Dallas Keuchel won a Cy Young last night, becoming the second pitcher in as many seasons to complete the two-year transition of “some guy with a 5.15 ERA” to “American League Cy Young Award winner.” Keuchel’s career turnaround, as was Corey Kluber’s, is absolutely remarkable, though the similarities between the two elite hurlers mostly end there.

Kluber, of course, is a righty, while Keuchel throws left-handed. You think of the way Kluber pitches, and you think of all the strikeouts. You think of the way Keuchel pitches, and you think of all the ground balls. Granted, Kluber gets his grounders, and Keuchel started getting his whiffs this year, too, but their primary methods of success lie on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Despite what FIP may lead you to believe, contact management is a real skill that certain pitchers have. Sure, the ability to miss bats entirely is a more reliable skill, and if you had to take one over the other you’d take the whiffs over the weak contact. But some pitchers miss bats, and some pitchers miss barrels. The best pitchers in the world do both, and that’s how Dallas Keuchel got to where he is today.

The whiffs are easy to see. The pitcher throws the amazing curveball and the batter tries to hit it but doesn’t. That’s a whiff. Do that a bunch of times and you have a bunch of whiffs. Soft contact isn’t quite as obvious. I mean, we can see it when it happens, but how? Why did the ball come off the bat like that? I know this is something people struggle with, grasping what it is exactly that a pitcher does to consistently generate weak contact. I’ve seen it asked in chats, live blogs, on Twitter and in comment sections. Understandably so. There’s only one kind of whiff. There’s like a million different ways the ball can come off the bat.

That being said, there’s plenty of ways we can examine the nature of Keuchel’s contact-management game. For now, we’ll stick to one.

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There’s a difference between saying a pitcher has a changeup, and saying a pitcher throws a changeup. Pretty much every pitcher has a changeup — all it takes is once or twice having messed around with the grip and the delivery. If a guy has thrown a changeup, and remembers what he did, it could be said the same guy has a changeup. But to say a guy throws a changeup — that’s something active. That says, not only does the pitcher possess a changeup in his arsenal, but he could throw it at any point. It’s a part of his approach. The pitcher has a fastball, a changeup, and a curve, say.

I don’t know where the point is where one becomes the other. I don’t know how many times a pitcher has to use a pitch before it can be said the pitch is a part of the pitcher’s attack. Here’s what I can tell you about Craig Kimbrel: for years, he’s had a changeup. Now he’s closer than ever to regularly throwing one.

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Congratulations to Jake Arrieta, who was just named the National League Cy Young Award winner, edging out Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke in one of the best Cy Young races in baseball history. Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer rounded out the top five in the voting, just released over at BBWAA.com.

Back in mid-August, I was informed that I had been chosen to vote on the Cy Young Award in the National League this year; it would be my first time getting to vote on the pitcher awards after being an MVP and Manager of the Year voter last year. As a voter, I feel an obligation to the players to try and acquire as much information as I can in order to make the most educated decision possible, and so I spent the next six weeks working my way through various ideas and philosophies about how to evaluate a pitcher’s performance.

About a week after receiving the ballot, I wrote a piece exploring the idea of using a pitcher’s hitting performance as a variable in deciding the Cy Young Award, and I asked a lot of people in the game whom I respect about their views on that issue. A month later, I worked through some of my thoughts on how to best separate out a catcher’s value from his pitchers’ results, and then the next day, I looked at some other factors mentioned by the commenters, including the potential value of consistency.

In writing those pieces, I wanted to lay some groundwork for how I was attempting to put this puzzle together, because I knew that when the time came to actually show my ballot, no one was going to read a 5,000 word treatise on the complexity of evaluating pitchers with the tools we currently have available. But given the abundance of worthy candidates this year, even that kind of article probably wouldn’t provide enough room to lay out the case for each of the pitchers who had deserving years. In my view, there were three guys who all had seasons that would be easy choices for a Cy Young Award in a normal year, and picking between them was basically an impossible task.

