Let’s start with the video. And then the words. Because you might not spot everything in the video the first time through. It sorta looks like an everyday foul ball, maybe with some sort of inside joke at the end. Trust me, though, this moment is fairly epic.

Paul Konerko‘s reaction provides our first clue that something was a bit different about this swing. He’s animated, talking to the third base coach about something. Zack Greinke’s doing a bit of stomping around after he watches it go.

“There are guys that take so quickly that it almost forces you to throw strikes,” Greinke told me at Spring Training earlier this month. “Paul Konerko, he would change his stances all the time, but there was this one time where he had this new stance where it looked like he wasn’t even getting ready and then all of a sudden you go and he’d swing.”

I laughed out loud. He was quick-pitching you! “Yeah,” Greinke agreed. “Before release, I think, oh, he’s taking, and you’d get overconfident. He only did that for a month or so.”

Go back and look at the video. It’s not quite a bat on the shoulder, but there is something about Konerko’s setup that seems lackadaisical. Given the 1-0 count, it looks like he’s waiting for Greinke to get himself in a deeper hole. “A guy like that, you think most pitchers would be coming with the fastball, but he’s liable to give you another slider out of the zone,” agreed Konerko when contacted by phone about the at-bat. “And then sometimes, he’d even take something off when he was supposed to come at you.”

So maybe Konerko was just taking, and that’s why it took him so long to get ready? Not quite. It did take him a long time to get ready back then. On purpose. “I used to be too tense too early before the pitch came,” Konerko remembered, “so sometimes I would wait to see how long I could wait. I was so ready to hit that it didn’t help me.” So, in the footage here, Konerko actually is attempting to chill out as long as possible, but not so much to mislead Greinke as to prepare himself optimally.

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I think I’ve written almost this exact thing before, but to kick off this annual series in earnest, let’s begin with the position we arguably know the least about! Here’s a link to Dave’s introduction to the series, if you need a bit of a refresher. Probably, though, it’s all self-explanatory, and now here’s a plot of all the projected team values behind the plate, with what at least I consider an unsurprising arrangement. In fairness, maybe it’s unsurprising because I’ve been looking at these numbers now for several, several hours. OK.

Did you know that the Giants have a good catcher? What I love about this isn’t just that the Giants are in the lead — it’s that they’re in the lead by 1.3 wins. That’s the same as the difference between the Dodgers in second place and the Reds in 15th. The tricky bit is that catchers can sometimes have all that perceived intangible value, and I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with leadership from a statistical perspective, but, you know, no analysis is perfect. Read on for paragraphs about catchers! (The Braves get the last paragraph.)

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EVALUATING THE PROSPECTS 2016 Angels Astros Athletics Blue Jays Braves Brewers Cardinals Cubs Diamondbacks Dodgers Giants Indians Mariners Marlins Mets Nationals Orioles Padres Phillies Pirates Rangers Rays Red Sox Reds Rockies Royals Tigers Twins White Sox Yankees

Since having committed to a full-scale rebuild, the Phillies have prepared themselves nicely for a more sustainable future. Right to the top of their prospect ranks went trade acquisitions Nick Williams, Mark Appel and Jake Thompson. Additionally, a number of second-tier players have given the organization the depth and upside it desperately needed after a few stagnant years with aging veterans. The main weakness of the minor-league group is its lack of immediate help for the rotation, with questions surrounding both Appel’s and Thompson’s viability as starters preventing them from being sure things. After that, there’s a lack of options until you get to the lower levels, where exciting younger pitchers like Franklyn Kilome look to take a step forward and challenge for upper-minors rotation spots.

There shouldn’t be a ton of surprises on this list. It looks like I’m a half-grade higher or lower on few guys than the consensus, but most of the guys after the 50+ group are fairly interchangeable. Medium-upside players at the lower levels of the system are plentiful, making the relative grades more a preference than anything.

Mark Appel’s ranking may stir some discussion, as I make the case here why I don’t think we have a Gerrit Cole-esque breakout to which we can to look forward. It’s not so dire that I don’t think he’s a major league starter, but his ceiling grade is lower here than most are ready to admit.

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The San Diego Padres were the most active team in baseball last winter, as newly-minted general manager A.J. Preller put his mark on the franchise with a mind-numbing mass of moves that aimed to quickly turn the Padres into a contender, mostly by injecting a bevy of ever-coveted right-handed power bats into a previously punchless lineup.

The plan didn’t work, for a host of reasons neither here nor there, and now a new plan has emerged. Justin Upton walked to free agency, Craig Kimbrel was shipped off to Boston, Wil Myers got out of center field, and Preller might not be done jettisoning the very players he acquired last year, the ones who were supposed to form The Next Good Padres Team.

Last week, Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News reported that the Texas Rangers continue to covet an upgrade at catcher, though their top target may not be Milwaukee’s Jonathan Lucroy, as previously expected, but rather Padres’ backstop Derek Norris. The Rangers like Norris because he’s cheaper than Lucroy, he’s got an extra year on his contract, and the Padres have more pieces that could be packaged together with Norris to make for a potential blockbuster deal.

