Since the middle of 2009, the Cardinals’ left fielder has been Matt Holliday. Injuries kept Holliday from playing a full season each of the last two years. For that reason and perhaps others, the team decided not to exercise his $17 million option, instead paying a $1 million buyout. Similarly, the team opted not to give a qualifying offer to Brandon Moss, who hit 28 homers but also struck out 30% of the time, somewhat limiting his value offensively. As a result, the Cardinals entered the offseason with two starting outfielders, Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty, and a hole. Following Ian Desmond’s deal for $70 million with Colorado and the White Sox’ trade of Adam Eaton to Washington in return for major package of prospects, the Cardinals elected to fill that hole with Dexter Fowler on five-year contract worth $82.5 million.

Fowler is coming off the best campaign of his career, having slashed .276/.393/.447 and produced a 129 wRC+ for the Cubs while recording average defensive numbers in center field. The result: nearly a five-win season. Fowler’s best attribute on offense has been his ability to get on base. He has a career walk rate at 13%, and of active players with at least 2,000 plate appearances, only Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, Carlos Santana, Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, and Joey Votto have walked more frequently. He has generally been a high-BABIP player, only once (2015) recording a mark lower than .320. He doesn’t steal a lot, but he does so with an acceptable success rate, has hit double figures in every big-league season, and has posted good baserunning numbers throughout his career.

His success getting on base will make him an ideal fit for St. Louis, who have been itching to move Matt Carpenter down the order since Carpenter’s power surge in 2015. The team tried to shoehorn some players who weren’t good fits occasionally last season, but Fowler’s numbers profile well in the leadoff spot. Fowler should also help the Cardinals’ baserunning, which was awful last season. Also ideal for the Cardinals is Fowler’s aging profile. This deal will take Fowler through his age-35 season. Fortunately for St. Louis, Fowler’ skills at the plate should age pretty well. I looked for Fowler comps when I profiled him earlier in the offseason, and I found that hitters like Fowler have historically recorded a 110 wRC+ from ages 31-34.

Whether this turns out to be a good deal for the Cardinals isn’t likely to depend on Fowler’s bat, but his glove. The Cardinals wanted to find a center fielder capable of moving Randal Grichuk to a corner-outfield spot and improving the team’s defense. Fowler should improve the club’s outfield defense relative to the 2016 season, but there’s considerable debate over how well Fowler’s glove profiles in center field. Fowler’s defensive numbers in Colorado and Houston were pretty terrible; the last two seasons in Chicago, on the other hand, they’ve been close to average. Generally speaking, using three years of defensive numbers will give you the best idea of a player’s defensive talent level, but there has been a strong narrative to Fowler’s improved positioning helping him get to a lot more plays in the outfield.

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About a month ago at this site, Dave Cameron argued that any offers for Andrew McCutchen this offseason would likely reflect McCutchen’s potential for a rebound from a poor and (until recently) anomalous 2016 season. Last week, Jeff Sullivan argued that the Washington Nationals represented an ideal fit for McCutchen. Finally, this past week, it seemed — for a time, at least — as though a deal between the Pirates and Nationals would come to fruition, with the latter club prepared to offer major prospects for the former’s star.

The deal didn’t happen, though, and the Nationals, after having negotiated for and failing to get Chris Sale from the White Sox, ultimately acquired Adam Eaton from that same team. That haul, or something close to it, could have gone to Pittsburgh in the Pirates’ quest to contend beyond 2017. This seems like a bad outcome for the Pirates, but it could prove to be a blessing in disguise for a team that still has a shot at contention next season.

The conventional wisdom around the Pirates’ interest in trading McCutchen is that they perhaps know something the rest of us don’t about one of the best players of the last decade. From 2011 through 2015, Andrew McCutchen averaged nearly seven wins above replacement per season. That’s a Hall of Fame-level peak, but last season, McCutchen’s bat went from spectacular to slightly above average. Add in below-average defense, and at the still-young age of 29, McCutchen went from Hall of Fame to below average in the blink of an eye. Given the height of the aforementioned peak, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a bounce-back season for McCutchen. That Pittsburgh would move McCutchen might suggest that the bounce back isn’t quite as likely as one might think. I’m not so sure.

The Pirates are in a unique situation: they have a corner outfielder in Starling Marte who could play quite capable defense in center field, another young corner outfielder in Gregory Polanco who has improved in his time in the majors, and one of the best prospects in baseball in Austin Meadows, who also plays the corner outfield. Marte is locked up through 2021 on a cheap, team-friendly deal. Polanco is in the same situation through 2023, and if the team calls up Meadows sometime in 2017, they will retain his services through the 2023 season. Andrew McCutchen has two team-friendly seasons left, totaling $28.5 million. While his 2016 campaign was disappointing, his value on the trade market remains incredibly high.

