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You don’t come across perfect free-agent fits that often. A lot of players fill needs, but not budgets. Some players fill needs and budgets, but not long-term plans. And so on. You know how it is.

I guess that makes today a special day, for today we have an excuse to talk about a rare perfect free-agent fit: A.J. Burnett and the Orioles.

On an otherwise slow Tuesday, this was the big news from Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

According to Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun, the Orioles are “definitely” interested in Burnett. To a point where he now might be at the top of the club’s wish list, if one source is to be believed.

Cue an image in my head of a bunch of Orioles fans shouting “Finally!” in unison.

It’s been that kind of winter. The Jim Johnson trade is the biggest splash the Orioles have made, and that involved the Orioles losing the star closer. They only got Jemile Weeks in that deal, and other pieces brought in by Dan Duquette include Ryan Webb, David Lough, Delmon Young and Alfredo Aceves. Grant Balfour was almost signed, but then he wasn’t. 

After winning 93 games in 2012, the Orioles took a step back to 85 wins in 2013. If their offseason haul ends up looking like, well, that when all is said and done, another step back will be in the cards.

But Burnett? Besides being the big-ticket addition Orioles fans have been waiting for, he’s also a big-ticket addition the Orioles can make and one that would solve a big problem that needs solving.

As of now, Cot’s Baseball Contracts has Baltimore’s salary commitments for 2014 at a modest $72 million. Baseball-Reference has the club’s final payroll projected in the low $80 million range.

Baltimore opened 2013 at $92 million. If we look at the going price for pitching in this winter’s market and assume that Burnett can be signed for between $10 and $15 million, the Orioles’ payroll would either be hardly budging or only going up a few million bucks. Not a lot to ask, that.

Plus, there’s the fact that Burnett isn’t tied to draft-pick compensation after the Pirates declined to make him a qualifying offer. Couple that with how he’s a candidate for a one-year deal—he is 37 and was said to be weighing retirement, after all—and we’re looking at a signing that has virtually zero chance of hurting the Orioles in the long run.

As for the big problem Burnett would fix, well, maybe you haven’t looked at Baltimore’s projected rotation in a while. Right now, the only sure things are:

1. Chris Tillman
2. Wei-Yin Chen
3. Bud Norris
4. Miguel Gonzalez

And that’s it. The hope for the No. 5 spot is young right-hander Kevin Gausman, and the job may be his to lose given the lack of real competition.

So yeah, not good.

The lack of depth is concerning. And while there’s some decent talent in the mix, it’s really only decent. According to FanGraphs, none of the aforementioned five guys was worth more than 2.0 WAR in 2013. Steamer’s projections say that none will be worth more than 2.2 WAR in 2014.

Now we come to the point in our program where we portray Burnett as a white knight based on what he did in 2012 and 2013 and what he’s projected to do in 2014:

After a bounce-back 2012 season, Burnett was about twice as valuable as any Orioles starter in 2013. And right now, he’s projected to be considerably more valuable in 2014 than any Orioles starter.

By no means should anyone be afraid to believe it. Burnett’s been a quality innings-eater in each of the last two seasons, something you can say about none of Baltimore’s current starters. He was an elite strikeout merchant in 2013, something the Orioles didn’t have.

To this end, it’s surprisingly reasonable to anticipate Burnett keeping it going. He still has one of the game’s nastier curveballs, and Brooks Baseball can show that his velocity actually went up in 2013.

If there’s something that might give one pause, it’s the reality that signing with the Orioles would not only take Burnett out of PNC Park (an extreme pitchers’ park) and put him at Oriole Park at Camden Yards (an extreme hitters’ park), but would also return him to the AL East.

The last time Burnett was pitching in the AL East, he was compiling a 5.20 ERA and giving up 56 homers between 2010 and 2011 as a member of the Yankees. He, uh, didn’t look so good.

But here’s the thing: Burnett is not the same pitcher he was when he was wearing pinstripes. He’s changed, and for the better.

That change is mostly in how Burnett handles his business when it comes to throwing heat. According to Brooks Baseball, here’s how his balance between his four-seamer and his sinker has evolved:

Burnett’s sinker used to play second fiddle to his four-seamer. In his two years in Pittsburgh, it was the other way around.

The result was what you would expect: Burnett’s ground-ball percentage skyrocketed. After sitting below 50 percent in each of his three years in New York, Burnett’s 56.7 GB% over the last two seasons ties him with Justin Masterson for second-best among all qualified starters.

This transformation helps alleviate any concerns of Burnett becoming as homer-prone as he was the last time he was pitching in the AL East. Ground balls play well everywhere, be it OPACY, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park or Rogers Centre.

It should also be acknowledged that Burnett would not be pitching in front of, say, the 2012 or 2013 Detroit Tigers defense. The Orioles were seventh in defensive efficiency in 2013, according to Baseball Prospectus. They were second in Ultimate Zone Rating.

