In yet another sign that baseball season is coming ever closer, the arbitration process this year is coming to a close. Many players signed one-year deals before the teams and players exchanged numbers last month, while others exchanged numbers and struck one-year deals. A few players have actually gone to arbitration. Four players — Lorenzo Cain, Josh Donaldson, J.D. Martinez, and A.J. Pollock — agreed to two-year deals with their teams, buying out no free-agent seasons, but ensuring both parties that arbitration would not be necessary next year. These two-year deals are common and typically come with a discount for the team. For the four players who signed this season, however, there was no discount.

The arbitration process is set up to provide a discount to teams in the years just before free agency. The players get their first taste of actual millions while the team retains control of the player at a price much less than what the market would yield — all without having to mark a multi-year commitment. Some players sign extensions which takie them through free agency while others are non-tendered and set free by clubs who think that even the small, arbitration-produced salaries are too much compared to the expected production.

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Well, that didn’t take long. Yesterday, I addressed the White Sox desperate need to bolster their rotation to be taken seriously as a contender, and suggested Yovani Gallardo as a sensible addition. The White Sox apparently agreed with me on the first count and rendered the second moot by agreeing to terms with Mat Latos just hours after the post went up.

The deal went down for one year and $3 million, a figure that jumps out as being essentially nothing in today’s free agency landscape. Especially so, when you consider what Latos was expected to receive:

Looking just at guaranteed dollars, it’s the fourth-cheapest contract of the offseason, relative to the crowd’s guess. The crowd expected Latos would earn $22 million this offseason, and what he actually got was $3 million.

Look beyond that, and Latos’ deal stands out even more. We all know about the funky Cespedes contract, and even though he got $57 million fewer guaranteed than expected, that’s largely offset by him actually getting a higher AAV. Iwakuma’s price tag dropped after failing a physical. Gordon got an equal AAV, just one fewer year. In terms of just AAV, Latos is the bargain of the offseason, so far, according to this one-track methodology. His AAV is $8 million less than the crowd predicted; no other free agent has had a gap larger than $4 million.

How did this gap come to be? Did the crowd wildly overestimate Latos’ value? Did the White Sox get a total steal?

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Previous editions: Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati  / Cleveland.

Earlier this week, lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth published his excellently in-depth prospect list for the Colorado Rockies. In this companion piece, I look at that same Colorado farm system through the lens of my recently refined KATOH projection system. There’s way more to prospect evaluation than just the stats, so if you haven’t already, I highly recommend you read Dan’s piece in addition to this one. KATOH has no idea how hard a pitcher throws, how good a hitter’s bat speed is, or what a player’s makeup is like. So it’s liable to miss big on players whose tools don’t line up with their performances. However, when paired with more scouting-based analyses, KATOH’s objectivity can be useful in identifying talented players who might be overlooked by the industry consensus or highly-touted prospects who might be over-hyped.

Below, I’ve grouped prospects into three groups: those who are forecast for two or more wins through their first six major-league seasons, those who receive a projection between 1.0 and 2.0 WAR though their first six seasons, and then any residual players who received Future Value (FV) grades of 45 or higher from Dan. Note that I generated forecasts only for players who accrued at least 200 plate appearances or batters faced last season. Also note that the projections for players over a relatively small sample are less reliable, especially when those samples came in the low minors.

1. Trevor Story, SS (Profile)

KATOH Projection: 7.2 WAR
Dan’s Grade: 50 FV

Story’s prospect trajectory resembles a bathtub curve — which is to say it’s gone from high to low and back to high again. Drafted 45th overall back in 2011, he got off to a strong start in the low minors, but hit a wall as soon as he reached High-A. Story got back on track in 2015 when he hit .279/.350/.514 between Double-A and Triple-A with 20 homers and 22 steals. Story was one of the top offensive performers in the high minors last year, which is mighty impressive for a shortstop. His 25% strikeout rate is cause for concern, but is largely outweighed by everything else he does well.

