Much digital ink has been spilt regarding the plight of minor-league baseball players. Dating back to the filing of the first minor-league wage lawsuit in back 2014, countless pieces have been written denouncing Major League Baseball for paying minor-league players a sub-minimum wage. Indeed, the optics of an organization that generates $10 billion dollars per year in revenues electively deciding to pay thousands of its full-time employees at below a subsistence level is — needless to say — not great.

So it was not surprising that the news that Congress appears posed to officially exclude minor leaguers from (at least some of) the protections afforded under federal wage and hour laws resulted in an immediate wave of outcry by numerous commentators. Specifically, as Sheryl Ring discussed earlier in the week, news reports emerged on Sunday night that, after years of persistent lobbying efforts, MLB was posed to succeed in persuading Congress to include a provision in its omnibus spending bill that would exempt minor-league players from Fair Labor Standards Act, the federal law establishing the minimum wage and overtime rules that millions of Americans take for granted.

On Wednesday night, the actual language of the provision that Congress would be voting on was released:

In some respects, the specific legislative language is better than critics had anticipated. Rather than entirely excluding minor leaguers from the right to the minimum wage — as had originally been feared — the provision’s focus was actually a bit narrower. Instead, it simply provides that minor league players are not entitled to overtime benefits when working more than 40 hours in a week, so long as they are otherwise paid a weekly salary compliant with the federal minimum wage (at least during baseball’s regular season). In other words, the exemption doesn’t deprive players of the right to the minimum wage, just to overtime compensation.

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Thank you, dear reader, for tuning into our continuing positional power rankings series. This episode concerns right field, and I’m your host, Sheryl Ring. Should it be that you reached right field in error and you wish to view other episodes with other (better) hosts, you may do so simply by selecting the appropriate position on the widget atop this article. If, on the other hand, you actually intended to choose this episode, I thank you heartily and promise you an adventure which should provide you with no ability whatsoever to stave off your eventual death, but which will at least give you something of nominal interest to do whilst awaiting its inevitable arrival.

With those words of introduction having been satisfied, to the graph:

You could say that, in recent years, we’ve seen a downturn in the quality of player being utilized in right field by your average major-league ballclub. Last year, in this very space, Neil Weinberg had four teams projected to eclipse three wins and five more projected to at least approximate three wins. As you can see, that isn’t the case this year. Last year, 14 teams were projected to surpass two wins in right field; this year, only 12 are. And then there are the Braves, whose ranking remains unchanged from last year. You can probably figure out why that is.

Despite what could possibly be interpreted as a low point for the major-league right fielder, there are signs of promise. For one, the top-three teams (the Nationals, Red Sox, Yankees) will all be starting players, who, for one reason or another, are standouts and stars worthy of that moniker. For another, unlike last year, there are reasons for optimism for many of the teams towards the middle and bottom of this list: either they are starting young players with yet-untapped upside (the Brewers, Mariners, Rangers, Tigers) or they have top prospects waiting in the wings with that sort of upside (the Mets, Orioles, Rays, Reds, Rockies, and White Sox).

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“The game power plays beneath his raw because Vogelbach’s approach to hitting is often of the Take What You’re Given variety and he’s spraying contact all over the field.”

– Eric Longenhagen

FanGraphs’ lead prospect analyst wrote those words about Dan Vogelbach for last year’s Mariners list and largely echoed them in this year’s version, as well. The appraisal is accurate: Vogelbach has never put up the kind of power numbers that his hulking physique suggests he should.

He’s looking to change that. Seven years after the Cubs drafted him in the second round out of a Fort Myers, Florida, high school — and 20 months after the Mariners acquired him in the Mike Montgomery deal — Vogelbach has decided that what’s always worked for him isn’t working well enough.

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The phrase “out of left field” is typically used to describe the emergence of something strange and unexpected into our lives. Apparently, the expression came from Chicago. There was a mental hospital near left field of the West Side Grounds where the Cubbies used to play up until the early 20th century. Sometimes Cubs fans at the ballpark could hear the patients of the hospital scream. That’s some wild, wild stuff.

It’s also probably baloney.

What follows is the opposite of baloney. What follows is the post containing the left-field portion of our positional power rankings. Which is fortunate, because we’re out of baloney. Have a scrumptious graph instead:

It’s finally here. The promise: fulfilled. You asked for it and you got it.