Not much should change in 2014. Manny Machado and J.J. Hardy will still be on the left side, forming arguably the best defensive duo in the American League. Former shortstop Jonathan Schoop should be good enough at second base. Chris Davis is nothing special at first, but he is hardly a liability.

All things considered, maybe the biggest question is whether the Orioles make as much sense for Burnett as he makes for them. But the Orioles could be in worse standing there, too, as they might be able to sell Burnett on the notion of him being their missing link. Another thing they can offer him, of course, is a chance to pitch in his own backyard. Burnett lives in the Baltimore area.

If Burnett’s willing, the Orioles should be even more willing. He’s a pitcher they don’t need to break the bank to afford, and he has both the track record and the makings to be a top-of-the-rotation arm for a rotation that needs one.

It could happen. It might happen. Heck, it should happen. It’s just too perfect.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Earlier this month, Major League Baseball took a rather massive step into the 21st Century when the players union and umpires association both agreed to expand the use of instant replay, and the vote was unanimous among all 30 clubs, too.

This is no small feat, considering how baseball typically operates slowly and in measured methods, particularly when it comes to vast, sport-altering changes like the widespread adoption of replay.

From late in the 2008 season until now, only home runs were reviewable, and simply to determine whether the ball was fair, over the fence or interfered with by a fan. Under this new system of video review, though, all sorts of plays, actions, bounces and calls will be candidates for closer inspection.

As replay committee chairman John Schuerholz told Anthony Rieber of Newsday:

It’s the first time in the history of the game where managers have an opportunity to change the call of a play that may have adversely affected their team, that may have cost them a game, that may have cost them the division, may have cost them the World Series.

Still, even with replay, it’s impossible to cover, well, every base.

Heck, the National Football League still has issues with replay on occasion, and that league has been at it for two decades. MLB, by comparison, is a replay newborn—there is going to be stuff in need of changing.

The good news is that baseball has been busy brainstorming and beta-testing the review system—the prospect-laden Arizona Fall League got to break things in last November—and has come up with a design that is ready to go for the start of the 2014 regular season.

For all of the details on who were the key decision-makers involved along the way, as well as a full list of the new ways replay is being implemented, the league has a breakdown of the specifics.

Here, though, is an outlet to raise, consider and discuss some of the potential pitfalls and can’t-yet-be-certain consequences that may arise under the the sport’s new and expanded replay system.

Game Time

Arguably the biggest criticism that comes with extra replay is the expectation that it will mean extra time.

Baseball games, the argument goes, already are long and slow enough as is, so why add opportunities to stick a fork in whatever rhythm that existed in the first place?

This isn’t just about the length of time it will take for reviews, either. There’s a good chance that players and managers will find ways to stall after a close play to allow time to check if a review is worthwhile. Penalties for stalling have been mentioned, as Jon Paul Morosi of Fox Sports wrote, but what they would be and even what exactly constitutes stalling remains a gray area.

Still, as the AFL experimentation showed, reviews can be done easily and quickly, as in under two minutes. Given that, it’s reasonable to expect that cut-and-dry video footage could get to the bottom of things—and get the call correct—faster than the typical manager-coming-out-of-the-dugout-to-argue routine that happens pretty regularly.

A Challenging Strategy

Because managers are limited to a maximum of two reviews per game through the first six innings—as long as the first challenge is correct—there will be lots of hand-wringing over when and whether to ask for a review prior to the final nine outs. (Reviews from the seventh inning on are at the umpires’ discretion.)

Should a manager risk using and losing his challenge on a questionable call in the first or second inning…or save it for the possibility of a questionable call that never comes?

As Jonathan Bernhardt wrote for Sports On Earth:

…it keeps the coach/manager at the center of attention for what really should be an internal umpiring decision, and second, it shifts the focus of replay review from its proper goal—getting the call on the field right—to some sort of strategy mini-game, where the coach/manager has to weigh the value of the call in question and his likelihood of getting his challenge upheld against any future mistakes that the officials could make in calling the game.

This application is ripe for both first- and second-guessing, where the managers do the former and everyone else does the latter. Certainly, there will be games when a skipper correctly challenges two calls and even needs a third (or fourth) review, which won’t be available under these rules.

Ultimately, though, that should be a rare occurrence, and managers will get used to the if-then that comes with this element.

The Danger Zone

Since the strike zone is now the primary area of the sport that is absolutely un-reviewable, any egregious missed calls on balls and strikes will be subject to that much more scrutiny, controversy and outrage.

With just about everything else up for replay, how long will it be before a strike-three call like this becomes a very real debate?

At this point, baseball doesn’t exactly seem all that interested in the idea of incorporating a computerized strike zone as part of the replay system, even though just about every broadcast around displays one.

Hey, the demand for robot umps calling balls and strikes just isn’t there. Yet.

Umps Show

Umpires have been under all sorts of scrutiny in recent years, as the technology has amped up and made human error all the more visible.

