Of the approximately 150 pitchers to begin this season in the starting rotation of a big league team — we say “approximately” because some teams have taken advantage of early off-days to avoid using a fifth starter — 45 are left-handed. That’s just below 30 percent of expected starts going to southpaws, which aligns nicely with the actual percentage of plate appearances that came against all lefty pitching last season (29.8 percent).

That’s a sizable amount of plate appearances to account for, and so clubs must construct their rosters with the ensuing platoon splits in mind. But not all lefty starting pitching is created equally, and here we’re talking about much more than just the obvious differences between Clayton Kershaw and Jeff Francis. Whether by design or by circumstance, left-handed starting pitching is no way dispersed equally throughout the big leagues — some teams have to deal with up to four times as many southpaw starters in their divisions than others.

By mapping the lefty starters in each division against offensive tendencies, we can identify contenders who are most hurt and helped by the uneven distribution of southpaws.

Hurt: New York Yankees

On Opening Day in the Bronx, the Yankees faced lefty starter Jon Lester and his Boston Red Sox. As one might expect, Yankee manager Joe Girardi attempted to respond by loading his lineup with as many right-handed bats as he could against the Boston southpaw.

Last year, when the club had the fourth-best wRC+ in baseball against lefty pitching, that lineup would have included Derek Jeter, Russell Martin, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, and Nick Swisher.

But this season, limited by various injuries and a tight offseason budget, the best Girardi was able to come up with was a group that included bench players and castoffs like Ben Francisco, Jayson Nix, Eduardo Nunez, and Vernon Wells. The quartet combined for just two walks in 12 plate appearances; the Yankees ended up falling to their rivals by a score of 8-2.

It’s fair to note that the litany of problems facing the Yankees this season stand to give them trouble against pitchers of all shapes and sizes, but the rag-tag lineup underscored a larger concern — the club looks to have an extremely serious problem hitting southpaws in 2013. Of the 10 Yankees on the current active roster who had at least 50 plate appearances against left-handed pitching in 2012, only Travis Hafner, Nunez and Kevin Youkilis managed even a league-average wRC+ against southpaws. Hafner is unlikely to see much time against lefties, so that leaves New York with a large portion of their lineup that will struggle to hit southpaws — yes, even Robinson Cano, who had only a 78 wRC+ against his fellow lefties.

That’s a big problem in a division where every team except Baltimore has at least two lefty starters, including defending Cy Young Award winner David Price and up-and-coming star Matt Moore in Tampa Bay. While the Red Sox added lefty-killers Mike Napoli and Shane Victorino this winter and the Toronto Blue Jays can still rely on Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion, the Yankees can best hope to tread water while hoping their injured right-handed stars return sooner than later.

Hurt: Los Angeles Dodgers

If you don’t like lefty pitching, then the NL West is a tough place to be. Each team here starts the season with two lefties in its rotation, which means that every club has to prepare to see eight lefty starters within the division — tied with the Baltimore Orioles, Miami Marlins, and New York Mets for the most in baseball.

The Dodgers may luck out in that they don’t have to face their own ace lefty (Clayton Kershaw), but it’s a bigger problem for them than their rivals because the club has serious problems against lefties. They finished tied for 24th in wRC+ against southpaws in 2012, and the 2013 roster isn’t exactly built to improve upon that. The most notable addition to the lineup this year is Carl Crawford, who brings just an 83 wRC+ against lefties over his career, and the inability — or unwillingness — to find a suitable platoon partner for Andre Ethier (76 wRC+) has plagued the team for years.

While a full season of Adrian Gonzalez (career 115 wRC+ against lefties) rather than James Loney (77 wRC+) at first base will ameliorate that somewhat, the loss of Hanley Ramirez (135 wRC+) to injury for most of the next two months is going to further inhibit the club against southpaws. More than anything, the team needs Matt Kemp to prove he’s fully recovered from offseason shoulder surgery to destroy lefty pitching as he did in 2011.

He’s been unable to do that in the early going, and if not, the team could be in for more than a few games like the one they suffered through on Tuesday, when Madison Bumgarner dominated them over eight shutout innings.

Helped: Cincinnati Reds

There are only five lefty starters in the NL Central, and the Reds and Milwaukee Brewers are both actually going with all-righty groups after Aroldis Chapman and Chris Narveson ended up in the bullpen. What’s more, since three of those five are Jeff Locke, Jonathan Sanchez, and Travis Wood, it’s not exactly as though the lack of quantity is being made up for with high quality.

The lack of tough southpaw starters in the division benefits the Reds, who traded lefty-killer Drew Stubbs over the winter and just lost Ryan Ludwick (coming off a very good 149 wRC+ against lefties last season) for the next three months after dislocating his shoulder. That doesn’t mean they’ll be totally punchless against the lefties they do see, because Joey Votto hits absolutely everyone and Todd Frazier showed success against southpaws last year, but this is now a team that’s well-equipped to handle righty pitching.

