As the first wave of spring-training games begin, let’s continue to take a position-by-position look back at the ball-in-play (BIP) profiles of 2015 semi-regulars and regulars to see if we can find any clues as to their projected performance moving forward. We’ve already looked at all the various infield positions — and, just yesterday, left field. Only three more to go; today, it’s the center fielders’ turn.

First, some ground rules. To come up with an overall player population roughly equal to one player per team per position, the minimum number of batted balls with Statcast readings was set at 164. Players were listed at the position at which they played the most games. There is more than one player per team at some positions and less at others, like catcher and DH. Players are listed in descending OPS+ order. Let’s start with the AL center fielders. Hmmm, I wonder who’s at the top of the list?

BIP Overview – AL CF

Name	Avg MPH	FB/LD MPH	GB MPH	POP%	FLY%	LD%	GB%	CON	K%	BB%	OPS+	Pull%	Cent%	Opp%
Trout	93.17	96.67	89.25	1.0%	37.4%	24.4%	37.2%	196	23.2%	13.5%	176	38.2%	33.2%	28.7%
Cain	90.86	92.70	89.12	0.9%	30.4%	23.2%	45.5%	127	16.2%	6.1%	126	33.7%	38.1%	28.2%
Eaton	87.64	89.53	88.72	2.8%	24.5%	22.0%	50.7%	117	19.0%	8.4%	122	29.2%	36.8%	34.0%
Betts	91.16	91.89	91.72	4.5%	37.9%	19.5%	38.2%	108	12.5%	7.0%	118	40.3%	36.5%	23.1%
A.Jones	89.03	93.97	85.92	4.3%	32.0%	17.8%	45.8%	114	17.6%	4.1%	109	44.3%	34.0%	21.7%
R.Davis	87.44	90.83	85.65	6.1%	27.4%	22.4%	44.1%	109	20.5%	5.9%	104	34.9%	34.2%	30.9%
Burns	82.99	85.28	83.06	5.8%	22.3%	21.6%	50.3%	97	14.6%	4.7%	100	29.6%	36.9%	33.5%
Kiermaier	87.65	89.93	88.15	3.9%	25.4%	22.9%	47.8%	98	17.8%	4.5%	98	41.3%	36.0%	22.7%
Pillar	85.35	88.02	86.23	6.5%	30.2%	21.9%	41.4%	88	13.5%	4.5%	96	42.9%	30.2%	26.9%
Hicks	89.32	92.37	86.01	3.6%	31.8%	22.9%	41.8%	91	16.9%	8.7%	95	35.8%	34.4%	29.9%
DeShields	85.81	88.08	84.30	2.0%	31.7%	19.0%	47.4%	94	20.5%	10.8%	95	36.7%	36.7%	26.6%
A.Jackson	89.38	91.33	87.97	0.5%	24.1%	24.3%	51.1%	112	23.9%	5.5%	95	36.0%	37.9%	26.0%
Gose	87.33	89.58	87.93	1.9%	23.3%	20.8%	54.0%	112	27.1%	8.4%	91	31.0%	35.7%	33.3%
Ellsbury	86.86	88.36	87.47	3.2%	27.4%	24.1%	45.3%	80	17.2%	7.0%	84	37.8%	35.1%	27.0%
Marisnick	85.21	90.06	82.11	3.9%	34.5%	19.7%	41.9%	104	28.2%	4.8%	81	42.6%	30.3%	27.1%
Bourn	85.17	87.93	83.85	1.6%	26.4%	24.8%	47.3%	71	22.2%	9.5%	64	33.4%	39.5%	27.1%
AVERAGE	87.77	90.41	86.72	3.3%	29.2%	22.0%	45.6%	107	19.4%	7.1%	103	36.7%	35.3%	27.9%

Most of the column headers are self explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and BIP by field sector (pull, central, opposite). Each player’s OPS and Unadjusted Contact Score (CON) is also listed. For those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100.

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When Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association agreed to terms on a new domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse policy last August, it was clear that the first few cases to arise under the new agreement would take on heightened importance. As I noted at the time, under the agreement MLB and the union agreed that any past suspension — or lack thereof — for an act of domestic violence would not serve as a precedent in any future cases arising under the new policy. Instead, the initial suspensions handed out by Commissioner Manfred under the agreement would establish a new baseline against which the fairness of any future punishment would be judged.

As a result, Tuesday’s news that MLB had officially suspended Aroldis Chapman for the first 30 games of the 2016 season established a significant milestone, marking the first case in which a player has been suspended without pay under baseball’s new domestic violence agreement. This is all the more noteworthy considering that Chapman was never actually charged for the incident that led to his suspension. Although baseball’s new policy clearly permits MLB to punish players in cases that do not result in criminal prosecution, it wasn’t clear to what extent the league would be willing to suspend someone for an incident that did not result in the player being charged with a crime.

