Every Friday, for a couple of hours, I host a FanGraphs live baseball chat. Yesterday, I held my first chat in the aftermath of the winter meetings. The previous Friday, I held my last chat before the winter meetings. Within that chat, here’s a question that popped up:

We might never know Tom’s true identity. But, Tom, if that is your real name — good going. You came awfully close.

With five players involved, this is a big trade for two teams to make. But then, if we’re going to be realistic, this isn’t about the players at all. This is a swap of money, or, more accurately, this is a swap of debt. There is short-term debt, and there is shorter-term debt.

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You could say that, in recent years, the Cardinals and Marlins have dealt with opposite strengths and weaknesses. Even leaving ownership issues aside, the Cardinals have fielded teams full of pretty good players, with precious few great ones. The Marlins, meanwhile, have had their great players, but they couldn’t surround them with any depth. With the Marlins presently tearing down, it made all the sense in the world for the Cardinals to try to get their ear. And although the Cardinals ultimately couldn’t get Giancarlo Stanton to waive his no-trade clause, Wednesday they’ve settled for a powerful alternative. The newest outfielder in St. Louis is none other than Marcell Ozuna.

This is the kind of trade the Cardinals were lined up to make. This is a form of talent consolidation, and the team might not be finished. The Cubs are just within reach, and the Cardinals aren’t happy missing the playoffs two years in a row. They made it a mission of theirs to acquire some form of impact bat. From the Marlins’ side, this was inevitable, unavoidable. This is how a rebuild proceeds, and the years ahead will be ugly. With luck, the Marlins will have a promising 2021. With luck, the Cardinals will have a promising 2018.

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The competitive-balance tax isn’t a salary cap, not in the hard and fast sense, but sometimes it acts in the exact same way. As a consequence, you can have big-budget teams in the business of cutting payroll, which can lead to situations like Tuesday’s, where the Padres have come to the aid of the Yankees. The Yankees are trying to stay below the threshold, even after acquiring Giancarlo Stanton, and that almost fully explains this morning’s exchange.

Padres get:

• Chase Headley
• Bryan Mitchell

Yankees get:

• Jabari Blash

This is a trade involving three major-league players. And even though I’m not at all convinced Blash lasts the winter on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, there are things about him to like. Ultimately, though, this is really quite simple to understand — the Padres are taking Headley’s $13-million final year, and they’re getting Mitchell for the trouble. The Yankees drop their payroll, and the Padres get a project.

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As I sit here in the winter meetings media room, there’s a press conference taking place in front of me, with Giancarlo Stanton being officially introduced as a member of the New York Yankees. If you’re a Yankees fan, you love it, and if you’re a fan of anyone else, you don’t, but one thing every fan understands is that this gives the Yankees something extraordinary. Your mind goes directly to one place: The Yankees lineup is about to feature both Stanton and Aaron Judge, and Stanton and Judge are amazing.

If you’re analytically inclined, you know that Stanton and Judge are Statcast outliers. They’re the two players who most frequently push the upper boundaries of exit velocity. And even if you’ve never heard the word “Statcast” at all, you can understand that Judge just led the American League in home runs, while Stanton led the majors. Stanton was Judge before Judge, Judge v1.0, and he’s as big a power threat as anyone in baseball. Stanton could hit the ball out anywhere even before the ball started flying, and he’s associated with his power in the way Aroldis Chapman is associated with his fastball. The Yankees have landed a premium slugger, to go along with their other premium slugger.

But Stanton’s reputation might be a little misleading. Power is his biggest strength, sure, but there’s more to his game. Stanton’s more of a complete player than you might realize, after making some changes in the regular season.

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Shohei Ohtani has decided to sign with the Angels. I don’t think many people were expecting an Ohtani announcement on Friday. And I don’t think many people were expecting Ohtani to go where he’s going. There’s a lesson in here, perhaps, the lesson that you should never assume another person’s motives. Yet that lesson also isn’t very helpful. The Ohtani sweepstakes were essentially unprecedented. We’re not going to see many cases like this in the future. By and large, we know how baseball decisions get made. We knew hardly anything about this one. Even though the Angels were there as one of the seven finalists, they were mostly written off, right up until they won.