That’s a tendency which is shown in the splits, because Votto (192 wRC+ in 2012 against righties, as opposed to 145 wRC+ against lefties), Jay Bruce (128/99), Shin-Soo Choo (160/78), Jack Hannahan (100/78) and Brandon Phillips (102/96) all hit better against righty pitching than lefties last season. That’s the heart of the Cincinnati order, and Chris Heisey, expected to fill the Ludwick void, has had better success over his career against righty pitching as well.

This is a good Reds team that should be able to hit no matter who is on the mound, but this can give them a slight edge in a division they were already favored by many to win.

Helped: Kansas City Royals

The only place with fewer lefty starters than the NL Central is the AL Central, which started the year with only two southpaw starters once Scott Kazmir landed on the disabled list. While Chris Sale is a quality pitcher, Jose Quintana still has much to prove.

That’s good news for the Royals, who beat out only the Cleveland Indians and non-contenders Chicago Cubs, Houston Astros, and Marlins in wRC+ against lefties in 2012. Ned Yost’s club had 14 different hitters gather at least 50 plate appearances against southpaw pitching last season, and a mere three — Billy Butler, Lorenzo Cain, and Salvador Perez — managed to be league-average.

That leaves an awfully large amount of plate appearances against southpaws that generally ended poorly, whether it was the 201 times up for Eric Hosmer (a horrendous 63 wRC+), 179 to Jeff Francoeur (79), and even 254 to Alex Gordon (84). There’s some hope here because Perez is now healthy and expected to see more playing time, and Francoeur traditionally has been better against lefties, but the Royals made few changes on the offensive side of the ball, importing only Elliot Johnson and his 67 wRC+ against lefties in 101 plate appearances.

For a team desperately trying to break a losing skid that’s measured in decades, every little advantage can help, and this works in Kansas City’s favor.

Commissioner Bud Selig is fond of saying that under his watch, revenue sharing and the addition of two wild cards have allowed more teams than ever to begin the season with at least some hope of reaching the postseason. Perhaps that’s true, but realistically it doesn’t apply to everyone. In five of the six divisions, there’s at least one team with almost no chance for glory in 2013.

Even if there’s little likelihood of success between the lines, these teams can — must, really — identify ways to make 2013 a successful season, rather than just marking time as endless games go by. These teams can learn more about what they have, what they don’t and what they need to do to get back into contention.

For these clubs, success this season will be defined in ways other than victories.

Miami Marlins

Attempt to win back some sort of public goodwill by proving that the latest fire sale brought back the core of the next good Marlins team.

The Marlins were rightfully flogged after the deals that shipped out Emilio Bonifacio, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and Anibal Sanchez, raising the white flag after just a single season in their new publicly-funded park. That series of moves has shrunk the Opening Day payroll from just more than $100 million in 2012 to about a third of that this season, leaving them with only Giancarlo Stanton and what’s likely to be a whole lot of empty seats.

Miami fans might feel betrayed by the moves, but the Marlins can help redeem themselves this season by showing that the deals made sense from a baseball perspective, not just a financial one. Catcher Rob Brantly (.290/.372/.460 in 113 plate appearances after coming from Detroit), pitchers Henderson Alvarez and Nathan Eovaldi (4.13 FIP in 22 starts between Los Angeles and Miami) and slick-fielding rookie shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria all arrived in the deals and will start the season with the Marlins. They’ll soon be joined by fellow trade acquisitions in outfielder Jake Marisnick and pitchers Justin Nicolino and Jacob Turner, plus two top prospects the team already had — pitcher Jose Fernandez and outfielder Christian Yelich.

It won’t be easy for the Marlins to swing the tide of public opinion back their way, but it’s important to remember this is a team that lost 93 games last season and 90 in 2011. For this to be a successful season in Miami, the Marlins can win a similar amount of games for a fraction of the cost and with a much brighter future.

Colorado Rockies

Sort out their organizational direction.

It’s one thing to say that the Rockies should just fix their lousy pitching staff, because that’s been an ongoing concern almost since the day they were born in 1993. This edition of the club has a larger concern to deal with — they’ve increasingly become one of the more oddly-run organizations in baseball.

In a five-month span last season, the Rockies ran through one of the more confounding stretches we’ve seen in years. In June, they announced plans to go to a four-man rotation and limit starters to 75 pitches per outing. While that represented admirable outside-the-box thinking, the timing of the midseason implementation was awkward, and players never seemed to buy into it. In August, the club raised the eyebrows of many by promoting assistant general manager Bill Geivett to perform the duties of a general manager without actually stripping incumbent Dan O’Dowd of the title. Geivett took that one step further, locating his desk within the clubhouse — a move nearly unheard of in the sport.