Further, because Chapman declared shortly after his suspension was announced on Tuesday that he would not be appealing the punishment, MLB has avoided the possibility that the 30-game suspension could be overturned by an arbitrator, creating an immediate precedent for future cases.

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Every player in baseball is having a good year. I mean it! No one’s had time to screw it up yet. Every prospect is going to be a star. The pitchers will all remain healthy. Any veteran whose career took a nosedive last year is on track to regain his old form. All the guys who played over their head have shown no indication they can’t maintain last year’s pace. Spring Training games don’t even count!

And all of the hulking 23-year-olds with tools through the roof and devastating contact problems haven’t swung and missed one time yet! What contact problems?

It’s only natural, as the fake-games begin and the regular season breaches the horizon, that we develop irresponsible fixations upon certain players. The way I see it is this: players have upside, and they have downside. Upside is always present — it’s like this mythological thing that cannot be seen or touched or heard or felt, but we know that it exists. But with the regular season comes meaningful games, and meaningful games present scenarios that remind you of your fixation’s flaws, the very things that will prevent Him from reaching His upside. During the offseason, those flaws cannot be seen; only upside exists, and we dream big.

I’m here to talk about Domingo Santana. But first, I want to talk about George Springer.

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Other clubs: Angels, Astros, Braves, Cubs, Diamondbacks, Indians, Orioles, Reds, Red Sox, Rockies, Royals, Tigers, White Sox.

To start off, a brief programming note: I’m going out of alphabetical order here, as inside information trickles in at different rates. I’ll be jumping around to different teams as soon as I get a suitable amount of corroborating sources for each.

With regard to the Marlins, specifically, they don’t have a ton of impact offense waiting in the wings, but there is a plethora of pitching reinforcements — mostly in terms of depth but some with high ceilings — at all levels of the minors. It’s interesting to think about what this group will do in the next few years, having enough potential to turn out a number of surprise contributors but not enough blue-chippers to rank highly among the league’s best farm systems.

Tyler Kolek has struggled a bit as a professional, but his talent makes him the best prospect in the organization. It seems I’m the high guy on Chris Paddack, but his placement only sticks out here because of the lack of certainty among other prospects around him. There aren’t a ton of other surprises elswhere, with a reasonable argument to be made about anyone outside the top-four or -five guys to either be in the top 10 or at the bottom of the list.

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This is going to have a lot of caveats, so I should try to sell you on it first. Team depth — is it important? The correct answer is, “sometimes, yeah, although not all the times.” See, depth is no one’s primary weapon. A team comes first with its stars, with its everyday regulars. But depth is one of those things that commonly becomes important, because bad things happen, and they happen indiscriminately. Depth is basically like health insurance, and while a team can have a successful season without very much of it, the odds are eventually it’s going to come into play. Which is why some teams talk openly about trying to accumulate it.

A few front offices this past winter talked about how the average team needs way more than five starting pitchers. I think by now we all have a good understanding of that. Then sometimes you also get teams like the 2015 Mets, who wound up in need of position-player depth. Ideally a team will begin a season with plenty of in-house support, and below, I’ve made an attempt to quantify what teams currently have. It’s not a perfect, inarguable attempt. It’s just the attempt you’re reading right now.

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Ben and Sam play a quick player guessing game, banter about pitching-coach projects and Coors Field fences, and answer listener emails about the Cubs and personal catchers, irrational fan beliefs, Mike Trout, and more.

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The one conversation we continue to have about the Royals to this day is whether there’s just something about them that the numbers aren’t seeing. I think we’ve all agreed the Royals have deserved to be pretty good of late, but to be as good as they’ve been — let’s face it, the pro-Royals side has plenty of ammunition. They’ve played like something greater than the sum of the roster’s parts, and that’s where there could be a disconnect. One idea is that a team is the sum of its parts, plus or minus however much randomness. A counter-idea is we’re missing some kind of human element, in our haste to try to see the future. This would be where the Royals have perfected a magic formula.

If there’s one player who might adequately represent the Royals in a nutshell, it’s Salvador Perez. You could always try to go with Alcides Escobar, on account of #EskyMagic, and that’s fine, but I think Perez is a little more fitting. Perez is still young, and he’s obviously talented. Looking at his numbers, there are things for us to like, and there are things for us to not like. Objectively, Perez appears to be a good but flawed player, yet if you listen to the Royals themselves, they think of him as the heart and soul. They see him as the most important player on the roster, and over the last three years, the Royals have won 57% of the time when Perez has started, and they’ve won 49% of the time when Perez has been on the bench. Just as there might be something about the Royals, there might be something about Salvador Perez. It’s just another conversation for all of us to have.

