Let’s continue on our journey of identifying the extreme offensive performers so far over the first week and a half of the season.

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What I love about the first couple of weeks of the baseball season is all the crazy rates players are posting. In small samples, the range recorded in all metrics is much wider than over a larger sample. Obviously, the larger the sample, the more a player’s performance will revert toward his true talent level. In only nine to 11 games, anything goes! So for fun, let’s take a gander at some of the weird and wonderful rates that have been posted by hitters so far.

So there’s at least some care given to sample size, I limited my dive to hitters who have recorded at least 30 plate appearances.

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Earlier this week, I shared and discussed starting pitcher velocity gainers on Monday and Tuesday, and then relievers yesterday. Now let’s flip to the fastball velocity decliners. My level of concern for the pitchers on this list, and for those who missed the cut but have also suffered declines, is lower than my excitement for the velocity gainers. Given the abbreviated spring training, it’s understandable if some pitchers are still building up their arm strength, and we’ll see their velocities gradually rise closer to what we expected. Surprisingly however, leaguewide velocity is actually up! During the same date range of Apr 7 – Apr 12, 2022 fastball (four-seam, two-seam, sinker) velocity is actually up from 93.4 MPH in 2021 to 93.6 MPH in 2022. So it’s hard to use the blanket short spring training as an explanation, but I’m sure every pitcher is affected differently. Bottom line is while this group is certainly worth monitoring and a trip to the IL with an injury shared could certainly be announced, I wouldn’t panic just yet.

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This week, I have been identifying and discussing the starting pitchers that have enjoyed a fastball velocity surge during their first start. Let’s now shift over to relievers. Even without recording saves, middle relievers can earn value in deeper leagues. This has been even truer in recent years as starting pitchers have been averaging fewer innings per start, so the difference between a replacement level starter’s strikeout and win totals and a good reliever’s is much smaller than it used to be. Let’s now discuss six relievers that have most increased their fastball velocities so far. Remember, the sample sizes here are small and velocity does fluctuate from game to game.

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Let’s continue reviewing the starting pitcher velocity surgers, as finding those breakouts will give you a huge leg up on your league winning journey. Yesterday, I shared and discussed six names, so let’s do another five today. As a reminder, these velocities are after just one start, and because the majority of starts have been abbreviated so far this season, the sample size of pitches is smaller than usual. While velocities stabilize rather quickly, they do fluctuate from start to start.

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There’s not a whole lot to analyze at the beginning of the season aside from playing time, but there is one metric that stabilizes rather quickly and gives us extremely useful information — pitch velocity. I always monitor velocities during spring training and then early in the season to potentially get a leg up and find breakouts before they occur. So let’s review six velocity surgers after one start. To make data comparisons easier for me, I used Baseball Savant’s search tool and lumped all three fastball types (four-seam, two-seam, sinker) together and compared the average velocities of all three pitches for each pitcher to last season. Note that these velocities differ from the two velocity tables we have on FanGraphs. The absolute velocity is far less important than the increase in velocity, so the fact that the velocities don’t match isn’t an issue.

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Baseball is back! It’s an exciting time when a trio of the toppest of top prospects will be in the starting lineup on opening day — Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Spencer Torkelson. That’s three of our top five overall prospects! There has been enough digital ink spilled on them, though, so let’s discuss three less heralded prospects who have earned a starting job.

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It’s bold predictions time! Earlier this week, I shared my bold hitter league leaders and bold pitcher league leaders. While those picks and writeups should provide value, they are more for fun given the loooooong odds of getting even one of them right. On the other hand, I expect to hit on several of my bold predictions, aiming for at least two to three correct calls. Let’s dive right in.

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Yesterday, I unveiled my bold hitter league leaders. Today, let’s jump over to the pitching side, where I’ll do the same for the throwers. Once again, I’ll use my Pod Projections to guide me toward players I’m more bullish on than the other projection systems. Unlike for hitters, I’ll only be sharing bold leaders in four categories. There will be no bold wins league leader named, because wins are silly and unpredictable.

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Every season, in addition to posting my standard bold predictions, I up the ante with my bold league leaders. If you thought nailing a bold prediction was tough, the bold league leaders are even more difficult! Just getting one right is worthy of celebration. Because these are bold, I automatically disqualify players I don’t personally believe would be considered bold or is already projected to finish top five in the category. So I challenge myself and it typically causes me to bat .000, though I actually have hit on a couple over the years. This is more for fun and dreaming of what could be, rather than any serious attempt at being right. Naturally, I use my Pod Projections to identify players with that 80th-90th percentile upside to vault to the top of the category mountains.

Today, I’ll start with the bold hitting league leaders in each of the five categories, split up by league. Tomorrow, I’ll move on to the pitchers.

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