By September, they announced the four-man rotation idea would be scrapped for 2013. That was followed by a managerial shakeup in October, as Jim Tracy decided he’d had enough and quit. After a search that included an active player, Jason Giambi, they settled upon former shortstop Walt Weiss, who was previously coaching high school baseball.

The Rockies have plenty of problems on the field and are expected to finish last in 2013. The best thing they can do to change that for the future is to figure out their organizational philosophy and return the focus to building a winning team.

Seattle Mariners

Figure out if they already have the offensive core of the future, or if they need to find one.

Seattle lost 87 games last season and spent the winter applying patches to the offense, importing short-term fixes like Kendrys Morales and Michael Morse. There’s plenty of pitching talent on the way, with pitchers Danny Hultzen, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker all likely to be ready within the year to join the newly-extended Felix Hernandez, but the Mariners need to understand if they have the pieces to upgrade that league-worst offense for years to come.

The team thought it might have done that already with youngsters second baseman Dustin Ackley, catcher Jesus Montero and first baseman Justin Smoak, but all three flopped last season, with Montero’s lowly .298 OBP representing the trio’s best mark.

There’s still hope here, because youth is on their side — none are older than 26 — and Smoak put up a red-hot September after switching to a lighter bat. This is probably his last chance to prove himself with Seattle, however, and the Mariners need to find out if Ackley and Montero are for real, as well.

New York Mets

Get the growing pains of their “big three” prospects out of the way in a low-expectation year.

After four straight losing seasons, the Mets head into 2013 with more problems than ever. R.A. Dickey is gone, Johan Santana might be finished and the team arguably doesn’t have a single big league quality outfielder. That’s going to make for a tough season against the powerhouses of the NL East, but Mets fans have a lot to look forward to thanks to a trio of ready-now young talent.

Matt Harvey made his debut last season and sparkled in 10 late-season starts, striking out 70 in 59 1/3; innings. He’ll be joined later in the season by fellow starter Zack Wheeler, one year younger but even more highly-regarded, and also by catcher Travis d’Arnaud, the main prize of the Dickey deal. All three should see considerable time in the big leagues this season. While that won’t be enough to allow the Mets to contend this year, there’s nothing better they can do than to get the trio fully acclimated to New York while the pressure is at its lowest.

Put another way: The Mets head into this season with Jeremy Hefner in the rotation and John Buck behind the plate. If the team does nothing else but replace them by beginning the careers of the core of the next good New York club, it’ll be a worthwhile endeavor.

San Diego Padres

Settle Chase Headley’s future, one way or another.

Headley broke out in a huge way in 2012, finishing fifth in the National League Most Valuable Player ballot thanks to 31 home runs and 115 RBIs, along with solid defense. He’s set to earn $8.5 million this season and has one remaining season of arbitration beyond that before hitting free agency after 2014.

Unsurprisingly, that combination has had trade rumors swirling around Headley since last summer, especially considering how thin third base is and that large market teams like the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees both need help at the position. The longer the Padres hold on to him, the lower his trade value becomes — especially if his 2012 was a mirage, considering he hit just four homers the season before — so it’s important to their long-term success that they end the questions and sign him or move him.

If there’s any kind of silver lining to the broken thumb that will sideline Headley for the first few weeks of the season, it’s that the Padres will get plenty of time to look at 24-year-old prospect Jedd Gyorko. Gyorko is a career .319/.385/.529 hitter in the minors with 55 homers over the past two seasons, but he’s been blocked at third base by Headley. With Headley and backup Logan Forsythe both injured, Gyorko is expected to see time both at second base and third base in San Diego this year; his performance will go a long way towards informing the Padres if Headley is expendable or not.

Minnesota Twins

Fully commit to a ground-up rebuild.

The Twins have lost 195 games over the past two seasons, in large part because no team in baseball had a worse FIP than Minnesota did in 2012 — no, not even the Rockies. Their last-place outlook doesn’t seem likely to change in 2013, and giving $14 million to Kevin Correia and Mike Pelfrey seemed like a large sum of money for an incremental improvement when similar placeholder types could have been found for a fraction of that.

The process of turning this team over began when outfielders Ben Revere and Denard Span were traded for pitching prospects Trevor May and Alex Meyer, along with back-end starter Vance Worley. It’s a good start, but the team needs to go further.

Outfielder Josh Willingham is coming off a career year (35 homers and an .890 OPS) and has a reasonable two years left on his contract; he’ll be more valuable as a trade chip than he will be on the field for a losing team. The same goes for longtime Twin Justin Morneau, who is headed into the last year of his contract and showed that he could stay healthy and reasonably productive in 2012. If they can get some value out of multi-positional types like Jamey Carroll and Ryan Doumit as well, all the better; none of these players will be around the next time the Twins see October.

