Daulton Jefferies wasn’t at the very peak of his game in California’s season opener against Duke at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park on Friday, but the junior right-hander still flashed the stuff that makes him an early favorite to be a first-round selection in June.

I was on hand for his first start of the year as he opposed another top draft prospect in Duke right-hander Bailey Clark. To paint a fuller picture of Jefferies’ prospect outlook, I’m mixing my takeaways from this outing with what I saw this summer when he pitched for the Team USA Collegiate National Team and ranked as my No. 13 prospect on the squad.

The video below shows all 15 pitches from the first inning of his start on Friday. He tossed six innings and gave up five hits, two runs (both unearned) with two walks and nine strikeouts.

Jefferies is listed at six feet and 180 pounds. He has wiry strength and still projects in spite of his stature, with room for mass through his shoulders and a lean torso that tapers off at the waist. It’s an athletic body type that’s not difficult to maintain. He also shows quick-twitch actions when fielding his position, which you’ll see at the 1:30 mark in the video.

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Last week, I gave my thoughts on the best and worst transactions of the winter, but those lists only covered 16 different moves — four trades appeared on both lists — so they don’t exactly represent a complete overview of the offseason. So, in the spirit of thoroughness, I figured it was worth giving a brief overview of my take on every team’s moves this winter. As always, a reminder that my opinion is just that, and you can put as much or as little weight on it as you’d like; a lot of the comments below are going to look silly in 12 months.

And as I mentioned in the worst transactions write-up, MLB teams have gotten a lot better at making decisions in the last five years, and it is now much more difficult to find moves that are clearly destructive to the organization. In general, teams are mostly making smart decisions, or at least justifiable ones, well within the margin of what can be known at the time a decision has to be made. There will be deals that don’t turn out, and moves organizations regret making with the benefit of hindsight, but with just a few exceptions, most of the moves made this winter appear to be rooted in reasonable assumptions.

The result of more efficient decision making? The offseason probably matters a lot less than it used to. Because the market is doing a better job of valuing players rationally, and we don’t have as many rogue GMs just giving away star players, it’s tough to dramatically overhaul your franchise in just one winter. The magnitude of what a great offseason means has been diminished, and sustained winning in baseball is now more about making a long series of good decisions than it is about winning big on a handful of moves. But, with all that said, there are still some teams who helped themselves more than others this winter, and what follows is my assessment of how each team fared in their attempt to upgrade their organizational standing.

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Do you feel that? Spring Training is underway! No, not the part where they play actual games and it’s exciting for three innings. Rather, it’s the part where beat writers from all 30 teams bombard your Twitter feed with videos of pitchers throwing bullpen sessions and hitters taking batting practice and stories of how that one reliever got away from baseball by working on his truck all offseason or how that second baseman just eats a bunch of kale now.

You also get pictures of players with their new teams! Here’s Joba Chamberlain in an Indians jersey! Skip Schumaker with the Padres! Wow! Spoiler alert: Chamberlain gets chased out of Cleveland by a swarm of bugs before he ever pitches a regular season game. Schumaker has an embarrassing Spring Training moment where, while his team is taking the field between innings, he goes around to each position and looks into the dugout as if to say, “Here? Should I play here this inning?” and gets to every position before he realizes that his manager never actually told him to take the field. In fact, no one ever even invited him to camp. He just showed up and they gave him a jersey because they felt bad.

That’s the thing with veterans who sign minor league contracts in the offseason — it can be kinda sad. Like, Matt Joyce can only get a minor league deal now? Bummer. Brad Penny is still trying to make this happen? Yeesh. Ricky Romero? Ricky Romero.

But the other thing is this — sometimes, it’s going to work out! Sometimes, three years removed from professional baseball, the Indians sign Scott Kazmir to a minor league deal and he turns his life around and three years later he’s earned himself an extra $70 million. Sometimes, three years removed from pitching at all, really, the Royals sign Ryan Madson to a minor league deal and he helps win a World Series and gets a three-year contract the next offseason at 35.

A few of the guys who signed minor league contracts this offseason are going to make a real impact at the major league level this season. Most won’t. From a team-building perspective, it’s interesting to see how different organizations used their minor league spots and Spring Training invites. A few weeks back, I looked at how the teams were built, analyzing the makeup of each 40-man roster. In a similar vein, I thought I’d analyze which teams gave out the most minor league contracts this offseason, and to what kind of players.

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There are rumors that Adrian Beltre, a potential free agent next winter, might sign a contract extension with the Rangers this spring, potentially taking him to the end of his career. Jose Bautista in is a slightly similar situation with the Blue Jays. Dave Cameron discussed the potential of signing him to a contract extension one year out. Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Gomez are also among those veteran players who have previously signed contract extensions but who are eligible for free agency after the 2016 season. Those players could conceivably sign extensions before hitting the free-agent market. If they do, how will the contract look? Will the signing team extract any extra value from signing it? Or is it distinctly an advantage for the player?

On Friday, we looked at players who were bought out before taking their very first crack at free agency — players who signed their first extension just before reaching their free-agent years. Generally speaking, teams paid free-agent prices for those players and received typical free-agent results.

I wondered if the same form would hold true for more veteran players who have already received an extension somewhere along the line or had even already participated in free agency. On the one had, such players are older and thus more prone to decline earlier on in the contract. On the other, the signing teams would already have familiarity with these players and these players might be better given the previous investment, perhaps mitigating the influence of any age-related decline.

Much like I did on Friday, I consulted MLB Trade Rumors and looked for players who signed an extension within a year of free agency. This time, I considered only players who had amassed at least six years of service time, indicating that he’d already signed a previous free-agent contract — either that, or at least signed an extension that bought out a certain number of free-agent seasons. For the most part, these players had been made a priority by their current team or a previous one and their current team decided to make a significant investment in their future and convince them to skip the allure of free agency.

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At ESPN, they recently wrapped up their prospects week. I thought I’d zag from that zig, however, and instead wrote a piece for Insider about 30-year-olds and how they’ll age. Using some research from Jeff Zimmerman on aging by player type, I tried to spot some 30-year-olds who are about to go into the tank, and some that might age better than we expect.

But while working on the piece, I asked Zimmerman to update the research on player-type aging, starting in 2005. That’s the year baseball stiffened their steroid policy. Here’s something strange: in this, what we might call the “post-PED era,” it appears as though certain player types have begun aging in an entirely different way.

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Episode 633
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the exhausting guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 7 min play time.)

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In the early 1990s, a cerebral New Hampshire native was the best starting pitcher on the Cardinals’ staff. A control artist who relied more on on guile than on gas, Bob Tewksbury went 33-15 over a two-year stretch and made an All-Star team.

Last summer, St. Louis drafted a cerebral New Hampshire native who shares several of Tewksbury traits. Carson Cross is all about changing speeds, sequencing, and hitting spots.

A 14th-round senior sign (Tewksbury was a 19th-round pick), Cross went 10-2, 2.29 in his final season at the University of Connecticut. He then logged a 2.70 ERA in 10 outings with the Cardinals’ State College affiliate.

Cross’s game is “more mental than physical” and command is a strength. Not being a flamethrower, he considers location vital to his success.

“I’m not blowing the doors open like some kids,” explained Cross. “Fastball command is big for me. If you’re out there hoping you have that pitch working and it isn’t, then you’re kind of stuck in the back seat.”

Cross throws a cross-seam fastball, and not always at the same speed. 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, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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