If you’d made your way over to the “relief pitchers” tab of our team depth charts section lately, there’s something peculiar that may have caught your eye. It didn’t seem to get past Twitter user Brad Shapiro, operating under the moniker @Big_Hebrew:

@BtBScore HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that’s hilarious. Best bullpen in baseball last 2 season means nothing, got it

— Brad Shapiro (@Big_Hebrew) December 6, 2015

To whom is Brad referring? A quick perusal of Brad’s Twitter profile reveals a Royals “Took the Crown” avatar, a “Royalty” header, and tweets like “CRYING LIKE A BABY RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” posted minutes after the Royals won the World Series. Using these context clues, I’ve drawn the conclusion that Brad is a Royals fan, and that Brad’s tweet was in reference to the Royals bullpen being ranked 25th by our projected depth charts.

Now, I understand that sounds a little silly, given what you know about the Royals bullpen. But here’s the thing about the projections that doesn’t need repeating but probably needs repeating: the projections aren’t perfect, and under certain unique circumstances, they’re going to miss. Also: bullpens, in particular, are hard to project, because relievers are notoriously volatile.

So when you look at Wade Davis‘ Steamer projection for 2015 — the 2.74 ERA, the 3.04 FIP, the 1.4 WAR that’s the same as or lower than Brett Cecil‘s and Will Smith’s — you have to understand that these projections come with error bars. You have to understand that Wade Davis used to be a starter, a bad starter, and that the projection systems can’t make individual player exceptions. And you have to understand that the difference between 25th place and sixth place on the reliever depth chart projections is 1.0 WAR, and that if you just project Wade Davis as a 2.4 WAR reliever — still probably low — rather than a 1.4 WAR reliever, the Royals are right back near the top where they belong.

But about that Royals bullpen, which has, in fact, probably been the best in baseball the last two seasons (h/t Brad). It doesn’t have Greg Holland anymore, lost for the season to Tommy John surgery, and Holland’s been a key part those last two years. It doesn’t have Ryan Madson anymore, signed by the A’s, and Madson was a key part last year. It doesn’t have Franklin Morales anymore, currently a free agent, and Morales was a key part last year.

Even with incumbents Davis and Kelvin Herrera, the Royals bullpen, when Brad composed his tweet, looked a little vulnerable. The next-best option was Luke Hochevar, and while he’s a nice comeback story, his ERA and FIP were both near or at 4.00 last season, he’s now 32 years old, and remember that thing about relievers being notoriously volatile? No telling whether Hochevar returns to being anything more than a middle relief option at this point in his career. Teams could do worse than having Luke Hochevar throw high-leverage innings for them, but the Royals are World Champions with high expectations who have built this sort of bullpen model, and that model doesn’t include Luke Hochevar throwing high-leverage innings.

What it does include, though — and boy have I done some kind of job burying the lede here — is Joakim Soria throwing high leverage innings, because the Royals signed the 31-year-old reliever to a three-year, $25 million contract with a fourth-year mutual option.

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The rumors began back in July, and they’ve persisted since. “Cleveland has been willing to listen on pitching, particularly Carlos Carrasco,” read Jeff Passan’s tweet. That came a week before the July 31 trade deadline, and during that week, Carrasco was linked strongly to the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Cubs and Red Sox. The deadline came and went, and Carrasco remained an Indian, yet the rumors haven’t stopped.

On October 11, the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo wrote “There’s no question the Indians are going to deal a starting pitcher for a hitter this offseason,” invoking the names of both Carrasco and Danny Salazar. Two weeks later, Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times expected the Cubs to reengage the Carrasco talks over the offseason. Then, earlier this week, ESPN’s Buster Olney reignited the Carrasco rumor storm by bringing to light a Carrasco for Brandon Belt and Joe Panik framework that was discussed, but ultimately shot down by the Giants.