The good part about expanded replay is it will be that much easier to get calls correct, if not the first time then at least on the second one. That, ultimately, is what this is about—accuracy.

So what happens when a close call is reviewed and—gasp—they still get it wrong? Sorry to say, but this is bound to happen, although (hopefully) only very, very rarely. Then again, it did occur just last May.

Remember this fiasco?

When that happens again, the men in blue are going to face a lot more—and much harsher—criticism than they do already. Never mind the fact that on-field umps won’t be doing the actual reviewing themselves; that is entrusted to umpires at the official-sounding Replay Command Center in New York.

A missed call in real time on a too-close-to-tell play is one thing, but a missed second-look, slow-motion review from the replay official situated in an entirely different location from the ballpark? That’s something else entirely.

Plus, in this age of accessible information, it’s all but guaranteed that someone somewhere is going to be tracking the failings of umpires based on the number of calls overturned and making the statistics part of the public forum.

Anger Management

The final aspect of all this? Because replay challenges are at a manager’s disposal in the first place, and on-field personnel are prohibited from arguing the replay official’s ruling, there’s bound to be fewer and fewer manager-yelling-in-the-umpire’s-face outbursts.

Sure, there still will be some, but those curse-filled, manic-gesturing feuds in turn will result in the offending skipper getting suspended or fined as punishment.

On the plus side, as mentioned, that should save some time. On the downside, hey, who doesn’t enjoy an occasional blow-up?

The Bottom Line

Just because baseball is adopting expanded instant replay doesn’t mean the sport is suddenly going to get everything right—whether the initial calls on the field, the reviewed calls in the replay center or the overall process in general.

Certainly, though, there will be fewer mistakes that cannot be fixed, which is not only good but also the point of all this. Because, yes, expanded replay is improved replay, and getting the calls and the review process right is the goal.

The league should get credit for being open about the fact that this is, in fact, a learning process—one that will need to be tweaked from time to time, especially in the first year or two—as much as anything else.

In a way, then, instant replay itself will be, well, under review.

“This is a start. This is a great, giant step. It is in three phases,” Schuerholz said via Paul Hagen of MLB.com. “We’ll check on how well we did after Year 1, again after Year 2. And after Year 3, we expect to be as near to perfection as we humans can get.”

And if not, well, there’s always robot umps.

To talk baseball or fantasy baseball, check in with me on Twitter: @JayCat11

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

It’s that magical time of year where websites and prospect writers have gathered all their information to provide readers with the list of top 100 minor leaguers who will impact Major League Baseball in the near future. 

With these lists comes a lot of praise—especially for the work that goes into it—but also a lot of backlash. Fans want to see their favorite prospects appearing on a top 100 list because it provides hope and optimism. 

Everyone has their own opinions and methods for determining why a player does or doesn’t make a top 100 list.

In analyzing some of these lists, which combine scouting reports from various sources and the writer’s opinion, there are a lot of things to agree with. Minnesota Twins outfielder Byron Buxton as the No. 1 player, according to MLB.com, is a no-brainer. 

Not everything will be agreed upon, which is the point of this particular list. While staying respectful to the process and lists put forth by various writers, there are players who would have made my hypothetical top 100 list who aren’t appearing as high, or were left off, other rankings. 

So here are the 10 prospects I believe deserve more love than they are currently getting from certain major outlets. 

Note: All stats courtesy of MiLB.com unless otherwise noted. Lists used via MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus. 

Begin Slideshow

At last, the question of whether A.J. Burnett will retire or return to pitch in 2014 has been answered. Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review is reporting that, according to a source, the 37-year-old Burnett will indeed return for his 16th big league season. 

Not only did the source confirm Burnett’s desire to pitch in 2014, he suspects that the right-hander, who posted a 3.30 ERA with 3.2 BB/9 and a league-leading 9.8 K/9 in 191 innings pitched last season, will test the open market and not limit himself to a return to Pittsburgh. 

While Burnett has stated his desire to remain with the Pirates—he was quoted last offseason as saying he wouldn’t want to pitch anywhere else but Pittsburgh if he resumed his playing career after 2013—he’s much more likely to land a bigger contract elsewhere or, if anything, drive up the Pirates’ price with multiple teams bidding on his services. 

Here are five teams that could have the most interest in adding Burnett to the front of their rotation in 2014.

Begin Slideshow

The Texas Rangers have shown some interest in MLB free-agent pitcher A.J. Burnett. This being reported by Richard Durrett of ESPN Dallas on Twitter.

Pittsburgh Pirates reporter Travis Sawchik of the Tribune-Review broke the news in a January 28 article that Burnett would indeed be returning to Major League Baseball.

After keeping the Pirates and the rest of the baseball world in wait for nearly the entirety of the offseason, veteran free agent A.J. Burnett has decided to pitch in 2014, a source close to the situation told the Tribune-Review.