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Brian Dozier had himself quite the 2016 season. If you want to be technical, you could say he had quite the second half of the 2016 season, but that’s splitting hairs — he was still pretty good in the first half. It wasn’t historically superlative, but for second basemen in this millennium, it was pretty impressive. Now the Minnesota Twins have essentially made him available, and “four to five” teams are said to be interested in acquiring his services. Let’s take a look at who those teams could be.

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As of yesterday afternoon, both Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen had been courted by the Yankees. Both had received offers. And both those offers were believed to exceed the four-year and $62 million deal that had just rendered Mark Melancon the most well-compensated relief pitcher in history.

Brian Cashman said his preference was for Chapman because, among other reasons, Chapman wouldn’t cost a draft pick, and the closer had pitched well in New York. Cashman told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch that he “[didn’t] believe that Jansen would have any issues pitching in New York either, but it’s nice to have that box checked, too.” You have to figure Champan’s 100 mph fastball certainly helped matters.

Cashman got his wish. Chapman is a Yankee once again, to the tune of five years and $86 million. There are reasons the deal makes sense from a baseball point of view. It’s also possible that the spectacle of Chapman’s velocity will have some marketing value. Hal Steinbrenner himself has reportedly stated that he liked the buzz Chapman created at the stadium. By those criteria, it’s possible that they choose wisely, and I’ll address those points in a moment.

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Just one day after they dealt away Chris Sale for an impressive crop of young talent, the White Sox continued their tear-down yesterday by flipping Adam Eaton for another nice haul. This time, they landed three young pitchers (roughly in order of consensus future value): Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning.

Here’s how the minor leaguers headed to Chicago grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.

*****

Lucas Giolito, RHP (Profile)

KATOH: 5.8 WAR (47th overall)
KATOH+: 10.8 WAR (9th overall)

Giolito is one of those cases where the scouting reports outstrip the on-field performance. Scouts have long raved about Giolito’s fastball-curveball combination, and he parlayed it into dominance at the lower rungs of the minor leagues in 2014 and 2015. He was a consensus top-five prospect at this time last year, but things got a little rough for him in 2016.

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The White Sox continued adding to their suddenly robust farm system yesterday, acquiring a trio of pitching prospects from Washington in exchange for star outfielder Adam Eaton. Below are my scouting reports on the prospects involved. Lucas Giolito (60 Future Value) will slot in behind Yoan Moncada on the next revision of the White Sox prospect list, the completions of which I might delay until Rick Hahn’s purge of the major-league roster appears complete. Reynaldo Lopez will slot between Michael Kopech and Zack Collins as a 55 FV, while Dane Dunning will be the top 45 FV on the list.

The once Prodigious Lucas Giolito has more recently become the Enigmatic Lucas Giolito. While he remains one of baseball’s best pitching prospects after an inconsistent 2016, Giolito is no longer head-and-shoulders the game’s best. The opinions of scouts who saw Giolito this year make for an interesting collage of hope, fear, tempered expectations and patience, but all agree that front-end starter upside is still extant, if a bit less likely.

That kind of upside has been apparent since Giolito’s days at Harvard-Westlake, where, before suffering a season-ending elbow injury that would later require Tommy John surgery, he was generating potential 1-1 buzz and had a legitimate chance to become the first right-handed high-school pitcher ever taken with the draft’s first pick.

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You might remember that, last year, the Nationals didn’t get who they wanted. They made a strong run at Yoenis Cespedes, but they obviously didn’t win. They made runs at Jason Heyward and Ben Zobrist, too, but they didn’t win there, either. They ultimately wound up with Daniel Murphy, and Murphy worked out fantastic. The season worked out fantastic. The Nationals pulled off a significant pivot.

There’s been more pivoting this week. The Nationals made a run at Chris Sale, and they lost to the Red Sox. They made a run at Andrew McCutchen, and they couldn’t reach an agreement. So the front office quickly turned to Adam Eaton. You could think of Eaton as being the Nationals’ Plan C, and he’s not so sexy a splash as the others. And yet he’s good, incredibly good, arguably even McCutchen-good, and he’s the newest star player on the Nationals’ roster. All the Sale talks made the deal move fast. It must have been an exciting trade to complete.

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A day after the Nationals failed to send a bunch of talent to Chicago for Chris Sale, the Nationals have reportedly agreed to send a bunch of talent to Chicago for Adam Eaton.

Source confirms: #Nationals, if deal is completed, will send Lucas Giolito, Dane Dunning and Reynaldo Lopez to #WhiteSox for Eaton.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

According to reports yesterday, both Lucas Giolito and Reynoldo Lopez were in the Nationals offer for Sale, so the two teams appeared to have just reworked the rest of the package to get Washington an outfield upgrade instead of a rotation upgrade. And while Eaton is definitely not Chris Sale, this might be just as impactful an upgrade for the Nationals.