While I eventually had to settle on a 1-5 order, a more realistic assessment of my view is that I turned in ballot with #1A, #1B, #1C, #4, and #5. As I write this, I don’t actually know who is going to win, and I’m not going to feel the wrong guy won no matter how the top three end up being ordered. You can make a strong case for any of them, and the gaps between them are so slight that I don’t think we should be arguing with significant conviction that there is a right answer. There are three deserving Cy Young winners in the National League this year, and I only wish there was some mechanism in place where I could have voted for a tie.

But, at the end of the day, we were asked to split hairs and determine an order. So, now that the voting has been revealed, here is a look at how I filled out my ballot, with some brief overviews of the reasoning behind those decisions. And by brief overview, I mean there are another 2,500 words to this post, but I left out some discussion of things I looked at that ended up not having a huge impact on my decision, such as quality of opposition, park factor adjustments beyond what is already calculated, and which umpires they pitched to, among other things. I’ve tried to lay out my thoughts as coherently as possible while also keeping this post on the shorter side of War and Peace. With that said, on to the ballot itself.

One of the best young pitchers in baseball, Cole turned into a dominating #1 starter this year, and when I began the process, I assumed I’d have him somewhere on my ballot. In the end, though, he fell just short, coming in at the sixth spot on a ballot with only five openings. While his numbers were excellent, a few small flaws in his resume conspired to push him just outside the top five.

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Darren O’Day is a free agent. Ken Rosenthal reports on what’s going on with free agents. Mild controversy:

Sources: O’Day asking for four-year deal in $28M to $36M range. Most accomplished reliever on open market.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 18, 2015

The argument against: as players go, Darren O’Day is relatively old, and old people wither and die. Also, O’Day is a reliever, and the perception is that relievers are made out of dry spaghetti noodles, subject to break with the lightest pressure. A four-year commitment to an aging reliever? No, sir. Better to find a starting pitcher, or maybe a young outfielder or something. Something you can set your watch to.

The argument for: Darren O’Day is really super good. The best predictor of someone being really super good next year is whether a player was really super good last year. Good players get big free-agent contracts. Really, that’s all you need to know. The rest of the post will only belabor this.

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The other day, August wrote about how the Tigers’ bullpen was in desperate need of improvement. That is, if the Tigers intend to compete in 2016, and they do intend to compete in 2016, while simultaneously trying to keep the longer-term picture in mind. So it made sense when, earlier Wednesday, reports came out the Tigers didn’t love the asking prices for the higher-tier relievers available. It’s not like the Tigers have all that much youth to move around, anyway. This all led to an unsurprising end: the Tigers have picked up the more affordable Francisco Rodriguez, from the Brewers. The Brewers are getting a low-level prospect. There are some players to be named later. This will probably just be remembered as the Rodriguez trade, if it’s remembered at all.

Of course a team in the Brewers’ position had little reason to hang on to a veteran closer. And of course a team in the Tigers’ position was looking to add a veteran closer. Doesn’t get more veteran closer-y than picking up the active leader in career saves. You could say Rodriguez is only 34 in January, and that’s true. He’s also looking ahead to his 15th season in the major leagues. He’s survived for a long time, and he’s even thrived for a long time. You can only do that by adapting. Francisco Rodriguez is a tremendous example of how a pitcher should want to age.

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So you want your team to spend in free agency. You think to yourself, “This is the year. We’re just a couple pieces away. Go out and get ’em, [insert name of General Manager who, in all likelihood, will not ‘go out and get ’em’ the way you envision].”

Maybe you look to a pair of recent World Series winners as the way to do the offseason without committing a massive chunk of payroll on a big-ticket acquisition. Look at how much value the Royals extracted out of mid-tier signings like Kendrys Morales, Edinson Volquez and, on a smaller scale, guys like Kris Medlen and Ryan Madson. Or the Red Sox, and their insanely cost-effective 2013 offseason that netted them Mike Napoli, Shane Victorino and Koji Uehara — crucial pieces to their championship run.