The Marlins Takeover.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Alex Cobb’s surprising windfall with the Orioles and the ever-present overlap between baseball and social issues, follow up on non-throwing outfielders, and answer listener emails about challengers to Mike Trout’s email-episode throne (and Trout’s spring training strikeout-less streak), whether tanking is actually bad for baseball or becoming more common, what might make Clayton Kershaw opt not to opt out, players whom cutting-edge stats overrate, how hitters can discourage teams from shifting against them, whether Alex Rodriguez stood out for beating up on bad pitchers, and the possibility of a pitcher getting a loss and a save in the same game, plus a Stat Blast on the best-projected teams and rapid roster improvements.

Audio intro: Weezer, "Beverly Hills"
Audio outro: Jet, "Bring it on Back"

Link to video of Tomoaki Kanemoto throwing
Link to Ben’s article about tanking, hope and faith
Link to Jeff’s post about projected strength of schedule

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Here, I thought it virtually inevitable that Alex Cobb would settle for something similar to the Lance Lynn contract. The pitchers have similar ages, strengths, and profiles, and both Cobb and Lynn happen to have turned down qualifying offers. A week and a half ago, Lynn signed with the Twins for a year and $12 million, after spending the offseason aiming much higher. In my head, I figured that would be Cobb’s fate, too. There are worse things. Yet Cobb has emerged with something much stronger, something more lucrative. Seemingly despite the odds, Cobb now has more or less the contract he wanted all along, agreeing to terms with the Orioles for four years and $57 million.

In the bigger picture, it’s not surprising, since Cobb was expected to get something like this back in December. In the smaller picture, it is surprising, given how the market played out. And it’s additionally surprising, given the Orioles’ reluctance to sign pitchers to long-term deals. I don’t think this was ever the likelihood, which helps to explain why it took so long in the first place. But for Cobb, he’s got a home, in a familiar division. And for the Orioles, they’ve patched another rotation together, after appearing shorthanded. While they might be the East’s worst team, we’ve heard that before. They’re going to give this another shot.

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I’d like to beg your indulgence to reflect on community. Specifically, our community. Our community here at FanGraphs, sure, but the community of people who care about the rigorous analysis of baseball, too. Communities are home to all kinds of folks engaged in different bits of sin and kindness, all experiencing different stakes. We’re knit together by our sins and our kindnesses, sometimes quite uncomfortably. One such sin is the everyday kind, the sort of casual meanness and lack of care we all wade through all the time. It’s a smaller kind, but we still find ourselves altered by it. I suppose you’ll have to forgive me for worrying on such things; I know we can be suspicious of feelings around here. But don’t fret. There’s another bit of sin, too, a baseball sin.

Earlier this month, Sheryl Ring published a piece called “Can Major League Baseball Legally Exclude a Woman?” The piece considered whether the exclusion of women from baseball, both as players and umpires, was legally permissible under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, Sheryl, while acknowledging that it wouldn’t be an easy case to make, argued that being male was not a Bona Fide Occupational Qualification for playing Major League Baseball and that the failure to scout, much less hire, women could potentially violate Title VII.

The response in the comments was resoundingly negative. That isn’t in itself a bad thing. It wasn’t a perfect piece, though what piece is? We here like debate. We don’t always get things right, or express our ideas as well as we ought to. Our job as writers is to convince you or move you or both. The issue isn’t that the comments were critical. Rather, what struck me was how quickly some of the voices escalated, from skepticism to certainty to what read, at least to me, as a barely repressed anger that other commenters seemed less sure and more open, that the question had been posed at all.

Communities fight. Communities committed to finding right answers may fight more — and harder — than most. For years, we fought others, fought against bunts and batting average, but we mostly won. Now the lines are less clear; the field is muddy and murky and full of fog. We’re still a community, but we’re changing. We’re having to make room for new folks in our digital neighborhood. But as strangers, unburdened by the potential chance encounter at the corner store, we have an odd relationship with the idea of care. The literal distance between us has resulted in a high tolerance for gruffness; I never have to see my barbs land, never have to watch your face color with anger or embarrassment. I am free to forget your stakes, and you are free to forget mine.