The Twins cost themselves in 2011 by failing to trade Michael Cuddyer in his free-agent walk year, letting him move on to Colorado as a free agent for nothing. If the team plans to truly turn around what’s become one of the worst teams in the league, they can’t repeat that mistake.

Houston Astros

Find rock bottom this year.

You just can’t overstate how bad it’s going to be for the Astros in 2013. Take a team that lost 213 games over the plast two seasons, remove the only offensive player who contributed more than two wins above replacement (Jed Lowrie, at 2.6), switch them to one of the toughest divisions in baseball and what you have is a recipe for outright disaster.

GM Jeff Luhnow already traded off all of his respectable veterans last season, other than perhaps starter Bud Norris, so fans don’t even have that to look forward to.

What the team can do instead is to make sure that this season is as bad as it gets, and that next season starts the long climb back to respectability. That doesn’t mean it won’t still be bad — if the team is as awful as everyone expects this season, it could improve by 10 games in 2014 and still lose more than 100 — but now that the teardown is finished, the front office can see what’s left.

That means finding out if Brett Wallace is ever going to hit, or if Justin Maxwell can be a usable outfielder, and maybe even getting top prospect Jonathan Singleton up after his suspension is over. It’ll be ugly in Houston no matter what, but fans and players alike need to begin to see that there’s light at the end of this tunnel.

For the third time in four years, the Cleveland Indians are coming off a season of at least 93 losses. General manager Chris Antonetti, having already fired manager Manny Acta before the 2012 season ended, spent the winter remaking the face of his club. That meant bringing in two-time World Series champion Terry Francona to manage and bidding farewell to longtime offensive cogs Shin-Soo Choo and Travis Hafner, part of what ended up being a surprisingly active offseason for a small-market team seemingly so far away from contention.

After acquiring Drew Stubbs in the Choo deal and signing Mark Reynolds, Cleveland then forfeited two high draft picks to sign Michael Bourn and Nick Swisher to expensive four-year deals. The new quartet — along with returning bats such as Asdrubal Cabrera, Jason Kipnis and Carlos Santana — should make for an immediate upgrade to a Cleveland attack that finished 22nd in runs scored.

Yet for all the effort Antonetti put into reshaping his offense, he seemingly did little to improve a pitching staff that ranked as the least effective run-prevention unit in baseball (non-Colorado division). Needless to say, the offseason strategy has left many confused. Why, after all, make commitments of more than $100 million and two draft picks to improve the offense immediately, but fail to upgrade one of the worst rotations in baseball enough to make a real playoff push?

The answer: Antonetti may not have made a prominent addition to his rotation, but he did help his team take a huge leap forward in preventing runs.

Addition by subtraction

You might be wondering: How is a team that is bringing back the underwhelming trio of Ubaldo Jimenez, Justin Masterson and Zach McAllister, and fortifying it with Brett Myers and Scott Kazmir — yes, him — going to be any better than last year’s group? It’s because the responsibility for run prevention doesn’t fall entirely on the pitcher, and the offseason moves haven’t only upgraded the Cleveland offense — they’ve made a large impact on the team’s defense as well. Simply turning more balls into outs should help the pitching staff look better, even if the pitchers aren’t actually performing better.

Advanced defensive statistics remain admittedly imperfect, but they’re light years ahead of the generally useless fielding percentage, and they all agree on one thing — Cleveland’s 2012 defense was one of the worst in baseball. Whether you prefer defensive runs saved (28th, at minus-51 runs), UZR/150 (30th at minus-57 runs) or just about anything else, the team’s fielding was ranked poorly. It isn’t just a single-year problem, either; the Indians haven’t ranked above fourth worst in UZR/150 since 2008.

Extra outs in the field pile up on a team’s arms, and it’s not difficult to see how that affected Jimenez and Masterson, the only two Cleveland starters to throw at least 150 innings last season. Each ended up with ERA marks (5.40 for Jimenez, 4.93 for Masterson) that exceeded their FIP (5.04 for Jimenez, 4.16 for Masterson) by a considerable amount. In fact, six of the seven Cleveland pitchers to make more than five starts ended up with an ERA higher than their FIP, indicating a defense that was not making the plays it needed to. The pitching staff wasn’t good, but the defense made it seem even worse.

Taking the staff as a whole, only the Colorado Rockies and Milwaukee Brewers ended up with larger differences between their ERA and FIP than Cleveland’s did. It’s a serious problem, and it’s one that might have still existed even if Antonetti had spent more of his time on improving his pitching.

