Last month, not only did the Tampa Bay Rays cut Jose Molina, but, as Jeff detailed, no other Major League team was or has been interested in picking Molina up, even for the smallest of prices. As somebody who has always had their interests piqued by pitch-framing, this tiny morsel of a transaction nonetheless triggered a miniature existential crisis on the significance and value of pitch-framing. Have the estimates of framing value been, in fact, comically optimistic? Have savvier umpires begun to render this skill a moot point? Is there some other factor about the nature of the catcher position that we, on the outside, simply don’t know?

Some of those things may very well be true, maybe even all of them. But before we use the Rays dumping Molina as an example of the preacher turning pagan, let us consider yesterday’s big trade between the Rays, Nationals, and Padres. Somewhere amidst this flurry of new forwarding addresses, defensive-minded catcher Ryan Hanigan went from Tampa Bay to San Diego, while defensive-minded catcher Rene Rivera went from San Diego to Tampa Bay. The catcher swap was the minor part of the deal for the public, but perhaps the Rays don’t see it that way. In fact, if they still believe strongly in the value of catcher defense, perhaps the Rays didn’t even consider themselves as selling low on Wil Myers, given the potential value that Rivera might provide.

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In the weeks when between Billy Butler’s contract was bought out and today, with Kendrys Morales brought to Kansas City on a two-year, $17 million deal, the Royals ranked dead-last in FanGraphs’ projected Designated Hitter Depth Charts. Not dead-last amongst American League teams: Dead. Last. Less projected WAR from their DH spot than 15 NL teams, none of which actually employ a designated hitter.

With Morales now in Kansas City, one can see that the Royals have now soared up the depth chart rankings…up to the #24 position, with an estimated 0.6 WAR now due to emit from this spot in the lineup. The Texas Rangers now have the dishonor at being the lowest-ranked AL team, headlined by the light-hitting combination of Mitch Moreland and Rougned Odor. The Royals are now only just ahead of the Miami Marlins (featuring a rotation of Justin Bour/Jeff Baker/Donovan Solano/Derek Dietrich) and the Philadelphia Philles (Darin Ruf/Grady Sizemore/Cesar Hernandez/Cameron Rupp/Maikel Franco).

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A few weeks ago, Eno tried to make sense of Oakland’s Billy Butler signing by wondering about the holistic impact that Butler will have in the A’s lineup. Eno mentions the designated hitter penalty before examining how Butler could very well help the A’s by adding variation to their ratios of ground balls and fly balls. Batted-ball types could very well be the A’s primary motivation in signing Butler.

But I want to stop at just the designated hitter penalty: what if the A’s signed Butler primarily because Billy Beane both believed in the existence of this penalty, and also very much wanted his team to avoid it?

I’m personally inclined to believe in the existence of the penalty because it feels, to me, like a really elegant combination of intelligence gleaned from both statistics and on-the-field gameplay. On one hand it makes intuitive sense that playing as a designated hitter would be a sweet gig: your full day’s work is just four or five plate appearances! Sweet! So much less risk of injury! So much more ability to maintain endurance over the brutally long season!

There does exist a common-sense argument, though, in the favor of the DH penalty. Baseball is a game of rhythms, we know — even the additional off days in the playoffs, which would theoretically help a team rest, can jolt a team’s daily rhythms of play. It’s not hard to imagine being pencilled in as DH being disruptive just like those unwanted October off-days. These players have been constantly playing games their whole lives, and have only ever known the rhythm of going on the field, off the field, on the field, off the field, inning by inning. If you played left field on Tuesday, it could be pretty weird to suddenly have hours of in-game free time on Wednesday. What do you do with that time? How to you stay fresh and ready? Is it simply too much time to get bogged down with thinking?

For the last few years, the A’s have gone with a DH by committee, so Bob Melvin has had the daily task of pulling a new player off the field. This season, the A’s leader in plate appearances as a DH was Alberto Callaspo, with only 151. Just about everybody in their lineup spent at least a combined week at DH, and there were plenty of other A’s DH’s I won’t get to because of small sample sizes. (Yoenis Cespedes had 69 PA’s as a DH before his trade to Boston; Stephen Vogt had 23; Jonny Gomes had 17; Kyle Blanks had 8; Nate Freiman had 3, and shoot there are probably some others too.)

We know that the A’s constantly switched DH’s because they constantly switched the rest of their lineup in an attempt to play platoon advantages. Only, looking back at the 2014 A’s, it’s easy to see how this lack of lineup continuity backfired. Oakland DH’s who had preseason projections at DH (compiled by Matt Klaassen here) seriously underperformed those projections in their DH-PA’s. And also: they seriously underperformed compared to their own performances on the days when they played defense.

