Mike Trout probably isn’t going to win the MVP today. I’ll be honest with you: It’s hard for me to care very much. I know that it would mean something to Trout, and I know we’re all supposed to rail against arguments we disagree with, and I do disagree with the argument that Trout isn’t the league’s most valuable player. I just don’t see how it really matters. All Trout’s missing is a piece of hardware, and a nice moment with his friends and family. As recognition goes, he’s already widely recognized as the best player in the game. Even the people who don’t vote for him say that. And, down the line, Trout’s numbers will speak for themselves. His Hall-of-Fame candidacy won’t come down to the number of awards he picked up. Voters look beyond that, and, even more importantly, Trout’s unlikely to be a borderline case. He’s on track to coast into Cooperstown, and he’s on track to be one of the best players ever. Everybody sees that, and missing an award won’t slow him down.

In a way, Trout might even benefit from not winning. An award, sure, is an excuse to try to appreciate a great player. But when Trout finishes second or third, then people get to argue the voting’s unjust. The conversation revolves around Trout, and it sheds light on how much better he is than the rest of his teammates. In short, when MVP voting comes around, Trout’s greatness is widely broadcast. People hear about it, regardless of who actually wins the damn thing.

I now want to touch on that greatness one more time. One thing that separates great players from good ones is that great players are never satisfied. Every player is to some degree motivated, but the great players make improvements. If you look at Trout, along the line, he improved his power hitting. He improved his contact ability, and he improved his approach. He improved against high fastballs. There’s recently been one more improvement. We’re pretty much out of things that Mike Trout doesn’t do.

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The Cubs won the World Series. I’m sure enough has been made of that. I’m not sure enough has been made of their defense. Or, if you prefer, their hit suppression. Don’t get me wrong, there have been articles about this very topic. But, you know BABIP. By BABIP allowed, the 2016 Cubs were the all-time best. The all-time best, over more than a century. It’s kind of unbelievable what the Cubs pulled off.

Like many statistics, league BABIP changes with the eras. You don’t want to compare raw BABIPs throughout history, just as you wouldn’t want to compare raw strikeout rates, or slugging percentages. I’ve calculated something very simple — the difference between a team’s BABIP allowed and the league-average BABIP allowed. Here’s a table of the top 10 since 1900, and, well, I told you:

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Times are desperate, man. You know what kind of shape the free-agent market for starting pitchers is in. I hope you like Edinson Volquez, because you can’t even get a Jeremy Hellickson, and there’s only one Rich Hill to go around. Everyone knows the market is bad. Even the pitchers who make up the market know the market is bad. Out of this bad market, the Astros have plucked Charlie Morton, for two guaranteed years, and at least fourteen million guaranteed dollars.

Morton is newly 33. He appeared in four games last year before getting hurt, and his career ERA is 19% worse than league average. The Phillies let Morton walk, instead of exercising a $9.5-million option. The thing about front offices thinking so similarly is that you can’t just say “oh, the Phillies were being stupid.” No one is stupid. In Morton, the Phillies saw downside. In Morton, the Astros see upside. It’s always interesting when this happens.

And me, I’m an optimist. I’m a believer in people, and though that does come back to bite me, I see reasons to believe in Charlie Morton. I like him as an upside play, as a guy who could affordably knock your socks off.

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The season’s most lopsided game was a Clayton Kershaw start. That shouldn’t surprise you — the Dodgers were good, and Clayton Kershaw was great, and the Dodgers with Clayton Kershaw were fantastic. As a matter of fact, five of the season’s 10 most lopsided games were Clayton Kershaw starts. His opponents in those games: Bud Norris, Jered Weaver, Brandon Finnegan, Chad Bettis, and Tom Koehler. Four of those games, the Dodgers won. They lost the Kershaw/Koehler game. It was nearly the season’s biggest upset.

For every game all year long, we publish pregame win probabilities. At first, they’re based on general team projections, and the starting pitchers. Then they update to account for the actual starting lineups. Every calculation includes a home-field-advantage boost of four percentage points. This year, there were 58 games in which the favorite was given at least a 70% chance of winning. Our math predicted 42 wins. In reality, there were 43 wins. The odds work pretty well, provided you don’t take them too seriously. They’re wonderful estimates.