Instead, the new-look Indians’ defensive corps is in position to actually help their staff rather than hinder it, and that’s in part simply due to addition by subtraction. Choo and Shelley Duncan were the two corner outfielders with the most playing time last season, and both were subpar defenders; Choo in particular rated as being especially poor (minus-17 UZR). If Antonetti had merely replaced them with average fielders, that would be an upgrade, but he has done much better than that — the 2013 Indians are likely to be one of the only teams in baseball playing three center field quality defenders in their outfield.

The new crew

Bourn is the real prize here, because he’s one of the few players universally acclaimed in the field by both traditional methods (two Gold Gloves) and advanced stats (DRS and UZR/150 each ranked him as 2012’s best defensive outfielder). DRS has Bourn has saving 24 runs on his own, and that alone would take a major chunk out of the 51-run defensive deficit the team saw last year.

The addition of Bourn also creates a domino effect that moves last year’s center fielder, Michael Brantley, over to left. Brantley ranked as a slightly below-average center fielder, and he should be more effective as he slides down the defensive spectrum to a less demanding position. When Brantley last played left field regularly, logging 558 1/3 innings there in 2011, both DRS and UZR/150 considered him above-average. He’ll look even better this year when compared to Duncan.

Rather than the subpar Choo in right field, Stubbs figures to see most of the playing time there. Despite hitting only .213/.277/.333 with Ohio’s other team, Stubbs still was worth 1.3 wins above replacement simply because of his excellent defense and baserunning (30 steals in 37 attempts). Like Brantley, he’ll be moving to a corner after having been a regular center fielder, and he’ll be a massive improvement over Choo.

Due to Stubbs’ huge platoon split, Swisher could see time in right field as well, but he’s expected to get most of his playing time at first base. That’s for the best, not only because it keeps the defensively challenged Jason Giambi and Reynolds as the designated hitter platoon they really ought to be, but because Swisher is a capable defender as well. If Swisher is even average at first base, that’s an improvement; despite the sterling defensive reputation of Swisher’s predecessor, Casey Kotchman, the metrics indicate he has been declining with the glove for several years now, posting a negative DRS and UZR for three straight years.

As for the rest of the infield, the Indians return the same primary starters who finished last season. Cabrera is not a good defensive shortstop, and Lonnie Chisenhall proved to be rough around the edges in limited play, but Kipnis was about average. Considering the inexperience and youth of Chisenhall and Kipnis, there’s the potential for improvement there, and Mike Aviles should take over the Jack Hannahan role. At the least, the infield — while not a strength — isn’t likely to be worse than last year’s version, and could be slightly better. Masterson, as a ground ball pitcher, stands to gain the most from any improvement here.

Again, advanced defensive metrics have not yet attained perfection, and so it’s reasonable if one were to quibble with some of the exact numbers. But the idea that an outfield of Bourn, Brantley and Stubbs comprises one of the best defensive groups in the game more than passes the sniff test. For a team that needed all the help it could get in preventing runs from scoring, an improved defense that will help every pitcher on the staff could be even more effective than having made a single big splash on the pitching market.

The Baltimore Orioles shocked the baseball world by winning 93 games and beating the favored Texas Rangers in the wild-card playoff last year, breaking a streak of 14 consecutive losing seasons that dated back to the Cal Ripken Jr. era. The AL East has long been a brutal division to compete in, but the usual powers in Boston and New York have finally begun to show signs of vulnerability, and Tampa Bay has to overcome the losses of James Shields and B.J. Upton. At long last, the timing would have appeared right this winter for the Orioles to capitalize on their success and take advantage of what might be a small window of opportunity.

That’s clearly the way the Toronto Blue Jays saw things, making big splashes in trades with the Miami Marlins and New York Mets, but Baltimore general manager Dan Duquette chose a different, much quieter path. The Orioles didn’t sign a single new player to a major league contract this winter, and even the team’s trading activity merely netted them bit players like Yamaico Navarro and Trayvon Robinson.

The lack of action was most notable in the team’s unstable rotation, where 12 different pitchers made at least two starts for the team last season, and only Wei-Yin Chen made more than 20. Rather than attempting to import a stabilizing presence, Duquette decided to stay with his various internal options for the rotation.

Despite the playoff berth, the Orioles outscored their opponents by only seven runs — good for an expected record of 82-80 — and much of the 2012 magic in Baltimore was built on a record-setting 29-9 record in one-run games. That’s good for a fantastic story for a fan base which desperately needed one, but it’s not indicative of their true talent level and almost certainly not sustainable going forward.

For this reason, Duquette has been criticized for not making a splash, But when you examine the three courses of action he had this winter, he made the right choice.

Course No. 1. Trade young talent for a big-time starting pitcher.

This is the largely unpopular route Dayton Moore took in Kansas City, cashing in star-in-the-making Wil Myers and three other decent-to-good prospects to add Shields and Wade Davis to his rotation. Duquette could have done the same, but it would likely have cost him stud prospects like pitcher Dylan Bundy  one of only three prospects to top Myers on Keith Law’s Top 100 — or infielder Manny Machado, each of whom made their MLB debuts in their age-19 seasons last year.

