If you’ve been wondering just how slow this offseason has been, Travis Sawchik has the answer for you: it is the slowest ever. Writing about the glacial pace of the market, Sawchik addressed both the short-term problem — that too many players need to find jobs — and hinted at possible longer-term issues caused by the current collective bargaining agreement, as well.

Whether the current issues will persist in subsequent years is a good question. Next winter, when Bryce Harper signs for $400 million or something, ownership’s reluctance to spend on the current free-agent class might seem like a distant memory. It is possible that a few of next offseason’s signings, however, will simply paper over issues that are likely to endure for the next half-decade.

One of the prominent theories regarding this slow winter has been that teams are saving up for a run at free agency next winter. That might help explain why, even after all of the current free agents find homes, total league-wide payroll in 2018 is likely to be comparable to 2017’s mark. The theory is that teams could be avoiding major commitments this year to save up for a bonanza next year. Perhaps that’s hypothesis will bear fruit. In order to make up for next offseason to compensate for this winter’s relative lack of activity, two conditions need to be met. First, next year’s crop of free agents will need to be composed of much better players and, second, teams will have to spend well beyond current levels.

Let’s start with the players involved. Harper and Manny Machado headline next year’s free-agent class. There’s really nobody close to those two this year. With each set to turn just 26 years old in 2019, both Harper and Machado seem likely to double the highest guarantee of any player this winter. After that pair, we find Charlie Blackmon, Josh Donaldson, Clayton Kershaw (who has an opt-out), and Dallas Keuchel. Blackmon and Donaldson are a little bit older than their free-agent peers, but both have been excellent in recent seasons.

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“I think prudence and judgment would indicate that those long-term, late-in-career deals in any era have generally not turned out to be very good decisions. I think we’ve been right to [avoid lucrative free agent deals]. I think we’ll be even more right in the next era.”

— Pirates owner Bob Nutting

“We believe [the players’ revenue share] is well below 50 [percent]. Show me a team, after you go through the general fund without selling a ticket, that’s not making $120 million. So where is it going?… Where are [owners] spending it?”

— Agent Scott Boras

This author gathered those quotes for a story that appeared on May 30, 2015, in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

For many players, trouble did not then seem to be on the horizon. When I asked then-Pirates player rep Neil Walker about teams running their operations more efficiently and the possibility of owners taking a greater share of revenues, Walker seemed untroubled. “Frankly, at this point,” he said, “we don’t see it as much of a concern.”

To be fair, owners went out and guaranteed a record $2.4 billion to free agents that following offseason. But then the trouble really began to bubble up for players. Spending declined by a billion dollars the following winter and sits at $746 million to date this offseason, according to Spotrac. As Craig Edwards recently noted, MLB Opening Day payroll could decrease for the first time in a long time.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about February rituals and the start and format of the sixth annual EW season preview series, as well as transaction inactivity and another player trampoline sighting. Then they preview the 2018 Astros (9:43) with The Ringer’s Michael Baumann, and the 2018 White Sox (40:45) with White Sox and ESPN broadcaster Jason Benetti.

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As ESPN’s Christina Kahrl noted last week on Twitter, perhaps it is spending that is the new market inefficiency.

After all, who anticipated that Brewers would be responsible for the greatest free-agent deal to date? And tonight, another team in something of a no-man’s land has made its second splash of the New Year, perhaps sensing opportunity.

The Mets entered Monday forecast to finish 80-82. They’ve passed the offseason firmly entrenched in that space between the Haves and Have Nots, a space fewer teams seem interested in inhabiting. But with the addition of Todd Frazier, they appear to have paid relatively little for a player who can help at third or first base, positions at which Asdrubal Cabrera and Dominic Smith, respectively, sat atop the club’s depth chart entering the day.

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The Marlins have already had what would be a record-setting sell-off. Not only have they completely dismantled arguably the best outfield in baseball; they’ve also traded away a quality second baseman about to move to center. So, in a sense, the Marlins’ teardown has involved the trading of four starting outfielders, and there’s only so much meaningful selling left to do. Dan Straily could get something, sure. Justin Bour is better than his pretty much non-existent reputation. Yet the one jewel left is J.T. Realmuto. He’d be the ticket to one last Miami blockbuster.

Realmuto is a catcher who turns only 27 years old in a month and a half, and he’s got another three seasons of club control. As a player, Realmuto is incredibly valuable, and, even more, he’s expressed an interest in getting the chance to play for someone else. Even though Realmuto’s actual leverage here is low, the Marlins wouldn’t hesitate to grant his wish, should the right offer come along. And, say, wouldn’t you know it, but the Nationals could use a quality backstop! Matt Wieters probably shouldn’t be that guy. Miguel Montero isn’t likely to be that guy. The Nationals have been included in catcher rumors all offseason long.

It seems like there should be a reasonable fit. And maybe something here will actually happen. It’s just that there’s a stumbling block: The Nationals are already perhaps too good.

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Below is our list of the top-100 prospects in baseball. Scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data, industry sources, as well as from our own observations.