The Yankees were seen as a favorite. Endorsement opportunities, and everything. They were eliminated early. The Mariners were seen as a favorite. History of Japanese players having success. No dice. The Giants were in there, having recently won a bunch. The Dodgers and Cubs were in there, being presently very good. The Rangers and Padres were in there, with Ohtani pursuits dating back several years. I don’t know what it was that might’ve allowed the Angels to stand out. Ohtani has indicated only that he felt the closest bond with them. That made the difference. You might want to think it was Mike Trout, but, according to Ohtani, it was the team connection.

There’s nothing there to analyze, I don’t think. Not in any meaningful way. Ohtani didn’t go for the most money. He went for what felt right in his heart. That’s the very definition of personal, and what matters most to Ohtani might not matter much to other people. In this case, it doesn’t matter what matters to other people. Something about the Angels spoke to Ohtani’s desire. That’s the whole story. We all have our own things we feel connected to. Those connections might not always seem outwardly to make the most sense.

Now the Angels have a talented young pitcher, who is also a talented young hitter. You’ve been hearing about Ohtani for years, so I don’t need to give you the summary. You know what he’s about. He’ll have to be managed carefully, and there’s certainly some amount of risk, but had Ohtani been an unrestricted free agent, he would’ve signed for something like $200 million. He’s about to earn, instead, the league minimum. Right now, Ohtani is probably one of the 10 or 15 most valuable players in the league. The Angels just…got him. They picked him up and put him on the roster. For all 30 teams, this was a one-time opportunity. It’s the Angels who now get to look a whole hell of a lot better.

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Shohei Ohtani. Giancarlo Stanton. Something about Shohei Ohtani, and something about Giancarlo Stanton. Given the nature of the rumor mill these past few weeks, it would’ve been easy to forget that teams have other needs. Take the Mariners, for example. The Mariners badly need a good starting pitcher. That could be Ohtani. They’re right in there, among the seven finalists. But the Mariners have also needed a center fielder. Finding a center fielder is less interesting than trying to land Ohtani, sure, but it doesn’t mean it could just be ignored. Not everything has to do with Ohtani, or Stanton. And so on Thursday, the Mariners have made a trade with the Marlins. A trade to address the other need. A creative one!

Mariners get:

• Dee Gordon
• $1 million in international slot money

Marlins get:

• Nick Neidert
• Chris Torres
• Robert Dugger

The Mariners’ roster lacked a center fielder. Dee Gordon isn’t a center fielder. He’s a second baseman. The Mariners will ask him to convert, so I guess that means he is a center fielder, at least by label. The Mariners are taking the chance that Gordon can pull this position switch off. From the Marlins’ side, does this need to be explained? Gordon turns 30 next April. He’s due at least $38 million over the next three years, and that could turn into $51 million over four. The Marlins wanted out. They’re all about cutting costs right now, so this is a normal trade for prospects. If, that is, you believe the Mariners had prospects to give. It’s debatable.

Oh, and there’s slot money, too. Turns out this is connected to Ohtani after all. He just can’t be escaped.

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Earlier this very week, I ran a polling project. The question being asked was simple: What do you think of your favorite team’s front office? That is, the front office, independent of ownership. The front office, independent of things the front office doesn’t control. We all have opinions. None of us have actual concrete answers. The question is simple and impossibly complicated. But so many of you voted, and I promised to analyze the results. That’s what we have here — sort of a crowdsourced FanGraphs community front-office power ranking.

There’s no real perfect way to evaluate a front office. Never has been. FanGraphs tried to do it before, by gathering input from a bunch of its own writers, but that was eventually put to a stop, because it was too controversial. We can’t know, we can’t know for sure, but the results here are still significant. What’s truly being measured is how people perceive the various front offices. Wouldn’t you like to know about the perceptions, league-wide? Wonder no more. Here’s what we have, according to, at least, a strongly sabermetric audience.

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To make it clear right off the bat, this has nothing to do with Shohei Ohtani or Giancarlo Stanton. This has nothing to do with the current offseason market, and, frankly, this has nothing to do with baseball from any of the past few decades. This is just built around a historical fun fact, but, you know, we all need breaks. And we all need improbable fun facts.

You can probably think of a few baseball coincidences on your own. One I personally can’t forget is that both Ken Griffey Jr. and Stan Musial were born on November 21 in Donora, Pennsylvania. There’s Roberto Clemente’s career ending at exactly 3,000 hits. I don’t know what you do and don’t remember, but I have a coincidence to add to the list. It takes a little explaining, but I think the destination is worth it. Maybe you won’t agree in the end, but I’ve been thinking about this since I found it by accident during a podcast last week. I feel compelled to speak my truth. I have to share this little statistical story.

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