The Tampa Bay Rays had 12 bunt hits in 2016, with Kevin Kiermaier’s four leading the way. Expect Mallex Smith to surpass both of those numbers this season — not just the individual mark, but the team total, as well. The 23-year-old speedster already has one in the books, and if all goes to plan, more are on the way.

Mallex Smith is a bunt machine in the making. That’s not a pejorative. The kill-the-bunt crowd isn’t off base, but their primary target is the out-surrendering sacrifice. Smith’s aim is to reach safely, and to then wreak havoc once he’s on. There’s no questioning his ability to do the latter. Smith led the minors with 88 steals in 2014 (as MLB.com’s Jim Callis sagely predicted he would), and he’s a perfect three-for-three since donning a Tampa Bay uniform.

Acquired over the offseason — he went from Atlanta to Seattle to Tampa on January 11 — Smith isn’t conventional in a modern-day sense. Launch angles and exit velocity are in vogue, and the 5-foot-9 outfielder is all about electricity. He fashions himself a jackrabbit, which is exactly how his first-base coach sees him.

“Mallex is a very dynamic athlete who can do things you don’t see a lot on a baseball field these days,” opined Rocco Baldelli, who as a player was dubbed The Woonsocket Rocket. “There just aren’t a lot of players that fit that sort of speedy, athletic profile in 2017. He really endears himself to that role. He knows what he is as a player.”

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Writing about baseball in April can be difficult. Things are happening, and the natural inclination is to want to talk about those things, but for most players, we’re talking about 20 or 30 plate appearances. A bunch of starters have pitched one game. Besides changes in velocity, there’s not much we can say about what has happened so far. The Diamondbacks and Twins are the best two teams in baseball right now, so yeah, it’s early.

But while samples are still tiny for players and teams, things tend to stabilize pretty quickly at the league level. And, not surprisingly, the first week of the season was filled with the two things MLB games are becoming known for; strikeouts and home runs.

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KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Everyone wants to speak with John Hart.

On a sunny day in late March at the Braves’ spring-training facility, Hart is seated in the driver’s seat of an E-Z-GO golf cart near the nylon netting of the on-field cage during batting practice. He employs the cart to travel around the sprawling facility. He loves spending time at its back fields, where the game’s No. 1 farm system, according to Baseball America, resided this spring. But at the big-league field his ability to watch pre-game work is compromised by a constant flow of visitors.

Bo Porter, a front-office assistant, is seated next to Hart in the passenger seat of the cart when Charlie Leibrandt approaches and speaks with Hart about a recent golf outing. Several current Braves players approach, as does a reporter (me). He makes time for everyone. No one is hesitant to greet the club president. There’s no halo of space — or a sense of need for space — around him.

“I like people. I’m an encourager by nature,” Hart says. “I really am.”

Perhaps that’s the foundation of his success: availability and amiability. I spoke with Hart this spring in the midst of his third rebuild project as an executive. His first, in Cleveland, was a major success, and he later put pieces in place for a turnaround in Texas. All that eludes him in a professional career spanning nearly four decades is a World Series ring.

It’s quite possible that encouraging, enjoying people, listening, being approachable — that they’re all keys to fostering the sort of collaborative environment and innovation for which Hart is responsible. It was under Hart that pre-arbitration contracts were pioneered, along with the modern front-office structure, in the early and mid-1990s in Cleveland. The game’s first proprietary database was built there, and all those Ivy League GMs who are running the show these days? Hart started that trend, too. He’s the creator of something akin to baseball’s version of the Bill Parcells Coaching Tree, having hired an unparalleled number of front-office staffers who became general managers.

Said Braves general manager John Coppolella, whom Hart hired in Atlanta: “I think you can very easily make a case for John Hart to be in the Hall of Fame. If you think about the influence he’s had. There are, what, 10 GMs who have worked for him? He can really hand power to people.”

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Houston Astros farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)
NL West (LAA)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded strikeout and walk rates of 25% and 9%, respectively, at Double-A.

Scouting Report
The story of Martes’s acquisition is well told. The effects of the deal are obviously still resonating atop Houston’s prospect list, but perhaps more significant is the way that deal changed the way complex-level ball is scouted. Since Martes was unearthed in the GCL, more and more scouts are being assigned to rookie ball in Florida and Arizona. Some clubs have scout(s) here every year, others tailor their coverage based on where they are on the competitive spectrum, with rebuilding clubs more likely to have scouts here than ones who, if they make a trade, are hunting big leaguers instead of teenage lottery tickets. So while Martes has a chance to make a significant impact on an Astros club poised to compete for their division and, maybe, a World Series, the ripples through the industry created by his acquisition are arguably more significant. Okay, on to Martes as a prospect…

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On October 24, 2015, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Trevor Williams from the Miami Marlins in exchange for Richard Mitchell. Sort of. As ESPN’s Jayson Stark reported shortly thereafter, Williams was actually compensation for the Marlins’ hiring of pitching guru Jim Benedict. Mitchell was considered a non-prospect, while Williams was a former second-round pick, and is now working out of the Pittsburgh pen.

Last week, I asked Williams about the veracity of the report. Was he truly traded for a pitching instructor?

“It was weird,” said the 25-year-old right-hander.“On paper, I wasn’t, but in actuality, I was. It does make for a good story, because not many people get traded for a non-player. It is what it is. Whether you’re traded for a player, a front office guy, or a clubbie, you’re changing teams, you’re changing scenery.”

Williams wasn’t immediately aware of what had gone down. All he was told is that he was traded for “a minor leaguer.” Once the name became known, he went to his computer. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on 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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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Keon Broxton and batting helmets, statistical soothsaying, and the two-way-player attempts of Michael Lorenzen and Christian Bethancourt, then discuss the early results of several preseason players and teams of interest.

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Real 2017 games have been played in earnest, but sample sizes are so small that we might as well continue our look at 2016 starting-pitcher contact management by pitch type. Last time, we reviewed the AL ERA qualifiers; today, it’s the NL qualifiers’ turn.

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