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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 Tampa Bay Rays. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Oakland / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Texas / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Tampa Bay center fielder Kevin Kiermaier hasn’t merely recorded more wins than every other 31st-round selection from the 2010 draft, but he appears also to have recorded more wins than all but six players — including (and, it would seem, limited to) Adam Eaton, Bryce Harper, Matt Harvey, Manny Machado, Chris Sale, and Andrelton Simmons — from that same draft class. What else he’s done is to distinguish himself as the prohibitive star of your 2016 Rays. Taken out of Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois, Kiermaier has now produced a 9.5 WAR in fewer than two full seasons’ worth of plate appearances. His projection for the 2016 campaign (521 PA, 4.2 zWAR) calls for roughly a repeat of the same.

After Kiermaier, the 2016 iteration of the club appears to be an exercise in uninspiring competence. Desmond Jennings is roughly average. Logan Forsythe and Brad Miller are roughly average. Whoever’s platooning in right field is likely to provide a roughly average platoon. The club’s weaknesses are at designated hitter and first base. Neither Logan Morrison (445 PA, 0.0 zWAR) nor James Loney (498 PA, 0.0 zWAR) appear well-equipped to benefit the team at either position.

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Ben and Sam discuss why teams don’t pay a premium for elite free agents and why players who switch positions might not always do so smoothly.

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Last night, the Jays avoided arbitration with Josh Donaldson, agreeing to a two year deal that gives him nearly $29 million in guaranteed income, and helps the team avoid a second huge raise next year if Donaldson has another great year. The team had publicly stated their desire to get Donaldson locked up long-term, but as a Super Two coming off an MVP season, Donaldson had plenty of leverage to get paid while still retaining his ability to hit free agency after the 2018 season. The team can still revisit a longer deal with Donaldson if they wish, but most likely, this two year deal signifies that he’s not looking to sell any of his free agent years at prices the Blue Jays are currently willing to pay.

So, now, with that piece of business out of the way, the Blue Jays focus can turn towards a more pressing contract issue: what to do with star outfielder Jose Bautista. The face of the franchise, Bautista is in the final year of his contract, and will likely be the best hitter on the market next winter if the Blue Jays can’t sign him to an extension this spring. Both sides have publicly stated an interest in getting a deal done, though with the Jays bringing in Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins from Cleveland to run their baseball operations department, there’s some expectation that the club will operate a bit more conservatively, and that could limit their willingness to pay Bautista the kind of money that would convince him to forego free agency.

On the other hand, there’s clearly a lot of sentiment towards just giving Joey Bats whatever he wants, and the team will face significant negative backlash if they let Bautista leave, at least in the short-term. So even with some expected belt-tightening, let’s see if we can construct an extension that both sides would be happy with.

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The Oakland A’s had a nightmarish season in 2015. They had the biggest difference in Base Runs vs. actual record out of any team since 2002. Their bullpen had historically-bad timing. And, finally, their defensive issues were on display most of the year, especially in the early stages of the season when they were on pace for a record-breaking number of errors. The infield was mostly to blame for the last problem, with Brett Lawrie and Marcus Semien routinely exhibiting the sort of lapses that have mostly been excised from players by the time they make it to the majors. It was ugly, and it was a part of why the A’s buried themselves in a hole in the AL West standings before the season was even a third of the way through.

Through May 21st of 2015, the A’s were on pace 169 errors, which would have been the most since the year 2000 by a fairly wide margin. Here’s a graphic from the previously-linked post from May 22nd of last season that shows the error gulf we were witnessing:

The A’s finished with only 126 errors, missing out on a particularly ignominious title. However, much of the defensive blame fell squarely on Semien during the early parts of the season, and for good reason: at the time of the May post, he had accounted for 16 of Oakland’s fielding and throwing errors. By the end of May, some were claiming that the A’s might not be able to afford to keep his glove at shortstop, despite his strong production at the plate. But the team did something about it: they hired Ron Washington to tutor the young shortstop on defense, and he started doing so on May 22nd. They got right to work, with Semien doing throwing mechanics drills, and often fielding ground balls with a plank-like glove to soften his hands:

His pregame fielding routine begins by taking grounders with a “flat glove.” Rather than a soft pocket, it has a flat surface, which forces a player to field the ball with soft hands. Semien fields balls to his left, then his right with the flat glove. Only after that does he slip on his regular glove.

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