By the admission of the player himself, John Smoltz had a unique career that doesn’t quite stack up against the traditional standards set by past Hall of Fame inductees. He had two careers, and “each doesn’t qualify a hall of fame type career,” as the pitcher said on a conference call after he was inducted on Tuesday.

By definition, his career is now a Hall of Fame career, but is it possible that he stacks up better against his new colleagues if you consider his career as two halves of two separate induction-worthy careers?

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The Phillies just traded Marlon Byrd to the Reds for a pitcher that couldn’t crack Cincinnati’s top ten prospect lists. Could the Phillies have done better than Ben Lively for their asset? The answer to that question depends on deception.

Even though Byrd’s old, he’s been an above-average player the last two years, and he’s signed to a nice contract. Ever since he started swinging harder, missing more, and hitting the ball in the air more, he’s showed enough power to make up for declining defense and patience. Given his publicly-admitted adjustments, and the now two-year sample of evidence, maybe the deceptive thing about Byrd is that he’s not the same player that Steamer is projecting for a half win.

If you base Byrd’s trade value on recent outfield signings instead of straight dollars per win, he has more trade value. In terms of on-field production over the last two years, he compares favorably to another older corner outfielder that got two years and $21 million from the Mets at least. He’d even represent some surplus value when compared to Michael Cuddyer, probably.

Source: FanGraphs — Marlon Byrd, Michael Cuddyer

So you can see that there’s probably not a lot of consensus when it comes to Marlon Byrd’s trade value. There’s even less consensus about the value of the prospect going back to the Phillies.

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There are many different ways to describe the quality of a pitch. We have movement numbers on this site. There are ground-ball rates. There are whiff rates. There are metrics that use a combination of ground-ball and whiff rates. And metrics that use balls in play. There’s a whole spectrum from process to results, and you can focus on any one part of that spectrum if you like.

But there’s something that’s so appealing about the whiff. It’s a result, but it’s an undeniable one. There is no human being trying to decide if the ball went straight or if it went up in the air or if the ball went down. It’s just: did the batter swing and miss? So, as a result, it seems unassailable.

Of course, there are some decisions you still have to make if you want to judge pitches by whiff rates. How many of the pitch does the pitcher have to have thrown to be considered? Gonzalez Germen had a higher whiff rate on his changeup (30.7%) this year than Cole Hamels (23.7%). Cole Hamels threw seven times as many changeups (708 to 101).

So, in judging this year’s best pitches, let’s declare a top pitch among starters and a top pitch among relievers. That’s only fair, considering the difference in number of pitches thrown between the two. It’s way harder to get people to keep missing a pitch they’ve seen seven times as often. And, in order to avoid avoiding R.A. Dickey the R. A. Dickey Knuckler award, we’ll leave knucklers off the list, and include knuckle curves in among the curves.

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There was once a statistical revolution that was supposedly about on-base percentage. Scott Hatteberg showed us the power of patience, right? In today’s league, though, it’s virtually impossible to make a living if the ability to walk is your only real skill.

The Twins just designated Chris Parmelee for assignment. He might not be a perfect comparable for Scott Hatteberg, but he’s close. Not a defensive asset anywhere but first, Parmelee also doesn’t have above-average power. So far so good.

Parmelee hasn’t shown great patience in the big leagues yet, but that’s complicated. He did have a 12.3% walk rate in the minors, and there have been grumbles in Minnesota that he was too passive as a hitter. Perhaps he’s been trying to be less patient in response to that pressure.

Parmelee himself admitted to me in May this year that he’s spent the last few years searching: “I was trying to find who I was as a hitter.” In the newest variant on his game, he’s been more aggressive. This year, he swung more than ever. He reached more than ever, too. “It might not be that perfect pitch that you were looking for, but it’s still a ball that you can put the barrel on and drive somewhere,” he said.

No matter. To date, Parmelee’s best skill to date has been his walk rate. He’s been just about league-average with the bat, but he’s been above-average with the patience. He *could* be a modern-day Hatteberg for the right team.

Except that it looks like, today, teams aren’t really interested in players that can walk but are having trouble adding value in any other way.

