This morning, after a long and protracted negotiation that finally resulted in the team threatening to pursue alternative free agents, the Orioles reportedly agreed to re-sign their slugging first baseman Chris Davis. The price? $161 million over seven years, giving Davis the same annual average value as Jason Heyward, the winter’s best available position player. And Davis was able to land this contract despite the fact this contract is probably going to be a disaster and that the market for hitters has been quite frigid this winter.

Given the limited suitors looking for a first baseman, the remaining crop of quality outfielders, and the risks surrounding Davis’ skillset, this might be Scott Boras’ most impressive victory over reason yet. As an agent, he has perfected the ability to go around the baseball operations department, dealing directly with owners who simply don’t have the same level of knowledge as the people they employ to run their team on a daily basis. Except in this case, even Peter Angelos had to know he was bidding against himself.

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Let’s face it — there’s no way not to feel uncomfortable about the Chris Davis sweepstakes.

I’m not just referring to how the Orioles and Davis seem to be at something of an impasse. I’m not just referring to how Davis has to this point been unable to drum up much of a market. It’s just, this is going to require a lot of money, and it’s hard to know what Davis is going to be. He’s as much a boom-or-bust player as you can find: Last year, he hit as well as Jose Bautista; the year before, he hit as well as Jed Lowrie. He’s been bad and he’s been an MVP candidate, and there’s a whole lot of space in between.

I don’t think player comps can be much help. For one thing, there just aren’t very many. Davis is an unusual player, historically speaking, given his massive power and his massive strikeout side effect. Maybe the two best comps are Jim Thome and Ryan Howard, and their careers went in completely opposite directions. Those comps are as unhelpful as Davis’ recent track record. He could turn out really amazing. He could be a disaster. This isn’t particularly illuminating.

Davis is 230 pounds of uncertainty. The extent of his success will be determined by what happens with a handful of swings every season, and there’s a lot of room for that to go right or wrong. Basically, there’s no achieving actual comfort. There’s only pursuing artificial comfort. That comes out of just learning more information — more knowledge has to be a good thing, right? — so let’s take a look at something that’s been going on under the hood. Let’s learn more about Davis, even if it might not ultimately help to understand what his future’s going to be.

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It might seem easy to envy the life of a major league baseball player: even the least famous of them make a lot of money, have a bunch of Twitter followers, and get to play a game for a living. But it’s always been a little tougher for me to envy the life of a relief pitcher, who seems to experience the worst drawbacks of the job with little of the upside. As opposed to starting pitching — where one’s mistakes can be more easily made up for by logging good innings — relief pitching is simply less forgiving, with every mistake massively amplified. And no pitcher has embodied that more in the past two seasons than Evan Scribner.

You might know about Scribner, as he was just traded from the A’s to the Mariners last month. There’s more than that to him, of course, and one of the big things is the number of strikeouts he’s recorded compared to the number of walks he’s issued. That’s important, because we like the K-BB% stat a lot for pitchers: it’s been shown to be the best ultra-simple ERA estimator we currently have. It’s not perfect, but it can be a handy way to get an idea of how a pitcher could perform in the future. There’s even some work that shows it performed better than xFIP, FIP, and SIERA at predicting second-half ERA after a first half was in the books. All of this is just a set up, really, for this table, which shows the 15 best K-BB% marks for relievers with at least 70 innings pitched between 2014-2015:

The list is pretty much a who’s who of dominant relievers, as every guy in the top 10 is closing or has closed for their respective teams sometime during the past two years. Then there’s Scribner, who sticks out like a sore thumb mostly because of his ERA and the fact that he walks no one. Well, not no one, but in major league terms, he walks no one. He has the lowest walk rate among relievers who have pitched meaningful innings in the past two years (20+ innings), and it’s not particularly close; in raw numbers, he’s walked four batters in 71.2 innings.

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Look, I don’t want you to think me unserious. I very well could be, quite possibly I am, but I don’t want you to think it. So you should know I debated with myself over writing this article. And I won that debate. So here I am. Here we are. Because it’s January. And we ain’t got nothing to do.