First off, Eaton is really good. August Fagerstrom called him “Baseball’s Quietest Superstar” back in May, and he justified the commentary over the rest of the season. Eaton’s put up three straight years with a 115-120 wRC+, and after moving to right field last year, his defensive numbers took off. He’ll have to move back to center field in Washington, but there’s definitely real defensive value here, and he runs the bases too. Eaton is a terrific all around player with an above-average bat, and he fits well at the top of the Nationals line-up.

Whether he’ll be as good back in center field is an open question, and if the defense is just okay, then Eaton won’t put up +6 WAR again. But with his bat and legs at an up-the-middle spot, his floor is probably +2 WAR as long as he’s healthy, and there’s obviously room for value well above that if the defense still plays back in center field.

And, of course, there’s the contract. Eaton is signed for $18 million over the next three years, with club options that could push it up to 5/$38M; that’s a remarkable value. As a free agent, Eaton would have gone well over $100 million, and maybe over $150 million; Jason Heyward got 8/$184M for the same kind of package of skills last winter, though he had a longer track record of success than Eaton. But there’s similarities there, and the market paid big for Heyward last winter, so this is not a player type the Nationals could have acquired cheaply.

For the White Sox, they get what looks like a great return in young pitching, though as Jeff Sullivan wrote yesterday, there are reasons the Nationals are willing to trade Lucas Giolito. But Giolito and Lopez both have a lot of upside, and Dunning was the Nationals first round pick last year, so there’s a lot of options for how this could work for Chicago. Even if you only get one good starter out of the three, that’s still probably more valuable than betting on Eaton to age well enough to still be around the next time the White Sox are good.

With this deal, Eaton’s acquisition means Trea Turner heads back to shortstop, which pushes Danny Espinosa back into a part-time role, where he can spell Daniel Murphy and Anthony Rendon. The upgrade from Espinosa to Eaton is probably worth a couple of wins, plus this gives the team more depth, and adding Sale to the rotation and then dumping Gio Gonzalez to free up a rotation spot wouldn’t have been a dramatically larger improvement.

So the Nationals got better, but at the cost of a couple of good young arms. The White Sox get upside arms to throw at the wall and see what sticks. A good team gets better, a rebuilding team gets younger, and this looks like the kind of deal that might work for both sides.

Hoo boy, here we go. Welcome to prime hot-stove season, everyone. Ian Desmond is going to the Colorado Rockies, and he’s going to be paid $70 million to play there for five years. And, according to various reports, the Rockies may be looking at him as a first baseman. This move is the equivalent of the Denver Broncos signing Lionel Messi. It’s unexpected. It’s bonkers. It’s newly legal in Colorado, and Jeff Bridich is into it.

Man, let’s think about this for a minute. Ian Desmond was a lost cause a year ago. He had imploded in glorious fashion in Washington and then took a pillow contract with the Rangers to play a super-utility man. He wound up moving the outfield and recorded roughly average overall defensive numbers there. He also put together a 106 wRC+ for the year… but just a 65 wRC+ in the second half. Did he go back to being his 2015 self? Was it just a prolonged slump. Was he really a decent hitter once more?

We’re going to find out. We’re also, apparently, going to find out if he can play first base. Or… are we?

I mean, is Ian Desmond really going to play first? Committing $70 million to a guy to play a position entirely foreign to him seems strange. Asking him to play first base after he’s just finished a roughly average offensive season is also strange. If the Rockies wanted to move an outfielder to first base, they could’ve just done so with Carlos Gonzalez, whose defensive skills have been declining for some time now. Instead, the Rockies are going to stick Desmond there and cross their fingers.

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Last night, the Tampa Bay Rays signed Wilson Ramos for two years and $12 million, with nearly $18.25 million available in all if he meets certain incentives. Ramos represented an interesting case for potential suitors. At 29, he’d just produced the best season of his career. He’d also sustained, and is currently rehabbing, the worst injury of his career — one that will prevent him from returning until midseason at best. From the Rays’ perspective, the move is unusual in at least one way, too: they just signed a catcher who can hit.

Were Ramos to repeat his 2016 campaign, he’d immediately become the best catcher the Rays have ever had. Were he to repeat his second-best season, he’d become the best catcher the Rays ever had. Were he to repeat his third-best season, Ramos would be the third-best catcher the Rays have ever had. By wins above replacement, Ramos — once he’s healthy in 2018 — is very likely to become the best Rays catcher ever. Even if he just hits to his career level (exactly league average), once he sees 100 plate appearances, he’ll be the best hitting catcher the Rays have ever had.

Of course, there’s a lot more going on than offense and positional value in this deal, which slots in nicely with the two-year, $10-ish million contracts that have been handed out to volatile veterans like Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, and Sean Rodriguez. There’s plenty to worry about, just like in those deals.

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