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It’s soon going to be harder to be an agent certified by the Major League Baseball Player’s Association. The process is about to change, and though it’s been due for an update for a while, the new rules are not without questions. Will it change anything? Is it being done for the right reasons?

According to multiple sources familiar with the process, the MLBPA will soon be officially changing the process of agent certification. Right now, their site lists having a player on the forty-man, filling out an application, and submitting $500 as the main requirements.

The revised process will ask new agents to complete an in-person test, available twice a year. Fees may be raised (sources conflicted on this issue). Background checks will be beefed up. And the more informal rule governing having a player on the forty-man will be relaxed in one way and strengthened in another: agents must have a player on the forty-man once every three years, but presumably this will be enforced more often than it has been in the past.

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There are plenty of ways to poo-poo Nathan Eovaldi. Dude has thrown 300 changeups and they’ve been bad, for the most part. Dude has gas, but his four-seamer gets only gets average whiffs. Dude’s thrown almost 500 innings and been league average. Dude’s done this in pitcher-friendly parks and leagues and now is headed to Yankee Stadium. Dude.

There’s at least one way to get excited about Eovaldi. By arsenal shape, speed, and peripheral results, he’s pretty much Garrett Richards.

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The Winter Meetings revelry has passed. We’re still waiting on a few big trades to finally ‘consummate,’ but the list of free agents is less attractive by day. Before you turn down a chance at glory with the guys left waiting for a team, it’s probably a good idea to look at how badly you need them. This is not dating advice, but it sort of feels like it.

To that end, I’ve taking our depth charts and calculated a quick stat for ‘neediness.’ By averaging team WAR over 13 roster spots — the portion of the 25-man roster usually used for offense — and then looking at the difference between that average WAR and each position WAR, I’ve found a way to show where the biggest remaining lineup holes are.

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Nick Ennis was recently promoted to Director of Baseball Operations for the San Diego Padres. He signed on with the Padres as an intern in the baseball operations department out of Columbia Business School, and has also been an advance scout since he joined the team in 2010. He agreed to talk at the Winter Meetings in San Diego, where he had a hotel room despite living five minutes from the convention center. How else are you going to finish up work at two a.m. in the morning and be available for brunch?

Eno Sarris: One of the first interviews I ever did was at the winter meetings, with John Coppolella, now an Assistant General Manager in Atlanta. I asked him about defensive stats, and where they were, and if he ever looked at stats like UZR. He said, yeah, we do have some of that stuff in our database and we have our own opinions. When it comes to the stuff that you see on FanGraphs, how far off is the research?

Nick Ennis: That’s a good question because in the realm of their information, the lens through which they view the world — a macro view, bucketing different outcomes of batted balls with the information that they have, that kind of stuff — I think they’re good. With the public information at their disposal, those metrics are good. That’s a testament to the skills and talent of the members of the public baseball analytics community.

Where the clubs might have access to information that isn’t publicly available — whether it’s information that’s proprietary to that specific club, or information that’s shared only amongst clubs — then you start to see advantages potentially. Better input, essentially. All these models are going to depend on their inputs as well as the way they weigh those inputs.

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The largest signing bonus ever awarded to a Cuban player was just handed to Yasmany Tomas by the Arizona Diamondbacks. There are serious doubts about his game. Is the market for Cuban players out of control?

In what could easily become a yearly tradition, the most recent Cuban signee has a showcase video on youtube — once again complete with jump cuts, slow mo, and a soundtrack (no Michael McDonald this time, though). Even as the video is edited to show Tomas at his best, the laymen’s eye might notice a ‘thick lower half,’ a long swing, and some iffy moves on defense.

While praising Tomas — by pointing out the scarcity of power and lauding Tomas’ raw ability in that department, and calling his swing short for a power hitter — FanGraphs’ Kiley McDaniel admitted that he owned a “riskier bat” than the Cuban immigrants that have been so successful in recent years.

Ben Badler of Baseball America mentioned that Tomas’ weight ballooned in Cuba last season, and then pointed out risk factors beyond the outfielder’s body type in an email. “He’s a high-risk player because of his pitch recognition and swing-and-miss tendencies, both in and out of the strike zone,” wrote Badler of Tomas.

The numbers tell the same story — Tomas is one of the riskiest big-money signings out of Cuba so far.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.