In light of the tremendous success of last week’s edition of Let’s Find a Home — for which we took about 20 minutes to send Johnny Cueto eagerly off to San Francisco — I thought it would be right neighborly to take on a different, lonely, sad free agent this holiday season. So, people, won’t you help me find a new happy home for Chris Davis? He’s tall, he hits homers, and he is completely potty trained! Adoption fees start at $150 million.

There’s an alternate reality somewhere out beyond our galaxy (yes, I saw Star Wars a few days ago) where Chris Davis is taking one year “rebuild his value” offers from a few teams after another unsuccessful season. In that galaxy, Chris Davis is Mike Napoli, and when he signs, it doesn’t merit a press conference, only a few lines from his new manager amidst discussion of other business. That’s where things were headed for Davis after 2014. He was worth not quite a full win that season, batting below .200, just reaching a .300 on-base percentage, and slugging a hearty (for a middle infielder) .404. This came following a seven win season. Seven! Wins! Chris Davis posted a seven win season then wasn’t worth a single win the next season. Ahhhh baseball!

Then last season, Davis was worth 5.6 wins. Ahhhh baseball reprise! Chris Davis is your friend who insists on driving but doesn’t understand the subtlety required by brake and acceleration pedals. His car lurches forward off the line then, as soon as he sees anyone slowing in front of him, he slams on the breaks. Can you pay that guy like he’s a champion race-car driver?

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Many baseball things happened yesterday. One of them was that Mike Napoli, late of the Angels, Rangers, Red Sox, and, hey, Rangers again, signed a one year, $7 million deal with the Cleveland Indians. Since converting to first base in 2013, Napoli has played there almost exclusively, the exception being a brief though not brief enough cameo in left field with Texas last season. The Indians still need some outfield help, but presumably they are able to distinguish between ex-catchers who play first base and actual outfielders, and as such will use Napoli at first base. This, Indians fans, is a good thing. Oh, and so is the signing.

Napoli offers power and on-base and and a general ability to play first base effectively if not spectacularly. This, friends, is a valuable package. There is, of course, some potential for downside though. You don’t sign a player to a one year contract for $7 million in this market without there being some sort of problem. Napoli’s defect, the reason he could be had so cheaply, is that last season he was bad. However, there’s more to it than that, and as such there’s reason to believe Cleveland has bought a good player on the cheap.

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For the average adult, seeing December 22 on the calendar is typically an indication that Christmas is nigh. Inform a child on that same date, however, that the holiday is three days away, and he’s gonna whine, “But that’s foreeeeever!” Children time runs differently, in these cases.

Look up Johnny Cueto on MLB Trade Rumors and you’ll find the last post containing any information about him went up three days ago. In normal time, three days is just three days. But in these the fiery, early days of free agency — when rumors run rampant like the river Ganges — three days is an eternity. Free-agent time runs differently, too.

Johnny Cueto’s name should be up in lights; mentioned every four posts; connected with teams like the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, Red Sox, and [your team here]; and, of course, mentioned using comically stalker-ish verbiage. But it isn’t.

Now, look up the free agent leaderboards here at FanGraphs. You’ll see Cueto’s name placed prominently near the top. He was, it turns out, quite good this past season! As further research reveals, he’s been quite good in years past, as well. But while David Price, Zack Greinke, and Jordan Zimmermann have all found new teams, poor Cueto is teamless. Let’s all band together right now and help stop this scourge of teamlessness, because… the more you know [shooting star].

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Note: this post was published earlier today at FOX Sports, before reports surfaced that Heyward has reached an agreement with the Chicago Cubs.

Look towards the top of any list of free agents available this off-season and you’ll find Jason Heyward’s name. There are good reasons for this. Sure, he’s polite at parties, never leaves the seat up, and always holds the door open for the elderly, but it’s more than that. He’s got perhaps the most well-rounded set of skills the free-agent market has ever seen. He’s got a career wRC+ of 118, so he can hit; he’s got some power in there, as well as on-base ability; he’s an excellent baserunner and a superb fielder. There’s really nothing that Heyward doesn’t do well, and when you add his age into the equation, that’s when things get silly, financially speaking. Ah, his age. That’s really the crux of this whole thing.

