A month and a half ago, Yasiel Puig was struggling. In the playoff series against the Cardinals, Puig struck out seven times in a row at one point, and there was a pretty clear book on him: try to beat him with heat, away. He was having trouble catching up, so the Cardinals were having less trouble putting him away, and that’s among the reasons the Dodgers were unable to advance. Anyway, nevermind the bigger context. Nevermind the Dodgers. It’s interesting how Puig was being pitched.

Because the book on Puig late in 2014 was sort of the opposite of the book on Puig late in 2013. A year ago, it seemed like pitchers solved Puig by busting him with fastballs inside. That was the scouting report at the time, and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t valid. It’s just, accurate scouting reports can be temporary scouting reports, sometimes. Over the course of 12 months, Yasiel Puig changed his own book.

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The Arizona Fall League championship game (domestic professional baseball’s de facto funeral for the year) featured superlative performances from a number of prospects that may have piqued your curiosity. Here’s a look at how, after nearly two months of evaluating these players, I feel things will play out moving forward.

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Remember when Billy Butler stole a base against the Angels in the playoffs? Of course you do. It was beautiful and it was absurd, and it psychologically cemented the notion that there was nothing the Angels could do to slow the Royals down. Even Billy Butler was having his way, however he wanted to. It was like the Royals flying their flag over the Angels’ conquered castle. And it had to be Butler. It felt meaningful because that’s something Butler just doesn’t do. There are reasons he doesn’t run, so when he ran, and when he got away with it, the Royals felt invincible.

Here’s an image sequence that should remind you of how the moment felt:

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The title of this post presupposes a few things — that new Brave Shelby Miller is broken; that Shelby Miller can be fixed; that Shelby Miller has not yet been fixed; that some teams are more likely than others to fix certain problems. We’re not going to leave those presuppositions aside, though. Let’s instead tackle them, one by one.

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Just like winter, hot stove season appears to be arriving early this year. Somewhat lost in all of the hubbub regarding Giancarlo Stanton‘s record-breaking deal is Russell Martin‘s five-year, $82 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. Though it is heavily backloaded, this still ranks as the third-largest catching contract currently on any club’s books — behind Buster Posey‘s nine-year, $164 million, and Brian McCann’s five-year, $85 million deals, which both run through the respective players’ age-34 seasons. Martin’s runs through his age-36 season. So how do the next five years look for Martin, and for the Blue Jays? Read the rest of this entry »

We’re used to making little adjustments all the time. Most commonly, it’s because of ballpark environment. A .350 wOBA in San Francisco is a hell of a lot more valuable than a .350 wOBA in Arizona. Sometimes you’ll also see adjustments for era, which is relevant now given increasing strikeouts and decreasing runs. There are raw stats, and there are adjusted stats, like, say, wRC+, but there’s one adjustment we seldom talk about even though it’s right there in front of our faces. What about the opposition a player actually faces?

It’s like strength-of-schedule, on the player level. No one debates the utility of strength-of-schedule measurements. Now, in baseball, what’s convenient is that the samples get pretty big so we can generally get away with assuming that things even out. Over broad windows, no one’s going to face exclusively awful opponents or awesome opponents. But in certain cases, it’s worth digging in when we have a suspicion. As such, I want to go into more detail on something I noted about Cole Hamels earlier.

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It’s funny. The team I know the most about is the team I try hardest not to write about for FanGraphs. I write about the Indians enough as it is for my job, and it’s nice to be able to write about other teams once in a while. But also, I don’t want my posts to be viewed as tainted with potential homerism. I’d like to believe I don’t let much, if any, bias slip into my writing, but it could be viewed that way. Nevertheless, here I am writing a post called “Where the Indians Are Baseball’s Most Valuable Team.”

But! I’m not the only one who is high on the Indians for 2015. A couple weeks back, Mike Petriello called the Indians his sleeper team for 2015, and when he claimed the post on our internal message board, he called them “your 2015 World Champion Indians.” That’s right, Petriello. I just put you on blast. You all should call him out on this when it doesn’t happen.