Burnett’s decision to return does not mean he will limit himself to pitching for the Pirates, though Burnett indicated that was his preference last season. The 37-year-old Burnett led the National League in groundball rate and strikeout rate last season showing no signs of diminishing skills. The Phillies and Orioles also have reportedly expressed interest in Burnett.

Burnett could be a good fit for the Rangers who will start the season without veteran left-handed pitcher Derek Holland. Holland suffered a knee injury while playing with his dog, per multiple sources. According to the Rangers’ depth chart via the team website, Holland was slated to be the No. 2 starter.

Burnett certainly fits the mold of a pitcher wanting success at the hitter’s friendly Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. In 2013, Burnett had a 56.5 percent ground ball rate which was first in the NL , and he struck out 209 batters which was No. 10 in the MLB.

Other teams that have interest in Burnett include the Philadelphia Phillies and Baltimore Orioles, per Sawchik on Twitter.

At 37-years old, Burnett might be a liability because of age. However, the Rangers did bring in veteran Joe Nathan two seasons ago, days before his 37th birthday. A one-year deal might be enough for Burnett to fill the roll of the No. 4 or No. 5 starter if someone like Robbie Ross or Colby Lewis doesn’t rise up during spring training. If he can replicate his stats from the previous two seasons, signing Burnett will have been a smart move by general manager Jon Daniels, if he chooses to pursue the starting pitcher.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

There are a number of dark-horse prospects who could make the New York Mets’ roster on Opening Day, and with pitchers and catchers arriving to Port St. Lucie, Fla., in the next few weeks, it’s easy to get excited about them already.

While many fans want to see star prospects, such as Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero, make the Opening Day roster, they are less likely candidates and will probably begin the season in Double-A. This list lacks potentially elite prospects such as Syndergaard, but fans should care about these players, as they will be making an impact on the major league roster sooner rather than later.

Because of the bullpen competition that will occur during spring training, most of these prospects are pitchers who are either already relievers or starters who could end up in the bullpen eventually. I have only included prospects who have yet to make their major league debut, so prospects such as Wilmer Flores, Jeurys Familia and Wilfredo Tovar are not present.

Here are five dark-horse prospects who could make the Mets’ roster out of spring training.

All statistics courtesy of Baseball Reference.

Begin Slideshow

Mankind has invented the wheel. Split the atom. Explored space. It stands to reason that, one day, a legitimately unhittable pitch shall be discovered.

Until then, well, at least there’s one pitch that’s pretty close.

This being the super-slow, please-make-it-stop portion of the offseason, allow me to tell you about a quest I went on. Its mission was simple: Find out which of the seven core pitches thrown in Major League Baseball is the most devastating.

This quest led me to Baseball Prospectus’ PITCHf/x leaderboards, which feature data compiled by Brooks Baseball. Once there, I…

• Narrowed my sights to 2010-2013 so I was looking strictly at data relevant to the current low-scoring environment.
• Set the pitch minimum to zero so I was looking at pitches thrown by the good, the bad, the mediocre and the barely used.
• Took data for all four-seam fastballs, sinkers, cutters, curveballs, sliders, changeups and splitters and copied the figures into Excel.
• Ignored screwballs and knuckleballs, because only a few pitchers throw those two pitches and there aren’t enough of them to form a big enough sample size.

Now, before we go any further, two things must be acknowledged.

1. Pitch classifications are tricky. Some four-seamers look like cutters. Some curveballs look like sliders. Some changeups look like splitters. Some changeups are splitters (spoiler: keep this in mind).
2. It looks like the BP leaderboards don’t feature as many pitches as they should. If there’s an explanation for that, I don’t know what it is.

As such, it’s fair for the data I ended up with to be characterized as less than 100 percent conclusive. But seeing as how it was still data from two very reliable resources, and there was a lot of it, I’d put its conclusiveness somewhere in the 90-percent range. Good enough.

It’s on that note that, finally, I present to you this big board full of numbers, arranged by lowest batting average against for the sake of having a clear starting point:

Note: The figures for Swing Rate, Whiff/Swing and GB/FB represent the average of all the individual rates. Not exactly a scientific method but one that works well enough given the largeness of the sample sizes.

About what you’d expect, right? The three fastballs and changeups have their uses, but the really eye-popping numbers belong to sliders, splitters and curveballs. Some of that is due to them typically being two-strike pitches, but these are also the pitches that have the deadliest movement. They would show as the hardest to hit in a study like this one. Duh.

But you’ll notice I highlighted splitters. Look at the numbers for those and you’ll see that over the last four seasons, they’ve been:

• Extremely hard to lay off.
• Almost as hard to make contact with as sliders.
• Almost as hard to hit in the air as sinkers.
• Just as hard to hit, in general, as curveballs.

The only thing better than a swing-and-miss pitch is a swing-and-miss pitch batters can’t lay off, and the only thing better than one of those is one that hitters can’t elevate when they do make contact.

