Soon, we’ll get games on television again. I know it’s hard to believe, because it seems like it’s been so long, but it’s true. It’ll only be spring training, but it’ll be baseball and it’ll be great.

Along with these televised games, we’ll hear commentators discussing key statistics. It’s very possible that, due to the rising popularity and availability of Statcast, we’ll hear about increases in spin rate when it’s relevant. That’s great! But there will be some context we won’t hear, and that context will be important.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan introduce the fifth annual Effectively Wild season-preview series and banter about the short life expectancy of front-office secrets. Then they preview the Dodgers’ 2017 season with Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times, and the Padres’ 2017 season with Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Commissioner Rob Manfred has clearly made a priority of improving baseball’s “pace of play.” The theory goes that, since today’s youngsters supposedly have shorter attention spans than ever and aren’t all that inclined to watch players stand around between bursts of actions, the game should move at a brisker pace and the bursts of action should feature less time between them. This theory has already led to some practice, including the introduction of a between-innings clock and a rule requiring hitters to keep their feet in the batter’s box. Baseball is an old game with an old audience, and Manfred would like to see a younger audience consuming his product.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark reports that the league has submitted two new proposals to the league: one which would raise the bottom of the strike zone and another that would eliminate the need to throw four lob pitches to intentionally walk a batter. The strike-zone proposal aims to create more balls in play, while the intentional-walk proposal would simply speed up the game. These things make sense in a vacuum. Of course, baseball isn’t played in a vacuum, but in real time and with human beings, and that makes the game a very interesting collection of circumstance, accidents, and general madness.

We won’t touch on the strike-zone proposal now, although it certainly merits discussion. Stark says in his report that it’s less likely to get a green light for the coming season than the intentional-walk proposal. So, about the intentional walk, then.

It’s a trivial part of the game, really. Barry Bonds has come to the plate, and you, in your wisdom, do not wish to pitch to Barry Bonds with a man on and two outs. You present Bonds with first base instead of a potential home-run ball, and then you work to get the next batter out. All you have to do is play catch with your catcher for a few moments. If Baseball with a capital B wants to speed up the game, why not eliminate the game of catch? It’s dead weight.

Because, once again, baseball is played by human beings. The man on the mound isn’t a robot, but a pitcher. Intentional walks almost always go off without a hitch. When they don’t, it’s impactful to the game.

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On Super Bowl Sunday, the Pirates announced they were moving their Face of the Franchise, Andrew McCutchen, to right field.

Since his major-league debut in 2009, the Pirates’ most valuable and exciting player since Barry Bonds has played 10,317.1 innings in the field. All have come in center field. But due to McCutchen’s decline in the field, and the Gold Glove-caliber skill of of Starling Marte, the Pirates are re-arranging their outfield. Gregory Polanco will play left field.

One could argue the move should have happened much earlier.

McCutchen’s uncharacteristically poor age-29 season was largely fueled by a defensive decline, though McCutchen also posted career-low speed measures across the board. McCutchen, who was very much available in this offseason’s trade market, posted a mark of -28 Defensive Runs Saved last season, the worst in baseball. Flanking him in the outfield was Marte, who won his second straight Gold Glove and produced +19 DRS. While the Pirates’ shallower outfield alignment strategy did not help McCutchen, that positioning combined with poor execution off the mound, McCutchen is still in he midst of a multi-year decline defensively.

McCutchen was worth +5 DRS in 2013, -13 in 2014, -8 in 2015 and -28 last season.

Here’s McCutchen’s defensive work in 2016 via data visualization from BaseballSavant.com:

Pirates general manager Neal Huntington and manager Clint Hurdle acknowledged they were considering moving McCutchen at the end of the season. Huntington noted that McCutchen’s DRS number “grabs your attention.” On Sunday they made it official.

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Jason Hammel isn’t yet officially a member of the Royals. He still has to pass a physical, and we’ve been burned before when we’ve jumped the gun. Yet the odds are that Hammel will soon officially join the Royals, and he’ll do so on a two-year guarantee worth $16 million. I’ve personally never signed a two-year guarantee worth $16 million, and I can’t imagine I’m going to, unless FanGraphs gets incredibly popular. Hammel is coming out of this with a nice chunk of change.

On the other hand, we’re a week into February, meaning spring training is right around the corner. Hammel got two years where he really wanted three, and this offer might not have even existed were it not for a horrible accident claiming the life of Yordano Ventura. The Royals were more or less forced into this position, and the offseason for Hammel wasn’t what he thought it would be. Looking back, I suppose there’s not much mystery. Hammel’s representatives were fighting something of an uphill battle.

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I love it when research underlines conventional wisdom. Like when Mitchel Lichtman found that, the more pitches a pitcher had in his arsenal, the better his chances the third time through the order. Even if it was only on the order of a few points of weighted on base average, it was a real finding that functions as a virtual nod towards all those scouts and pitching coaches who’ve wondered about a pitchers’ third and fourth options. You might not need a changeup specifically, but you need other pitches if just to put more doubt in the hitter’s mind.

Given that finding, I thought it might be fun to try and use it in reverse. Who were the worst pitchers in baseball last season when it came to the third time through the order? Who saw their talent drop off the most upon seeing a batter the third time?

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In his spartan hitting facility in a San Fernando Valley industrial park near Los Angeles, private hitting instructor Doug Latta said something of a hitting “think tank” developed.

There in a windowless, warehouse-like structure that encased two batting cages and a gym, Latta, a former high-school coach — along with other hitting instructors from the private to amateur and professional ranks — gathered on the Astro-turf carpet on fold-out chairs to discuss their craft. Latta kept about 30 chairs on hand for larger crowds. Don Slaught, a former major leaguer turned instructor, was a frequent visitor and in one meeting debuted his swing analysis computer system, Right View Pro. Greg Walker, who had served as a hitting coach with the White Sox and Braves, was another regular contributor. During one meeting, he told a story about how a new player had asked him a question. His response: “I don’t know, let’s go to the cage and find out.” That story resonated with Latta. He saw it was not about knowing all and having an answer for everything. Rather, coaching was about searching for an answer that works for a hitter.

In conversation with FanGraphs last week, Latta said there was “flow” during the talks. The meetings exposed what Latta describes as a “big hole” in how hitting is taught at all levels of the game. Those conversations, combined with thousands of hours of working with hitters and poring over video, led Latta to a hitting philosophy.

In simplistic terms, the philosophy is this: the optimum swing plane is an uppercut, which is often at odds with much of conventional wisdom. The principles are basic: stay square, stay balanced, stay relaxed, and get the ball in the air.

The philosophy helped two of Latta’s clients, Justin Turner and Marlon Byrd – for Byrd it was between PED suspensions – reach new levels of performance.

Others, like J.D. Martinez and Josh Donaldson have found success, through a similar philosophy – based largely on getting balls in the air – by working with private instructors. Donaldson credited so much of his success to his swing change that he chose his private instructor – Bobby Tewksbary – to pitch to him in the 2015 Home Run Derby.

The 2013 Oakland A’s won 96 games in part via a fly-ball approach, posting the top ratio on record since GB/FB metrics have been tracked. A fly-ball swing plane is especially effective against two-seam, sinking fastballs, as noted in The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball. Despite these successes, Latta’s philosophy, and those similar to it, haven’t been widely adopted in professional baseball.

“You would be surprised at how much resistance [exists],” Latta said. “We talk about swing planes, how we initiate the swing, getting the ball in the air. That stuff is antithetical to most people out there doing training.”

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