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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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To the overwhelming majority of baseball fans, the name Willians Astudillo means nothing. The 26-year-old has never been called up to the majors, and for three years in a row now, he’s elected free agency and signed a minor-league contract. Astudillo is there in spring training right now, but so are countless professional players you’d never recognize at the next table in a restaurant. Most people don’t know Willians Astudillo. Most people will never know Willians Astudillo. But there are those out there who know exactly who he is. Astudillo has a claim to being the single most interesting player in the minors.

Astudillo has yet to strike out this spring. Over the winter he batted 223 times in Venezuela, and he struck out on just four occasions. He struck out less often than a teammate who came to the plate just eight times. This is the Astudillo story. Out of the thousands of players in the minors in 2017, Astudillo had the third-lowest strikeout rate, and the lowest strikeout rate in Triple-A. He had the lowest strikeout rate in the minors in 2016. He had the lowest strikeout rate in the minors in 2015. He had the second-lowest strikeout rate in the minors in 2014. He apparently didn’t play in 2013, but in 2012, and in 2011, and in 2010, he had the lowest strikeout rate in the minors. Astudillo doesn’t strike out. Astudillo also doesn’t walk, and he has a limited track record of hitting for power, but he doesn’t strike out. As a professional, Astudillo has 67 strikeouts in 2,154 plate appearances. Joey Gallo recorded his 67th major-league strikeout in his 140th plate appearance.

For his ability to make contact alone, Astudillo has won himself some fans. But now, he also has another claim to fame. Although Astudillo has moved around, he is still considered a catcher. And, the other day, in a spring game, he picked off Shane Robinson without looking.

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This slow offseason has many fans and teams already looking toward — and maybe salivating over — next year’s free-agent class. The star power available next season is incredible. Josh Donaldson, Bryce Harper, and Manny Machado are among the top-nine position players on our Depth Chart Projections. All three will be free agents in November. With Charlie Blackmon, A.J. Pollock, Brian Dozier, Clayton Kershaw, Daniel Murphy, and Andrew McCutchen also set to hit the market, the class boasts quality depth, as well.

Those are certainly some impressive names. Notably, however, almost all of them belong to position players. While next year’s free-agent class could be unrivaled in terms of overall talent, it’s possible that the glow of the top hitters has obscured how lopsided that class is likely to be. Kershaw is great, but there’s only one of him. Multiple teams, meanwhile, will be searching for pitching upgrades next winter. A preliminary glance at things reveals that their options could be limited.

Before getting to next year’s crop of pitchers, let’s perform a brief refresher on the one wrapping up. We had Yu Darvish at the top of the class, with Jake Arrieta a rung below followed by Lance Lynn, Alex Cobb, Tyler Chatwood, Jhoulys Chacin, and Jaime Garcia. This year’s group of free-agent starting pitchers lacked both firepower and quality depth, an unexpected development considering how things looked heading into last season. In December 2016, I naively believed in this year’s crop of starters. The projections backed me up, too: at that time, three pitchers appeared likely to produce four-win seasons, six to top three wins, and eight pitchers total to put up at least 2.5 WAR. By November, only Yu Darvish hit free agency with a season above 2.5 WAR, and even he missed his projection by a full win.

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Depending on your point of view, one of the more celebrated or ignominious parts of the game of baseball is the headhunter, perhaps most recently embodied in the person of Vicente Padilla. There have been others, though. Armando Benitez was, in his day, notorious for throwing chin music — and sometimes more than that.

Throwing a pitch at a batter intentionally is a violation of Major League Baseball Rule 6.02(c)(9) (Rule 8.02(d)). The comment to that Rule states that “[t]o pitch at a batter’s head is unsportsmanlike and highly dangerous. It should be — and is — condemned by everybody. Umpires should act without hesitation in enforcement of this rule.” Despite that strong language, headhunting is not a violation of baseball’s unwritten rules. Therefore, it keeps happening.

Whatever virtues one might find in the practice, it’s nevertheless obvious that headhunting can be really dangerous. Former Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman notably died after being struck in the head. Tony Conigliaro’s career — and life — was altered dramatically by a beaning in his age-22 season. Even throwing at a batter unintentionally can have devastating consequences, as we saw with Giancarlo Stanton after he was hit by Mike Fiers.

But the presence of headhunting in the game raises an interesting question — namely, what legal recourse, if any, does a batter have against a pitcher who throws at him intentionally?

Let’s start with some basic definitions to help us out here. Today we’ll be talking about “assault” and “battery,” two terms that get thrown around a lot in popular culture but actually have pretty specific legal meanings.

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