Sounds like the ultimate pitch to me, and the splitter is the pitch that matches that description the best.

If you’re looking for an excuse to nitpick, I’ll give you one: Included in the splitter data are split-changeups. Tim Lincecum throws one. So does Alex Cobb. And Danny Salazar. If you’re so inclined, maybe you’d label hybrid pitches like they’re changeups before you’d label them splitters.

But me? I’m not inclined to do that. Split-changes act more like splitters than changeups. They tend to not only have more velocity, but also that sharp, late and lethal downward action that fools hitters. Just like with regular splitters, the idea with split-changes is to trick the hitter into thinking he’s getting a fastball until—Trololol!—he’s not.

If you watch enough baseball, you’re probably familiar with this concept. If you don’t, well, perhaps you require an illustration.

That can be arranged.

Because he’s saved, according to FanGraphs, more runs above average with his splitter than any other qualified pitcher in our 2010-2013 window, we’re going to use Mariners right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma as an example. He has a darn good splitter, and he knows how to use it.

[Side note: Because it must be said, yes, Koji Uehara would have made for an outstanding example as well. Isn’t that right, Matt Carpenter?]

Consider how Iwakuma used his split at the 0:19 mark of this video, which shows him striking out Chris Herrmann in the third inning of a July 25 game against the Twins:

The sheer movement of that splitter was a work of art. But just as important to the total work of art Iwakuma performed with it is the pitch that came before it.

Per Brooks Baseball, the splitter Herrmann whiffed on was the fifth pitch of the at-bat. The fourth pitch was a four-seamer down the middle that Herrmann fouled off. While I don’t have video of that pitch, I was able to pluck a couple of stills from the Root Sports telecast using MLB.TV.

Here’s a side-by-side view that shows the location of Iwakuma’s fourth-pitch heater when Herrmann was geared up to swing next to where it was as it was entering the hitting zone:

When he had his front toe down, Herrmann was looking at a fastball that was headed middle-in. Since that’s where it ended up, here’s thinking Herrmann wasn’t pleased about missing it.

A few moments later, the fifth pitch of the at-bat came Herrmann’s way. This is a side-by-side comparison of where it was when he readied himself to swing in relation to the previous pitch:

Herrmann was looking at a pitch that wasn’t ticketed for the exact same spot as the previous pitch, but it was pretty close. If anything, the fifth pitch must have looked like a better pitch to hit given that it was headed a little more low and inside. For lefty hitters, that’s the happy-fun-times zone.

Of course, we know what happened. It turned out the fifth pitch was a splitter. It did what splitters do, diving down toward the ground and safely out of the way of Herrmann’s bat.

Now, you can go back to that Brooks Baseball link and see from the fifth pitch’s ultimate location that it ended up over the plate in the same general area as the previous pitch, except a lot lower. Or you could just look at this:

That green dot is where the fourth-pitch fastball was as it was entering the hitting zone. That red dot is where the fifth-pitch splitter was when Herrmann swung and missed.

That’s the entire concept of the splitter in a nutshell. Its deception act is a simple one: Look like a fastball for a little while, and then drop off the table. If a pitcher has a good splitter, all he needs to make it work is solid fastball command and an elementary understanding of sequencing.

Simple as that. But by now, maybe you’re more focused on the obvious question:

If splitters are so great, why aren’t there more of them?

That question is one the Associated Press was asking in 2011, with the big reveal being that the splitter had developed a bad reputation. Thanks in part to injuries suffered by notable splitter merchants like Bryan Harvey, Rod Beck and John Smoltz, the splitter came to be known as a dangerous pitch.

“You can just take your fingers and the more you put them apart, the more you put stress on the elbow,” said Minnesota Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson, referring to the splitter’s unique grip. “It’s a pitch we really try to shy off of.”

Said Angels manager Mike Scioscia: “I think there is a correlation between some stresses put on the arms—some guys have had elbow problems, forearm problems, shoulder problems—and that pitch.”

At the time, the Twins and Angels weren’t the only clubs that had it out for the splitter. The Giants, Reds, Padres and Rays were also cited as teams that discouraged their young pitchers from throwing splitters.

Whether there’s any truth to the idea that splitters put pitchers at greater risk of injury, however, is up for debate.

In a 2008 interview with Baseball Prospectus, pitching expert Doug Thorburn said, “I haven’t come across any research that found a convincing link between a split-finger fastball and a specific arm injury, and I would put this in the category of unproven conventional wisdom.”

That tends to be the case when it comes to theories about this or that leading to pitcher injuries. And in this case, what it means is that one of the reasons why clubs discourage splitters might be bogus.

Another reason, meanwhile, fairly boggles the mind.

Here’s how Rays manager Joe Maddon put it: “It’s not just about them getting hurt. They’ll never develop their other pitches because they’ll always get guys out with that pitch.”

Think about that second sentence for a moment. For that matter, go ahead and translate it.