On April 26, Koehler and the Marlins went into Los Angeles and beat Kershaw and the Dodgers. Before the game, the Dodgers’ chances of winning were 74.3%. On July 22, Zach Eflin and the Phillies went into Pittsburgh and beat Gerrit Cole and the Pirates. Before the game, the Pirates’ chances of winning were 74.4%. There is no meaningful difference between these numbers. The calculation error is far greater than one-tenth of one percentage point. But, a difference is a difference. A leader is a leader. I have no choice but to designate that game on July 22 as the biggest upset of 2016.

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These days, some people are hard at work trying to understand one another. As votes rolled in and results were released, segments of the population were taken aback. In certain corners, the mood has been celebratory, triumphant. Elsewhere there has been fear, disappointment, and, more than anything else, confusion. “How could anyone make that choice?” many have wailed. “How could so many people overlook all the evidence?” I won’t pretend to be more than I am. I know that I am but a single man in a rising, roiling ocean of souls. But I can try to defend at least my own decision. For 2016 American League Rookie of the Year, I voted for Michael Fulmer ahead of Gary Sanchez.

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The people who say that history repeats itself usually aren’t referring to baseball trade rumors, but here we are, with an offseason that’s already feeling a lot like last July. Around the most recent trade deadline, teams were in the hunt for starting pitching, and at the top of the market were some potentially available, cost-controlled aces. Now teams have resumed the same hunt, with rumors around many of the same targets, and maybe foremost among them are Chris Sale and Chris Archer. Sale’s an ace on a team that might elect to rebuild. Archer’s an ace on a team that can’t afford loyalty.

Just so we’re all on the same page, odds are Sale and Archer don’t both get traded. For all I know, could be that odds are neither gets traded. But let’s explore the situation anyway. Sale’s been a great starter since 2012. He’ll turn 28 in March. Archer became a quality starter in 2013, and he turned 28 in September. Sale’s long been considered perhaps the best starting pitcher in the American League. Archer this season very narrowly avoided 20 losses. If I polled you, almost all of you would rather have Sale than Archer for a must-win game tomorrow. Yet as trade negotiations go, I bet Archer has the higher price tag.

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So I actually ran two different polling projects this week. In one of them, I asked you to reflect on your 2016 fan experience. I wrote about the results of that on Thursday. In the other one, I asked you to look ahead to 2017. The question was pretty simple: For whichever given team, how many games do you expect that team to win?

I tried to make it clear I wasn’t asking about the teams with rosters as presently constructed. I wanted you to fold in some offseason expectations, some additions or subtractions. Of course, we don’t know how the real offseason will go, but we have ideas of what various teams want to do. In any case, I plan to look at numbers like these a few times before Opening Day 2017. Here goes the first analysis!

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Earlier this week, you were asked to place some votes, and some of those votes were placed on FanGraphs. I ran a polling project identical to the one I ran after the 2015 World Series, and many thousands of you participated, for which I am grateful. On a team-by-team basis, I asked you how you felt, in general, about the season that was. Here’s a sample poll:

Part of the fun of these projects is sparking some discussion. But most of the fun of these projects comes from eventually analyzing all the results. That’s what we’re here for today. I’ve got my spreadsheet and plots all together, so, away we go!

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The next good hitter to come from South Korea almost came to the majors a year ago. Maybe “almost” is taking it too far — ultimately, nobody placed a bid. But the hitter was posted, then, so the opportunity was present. The hitter is now a free agent. The opportunity is present once more.

You’ve heard what people have been saying about this year’s free-agent market. It’s miserable, especially toward the top, and the other day Keith Law said it’s one of the worst classes he can remember. One player can’t make the difference, short of that one player being, say, Mike Trout or Shohei Otani. This is going to be the winter of trade rumors. But the free-agent market doesn’t only include minor leaguers and major leaguers with American track records. You shouldn’t overlook the 29-year-old Jae-Gyun Hwang, because he just made himself substantially better, and he’s there for the bidding.

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