That’s how you do it! You don’t even need to catch the big fish. Just plug your holes with a few of the middle-class free agents to put around your stars and you win the world championship. All there is to it!

Except, remember that time the White Sox:

• signed Adam LaRoche to extend their lineup, and
• signed Melky Cabrera to shore up their outfield, and
• signed Zach Duke to pitch the late innings?

And then:

• Adam LaRoche posted a negative WAR, and
• Melky Cabrera posted a negative WAR, and
• Zach Duke posted a negative WAR?

At the times of their signings, there wasn’t a real discernible difference between the Victorino/Napoli/Uehara trio and the Cabrera/LaRoche/Duke trio, except the Red Sox trio turned out to be awesome and help win a World Series, and the White Sox trio became a complete trainwreck and now the White Sox are stuck with those guys. They’re deals that were totally defensible at the time, but deals that wouldn’t be made were Rick Hahn given a do-over.

The White Sox were the epitome of a stars-and-scrubs team in 2015, led on offense by Jose Abreu and Adam Eaton, with a rotation fronted by typically excellent seasons out of Chris Sale and Jose Quintana. In Abreu and Sale, specifically, the White Sox can already cross off one of the hard parts in building a winner: get some of the best players in the world. Abreu is one of the very best hitters in the sport. Sale is one of the very best pitchers in the sport. These guys are real and play for the White Sox. They’re not the problem. The rest is the problem.

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Last week, MLB saw two of their first big trades of the winter, as both the Red Sox and Angels gave up significant pieces of their farm system to acquire upgrades to their big league roster; Boston acquired closer Craig Kimbrel, while Anaheim landed shortstop Andrelton Simmons. In both cases, the acquisitions are not rentals, as Kimbrel is signed for two more years with a team option for a third, while Simmons is under contract through the 2020 season. To get high-quality players with multiple years of team control, both teams had to give up significant prospects from their farm system.

For the Red Sox, that meant parting with a pair of consensus Top 100 prospects in outfielder Manny Margot and shortstop Javier Guerra, along with a couple of lower tier add-ons. For the Angels, the cost was left-handed pitcher Sean Newcomb, the team’s first round pick in the 2014 draft and the most coveted player they had in the minor leagues; they also sent along with a second pitching prospect and shortstop Erick Aybar, who had been their everyday player at the position for the last seven years.

Both teams surrendered talent they would rather have kept, but felt strongly enough about the players they were receiving to make the trades anyway. And both teams did get very good players, among the best at their respective positions. But in terms of what these deals did to the remains of their respective farm systems, the situations could not be more different.

In making the Kimbrel deal, Dombrowski referenced the Red Sox loaded farm system, which has regularly been seen as one of the best in baseball.

“You don’t ever like to give up young talent,” Dombrowski said. “We think they’re very talented individuals. But I do think that (because of) the good job that the people at player development, scouting, international operations have done, we do have some depth at those positions. And we do have some other quality young players that we were asked about repeatedly.”

Those quality young players Dombrowski is referring to? They are almost certainly Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, the team’s pair of 23-year-old big league cornerstones, who happen to play center field and shortstop, respectively, the same positions that Margot and Guerra are playing in the minor leagues. With those positions locked down at the Major League level for the foreseeable future, Margot and Guerra were seen as somewhat extraneous to the team’s long-term plans, and were likely going to be traded at some point. The primary justification for paying a very high price for Kimbrel is that the team’s depth of prospects allowed them to make a trade like this, because even after surrendering good young talent, they have other good young talent to help them keep their future looking bright.

The Angels are in a very different situation; Newcomb was essentially their only prospect of significance, now that Andrew Heaney has too much time in the majors to qualify as a prospect. Roberto Baldoquin, the team’s top-rated prospect after Heaney and Newcomb heading into the 2015 season, just hit a meager .235/.266/.294 in A-ball, to give you some idea of the organization’s current crop of hitting prospect. With Newcomb, the team’s farm system would have been rated as one of the worst in baseball; without him, it unquestionably is so.

