Today, there’s a lot of talk about Ian Kinsler’s decline. He just finished his age-31 season, and his power seems to be disappearing before our eyes. His ISOs over the last three years: .223/.166./.136, and that’s with playing half his games in Texas. There are signs that he might be slowing down too, as he was just 15 for 26 in stolen base attempts, not anywhere near his career 84% success rate heading into 2013.

Kinsler was still a reasonably productive player last year, but as a right-handed hitter who does most of his damage against lefties, a continuation of these trends might lead to Kinsler ending up as a very expensive platoon player in a couple of years. If the power starting to erode, or was a product of Texas’ ballpark, then Kinsler’s future value is going to depend on his baserunning and defense, both things we expect to evaporate as a player gets into his thirties.

Still, I can’t help but feel like I heard all these same arguments last year when the Red Sox signed Shane Victorino to a three year, $39 million contract. Because Victorino’s 2012 and Kinsler’s 2013 look pretty darn similar.

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Ben and Sam discuss the Ian Kinsler-Prince Fielder trade, then talk to Baseball South Australia’s Drew Samuelson about the incredible Canberra Cavalry.

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The Rangers traded Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder. You know this already. I’ve already written a post about this trade, in fact, detailing why I love this deal for the Tigers. If baseball trading were a zero sum game, this would mean that I hate this move for the Rangers, since a big win would have to be offset by a big loss on the other side. But baseball trades are not a zero sum game. There are mutually beneficial trades. The Rangers are now hoping this is one of those deals where both sides get better.

The Rangers had to move a middle infielder. They couldn’t go into 2014 with Jurickson Profar as a super utility guy behind Elvis Andrus and Ian Kinsler again. They had three starting middle infielders, and Kinsler wasn’t interested in becoming a starting first baseman, so shifting him over to make room for Profar probably wasn’t an option. Someone had to go.

So, in that sense, this deal is not quite as straight forward as it is from the Tigers perspective. Detroit turned a +3 WAR player into a +3 WAR player and saved a bunch of money in the process. For the Rangers, though, the context is the reason the deal got done, and simply comparing the value of the player going out with the value of the player coming in doesn’t work. This deal was made because of the other players on the roster, the ones not getting traded. So let’s try and sort this all out.

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(I decided to break this deal down in two separate posts, because there are too many angles to fit it all into one. Texas fans, we’ll talk about this deal from the Rangers perspective in a separate article.)

The Detroit Tigers were a very good baseball team, but with Omar Infante heading for free agency and too much money committed to other players to keep him around, they had a hole at second base. They also had too many designated hitters, with Victor Martinez’s presence forcing both Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera to play the field even when they really couldn’t. With Cabrera’s body breaking down in September, it became pretty clear that something had to give, and an obvious solution was moving one of their DHs could open up some money for them to fill their second base hole.

Instead of making a series of smaller transactions that accomplished that goal, the Tigers instead just found a way to directly exchange Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler, filling their hole at second base, freeing up their DH logjam, and saving enough money to potentially keep the rest of their core in tact. This is a pretty fantastic start to the off-season for Dave Dombrowski.

Before we get too much further into the commentary, let’s break down the specifics of what swapping Prince Fielder for Ian Kinsler actually works out to.

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This evening, Jon Heyman broke the story that the Detroit Tigers are on the verge of sending Prince Fielder to the Texas Rangers for Ian Kinsler. We don’t have all of the details yet, so there could be more to it, but at the very least, it is a very, very interesting trade. Dave Cameron will have more on this later, but let’s take a brief look now, shall we?

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Alex Rodriguez stormed out of the arbitration hearing today on his appeal of Major League Baseball’s 211-game suspension after the arbitrator, Frederic Horowitz, denied Rodriguez’s request to call Commissioner Bud Selig as a witnesses.

Rodriguez’s outburst is just the latest twist in the on-going drama between him and MLB. And it suggests that Rodriguez and his attorneys believe that the arbitrator will uphold the suspension, at least for some number of games. But Rodriguez is unlikely to get the help he wants from a court — to either stop the arbitration or overturn Horowitz’s final ruling.

