Jake Arrieta is now officially a member of the Phillies. For a few weeks, this arrangement was feeling increasingly inevitable, as Scott Boras wasn’t finding longer-term offers, and as the Phillies have had tens of millions of dollars of payroll space. The Phillies are getting closer to relevance, and, among the would-be Arrieta suitors, they have to worry about efficient spending the least. So, here we are, with Arrieta having had his formal press-conference introduction. The Phillies still aren’t anyone’s wild-card favorites, but Arrieta unquestionably makes them stronger. The rotation is now deeper than just Aaron Nola.

The player in question is interesting enough on his own. Entire books could be written about Arrieta’s career, and he still has another few chapters to go. Arrieta has experienced dizzying highs and unthinkable lows, which makes him out to be something inspiring. But let me warn you right now, this is not a post about Arrieta’s professional achievements. It’s not a post about whether I think Arrieta is going to age gracefully. This is a post about the contract. The inanimate paper contract. Specifically, this is a post about a clause in the contract. You should leave now if you don’t care about this. But with the Jake Arrieta deal, the Phillies and Scott Boras have agreed to something new.

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The A’s are signing Jonathan Lucroy for one year and $6.5 million. Why are they doing that? Because Lucroy has been good before, and, other than Lucroy, the A’s catchers are Bruce Maxwell, Josh Phegley, and Dustin Garneau. It’s not so much that Lucroy is sure to be a massive improvement. But, he ought to help, and the A’s had some money to move, and this season, the A’s also happen to look like a half-decent wild-card contender. Everything makes sense. This move was almost painfully obvious.

Of course, in order for this move to go down, Lucroy had to accept. You know how free agency works. And the A’s have had some problems here, in terms of getting players to take their money. Sure, the A’s have run low payrolls in large part because they’ve intended for payroll to be low, but they’ve also often been turned down, even when they’ve had the high offer. This offseason, for example, the A’s offered the biggest contract to Brian Duensing, who re-signed with the Cubs. Maybe Lucroy is fond of the A’s. Maybe he’s excited to go there. But, it’s the middle of spring training. The market decided Lucroy wasn’t worth being enthusiastic about. The A’s came calling with a job.

As I write this, Lucroy is 31 years old. Not even very long ago, he was considered one of baseball’s best catchers. How did his free agency end up in this place? Lucroy, like Carlos Gonzalez, is coming off a bad season. And it’s not at all clear what anyone should make of him at this point. What skills he still has are fair to question.

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Back on the other side of the weekend, word got out the Rockies were re-signing Carlos Gonzalez for a year and $8 million. In one way, it’s great news, because now Gonzalez has a job. Furthermore, Nolan Arenado said bringing Gonzalez back “would be the greatest thing ever.” So, from the Rockies’ standpoint, and also from Gonzalez’s standpoint, it’s terrific to preserve some familiarity. In another way, this is disappointing news. It’s disappointing to Gonzalez, because a year ago, he turned down what would’ve been a lucrative three-year extension. And it’s disappointing to some fans, who now wonder what to make of the Rockies’ outfield picture. There are some younger players who are knocking on the door.

When I chatted last Friday, I received several inquiries related to Raimel Tapia, David Dahl, and Mike Tauchman. There’s an argument to be made that all of them are major-league ready. Gonzalez now gets in the way, because he’s not re-signing to platoon, or to sit on the bench. Gonzalez is going to play, and that playing time comes at the expense of other Rockies. What I would say is not to worry too much. Gonzalez now occupies a spot in a nine-man lineup, but I see this more as helping the depth. There’s value in having moving pieces.

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Free agency is supposed to be the reward. Of course, not every player gets treated the same, but, in general, free agency tends to reward good hitting. Mike Moustakas has blossomed into a pretty good hitter. Free agency tends to reward good fielding. Mike Moustakas has been a fine defensive third baseman. Free agency tends to reward winning experience. Mike Moustakas was part of a World Series champion. And, importantly, free agency tends to reward youth. Mike Moustakas is 29 years old. He’s just one year older than Eric Hosmer, who signed for massive terms with the Padres. It feels like it should’ve been there. It feels like Mike Moustakas should’ve earned his reward.

Moustakas is returning to the Royals. It’s a one-year contract, with a $6.5-million guarantee, and while there exists a second-year mutual option, those are never picked up. It was the Royals who extended to Moustakas a $17.4-million qualifying offer, which Moustakas, in turn, declined. Now he won’t come close to that money. There’s been talk for a while this market is strange, but the Moustakas terms in particular are jarring. It’s incredible that his free agency got to this point.

MLB Trade Rumors figured Moustakas would sign for five years and $85 million. The FanGraphs community figured he’d sign for five years and $85 million. Dave Cameron figured he’d sign for five years and $95 million. Now, Moustakas can still earn big money. He won’t have a qualifying offer attached next offseason, and another strong year would improve his stock. And, also, it’s easy to try to point things out after the fact. No one knew this was how Moustakas would end up. But, in hindsight, there were issues from the beginning. A variety of factors came together to prevent Moustakas from finding the commitment he wanted.

