Earlier today, Jeff Sullivan re-introduced this year’s positional power rankings. Hopefully, you are familiar with our methods for producing these rankings, but if not, a brief reminder: all 30 teams are ranked based on projected WAR from our depth chart projections. With those in place, our writers endeavor to provide additional commentary, some of it useful and some less so. We begin this year’s rankings with catchers.

The catcher rankings start, as they tend to do, with Buster Posey and the Giants. After a gap, the rankings cover the next 28 teams on a slow steady decline, and then there’s the Phillies. While Gary Sanchez and Willson Contreras represent a youthful contingent, the top of the list is still dominated by veterans, with Posey, Jonathan Lucroy, Brian McCann, Salvador Perez, Yadier Molina, and Russell Martin all placing their teams in the top 10. The last-place Phillies could make a big move up this list if former prospect Jorge Alfaro can take a leap forward.

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PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Rays starter Chris Archer is one of the better pitchers in the game. He’s one of the more thoughtful and intelligent players in the game, too. Besides those distinctions, Archer might also be prescient. He has a sense of what the future will look like for a major-league pitcher. He’s going to be part of an experiment this season in Tampa Bay that could impact what the future looks like for many arms.

“If you don’t have that high-end stuff as a starter, it’s going to get a little blurry,” Archer said to FanGraphs with regard to the future of pitching roles.

The Rays are committed to a four-man rotation this season, although it’s more of a hybrid plan. While it will include only four traditional starting pitchers, the Rays will use bullpen games and a high volume of off-days early in the season to keep their four starters on regular intervals of rest.

MLB.com Bill Chastain reported on the plan a couple weeks ago:

“We’re going to try to stay at four,” [Rays manager Kevin] Cash said. “We’re going to have some bullpen days in there. We’re going to try and do that for a long period of time. We’re going to learn a lot in the first six weeks.

“We’re going to schedule in a bullpen day as our fifth starter. That’s kind of our hope — going past six weeks.”

An evolution from the traditional five-man rotation might be inevitable. Saber-minded voices have screamed for years that starting pitchers are less effective each time they work through a batting order. Pitching labels are blurring. Relievers accounted for an MLB-record 38.1% of total innings thrown last season, up three percentage points (35.2%) and 1,200 innings from just 10 years earlier. The game warps even more toward the bullpen in the postseason. Last October, relievers accounted for 46.4% of innings.

“The playoffs make it appear to be sexy, but over the course of 162, it’s hard to sustain,” Archer said of radical pitching-staff construction.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Archer is an unwilling participant in the Rays’ plan. “The concept makes sense,” says Archer of the four-man rotation as a theory. But he has his doubts about it as a full-season practice. The questions include whether the plan can extend to and succeed over the course of a full season, what it means for player development, and how the club will adapt to inevitable challenges, whether they be in-game or longer-term in nature.

Archer has shared his questions with the front office, which he says extends to him an open line of communication.

“Our front office is open. They talk to me about a lot of different scenarios: ‘How do you feel about this, what do you think about this?… Do you think you could bounce back if you pitch like this?’” Archer said. “I do like that they are asking someone actually doing it as opposed to drawing their own conclusions.”

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As Opening Day approaches, many team’s rosters have rounded into place. However, there is some slight tinkering to be done. With this in mind, let’s consider the careers of two players, blindly — one of whom is a mainstay for his team and the other who used to be.

Both players converted from shortstop to center field. They’re almost the same age. Player A was once a top-25 prospect, however, while Player B was a relatively unheralded signing out of the Dominican. Now, Player A is his team’s unquestioned starting center fielder, while Player B is on the trading block.

Player A is Billy Hamilton, noted speedster, while Player B is Juan Lagares. Recent reports suggest that the Mets have received interest in Lagares and that the club is motivated to move him.

Now, this could be the case for a variety of reasons. Lagares hasn’t hit particularly well this spring, going just 7 for 36 so far with 13 strikeouts. While spring stats only correlate so well to regular season, Lagares hasn’t made an overwhelming case for an expanded role. Lagares also makes $6.5 million this year and $9 million next year, and the Mets have supposedly been interested in shedding some payroll. Finally, there’s the fact that Lagares — one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball — is buried on the Mets’ outfield depth chart by a bevy of corner outfielders masquerading as center fielders. The fact that he is available should pique the interest of many teams, just as much if Billy Hamilton was available.

