Today, I’ve published a pair of posts in which I attempt to estimate the present-day value of prospects, both in terms of WAR and dollars. With that work complete, the logical next step is to turn away from the value of specific prospects and towards farm systems as a whole.

One can get a sense of the stronger and weaker systems just by eyeballing the rankings produced by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel. What the prospect-valuation data allows us to do, however, is to place a figure on baseball’s top-800 or so prospects, creating a more objective ranking based on the grades assessed to each player here at FanGraphs.

These rankings provide a current snapshot of the farm systems before Longenhagen and McDaniel embark on their winter-long reveal of team prospect rankings. (The first post in their offseason series will appear this week.) As noted, the methodology for valuing prospects based on their grades is explained in my last two posts on the subjects:

• An Update to Prospect Valuation
• Putting a Dollar Value on Prospects Outside the Top 100

Keep in mind, these values are based on the current CBA, where players receive a minimum salary for roughly three years and then have three (or four) years of arbitration before reaching free agency after six full MLB seasons. Players are generally underpaid compared to their value on the field during these seasons, which is what creates the high present-day values and partially justifies the high value placed by teams on prospects when executing trades.

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Over the years, a good deal of effort has been put into determining the value of prospects. Victor Wang, Scott McKinney (updated here), Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli together, and Jeff Zimmerman have all published work on the subject, roughly in that order.

The reasoning behind such efforts is fairly obvious: teams trade prospects for proven players all the time. Finding an objective way to evaluate those trades is useful to better understanding how the sport operates. Indeed, FanGraphs has benefited from those prospect-valuation studies on multiple occasions.

With another year having passed, I’ve attempted to build on the work of others and produce updated valuations of my own. Previous efforts have been very helpful in the process, while the input of prospect analysts Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel has helped me find results that would be most useful.

In building this study, I set out with the following aims:

• To separate players into as many useful tiers as possible without creating unnecessary distinctions.
• To use as much data as possible so long as it was useful and likely still relevant today.
• To make the valuations as forward-looking as possible.
• To recognize that player development is not linear and that players appearing on prospect lists vary from major-league-ready to raw, Rookie-level talents.

To those various ends, here are some of the parameters of this study:

1. Baseball America’s top-100 lists from 1996 to 2010 serve as the foundation for prospect grades.
When I started the study, I looked at the lists dating back to 1990, separating out position players from pitchers and organizing by year. I found that the evaluations from the earlier part of the 90s — especially those for pitchers — had considerably worse outcomes than those that came after. I debated whether or not to throw out the data. Eventually, though, I decided that since 15 years of prospect numbers were showing decidedly different results, and that there was considerable turmoil occurring within the sport during that time — expansion, a strike, and a lockout — it seemed reasonable to toss the earlier years and go with the assumption that the 1996-2010 lists more accurately represented prospect evaluation today and going forward than the rankings of 25 years ago.

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Free agency officially begins on Saturday. While clubs have had the right this week to negotiate exclusively with their own departing players, that stops tomorrow. Tomorrow, anyone can talk to anyone.

As we enter free-agent season and attempt to understand which deals are likely and which are less so, it helps to have a sense of how much each club has to spend. Last offseason unfolded slow: teams and players battled on contract terms until spring. When the dust finally settled, payroll hadn’t actually increased from the previous year — a relatively rare occurrence, especially in an era when the game is so financially healthy.

That lack of upward movement in salaries was attributed, in part, to the impressive free-agent class of this winter. By looking at payrolls from the past couple years, we can get an idea of who has the most money to spend and who will need to significantly increase payroll if they want to get in on free-agent spending.

To begin, let’s consider what payrolls looked like at the beginning of the 2018 campaign.

That massive payroll worked out pretty well for the Red Sox: the World Series winners took advantage of the attempt by others clubs to stay under the competitive-balance tax threshold. At the other end of the payroll spectrum, meanwhile, Milwaukee, Oakland, and Tampa Bay managed to win a bunch of games without spending big, though the relationship between payroll and wins remains relatively strong.

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The popularity of baseball is oft-discussed and yet somewhat difficult to measure. We can look at everything from attendance to jersey sales to commercials to revenue and yet fail to reach any real conclusions due to the constantly changing ways in which people consume media and celebrate fandom.