Had Duquette made those players available, he certainly could have swung a deal for a Shields or a comparable starter, but the long-term cost would have far outweighed the present benefits for a team that isn’t as close as hometown fans may believe.

2. Spend a lot of money (and potentially a first-round draft pick) on a free agent.

If you figure that the Orioles were never going to be in the race for Zack Greinke and that lesser choices like Joe Blanton or Kevin Correia weren’t enough of an upgrade to matter, the midrange market for impact starting pitching was exceptionally thin this winter. Other than Greinke, only two pitchers who moved to new teams signed for more than $15 million total — Ryan Dempster with the Red Sox and Edwin Jackson with the Cubs. Kyle Lohse remains available, of course, but in addition to being an imperfect fit for the AL East, he would have cost Baltimore its top draft pick since the Cardinals made him a qualifying offer. This is the toughest part of the market to find value in.

3. Stand pat.

This is the path the Orioles have taken, conserving their resources, and it makes sense because Duquette has no shortage of intriguing candidates to fill out his rotation. Only Chen and veteran Jason Hammel, who was surprisingly effective before going down with a knee injury, appear to have solid holds on jobs. Manager Buck Showalter has indicated that righties Miguel Gonzalez and Chris Tillman are in line to get the next two, but it’s difficult to envision a scenario where both keep those positions all season.

Gonzalez was a 28-year-old rookie who impressed with a 3.25 ERA that wasn’t backed up by a 4.38 FIP or a less-than-stellar minor league track record. Tillman’s 2.93 ERA looked even better, but mediocre peripherals along with a .221 BABIP gave him a 4.25 FIP and make it unlikely he prevents runs as effectively again. In Tillman’s case, even reports of improved velocity may not be accurate, since it was skewed largely by a spike in his first game of the season that didn’t last.

Battling for the final spot — and for those that inevitably open up during the season — is a cast of seemingly thousands. The Orioles have former prospects who haven’t quite put it together yet (Jake Arrieta, Zach Britton, Steve Johnson, and Brian Matusz), they have veterans trying to prove they can stay healthy and effective (Tommy Hunter, Jair Jurrjens, and Tsuyoshi Wada), and both groups should be looking over their shoulders at the next wave knocking on the door (Bundy and Kevin Gausman).

This is where the Orioles can look for breakout potential, because the first four starters are unlikely to provide a whole lot more than we’ve already seen. It may seem odd to say about a pitcher coming off a 6.20 ERA season, but Arrieta might be the most likely of this group to come alive and provide value. In his age-26 campaign, he increased his strikeout rate to 8.56 per nine innings while also lowering his walk rate to 2.75 per nine, good numbers that continued the steps forward he’d made there in 2011. The resulting 3.11 strikeout-to-walk ratio was better than successful starters like Dempster, Matt Garza, Jackson, Mat Latos and Brandon McCarthy, and the upward trend in that metric is generally a good indicator of a pitcher doing something right.

Arrieta turned 27 this week, and scouts still love his multiple fastballs and plus secondary pitches, so the conditions are there for him to shave that ERA number significantly.

By this time next year, or perhaps even later in 2013, it’s quite possible that stud prospects Bundy and Gausman each occupy spots in the Baltimore rotation. Duquette knows that they are the future of the rotation, so there was no sense spending a lot of money (or talent) to bring in guys who might not be much better than their in-house options.

The Orioles need to sort out once and for all which of their many current starting options are going to join Bundy and Gausman, be a part of their bullpen or move on entirely. It may not be the most popular decision to stand still, but acquiring someone like an Aaron Harang only serves to ensure mediocrity and prevent young players like Arrieta from proving they’re part of the future.

Given the options available, Dan Duquette made the right decision for Baltimore’s long-term success — even if, in the present, it’s hard for fans to swallow.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers retained reliever Brandon League in October by guaranteeing him $22.5 million over three years, with the chance to earn an additional $10 million in incentives, it was a move that was largely panned in the baseball world.

League is a good-but-not-great reliever in a world where expensive multiyear contracts for nonelite relievers almost invariably end poorly for the team. Over the past four seasons, League’s 3.51 ERA is nearly identical to that of Matt Belisle (making $4.1 million this year for Colorado) and Brandon Lyon (with the Mets for one year and just $750,000).

Why? Because League saved 37 games with the Seattle Mariners in 2011 and has earned the closer label. The excessive money may not bother the obscenely wealthy Dodgers as much as it would other teams, but general manager Ned Colletti compounded the decision by declaring that League would be the team’s closer in 2013 despite the presence of the undeniably more talented Kenley Jansen.