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Episode 806
Three of the 2018 draft’s top-10 prospects have played near Eric Longenhagen in Arizona this spring. He shares not only his thoughts regarding those prospects but also his ideas about them. Also: scouting a two-time Cy Young winner. And: the concept of “reverse projection.”

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 52 min play time.)

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Season-preview time is always a little weird. Spring training is the signal that the regular season is coming right up. We’re past the point where we’ve heard about who’s in great shape. By this point we’ve already had players getting injured. And, of course, we’ve had players getting reassigned or released. The Opening Day rosters are clearer than ever, because Opening Day’s in a week and a half. We should do something to prepare for the season, right? Something to lay out how every team looks.

On the one hand, maybe it’s unnecessary, because we’ve been writing about baseball every day, and there have been constantly updating 2018 team projections. If you’re on FanGraphs, you’re more likely to already know what’s going on. On the other hand, some sort of season preview just feels obligatory. You can’t not preview the upcoming season. There seems to be a demand for it. The trick is to do it well, and to be thorough while still being engaging.

I don’t think anyone has figured out the perfect way to do a season preview. What I can say is that FanGraphs, at least, runs a series unlike any other. It might not be perfect, but I like what we have. Consider this the kickoff post. Welcome to the 2018 positional power rankings!

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Brendan Rodgers is living up to his billing. Drafted third overall by the Colorado Rockies in 2015 out of a Florida high school, the smooth-swinging shortstop slashed .336/.373/.567 between high-A Lancaster and Double-A Hartford last year. His calling-card bat speed on full display, he crashed 18 home runs in 400 plate appearances.

Rodgers was seemingly born to hit. He’s worked hard to hone his craft, but at the same time, letting his natural talent shine through is his M.O..

“I keep hitting as simple as possible,” explained the talented 21-year-old. “Body movement, stride, how my hands work… everything. I keep all it to a minimum. I try to not make the game harder than it is.”

Mechanically, Rodgers sticks with what he was taught “when he was younger.” He told me that the Rockies haven’t suggested any notable tweaks, and that for him “it’s all about being on time and in rhythm.”

He doesn’t have a leg kick — “just a little stride” — although he did have one back in his formative years. Wanting to feel more balanced, he “shut that down and spread out a little bit,” which he feels helps him stay in his legs better. Approach-wise, he attacks the baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless another major deal comes out in the next few weeks, the Houston Astros have signed Jose Altuve to the biggest contract of the winter. The deal is notable for several reasons.

1. Under his previous contract, Jose Altuve would not reach free agency for another two years, after the 2019 season.
2. Jose Altuve’s agent is Scott Boras, and he has long been loathe to give away any free-agent years ahead of free agency.

As Travis Sawchik noted last night, Altuve will reportedly sign for five years and $151 million, and the contract will begin after Altuve’s current contract runs out. Altuve will earn just $12.5 million over the next two seasons in one of the biggest bargain contracts baseball has ever seen. While he wasn’t all that good when the Astros signed him back in 2013, Altuve has been one of the best players in baseball since 2014, with his 24 wins third to only Mike Trout and Josh Donaldson among position players in that span. Altuve just finished off a fantastic MVP season for the World Series champions, and historically, he’s on one of the better runs for a second baseman in history. The table below shows second baseman since 1947 through their age-27 seasons.

Five of the 11 non-Altuve players on that list are in the Hall of Fame. Grich and Whitaker, meanwhile, represent some of the biggest snubs of the last half-century, while Pedroia remains active still building a case.

When the Twins signed Logan Morrison to a deal for $6.5 million, most agreed it was a bargain. By comparison, the Astros have the reigning MVP locked up for that price in his prime for the next two seasons. That leads to obvious questions regarding the Astros’ motivation here. Why sign a player to an extension before it is necessary? Anyone who remembers the Ryan Howard contract, for example, might look at this extension and wonder if it’s simply a gift from the Houston front office.

This is not a gift, though. It’s a fair deal.

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Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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