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Yesterday, the Marlins agreed to sign outfielder Christian Yelich to a deal that guarantees him at least $51 million over seven years, locking up one of the game’s best young players. This morning, Rob Bradford of WEEI.com reported that the Red Sox are considering approaching Mookie Betts about signing a long-term deal of his own, which might both serve to lock in some future cost savings as well as temper the speculation about if they’ll use Betts as a trade chip to relieve their outfield logjam. The timing of Yelich’s deal and the rumored possible offer for Betts serves as an opportunity to look at them side by side, and note that while they’re physically quite different, they might be pretty similar players going forward.

Certainly, Yelich and Betts don’t look similar. Yelich is six inches taller, standing at 6-foot-3 compared to the 5-foot-9 Betts. Besides just the size difference, Yelich hits from the left side while Betts is a right-handed batter. If you watched them both swing, you wouldn’t necessarily draw a connection between them.

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Yesterday, Lyle Spencer of MLB.com published some fascinating results to a question he posed to “18 Major League executives and managers from 12 clubs in Arizona.” That question: “You are starting a franchise with a focus on the future, not one season. Which three players, excluding those on your own team, would be your top choices?”

Unsurprisingly, the top two vote getters in Spencer’s poll were the reigning MVPs of each league, Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. Trout’s the best player in baseball. Kershaw’s the best pitcher in baseball. In both cases, there isn’t really an argument about those designations. These guys are the cream of their crop, and both are still young enough to be considered at the beginning of their careers.

After those two, though, opinions started to diverge, with no player being mentioned by more than four of the sources polled; including Trout and Kershaw, 15 different players were named as a guy these front office members said they would want to build their team around. While I will admit that a few of the names on the list caused me to scratch my head, I figured that rather than criticizing other’s selections, I’d take a stab at this myself. So let’s try and answer this question from a data-driven perspective.

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Over the winter, the Reds remade their starting rotation, trading away both Mat Latos and Alfredo Simon, getting younger and cheaper players back in return for a pair of arms headed into their walk years. However, they declined to go into a full rebuild, keeping both Johnny Cueto and Mike Leake despite the fact that they’re also pending free agents; the Reds wanted to take one more shot at winning with their current core, especially given that they’re hosting the All-Star Game this year.

Now, the Reds actually pulling off this contend-while-kinda-rebuilding plan seems like a bit of a longshot. We currently have them projected for 75 wins, last in the NL Central, with just a 2.7% chance of winning the division and a 5.9% chance of capturing one of the two Wild Card spots. And it’s not like we’re out on a limb here; Bovada has the Reds over/under at 77.5. Baseball Prospectus is slightly more optimistic, pegging them at 79 wins, matching Clay Davenport’s projected win total.

So, in general, the pre-season forecasts peg the Reds as something like a 75 to 80 win team, meaning they need to find an extra dozen or so wins in either surprisingly strong performances or sequencing luck in order to sneak into a playoff spot. It definitely is possible, especially if the team gets strong bounce back performances from Jay Bruce and Joey Votto, but the Reds are going to need to get a few breakthrough performances from unexpected sources. When you’re starting from this position and trying to win, you need to take some gambles and have them pay off.

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Today, Joe Kelly took the mound in Ft. Myers, and it didn’t go well; he gave up seven hits in 2 2/3 innings before leaving with an injury currently being called biceps tightness

Kelly said he had biceps tightness that limited him to fastballs; 'not concerned.' Says he's had it before. 'Usually doesn't last too long'

— Alex Speier (@alexspeier) March 16, 2015

Today’s performance continued a trend from his two previous spring training starts, as he’s now allowed 17 hits in 7 2/3 innings this spring; his spring training ERA currently stands at 11.05. On their own, the results aren’t a big deal, but when you combine it with a potential injury, it might be fair to say that Kelly’s spot could be up for grabs at this point.

Of course, any time the Red Sox rotation is mentioned, people will invariably bring up Cole Hamels, but Boston continues to seem uninterested in meeting the Phillies price, and they do have some interesting alternatives in-house. While youngsters Henry Owens and Eduardo Rodriguez are the two best long-term prospects and might be ready for an audition, John Farrell has made sure the beat writers keep Steven Wright’s name in the picture as well. Per Alex Speier, from this morning:

The Sox would not be opposed to adding a veteran starter to their Triple A rotation. But Farrell again expressed confidence in Steven Wright as a depth starter. “He gives us a lot of comfort. As that knuckleball has come along, he’s throwing a lot more strikes,” Farrell said. “He’s got the ability to give a contrast of style.”

