Today’s the day that Jose Abreu wins the 2014 American League Rookie of the Year Award. Seems like they’re doing a whole announcement show, and nothing’s official yet because they don’t want to spoil the suspense, but the suspense has already long been spoiled, by Abreu and by the rest of the AL rookie class. There’s been a little bit of chatter that Abreu might have an MVP case. Now, he’s not going to have an MVP case, as reflected by the voting, but if a guy is getting talked up in some circles as a dark-horse MVP, he’s your Rookie of the Year.

A little over a year ago, the White Sox signed Abreu to a six-year contract. At that point, it looked like a heavy investment in a player whose value would be entirely tied up in his bat. Now, Abreu’s looks like one of the more valuable contracts in the game, as he’s coming off a season that saw him answer most of the questions about his productivity. Abreu wasn’t an outstanding defender at first base. He wasn’t a stealth quality base-runner, so everything really did come down to the hitting, but the hitting was phenomenal from start to finish, and it seems worthwhile now to reflect upon Abreu’s scouting reports around the time of his signing.

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It’s never easy to try to figure out intent after the fact. Consider questionable hit-by-pitches. Some of them are more obviously intentional than others, but there’s nothing we can do in a database to separate the intentionals from the accidentals. It gets a little tricky with bunting for a hit, too, because bunting can also serve a very different purpose, but there’s one thing we can look at as a proxy. Let’s focus only on bunt attempts with nobody on base. Sometimes, a hitter might be trying to bunt for a hit with somebody on, but that’s relatively uncommon, and when the bases are empty, at least we know with absolute certainty the idea. A bunt with no one on is a bunt attempt for a hit. Or it’s a bunt attempt by a guy inexplicably playing through a strained oblique, but, generally, it’s a bunt attempt for a hit.

So, 2014. Let’s use some data from Baseball Savant, combining bunts in play with foul and missed bunts, to come up with total attempts. Here’s something that won’t surprise you: Billy Hamilton led baseball with 77 bunt attempts with the bases empty. We can think of those as 77 bunt attempts for a hit. In second place, again unsurprisingly, we find Dee Gordon, with 70 attempts. Then there’s Leonys Martin, with 52, and Adeiny Hechavarria, with 40. All makes perfect sense. This only gets weird when you consider rate stats.

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Let’s get this out of the way as quickly as we can: my favorite team is the Mariners, which means I want them to win more than I want other teams to win. Been that way for a long time. That perspective comes with certain biases, which I sometimes can’t even help, but in this instance, understand that I have nothing to do with the numbers you’ll see. As a matter of fact, I was taken by surprise, and so it feels only natural to write this up, because who doesn’t love discussing surprises? I should clue you in on what I’m talking about.

It’s the offseason now, you’ve noticed. Joe Maddon’s changed teams. Hank Conger’s changed teams. Cesar Ramos has changed teams. Right now, teams are reaching out to connect with free agents and with other front offices, as groundwork is laid for future transactions. Eyes have turned to 2015, with 2014 entirely in the books, and wouldn’t you know it, but we’ve already got 2015 player projections. You can find them at FanGraphs, and they go by the name Steamer. It’s not the only projection system around, but all of them are pretty similar, and with Steamer, we can start to get an idea of how things look for the moment.

Now, a small group of FanGraphs authors maintains depth charts for all 30 teams in the majors, updated on a regular basis. Those same depth charts have been updated to prepare for the offseason, with free agents gone and with certain minor leaguers showing up. Steamer provides individual player projections. However, when you combine player projections with team depth charts, you end up with team projections. I’m always interested to see how things are looking, so recently I glanced at the order of team projections with the offseason getting under way. Who has the most work to do? Who’s already sitting pretty?

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In some ways, this feels like a blog post from ten years ago. The idea template, at least, is the same, but then, we weren’t complete idiots ten years ago. We knew less, but we didn’t know nothing. Brandon McCarthy is a free agent. He looks like a potentially valuable free agent, at least as far as free-agent values go. I’ll explain, starting here: James Shields is also a free agent. He’s one of the high-profile ones, considered just a little below Jon Lester and Max Scherzer. According to our contract crowdsourcing, the audience projects Shields for a five-year contract worth about $90 million, and McCarthy is projected for a three-year contract worth about $36 million. Shields is nearly 33. McCarthy is more newly 31. Shields was extended a qualifying offer.

Here’s what Steamer sees from Shields in the year ahead:

• 19% strikeouts
• 6% walks
• 3.70 FIP

Here’s what Steamer sees from McCarthy in the year ahead:

• 19% strikeouts
• 5% walks
• 3.75 FIP

Let’s continue.

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Sometimes, a transaction is so immediately obvious you don’t have to spend any time at all trying to work out the rationale behind it. Other times, a transaction only seems that immediately obvious, because we’re not privy to all of the relevant information. In each case, though, we get to pretend like the move in question is immediately obvious, because we can’t know what we don’t know, and on Wednesday, the Astros made a trade. They got a guy they like, and they like him because of course they like him.