Heyward is 26 all year, so unlike most free agents, the team that signs him will get his peak seasons. There are some players who have many of Heyward’s abilities but who won’t approach what he’s expected to get. Ben Zobrist, for instance, is an interesting comparison. He’s a good fielder, a smart baserunner, he has some pop in his bat and he’s exhibited about as much on-base ability as Heyward has. He also plays 70 positions despite baseball not having that many. But Zobrist was born in May, 1981, meaning he’ll be 35 years old next season. Heyward was born in August of 1989, so he’ll be 26. This is why Zobrist just signed with the Cubs for four years, $56 million while Heyward is expected to more than double both the total years as well as the AAV of Zobrist’s contract. Imagine if you could go back in time and sign Ben Zobrist for 10 years beginning at his age-26 season. In today’s market, that would be a bargain.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

It’s an interesting thing in life when we can look at someone’s behavior and immediately identify its causes based on what we know of their past. Like when an actor tries to do a serious movie because they’ve only been seen as a comedian, or when a guy hits 40 and rushes out to by that ’86 Firebird he’d wanted since he was 11. These things are easy to diagnose, no degree required.

So, too, with Dave Dombrowski’s first offseason in Boston. He’s spent the balance of the last decade, it seems, losing in the playoffs because his bullpen failed him when he needed it most of all. So how do you counteract that? Easy! Get all the best relievers, or a good number of them, anyway. That was easy!

First, there was the Craig Kimbrel deal which did two things. It (a) caused the internet to freak out because Dombrowski dealt a seemingly silly amount of prospects to San Diego, and (b) added Kimbrel to the Red Sox bullpen. Then yesterday he traded Wade Miley for reliever Carson Smith (covered here by Jeff Sullivan). It’s easy to picture Dombrowski sitting down for the first time in his Fenway Park office, visions of David Ortiz’s grand slam flying just beyond the outstretched glove of Torii Hunter flickering in his brain like an old newsreel. He grabs a napkin out of his pocket and jots down the word “bullpen” over and over until he builds up then pops a blister on his finger. “The most dominant, unimpeachable, and impregnable bullpen yet seen on earth will be mine,” he thinks, “just as soon as I find a band-aid. OW! That smarts.”

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I was listening to a relatively prominent podcast a few days ago, just before David Price signed with the Red Sox, on which one of the commenters who has connections inside baseball said he knew Price wouldn’t go to the highest bidder. He isn’t that kind of guy, the commenter stated, matter-of-factly (that’s a paraphrase). To further paraphrase: he cares about location, about comfort, about winning. Then Price took the highest offer from a last place team, the most prominent player on which he’s reportedly had a feud.

As it turns out, Price is exactly that kind of guy. Which isn’t to say that being that kind of guy is bad, wrong, or indeed anything negative at all. [Insert boilerplate about how Price has earned everything he can get and also blah blah blah.] Even so, David Price’s seven year deal with the Red Sox makes some loud statements about the nature of free agency, statements that will almost assuredly be ignored by many, but statements that shouldn’t be. Because they are true, and the truth will set you free, and freedom is not free, like this bagel I’m eating, and bagels are delicious. So there.

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With the signing of J.A. Happ to a three year, $36 million contract, the Blue Jays seem to have turned the corner on their 2015 ace, David Price. So in that sense, for Blue Jays fans, the Happ signing is not a Happ-y occurrence… Has everybody left? Okay! Time to get down to business. While we are all focused on the big-name free agents, like Price, picking their new and surely happy homes, the almost-AL Champs north of the border have been somewhat quietly going about the business of doing lots of business, and that business has been assembling a rotation that can take advantage of their offense.

Happ is the third starting pitcher the Jays have brought in or back since the season ended. Recall that they re-signed Marco Estrada to a two year deal, and then traded Liam Hendriks to Oakland for Jesse Chavez. Now they bring back Happ, a member of the Jays as recently as 2014. With R.A. Dickey and Marcus Stroman, that’s five starting pitchers under team control for next season. While Happ represents likely the last and largest free agent outlay by the Blue Jays organization for a starting pitcher this offseason, that doesn’t mean the team is completely done. With Happ, the team has $92 million committed to seven players in 2016 and none of those seven are Josh Donaldson, meaning adding an eighth player will make that figure meaningfully larger. Last season Toronto spent $137 million, their highest payroll ever, and though reports are a bit conflicting, they don’t seem likely to go much beyond that if at all for 2016. Assuming that’s all true, fitting David Price’s salary in would have meant cutting some muscle from the payroll, and doing that likely would have meant cutting muscle from Toronto’s greatest strength, their offense.

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Simplicity can be a good goal to have, but often the real world won’t allow it. Life creates uncertainty and complexity and this can be a problem when attempting to determine the proper path to take. For example, should I put down the computer right now and find out what my son is repeatedly slamming into the wall, or should I try to finish this thought? The answer, in this case: probably just finish this thought while simultaneously hoping not to see a hammer on its way through the living room sheetrock. It might not ultimately be the optimal decision, but it’s the best one at which I can arrive given the information at my disposal.

