Sunday marked the first public workout of the 2016 season for the Tampa Bay Rays. After a long and cold offseason, most of us are incredibly excited by the prospect of watching baseball any capacity ― meaningful or otherwise. Yet even with the excitement that this wonderful time of year brings, the purpose Spring Training shouldn’t be lost.
With that in mind, join X-Rays Spex as we attempt to clue you in on what to look for over the next month plus.
Sample sizes are so small that any meaningful conclusion about a player’s performance cannot truly be determined
Everyday starters, and players getting serious roster consideration, will get around 60 at bats during the spring. The small sample size isn’t enough to give an accurate depiction of what to expect out of a batter. Why? Among other things, the first statistic to stabilize for hitters is strikeout percentage, and it takes at least 60 plate appearances to do so. Ultimately hitters aren’t worried about looking for the perfect pitch to incur damage upon, they are trying to get their timing down. Anything above and beyond that is icing on the cake.
Conditions for hitting in south Florida are vastly different from The Trop
The Rays play in a dome where there is less air resistance on the ball in flight, and wind is not a factor. Compare that with Charlotte Sports Park, where a stiff breeze blowing in can turn a home run into a routine fly ball.
Last season catcher Luke Maile hit a ninth inning double that should have left the confines of Steinbrenner Field, in Tampa. However, the wind resistance applied to the ball was enough to keep it in the park. True, that game took place in Tampa, not Port Charlotte, but you catch my drift.
Pitchers aren’t worried about setting up a hitter to freeze him with a nasty slider, rather they are concerned with staying healthy and building arm strength
Pitchers are focused on getting ready for the season, not getting batters out. It takes time for pitchers to build their arm strength. Dips in velocity are going to happen, homers are going to happen, and a pitcher might look like, well…crap prior to Opening Day. A handful of poor spring performances prior to Opening Day isn’t indicative of a pitchers future performance. A good example of that is Corey Kluber, the 2014 American League Cy Young Award winner. Kluber posited a gaudy 5.60 ERA in Spring Training, yet ended the season as the best pitcher in the AL.
Pitchers use Spring Training to work on pitches
It was written elsewhere:
The time for trial and error is now. Spending time during the season experimenting with a two-seam fastball or a circle change is not a good idea. That should be reserved for side sessions and bullpens. During Spring Training, however, there is absolutely no negative impact to trying out some changes that could eventually be beneficial. Sometimes pitchers will go out to the mound only throwing fastballs away in order to work on their command over the outer half of the plate. Sometimes a pitcher will only work inside and give up a couple of bombs from missing spots.
‘Nuff said.
Players are going to make errors, and that’s fine
Cloudless skies turn poppers into doubles, and errors from players playing out of position aren’t going to happen during the regular season. Spring Training is a time for players, many of whom are untested at the Major League level, to prove their worth. Instead, watch how a player jumps on the ball. Is he quick? Does he have good range? Do his movements seem fluid or stilted? What about his arm? Also, pay attention to where a player is stationed.
Take note of who plays where and for how long
Earlier this week, Marc Topkin (Tampa Bay Times) wrote that Kevin Cash “Plans to use relievers in front of closer Brad Boxberger to work in more than one inning and, at times, to get more than three outs.” And while it’s not nearly as unconventional as last season’s plan to lift a lesser experienced starter two times through the batting order, it is still a different approach.
Citing the need to fill the void left by trading Jake McGee, Matt Silverman called the new plan a way to increase flexibility and maximize their options in what will be a relatively inexperienced bullpen:
It would be great if our starter goes seven innings, hand it off to our reliever in the eighth, close it out in the ninth and win a ball game. And if that happens, fantastic.
But we want to make sure we have contingencies where we don’t have issues covering innings if there is an injury to a starter, if a guy doesn’t go very deep, we want to make sure we have the length to be able to have a fresh pen the next day and not have it affect our club that day and for a couple of games down the road.
The plan is to experiment in exhibition games to see how it works. Alex Colome, Xavier Cedeno, Enny Romero, Danny Farquhar and Andrew Bellatti would all seem to be candidates for extended duty, and Cash suggested they could use this group approach rather than having a set set-up man:
That’s something we’re going to have to find out in spring training — how those guys can do it. Can they bounce back? Are they able to come in after one-third of an inning and sit for 15 minutes while we’re scoring runs and go back out? We’re going to have to figure that out with some guys. Because the way we were stacked up last year, it was a lot of one-inning guys.
Watch for injuries
One week into the Spring Training game action last season, and the injury bug nipped a good number of teams ― Tampa Bay included. Hunter Pence broke his arm, Cliff Lee suffered a sore elbow, both Josh Reddick and Brandon Guyer incurred oblique injuries, Drew Smyly sustained a bout with tendonitis that masked a torn labrum, and both Marcus Stroman and Alex Cobb tore their anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL), with the latter missing the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Suffice it to say, a good number of those players missed a significant amount of time last season.
The win-loss record at the end of the spring means nothing
Oakland went 22-11 in the Cactus League last season, and Tampa Bay went on to post a +.500 record in the Grapefruit League. The positive Spring Training outcomes were ultimately meaningless for both teams. On the other hand, Texas went 9-19 and Houston went 12-12, and both teams appeared in the postseason.