Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a new nautical analogy by Scott Boras, the resurgent Lucas Giolito, Ronald Acuña (again), and possible destinations for free agents Alex Cobb and Greg Holland, then preview the 2018 Blue Jays (15:00) with Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith, and the 2018 Pirates (46:48) with MLB.com’s Adam Berry.

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Sandy Alderson is a shrewd fellow. He went to, and graduated from, Dartmouth College before attending, and graduating from, Harvard Law School. He invented “Moneyball,” only for his former Oakland A’s deputy Billy Beane to reap all of the glory, envy, and disdain. His tenure as New York Mets general manager has not changed the perception that he is a smarty. When everybody and their deceased relatives knew he was looking to unload Addison Reed last summer, Alderson added another reliever (AJ Ramos) via trade, improving the market for Reed and picking up a division rival’s closer under team control for 2018 in the process.

Seeing Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy in Dodger and National jerseys, respectively, is a reminder he isn’t perfect. Seeing Noah Syndergaard tossing 101 mph fastballs with seemingly no effort is a reminder, however, that Sandy didn’t lose his own fastball in his twilight years. Throw in the caveat that he’s working with a weirdly limited — and allegedly nebulous — budget for a team based in New York and that ownership sometimes rejects trades he makes, and you got yourself an appreciation stew.

So, in that context, let’s now also remember that Sandy Alderson has said he thinks that Tim Tebow will make the major leagues.

I think he will play in the Major Leagues. That’s my guess. That’s my hope. And to some extent now after a year and a half, a modest expectation.

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It’s not actually all that clear how many pitchers have had Tommy John surgery three or more times. According to some sources, Jose Rijo counts. According to some sources, Jason Isringhausen counts. Baseball Reference includes Scott Williamson, Jarrod Parker, Josh Johnson, and Chad Fox. On the other hand, we have the list provided by Jon Roegele. Among the repeats, there’s only one three-time survivor. Anthony Castrovince provides a partial explanation.

How many pitchers have made it back to the big leagues after their third Tommy John? Technically, none. Though Jose Rijo and Jason Isringhausen are often cited to have had at least three Tommy Johns apiece, Jon Roegele’s oft-cited Tommy John database does not recognize either pitcher as a three-time recipient of the surgery, because, for each guy, at least one of the surgeries addressed a flexor tendon tear, not a UCL tear.

I can’t speak to the exact history of the procedure. I can’t tell you exactly how many pitchers have had it three times. I can tell you that, whatever the answer is, it’s an absurdly low number. It’s a number that includes Jonny Venters. Not only has Venters been through Tommy John three times; more recently, he’s been through another elbow operation. Right now, he’s in camp with the Rays. Just yesterday, he pitched. And when he pitched on February 25 against the Twins, it was his first spring action since 2013.

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Three years ago, Kris Bryant ranked as the best prospect in baseball. Then 23 years old, Bryant had brutalized minor-league pitching the year before and destroyed the competition in spring training with nine homers and 17 total hits in 44 plate appearances. Despite a clubhouse that now included Jon Lester and manager Joe Maddon among others — part of the Cubs’ signal to the world they were ready to compete — Bryant was easily one of the best 25 players in the organization, probably among the top five, and eventually proved during the season he was Chicago’s best position player.

And yet, the Cubs opted not to start the season with Kris Bryant on the roster. Once Bryant had spent enough days at Triple-A to extend his team control by a year — to become a free agent after the 2021 season instead of the 2020 campaign — the future MVP received a callup to the majors.

Bryant is still the most famous and most obvious case of a team’s effort to manipulate player service time to the potential detriment of the on-field product, but it happened before Bryant, has happened since Bryant, and is likely to keep happening. This season, there are several prominent players who might be kept off their major-league rosters for a time so that the team might save money and gain control of the player for an extra season.

For those unfamiliar with how service time works in these instances, here it is briefly. Players achieve free agency once they have six years of service time. Although the season lasts 187 days, a player is considered to have played a full season if he appears on an MLB roster or disabled list for 172 days. In any season where a player hits the 172-day threshold, that counts as one season of service time. If a player belongs to the roster for fewer than 172 days, he must combine those days with days from another campaign to reach the official “full season” mark.