The White Sox are in a similar situation. Fortunately for them, it has nothing to do either with my feral child nor the hammers he’s always carrying, but rather their major league roster — and, specifically, whether to rebuild or restock it (which can, in some ways, be even more daunting). As things currently stand, they don’t know what to do this offseason. Are they rebuilding? Adding on? What does Ken Williams think about the definitive direction of the team?

Are the White Sox rebuilding? Adding on? Ken Williams told reporters last night that definitive direction hasn’t been decided upon yet

— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) November 18, 2015

Thanks, Scott Merkin! That sure was timely. I’m not here to argue that the White Sox should blow things up or stand pat. They could go either way, but regardless of whether they take the We-Want-to-Win-Now direction or the We-Want-to-Win-Later direction, they’re going to have to do something about their defense.

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The Cleveland Indians finished in third place in the AL Central last season, but just 4.5 games out of the Wild Card, and 13.5 behind the eventual World Series champion Royals. With a pitching staff fronted by Corey Kluber and a young talented infield headed by superprospect Francisco Lindor, the Indians are looking at 2016 as a chance to take the next step and make the playoffs for the first time since 2013. But, being the Indians, they have a problem.

Taking that next step towards the playoffs means adding to the team’s offense. Last season Cleveland scored 669 runs. Only Seattle, the Angels, the White Sox, and Tampa scored fewer, and nobody scored much fewer. The Indians were 47 runs ahead of the last place White Sox, but 222 runs behind first place Toronto. The team wasn’t wholly without merit, though, as they also allowed just 640 runs, the second fewest in the AL and one fewer than those darn Royals. So, if we can speak in broad generalizations for the moment, we can say that the Indians have pitching and fielding, but to become a championship-caliber team, they need to score some runs. They need offense. So get some offense. That’s it. The end! Thanks for reading!

But, wait! This is the Indians we’re talking about. They can’t just go out and get offense. They can’t sign Jason Heyward or Chris Davis. Like your roommate, they’re perennially short on funds, dude (but if you front them for some pizza they’ll totally get you back next Thursday). So the problem is twofold: the Indians don’t have the ability to simply sign someone at market rates because to do so would blow up their salary structure. This means a trade. And, as shell-shocked Red Sox fans trying to talk themselves into the Craig Kimbrel trade will tell you, you have to give up something to get something.

Further, if Cleveland is going to acquire a major league player who can hit and play the outfield passably well, the likelihood is they’ll have to give up major league players to do it. Sure, the Brewers might be inclined to deal Ryan Braun and the Padres will gladly give you a steaming helping of Matt Kemp, but that will detonate the ol’ salary structure as well, and then there’s that whole “we’re trying to win” thing. So that’s a polite no thanks. This is all by way of explaining why the Indians, a team that is trying to win now, have been mentioned so prominently in trade rumors recently and even going back to the end of last season.

And, in fact, even while I’ve been writing this, here it comes again. Via MLB Trade Rumors:

The Blue Jays, Dodgers and Yankees are among the teams that have reached out to the Indians and had “preliminary” trade talks about Cleveland’s starting pitching, reports Jon Morosi of FOX Sports (links to Twitter). The still-very-early frameworks being discussed would each send a controllable starter away from Cleveland in exchange for an everyday outfielder, he continues.

The problem with this is obvious. It robs Peter to pay Paul, as they old saying goes, and I’m not sure it doesn’t rob Peter’s wife, and their neighbor Frank as well. The cost of giving up a Carlos Carrasco or Kluber is significant. Sure, you’re saying, the Indians would get something significant back, and I’m certain you’re right. They would. But this is simply a reallocation of resources. This is taking four WAR and moving it from your rotation to your outfield, and that’s if you do it right. If you don’t, like the beaming ray in Spaceballs: The Movie, you lose something in the translation.

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The sabermetric movement has grown up over the last decade. A thing that you regularly hear now that you maybe wouldn’t have heard 10 years ago is this: I don’t know. So that’s where we start today. We don’t know what the going rate for ace relief pitchers is. That said, we do have one strong data point following this weekend’s trade of Craig Kimbrel by the Padres to the Red Sox, and it suggests that the cost to grab one of the best relievers in baseball is now substantial, akin to what it might have cost to get an ace starter some years ago.

Kimbrel is an elite relief pitcher, but it was surprising to see Boston acquire him for four prospects, including two top-50 prospects in outfielder Manuel Margot and shortstop Javier Guerra. On top of that already substantial talent the Red Sox tossed in starting pitcher Logan Allen and infielder Carlos Asuaje. That’s a ton of young talent to give up for anyone, let alone for three years of a reliever. It looks quite possibly as though the Red Sox have reset the cost for acquiring a top reliever. But have they?

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