Projecting the performance of knuckleballers is not quite impossible, but is something kind of close to it. Wright could be very good — as he was in a September trial last year — or he could be terrible, with pretty much any result in between seemingly equally likely. Knuckleballers are lottery tickets, especially ones with spotty track records and iffy command. Dickey’s success came after he cut his walk rate in half, which Wright appears to have done in Triple-A last year, but we essentially have half a minor league season and a month of big league action where Wright showed a consistent ability to throw strikes. If he’s not throwing strikes, he’s not any good, and it’s not a big surprise that the Red Sox wouldn’t want to count on his 2014 command improvement carrying over when trying to win in 2015.

But there are a couple of reasons why I think it might make sense for the Red Sox to give Wright a shot, especially if Kelly needs replacing on the Opening Day roster: his Z-Contact% and the knuckleball carryover effect.

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The Hector Olivera situation is just really strange. As Kiley broke down over the weekend, the market has been saturated with questionable information, and Olivera ended up hiring new representation after the early offers apparently didn’t match the lofty thresholds that were being floated publicly. Toss in his unusual health track record and the fact that this has dragged into mid-March, and the entire situation remains particularly odd.

And that’s before we even get to the teams involved (or not) in the bidding. Olivera is projected as a second baseman or a third baseman, depending on the acquiring team’s need on the infield, but the teams with the most glaring needs at those positions seem mostly uninterested. No contenders need a second baseman more than the White Sox, Blue Jays, or Angels, but none of them have been reported to be particularly interested in signing him as a middle infield upgrade. On the other hand, the Braves have been strongly connected to Olivera, despite the fact that they’re likely to be one of the league’s worst teams in 2015, and at age-30, Olivera isn’t exactly a long-term upside play.

But perhaps no team linked to Olivera makes less sense than the Dodgers. With Howie Kendrick at second base and Juan Uribe at third base, the team doesn’t really have an open spot for a player who is likely going to command $10 million or more per season, and it seems unlikely that Olivera would want to spend a year on the bench waiting for a position to open up. Of course, injuries do happen, and the Dodgers have enough money to stockpile depth, so the presence of Kendrick and Uribe shouldn’t automatically eliminate LA from signing a talented player.

However, when reading scouting reports about Olivera’s expected performance, I can’t shake the idea that the Dodgers already have this player; he just goes by the name of Justin Turner.

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The Blue Jays may have won the winter by acquiring Josh Donaldson and Russell Martin, but no team has lost the spring more than Toronto, who saw young hurler Marcus Stroman tear his ACL in a workout on Tuesday morning. Surgery to repair the ligament will cost him the entire season, and opens up a gaping hole in in the Jays rotation; even though he was young, Stroman projected as the team’s best pitcher, and one of the best pitchers in the entire league.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, speculation immediately began to link the Blue Jays and the Phillies, who have been waiting for an opportunity just like this to convince a team to pay dearly for Cole Hamels. GM Alex Anthoplous was pretty quick to downplay that idea, however; after stating there are few aces available this time of year, he added “Actually there might be one, but I don’t know that we can afford that right now.” For now, at least, it seems the Blue Jays will look in-house to replace Stroman.

Young hurlers Daniel Norris and Aaron Sanchez are likely to get much longer looks now, and with Stroman out of the picture, at least one of the two likely break camp in the rotation, with the other fighting Marco Estrada for the last starting spot on the team. Unlike the young guns, Estrada doesn’t possess a particularly strong fastball, and certainly has the least upside of the three. But if the Jays really are going to stay with what they have, then I’d argue that Estrada might be their best option to replace Stroman, at least in the short-term.

There’s no question that Estrada was terrible in Milwaukee a year ago, particularly with his inability to keep the ball in the yard; he allowed 29 home runs in just 150 innings. When you don’t locate an 89 mph fastball particularly well, it often gets crushed, and Estrada looked like he was throwing batting practice for a large portion of the 2014 season. Estrada’s entire game is about commanding the top of the strike zone, and last year, he simply missed his spots too many times.

But there are reasons to think that, even with a mediocre fastball, Estrada’s up-in-the-zone preference can actually work to his advantage. While the result of this style of pitching is often a home run problem, that negative can be offset by inducing a large number of infield flies, which are basically equivalent to a strikeout. And few pitchers in baseball generate popups at the same rate as Estrada.

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