I asked myself this question a while ago: how do you improve the structure of baseball? We’ve been so focused on fixing small bits here and there, forcing a pitcher to do this little thing, or the batter to keep his foot there, but how do you take the general rules of the game and make it more interesting? Do you make pitchers throw with their opposite hands. No. Do you add little spikes to the ball? No. Do you put each base at the top of a small flight of stairs? Well… I’ll get back to you on that one. Otherwise, though, all of the above are ridiculous suggestions. They might be funny (or not), but you couldn’t implement them because they’re too silly and too painful.

However, there is one way you could change the game and create, at the same time, grounds for more strategy — as opposed to more injuries. The answer is, you eliminate one of the bases. Think about it. There are four bases. There could be two, or three, but for some reason, there are four. I’ll blame Old Hoss Radbourn. It’s odd to think about, but it takes forever to get around the bases and baseball, as baseball itself acknowledges, takes too long. What baseball needs is an HOV lane, an express lane, and a way to add some choice. Let’s give players options and watch them make mistakes!

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A pitcher, standing on the mound, peers in toward his catcher for a signal. It’s the first pitch of an at-bat. The catcher puts down a couple fingers, and the pitcher shakes him off once. He shakes him off twice. The pair agree on a pitch. The pitcher starts his windup, rears back, and fires. Miss. Ball one. A league-average batter now has a 37% chance of reaching base in this at-bat, just on the pitcher misfiring on his first offering alone. In an alternate universe, where the pitcher throws a strike, the batter’s chances of reaching are reduced to just 26%. Over the course of a full-length season, two identical batters with equal true-talent levels could bat 600 times each, and batter A, who starts out every at-bat with a ball, would reach 66 more times than batter B, who starts out every at-bat with a strike, the seperation being due entirely to the difference in count leverage.

We know count leverage is important, but its omnipresence makes it easy to undersell its magnitude. Someone’s always got the edge. The battle is winning it back. In the same vein, the other side of the battle is not losing it once you have it.

There’s no worse spot for a hitter to be than an 0-2 count. After falling behind 0-2, the league hit just .171 last year, with a .200 on-base percentage. It’s not any easier against Chris Sale. From a batter’s point of view, the words “easy” “against” and “Chris Sale” don’t mix well. Against Sale last year, batters were held to a .155/.169/.243 line after falling behind 0-2. Sale found himself with the advantage of an 0-2 count plenty of times — 231, to be exact. More than a quarter of Sale’s at-bats went directly to an 0-2 count. And from there, things only got worse for the hitter. Of those 231 counts that went straight to 0-2, Sale recorded a strikeout in 132 of them, with exactly one walk.

Only one time last season did Chris Sale lose an 0-2 count to a walk. Julio Teheran lost just one as well, but in 73 fewer at-bats. And, sure, what David Price did is probably every bit as impressive as Sale, except singularity is fascinating. And fascinations are worth exploring.

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It’s mid-January, and to this point, no team has appeared as a front-runner to sign Yoenis Cespedes. Despite a monstrous 2015 season, he’s gotten caught up in the cold free agent market for hitters this winter, as the teams with money to spend all decided to go for pitching this off-season. Now, with Spring Training a month away, teams have shifted into bargain-hunting mode, so we get reports like this one.

Sources say #Orioles have grown increasingly frustrated with Chris Davis' demands and might be close to walking away.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) January 15, 2016

It's believed the #Orioles are willing to go to five years and the $75-90M range to sign Yoenis Cespedes.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) January 15, 2016

In their attempts to re-sign Chris Davis, the Orioles reportedly put out an offer of $150 million over seven years; their reported comfort zone with Cespedes is for about half of that. The Davis offer is not a very wise one — he probably should have already taken it, given the likelihood that his skillset isn’t going to age well — but the idea that Cespedes is worth 50-60% of Davis is laughable.

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The Padres have been linked to two shortstops this offseason. One was four years younger than the other, and still in some command of the tools that made him an All-Star-level player. But Ian Desmond is risky, and more expensive than $4 million guaranteed over one year with a mutual option for 2017. According to multiple sources, that’s the deal the Padres have agreed to hand Alexei Ramirez, who should be worth that price, no matter which Alexei Ramirez shows up.

One year, Alexei Ramirez hit 15 homers and stole seven bases. The next year, he hit nine homers and stole 20. And that’s not the only place where we’ve seen wild swings from Ramirez. He’s walked 2.6% of the time in a year, and 8.1%. He’s produced an isolated-slugging figure of .185, and also of .096. He’s swung and missed 10.7% of the time, and 6.5% of the time. He’s hit nearly one grounder per fly ball and also nearly two grounders per fly ball. He’s pulled the ball 38% of the time, and also 54% of the time. He’s shown below-average defense, and league-leading defense. He’s swung at 60% of the pitches he’s seen, and 49%.

