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

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / San Diego / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Most everyone has become comfortable with the fact that Mike Trout (680 PA, 9.0 zWAR) is the world’s best living ballplayer. Merely because one has grown accustomed to his excellence, however, doesn’t preclude one from wanting to have that greatness illustrated periodically. Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections facilitate an opportunity to do that. ZiPS, like other projection systems, is inherently conservative. Despite that, Trout is forecast for nine wins. For reference, consider that, since 2011, a player has reached the nine-win threshold on just six occasions. (On four of those occasions, of course, the player in question was Trout himself.) By definition, a nine-win season is an outlier. Nevertheless, Szymborski’s computer has suggested that as the median outcome for Trout in 2017.

Beyond Trout, unfortunately, there’s little reason for enthusiasm here. Kole Calhoun (620, 3.0) and Andrelton Simmons (574, 3.4) offer some promise. Of the remaining six positions on the club’s offensive depth chart, though, five of them are expected to produce only about a win.

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For the fourth consecutive year, Ben and Sam draft the 20 minor league free agents they hope will earn the most major league playing time next season.

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While answering a question in my chat last Friday, I wound up navigating to Billy Butler’s player page, and then I casually noticed that since he debuted a decade ago, he’s been worth about -9 wins on the bases. In the moment, that didn’t seem like something that was going to stick in my mind, but, here we are. You’re going to get a whole article about this.

Look, everyone knows that Billy Butler isn’t much of a baserunner. Butler certainly knows, which is why he laughs and calls attention to himself whenever he does anything good out there. I’ve written about his baserunning before, and it’s hard to go back to this without feeling like I’m making fun. My intention isn’t to be cruel. It’s just, hey, this is a site where we talk about numbers, and some of his numbers are crazy. Butler built a career around his bat, and he has a lifetime 115 wRC+. That’s great. Very few people on planet Earth could do that over one month, much less 10 years. Yet, as Butler’s bat has provided positive value, his legs have given some of that back. He’s nearly the worst baserunner of all time.

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Earlier today, the Boston Red Sox traded starting pitcher Clay Buchholz to the Phillies in exchange for minor-league infielder Josh Tobias. In so doing, both teams have more or less crystallized their plans for their 2017 starting rotations.

For the Red Sox, this is about nailing down just who will be on the 2017 pitching staff. In his remarks to reporters, Red Sox head honcho Dave Dombrowski made specific mention that he feels the team is done wheeling and dealing for the 2017 squad, save some depth moves. In other words, those who are on the roster right now are the players with which the team expects to move forward. So, who are they? Let’s take a look:

Definite Starting Pitchers:

• Chris Sale
• David Price
• Rick Porcello
• Eduardo Rodriguez

Likely Starting Pitchers:

• Drew Pomeranz
• Steven Wright

As you can see, the rotation picture is now a lot more clear. Before Buchholz was traded, you had to wonder what his role would be. He pitched begrudgingly in relief last season, but his clear preference was to be in the rotation. But with six qualified starters ahead of him on the depth chart, that didn’t seem to be a likely scenario. And if it weren’t, how much fuss would Buchholz kick up? We’ll never have to find out now that he has been dealt.

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We’ve gone through five years of having the wild-card playoffs, and I think people are pretty happy. Maybe Pirates fans are slightly less happy, but the whole thing has worked out. Yet there was concern! There was concern that it was a money grab. Short of that, there was concern that baseball was trying to inject some manufactured drama. One-game playoffs, so the line of thinking went, were best when organic. Having them every single season could and would take something away from the sanctity of the division races.

Again, I think it’s going well. One-game playoffs are always dramatic, regardless of why they’re being played. The division races are still important, because winning is the only way to bypass the elimination game. And sometimes baseball just needs the extra suspense. Now, even with just one wild card, that race could still be plenty tense. The division races, though, haven’t always been. And this year there might not be a single race at all.

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The White Sox are blowing it up, having traded Chris Sale and Adam Eaton in blockbuster deals on back-to-back days at the Winter Meetings. They are almost certainly not done, with other attractive veterans like David Robertson and Todd Frazier as trade chips, either this winter or before the summer trade deadline. But for teams looking for make a bigger splash, the White Sox have one more big trade to make, as they haven’t yet moved Jose Quintana, one of the game’s best pitchers, and a guy who is signed for four more years at bargain prices.

And for a while now, whenever anyone asked where I thought Quintana would end up, I would name the Houston Astros as the best fit. The Astros already have a very good team, but they’re a step below the best teams in baseball, and adding a frontline pitcher like Quintana seems like a way for a team with a strong young core to solidify their status as contenders both this year and for the future. Quintana’s modest salary would not prevent them from keeping any of their young stars in Houston, and since he’s around for the next four years, they could justify giving up some of the valuable young talent for which they might not have room.

The Astros have the means to get Quintana, and as a contender who could use an upgrade to keep up with Boston and the big boys in the National League, it’s not that hard to make a case for why they should push hard to land Chicago’s other ace. But the more I looked at the Astros roster, the more I began to wonder whether Houston really needs Quintana after all.

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Ben and Sam banter about good deeds by two podcast listeners, then discuss several topics inspired by a selection of baseball writers’ self-selected favorite stories from 2016, including pitcher abuse, fans running on the field, and the home run spike.

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Somewhere around two years and $6 million a year: those appear to be the terms for a certain kind of match this offseason. A match between budget-conscious teams seeking to acquire meaningful (if flawed) talent and players willing to forgo a bigger one-year deal in order to gain an extra year of security. Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, Wilson Ramos, Sean Rodriguez, even Junichi Tazawa — they’ve all given us brief glimpses into above-average work, and longer looks at less exciting work.

In a way, Daniel Hudson fits right into this collection of players: according to Jeff Passan, he received a two-year, $11 million deal from the Pirates. If he’s their closer for the next two years, that will be a bargain; he could also return hardly anything. In either case, discussing the deal in such simple terms is selling his story way, way too short.

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