Another measure is television viewership and ratings. Determining the number of people who have enough interest to watch the sport on television should be a relatively good measure of popularity, although even those measures need context to make any sense. On one hand, local television ratings remain strong during the season, indicating relatively widespread support for the game. On the other hand, the ratings for this season’s World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were not good.

Consider a couple of headlines. Like Boston-LA World Series Struck Out Looking for Fox from the LA Times and like The 2018 World Series was Good for the Red Sox–and Bad for Baseball from The Atlantic. Even commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged disappointment with the ratings after the first few games.

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For the second straight year, the Dodgers’ season has ended in a World Series appearance but not a World Series victory. While the Red Sox’ four-games-to-one win might show up in history as something of a blowout, the Dodgers were one key hit away from victory in Game One. If they’d also held onto a fifth-inning lead in Game Two and an eighth-inning lead in Game Four, we’d be talking about a great Dodgers team finally winning it all.

It didn’t happen that way, though — and it wasn’t because the Red Sox wanted it more or because the Dodgers’ analytics failed them. Sometimes baseball happens. It happened to the Dodgers, and in the end, the more deserving team won.

Win or lose, the Dodgers were going to face a lot of questions this offseason. Here are the four most-pressing questions in need of an answer.

Bring Back Clayton Kershaw?

Clayton Kershaw could make the decision easy for everyone by not opting out of the two years and $65 million he has left on his contract. There are plenty of concerns with Kershaw: his velocity has declined and he’s relying on his slider more than ever. The future Hall of Famer will begin next season at 31 years old, hardly an elder, but certainly past his prime. Despite those concerns, Kershaw started 31 games in 2018 and pitched 191.1 innings, including the postseason. His ERA and FIP, including the playoffs, were 2.96, and 3.31, respectively. Those are both very good numbers along with his 3.6 WAR from the regular season. Among pending free-agent pitchers, only Patrick Corbin had a better season — and Kershaw showed he could still get outs at a high rate with declining velocity.

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After the first two games of the World Series, the Red Sox are probably feeling pretty good. With two victories already to their credit, they need to win just two of their next five contests to win this year’s title. The odds are in their favor.

As they begin the the first of three games in Los Angeles, however, they have a decision to make regarding their lineup, owing to the absence of the designated hitter in a National League park. The issue comes up every year, but rarely does it present much difficulty to decision-makers. Most American League champions feature either feature a DH who isn’t worth playing elsewhere or an obvious weakness somewhere in the lineup.

That isn’t so much the case for J.D. Martinez and the Boston Red Sox, however.

Consider some examples from recent World Series. In 2014, Billy Butler DH’d for the Royals in Kansas City but only pinch-hit in San Francisco. Kendrys Morales played the same role for the 2015 edition of the Royals. Last year, it was the Astros’ Evan Gattis. Only Cleveland, during their series against the Cubs, was forced to take some unusual measures to include their usual DH in the lineup, placing Carlos Santana in the outfield. That said, Cleveland also lacked a surplus of great outfield options at the time.

The last legitimately good AL player forced from a lineup when the World Series headed to an NL park was probably Kevin Youkilis in 2007, when the presence of David Ortiz sent him to the bench. But the current version of the Red Sox will be forced to take similar steps in Los Angeles. Martinez was a six-win player this season, with a 170 wRC+ as Boston’s designated hitter, marking the best season by a DH since Ortiz’s 2007 campaign for the world champions. Martinez needs to go to an outfield corner, and even if he we assume that he had just bested (worsted?) the single-season low for UZR (-36 runs, set by Brad Hawpe in 2008), he still would have recorded nearly four wins this season. He needs to be in the lineup, right?

It would seem so, yes, but once Martinez goes into the outfield, one of the following scenarios needs to occur:

1. The Red Sox bench Jackie Bradley Jr.; or
2. they bench Andrew Benintendi; or
3. they play Mookie Betts at second base.

Mike Petriello made the case for the third option over at MLB.com. In that piece, he notes that the decision is easier in games Four and Five with a lefty on the mound, mentions the lack of potential opportunities for Betts at second base based on Red Sox pitching and Dodgers hitters, says the offensive numbers are a wash, and concludes thusly:

So if the lineup choices are a wash, this comes down to defense. Martinez is a sizable step down from Betts in right, but he’s got to be there if we want his bat in the lineup. Betts is likely a small step down from Bradley in center, probably a barely perceptible one, but that matters with Martinez in right. And at second, Holt is worse than Kinsler, but better than Betts. You could argue in either direction. Either way, Betts and Martinez must both play, and Bradley’s defense is more valuable than Holt’s.

