The Astros have reportedly come to an agreement on a second extension for their second baseman, and the reigning AL MVP, Jose Altuve. Only, this time, Altuve did not sign as cheaply.

The reported five-year, $151-millon deal will begin in 2020, or Altuve’s age-30 season.

Entering the 2014 season, the Astros signed Altuve to a pre-arb buyout deal that included two club options. At the time, it was unclear if the undersized Altuve would ever become more than a high-contact, low-power second baseman.

He was coming off an uninspiring season that included a .283/.316/.363 slash line, an 84 wRC+, and 0.7 WAR. Over three full seasons, the maybe 5-foot-6 dynamo had compiled just over two wins. The four-year, $12.5 millon deal with club options — options which, when exercised, will make it a six-year, $23.2 millon pact — seemed like a reasonable deal.

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Eugenio Suarez is young, and, last year, he was very good. He wasn’t about to leave the Reds any time soon, but now a separation could be even further away. See, Suarez was looking at three more years of team control, but now he and the club have agreed to a seven-year contract with an eighth-year club option. The breakdown is as follows, and what isn’t shown is Suarez’s $2-million signing bonus.

• 2018: $2.25 million
• 2019: $7 million
• 2020: $9.25 million
• 2021: $10.5 million
• 2022: $11 million
• 2023: $11 million
• 2024: $11 million
• 2025: $15-million club option ($2-million buyout)

Suarez’s first free-agent year would’ve been 2021. He’s signed away four of them, and maybe a fifth, and the total guarantee works out to $66 million. There are no other bonuses or escalators included, and Suarez also hasn’t received a no-trade clause. We’ve seen a lot of increasingly complicated contracts. This one’s simple. The Reds are locking up a good player for a while, and that player is now guaranteed life-changing money that will afford his family great comfort.

Everyone right now is saying the right things. The mood is typically pleasant when a contract is announced. The Reds say they’re thrilled to keep a building block. They see Suarez as someone who can lead them out of the rebuild and into contention. And Suarez says he’s ecstatic to commit to Cincinnati, where he’s come to excel. I can’t imagine being upset about sixty-six million dollars. It’s very, very easy to see how this is a triumphant moment for Suarez as a player. It’s also easy to see how Suarez might’ve been undervalued. The timing here probably isn’t a coincidence.

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It took Ed Charles a long time to get his chance, but he persisted, and made the most of it. Born into segregation and poverty in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1933, he was inspired by seeing Jackie Robinson in spring training with the Montreal Royals in 1946, a moment dramatized (with some artistic license) in the 2013 movie 42. Signed by the Boston Braves in 1952, Charles didn’t make the major leagues until a decade later with the Kansas City A’s. He played eight years in the bigs, the last three of them with the Mets, earning the nickname “The Glider” for his fluid, economical defense and providing a steadying veteran presence for an upstart team that won the World Series.

Before Roger Angell and Vin Scully, Charles was also hailed as “The Poet Laureate of Baseball,” having begun crafting verse while toiling in the minors. When he passed away on Thursday at the age of 84, his New York Times obituary called him “the heart and soul of the Miracle Mets of 1969.” That’s a life well lived.

One of nine children in a broken home, Charles could not afford a ticket to see the Dodgers and Royals (their top minor-league affiliate) play at Daytona’s City Island Park, but he watched through a chain-link fence in left field as baseball’s color line begin to crumble. Via Chris Lamb’s Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring Training:

We watched him play that day and finally believed what we had read in the papers, that one of us was out there on the ball field. When [spring training] was over, we kids followed Jackie as he walked with his teammates down to the train station, and when the train pulled out, we ran down the tracks listening for the sounds as far as we could. And when we finally couldn’t hear it any longer, we ran some more and finally stopped and put our ears to the tracks so we could feel the vibrations of that train carrying Jackie Robinson. We wanted to be a part of him as long as we could.

In the movie, the young Charles is depicted receiving an autographed ball from Robinson at the train station, but as Bruce Markusen wrote for The Hardball Times in 2013, that particular moment never happened. Nevertheless, Charles, who dropped out of school after eighth grade and finally returned after going to live with his older sister in St. Petersburg, became the captain of the Gibbs High School baseball team and signed a professional contract in 1952. Though they weren’t as innovative or aggressive as the Dodgers, the Braves (along with the Giants) were well ahead of the curve in integrating the majors. Rickey signed such a surplus of black talent that he dealt outfielder Sam Jethroe to Boston in 1949, and the following year, “Jet” won NL Rookie of the Year, the third of six black NL players to win the award in its first seven years.

