2/20 Spring Training News & Analysis
Setting the stage for spring training, and thoughts on Jose Altuve being a left fielder
There is a professional baseball game being played today. Exhibition or not, it’s a very good thing to have happen. It’s been below 15 degrees with snow every day for weeks where I live, so it’s nice to start seeing some things shift in the other direction. I can actually still see the sunlight at 6pm, and now we’ll have baseball data streaming in again.
I also think we should take a moment today to appreciate what we have. Remember the 2020 and 2022 seasons? I don’t think I need to remind you about 2020, that’s firmly etched in all of your memories. But maybe you’ve forgotten about the 2022 lockout situation. Spring Training started super late, and they even had to move the season back a week. That did not turn out to be a big deal at all, but there were real worries about the season being shortened or maybe even canceled around this time three years ago. So we had two out of three seasons that began int total chaos. We don’t have that this year, so let us be thankful.
My Spring Coverage
Here’s my plan for the spring. I will be staying in my basement and looking at numbers. Just kidding, I will probably meander upstairs and force my kids to watch a few innings with me over the next week or so before I get tired of it until real games begin.
There are a ton of ways to react improperly to Spring Training. I doubt we really need to go over this with my audience, but there’s no harm in saying the true things even if they’re known. Spring stats do not matter. Even the advanced ones. If Junior Caminero hits nine homers this spring, you should not change your opinion about him. What you think right now is what you should think in four weeks unless there’s a change in:
Health
Playing time
Those are the two things that will change my ranks this spring. There will be injuries, so I’ll downgrade injured players and upgrade some of the guys who are likely to fill in for them.
I will also be scraping the Statcast data where it’s available. I think there are more Statcast games than ever before this spring. TJStats on X is honestly running laps around me at this point. And that’s okay; my favorite place has always been second place. He’s made a really nice Google Sheet with all of the team schedules for the spring. Check that out here.
I’ll primarily be looking for pitch velocity increases and new pitches being thrown. I don’t care about a decrease in velo because that’s a pretty common thing to see. There are a lot of cases of pitchers not being fully built up or maybe just not putting their full effort into meaningless innings. We shouldn’t react much to either one, but there certainly will be some names out there who have added velocity this offseason, and the first time to see evidence of that will be in these spring games.
As for the new pitches, a lot of the ones we see won’t transfer over to the regular season. Spring is a good place to try stuff out. I think we’ll see guys messing around with cutters and splitters. Some of the new pitches will stick, and some will not. We’re also going to hear about “spike changeups” and whatever other new terms they come up with. That’s just a part of the world now. We’re going to hear more and more about different variations of the same basic pitch type. And we’ll have to deal with that where it comes.
I also already have a lineup tracking Tableau dashboard I made for Mike Kurland last year. He’s temporarily retired, but the data and Tableau stuff were all mine, so I will just be continuing to update that.
You can find the link to that in the resource glossary or below the paywall here.
My primary focus this spring will be on having some fun. I’m not going to be the guy digging data nuggets out of spring games to try to get attention with. I know that the data is 95% useless, and I’m not going to sell something that’s useless as if it’s not useless.
So, I’ll keep it to just things that I think could be meaningful, and we’ll do a lot of “this might not matter” qualifying along the way.
News
Altuve to Left Field?
Jose Altuve will at least try out left field this year. They’ve said that’s where he’ll start in the first spring game. That sounds weird, for sure. My money would be on that not actually happening in the regular season, but it’s worth tracking, and it makes a lot of sense.
The Astros have a lot more infielders than outfielders. We talked about that in the team preview. Zach Dezenzo and Shay Whitcomb are two notable prospects they have who debuted in the Majors last year. They’ll both be hoping to make the roster out of camp, and they’re primarily infielders. Isaac Paredes has also played second base in his career, so they could feasibly put him there and Whitcomb at third. They give themselves a lot more options if Altuve truly does go to left field.
I don’t know what will happen. What I do know is that the Astros roster is a puzzle that still needs to put together, and that has not been the case in many years. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
There are also two veterans in the picture here. Mauricio Dubon will play at least a part time role for the club, and they’ve recently signed Brendan Rodgers to a minor league deal. Either one of those guys could outright win the job, I think.
Altuve gaining outfield eligibility certainly doesn’t hurt anything. But if you’re drafting him, I’m guessing he’s your second baseman. You’re much more likely to find outfielders late in the draft and on waivers than second basemen. This is basically a non-issue for fantasy purposes unless it leads to Whitcomb or Dezenzo becoming an everyday starter. Both of them would be interesting for deeper leagues if they do get to play.
Yankees Pitching News
Clarke Schmidt has a back thing going on. The team is saying he’s fine and he’ll throw a bullpen session today. But whatever, you don’t like to hear about back issues. I was off of him in the first place, so if you believe in me, you won’t be drafting Schmidt this year.
Chase Hampton has a UCL injury thing going on, which will cause him to miss “significant time”. He’s one of their top pitching prospects. He had an exciting 2023 season (107 IP, 33% K%, 8.4% BB%), but threw just 15 innings last year due to injuries, so this is another big roadblock for him. I don’t think he needs to be on anybody’s fantasy radar this year.
Those are the only significant news items I didn’t cover last time. I just wanted to make this post to welcome you all officially to baseball season and get the word out about how I’ll be handling spring. Let’s get into it! Peace out.