There’s nothing more enviable than a collection of stars. Generally speaking, people tend to focus on the top of a given roster, because that’s where you find the most impressive players, the players most likely to make a significant difference. The fantasy world operates like a video game with injuries turned off: you go in with your starting lineup and starting rotation, and you never need to replace anyone, and everyone’s competent. Every so often, teams do have sufficient health to be able to rely on the expected regulars. But more often than not, depth becomes a major factor. Sometimes this is even intentional — teams will accumulate depth in lieu of adding higher-quality starters. We’ve seen the A’s, for example, focus on depth, at practically every position. It’s not the most important thing; it’s just an important thing, frequently.

And it can be a tricky thing to measure, ahead of time. You can go about it by feel, on a case-by-case basis, but I thought I’d try something quick and easy. Which teams project to have the most and least depth for the season ahead, based on where things stand today? Presented below is not the final word, but it should be at least a starting point. Some numbers will change when, say, Max Scherzer and James Shields make up their minds, but they aren’t going to flip this graph on its head.

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By the time you are voted into the Hall of Fame, you gather as many urban legends as legitimate accolades: Babe Ruth called his shot, Harmon Killebrew was the model for the MLB logo, Wade Boggs drank 64 beers on a flight once. It has been said that peak Pedro Martinez had four pitches and each was the best of its type in baseball. Legit or legend?

The current crop of Hall of Fame inductees are the first that have any data that give us any hope of answering this question. The PITCHf/x era is said to have started in 2007, and that is indeed when the numbers linking individual pitches to their outcomes begin.

Unfortunately, it’s not very instructive to say that Martinez’s changeup had the 42nd-best swinging strike rate among the 78 pitchers that threw at least 300 changeups in 2008. Pedro was 38 years old that year, and though he pitched over 100 innings, by wins above replacement it was the worst effort of his career. Not a great time to test the legend.

Over at FanGraphs, though, we have Baseball Info Solutions data back to 2002. That year, Pedro won 20 games and had probably the third-best season of his career. He was 31, and it wasn’t his best year, and the numbers come to us from humans rather than computers, but it’s the best we can do with available statistics.

Here’s how Pedro’s change, curve, and fastball did that season by swinging strikes. Whiffs are not the only way to judge a pitch, but they are what we have on hand currently — and the pitcher never had an above-average overall grounder rate, so it’s not likely his individual pitches were elite by that measure either. By whiffs at least, he was comfortably above the league’s averages with those three pitches.

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As most of you know, I grew up in Seattle. My parents owned their own small business not far from Sea-Tac Airport, which meant that I spent a lot of after-school time at an auto parts store, trying to entertain myself with things that were of minimal interest to a child. But the store had a radio, and in the spring and summer, KIRO 710 broadcast baseball games. Combined with access to 25-cent packs of baseball cards at the 7-11 down the street, baseball became my babysitter.

We didn’t have a television until I was a bit older, and my parents worked too much to take us to the Kingdome very often, so I fell in love with the sport through the radio broadcasts of Dave Niehaus. I was taught about the game by his play-by-play calls, as neither of my parents were big sports fans, and the mid-80s Mariners weren’t exactly the kind of team that drew in anyone but those who truly loved the sport. I essentially became the sole reason my Mom and Dad paid any attention to baseball at all; even their moderate interest was mostly because, being good parents, they wanted to be involved in the things that I enjoyed.

I’m writing about this because, two weeks ago, I became a father, and in between diaper changes, I’ve been thinking about my son’s future relationship with baseball. How am I going to introduce him to the game? How am I going to teach him not just about the sport of baseball, but about being a fan?

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Do you guys want to yell about the Hall of Fame just a little bit more? I feel like there hasn’t been enough of that lately. It’s not my intention for this post to cause yelling, but it seems any discussion about the Hall of Fame inevitably leads to yelling, so let’s get to it.

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Earlier this off-season, the Chicago Cubs began work on their long-awaited renovations to Wrigley Field. The team launched phase one of the project in October, tearing down the stadium’s existing bleachers with the hope of rebuilding and expanding them in time for Opening Day. In addition, the $575 million project will eventually include new clubhouses, luxury suites, concession areas and signage throughout the stadium — as well as the construction of a nearby hotel and office-building complex.

Unless, that is, owners of the rooftops overlooking Wrigley Field get their way. These building owners have filed two lawsuits over the past four months — the first coming this past August, and the second on Thursday — in an attempt to stop the renovations. In particular, the rooftop owners fear that two new scoreboards to be constructed as part of the renovation project will block their views into the stadium, threatening the roughly $20 million in annual ticket revenue the rooftops currently generate.