So, relative to their stock of future utility to the organization, the Angels probably gave up a greater percentage of their inventory than the Red Sox did, even though it’s pretty clear the package San Diego got for Kimbrel is a better one than the Braves got for Simmons. But even though Newcomb had more utility to his own organization than Margot or Guerra did, I can’t agree with the notion that highly talented prospects should be viewed as having significantly diminished value to an organization simply because of the presence of other highly talented players, even other talented players at the same position.

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You can make a strong argument that Brandon Crawford isn’t the best shortstop in baseball. If you’re a track-record kind of guy, the default might still remain Troy Tulowitzki. And there’s just so much young talent around. Carlos Correa came up and showed he can do almost anything. Francisco Lindor came up and arguably outplayed Carlos Correa. Xander Bogaerts is coming off an awful high average, and I haven’t yet said a word about Corey Seager. Or Addison Russell. Not to mention I’m a huge fan of Jung-ho Kang. There are enough possibilities out there that you might choose “field” over “Crawford.” I won’t judge you.

But to argue against Crawford, in a way, is to acknowledge he’s at least in the conversation. And he is, if he isn’t the front-runner. Just as you can argue Crawford isn’t the best, you can argue he is, what with Tulowitzki’s apparent decline. Then you have to take a step back and realize you’re talking about Brandon Crawford. Crawford wasn’t supposed to develop into the player he’s become, and the course of that development gave the Giants the confidence to sign Crawford to a six-year extension worth $75 million. It’s not a stunning agreement now, given what we know, but years back, we didn’t know we’d know this.

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The Cincinnati Reds front office underwent a makeover a few weeks ago. Dick Williams, a 44-year-old former investment banker, was appointed the club’s general manager. Walt Jocketty, who is heading into the final year of his contract, moved from GM to President of Baseball Operations.

Williams, who had been the assistant GM, will continue to work under Jocketty until the latter steps down at the end of the 2016 season. Not a lot is expected to change over the next 10-11 months, but it will be interesting to see how differently the Reds operate once Williams is handed the decision-making reins. Jocketty has a business background of own, but he’s also 64 years old and cut his teeth on scouting. By today’s standards, he’s very much an old school executive. Professionally speaking, Williams was weaned on analytics.

Williams talked about his philosophies during last week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

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On working with and learning from Walt Jocketty: “It’s hard to work for a guy for eight years and not learn from him as you go. Walt has been an executive of the year for a couple of different teams. He’s been here for 20-plus years and has a ring. I’ve learned a lot from Walt.

“I got into baseball a little later in life. I was in my mid 30s. I had close to a 15-year business career in investment banking and private equity. My background isn’t totally unique in baseball front offices, but it’s somewhat unique, and it’s shaped a lot of who I am and how I think about problems.

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Anyone who’s ever tried to analyze baseball has had the occasions of coming away fairly humbled by the experience. I’ve been made to look stupid at least dozens of times, but one that really sticks out is a blog entry from May 2007, when I figured a mid-30s Raul Ibanez was about out of bat speed and power. From the date of that entry through the end of his career, Ibanez batted more than 4,000 times, drilling 166 home runs while posting a 112 wRC+ and making something like $50 million. Ibanez remained with the Mariners, left them, came back more than a half-decade later, and that year was the best hitter on the team. He was never toast until he was. It’s hard to look into the toaster.

Next season is going to be David Ortiz’s last. The official announcement is apparently coming Wednesday, but the word is out now, and it’s unlikely Ortiz is suddenly going to reverse course next November. So 2016 will bring another farewell tour for another franchise icon, and at every stop, people are going to share their memories. We all have our own, and if we’re being honest, we all have several. Among mine is that, time and time again, it’s been speculated that Ortiz was about at the end of the road. It’s a perfectly reasonable position to take with a player getting up there in years, but to Ortiz’s credit, there have been slumps, but he still hasn’t actually declined. He turns 40 tomorrow.

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