Let’s review how we got here:

MLB suspended Rodriguez on August 5 for violations of the the Collective Bargaining Agreement and Joint Drug Agreement between MLB and the Players’ Association (or MLBPA). MLB charged Rodriguez with using banned substances over a period of years and with attempting to obstruct MLB’s investigation. MLB suspended Rodriguez for the remainder of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season, which amounted to 211 games.

Rodriguez immediately appealed his suspension to baseball’s arbitrator. That gave Rodriguez the right to continue playing baseball until the arbitrator issued his final decision.

The hearing on Rodriguez’s appeal got under way on September 30 at MLB’s offices in New York. Even though Rodriguez is, essentially, the complainant — as he is challenging the commissioner’s suspension — MLB has the burden to prove that Rodriguez used substances banned by the JDA and impeded the investigation, and that the 211-game suspension was justified.

Over the course of several weeks, MLB put on the testimony of Anthony Bosch, the owner of the now-shuttered Biogenesis Clinic; Dan Mullins, MLB’s lead investigator, and Rob Manfred, MLB’s Chief Operating Officer. Rodriguez’s lawyers had the opportunity to cross-examine these witnesses and did so. There were charges and counter-charges of secret meetings, witness tampering, purchasing stolen documents and more. The appeal hearing was adjourned in mid-October, and set to resume on November 18. In early November, the New York Times detailed the aggressive tactics used by both sides during MLB’s investigation and Rodriguez’s appeal in this story.

A few days after the Times story, Rodriguez sued MLB in New York state court for interfering with his contract with the Yankees and with other business relationships. Rodriguez accused MLB of doing everything in its power (and some things beyond its power) to paint him as the poster boy for the steroid era, to push him out of baseball and ruin his reputation. The complaint — which you can read here — previewed Rodriguez’s attack on MLB’s tactics and the appeal process, and tried to lay the groundwork for Rodriguez to overturn the arbitrator’s final ruling. But Rodriguez didn’t ask the state court to stop the appeal hearing.

MLB removed Rodriguez’s complaint to federal court on the theory that Rodriguez’s allegations and his claims are governed by the CBA and JDA, and thus pre-empted by federal labor law. MLB then filed a motion to dismiss Rodriguez’s complaint on the same grounds (copy here). MLB also argued that Rodriguez had failed to “exhaust his remedies” by filing a lawsuit before the end of the appeal hearing. Rodriguez, for his part, filed a motion to remand the case back to state court (copy here). The federal judge presiding over the case — Judge Lorna A. Schofield of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York — has not yet ruled on these motions.

Which brings us to today’s developments.

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A few weeks ago, we provided some links to a few different custom leaderboards, which allow you to sort and compare free agents to your hearts content. These are super useful for seeing how various players on the open market have done in the past, but the leaderboards don’t contain future projections, which is mostly what we care about when discussing what kind of contracts a player is going to sign or whether a team should pursue one free agent over another.

So, today, I’m going to let you in on a little secret that you may or may not have noticed: we now have a free agent depth chart, complete with 2014 Steamer Projection data, so you can compare available free agents at each position to each other based on their forecasts for next season. These depth charts reveal some pretty fun facts, so let’s walk through a few of them and see why I’m going to be using this page regularly.

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Former Texas Ranger David Murphy has reportedly agreed to a contract with the Cleveland Indians. As of this writing, the details are still coming out, but the deal is said to be for two years and about $12 million. It sounds like the new standard contract for platoon players in their thirties — see Jonny Gomes and David DeJesus for recent examples. Cleveland might very well be planning to platoon the left-handed-hitting Murphy with Ryan Raburn in right field. The combination could provide enough production at the right price to overcome concerns about flexibility while also filling out Cleveland’s lineup and allowing them a chance to take another shot at the playoffs in 2014 if they make some additional moves.

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The author has published a weekly statistical report for the Arizona Fall League each week since its brief season commenced back in October — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league.

What follows is the entirely last statistical report for the AFL, following that league’ championship game this past Saturday.

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