But I wish we would remember them. The idea of a woman playing in Major League Baseball means something to me. It stirs something. I long for it, in a way that is embarrassing to talk about in my place of work, which this is, but those are my stakes. They aren’t the only stakes I have, but they’re important ones. I suspect seeing someone who looks like me play the game will make me feel that I belong in a way I don’t quite now. I want it to be real, even as I’m not sure it ever will be.

Others may not have liked the piece or found it convincing. Perhaps the post ought to have lingered longer on the institutional barriers girls and women face when playing baseball. Maybe certain readers thought it didn’t express adequate appreciation of the great distance we have to close. But they could have been nicer about it; they could have shown greater care. They could have appreciated that what means very little to them means a great deal to me and mine, and tempered not their criticism but their ire. They could have thought for a moment about what else we might worry that ire is meant to say: that we are not welcome. They could have remembered our stakes, as members of their community.

That was the everyday sin, the sin of disrespect and unfeeling. It is what makes our community less than perfect and less than perfectly welcoming. It is troubling, this lack of care. I’ve worried every day since then who we might have driven away, who might only ever lurk at the edges of the comments, blistered by those who think the only means by which to disagree is to trample. To ignore others’ stakes.

The baseball sin was the certainty.

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Out of all the polling projects I run, this one’s always my favorite. No sense in beating around the bush. Here are our current, schedule-adjusted projected 2018 standings. These are based on the Steamer projection system, the ZiPS projection system, and manually-adjusted team depth charts. Now that the Orioles have signed Alex Cobb, there are hardly more big changes to make between now and opening day. So, what do you actually think of the projections you’re seeing?

For convenience, here are the league landscapes, in case you didn’t feel like clicking the link.

The top looks like the top you’d expect. The bottom looks like the bottom you’d expect. We’ve been writing about the various tiers for months. But, even if you might not realize it, you’re experts. You know a lot about particular baseball teams, information the projection systems might not be aware of. So you might consider certain team projections too optimistic, or you might consider certain team projections too pessimistic. This is your collective opportunity to make yourselves heard. Last year, the community thought the projections were too low on the Rockies, Brewers, and Royals. All three teams won more games than was projected. Meanwhile, the community thought the projections were too high on the A’s, Angels, and Marlins. All three teams won fewer games than was projected. You all can provide valuable input, and so I love when this project gets to the analysis part.

The analysis part is coming, probably early next week. Following, you’ll find 30 polls for 30 teams. They should be simple to understand, especially if you’ve done this before. Vote based on research, or vote based on gut. I don’t care. Just vote. All I ask is that you vote based on the information we know today. Vote based on the rosters and depth teams have, and don’t vote based on the assumption that a team will make midseason additions or subtractions. That stuff is effectively un-projectable. Everything now being said, I leave it to you. Thank you all in advance for your participation.

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Aaron Judge is in hot water. The Yankees’ slugger and junior Tower of Power recently told Baltimore’s Manny Machado that the shortstop would “look good in pinstripes.” Major League Baseball, concerned that Judge’s comments might constitute tampering, proceeded to slap the right fielder on the wrist.

Now, it’s common knowledge that Machado (a) is a free agent after the season and (b) has been connected to the Yankees before. So what, exactly, did Judge do wrong here? And what is “tampering” anyway?

If you’re a fan of that other sport invented by James Naismith using soccer balls and peach baskets, you’ve probably seen “tampering” thrown around relatively often. It’s less common in baseball, but does occur. So let’s look at the Rule. You’ll find it in Major League Baseball’s Official Rules. No, not these rules. These other rules. I bet you didn’t know there were two rulebooks.

Anyway, Rule 3(k) on page 43 of the latest Rulebook governs tampering, and says this:

TAMPERING. To preserve discipline and competition, and to prevent the enticement of players, coaches, managers and umpires, there shall be no negotiations or dealings respecting employment, either present or prospective, between any player, coach or manager and any Major or Minor League Club other than the Club with which the player is under contract, or acceptance of terms, or by which the player is reserved or which has the player on its Negotiation List, or between any umpire and any baseball employer other than the baseball employer with which the umpire is under contract, or acceptance of terms, unless the Club or baseball employer with which the person is connected shall have, in writing, expressly authorized such negotiations or dealings prior to their commencement.

And as if to reiterate that point, Section 3 of the MLBPA Regulations of Player Agents states that only agents can do recruiting.

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