“This is maybe the most unique circumstance in baseball that I can recall. It is all about how you as a city, as an organization and as human beings appeal to an individual, rather than the final paycheck. In my lifetime, that’s really never been a thing.”

—Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto

This author certainly cannot remember a more interesting courtship in the history of free agency. Once Shohei Ohtani is officially available — he’s expected to be posted Friday or Saturday after an owner’s vote on the posting agreement — he will have 21 days to make a decision. After that, the world will wait. Teams will recruit.

That recruiting effort became more interesting over the weekend, as Ohtani’s, agent, Nez Balelo of CAA Baseball, sent something of an exam to all 30 clubs, a development first reported by The Associated Press.

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Chatter has been picking up that Major League Baseball will introduce a pitch clock in 2018. It’s felt like an inevitable development for some time, with the clock having been in place in the upper minors for the last few years. Reactions have been mixed, because reactions are always mixed, but the pitch clock is coming, and it’s probably going to be fine. We’ll get used to it, everyone will get used to it, and the game will remain by and large the same.

I made a point about the pitch clock last week. According to early reports, the proposed clock would only be used when the bases are empty, and I pointed out that the game only really slows down after somebody reaches. When there’s a runner on base, pitchers have more to worry about, so it makes sense that they’d work slower. But I don’t want to make this all about pitchers. We tend to think of pitchers as being responsible for dictating the pace. They are, after all, the guys holding the baseballs. But in any at-bat, there are two parties involved. As Buster Olney wrote in his report, no batter in the National League averaged more time between pitches than Odubel Herrera. And no batter in either league averaged more time between pitches than Marwin Gonzalez.

On average last year, overall, there were 24.2 seconds between pitches. For Gonzalez, that average was 29.5. That was up from the previous year’s 27.2, and up from his career low of 24.4. Pitching to Gonzalez was most recently 22% slower than pitching to a league-average hitter. Just as a pitch clock will make certain pitchers hurry up, it would have the same effect on certain hitters. At least, given proper enforcement.

I imagine we can mostly agree that’s a good thing. There’s baseball’s normal, familiar pace, and there are the players who push it too far. Wasted seconds benefit no one, and there’s no need for there to be just two pitches every minute. Players will need to maintain a good tempo. What effect this all ultimately has, we’ll have to see. Yet there’s one question we can answer right now: What in the heck is Marwin Gonzalez even doing?

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
The 2017 campaign wasn’t what anyone would characterize as an “overwhelming success” for Cincinnati. The club finished 26 games under .500. Their BaseRuns record wasn’t much better, either. All in all, it was the sort of season one might expect from a rebuilding club.

A brief inspection of the numbers, however, reveals that the club’s position players were actually pretty good. Due largely to a defensive performance rated highly both by DRS and UZR, the Reds’ batters and fielders recorded the 10th-best WAR in the league. The team’s pitchers, meanwhile, ranked 30th by that measure. The split was the second largest in all the league.

The defense should be a strength once again in 2018. While free agent Zack Cozart (projected for +7 runs at shortstop and 3.0 zWAR overall) is unlikely to return to Cincinnati, both catcher Tucker Barnhart (+9, 2.5) and center fielder Billy Hamilton (+12, 2.3) return to a roster populated mostly by average-or-better fielders.

As for Joey Votto (5.3 zWAR), he isn’t projected to be an elite defender. He is, however, forecast to be the club’s best player — by a couple wins, in this case. Eugenio Suarez (3.5 zWAR) is the team’s other All-Star candidate according to the projections.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a slow week in baseball and the likely effects of MLB’s impending pitch clock, then talk to former front-office executive (and former FanGraphs writer) Tony Blengino about how baseball brain trusts could and should be crafting their responses to the seven questions that Shohei Ohtani’s agent recently sent to teams.

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Somewhat quietly, the Rangers have ended up in a difficult situation. We tend to think of the Rangers as perennial contenders, and they’ve established a fairly good record of success, but they could be approaching a cliff. In the same way you see the Orioles as a club that could be rebuilding a year from now, the Rangers aren’t too different, now that Yu Darvish is gone and Cole Hamels has declined. Just like every other club, the Rangers are interested in Shohei Ohtani, but just like every other club, the Rangers have to understand they probably aren’t going to get him. They don’t occupy an enviable spot.

What the Rangers haven’t done, however, is throw in the towel. There is still a path to short-term success, even should Ohtani go somewhere else. It requires the Rangers to be smart with their money, trying to get the most bang for their buck. They’re presently on the verge of signing Doug Fister. Last I heard, all that’s left is a physical. This is a good start. Fister should supply some immediate help.

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The Cardinals are trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. They’ve made no secret of their off-season plan to consolidate some of their young talent into a trade for an impact hitter, and Stanton seems to be Plan A. But they aren’t the only team trying to trade for the reigning NL MVP, and reports have suggested the Giants might be the most aggressive bidder so far. Additionally, Stanton might have some preference for playing on the west coast, and since he has a full no-trade clause, Stanton could just veto a trade to STL if he thought he had some chance of going to SF instead.

So the Cardinals might want Giancarlo Stanton and even line up best with the Marlins in a trade, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. And thus, the Cardinals should have some kind of Plan B. So let me suggest that, while the Blue Jays continue to say they aren’t trading their star player, the Cardinals should be pestering Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins about making a deal for Josh Donaldson.

Because a Donaldson-to-STL trade might make even more sense than a Stanton trade.

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We love debating which baseball players deserve to be designated as the “best of all time.” In the last year alone, I personally have written about Larry Walker‘s case to be regarded as one of them, as well as Andruw Jones’s. Over at The Hardball Times, we publish a piece that explores this notion seemingly every month, sometimes more. Two years ago, we devoted a whole week to the matter. In almost every case, these debates revolve around a player’s credentials for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. But now, more than ever, the institution is unworthy of that authority.

I’m not suggesting everyone should cease attempting to identify baseball’s top players or most influential figures. History is important. I just don’t think that the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum should be the focus of this attention or serve as the arbiter of these decisions. One thing that struck me repeatedly while reading Jay Jaffe’s book, The Cooperstown Casebook, earlier this year is just how relentlessly the Hall of Fame has failed at the task of electing the best players to its institution.

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Last week at the site, Craig Edwards attempted to estimate each club’s free-agent spending power for the offseason. The task is a difficult one. Because major-league clubs aren’t tax-funded public institutions, one can’t simply file a Freedom of Information Act request to view each team’s finances. It’s necessary, therefore, to use a club’s past payroll figures as a guide to the future.

One of the most interesting results from Edwards’ exercise concerns the Phillies. By Edwards’ methodology, Philadelphia has about $70 million available to spend this offseason, trailing only the rebuilding Tigers in that regard. They might even have more potential spending power than that: despite residing in one of the largest markets in the country, the Phillies have only an estimated $37 million in projected salary after arbitration.

The Phillies, like a host of teams, have been connected to Giancarlo Stanton this offseason. That makes some sense, as they could easily take on Stanton’s contract. The Phillies could add Stanton and still have another $40-plus million to add additional help and try and accelerate their return to competitiveness.

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