Arcade Fire, "Put Your Money on Me"

Link to Nathaniel Grow article about the indy leagues
Link to Diamondbacks bullpen cart video
Link to Ben’s article about spring stats
Link to Pages from Baseball’s Past

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This is Alexis Brudnicki’s third piece as part of her March residency at FanGraphs. Alexis is the Director of Baseball Information for the Great Lake Canadians, an elite amateur baseball program in London, Ontario, Canada. She has written for various publications including Baseball America, Canadian Baseball Network, Sportsnet, The Hardball Times, and Prep Baseball report. She won a 2016 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award for Contemporary Baseball Commentary. She can also be found on Twitter (@baseballexis). She’ll be contributing here this month.

Juiced or not juiced?

While the question has become a persistent topic of conversation in Major League Baseball of late, similar rumblings about the state of the baseball have begun to pick up steam across the world.

After the six teams in the Australian Baseball League combined for 171 home runs over 119 total regular-season games during the 2016-2017 season, those same squads hit 379 long balls in the same number of matchups during the most recent winter.

A comparison of the offensive stats of the 2016-17 season to the 2017-18 season highlights the shift:

And the pitching stats diverge similarly:

Power numbers went way up, offensive numbers increased in every statistical category across the league, and pitching stats were abysmal, with more runs scored per game than ever before. It was a significant enough difference to inspire the players and fans to speculate on the causes.

The obvious answer in Australia was that the equipment was different. Though there has been speculation about modifications to the baseballs in MLB, the Aussie league’s transition to a new equipment provider — moving from Rawlings balls and SAM BAT sticks to bats and balls from Brett Sports — removes any need to speculate.

Or does it?

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After examining the most player-friendly free-agent contracts of the 2017-18 offseason, here I turn to the winter’s most team-friendly deals. As I explained previously, given the perfect storm of factors that suppressed free-agent spending relative to past winters, it feels unseemly simply to celebrate “winners” and pick on “losers.” I’m not here to punch down at a player such as Mike Moustakas, whose one-year, $6.5 million deal was less than one-tenth the value of estimates projected by Dave Cameron, the FanGraphs crowd, the MLB Trade Rumors crew, FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, and MLB.com’s Jim Duquette back in November.

Instead, I think it’s more appropriate to view the free-agent contracts in terms of team- and player-friendliness. While acknowledging that shorter deals are inherently more team-friendly, I’ve stuck with apples-to-apples comparisons for this column and the previous one by considering the one-year, two-year, and three-year deals in their own separate categories — and grouping those of four years or more together due to the small sample size. Here, price and expected WAR aren’t the only considerations: player age, fit with a team’s roster, and competitive situation are among the additional factors to weigh.

As a refresher, here’s a graphic breaking down major-league free-agent deals by contract length over each of the past six winters, using data from the MLB Trade Rumors Free Agent Tracker. I’ve omitted minor-league deals as well as those signed by international players, including Shohei Ohtani.

Four Years or More

Lorenzo Cain, Brewers: five years, $80 million

Of the winter’s five deals that offer four years or more, only those signed by Cain and Alex Cobb (four years, $57 million from the Orioles) feature a total value under $100 million. Between those two players, Cain (who turns 32 on April 13) has the longer track record for productivity than Cobb, having averaged more than four wins per season over the past four years. He recorded 4.1 WAR in 2017, his last in Kansas City. Cobb was worth 2.4 WAR last year and hasn’t been above 3.0 in any of his four seasons with at least 100 innings pitched, plus he lost most of 2015-16 to Tommy John surgery and (checks roster) remains a pitcher.

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Pitchers learn and develop different pitches at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, a slider or split-finger fastball in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. As the quality of competition improves, a pitcher frequently needs to optimize his repertoire.

In the first installment of this series, we’ll hear from Jeff Hoffman, T.J. McFarland, and Drew Smyly on how they learned and/or developed a specific pitch.

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Jeff Hoffman (Rockies) on His Slider

“The one pitch in my repertoire that I haven’t thrown my whole life is my slider. I picked that up in college. It actually started as a cutter, but I couldn’t really keep it small, like a cutter, so it turned into a slider. I’ve kind of just hung with it through the years, embracing it as a slider.

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