One conversation we never needed to have: whether Perez’s old multi-year contract was team-friendly. It was stupid team-friendly. More than maybe any other deal, depending on your own Perez evaluation. Teams don’t often willingly amend such lopsided agreements, but the Royals wanted to keep Perez happy. So now that old contract has been torn up, and Perez has been more adequately rewarded for everything that he’s meant.

Call it a smart and atypical move, on the Royals’ part. Call it a necessary move, on the Royals’ part. There are plenty of team-friendly contracts out there, but not many to such an extent, so we don’t have a lot of situational comps. All that’s really important here is that Perez is being treated fairly. Maybe this is something the Rays would’ve been willing to do, and maybe it’s not. Perez just cares that the Royals did it.

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As the calendar mercifully flips to March, it won’t be long until meaningful major league baseball games will be played in a ballpark near you. Meanwhile, let’s continue our series of position-by-position looks at the ball-in-play (BIP) profiles of 2015 regulars and semi-regulars. We’ve already looked at all the various infield positions, so today we’ll begin our outfield review in left field.

First, let’s review some ground rules. To come up with an overall player population roughly equal to one player per team per position, the minimum number of batted balls with Statcast readings was set at 164. Players were listed at the position at which they played the most games. There is more than one player per team at some positions and less at others, like catcher and DH. Players are listed in descending OPS+ order. Let’s begin with the AL left fielders.

BIP Overview – AL LF

Name	Avg MPH	FB/LD MPH	GB MPH	POP%	FLY%	LD%	GB%	CON	K%	BB%	OPS+	Pull%	Cent%	Opp%
Cespedes	93.18	96.53	89.46	3.4%	34.5%	20.4%	41.7%	156	20.9%	4.9%	137	43.7%	34.8%	21.5%
Brantley	89.11	91.93	87.35	1.7%	30.0%	22.5%	45.8%	107	8.6%	10.1%	130	42.7%	32.7%	24.6%
Gordon	89.00	91.50	86.61	3.0%	34.6%	24.8%	37.6%	123	21.8%	11.6%	120	45.7%	36.3%	18.0%
S.Smith	89.41	91.86	88.29	0.7%	37.3%	19.7%	42.3%	112	21.9%	10.4%	117	38.7%	34.8%	26.5%
Guyer	86.72	90.73	84.81	6.0%	28.6%	21.2%	44.2%	95	15.8%	6.5%	115	44.7%	32.7%	22.6%
Rasmus	90.24	93.42	84.02	5.1%	46.5%	20.0%	28.4%	159	31.8%	9.7%	113	52.8%	27.0%	20.2%
Gardner	88.22	91.69	86.48	2.1%	31.8%	20.8%	45.3%	101	20.6%	10.4%	105	34.9%	34.5%	30.7%
De Aza	86.63	89.12	83.31	0.9%	36.8%	23.4%	39.0%	118	23.0%	8.5%	104	37.1%	39.2%	23.7%
Dv.Murphy	88.79	90.24	87.98	4.1%	28.4%	16.7%	50.8%	92	12.5%	5.1%	101	38.7%	39.6%	21.7%
E.Rosario	87.90	91.11	83.52	4.8%	35.8%	20.3%	39.1%	129	24.9%	3.2%	99	39.0%	35.8%	25.2%
Tucker	90.55	91.38	90.90	4.8%	31.0%	17.7%	46.6%	106	21.1%	6.2%	99	43.1%	33.6%	23.3%
Me.Cabrera	90.19	91.11	91.38	2.7%	27.2%	23.9%	46.3%	84	12.9%	5.9%	97	36.9%	35.4%	27.7%
H.Ramirez	91.16	95.39	89.24	3.6%	26.0%	20.4%	50.0%	91	16.5%	4.9%	90	37.1%	39.5%	23.4%
DeJesus	87.87	91.16	85.21	3.0%	29.8%	23.5%	43.7%	68	16.4%	6.6%	76	42.0%	33.2%	24.8%
Aviles	87.10	88.20	87.75	4.3%	30.2%	16.3%	49.2%	56	12.0%	6.3%	61	38.0%	36.8%	25.2%
AVERAGE	89.07	91.69	87.09	3.3%	32.6%	20.8%	43.3%	106	18.7%	7.4%	104	41.0%	35.1%	23.9%

Most of the column headers are self explanatory, including average BIP speed (overall and by BIP type), BIP type frequency, K and BB rates, and BIP by field sector (pull, central, opposite). Each player’s OPS and Unadjusted Contact Score (CON) is also listed. For those of you who have not read my articles on the topic, Contact Score is derived by removing Ks and BBs from hitters’ batting lines, assigning run values to all other events, and comparing them to a league average of 100.

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