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Major League Baseball’s new pace-of-play rules, including the new mound-visit limits, have already been covered at this site. Accordingly, this post won’t address the rules themselves. Rather, I’d like to examine what happens when a player breaks those rules — or, possibly, what won’t happen when a player breaks them.

Catchers Willson Contreras and Martin Maldonado have already said they won’t follow the new mound-visit rule. Specifically, they said they are willing to pay fines rather than comply if the game is on the line.

As a lawyer, my entire job is to research, apply, and interpret rules of one sort or other. So when I hear that two players are going to willingly not follow rules, it piques my interest. And that got me wondering… is a fine all they’d face if they did, as they said, ignore the rule and go out for that seventh visit?

The first issue is whether they’d even be allowed to go out a seventh time. Joe Torre thinks (and reports confirm) that umpires just won’t even permit the seventh visit at all. But as a practical matter, how will the umpire prevent it, exactly? It doesn’t seem that the umpire will be able to throw himself bodily in the path of every wayward catcher. So there have to be some consequences for violators. And this is where things get weird.

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“What are you trying to ask me? About launch angle?”

– Eric Hosmer

PEORIA, Ariz. — We’ve written quite a bit about Eric Hosmer this offseason.

Former FanGraphs manager editor and current Padres front-office official, Dave Cameron, ranked Hosmer as his No. 1 free-agent land mine of the offseason. Not long before that, I’d identified Carlos Santana as a superior free-agent option at first base.

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It’s not a stretch to say that Hanley Ramirez’s four-year, $88 million contract with the Red Sox hasn’t worked out well through its first three years. He’s moved off of shortstop to unfamiliar positions at which he’s struggled, namely left field (2015) and first base (2016). He’s battled injuries — particularly problems with both shoulders — to the point of averaging just 128 games per year. And in two of his three seasons, he’s finished with a sub-zero WAR (-1.7 in 2015, -0.4 last year). With the addition of J.D. Martinez to the crowded Boston roster, he stands to lose playing time. Even so, his chipper disposition in this Boston Herald piece earlier this week was eye-catching, even if it marks the 34-year-old slugger’s entry into the “Best Shape of His Life” genre.

After hitting just .242/.320/.429 with 23 homers and a 93 wRC+ last year, Ramirez underwent surgery to debride his left shoulder (the one that required season-ending surgery in 2011) in November. He spent the winter working out with Martinez in Miami, reported to camp (allegedly) 15 pounds lighter thanks to a new diet and fitness regimen, and has been playing first base in Grapefruit League games with no reported difficulties. Via the Herald’s Mike Silverman, Ramirez has been telling reporters he’ll go 30-30 this year — 30 homers and 30 steals, a pairing he achieved in 2008 after missing by one homer the year before. It certainly seems unlikely given that he stole just one base last year and has needed the past four seasons to total exactly 30.

Nobody’s about to bet on that. The big question is how much playing time he’ll get under new manager Alex Cora, who will have his hands full. With an outfield of 23-year-old Andrew Benintendi in left, 28-year-old Jackie Bradley in center, and 25-year-old Mookie Betts in right — a defensively adept group that combined for 48 DRS and 26 UZR last year — it’s not like it makes a ton of sense to shoehorn Martinez (-8 UZR in rightfield last year, -5.8 per 150 games in the two corners career-wise) into an outfield corner instead of DH-ing him. Perhaps the lefty-swinging Benintendi’s struggles against same-side pitching (60 wRC+ in 140 career PA) provide an opening, albeit at the risk of impeding the younger player’s development and forcing Martinez to play the Green Monster. The Red Sox have discussed what amounts to a home-road platoon with Martinez-Bradley-Betts at Fenway and Benintendi-Betts-Martinez elsewhere, but that’s a lot of time riding pine for Bradley as well as Benintendi, who just a year ago was touted as a Rookie of the Year candidate.

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Sandy Alderson is a shrewd fellow. He went to, and graduated from, Dartmouth College before attending, and graduating from, Harvard Law School. He invented “Moneyball,” only for his former Oakland A’s deputy Billy Beane to reap all of the glory, envy, and disdain. His tenure as New York Mets general manager has not changed the perception that he is a smarty. When everybody and their deceased relatives knew he was looking to unload Addison Reed last summer, Alderson added another reliever (AJ Ramos) via trade, improving the market for Reed and picking up a division rival’s closer under team control for 2018 in the process.

Seeing Justin Turner and Daniel Murphy in Dodger and National jerseys, respectively, is a reminder he isn’t perfect. Seeing Noah Syndergaard tossing 101 mph fastballs with seemingly no effort is a reminder, however, that Sandy didn’t lose his own fastball in his twilight years. Throw in the caveat that he’s working with a weirdly limited — and allegedly nebulous — budget for a team based in New York and that ownership sometimes rejects trades he makes, and you got yourself an appreciation stew.