While Norris may not be the same caliber player as a healthy Lucroy, he would presumably offer an upgrade over Texas incumbent Robinson Chirinos, both behind the plate and with the bat, while also providing much-needed depth. But the glove has only been a plus for one year — Norris graded as a well below-average pitch-framer before last season — and the deeper you look into the bat, the less promising it becomes. And evidently, pitchers around the league agree.

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We’re now officially two weeks from Opening Day, which means you’re about to be inundated with season previews. Some places will go team by team, others will group by divisions, but basically every outlet that covers baseball will roll out overviews of the 2016 season. In an attempt to provide something a little bit different here at FanGraphs, we do our season previews on a positional basis, and we call them the Positional Power Rankings. This is now our fifth crack at these things — you can see the archived versions of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 by clicking on those links — and we hope that they’re getting better each time we do them.

From my perspective, one of the primary benefits of previewing the season from a positional perspective is that we can spend a bit more time discussing a team’s overall depth. Most team-based previews aren’t going to spend a lot of time on the bench pieces or the minor leaguers who will get first crack at playing time should an injury occur, especially on a contender; no one clicks on a story about the Nationals 2016 season to read about Jose Lobaton, for instance. But depth matters, and often times, the difference between making the postseason or watching October baseball from home is the performance of a team’s role players, and with many teams moving towards a balanced roster approach over betting on a few big-name stars, we think breaking down every team’s projections at each position on the field gives you guys a better understanding of where the various strengths and weaknesses lie.

How does a platoon stack up against having one regular everyday guy? What is the magnitude of the improvement a team will get from swapping out a veteran placeholder with a top prospect in May or June? These are the kinds of things we think the Positional Power Rankings are helpful at identifying, and because our previews are based on strength at a certain spot, non-contenders get a chance to shine if they have a particularly strength as well. So we know it’s different than most places, but hopefully it’s different in a good way, providing you with information you won’t get elsewhere, or at least provides information in a format that makes you see a team’s pros and cons in a different light.

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Adam LaRoche’s unexpected retirement announcement on Tuesday – along with the many twists and turns that followed – dominated the baseball headlines last week. To recap, on Wednesday we learned that rather than walking away from the game voluntarily due to a perceived diminution in talent or lack of desire, LaRoche instead elected to retire after being informed by Chicago White Sox Vice President Ken Williams that LaRoche’s son Drake was no longer welcome in the team’s clubhouse (or, at least, was not welcome to accompany LaRoche quite as frequently as he had in 2015). Then on Thursday, reports emerged that the Major League Baseball Players Association was considering whether to file a grievance against the White Sox on LaRoche’s behalf.

It’s currently difficult to determine exactly how strong a legal case LaRoche might have against the White Sox because there is still a lot we don’t know about what agreement, if any, LaRoche reached with Chicago regarding the extent to which his son could accompany him to games. For instance, on Friday, White Sox union representative Adam Eaton told the media that LaRoche’s contract with the team did in fact include a provision regarding his son’s access to the clubhouse. Meanwhile, other reports have suggested that any agreement between LaRoche and the team regarding his son was limited to a verbal understanding, and was not embodied in his written contract.

Ultimately, this distinction between a written and verbal agreement is likely to determine whether LaRoche has any real hope of prevailing in a grievance against the White Sox, should he choose to pursue one.

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Email newsletters are a burgeoning communications tool, and FanGraphs is getting in on the act. This is something we’ve actually had our eye on for quite some time — as far back as 2013, actually — and we’re excited to finally be bringing it to you. Today, actually: the newsletter’s inaugural edition will drop this afternoon. Let’s talk details.

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Ben and Sam preview the Nationals’ season with Washington Post Nationals beat writer Chelsea Janes, and Jeff talks to Chelsea’s Washington Post colleague, James Wagner (at 23:56).

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Dick Egan has had a long and successful career. Currently a special assistant to the general manager in Detroit, the 78-year-old Egan has been in the game for over five decades. A few months ago he received a Legends in Scouting award.

His coaching and scouting acumen have exceeded his ability to retire big-league hitters. Pitching out of the bullpen for the Tigers, Angels and Dodgers from 1963-1967, Egan put up a 5.15 ERA.

The first of his 74 career appearances came on opening day, at Tiger Stadium. Egan recalls it being cold — “I think it was about 20 degrees when we arrived in Detroit” — but he got off to a hot start. The left-hander replaced Jim Bunning in the eighth inning and fanned the only batter he faced.

“They got me up, brought me in, and I struck out Nellie Fox with three straight sliders,” said Egan. “Bob Scheffing, our manager, told me he’s never seen Fox look that bad. Unfortunately, it didn’t carry over to the rest of my career.”

The following year, Egan threw a pitch that carried a long way. Read the rest of this entry »