It’s not just that splitters are good. It’s that they’re too good.

The eye test supports the notion. So do the numbers. And since it hasn’t actually been proved that the splitter is a dangerous pitch, well, maybe it’s time it made a comeback.

Unless, of course, mankind gets to that ultimate unhittable pitch first.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball Prospectus and Brooks Baseball unless otherwise noted/linked.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

When the Phillies and Yankees arrive for full-squad workouts in Clearwater and Tampa, Fla., respectively, a fountain of youth will be as necessary as cleats, gloves and bats.

Heading into the 2014 season, both the Phillies and Yankees are really, really old. The 2009 World Series combatants are five years removed from a date in late October, but it feels like an eternity since the two heavy-spending franchises had prime-aged stars to deliver postseason success.

In reality, both teams should be concerned with age, injuries and ineffectiveness in 2014. Yet, of the two, the Phillies’ issues and risks stands out.

According to MLB Depth Charts’ projected rosters, Philadelphia is poised to field an everyday lineup with an average age of 31.1. In New York, that number is 33.5. Those numbers, taken on the surface, give an edge to Philadelphia and place an aura of youth around one of these two aging teams. Yet, as we’ll get to below, the numbers can be deceiving. 

The respective starting rotations both skew over age 30 for an average number, but this time, Philadelphia projects as the more grizzled group. In fact, if the Yankees award their fifth-starter role to 25-year-old Michael Pineda, a former top rookie with the Seattle Mariners, the group would project to an average age of 29.6.

While that’s far from young, it represents progress for an aging team.

Before spending the rest of this column underscoring why the Phillies are in so much trouble in 2014, let’s acknowledge the issues in New York.

After spending over $500 million on talent this winter, the Yankees aren’t a finished product, the best team in their own division or a lock for the postseason. If that isn’t eye-opening enough, consider this: Despite losing both 44-year-old Mariano Rivera and 41-year-old Andy Pettitte to retirement, the Yankees head into 2014 as an older baseball team.

As Joel Sherman of the New York Post pointed out, not one member of New York’s starting lineup will be under age 30 when the season begins.

In a division that includes the defending champion Red Sox, the young, smart, evolving Rays, talent-rich Orioles and bounce-back candidate in the Blue Jays, the recipe for disappointment is prevalent in the Bronx.

The Yankees have issues, but the Phillies are in crisis mode. 

Here’s why: New York, despite its age, restocked the franchise with prime-age stars, hoping their star-level can elevate the rest of an over-the-hill roster. 

By acquiring Jacoby Ellsbury (30), Brian McCann (29) and Masahiro Tanaka (25), the Yankees committed roughly $60.1 million, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts, to three potential All-Stars in 2014. Those players, unlike supplementary pieces added in Philadelphia, are expected to carry older Yankees through transition years.

If Derek Jeter stumbles in his age-40 season or Mark Teixeira can’t rebound from wrist surgery in his mid-30s, the new Yankees are in tow to pick up the slack. 

Yes, the Phillies can boast three projected starters—Cody Asche, Domonic Brown and Ben Revere—under age 30, something the Yankees can only dream of with the roster construction. As Jerry Crasnick of ESPN put it, Asche, Brown and Revere are the only three Phillies starters born after the 1970s. 

Outside of Brown’s All-Star appearance serving as the potential for bigger things in 2014, the Phillies are still relying on a core that has seen its time come and go.

The following chart illustrates the problem in Philadelphia. A franchise once built upon a relentless, bludgeoning offensive attack has been rendered meek. 

Instead of retooling with new, late-20s or early-30s stars to refuel the attack, Philadelphia has added age and banked on returns to health from aging former stars like Ryan Howard. 

Marlon Byrd, one of general manager Ruben Amaro’s major moves this winter, will be a 36-year-old outfielder in 2014. For most teams, handing a player like that a multiyear deal would be foolhardy. For the Phillies, it was a priority. 

Showing how seamlessly he’ll fit into the culture at Citizens Bank Park, Byrd spoke about the misconception around age with Jim Salisbury of CSN Philly.

“All of us do. You keep hearing old, old, old … we’re not an old team,” Byrd said. “We can still play. Once you can’t play, then you’re old. We still have a lot in the tank, we just to have to show that and stay healthy.”

Judging by the chart above, Byrd’s assertion is wrong. While he had an excellent bounce-back season last year at age 35, the core of the Phillies still can’t play. Or, at the very least, can’t play at the level it once did. 

Of course, not all of Philadelphia’s successful teams led the league in OPS. In 2011, the franchise won 102 games on the strength of pitching and a mediocre offensive attack. Led by Cliff Lee (35) and Cole Hamels (30), the front of the rotation is still outstanding, but the back—Kyle Kendrick, Miguel Gonzalez, Roberto Hernandez—leaves something to be desired.

According to Ryan Lawrence of the Philadelphia Daily News, the Phillies rotation pitched to a 5.31 ERA in 66 games after the All-Star break last summer. 