So, in that context, let’s now also remember that Sandy Alderson has said he thinks that Tim Tebow will make the major leagues.

I think he will play in the Major Leagues. That’s my guess. That’s my hope. And to some extent now after a year and a half, a modest expectation.

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It’s not actually all that clear how many pitchers have had Tommy John surgery three or more times. According to some sources, Jose Rijo counts. According to some sources, Jason Isringhausen counts. Baseball Reference includes Scott Williamson, Jarrod Parker, Josh Johnson, and Chad Fox. On the other hand, we have the list provided by Jon Roegele. Among the repeats, there’s only one three-time survivor. Anthony Castrovince provides a partial explanation.

How many pitchers have made it back to the big leagues after their third Tommy John? Technically, none. Though Jose Rijo and Jason Isringhausen are often cited to have had at least three Tommy Johns apiece, Jon Roegele’s oft-cited Tommy John database does not recognize either pitcher as a three-time recipient of the surgery, because, for each guy, at least one of the surgeries addressed a flexor tendon tear, not a UCL tear.

I can’t speak to the exact history of the procedure. I can’t tell you exactly how many pitchers have had it three times. I can tell you that, whatever the answer is, it’s an absurdly low number. It’s a number that includes Jonny Venters. Not only has Venters been through Tommy John three times; more recently, he’s been through another elbow operation. Right now, he’s in camp with the Rays. Just yesterday, he pitched. And when he pitched on February 25 against the Twins, it was his first spring action since 2013.

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Three years ago, Kris Bryant ranked as the best prospect in baseball. Then 23 years old, Bryant had brutalized minor-league pitching the year before and destroyed the competition in spring training with nine homers and 17 total hits in 44 plate appearances. Despite a clubhouse that now included Jon Lester and manager Joe Maddon among others — part of the Cubs’ signal to the world they were ready to compete — Bryant was easily one of the best 25 players in the organization, probably among the top five, and eventually proved during the season he was Chicago’s best position player.

And yet, the Cubs opted not to start the season with Kris Bryant on the roster. Once Bryant had spent enough days at Triple-A to extend his team control by a year — to become a free agent after the 2021 season instead of the 2020 campaign — the future MVP received a callup to the majors.

Bryant is still the most famous and most obvious case of a team’s effort to manipulate player service time to the potential detriment of the on-field product, but it happened before Bryant, has happened since Bryant, and is likely to keep happening. This season, there are several prominent players who might be kept off their major-league rosters for a time so that the team might save money and gain control of the player for an extra season.

For those unfamiliar with how service time works in these instances, here it is briefly. Players achieve free agency once they have six years of service time. Although the season lasts 187 days, a player is considered to have played a full season if he appears on an MLB roster or disabled list for 172 days. In any season where a player hits the 172-day threshold, that counts as one season of service time. If a player belongs to the roster for fewer than 172 days, he must combine those days with days from another campaign to reach the official “full season” mark.

Kris Bryant’s case is a useful example of this work. In 2015, he was on the roster for 171 days. That time counts only as a partial season. In the last two years, Bryant has been on the roster for more than 180 days each year, and each of those seasons count as one year of service time. At the end of the 2020 season, Bryant will have five seasons and 171 days of service, one day short of the six seasons necessary for free agency. As a result, he will need to play in 2021 to become a free agent. An extended discussion of service time appears in the FanGraphs glossary.

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The Seattle Mariners are making a bold move with their run-prevention model. They’re not changing it (at least not very much), but they are making a defensive change that isn’t without risk. A team built around fly-ball pitchers and ball hawks is planning to play an infielder with no professional outfield experience in center field.

Not surprisingly, the decision to do so was built partly on projections that came from Statcast data. The player in question is 29-year-old Dee Gordon, who has performed exclusively at the shortstop and second base positions since being drafted in 2008.

Earlier this spring, I asked Mariners executive vice president and general manager Jerry Dipoto about the move and how it ties in to his club’s overall approach to keeping runs off the board.

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Jerry Dipoto on Dee Gordon and the Mariners’ run-prevention model: “I’d like to tell you that [the disappointing 2017 season] was mostly health. We were down 80% of our starting rotation, and a few of our everyday players, before we got to the first week of May. That was certainly a big factor. But dating back to 2016, when we first started to re-create our club, I feel like we nailed it in terms of the science. We built around fly-ball-oriented pitchers with an outfield that can go catch fly balls. What we weren’t planning on, along with the health issues, was the home-run explosion over the last two years. A lot of those fly balls ended up going over the fence.

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