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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for four players omitted from the previous ten days’ worth of these posts.

Other Players: Nori Aoki / Brett Anderson / Chad Billingsley / Emilio Bonifacio / A.J. Burnett / Billy Butler / Asdrubal Cabrera / Melky Cabrera / Nelson Cruz / Michael Cuddyer / Gavin Floyd / Jason Hammel / Aaron Harang / Chase Headley / Torii Hunter / Hiroki Kuroda / Adam LaRoche / Jon Lester / Francisco Liriano / Jed Lowrie / Nick Markakis / Russell Martin / Victor Martinez / Justin Masterson / Brandon McCarthy / Andrew Miller / Kendrys Morales / Brandon Morrow / Michael Morse / Jake Peavy / Aramis Ramirez / Hanley Ramirez / Colby Rasmus / Mark Reynolds / Alex Rios / David Robertson / Francisco Rodriguez / Sergio Romo / Pablo Sandoval / Ervin Santana / Max Scherzer / James Shields / Ichiro Suzuki / Koji Uehara / Ryan Vogelsong / Edinson Volquez / Chris Young (OF) / Chris Young (SP) / Delmon Young.

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With the World Series shifting to San Francisco for Game 3, the Royals have made some changes to their lineup. They’re not starting anybody as the designated hitter, because that would be against the rules. Ned Yost has elected to start Jarrod Dyson over Nori Aoki, which seems like the right thing to do. And Mike Moustakas has been bumped up to the fifth spot, with Alex Gordon soaring to second. It’s about as good a lineup as the Royals could have, under the circumstances, although there are two lefties back-to-back.

I’m not going to sit here and give you a prediction. However, there is one thing that might very slightly change the odds. You’ve seen broadcasts talk about x-factors before? Normally, they’re meaningless. Hell, maybe this one’s meaningless. But for this game, for this particular game, Moustakas should be one of the Royals’ best hitters. However small an advantage that presents, Moustakas has a couple of platoon factors working to his benefit.

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The Royals find themselves in an interesting situation. They’re in the World Series! Wow! And within that, with the series shifting now to San Francisco, the Royals are in an interesting sub-situation. Alex Gordon ought to start in the outfield, obviously. Lorenzo Cain ought to start in the outfield, obviously, as well. But then you’ve got Norichika Aoki and Jarrod Dyson. Aoki has been the starter in right field for a while, but now with the rules changing for three games, it’s time for Ned Yost to also make a change and keep Aoki on the bench at the beginning. Kansas City should go with the ultimate outfield.

This isn’t just a hypothetical suggestion, by the way. The matter is on Yost’s mind. Sometime Friday, he’ll make his call, and while it’s generally safest to bet on continuity, Yost’s been nothing if not unpredictable these last few weeks.

Ned Yost acknowledged possibility Jarrod Dyson might start tomorrow. Nori Aoki has more value off the bench than Dyson as a pinch hitter.

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughStar) October 24, 2014

The ultimate outfield looks like this:

LF: Gordon
CF: Dyson
RF: Cain

Cain, defensively, is outstandingly good. So it tells you something that Yost likes to have Dyson in center field, with Cain shifting to right. Actually, it tells you a couple of things: Dyson, also, is outstandingly good, and Cain might well be more comfortable in a corner. Anyhow, the difference between the ultimate outfield and the ordinary outfield is that Dyson subs in for Aoki, and swaps places with Cain. The ultimate outfield is weaker at the plate, but is just stupid good not at the plate.

Dyson bats left-handed. Aoki also bats left-handed. There’s a strong argument to be made that the Royals should use the ultimate outfield against all right-handed pitchers. But that obviously wasn’t going to happen with the Royals playing by American League rules. Now, the National League rules change things up somewhat. They should provide enough incentive to pencil Dyson into the starting lineup.

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Buster Posey hasn’t been quite himself this postseason. Through Wednesday’s game in Kansas City, he’s batted .288/.333/.288, which isn’t terrible but has included an un-Poseyish power outage. His batting line was better during the NLDS against Washington, which is ironic because most of the failures I’m about to talk about took place during that series.

