After taking last week off from Mining the News, I’m back with a partial recap and almost no in-depth commentary. It’s still almost 3000 words of projection altering nuggets. Also, I’m trying to catch up on the Spring Training fastball velocity tracker. Hopefully, both will be up-to-date in a day or so.

American League

Angels

• The Angels are considering Patrick Sandoval, Jose Suarez, Matt Andriese, and Jaime Barria for the rotation.

Patrick Sandoval (the Angels’ top pitching prospect, according to MLB Pipeline) started one of the team’s two games on Sunday, while Jose Suarez took the ball in the other. Both are considered candidates for the rotation, as are Matt Andriese and Jaime Barria.

“The candidates are great, it’s just a matter of experience and how they’ll be able to deal with all that,” Maddon said of the 22-year-old Suarez and 23-year-old Sandoval. “If you’re a scout and maybe just ran a fantasy baseball team, you kind of like this stuff. …

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An abbreviated version of the “Mining” on a Monday afternoon.

Blake Snell feels good and plans to play catch on Tuesday afternoon a cortisone shot in his elbow

On Sunday, neither Snell nor Cash would rule out being ready at the start of the season nor assure that he would be. Snell would likely to have been penciled in for the March 28 second game, with Charlie Morton working opening day.

I’m not moving Snell down my board at this moment. I’m keeping an eye on this situation, but holding firm on his #6 SP ranking for now.

—

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I’m trying to crank this article out three times a week to limit how long it takes me to assemble each one. That said, I’m not sure if/when the next one will be posted since I’m traveling Friday to BHQ’s First Pitch Florida for my mixed LABR auction. I’m guessing sometime late on Friday or sometime Saturday.

Notes

• I’m going to shy away from any current headline injury news (Luis Severino and J.D. Davis). Instead, I’ll try to dig a little deeper to find some “hidden” news that everyone isn’t “breaking”.

• I’ll continue to add in Spring Training velocities whenever I find them to my tracker.

American League

Angels

• Dillon Peters plans on emphasizing his slider to get left-handed hitters out.

Peters spoke after his first appearance of how he planned to begin mixing in a slider during the spring to give left-handed hitters another look. He threw the slider just 3.9 percent of the time last season.

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A couple of items before digging into projection adjusting news.

1. I’ve started collecting spring training fastball velocities and will update them as I find the time.

The Spring Training fastball velocity tracker is live. I'll update it when and if I feel like it, but I can always use some help. If anyone sees a velocity available in a Tweet or article, just tag me and I'll eventually add it. Thanks for the help. -Jeffhttps://t.co/2LaJ5uCDGJ

— Jeff Zimmerman (@jeffwzimmerman) February 22, 2020

One name which immediately sticks out is Alex Wood with a 2 to 3 mph jump. Wood lives off his sinker (50%+ usage). While it’s not a huge swing-and-miss pitch, it does better at 93 mph and higher.

While healthy, he’s a must-own in all formats.
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A new format, the same in-depth notes. Again, this took too long to dig through. Paul and I are trying to find a way to expedite it.

American League

Astros

• Josh James is being stretched out as a starter.

Hard-throwing right-hander Josh James was working out of the full windup during his first bullpen session of the spring on Friday, which is an indication the Astros plan to stretch him out this spring to be a starter. James entered camp last year competing for a rotation spot, but a right quad injury early in the spring derailed those plans.

• Don’t expect the Astros hitters to play over 150 games this season. Dusty likes to rest.

Former Astros manager AJ Hinch was a proponent of giving players regular days off, and Dusty Baker agrees. Baker said regular players would likely play about 150 games this season, meaning they would get two days off a month.

“I believe in rest days and I believe in telling guys when they have rest days,” he said. “There’s mental rest days, there’s baseball rest days, there’s days you say, ‘Hey man, go out and have a good meal and a couple of drinks and let your hair down a little bit and you won’t be off for another couple of weeks.’”

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In an effort to lighten the load on Jeff for this fantastic series he started, I’ll be doing some MtN pieces during the spring.

Shohei Ohtani is targeting a mid-May return to the mound

Ohtani will open the 2020 season as a DH, Billy Eppler said. They’re targeting a mid-May return for him on the mound. The new rules let him rehab while remaining on the big league roster.