This thinking is par for the course at Chavez Ravine. Last year, Javy Guerra began the season as the closer even though he is inferior to Jansen, and he lost the job to Jansen, who lost it to League when he had to miss a month with a cardiac issue.

While it’s unclear if the Dodgers actually think League is better than Jansen, what is clear is that they are better off with League in the ninth and Jansen in a setup role.

It’s long been a sabermetric principle that managers shouldn’t preserve their best relievers for the ninth inning with a lead, because it’s often not the most important moment in a game. There’s clearly more danger in a reliever trying to hold down a one-run lead with two on in the eighth against the heart of a lineup than on a closer starting a clean inning in the ninth against the 7-8-9 hitters, but reliever usage doesn’t reflect that.

The reason why is that it takes the right circumstances to make it work. For example, if a team has an established veteran closer — think a Jonathan Papelbon type — telling him he’s being moved to the eighth can be seen as a demotion. If a club has only one above-average reliever, it’s understandably going to be difficult for a manager to keep him out of the ninth for long if the closer is blowing games and the media is breathing down the skipper’s neck.

The Dodger combo of Jansen and League just so happens to be perfectly situated to make this work, even if it seems odd to keep the better pitcher away from save chances. Jansen is a young player who did well as a closer but hardly had the standing to be untouchable. If not for that missed time, we might not be having this conversation, because League was terrible in his first weeks as a Dodger and posed no threat to Jansen otherwise.

However, after some side work with Dodgers coaches Rick Honeycutt and Ken Howell, League allowed just one run in his final 21 games, converting all six save opportunities in Jansen’s absence. When Jansen returned Sept. 20, manager Don Mattingly chose to work him back in slowly as League’s setup man. (He was still excellent, striking out 13 in 8 1/3 innings.)

That sequence of events is what led Colletti and Mattingly to determine that Jansen should continue to set up League, though it’s probably more of a happy accident in the “it wasn’t broke last September, so don’t fix it” vein than it is any indication that the team is suddenly thinking especially sabermetrically.

Whether it was on purpose or not, it makes sense. League can be a solid reliever — perhaps more than solid if the mechanical change means he can maintain that excellent September performance — yet he’s also a flawed one. Using Baseball Reference’s Leverage Index, we can see how he has performed over the past three years in situations deemed as low, medium and high leverage (see table).

In each of the past three seasons, League has been hit harder when the most pressure is on. Jansen, by comparison, has continued to blow away batters no matter whether the situation is tense (.465 career OPS against in high-leverage situations) or less critical (.452 career OPS against in low-leverage situations). He has also been effective against both lefty and righty hitters, unlike League, who has shown a massive platoon split over his career, limiting the tactical situations a team would want to use him in the first place.

It’s clear that Jansen is the man the team should want on the mound in the most critical situations, and while it may seem counterintuitive to have a reliever who performs better in lower-pressure situations as the closer, it’s important to remember again that bases empty in the ninth inning is often less important to winning a game than two on and one out in the eighth.

There’s no question that Jansen is the more effective reliever, a statement that even League would probably agree with, and he may yet end up back in the ninth if League’s inconsistent history returns. Yet as long as League can hold things together as the closer, Jansen will provide the Dodgers one of baseball’s most dangerous bullpen weapons in the most important situations — even if he’s not the one actually collecting the saves.

Fans of the Washington Nationals have much to be excited about, because a team that already won 98 games last year looks like it could be geared to be even better in 2013. This year’s edition won’t have to worry about shutting down Stephen Strasburg, and they surprised many by adding Rafael Soriano to what was already a solid bullpen.

They can expect improved outfield performance given that Bryce Harper has a year of experience under his belt, Jayson Werth has returned from yet another injury — don’t forget, he was excellent (.312/.394/.441) in 52 starts after coming back last year — and they’ve finally filled the leadoff/center field hole they’ve been trying to patch for years by trading for Denard Span.

GM Mike Rizzo capped off his busy offseason by adding Dan Haren to the rotation, retainingAdam LaRoche on the club’s terms and rebuilding some farm depth by trading the somewhat overrated Mike Morse to Seattle.

All in all, it has been a very good winter for the Nationals, and they’re the consensus pick to win the National League East, especially given the teardowns in Miami and New York, and the continued aging of the Phillies. But for a team that’s truly built to win now, there’s one more move they could and should make — they need to be the club that swoops in to signKyle Lohse, the one big-ticket free agent remaining.

How good is he?

In some ways, the fact that Lohse remains unsigned headed into the second half of February seems like proof of the education of an industry. He brings 30 wins, a 3.11 ERA and one championship ring over the past two seasons into free agency, numbers that ordinarily would generate something of a feeding frenzy on an open market that is always desperate for quality starting pitching. Yet here we are, with camps open to pitchers and catchers across Arizona and Florida, and Lohse is still out there.