My topic isn’t how Posey’s been getting on base. It’s what he’s been doing after getting on base: specifically, getting thrown out on the bases. During the four-game NLDS, Buster Posey got himself cut down four times. After a clean NLCS, he added an out at home in Game One of the World Series to push his postseason total this year to five.

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The World Series is headed to San Francisco, which means Bruce Bochy has a decision to make. The games in Kansas City allowed him to start Michael Morse at DH, getting another power hitter into the line-up without forcing Morse to run around the outfield, but under NL rules, Morse will either have to play left field or come off the bench as a pinch-hitter. Morse is a terrible defender when healthy, and it’s not clear that he’s recovered enough from his oblique strain to live up to even his own low standards with the glove, but then again, the competition is converted first baseman Travis Ishikawa, who isn’t exactly a defensive standout himself.

If you’re going to have a defensively challenged left fielder, might as well pick the one with the better bat, right? Well, I’m not sure that those should really be the two choices being debated here. I’d like to suggest that maybe the best option isn’t either Ishikawa or Morse; instead, maybe the Giants best chance to win would come from starting Juan Perez.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for the a collection of five relief pitchers.

Other Players: Nori Aoki / Brett Anderson / Chad Billingsley / Emilio Bonifacio / A.J. Burnett / Billy Butler / Asdrubal Cabrera / Melky Cabrera / Nelson Cruz / Michael Cuddyer / Gavin Floyd / Jason Hammel / Aaron Harang / Chase Headley / Torii Hunter / Hiroki Kuroda / Adam LaRoche / Jon Lester / Francisco Liriano / Jed Lowrie / Nick Markakis / Russell Martin / Victor Martinez / Justin Masterson / Brandon McCarthy / Kendrys Morales / Brandon Morrow / Michael Morse / Jake Peavy / Aramis Ramirez / Hanley Ramirez / Colby Rasmus / Mark Reynolds / Alex Rios / Pablo Sandoval / Ervin Santana / Max Scherzer / James Shields / Ichiro Suzuki / Ryan Vogelsong / Edinson Volquez / Chris Young (OF) / Chris Young (SP) / Delmon Young.

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The finalists for the 2014 Rawlings’ Gold Glove Awards were announced on Thursday afternoon, and if you’re here on the internet with me, you know how much people hate the Gold Glove Awards.

Part of that is for good reason. For a long time, the Gold Glove Awards were pretty much a joke. Rafael Palmeiro has three. Derek Jeter has five. There have also been tons of worthy defenders to earn Gold Gloves, but throughout history it’s seemed to be more of an award that valued good hitters who weren’t terrible at defense, rather than the game’s best actual defenders.

But! Things appear to be getting better. Last season, the MLB introduced a “sabermetric component” to the decision making process. Advanced defensive metrics are still a hotly debated topic, but I think we can mostly agree that they do a better job than the “errors and the eye test” method that has been used for decades. There were still some questionable choices last year, sure, there are questionable choices this year and there will continue to be questionable choices in the future, because awards are subjective and people are never going to see eye-to-eye.

I think the eye test has its merits, but since this is FanGraphs, let’s imagine a world where the Gold Glove Awards are decided strictly by the numbers. I did a similar post last year when I was still a wee Community Blog writer, and I’m going to use a similar method this year.
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Two different guys named Jake Peavy pitched in the Major Leagues in 2014. One made 20 lacklustre starts for the Boston Red Sox. He was hit hard and hit often and, strangely a little wild. His walk rate brushed up against 10%, higher walk rate than at any point since his first full season in the big leagues.

Another guy named Jake Peavy made a dozen starts for the San Francisco Giants. Starts that were worth about 2 WAR, a nice bump given their playoff race context. He was miserly in his distribution of both home runs and walks – dropping his BB% below 5% and coughing up just three home runs in a Giants uniform. He was very good and was quickly identified as the second best starting pitcher on a playoff team.

The Giants would not be in the World Series without that Jake Peavy. He gave the Giants options (moving Tim Lincecum to the bullpen, an act of mercy for all involved) and now they’re here, competing for their third title in five years. Somebody in San Francisco saw something in Peavy that, with a little fine tuning, could help the Giants win the World Series.

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