In order for an above-average staff to emerge, Lee and Hamels will have to pitch like they are each in their 20s. During a primer on the Phillies’ season for CSN, Jim Salisbury raised the following point, likely sending chills down the spine of Phillies fans: 

“Want to feel old? Hamels turned 30 last month. And though he’s still younger than many of his teammates, he knows his baseball clock is ticking.”

If Hamels’ clock is ticking, the franchise is running out of time to compete. 

When Jesse Spector of Sporting News made his picks for 2014, he picked the Phillies to finish dead last in the NL East. That sentiment, while extreme, could be echoed by other voices that cover the sport on a national level.

In New York, despite the aforementioned issues, expect more postseason predictions than last-place proclamations from the media.

While it wouldn’t be a shock to see both New York and Philadelphia on the outside of the postseason picture, the more dire situation is emerging within the Phillies organization. The team is old, added players with little left in the tank and could be worse than the 73-win outfit of last season.

It’s too early to raise the white flag, but dark clouds are hanging over a Phillies team that still believes it can compete.

Agree? Disagree?

Comment, follow me on Twitter or “like” my Facebook page to talk all things baseball. 

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According to William Weinbaum of “Outside the Lines” on ESPN.com, Major League Baseball approved pitchers of all 30 teams to use new pad-protected caps on Tuesday morning.

This approval comes on the heels of five separate incidents of pitchers being hit in the head with a baseball between September of 2012 and June of 2013.

One of the most serious incidents came on September 5, 2012. Brandon McCarthy, a former Texas Rangers pitcher then with the Oakland A’s, was hit in the head by a line drive off the bat of shortstop Erick Aybar of the Los Angeles Angels.

McCarthy sustained a life-threatening brain contusion, an epidural hemorrhage and a skull fracture. He missed the rest of the 2012 season after undergoing major brain surgery. 

According to Weinbaum, the new caps are being manufactured by 4Licensing Company subsidiary isoBlox. The caps will be available to the players by the start of spring training in February. Their use is optional.

Weinbaum says that currently there is no rule regulating what type of protection pitchers can wear. As long as whatever they are wearing doesn’t directly interfere with play, it is acceptable. 

Weinbaum also reported that the new caps are more than a half of an inch thicker in the front and an inch thicker on the sides of the cap. They are manufactured to protect line drive speeds of up to 90 mph on front impact, and up to 85 mph impact on the side of the head. The thick padding in the cap’s interior is designed to absorb and disperse the force of an impact.

Dan Halem, MLB executive vice president for labor relations, told “Outside the Lines” that he is satisfied with the league’s new product.

We’re excited to have a product that meets our safety criteria. MLB is committed to working with manufacturers to develop products that offer maximum protection to our players, and we’re not stopping at all.

The MLB was looking for a product that guaranteed protection against the average off-the-bat line drive speed of 83 mph, Weinbaum reports. 

4Licensing Chief Executive Officer Bruce Foster is confident in the caps’ revolutionary ability to protect pitchers’ heads. Additionally, the caps aren’t expected to tamper with a pitcher’s natural throwing motion. How comfortable they may or may not be remains to be seen.

Looks are important to many major league players, but protection is the main priority here.

“What we’ve given [pitchers] is a product with protection they’ve never had before,” Foster said. “It changes the game for them.”

Despite excitement around the league’s offices, it will take time for major league pitchers to catch on to the new caps, according to Dave Schoenfield of SweetSpot Blog. Schoenfield says that while the recent head injuries have been serious, they aren’t nearly the widespread concern they are in a sport like football. 

He calls the development of the new caps a “no-harm, no-foul” situation. Pitchers will likely try out the new caps in spring training, and if they are comfortable with them they might stick with them. But if they aren’t, they’ll continue using the normal caps knowing that head injuries are very rare in the game.

For players then, the new caps could be a question of comfort and style versus safety.

This will be an incredibly interesting development to keep an eye on during spring training. Even though injuries happen in baseball just like in every sport, I’m all about maximizing player safety.

Safety is always a two-way street in baseball. It’s not just pitchers that are at risk here.

At the end of the day, the fact is that a batter never knows when a 102 mph fastball from Aroldis Chapman is going to rise just a bit too far high and in. Pitchers in this league are by and large phenomenally under control. They are professionals and that is why accidents rarely happen. 

Or you could have a situation similar to what happened in 2006, when Vladimir Guerrero smoked a line drive clocked at between 107 and 108 mph that nailed reliever Rafael Soriano in the temple. The speed was calculated and analyzed by Greg Rybarczyk, the creator of ESPN’s Home Run Tracker, reported Weinbaum.

Weinbaum also noted that pitchers have about one third of a second to dodge a screaming line drive 60′ 6″ away from home plate. Most guys have a natural fall off to either side of the mound in their delivery, which help them to avoid a blow.