Callaspo had a down year in just about every way you could imagine, and you can see how his offense took an even lower dip when he was called on as a DH (statistics via Baseball Reference’s Splits pages):

John Jaso was second on the team in DH-PA’s, presumably to save him from the injury-inducing dangers of playing catcher. The transition to DH really threw Jaso for a loop, as he dropped at least 100 points in every category the days he was off the field:

Transitioning to DH also rocked Coco Crisp, who struggled as a below-replacement hitter during his turns in the dugout:

Even the team’s All-Stars, Derek Norris and Josh Donaldson, looked profoundly mortal during the rare days when they hit as DH:

Just about the only player who didn’t struggle during his handful of DH-PA’s was Brandon Moss:

Moss as DH is hardly the answer, though. Between his defensive versatility between first base and the outfield, plus his offensive versatility at hitting pitchers of both hands, Moss is one of the most important cogs in Oakland’s platoon-dominating machine. Slotting Moss in at DH makes it extremely difficult to have advantageous handedness match-ups at both first base and corner outfield.

Whether epiphany struck Billy Beane mid-season, or whether the opportunity only presented itself at the end of August, we do know that Beane values a full-time DH: Beane traded for one. He traded for Adam Dunn, who was in the midst of a season playing better as a DH than he did as a fielder:

Dunn has hit considerably worse as a DH than as a fielder for the whole of his career. This, however, can be explained by Dunn entering the American League only in 2011, with his prime slugging years well behind him: he hit better when he was younger, which was when he played the field. What’s important is that Dunn’s AL production when a DH compares favorably to his AL production when a fielder. For the month of September, Beane and Melvin had a guy they could pencil in at DH every day — which they did — and actually know that they would get the player’s best offensive self.

More importantly, you can envision how Dunn’s constant presence in the lineup would serve as a rising tide that could lift all ships: now Jaso and Norris and Donaldson and Crisp and (I guess) Callaspo can all put forth their best offensive performances too, once they went back to the familiar rhythms of playing defense.

Both the A’s and Dunn knew that he was the shortest of short-term options, given his subsequent retirement. Seeing as a full-time DH was a priority for the A’s in September, it’s safe to assume that it was a priority for them going into the winter as well.

So, what were their options? Signing Nelson Cruz means the A’s would have had to top the Mariners’ 4-year/$57M offer, and also Cruz hit better as a fielder last year, the first of his career with extensive DH experience. Even if his 2014 weren’t so scary, Kendrys Morales has also comparatively struggled as a DH for the entirely of his career. Although he definitely seems like a late-career DH, Adam LaRoche has only had 22 DH-PA’s in his whole career, meaning his abilities at the DH-skill are still entirely unknown. Victor Martinez actually totally fits the bill of what the A’s are looking for, having hit well as a DH both last year and for his whole career. Oakland’s winning bid would also have to top Detroit’s 4-year/$68M offer, which would be ill-advised if not also financially implausible for the A’s.

Perhaps the A’s scouting and/or analytics staffs could have found reasons to start up reclamation projects in Paul Konerko, Raul Ibanez, or Jason Giambi. Otherwise, we’re pretty much already down to one dude on the free agent market with the established DH skill: Butler. It’s not like there are a lot of established DH-skill guys in the league, period, for possible trades. David Ortiz or Edwin Encarnacion would cost an unattainable fortune. Adam Lind and Chris Carter seem like intriguing possibilities, although Lind has made it to 100 games played in only one of the last three seasons, and the A’s traded Carter away when they had him.

So, Billy Butler. He had a very poor 2014, and also played worse when he was a DH compared to when he was in the field:

This is Butler at his very, very worst. And still he outperformed the 2014 DH production of talented offensive players like Jaso and Norris.

Steamer assumes that Butler’s below-replacement 2014 is the exception, rather than the new rule, putting him down for 1.3 WAR next year. Butler posted 1.5 WAR in 2013, meaning that the A’s can expect Butler’s 2015 to look a lot like that season, which the projections nailed almost exactly:

Heck, let’s go back to 2012, to the very first FanGraphs Positional Power Rankings:

So Butler performed very, very slightly better when on the field in 2012. Still: the drop when he played DH is barely perceptible, which was not the case for the A’s in 2014.

Even if Butler produces three straight one-WAR seasons for the A’s, he’ll also essentially be giving the team the gift of 600 or so PA’s for his teammates to play the field and, consequently, hit at their best. Whatever in-game routine Butler has in order to come to the plate fresh and focused, it’s still a rare skill across the game of baseball, and it’s a skill that has and will pay dividends for both Butler and his team.

All of the numbers that I’m about to dive into are subject to change — they will change mightily, and rapidly, as the proverbial baseball stove reaches nearer to its sizzling apex. Still, I was curious to know: which of baseball’s teams have committed the most money from this point forward?

Some baseball teams have access to vast resources — vast even when compared to other Major League teams — but none has access to infinite sums. The teams who have committed the most money from this point forward are the most likely to make advances towards premier free agents, or the most likely to lucratively extend their own young talents: these are the teams with money to spend. And yet, paradoxically, these same teams are in some ways the least likely to make the same advances: the outsized financial commitments they giddily made in the past could be the very thing that forces a team into conservative stewardship from here on out. The further we advance into the future, the more the severity of certain long-term contracts becomes apparent. That ink might as well be cast in concrete.