Wrote Olney:

“…[that] might seem outrageous until you place the value of a pitcher like Carrasco — more to the point, the value of his contract — in an era in which No. 4-type starters like J.A. Happ are getting $12 million a year in multiyear deals.”

Say, what’s Carrasco worth, anyway? There’s no definitive answer, of course — everyone’s got their own opinions. But the best you can do is use all the information at your disposal and figure out a ballpark estimate.

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Jon Lester became a talking point during last year’s postseason for all the wrong reasons. For all the good things Lester can do on a pitcher’s mound, he has this one glaring weakness, and last October, that glaring weakness was exposed on a national stage. In the American League Wild Card game, the Royals ran all over Lester, taking full advantage of his inability to make pickoff throws to first base. The Royals stole five bases on Lester and a record seven in the game, and the stolen bases, of course, played a huge role in the team’s comeback victory

Plenty of time was spent in the offseason discussing Lester’s weakness and whether it would be exploited in the upcoming season. Curiously, runners hadn’t taken advantage of Lester before the Royals game the way one might expect, but with the weakness exposed on such a large scale, it seemed inevitable that things would change in the future. And they did. This year, in Chicago, Lester allowed a league-high 44 steals. He had the second-highest rate of steals attempted. He allowed the fifth-highest pitcher-isolated success rate. This season, Lester was exploited in the way we’d all imagined.

Though it didn’t receive anywhere near the same level of attention, the same thing happened to Hank Conger.

A brief aside: I just want to admit that it feels kind of dirty to keep bringing up Lester’s problem with the run game, because despite that very real shortcoming, Lester still does plenty of things well and his weakness doesn’t prevent him from being a valuable player. Before we dive into Conger’s weakness, it’s worth pointing out that he does plenty of things well, too. It’s also worth pointing out why we’re talking about Conger in the first place. If you missed it, Conger was a non-tender candidate in Houston, and late Wednesday night, he was traded to the Tampa Bay Rays for cold hard cash.

Now, for what Tampa Bay’s new catcher does well. Firstly: the robot. He does that very well. Also: pitch framing. Conger’s been one of the game’s best pitch framers, and that’s probably the most important skill for a catcher to have! He wasn’t quite elite last year, with BaseballProspectus’ framing metric grading him at roughly +4 runs, but the year before that he led all catchers with +25 framing runs. Lastly: Conger can hit a little. He’s a switch-hitter, which is a rare luxury in a catcher, and over the last three years he’s been about a league-average hitter, running a 96 wRC+. That’s not great, but for a catcher, it’s just fine. That’s the same as Salvador Perez, Matt Wieters and Jason Castro.

Considering the robot, the framing, and the bat, you could do a lot worse in a backup catcher. But there’s this part of Conger’s game where you can’t do a lot worse. You can’t do any worse, in fact, because in this one area of catching — a pretty major area — Hank Conger just had the worst season in recorded history.

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For the second time in as many years, Mark Trumbo has become to a fanbase one of those “Remember when we had Mark Trumbo?” guys. He received less than a year’s worth of playing time in Arizona before being shipped to Seattle where he received less than a year’s worth of playing time before being shipped to Baltimore.

That Trumbo has been traded three times in two years is, in some ways, revealing on its own. Good players get traded, too, but more often its the players with glaring flaws who find themselves repeatedly expendable and repeatedly dealt. As a bat-only, power-and-nothing-else guy, Trumbo fits the mold.

Trumbo is in his final year of arbitration and will be a free agent next offseason, meaning that he’s likely to become the answer of a trivia question to a third fanbase before too long. For the Orioles, Trumbo probably serves as a stopgap. He’s set to earn something like $9 million in arbitration, which made him a non-tender candidate for a Seattle team that’s looking to become more athletic.

