Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
Lou Marson remembers the first time he saw Taylor Ward playing out of position.
It was 2018, and Marson—a former big-league catcher who’s currently in his fourth season as the manager of the Angels’ Triple-A affiliate, the Salt Lake Bees—was managing the Double-A squad at the time, the Mobile BayBears. It was then that the organization decided it was time to find Ward a new position. The 2015 first-round pick had played catcher almost exclusively from his freshman year at Fresno State through his first three years in the minors. Now, the Angels wanted to try him out at third base.
