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Thursday afternoon I spent a few minutes talking about pitch-framing with Michael Baumann and Ben Lindbergh. I was on their podcast for a segment to talk about my entry in this year’s Hardball Times Annual, and in the course of the conversation, Ryan Doumit’s name came up. As a big-leaguer, Doumit mostly stayed under the radar, but pitch-framing research exposed his crippling weakness. The numbers made him look bad. Not just bad-bad. Not just run-of-the-mill bad. Extremely bad. Extraordinarily bad. Doumit, as a receiver in 2008, is charged with -63 runs at Baseball Prospectus.

It wasn’t a one-year fluke. For his career, Doumit’s framing was worth almost -200 runs. If you look at his FanGraphs page, you see 8.2 career WAR. Fine role player, average bat. Add in framing, though, and he plummets to a WAR of nearly -12. Doumit goes from being useful to toxic. All because of something we couldn’t even measure a decade ago.

You’d be justified in wondering whether these numbers are accurate. I have trouble believing in them myself. That’s just so, so much value given away. However, allow me to offer this evidence. Doumit caught more than 4,000 innings. Other catchers on his teams caught twice as much. When Doumit was catching, the pitchers allowed 5.34 runs per nine innings. When someone else was catching, the pitchers allowed 4.90 runs per nine innings. That difference, over Doumit’s innings total: 213 runs. Something bad was happening there.

I’ve gone off course. I’m not here to pick on Ryan Doumit. He earned salaries totaling more than $22 million. He did it! But thinking about Doumit made me wonder. How bad could a pitch-framer possibly be? What would be the lower bound? I can’t give you a realistic answer, but I can give you estimates.

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The Marlins gave Edinson Volquez two years and $22 million. Now, I know what you might be thinking: The Marlins might have to issue bigger guarantees in order to convince players to join them. But I don’t know that for sure. What I do know for sure is that Volquez turns 34 next summer. Last season he had a worse-than-average ERA, a worse-than-average FIP, and a worse-than-average xFIP. Those same three things apply, also, to his overall career numbers. Volquez isn’t much. Fifth starter, perhaps.

The Pirates have given Ivan Nova three years and $26 million. Now, I know what you might be thinking: I should add in the modest performance-based incentives. But I just want to deal with the guarantee. Nova turns 30 in a matter of weeks. Last season he had an average ERA, an average FIP, and a better-than-average xFIP. This was supposed to be a terrible offseason to look for free-agent starters, but the Pirates still seem to have gotten something of a deal.

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Right after the end of the playoffs, we lost August Fagerstrom to a major-league front office. I miss having August around, because he was a good friend and an excellent writer. If there was one complication, though, it was that, shockingly often, we wanted to write about the same things. The same sorts of stuff inspired us, and in this line of work, there’s nothing more precious than a half-decent idea. It would be discouraging to want to do something, and then realize another person already had something along the same lines in progress.

It’s not good to have August gone. Less quality content is less quality content. But if nothing else, I am now freer to pursue what I like. Which means I am now freer to write about Domingo Santana. Used to be, August would carry that torch, and he wrote positive things about him any number of times. Now it’s up to me. Much like August, I consider myself a Domingo Santana fan. And it looks like he could become a crucial piece of the Brewers’ organizational rebuild.

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One of the complaints people make about us for some reason is that we spend too much time talking about how awesome Mike Trout is. I could issue the same complaint about those people in reverse: Clearly, they don’t spend enough time talking or thinking about how awesome Mike Trout is. He’s not just some great player, right? It’s not like you talk about Mike Trout in the same breath as Jose Bautista or Robinson Cano. Last year, Trout was better than the next-best position player by a full WAR. Over the past three years, Trout has been better than the next-best position player by more than 3 WAR. Over the past five years, Trout has been better than the next-best position player by 15 WAR. By 15 WAR! Looking at Steamer projections, over a constant denominator, there’s Trout’s projected WAR, at 7.8. And then there’s Manny Machado, at 5.9.

This is another Mike Trout puff piece, in a way. I like it because it serves a purpose, I like it because it’s simple, and I like it because I got to write the same damn article last spring. The offseason isn’t over, and certain teams are still going to make certain additions. But it’s a near guarantee the following will remain true: Mostly thanks to Trout, the Angels look like they should have the best outfield in the game.

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While answering a question in my chat last Friday, I wound up navigating to Billy Butler’s player page, and then I casually noticed that since he debuted a decade ago, he’s been worth about -9 wins on the bases. In the moment, that didn’t seem like something that was going to stick in my mind, but, here we are. You’re going to get a whole article about this.

Look, everyone knows that Billy Butler isn’t much of a baserunner. Butler certainly knows, which is why he laughs and calls attention to himself whenever he does anything good out there. I’ve written about his baserunning before, and it’s hard to go back to this without feeling like I’m making fun. My intention isn’t to be cruel. It’s just, hey, this is a site where we talk about numbers, and some of his numbers are crazy. Butler built a career around his bat, and he has a lifetime 115 wRC+. That’s great. Very few people on planet Earth could do that over one month, much less 10 years. Yet, as Butler’s bat has provided positive value, his legs have given some of that back. He’s nearly the worst baserunner of all time.

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We’ve gone through five years of having the wild-card playoffs, and I think people are pretty happy. Maybe Pirates fans are slightly less happy, but the whole thing has worked out. Yet there was concern! There was concern that it was a money grab. Short of that, there was concern that baseball was trying to inject some manufactured drama. One-game playoffs, so the line of thinking went, were best when organic. Having them every single season could and would take something away from the sanctity of the division races.

Again, I think it’s going well. One-game playoffs are always dramatic, regardless of why they’re being played. The division races are still important, because winning is the only way to bypass the elimination game. And sometimes baseball just needs the extra suspense. Now, even with just one wild card, that race could still be plenty tense. The division races, though, haven’t always been. And this year there might not be a single race at all.

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There were a few rookie hitters who ruined it for everyone. Gary Sanchez was completely absurd for a couple of months. Corey Seager immediately performed as one of the best players in baseball. Because of Seager, Trea Turner got overlooked in the National League — out of all the rookies who batted at least 250 times, Turner finished first in wRC+. He had a comfortable 10-point lead.

A couple players in the American League were even more overlooked. Ryon Healy finished fourth in that same group in wRC+. Hardly anyone noticed. And Tyler Naquin finished third, with a wRC+ of 135. Seager came in at 137. Mookie Betts finished at 135. The other Seager finished at 133. Naquin had a breakthrough season, and he was one of the guys who helped push the Indians into the playoffs.

Yet, eyeball the stat line, and you wonder. Naquin struck out three times out of every 10 opportunities. His BABIP was literally north of .400. And he also slugged .514, as a guy who didn’t establish a power-hitting track record in the minors. At 25, Naquin has plenty of time to improve. But in one way, his 2016 looks a lot like Bryce Harper’s 2015.

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