Maybe putting Betts at second base is too radical for the World Series. Perhaps Cora will just keep it simple and bench Bradley, starting Holt or Kinsler at second base. It’s the easy way to go, and Red Sox fans know better than most how hard one poorly-timed defensive miscue can sting. But October is when the tough choices mean the most. Putting Betts at second is far from traditional. It just might be the right thing to do.

Petriello presents an interesting argument, but I’m not sure it is the correct one. Instead of separating offense and defense, let’s try to combine them. First, here are the player projections with a slight platoon adjustment for the lefties against a potential righty in Walker Buehler.

That’s what things look like when the players are all playing their normal positions. I’m leaving Martinez where he is, since the DH penalty is roughly equivalent to a -10 outfielder, a figure that seems about right. In the scenario where Betts goes to second base, we have to remove about a win off his value because of the change in defensive position. He’s a great outfielder, yes, but given his lack of recent play at second base, it’s probably not reasonable to expect even average defense from him, regardless of how many grounders he’s taken over the last few years. Putting that into the calculation, we see these numbers for the four outfield slots plus second base.

Maybe Betts is better at second base than we think. Maybe Martinez is worse in the outfield. What happens if we replace Bradley with Betts in center field and put Kinsler at second base.

Betts isn’t likely to lose any value in center field given his range and arm are just as good as Bradley Jr.’s, even by Statcast metrics. Whatever he would theoretically lose in terms of fielding runs from the move, he would gain back by means of the center-field positional adjustment.

Whatever the case, it appears as though the difference between the two alignments — if one exists — is just a few runs. And while that’s minuscule over the course of one game, logic dictates that, when the radical solution doesn’t come out any better in the numbers, it probably isn’t worth the downside risk. The argument holds whether Benintendi or Bradley Jr. is benched. Given that Bradley Jr. seems more likely to hit the bench against a lefty on Saturday and Sunday (if necessary), I think it raises the argument that it is Benintendi who should sit against Walker Buehler.

Given Benintendi’s spot in the batting order, it is fairly clear that Alex Cora feels it is his left fielder who hits lefties (and righties) better than Bradley Jr. The projections (with defense) put the two players as near equals. Against Buehler, that means Cora is simply choosing offense or defense in Los Angeles with the other a potential pinch hitter. Neither option is a bad choice, but since Bradley Jr. still projects competently on offense against a righty, choosing defense over offense — in light of Martinez’s presence in the field — it makes sense to go with Bradley Jr. over Benintendi. The Red Sox center fielder has been unlucky with the bat this season by xwOBA, and it is possible projections are underrating his ability.

The graph below shows all players with 500 plate appearances with their xwOBA and wOBA, per Baseball Savant. Those players above the line are underperforming their xwOBA, while those players below the line are overperforming it.

Most of the players who undershoot their wOBA based on their xWOBA are slow as seen by the table below.

It’s a bunch of really slow guys, a player who gets massively shifted in Joey Gallo, and then Marcell Ozuna and Bradley Jr. The Red Sox center fielder has hit a lot better than his batting line indicates. At least against a righty starter, he deserves to play. With the pitcher’s spot inithe lineup, Benintendi will still have an opportunity to impact the game off the bench. It certainly feels odd to advocate benching one of Boston’s best players in Andrew Benintendi, but I suppose that is one of those good problems to have.

Every plate appearance, every run, and every win is magnified in the postseason. The Red Sox came to bat more than 6,000 times, scored nearly 900 runs, and won 108 games during the regular season. In the playoffs, it’s been roughly 400 plate appearances, 68 runs, and nine wins so far. Because it is the playoffs, and because it is fun and important and special, when players and teams do something out of the ordinary, it stands out and deserves greater discussion. This postseason, the Red Sox have scored more than half their runs with two outs and, with two outs and runners in scoring position, are hitting like J.D. Martinez in the middle of a hot streak. That’s amazing, and it is great for the Red Sox, but we should be a little leery of trying to extract some sort of design or strategy from this great run.