One-dimensional non-tender candidates in their final year of team control don’t tend to carry too much in the way of trade value, and so all the Orioles had to give up for Trumbo’s services was Steve Clevenger. Clevenger is a soon-to-be 30-year-old catcher who bats left handed and is out of options so he’ll see some playing time in Seattle, but also seems likely to see playing time in Triple-A. He’ll do some things for the big league club, but he won’t do more things. He hasn’t hit much, but last year he hit a little, and he doesn’t carry any kind of defensive reputation one way or the other. Seattle doesn’t have any left-handed catchers in the high minors and he can also play some first base, so in that way, Clevenger is a fit in the loosest sense of the word. This is more than enough about Steve Clevenger.

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I’ll just be up front: some amount of bias will be present in this post. It’s unavoidable when you write a “sleeper team” post. I’m high on the Diamondbacks, and I’m not afraid to admit it.

Between radio hits and and my weekly chats here at FanGraphs, I’ve been asked plenty of times who my sleeper team is for 2016. Of course, it’s far too early to have any real idea what Opening Day rosters will look like four months from now, yet the questions remain. I did a spot for sports betting website BangTheBook recently and was read the World Series futures odds and asked to pick a potential breakout from the teams being given 60/1 odds or worse. Those teams are as follows:

• Diamondbacks, 60/1
• Reds, 60/1
• Marlins, 60/1
• Brewers, 60/1
• Athletics, 60/1
• Padres, 60/1
• Braves, 100/1
• Rockies 150/1
• Phillies, 300/1

Let’s pretend that we have to place a bet on one of these teams. The Phillies, Rockies and Braves are pretty clearly the three worst teams in baseball with no real hopes or plans for immediate contention. They’re out. Likewise, the Brewers, Reds and Marlins are all in the midst of some sort of rebuild that has them essentially out of the conversation for 2016. Nix them. That leaves the A’s, Padres and D’backs as sort of fringy teams with some interesting pieces that don’t seem to be totally committed to a rebuild.

The Padres won 74 games last year, and were a 71-win team by BaseRuns. Take away Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, Ian Kennedy and Joaquin Benoit and you’re currently looking at one of the worst rosters in baseball. Scratch them off. The A’s are interesting because they won only 68 games but BaseRuns saw them as an 80-win team. The Diamondbacks are more interesting, though, because BaseRuns pegged them as 80-win team and they actually won 79. Pythag saw them as better than .500.

It’s not a sexy pick, and I’m certainly not here to argue that the Dbacks are one of the best teams in baseball, but a complaint you often hear about bold predictions is that they aren’t bold enough. Well, by nearly any measure we have a true-talent .500 team here, a team whose most notable free agent departure is Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and a team whose future World Series odds are being lumped in with the likes of the Reds and Brewers. To me, that’s the definition of a sleeper. And there’s reason to believe the team could get better.
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For four consecutive years, the Detroit Tigers sat comfortably atop the throne of the American League Central Division. Last year, they relinquished that reign and did so in dramatic fashion, fielding the franchise’s worst rotation since the 119-loss Tigers of 2003 while plummeting to last place in the division.

Clearly, the Tigers were going to add a pitcher or three in the offseason. The question was, would it be a series of band-aids to stop the bleeding, or something bigger to put them back on the attack? On Sunday, that question was answered, when the Tigers agreed to terms with Jordan Zimmermann.

Those terms, precisely, are five years and $110 million, which is less than the 6/120 that our crowdsourcing project predicted. In past years, the crowd has tended to err on the low side, especially with high-profile free agents, so any time a guy signs for less, it looks good for the team.

In fact, if you start with Zimmermann’s +3 WAR Steamer projection for 2016, assume he ages somewhat well and factor in inflation, Zimmermann’s contract comes out as a carbon-copy of what would be considered the fair, market price:

What the Tigers are paying for here is consistency. This is a team that gave 147 innings to Buck Farmer, Kyle Lobstein, Kyle Ryan, and Randy Wolf last year, and a team whose only qualified pitcher was Alfredo Simon. Even at the top of the rotation, there’s former workhorse Justin Verlander, who looked like his old self once returning from injury but still needs to prove he can throw 200 innings again; Anibal Sanchez, who has either been hurt or ineffective each of the last two years; and Daniel Norris, who’s never thrown more than 150 innings in professional ball and just had a cancerous growth removed from his thyroid.