But a pitcher’s delivery will generally move him between five to seven feet closer to home plate, giving him even less time to react, as former San Diego Padres and Rangers pitcher Chris Young describes in this video.  

As rare as they might seem, five incidents over an eight-month period is somewhat alarming. Something needs to be done to better protect pitchers especially, who are closer to a line-drive impact than any player on the field. 

I’d like to see all the Rangers starters wearing these new protective caps at some point in 2014. After all, the debilitating shoulder, elbow and back surgeries among Rangers pitchers over the last season and a half, the last thing Rangers fans want to see is another freak accident involving one of Texas’ key players. 

Again, it’s rare, but as they say in baseball “anything can happen.” That is one of the beauties of the game after all.

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One of the great dangers Major League Baseball teams face when bidding on a player in free agency is what I like to call “The Contract-Year Star.”

It takes talent to succeed at the highest level of baseball, sure, but sometimes a player will put in more focus and attention when he knows that a big contract is waiting on the open market. Teams are then forced to decide how much of this increased production is going to stick. 

There is no greater test case for this theory than right-handed pitcher Ervin Santana. The 31-year-old reignited his career with the Kansas City Royals in 2013.

Take a look at the numbers he put up last season and how they compare to the rest of his career. 

The fact that we can even talk about Santana getting a multi-year deal is a small miracle. He was cast off by the Los Angeles Angels—who desperately needed starting pitching in 2013—last winter and traded to the Royals for minor league reliever Brandon Sisk. 

Santana has evolved as a pitcher, especially last year, which would seem to help increase his value on the open market. Take a look at the way he used his sinker in 2013, compared to how it was used in the past. 

It comes as no surprise that Santana’s increased use of the sinker led to a steep drop in his home run rate from 2012 (2.0 to 1.1). He was also the beneficiary of luck in 2013, setting a career high with a 76.9 percent strand rate that was 4.3 percent better than his career average. 

Santana went from playing primarily in Los Angeles’ pitcher-friendly environment—which made the 39 homers he gave up in 2012 all the more alarming—to a better hitting park in Kansas City. He’s always given up a lot of home runs (at least 26 every season since 2010) but his 2013 total (26) is something to be happy about given the change in parks. 

These numbers paint a good story, but since we want to look at what teams will and should pay for, it is also important to compare Santana’s long- and short-term performances to that of other pitchers. 

As luck would have it, Santana compares favorably to two pitchers who also hit free agency after the 2013 season: Ricky Nolasco and Ubaldo Jimenez.

Nolasco has already found a home, signing a four-year, $48 million deal with Minnesota. 

If you like to use WAR, as I do, it should also be noted that Santana (19.6) and Nolasco (20.0) have basically provided the same WAR totals in their careers, even though Santana debuted in Los Angeles one year before Nolasco debuted in Florida. They were born one day apart in 1982. 

By these standards, Santana should be looking at a deal close to what Nolasco got from the Twins. That’s a far cry from the $100 million he was reportedly looking to get when free agency started. 

Going back a little further, since one-year sample sizes tend to be problematic when evaluating a free agent, Santana fares much worse. Take a look at this blind resume of two pitchers from 2010-13. 

Player B is Santana. His numbers took a beating in 2012, posting a negative Fangraphs‘ WAR total, 5.16 ERA and 1.97 homers per nine innings. Even working around that season, however, it hasn’t been lights out for the right-hander. 

Player A was Santana’s teammate, Jeremy Guthrie, last season. The 34-year-old also pitched more than 200 innings with a respectable 4.04 ERA in 2013, despite giving up a league-leading 236 hits and pedestrian 111-59 strikeout-to-walk ratio. 

Over the last four years, Santana and Guthrie have been worth roughly the same amount of value. Even though Santana will be superior to Guthrie moving forward, it is alarming how close the two have been recently. 

As Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors noted in his free-agent profile on Santana, another problem that limits his upside is lack of strikeouts. 

For a player who is positioned as one of the top pitchers on the free agent market, Santana doesn’t strike hitters out at an elite rate. His 6.9 K/9 in 2013 was below the league average of 7.2 for starting pitchers, and he hasn’t averaged more than 7.0 punchouts per nine innings since 2008. 

There are three things a pitcher has direct control over: home runs, strikeouts and walks.

Santana has always been an excellent strike thrower, averaging 2.8 walks per nine innings throughout his career. 

It’s the other two areas where Santana is lacking. He hasn’t averaged more than seven strikeouts per nine innings since 2008, meaning any team that signs him will need to have a great defense behind Santana to get the most bang for their buck. 

At his best, Santana is a very good mid-rotation starter who will eat a lot of innings and, occasionally, provide league-average or better ERA totals. When you factor in the draft compensation attached, it’s no wonder why his market has been slow to develop. 

Note: All stats courtesy of Fangraphs and Baseball Reference unless otherwise noted. Video via MLB Advanced Media.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

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