Note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal rankings. For example, the gap between prospect No. 5 on this list, Fernando Tatis Jr., and prospect No. 35, Corbin Burnes, is 30 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent there. The gap between Ke’Bryan Hayes (No. 56) and Leody Taveras (No. 86), meanwhile, is also 30 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. Below the list is a brief rundown of names of 50 FV prospects who didn’t make the 100. This same comparative principle applies to them.

As a quick explanation, variance means the range of possible outcomes in the big leagues, in terms of peak season. If we feel like a prospect could reasonably have a best big league season of anywhere from one to five wins/WAR, then that would be “high” whereas someone like Colin Moran where it’s something like two to three wins/WAR is “low.” High variance can be read as good since it allows for lots of ceiling, or bad since it allows for a lower floor. Your risk tolerance could lead you to sort by variance within a given FV tier if you feel strongly about variance. Here is a primer about the connection between FV and WAR.

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Over the last couple weeks, I have taken a look at the unenviable position in which the Major League Baseball Players Association currently finds itself. Although the glacial pace of free-agent signings this offseason has helped to highlight the extent to which the sport’s existing economic model increasingly favors ownership, the union is relatively powerless to change its trajectory.

Indeed, because there is currently not much of value that the players can offer the owners in collective bargaining, the union has comparatively little leverage over the owners, and thus presently would appear to have relatively little hope of substantially improving its position in the next round of CBA negotiations in 2021 (although much can, of course, change between now and then).

That does not necessarily mean the union’s position is hopeless; however, securing the sort of modifications to the game’s economic structure that will be necessary to substantially improve the players’ financial position may require the MLBPA to engage in some outside-the-box thinking, at least as compared to its recent operating procedure. And as Buster Olney recently observed, it’s never too early for the union to develop a long-term strategy ahead of the 2021 CBA negotiations.

So what can the union do? Realistically, because the owners are unlikely to voluntarily agree to substantially better the players’ financial position, the MLBPA will probably have to adopt a more adversarial negotiating posture in 2021 than it has in recent years if it wishes to substantially change the current economic structure of the sport. That would mean that players should be ready to head into the 2021 CBA talks anticipating a work stoppage, potentially a rather lengthy one.

And it also means that the union should at least consider preparing to do what for many would have long been  unthinkable: disband the MLBPA. While certainly a drastic step, dissolving the union could help provide the players with additional leverage of the sort needed to secure some real concessions from ownership, concessions of the sort that could meaningfully improve the players’ financial position.

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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 Chicago Cubs. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Dan Szymborski’s computer projects only three Cubs — Kris Bryant (670 PA, 5.8 zWAR), Anthony Rizzo (658, 4.9), and Addison Russell (508, 3.0) — to produce three wins or more in 2018, yet all eight of the positions on the depth-chart image below are forecast to reach that mark (within a rounding error, at least).

The cause of that discrepancy is as obvious as the deep, unabating terror in every mortal heart: the Cubs use platoons often and to good effect. Ben Zobrist (478, 1.9), for example, lacks a set role but is likely to complement Javier Baez (507, 1.7) and Jason Heyward (538, 2.3) at second base and right field, respectively. Ian Happ (545, 2.2), meanwhile, will probably share center and left fields with Albert Almora (437, 1.2) and Kyle Schwarber (511, 1.2).

As for weaknesses, no obvious one exists in the starting lineup as it’s presently constructed. That said, neither Almora nor Schwarber seem to be great candidates for a full-time role on a championship club — or, not according to ZiPS, at least. Were Happ to suffer an injury or fail to compensate for his strikeout rates with sufficient power on contact, then the team might be compelled to look for help elsewhere.

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Mike Shawaryn hadn’t put much thought into it. Finger pressure is instrumental in his success, both as a pitcher and as a musician, but how the two intertwine isn’t a subject he’d addressed. Not until I broached the subject this winter.

A 22-year-old right-hander out of the University of Maryland, Shawaryn is one of the top prospects in the Red Sox system (Baseball America has him No. 8; Eric Longenagen expects to rank him similarly when he puts together his forthcoming Red Sox list). Displaying a power arsenal, he fanned 169 batters in 134-and-two-thirds innings last year between low-A Greenville and high-A Salem.

When he’s not blowing away hitters, Shawaryn is playing the piano and the saxophone — and he’s a neophyte with neither. Boston’s pick in the fifth round of the 2016 draft has been tickling the ivories and blowing on a sax ever since his elementary school days in South Jersey.

Both instruments require dexterous fingers. Ditto pitching, where you’re gripping and releasing an object whose movement is influenced by the placement of digits on seams. Is there a direct correlation?

“I’ve never really thought about it like that, but the feel of the ball in your hand is obviously important,” Shawaryn said after first contemplating the idea. “Now, kind of connecting the dots, I’d say it’s the piano more so than the saxophone. The pressure you put on the keys determines the sound of it, the shape of the music. That’s probably helped me develop a type of feel in my fingers for the seams on the ball — what fingers I need to put pressure on to influence the shape of a pitch.”

And then there are rhythm and tempo. Pitchers change speeds within an at bat, and musicians change speeds within a song. Read the rest of this entry »