Throughout it all, he’s recorded nearly 5,000 plate appearances and been above-average with the stick for a shortstop, and the third-best overall glove since he debuted in 2008. Even with all the oscillating, all the bad plate discipline, all the weird changes to his game, Ramirez has been above-average in all of his years save two — his first and his last.

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Comparing positions is a tricky business. We’d like some sort of magic formula that could compare exactly how much harder it is to play average shortstop than average left field, but such magic does not exist. Instead, we estimate the difference by looking at how players do when they play new or multiple positions, and how offensive performance varies by position. We think that we have a decent set of positional adjustment estimates, but there is a lot of room for error in those marks.

In a basic sense, those adjustments tell us how much value a player provides by holding a particular spot on the field. Over the course of a season, an average shortstop provides about five runs more of value than an average third baseman (we think), so the logic dictates that if that average shortstop moved to third base he would be about five runs better than the average third baseman when we compare their UZR or DRS figures. Nothing is perfect, but that’s the basic understanding.

But there are a couple of places in which that logic breaks down (even if we were to accept it as flawless otherwise). First, left-handers can’t play second base, shortstop, or third base. This means that certain left-handers will wind up playing in a corner-outfield spot or at first base even when they are theoretically a middle infield-caliber defender. Second, catchers. The job of a catcher is so different than either of the other two classes of players that there’s really no comparing them directly for scientific purposes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally play other positions.

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I’ve long been greatly interested in Jonathan Lucroy, so now I find myself greatly interested in his situation with the Brewers. The Brewers, as you know, are bad, and they’re prepared for being bad, and though Lucroy is decidedly not bad, he’s got just two more seasons of control, and he’s coming up on 30 years old. It makes sense for Lucroy to be on the market, therefore, and this is something I wrote about a month ago for Fox. It’s a complicated spot for Milwaukee, given Lucroy’s up-and-down year and concussion, but Lucroy should be able to bring back a haul.

The team I’ve heard connected most often is the Rangers, who are a clear contender, but who could use some more affordable help. Robinson Chirinos is a fine-enough catcher, but Lucroy is better, and he could also spell Mitch Moreland at first when there’s a lefty on the mound. The Rangers would love to have Lucroy on what’s left of his cheap contract. The problem to this point: from what I’ve heard, the Brewers have been asking for entirely too much. The ask has been a non-starter, so Lucroy remains where he’s been.

Yet, let’s make an assumption: MLB executives are reasonable people. So they can arrive at reasonable deals, and the Brewers surely understand there’s some risk in keeping Lucroy around into the year. What this post is about, then, is trying to find a fit between the Rangers and the Brewers. It’s not like the Rangers are the only interested team, but they might be the most interested. Let’s run through some possibilities, together. How might the Rangers and Brewers be able to pull something off?

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Yesterday I wrote about Carter Capps, who last year was on his way to an almost impossible season before elbow trouble sent him off. The idea was to remind you of just what Capps was able to do over 30-odd innings, and in support of that, I noted that Capps had baseball’s most unhittable pitch if you set the minimum to 100 of a given pitch type thrown. That’s important — Capps’ slider is one of the very best sliders, on account of what he can do with his fastball.

But, we talked about how minimums are arbitrary. You can set them wherever you want, and, you know, 100 pitches is plenty, but you could look for more. For fun, why don’t we double the minimum? Here are the most unhittable pitches last year, for pitches thrown at least 200 times:

1. A.J. Ramos changeup, 34.8% swinging strikes
2. Will Smith slider, 29.5%
3. Carlos Carrasco curveball, 28.3%

At the 100-pitch minimum, Capps had a lead of about six percentage points over Ramos. At the 200-pitch minimum, Ramos had a lead of more than five percentage points over Smith. Ramos isn’t a freak in the way that Capps is a freak, but you could just as easily argue Ramos is more impressive since he doesn’t do anything to challenge the rules. A.J. Ramos just pitches, pretty quietly, and pretty quietly, he’s thrown a changeup as good as almost anyone else’s.

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