Spring training has arrived -- is there anything more beautiful to a baseball lover's soul than the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues? -- and it's our first chance to check out newcomers on our favorite teams.
Do the results matter? Not as much as they used to, as organizations have learned that small sample sizes from spring training aren't necessarily predictive of future performance.
Still, there are players to watch a little more closely than others this spring. So, let's dig into one for each team, zeroing in on rehabbing veterans, promising youngsters or top prospects looking to make the club's Opening Day roster. You'll see one pattern here: Hitters who need to improve their plate discipline and/or approach. While spring training stats don't tell us the whole story, strikeout and walk rates do stabilize pretty quickly, so those are some key numbers to note once the games begin.
If you play fantasy baseball, these are some of the players you'll want to focus on as well. Let's start off with the team that has the most hype coming off a winter for the ages (teams are listed in order of our winter power rankings).
