Major league teams spend months and months of intense evaluation and planning for spring training and the season ahead -- from the end of August to the middle of February, holding staff meetings to assess internal talent and acquisitions.
And, for some teams, those long-standing blueprints can be moved into the junk file, because some players and club elements are worse than expected (speaking of the Atlanta Braves bullpen and the Boston Red Sox rotation), and some players are better than expected.
Any analysis of Wade Miley two years ago would've revealed a player dangling off the final ledge of his career, but because of a mechanical change and a much greater reliance on his cutter, he has completely altered the trajectory of what might be considered possible for him.
The same could be said for the players below, a month into the 2019 season:
Javier Baez, Chicago Cubs: His game in the early part of his career has been well-defined, with big swings, big power, big plays. But the 2019 version of Baez is something previously unseen, because the Chicago infielder is taking the ball to the opposite field in a way his past hitting coaches wouldn't have ever imagined.
Baez is batting .315 this season, with nine homers in 26 games and a .640 slugging percentage, so he's doing plenty of damage. But the right-handed hitter is hitting the ball to right field at almost twice the rate of previous seasons -- and his current opposite-field rate of 37.5 percent is the highest in the National League. Extraordinary athletes can effect extraordinary change, and this is what Baez has done. His year-to-year percentage in hitting the ball to the opposite field:
2016: 19.9 percent
2017: 21.9 percent
2018: 26.1 percent
2019: 37.5 percent
Baez continues to swing at a high rate of pitches out of the strike zone, and he's amassing his usual share of strikeouts. But when he puts the ball in play, Baez is using a lot more of the field, which should help him over the course of the summer.
Frankie Montas, Oakland Athletics: For years, teams have coveted his arm and his power stuff, and have waited through many injuries for his talent to emerge. To quote a great line from a great movie: It's all happening.
In five starts for the A's this season, the 26-year-old Montas has generated the fourth-highest rate of soft contact in the big leagues, at 9.6 percent, and his ground ball/fly ball rate of 2.40 is the best in the majors.
Additionally, he has 26 strikeouts in 29 innings, which means the vast majority of the time, the hitters of Generation Launch Angle are either putting the ball on the ground or they're striking out. Montas generally throws strikes as well, so he's not beating himself with walks.
As always, the A's need to pick the right guys to emerge because of their wallet-thin payroll margin, and Montas looks like he's prepared to go next level.
Christian Walker, Arizona Diamondbacks: Prior to 2019, the first baseman had been a perennial understudy, playing behind Chris Davis in Baltimore and then Paul Goldschmidt in Arizona. He's finally getting his chance this season, in what appears to be a career-altering breakout.
Walker has an OPS of more than 1.000, but that's merely a symptom of what's going on -- he has a hard-hit rate of 68.7 percent, the highest in the majors. Walker's rate of ground balls is actually up, and he has a .400 batting average on balls in play, which suggests a regression. But Walker also has improved his plate discipline -- something that is probably improving with experience -- and his rate of swings-and-misses.
The Diamondbacks are one of the surprise teams in baseball so far this season, and Walker, thriving in his first real shot on center stage, is a big reason for that.
Jorge Polanco, Minnesota Twins: Most hitters work to get the ball in the air these days, but Polanco is succeeding more than most of his peers. (Granted, the Orioles pitching staff might have something to do with this, because Polanco and the rest of the Minnesota hitters already have pocketed six games against Baltimore this season.)
Polanco's ground ball/fly ball rate is an astounding 0.39, markedly lower than the 0.89 he posted in 2017 and his 0.94 last year. Only five hitters in baseball have generated a higher percentage of fly balls than Polanco, which suggests he is going to keep putting the ball in the air and continue doing a whole lot of damage; he's hitting .337 with 15 extra-base hits in 24 games.
The numbers bode well for the Twins as a whole. In Minnesota's excellent 16-9 start to the season, they have the highest rate of fly balls in the big leagues; not surprising, considering their acquisitions of Nelson Cruz, C.J. Cron, et al., during the winter.