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Just gonna go ahead and borrow from a colleague:

I wonder what kind of odds you could have gotten on “Doug Fister and Rich Hill will sign almost the same FA contract” 12 months ago.

— David Cameron (@DCameronFG) January 28, 2016

Rich Hill signed for a year and a guaranteed $6 million. He’s nearly 36 years old, and he just started all of four games for the Red Sox, and before those, he hadn’t made a start in the majors since 2009. Doug Fister, meanwhile, has now signed for a year and a guaranteed $7 million, with the Astros folding in some additional incentives. He’s nearly 32 years old, and between 2011 – 2014, he had roughly the same RA9-WAR as Max Scherzer, Jon Lester, and Zack Greinke. In this past season, Fister wasn’t terrible, and he didn’t undergo any surgeries.

Compared to Hill, Fister obviously has the track record. He also has age on his side, and more 2015 big-league innings, and yet the market wasn’t excited. We’re left with Fister signing for only an incrementally larger guarantee, and it’s because the market is forward-looking, and Fister is a mighty big question mark.

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I don’t know how many of you participate in the Fan projection process. I’m sure it’s only a small minority, because for one thing, it’s extra work, and for another, it’s not like we do a lot to incentivize mass participation. For whatever it’s worth, though, I do think they make for a valuable tool, because when you get enough people chiming in, you get to do things like compare Fan projections to other projections. That doesn’t have to be just for fun — there’s the potential for great insight there. Fans pick up on stuff. Even when they don’t, it’s interesting to see when fans think they’re picking up on stuff. In an ideal world, we’d have hundreds or thousands of people entering projections for all kinds of players, and then we could try to make something of the results.

We don’t live in an ideal world — at least not in that kind of ideal world — but I’m still going to use what we have, for what you find below. Just for the hell of it, I’ve elected to compare Fan projections for position players to Steamer projections for position players. Seems to me, it could be interesting to see where the projections don’t line up. Now, as caution, I want to tell you some of these fan projections are based on pretty small samples, so this is largely just for curiosity’s sake. But, you know, away we go. I’ve chosen to compare by WAR per 600 plate appearances. An awful lot of players aren’t going to get anywhere close to 600 plate appearances, but I’m just shooting for consistency.

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Marlins Park opened to much fanfare four years ago, and while the team quickly abandoned what it had taken on as its new operational identity, there’s no abandoning a ballpark that fast. Not that the Marlins want to leave, anyway, but — love it or hate it — Marlins Park will be around for a while yet. One of the funny things about the stadium is that it took exactly one game for people to be left with a certain impression. That impression: it’s enormous. In the opener, Giancarlo Stanton hit into a couple warning-track outs, and Lance Berkman was one of many players to talk about the park to the media. Said Berkman:

“If they don’t move the fences in after this year, I’d be surprised,” Berkman said. “And I’m going two years as the over-under on that.”

He continued:

“It’s the biggest ballpark in the game,” Berkman said. “And people have tried that big-ballpark deal, and it never works. Detroit moved the fences in. New York (i.e., the Mets) moved the fences in. I mean, there’s a reason why it’s 330-375-400 (in most parks). That’s a fair baseball game. You try to get too outrageous, and you end up with something that I think is going to be detrimental to their ballclub. I mean, Stanton hit two balls that probably were two home runs. And they were both outs. And we won the game.”

To further Berkman’s point, Seattle and San Diego also later moved in their fences. In the end, Berkman was wrong about his estimate — the Marlins didn’t move in the fences after a year, or after two years. But they are now making changes after four years. Pretty much all the fences are being lowered, and maybe more importantly, they’re doing something about the vast center field. It’s taken this long, but like so many other newer ballparks, Marlins Park is taking a step toward neutrality.

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Last September, at one point, the Astros staged an improbable ninth-inning comeback against the Angels. I don’t remember a whole lot of the details anymore, but there is still one play that sticks out in my mind, because it stuck out in my mind back then. George Springer neither started the rally nor ended it, but he did keep it alive with the bases empty and the Astros down to their last strike. Behold Springer in a 1-and-2 count against Huston Street:

All right, it’s one ball in play, and it was very nearly caught. So perhaps it was very nearly forgettable, but look at how Springer stayed with an attempted strikeout slider and made good contact the other way. It works well here as a representation of what George Springer got up to. It happened quietly — the Astros themselves were a bigger story than Springer as an individual, and theirs was a roster with Carlos Correa and Dallas Keuchel. Springer, for his part, missed time with injuries, which I’m sure he’d love to knock off. But there in the shadows, Springer turned himself into something less extreme. There was one big question mark hovering over his career, and now it’s been at least partially addressed.

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Lately there’s been a good amount of discussion regarding the National League adopting the designated hitter. To try and gain control of the runaway conversation, Rob Manfred has recently indicated no changes are on the horizon, but it really does just feel like a matter of time. I don’t need to go through all the reasons, but I do suspect change is inevitable. Whether it’s two or five or 20 years from now, the NL will probably have the DH, and everything’s going to be fine. The globe is going to be warming, perhaps uncontrollably, but the game of baseball’s going to be fine. Fans adjust, as they always do.