The Astros got one guy for two guys, giving up catcher Carlos Perez and pitcher Nick Tropeano. Perez might take over as the Angels’ backup, and Tropeano might manage to crack the Angels’ starting rotation. But the guy the Astros added is Hank Conger, and though Conger’s is by no means any sort of household name, you could say the Astros just got their Jose Molina. Have I mentioned lately that the Astros employ Mike Fast? Do I even need to?

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The Gold Glove Award winners were announced, and you probably noticed. You probably can’t recall off the top of your head all of the winners, but you can recall some of them. To whatever extent people care about awards, my sense is they care relatively little about the Gold Gloves, because the awards have a history of being stupid and because it’s just really hard, still, to measure defense. The Gold Gloves are the, I don’t know, Sporty Spice? of the baseball awards season.

There’s also the part where the Gold Gloves can just confirm what you already know. You have ideas in your head of the year-to-year best defensive players at each position. What gets a lot less attention are defensive improvements. There are reasons for that, but anyway, it’s interesting to know, for example, that Andrew McCutchen was an awesome hitter in 2014, but it’s differently interesting to know that the same could be said of J.D. Martinez. Baseball’s fun when expectations are met. Baseball’s fun when expectations are not met. Baseball’s fun! So let’s dedicate a little time to players who just took a defensive step forward. As much as we can measure that, I mean.

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Let’s stop beating around the bush. No more playing games. You’ve been thinking about it forever. I’ve been thinking about it forever. It’s always there in conversation, lingering somewhere just underneath. When it’s on your mind, you’re not sure how it’s ever not on your mind. It’s maybe the greatest trade hypothetical in baseball today. So let’s just try to figure this out, before the actual offseason starts happening. Would it make sense for the Angels to package Mike Trout and Albert Pujols together for nothing?

The actual question that gets asked gets asked in varying forms, but that’s what’s always right at the core. Does Pujols’ negative value cancel out Trout’s positive value? It’s not even that difficult a question to address. Last March, Dave Cameron referred to Mike Trout as the king of trade value, now and forever. During the summer, Dave asserted that Albert Pujols has the lowest trade value in the majors. This is why Trout and Pujols have been selected: They represent the very best and the very worst of something. Let’s proceed so we can never have to talk about this again — for a week or two.

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The word we’re supposed to use is “introduced”. As in, the Cubs introduced Joe Maddon on Monday as the team’s new manager. Really, Maddon’s a guy who needs no introduction, and in addition to that, Maddon isn’t a guy you bring in, as an organization, unless you feel like you’re on the verge of something. Maddon isn’t a guy you give five years and $25 million, as an organization, unless you feel like you’re entering a new era. The Cubs didn’t want to get rid of Rick Renteria, but at the same time, this wasn’t an opportunity they could let pass by. As was noted in the days prior to Monday’s press conference:

On Friday, Epstein said Maddon “may be as well-suited as anyone in the industry to manage the challenges that lie ahead of us.”

About those challenges — there are always challenges, for everyone, and there are certainly always challenges in Chicago, but the challenges that lie ahead now are quite different from the challenges that were ahead a few years back when the Cubs overhauled the front office. The idea now is that Maddon can help the team transition from loser to winner, and though that’s what all losers want, the Cubs are in a particular position. Maddon spent a chunk of his press conference talking about the 2015 playoffs. Theo Epstein, at the end of the regular season, also talked about the 2015 playoffs. The Cubs see Joe Maddon as the first step in a new level. The Cubs now intend to be serious about the present. So how far away are the Cubs from looking like a competitive team?

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I noted in my FanGraphs Player of the Year voting explanation that I very badly wanted to find a place for Aroldis Chapman. Ultimately I couldn’t do it, not with Chapman being a reliever and with other guys not being relievers, but I wanted to give Chapman some support for a season that was almost impossibly outstanding and extraordinary. Aroldis Chapman is coming off one of my favorite single seasons ever, and with everything in the books, none of the numbers are changing. Because I couldn’t give Chapman a vote, I decided I wanted to give him one last front-page post.

I know the headline sucks and I know lists seem lazy, but I don’t know a better way to capture what I want to be captured. I want to touch on my five favorite Chapman facts, and this is the simplest way to keep them organized. These are not the five best 2014 Aroldis Chapman facts, recovered after hours of mining — probably, there are things he did that have so far escaped my attention. These are just my five favorite facts, out of the facts I’m aware of. There are some good ones that didn’t qualify. Against left-handed batters, Chapman last season posted a negative FIP. He allowed a .121 batting average and a .172 slugging percentage, while National League pitchers batted .125 and slugged .156. Chapman was great! Here now are five better facts, that I haven’t bothered to order. It’s like trying to pick a favorite child, except none of these facts will spill grape juice on the carpet.

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