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Everyone knows not to make too much of spring-training numbers. This is a time for everyone to be optimistic. Good results are signs of improvement; bad results are to be dismissed because, come on, the games don’t even count. No one takes this time of year too seriously. Not even the players! But especially the fans. Look around. The current league leader in batting average is Mike Freeman. The current league leader in OPS is Billy McKinney. The current co-league leaders in at-bats are Raimel Tapia and Sam Travis. The Marlins, at 7-4, have a better record than the Nationals and the Dodgers. This is all practice. It’s practice, with the pointless quirk of keeping score.

But a funny thing happens when you have enough high-level baseball players playing enough practice games. As noisy as all the individual numbers are, when the sample size gets large, you can start to see real signal. Even in spring training, baseball has a way of finding its level — spring numbers often predict what we’ll see league-wide the subsequent summer. As such, I’ve gone in to investigate, because I’m impatient. This year’s spring training is roughly 40% complete. The league is past 15,000 total plate appearances. What might we be able to tell about the 2018 regular season? The answers might surprise you. (They will not surprise you.)

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Earlier, Travis Sawchik wrote about the struggles of the middle class in this free-agent market. Sawchik called attention to those players predicted by the FanGraphs community to sign for under $45 million, and he found that the actual terms have been significantly lower than expected. Sawchik highlighted eight players in the group who have done better than the forecasts, despite the trend around them. Something those eight players have in common? They’re all relievers.

For all the talk of how slowly the free-agent market progressed — and, I suppose, continues to progress — relievers have seemingly been the exception. Relievers have come off the board in droves, and even back around the winter meetings, when all anyone could think about was Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Ohtani finding new teams, relievers were finding contracts left and right. There was some obvious market enthusiasm, and to this point, free-agent relievers have signed for more money than free-agent starters. There are 24 relievers who have signed for multiple years, and that doesn’t count Mike Minor, who’s going to be tried as a starter again. One market is only one market, but still, what’s going on? It’s actually pretty simple to understand. You might even already know the answer.

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Since Byron Buxton arrived in the majors, observers have wondered if he’s going to hit. The concern there is valid, but it also misses the point, because Byron Buxton is already special. He’s already a better hitter than Billy Hamilton is, and if the bat moves further along, the Twins will have a superstar. Yet even with Buxton as what he presently is, he’s the envy of many opponents. The non-hitting skills are where Buxton stands out.

He’s a clear Statcast favorite, because of his league-leading sprint speed, and because of his league-leading outs above average. Buxton’s in the conversation for the most valuable defender on the planet, and Twins pitchers have basically given him credit for saving their most recent season. That speed, though, also helps elsewhere. According to our metric, Buxton was 2017’s most valuable baserunner. He ranked third in baseball in stolen-base value, fifth in double-play value, and seventh in all the rest. Buxton, of course, relies on his speed. But he also benefits from good baseball instincts and big-league experience. Buxton just ran with more confidence than ever, and his baserunning season was just about perfect. I’ll tell you what I mean.

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It’s time to say what I feel like I say every year. The overall team projections are right there, linked up top. You know where they are and you know what to do with them. We’ve talked about them a lot, already, even though the ZiPS projection system was only recently included. We here at FanGraphs are projections dorks. Estimated future baseball is the next-best thing to actual current baseball. And projections offer some relief to panicking over ugly spring-training results.

Mostly, what people care about are wins and losses. That’s obvious and self-explanatory, given that, what’s more fun than winning? But while it’s easy to look at the overall projections, less attention is given to projected components, because the data is harder to track down and see all together. We know the Astros are projected to finish with baseball’s best record. That’s because they’re probably baseball’s best team. They just won the World Series. Okay. But what if you want to know who’s projected to have the best defense? That information is provided. It just doesn’t have its own standings page. It has this blog post instead.

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This time of year, I tend to get stuck staring at projections. I think it’s a mechanism I developed over time as an alternative to making too much of spring-training statistics. I like to look at the projected standings to give myself a constant reminder of how the whole baseball landscape shakes out, but I also like to look at historical projected standings to give myself a similarly constant reminder of how baseball can surprise. Every March, I go back through my projections spreadsheet to remember supposedly good teams that underachieved. And even more fun than that, I browse to remember supposedly bad teams that overachieved.

When I do that, I’m reminded of the unbelievable 2012 Baltimore Orioles. They might be the most improbable recent success story — that team won 93 games, after being projected to win a woeful 70. And the key to the club was that they had the league’s most effective bullpen. This was before the emergence of bullpen monster Zach Britton. And in a way, those Orioles are representative; many of the greatest recent overachievers have been powered by excellent bullpens. Between 2007 and 2008, for example, the (Devil) Rays’ bullpen went from worst to first. A strong bullpen can squeeze wins out of thin air. There’s nothing quite like one, when you’re looking for any kind of separator.

I don’t need to tell you a good bullpen is important. Every fan *knows* a good bullpen is important. The question is, how do you know you have a good bullpen? It’s not as easy as you’d think. Or, it’s exactly as hard as you’d think.

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