Because I grew up a fan of an AL team, and of a team with an awesome DH, no less, you can imagine where I stand. That being said, when the DH extends into the NL, I’m going to miss pitchers hitting. I don’t know if I’m going to miss the actual event, but I’ll miss the numbers, and I’ll miss the rare surprises. As far as the numbers go, I love that plate appearances in the major leagues are given to athletes with minimal training. It’s the closest we can come to knowing how we might perform if we were asked to bat. And I’ve really loved the AL sub-group. I’ll miss the reality of pitchers hitting in general, but I’ll especially miss AL pitchers trying to give it a go.

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Pitch-framing as an idea has existed for almost as long as the game, but it wasn’t until we started getting numbers for it that people really started to think about it in depth. At that point we were introduced to the idea of a catcher potentially being worth a few extra wins just because of how he catches pitches behind the plate. That was startling, and it was fascinating, but there was an important question that wasn’t being discussed enough — is the existence of pitch-framing good? Valid arguments on either side. But it seemed that there was nothing to be done until we got an automated strike zone. Humans will be humans, after all.

On the other hand, humans can change. Humans can learn; humans can be trained. One interesting observation during the PITCHf/x era is that, over time, those human umpires have collectively started to call an increasingly consistent zone. PITCHf/x provided feedback, and umpires could get better as a result. Now, I can’t help but wonder if we’re seeing the beginning of the end for pitch-framing. Catchers are always going to catch a little differently, but I wonder if there are fewer available rewards.

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Two things were dumped on the DC area over the course of the weekend: an unfathomable volume of snow, and the news that Yoenis Cespedes was turning down the Nationals’ offer and returning to the Mets. In Washington, Cespedes would’ve replaced someone who’s already a decent center fielder. In New York, Cespedes will replace someone who’s already a decent center fielder. But now Juan Lagares is valuable depth, instead, and for either team, Cespedes represented some sort of improvement. So it was a damaging blow, effectively concluding what for the Nationals has been a frustrating offseason of almosts. The Mets, on the other hand, have reason to celebrate. They kept Cespedes, and on their own terms.

In a way it’s an extension of the Nationals’ narrative of disappointment. It’s also an extension of the Mets’ narrative of triumphant underdogging. There’s carryover from the last regular season, when the Nationals were one of the most disappointing winning teams in memory. That’s going to remain the most recent baseball until there’s even more recent baseball, but for the Nationals it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. Spoiler alert: this is going to be another poll post. I’m going to ask you to pick the top of the NL East. I’ll offer my own pick, but I’ll put it down in the comments, so as to avoid any bias.

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Yoenis Cespedes will return to the Mets, and from the team’s side of things, there’s almost nothing not to like about the arrangement. Even in the worst-case scenario where Cespedes just ends up a dead $75 million, he’s off the books before the starting pitchers hit free agency. And far more likely is that Cespedes opts out in a year, making him sort of an extended rental, without the long-term concern. Mets fans get to see their team spend, and they get to embrace a dynamic outfielder without bearing witness to a frustrating decline. If Cespedes opts out, the Mets can collect a draft pick. He’s better than what the Mets were going to go with, and Juan Lagares is still around to help, even if this means Alejandro De Aza has to disappear. The Mets’ chances of winning everything just got better.

It’s cause for celebration. Cespedes even turned down a bigger guarantee to go back to New York, because he likes it there, and this money might not otherwise have gone back into the team. Of course, Cespedes is unlikely to repeat his 2015. He blew past his career numbers, and with the Mets, he got to feast against some light stretch-run competition. People are aware that Cespedes struggled in the playoffs, and people are aware of his barely-.300 OBP. His game is power, and power’s inconsistent. But Cespedes has yet to be anything but an above-average player. The Mets know what they have in Cespedes as a hitter. What they don’t know, as much, is what they have in Cespedes as a defender. It’s probably the biggest question about his 2016.

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As I write this, it’s looking increasingly likely that the Nationals will swing in and sign Yoenis Cespedes as a free agent. Reports are circulating that the Nationals have offered a five-year deal, and though that doesn’t mean anything’s finished, the rest of the market hasn’t developed like this. The Mets, according to other reports, are holding at three years, and if that were to keep up, Cespedes wouldn’t have much of a choice on his hands. Players love security, and Cespedes wants the biggest offer he can land.

An interesting side note is that, from appearances, the Nationals’ pursuit of Cespedes is ownership-driven. The owners have made such big moves before, and if Washington’s front office thought it was going to grab a high-profile outfielder, it probably wouldn’t have recently traded for Ben Revere. Adding Cespedes and Revere would leave someone out of a regular job, and that wouldn’t be an ideal circumstance. But it matters only so much how a move happens — what’s more important is what happens next. And the Nationals could soon have to deal with the Cespedes mystery.

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