Then, yesterday afternoon, the always excellent Jonah Keri sent out a tweet that inspired me to write a post I’ve been considering writing for several weeks now.

Started working on favorite article series of the year, MLB Trade Value. Early reaction: Indians are in pretty good shape.

— Jonah Keri (@jonahkeri) November 18, 2014

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$325 million. That’s the number that gets your attention, and it should; the contract that Giancarlo Stanton signed with the Marlins is the largest in the history of baseball, and it will span the next 13 years. There are kids currently in first grade who could theoretically get to the big leagues in time to play with Stanton before this contract expires. The $325 million commitment is twice as much as Loria paid to buy the entire Marlins organization back back in 2002. The deal is staggering in both length and cost, but as Jeff Sullivan wrote last week, it’s an entirely reasonable contract for one of the game’s best players.

But there’s another fascinating aspect to Stanton’s contract: the $325 million figure might end up being nothing more than a mirage. Because of the leverage he commanded, and potentially some lingering distrust of the franchise after their last spend-a-bunch-of-money-then-trade-everyone fake out, Stanton’s representatives were able to negotiate an opt out clause into the deal, meaning that he can choose to void the deal after the 2020 season.

If Stanton continues to perform at an elite level, it’s entirely possible that he could void the last half of the deal and land a new contract for even more than this deal guarantees him next decade. After all, Stanton will have just finished his age-30 season when the opt-out decision comes due, and even at that age, elite players are landing 10 year contracts in free agency. Alex Rodriguez used this exact tactic in 2007 to opt-out of the final three years of his initial mega-contract, turning the remaining $72 million into a new 10 year, $275 million contract that the Yankees are still regretting.

Since that deal, the opt-out clause has become an increasing popular request for premium free agents, as Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke, and Masahiro Tanaka — among others — have had opt-outs negotiated into their contracts. Greinke’s decision comes next winter, when he’ll have $71 million remaining on the last three years of his deal; assuming he stays healthy and pitches reasonably well in 2015, opting out should be a pretty easy call, given the market price for high quality arms.

And that is exactly why the game’s best players are increasingly asking for these options to be inserted into their deals. For the player, a large guarantee with an opt-out is the ultimate win-win, as they secure a significant paycheck even if their performance declines or they suffer an injury, but they aren’t stuck with a below-market salary over the long term if they play well, or if the economic status of the league improves after they sign their mega-contract.

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At first glance, it seems crazy. A bad-body post-peak designated hitter that was under replacement last year… three years? $30 million? Billy Butler to the Athletics? A team that has never had three ten million dollar players on the roster at one time did so for the first time in order to sign a guy that might not play the field?

What if it wasn’t so crazy.

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Boy is it ever easy to trade away other people’s stuff. From a distance, it’s easy to recognize when a guy has to go, as things are uncomplicated by memories and emotions. It sucks the Philadelphia Phillies just about have to trade Cole Hamels. He’s great, and he’s been there forever, through some really good times, and people have developed an attachment to him. Even the Phillies have officially recognized the era is over, but moving Hamels would be a painful kind of closure. The front office doesn’t want to deal Hamels for younger, unfamiliar talent. But it has to happen. As popular as Hamels is, from an objective standpoint, he’s not getting better. And he’d mean a lot more to a team with a prayer of winning something over the next couple years.

So the Phillies ought to be looking to cash in on Hamels. More seriously than they did around the deadline, I mean. The Phillies are poised to gut what there is to gut, and Hamels is a front-line starter who’d hit a market thirsty for front-line starters. Probably the most popular rumor so far: Hamels leaving the Phillies for the Boston Red Sox, in exchange for a package that involved young players. Clearly, nothing has yet been agreed to, but clearly, there will be some more negotiations. So what could we conceivably see as a trade? Let’s design a Red Sox move for Cole Hamels.

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