Kris Bryant’s case is a useful example of this work. In 2015, he was on the roster for 171 days. That time counts only as a partial season. In the last two years, Bryant has been on the roster for more than 180 days each year, and each of those seasons count as one year of service time. At the end of the 2020 season, Bryant will have five seasons and 171 days of service, one day short of the six seasons necessary for free agency. As a result, he will need to play in 2021 to become a free agent. An extended discussion of service time appears in the FanGraphs glossary.

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The Seattle Mariners are making a bold move with their run-prevention model. They’re not changing it (at least not very much), but they are making a defensive change that isn’t without risk. A team built around fly-ball pitchers and ball hawks is planning to play an infielder with no professional outfield experience in center field.

Not surprisingly, the decision to do so was built partly on projections that came from Statcast data. The player in question is 29-year-old Dee Gordon, who has performed exclusively at the shortstop and second base positions since being drafted in 2008.

Earlier this spring, I asked Mariners executive vice president and general manager Jerry Dipoto about the move and how it ties in to his club’s overall approach to keeping runs off the board.

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Jerry Dipoto on Dee Gordon and the Mariners’ run-prevention model: “I’d like to tell you that [the disappointing 2017 season] was mostly health. We were down 80% of our starting rotation, and a few of our everyday players, before we got to the first week of May. That was certainly a big factor. But dating back to 2016, when we first started to re-create our club, I feel like we nailed it in terms of the science. We built around fly-ball-oriented pitchers with an outfield that can go catch fly balls. What we weren’t planning on, along with the health issues, was the home-run explosion over the last two years. A lot of those fly balls ended up going over the fence.

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PEORIA, Ariz. — Dee Gordon is in demand.

On a Tuesday morning, the slight 29-year-old enters the Mariners’ spring clubhouse wearing a black T-shirt, sweats, and — after exchanging words with teammates en route to his locker — a grin, as well. Before even having an opportunity to shed his street clothes, though, he’s pulled away by a Mariners public-relations staffer. Given a cell phone, he’s ushered out of the clubhouse. The reason: a radio request he has agreed to fulfill. He returns some 20 minutes later and, almost immediately, another reporter — this very FanGraphs dot com employee — intercepts him.

After spending the last three years in Miami, Gordon is not accustomed to regular media attention. But he’s a man of interest this spring because the Mariners are asking him to change positions. He was not caught off guard by the move: Marlins executive Michael Hill had alerted Gordon to the possibility of the trade and position change several weeks before the deal was finalized. And when he returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic in early December, Gordon was awoken by a call informing him he was traded. Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto then called to talk about the position change.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo’s day in the spotlight, Carter Capps’s new look, and Minor League Baseball’s new pace/length-of-play rules, follow up on previous discussions of spring-training celebrations and ground-bound players, and answer listener emails about a front-office saboteur, Steve Carlton’s incredible career balk total, the predictiveness of second-half performance, Ronald Acuña’s next triumph (and the cost of a lifetime Acuña contract), David Price’s opt-out, the strange statistical profile of Hall of Fame pitcher Ted Lyons, how a young Frank Thomas would have hit in the uppercut era, and two official-scoring quandaries, plus multiple Stat Blasts about Pi-themed players and games.

Audio intro: The Who, "Don’t Look Away"
Audio outro: Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Don’t Look Now"

Link to Jeff’s article about Willians Astudillo’s no-look pickoff
Link to GIF of Carter Capps
Link to article about the history of balks

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The last thing you probably want to read right now is another summary of the slow-moving pace of free agency. And it wasn’t just that the market moved slowly — for so many players, the contracts they’ve signed have fallen well short of expectations. It’s still too soon to know whether this will be an aberration, but it does feel as if something has shifted. One explanation would be that the free-agent market, from the team perspective, worked rationally. The player perspective would be less charitable. Teams are certainly behaving as if they’re not thrilled to pay players much money as they get deeper into their 30s.

If we take it to be true that free agency is changing, well, there would be several contributors to that. And if we take it to be true that free agency is changing, that should raise the level of urgency to shift more money to players earlier in their careers. That’s the real issue for baseball to deal with. But let’s go back for a second. I want to talk about one single contributor to a depressed market. I don’t think it’s something that’s been happening intentionally, for teams to try to save money. I think the impact on the market is one arguably unfortunate side effect. This is an exciting time for baseball — the age of information. What that can mean has probably been under-discussed.

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