I had been hearing something to this effect on MLB Network recently just in passing from different analysts but without any concrete news so I wasn’t sure if it was their speculation or news. We now have the concrete news. Of course, given his excellent bat this isn’t a total disaster for us in the fantasy realm. In a weird twist, I might actually be moving him up my rankings since he’s locked in the lineup everyday for 6 weeks so he’ll pile up the hitting stats early and then shift into the pitcher/hitter hybrid over the last four and a half months.

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During the offseason, I caught up on the news every couple of weeks. The news is picking up so I’m going to have to now go weekly. This article is too long but I didn’t want to cut anything useful. Sorry for the length and I try to keep them shorter.

• Teoscar Hernández will start the season with full-time at-bats.

Even though he’s managed to improve there in each of his three seasons with the Jays, it seems likely Hernández’s ceiling as an outfielder will never be higher than below average. Still, his big second half of 2019 (142 wRC+), and the fact that his platoon splits were even over that span (144 wRC+ against left-handed pitching, 141 against right-handers), means that he should be playing every day — at least until he proves that was a mirage. In a perfect world, he’d do so at DH, but that would force one of Alford or Shaw to the bench against right-handers, which isn’t ideal.

• Mitch Haniger will be out six to eight weeks because of hernia surgery.

“He’s gone through his surgery and we think it was successful,” Dipoto said. “We’re just fingers crossed. We have no expectation on his timeline until we actually see him live [at Spring Training]. We’re not going to push him. Mitch will return at his own pace. Whether that is some time around Opening Day or sometime around the middle of the season, I have no idea. We’re going to see where it takes us.”

Haniger was expected to miss at least 6-8 weeks after feeling an issue in his core muscles while ramping up his hitting program two weeks ago in Menlo Park, Calif.

Dipoto indicated at that time that Haniger almost certainly would still be sidelined at the start of the regular season in late March, but he was less specific on Tuesday as the team edges closer to the start of Spring Training.

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• Here is a loaded Tweet:

Dave Martinez revealed Friday the clearest picture yet of the Nats’ plans this year. They’re betting on Carter Kieboom at 3B and…
• Starlin Castro everyday 2B
• He thinks Zim reunion will happen
• Lineup shuffling could include Trea Turner hitting 3rdhttps://t.co/ziJg1M5s6d

— Sam Fortier (@Sam4TR) January 17, 2020

Starting with Turner, I think this gives him a bump in value. His Run-RBI mix will be closer to 1:1. Additionally, I compared all hitters projected for 30+ steals and how often they attempted steals from the first and third lineup spots in the same season. The drop was between one and two stolen bases. It’s a change but nothing to get too worked up about. The like 50 extra RBIs is a much bigger deal.

Also, with Starlin Castro at second and Carter Kieboom at third, Asdrúbal Cabrera’s fantasy value tanks.
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I’m finally able to mine a few useful bits of information with players, coaches, and owners talking at Fan Fests and caravans.

• Maikel Franco played through a hand bruise last season. When I collected information on players who played through an injury, he didn’t come up. The injury happened in early August and initially, his production suffered (.572 OPS). It bounced back in September (.703 OPS) hopefully meaning it’s not major.

• Brandon Nimmo is another hitter I missed who played through an injury.

Dragging down the above numbers is Nimmo’s performance last April and May, when he played through a bulging disk in his neck.

• Also, while investigating all the hitters who played through an injury, I found this nugget on Matt Carpenter from 2017.

Carpenter sat out the Cardinals’ final three games and underwent a follow-up MRI to the one he had a month ago. The exam showed the same thing now that the doctors knew then, which is that Carpenter is dealing with inflammation and not a structural issue.

Since then, he has missed a considerable amount of time with back injuries. I just can’t pay for any kind of rebound with what seems to be a chronic injury.

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It’s time to empty my notes and start clean for the new year. A “Mining the News” almost came out before the holiday break, so some notes are dated but still applicable.

• Nomar Mazara owners shouldn’t be counting on fulltime at-bats from him next season since he’ll likely be on the strong side of a platoon.

In 574 plate appearances against southpaws, Mazara features a below pedestrian line of .231/.272/.361 to go with 15 homers, 19 double and 68 RBIs. Manager Rick Renteria expressed hope in getting Mazara going against left-handers, but as it stands now, Mazara could get the bulk of playing time vs. righties with someone such as switching-hitting Leury García facing lefties.

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