Reese Kaplan -- Do Hot Springs Mean Anything?

How should roster decisions be made by a ballclub?  Anyone can go on a hot streak and anyone can go into a slump.  Spring training presents clubs with a glimpse of prospective resources to help them win, yet can several weeks in February and March accurately suggest the potential for success?

Bear in mind, of course, that hitters tend to be ahead of pitchers as spring training starts, and thus any offensive statistics must be taken with a grain of salt.  Furthermore, since opposing clubs are also exploring who will or won’t make their teams, you wind up with a lot of substandard pitching against your own hitting prospects.  Similarly, your pitching hopefuls are facing a lot of grade C and below players, so you might take those 9 pitch 3K innings with a healthy dose of skepticism, too.

I bring up this issue because there are a great many people performing notably better or worse than what you could reasonably expect over the course of a full season.  Taken the NY Mets outfield situation.  Obviously Yoenis Cespedes and Jay Bruce have long enough track records of success to fully expect their roles are carved in stone.  However, when Michael Conforto’s injury opened up an early year steady diet of ABs for Juan Lagares and Brandon Nimmo, you might tend to view the output provided in Port St. Lucie with a little more weight than you might otherwise do.

Juan Lagares has the much longer major league track record than does Brandon Nimmo.  The numbers certainly would suggest Lagares is at best a replacement level offensive player while Nimmo’s output has been slightly better.  Based upon this Spring Nimmo is hitting nearly twice as well as Lagares, so do you take that production as representative of what he can do,?  He's had stronger minor league numbers in the latter stages of his career.  Or do you have to say it’s merely a small sample size and go with the platoon originally intended?

Similarly, Kevin Plawecki is threatening to hit .400 and showing superior defense, yet Travis d’Arnaud is still considered the starter.  Is it right or wrong to think Plawecki deserves the starting nod?  

Even odder is the strong Spring of Gavin Cecchini vs. what’s being done by Jose Reyes and Asdrubal Cabrera.  Some are suggesting that there should be an open competition for 2^nd base simple because Cabrera is not doing his Jose Altuve impression.  Unfortunately, salary does usually dictate playing time and Cabrera’s track record would indicate that he’s a safer bet to produce than would the suddenly hot hitting Cecchini. 

The point of this rumination is not to speculate on who comes north with the big club but to consider the question of what factors should go into making those choices?  Some due to health are already ticketed to AAA such as Dominic Smith, while others have roster issues to overcome like Phil Evans while still others have youth/lack of experience like P.J. Conlon. 

If it was up to you, how much stock would you put into Spring training statistics when making roster determinations?