Tabulations courtesy of spotrac. Arbitration figures are not included because they are ultimately unknowable, and rookie contracts are not included because they are too small to be bothered with amidst this mighty storm of money.

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Yesterday, I heaped swift and mighty judgment upon the Contract Crowdsourcers of 2013 for their (your) contract proposals that were considerably more fiscally irresponsible than the contracts that were actually proposed to the players at hand. Between the injuries that befell some of the players mentioned yesterday — rendering their one-year contracts more or less entirely useless — to the career-worst years that befell the healthy, it was a veritable carnival of inefficiency, disappointment, and waste.

I told you the bad news first. But there is indeed good news! Here are five instances in which The Crowd’s proposed contracts are, I would argue, more beneficial to the team than the contracts that the teams actually agreed to. In three of the cases studied below, The Crowd’s noted tendency to underestimate both the years and average salary given to upper-tier free agents played to The Crowd’s advantage — when it comes to free agents who disappointed in 2014, no doubt The Real-Live GMs would much prefer to have a lot less guaranteed cash remaining on the books. In the other two cases, The Crowd bestowed modest multi-year deals upon players that were ultimately thrived on one-year deals — and who will be hunting for increased compensation this winter.

In the charts below, the columns cYRS, cAVG, and cTOT refer to the number of years, the amount of annual compensation, and the amount of total compensation that The Crowd gave to the players. The columns aYRS, aAVG, and aTOT list what the player actually, non-hypothetically received. The complete results of the 2013 Crowdsourcing can be found here.

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Of course it would take a sample size of so many decades of FanGraphs Contract Crowdsourcing before The Crowd could be properly evaluated for their salary-creating acumen. I will not hesitate, however, to deliver swift and mighty judgement upon The Crowd based on just their (your) inaugural year of estimations.

A few weeks ago, one Carson Cistulli shared an exhaustive chart showing how The Crowd’s aggregate contracts compared against the actual salaries that 2013’s free agents actually received. This is only one dimension with which The Crowd’s collective wisdom can be judged. Now that the free agents of 2013 have played the 2014 season, we can also begin to make strong guesses (and/or swift and mighty judgements) as to whether The Crowd or The Real-Live GM proposed a contract that more accurately reflects a given player’s competitive value.

Tomorrow, a look at The Crowd’s successes: five contracts that are perhaps even more discerning than the contracts proffered by The Real-Live GMs. But today, a look at The Crowd’s collective failures — five contracts that, were they executed by The Real-Live GMs, would be cause for those Real-Live GMs to question (and/or have already lost) their job security.

These five contracts have been selected not out of a set of rigorous objective criteria. However, their short length (all five players were signed by Real-Live GMs to one-year contracts) invites the arrival at conclusions. None of these five players had what one would call a “good” or even a “mediocre” season in 2014. While The Real-Live GMs who designed these contracts no doubt regret their decisions, in each case The Crowd proposed a much larger commitment, in terms of both years and dollars, for these players. In the financial tables below, one can see The Crowd’s aggregate proposals for the number of years (cYRS), average annual value (cAAV), and cumulative contract totals (cTOT) offered to these players, compared to the contracts that they would agree to with The Real-Live GMs (aYRS/aAAV/aTOT).

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Probably my favorite sub-plot of this manic Royals conquest is the team’s 25th man, Terrance Gore, who had played in 11 major league regular season games before this most iconic of winning streaks. In fact, including his postseason appearances, Gore has played only 33 games above single-A, and is now a World Series contestant.

One way to easily identify Gore on the field is his uniform number 0, an under-utilized quirk that is an easy way to gain my affection. (Much respect also to Adam Ottavino.) There are other easy ways to identify him: he’s by far the smallest person on the field, somewhere around 5’7”, and he is only summoned off the bench in order to pinch-run in late-inning situations, and almost always for designated hitter Billy Butler. The substitution for Butler is doubly brilliant on the Royals’ part: slow Billy is taken off of the basepaths, and inexperienced Terrance does not have to play high-leverage innings of defense. In his sixteen games as a Royal, Gore has only been allowed two plate appearances, neither of them in the postseason.

Gore’s inclusion on the roster is a brilliant example of an entire Major League organization working in orchestration. Anticipating his usefulness as a playoff bench weapon, the Royals promoted Gore from High-A Wilmington to Triple-A Omaha at the beginning of August, and then from Omaha to Kansas City at the end of the month. Come playoff time, and Gore effectively replaced Raul Ibanez on the 25-man roster, with the hoodied Ibanez looking more and more like a coach as he watches and encourages from the dugout.

It has been easy to compare Gore to Herb Washington, a track champion and an Oakland A from 1974-75. In his two years in the big leagues, Washington appeared in 110 games, stole 31 bases, and ended up with more World Series rings (1) than career plate appearances (0).

To compare these two players is actually disrespectful to Gore. For Washington’s career, he successfully stole on 31 of his 50 attempts — an unremarkable 62% — and went 0 for 2 in the playoffs. To wit:

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