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On Tuesday, Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports published a short column suggesting Wei-Yin Chen could be among the first free agent pitchers to sign. The column also included that agent Scott Boras is prepared to make the case that Chen is worth a higher AAV than what Rick Porcello earned last offseason, putting his yearly price tag north of $20 million.

When Morosi sent out a tweet that read “Is Wei-Yin Chen a $20 million-per-year pitcher? Or more? My column:” it was met with a frenzied response from The People of the Internet. Now, $20 million annually does seem a bit aggressive. But our crowdsourcing project pegged him for $13 million AAV, Dave Cameron thinks it will be closer to $16 million, and Cameron also named Chen as one of the five bargain buys of the offseason at that price. All it takes is a few teams to agree with Cameron’s assessment, and Chen’s price tag could be driven up near Boras’ demands.

The response to Morosi’s column shouldn’t be too surprising, for several reasons. For one, you should know that The People of the Internet are notoriously reactionary and easily agitated. Two, people almost always think players should earn less than what they actually end up making. And three, Wei-Yin Chen is probably better than most people think. He doesn’t blow people away, so he’s not a sexy pitcher, but he’s ran 3.44 ERA over the last couple years, and he’s done so in a hitter’s park in the AL East. His ERA- over that time is one point better than Chris Archer‘s, the same as Stephen Strasburg‘s, and one point worse than Madison Bumgarner’s.

I’m certainly not suggesting Chen is on, or even near, the level of an Archer, Strasburg, or Bumgarner, but he’s been about as durable as they come the last couple years with the results to boot. I’m not here to put a price tag on Wei-Yin Chen — I’ll let the market decide that — but Morosi’s column got me thinking about Chen, and thinking about Chen got me thinking about something else.

You’ll notice a couple paragraphs above that I only used ERA to evaluate Chen. Usually, we like to look at both ERA and FIP, and more information is always better, but Chen’s one of those tricky guys who seems to have proven himself as a FIP-beater, having outperformed his fielding independent numbers by nearly half a run since entering the league. Oftentimes, these FIP-beaters are guys who can consistently generate soft contact, and those kind of guys are among my favorite in baseball to think about right now.

On a related note, I explored how Dallas Keuchel goes about getting his soft contact last week. There’s plenty of ways to go about doing it, which makes it so fun to investigate. One of Keuchel’s methods is repeatedly pounding the first-base edge of the plate with two-seamers and changeups that tail away from the strike zone, hitting off the end of the bat against righties and jamming lefties.

That’s Keuchel’s method. Chen ranked sixth in the league in soft contact percentage this season, just three spots behind Keuchel. Chen’s got a method too.

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Gerardo Parra’s out there right now as a free agent and soon, a team will sign him to play somewhere in the outfield. Plenty of teams have been linked to Parra, and understandably so. He’s entering just his age-29 season, he’s something like a league average hitter who started to lift the ball to the pull field and hit for some power last year, he’s played all three outfield positions in the past and, at times, he’s played them exceptionally well! He won’t kill you on the bases, and he should come reasonably cheap, especially considering his lack of draft pick compensation. Most everyone can afford Parra, and most everyone would have a spot for him on a roster.

The first team to emerge as a potential landing spot for Parra were the Nationals, who made a push to acquire him at the deadline. Lately the talk has shifted toward the Cubs and Mets being interested in Parra’s services. Between these three teams, a common thread exists in the outfield.

The Nationals’ only outfield opening is in center field. The Cubs’ only outfield opening is in center. The Mets’ only outfield opening is in center. The Cubs have been vocal about prioritizing their outfield defense, and we saw in the World Series that the Mets could benefit from a defensive upgrade at just about any position. So the question becomes: would signing Gerardo Parra to predominately play center field help a defense, or hurt it?

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