It’s not hard to see why, of course. Teams have wisely begun to look beyond misleading win-loss records to dig a little deeper, and what you have in Lohse is someone on the wrong side of 30 with a long history of inconsistency who doesn’t miss bats and missed time in both 2009 and 2010 because of arm injuries.

Thirty wins over two years may seem elite, but a 3.58 FIP and a 5.72 K/9 — the latter among the 10 lowest figures of all qualified starters over the past two seasons — indicate someone who is much more of a mid-rotation starter. Throw in the presence of Scott Boras and the anchor of draft pick compensation due to the qualifying offer St. Louis extended, and you can see why Lohse’s stock isn’t as high as he might have thought back in the fall.

Lohse may not be among the elite group of pitchers in baseball, but a veteran mid-rotation guy still brings considerable value. He has seemingly become so overrated that he might actually now be underrated, because he’s still a good, solid picher, and his market may have fallen to where he might be a steal at this point. While he won’t miss bats, he has made himself into a control artist, walking only 1.62 batters per nine innings last season — better than all but four other starters — and finishing in the top 25 in home run rate (0.81 per nine). On the right terms, he would be an improvement for nearly every team in baseball.

Why Washington?

The Nationals make the most sense because two of the issues that may scare off other clubs — Boras and the draft pick — simply don’t apply here. Rizzo famously has a good relationship with the super-agent, counting Boras clients Harper, Soriano, Werth, Strasburg and Danny Espinosa among the current Nationals already. Boras also represents Edwin Jackson, who waited until February to sign with Washington last year before moving on to the Cubs this winter. The Nationals already forfeited their first-round draft pick to sign Soriano, so picking up Lohse would cost them only their next pick, which would be in the high 60s in what is expected to be a shallow draft.

That’s important because Washington is in exactly the right position on the win curve to continue to try to improve. That is, it wouldn’t make sense for a team such as Houston to go after Lohse, because spending millions and a draft pick to simply improve from 60 wins to 63 wins ultimately makes little difference. For the Nationals, who do still have to fight off the reloaded Braves on their way to another division title, every win counts — far more than a late second-round pick would.

Given that Washington already has a solid rotation in Strasburg, Haren, Gio Gonzalez, Jordan Zimmermannand Ross Detwiler, collecting Lohse may seem like an unnecessary addition that would merely lead to an embarrassment of riches. Perhaps so, but there’s ample reason for the Nationals to want to seal some of the cracks that are easily visible here.

Gonzalez may yet have to deal with the repercussions of his alleged involvement in the South Florida PED mess that has caught up Alex Rodriguez and others, while concerns over Haren’s back and hip were serious enough that he managed only a one-year deal, coming off one of the worst seasons of his career. If either one misses time, the team is without an obvious or appealing replacement because safety blanket John Lannan moved on this winter.

Adding Lohse probably would bump Detwiler out of the rotation, and that would not only improve the starters, it could solve one of the team’s more glaring holes — the lack of a real lefty option in the bullpen. Washington lost Sean Burnett to free agency and missed on available lefties such as J.P. Howell, which currently leaves them with only the mediocreZach Duke as a southpaw reliever.

Detwiler had a decent season in his first full year in the Washington rotation, contributing 164 1/3 innings of a 3.40 ERA, but advanced statistics are not a huge fan; he misses even fewer bats than Lohse does and brings neither elite velocity nor a great out pitch. Having him pitch in relief might allow his velocity to play up somewhat while also helping the club more than he would in the rotation, given that he has been very effective against lefty hitters over his career (.214/.307/.300 line against). He would not only be a better option than Duke, he would be available to return to the rotation should injuries require it.

The real question is whether the Nationals could find the money for Lohse, because they have spent so much elsewhere. That said, Lohse doesn’t look to be in much of a position to demand a massive deal at this point and Boras has shown a willingness to be creative with Washington, deferring a sizable portion of Soriano’s deal. Assuming Boras is never going to allow Lohse to sign for less than the $13.3 million qualifying offer he declined, a back-loaded two-year deal in the $28 million to $32 million range, perhaps with a third-year vesting option, seems appropriate for both sides.

From a baseball point of view, it almost seems like a no-brainer for everyone. Washington would improve its rotation depth and bullpen while fully gearing up for a World Series run; Lohse would get a chance to win another ring while remaining in the National League and playing in front of a good defense that should also score plenty of runs to support him.

There are other places that might make sense for Lohse — teams such as the Los Angeles Angels or Cleveland Indians, who both already have lost draft picks and could use another starter. After pricey offseasons for each, those clubs could be at their spending limits, and Lohse may not have interest in returning to the more difficult American League for the first time since 2006. Washington is the best fit if the money is there, and Boras and Rizzo always seem to find a way.