In an interesting twist, though, rather than suing the Cubs, the building owners have instead sued the City of Chicago in the hopes of having the renovation halted. Understanding why the rooftop owners would sue the city, rather than the team, requires some knowledge of the lengthy history of the dispute.

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The 2015 FAN Projection ballots are now open!

Before you can project any players, you’ll have to select the team you follow most closely towards the top of the screen. If you really don’t follow a team, just pick one. You’ll only have to do this once.

After you’ve selected a team, there are 9 categories for pitchers and 10 categories for position players. Pick the values in the drop-down boxes closest to what you think the player will do in 2015, hit the submit button and you’re done! If you made a mistake, you can always go back and change your selection at any time.

Please note that everything this year is a rate stat. You’re projecting 2B+3B, HR, SB, and Fielding as a measure of 150 games (basically a full season). The player’s previous stats are shown per 150 games in the projection ballot too. This will make changing playing time projections much easier as you’ll only have to change the games played portion.

That’s really all there is to it. You can filter players by team, or if you go to the player pages, you can project players individually. If you want to see all the players you’ve projected, you can click on the “My Rankings” button which will show you only what you specifically projected a player to do.

Fan Projections will show up on the player pages after there have been 5 ballots submitted.

If you do notice any issues, please let us know.

Hyun-Jin Ryu isn’t the best Dodger starter, because Clayton Kershaw exists. He’s not the second-best Dodger starter, because Zack Greinke exists. If you can’t even make a case for being one of the two best starters on your own team, it’s going to be very difficult to make the case that you’re one of the better starters in the game. “No. 3 starter” just doesn’t have that much appeal to it, as recent third bananas like Doug Fister or Anibal Sanchez can attest to.

Being fortunate — or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it — enough to be paired with the truly elite starters in the game shouldn’t affect how you’re viewed, of course. Any player should be judged on his own merits and compared to the full population of pitchers, not just those who happen to share a clubhouse. In the same way that it’s foolish to think that Maikel Franco and Addison Russell are equal players just because they are ranked as the No. 2 prospect for their respective franchises, you can’t assume that Ryu and, say, Ricky Nolasco are of equal value because they’re the third-best starter on their team.

All of which is a long way of getting to the point, which is this: Ryu has proven himself to be one of baseball’s outstanding pitchers in his two seasons in America, and none of us — us here at FanGraphs included, unfortunately — seem to talk about him that way.

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the New York Mets. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Chicago AL / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Oakland / San Francisco / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Washington.

Batters
Mets batters produced 18.2 WAR collectively in 2014, an almost precisely average figure among the league’s 30 clubs. Given the projections below, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them replicate that effort in 2015. All eight of the team’s likely starters are forecast to produce something between 0.9 and 3.8 WAR — and six of them, between 1.8 to 3.1 WAR.

An area of some interest with regard to the club seems to be how Terry Collins et al. contend with Lucas Duda and Lucas Duda’s difficulties with left-handed pitching. Despite a strong 2014 season, the Mets first baseman produced only a 54 wRC+ against left handers. By way of comparison, the worst overall figure among the game’s 146 qualified batters in 2014 was Zack Cozart’s 56 wRC+. Either John Mayberry (333 PA, -0.1 WAR) or even Eric Campbell (416 PA, 0.5 WAR) are candidates to platoon with Duda.

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The White Sox have had an incredibly busy offseason, but the goal’s always been clear. The Padres, too, have had a busy offseason, striving for an obvious purpose. Right before the Padres took the industry by storm, it was the Dodgers who were making moves every half hour, toward, again, a clear goal of contention. The A’s have had their own busy offseason, but theirs had been more confusing. Giving three guaranteed years to Billy Butler seemed like a move for a team trying to win. Dealing away a long-term asset like Josh Donaldson seemed like the opposite. To Oakland’s credit, though, they stuck to their own message — they weren’t trying to rebuild. They don’t believe in rebuilds. And now we can see how things all come together.

When the Rays signed Asdrubal Cabrera, after having acquired Nick Franklin last summer, they were provided the flexibility to move Ben Zobrist in advance of his contract year. Zobrist, of course, appealed to just about every team in baseball, on account of his talent and flexibility. Now Zobrist has been moved, and he’s been moved to the A’s, along with Yunel Escobar, in exchange for John Jaso, Daniel Robertson, and Boog Powell. The trade’s interesting from the Tampa Bay side, just because it involves moving one of the best players on the team. And the trade’s interesting from the Oakland side, because it adds a great player at little short-term cost. Score yet another point for those who issue reminders that you shouldn’t judge offseasons until they’re complete.

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Ben and Sam banter about Ryan Lavarnway and Billy Beane fan fiction, then discuss the Ben Zobrist trade.

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