Over at the Athletic, Jayson Stark has some of the amazing numbers the Red Sox have put up this postseason, including how they’ve scored 36 of their 68 runs with two outs. Teams usually score about 37% of their runs with two outs, so an increase by close to 50% is impressive. To try and determine how unusual of an occurrence this is, I ran a simple test, looking at the percentage of team runs scored with two outs from August 1 to August 13 of this year, roughly approximating the number of games the Red Sox play in October. During that one random stretch, no team was as high as 53% like the Red Sox arecurrently, but four teams were above 45%, with the Nationals at 48% to top the league. This is just one random stretch, but with a standard deviation of seven percentage points, what the Red Sox are doing puts them in the top 5%.

Then, for the same dates, I looked at team stats for runners in scoring position with two outs. Nobody ran numbers quite like the current Red Sox streak, with a wRC+ in the 220s, but there were two teams with at least a 190 wRC+ in the sample. One of those teams was the Braves. The other was these Boston Red Sox. So while what the Red Sox are doing is unusual, it also isn’t something that is impossible — and, indeed, the Red Sox seemed to do it earlier this season in early August.

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Neither the Red Sox’ four-run margin of victory, nor the ease with which Craig Kimbrel finished off the ninth, really do justice to the intensity of Game One of the World Series. Despite the final score, only 10 of the game’s 80 plays took place with a run differential greater than two runs. There were 11 high-leverage plays overall, and the average leverage index was 1.14, which is higher than normal. It was a game with important, exciting moments — and none were more important than certain moments of the seventh inning.

In terms purely of win expectancy, Eduardo Nunez’s three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh off Alex Wood was the game’s top play. When Nunez stepped to the plate with runners on first and second, two outs, and a one-run lead, the Red Sox’ chances of winning the game were 77% — which is to say, good but far from from certain. After his three-run homer — which came off the bat with a launch angle just under 20 degrees but managed to clear the Green Monster, anyway — Boston’s win probability increased to 96%. The game was pretty much over.

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Tonight’s World Series game features two of the best pitchers in baseball, with Clayton Kershaw facing off against Chris Sale. Jayson Stark made the argument that it might be the greatest starting matchup of all-time based on the career WHIPs of the pitchers. Kershaw and Sale have amassed over 100 WAR combined, and the former is the older one at just 30 years of age. Kershaw is already a surefire Hall of Famer, while Sale is likely to finish in the top six of Cy Young voting for the seventh straight year.

Career accomplishments are great, but they don’t necessarily tell us how well a pitcher is performing at present. The Clayton Kershaw we are seeing this year is not the same as the one from a few years past. To that end, I took a look at every World Series Game One matchup dating back to integration in 1947 and used single-season WAR to get a sense of how good this Kershaw-Sale matchup is historically

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If the Milwaukee Brewers had managed to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the seventh game of the NLCS, this post would examine one of biggest payroll disparities in World Series history. The Brewers couldn’t quite get the job done, however. As a result, it’s the Dodgers who advance to the final round of the 2018 postseason, and instead we have the most expensive World Series in history.

The Red Sox are projected to record a final a payroll around $237 million, which is the highest in baseball. The Dodgers — after considerable cost-cutting measures during the offseason — will finish the year with a payroll close to $194 million, per Cot’s Contracts. The Dodgers’ figure will likely be the fourth highest in MLB this season behind the Red Sox, Nationals, and Giants. The $423 million spent on payroll by the two World Series participants this season is the most ever.

The payroll totals somehow don’t do justice to how much these clubs have spent to get here. The Dodgers have spent $1.249 billion over the past five years, for an average payroll of $250 million. That’figure comes before accounting for the $28 million per season the Dodgers have paid in competitive-balance taxes. The Red Sox payroll this season — due to the Dodgers’ and Yankees’ efforts to get under the $197 million tax threshold — is more than $30 million clear of the second-place Nationals. When the club’s $10 million tax bill is considered, the team’s payroll is more than 20% higher than the Nationals. The difference between the Red Sox and Nationals is roughly the same as the difference between the Nationals and the 12th-place Mets. The Red Sox have spent $987.1 million on the team over the past five years, for an average payroll of $197 million — and just a bit over $200 million when factoring in taxes paid. Only the Dodgers and Yankees have spent more during that time.

As for the talent actually featured on the current rosters, the two clubs are very even: both had close to $155 million on the active roster in their respective LCSs. The graph below shows salaries (for competitive-balance tax purposes) for the players expected to play a role in the World Series. Players are shown by the amount of money the Red Sox or Dodgers are paying, not necessarily their full salary for the season. For example, Manny Machado is credited only with the portion of his salary for which the Dodgers are responsible following his acquisition from the Orioles.

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