Earlier this very week, I ran a polling project. The question being asked was simple: What do you think of your favorite team’s front office? That is, the front office, independent of ownership. The front office, independent of things the front office doesn’t control. We all have opinions. None of us have actual concrete answers. The question is simple and impossibly complicated. But so many of you voted, and I promised to analyze the results. That’s what we have here — sort of a crowdsourced FanGraphs community front-office power ranking.

There’s no real perfect way to evaluate a front office. Never has been. FanGraphs tried to do it before, by gathering input from a bunch of its own writers, but that was eventually put to a stop, because it was too controversial. We can’t know, we can’t know for sure, but the results here are still significant. What’s truly being measured is how people perceive the various front offices. Wouldn’t you like to know about the perceptions, league-wide? Wonder no more. Here’s what we have, according to, at least, a strongly sabermetric audience.

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The hot stove is flickering! There is actual news!

Cubs have agreed to a three-year deal with RHP Tyler Chatwood

— Sahadev Sharma (@sahadevsharma) December 7, 2017

Chatwood was one of the more interesting free agents in this class. Mike Petriello made a case for why Chatwood could be this year’s Charlie Morton, a high-velocity guy with a high-spin curveball who just needs a change of scenery. He was always likely to sign with an analytically-inclined organization, and the Cubs certainly qualify.

Chatwood ranked 17th among our Top 50 free agents heading into the off-season, with projections that work out to roughly league-average pitching when he’s on the mound, with durability a legitimate question.

I projected he’d get $30 million over three years, but it sounds like he did a bit better than that.

Tyler Chatwood's contract with #Cubs is worth around $40 million over 3 years, source says. @MLB @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 7, 2017

At nearly $40 million, Chatwood is no huge bargain, but there are definitely things to like about having him as a back-end starter with upside. There’s also plenty of risk here, of course, and the fact that an upside play with a limited track record of success costs $40 million tells you that this is a good winter to be a free agent pitcher.

In the next few days, it’s expected that Giancarlo Stanton will decide whether he’s going to waive his no-trade clause to join the San Francisco Giants or, less likely, the St. Louis Cardinals. Those are the two teams that have struck deals with the Marlins, and both made their pitch to him in person last week. Stanton has appeared to be holding out hope that the Dodgers would get into the mix, though to this point, no public reports have suggested they’ve seriously engaged the Marlins in discussions.

The Dodgers’ reticence likely has to do with their CBT tax position. Acquiring Stanton would put them over the tax threshold again, and, as I laid out in my argument for why the Dodgers should be interested, acquiring Stanton would probably force the team to choose between re-signing Clayton Kershaw or making a big run at Bryce Harper in free agency next winter. And according to Ken Rosenthal, the Marlins aren’t interested in taking back any current payroll in a Stanton deal, as they try to trim their 2018 player expenses to under $90 million.

But despite the Marlins’ apparent tunnel vision here, there still might be a way for both sides to get what they’re looking for, and it’s one of Friedman’s go-to moves: the three-way trade.

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Riley Pint has a golden arm and a sky-high ceiling. The 20-year-old right-hander reaches triple digits, which helped prompt the Colorado Rockies to take him fourth overall in the 2016 draft. He’s the best pitching prospect in the system and a potential big-league ace.

The numbers don’t reflect that. Since signing out of an Overland Park, Kansas, high school, Pint is 3-16 with a 5.40 ERA and a 1.70 WHIP. This past season, he walked 59 batters in 93 innings at Low-A Asheville. To say he’s a work in progress would qualify as an understatement.

Are the Rockies concerned? I asked Zach Wilson, the club’s director of player development, for his appraisal of the youngster’s development.

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Zach Wilson on Pint: “Numbers are numbers, and in the development world, they don’t tell the whole story. As a matter of fact, they tell very little of the story. Walking [59] guys in fewer than 100 innings is going to raise a red flag to somebody staring at a stat line, but this was a 19-year-old in his first full season — and we were aggressive with him. The numbers weren’t a concern to us whatsoever. This was just a small part of the global developments scenario for Riley. He made strides.

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A couple weeks ago, I asked my colleague Jeff Zimmerman to help me find some Shohei Ohtani comps and make a projection for Ohtani based upon the Davenport Translations of his 2016 NPB stats. Remember, Ohtani missed much of last season due to ankle and thigh injuries. Per Davenport, Ohtani’s 2016 numbers equate to the following MLB performance as a then-age-21 hitter: 324 at-bats, 14 home runs, 34 walks, 89 strikeouts, a .306/.367/.512 slash line, and 133 wRC+. He’s 23 now.

I was trying to answer whether Ohtani would produce more relative value as a DH in the AL or as a pitcher not only batting but also pinch-hitting in the NL. (And, yes, he might end up playing in the field in the NL.)

Here’s the full list of performance comps Zimmerman provided for Ohtani the Hitter:

2016 Comps
Adrian Beltre
Aledmys Diaz
Tyler Naquin
Hanley Ramirez
Corey Seager
Andrew Toles

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To make it clear right off the bat, this has nothing to do with Shohei Ohtani or Giancarlo Stanton. This has nothing to do with the current offseason market, and, frankly, this has nothing to do with baseball from any of the past few decades. This is just built around a historical fun fact, but, you know, we all need breaks. And we all need improbable fun facts.

You can probably think of a few baseball coincidences on your own. One I personally can’t forget is that both Ken Griffey Jr. and Stan Musial were born on November 21 in Donora, Pennsylvania. There’s Roberto Clemente’s career ending at exactly 3,000 hits. I don’t know what you do and don’t remember, but I have a coincidence to add to the list. It takes a little explaining, but I think the destination is worth it. Maybe you won’t agree in the end, but I’ve been thinking about this since I found it by accident during a podcast last week. I feel compelled to speak my truth. I have to share this little statistical story.

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I think we all understand the present circumstances. The Marlins are trying to trade Giancarlo Stanton in order to clear payroll, and they’ve reached general agreements with both the Cardinals and the Giants. From the Cardinals, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. From the Giants, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. There are differences, obviously, but right now you’d think there are only these two finalists. Stanton has full no-trade protection, but he doesn’t want to stick around where he is, and so we’re getting to a decision point. Stanton will soon need to pick St. Louis or San Francisco.

Or neither. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but Stanton grew up and played high-school ball around Los Angeles. We’re not familiar with Stanton’s actual thoughts, but the consensus opinion is that Stanton’s ideal outcome would be a trade to the Dodgers. To this point, we haven’t heard much about the Dodgers’ trade interest. Stanton wouldn’t be the type of add they typically make. And yet, here we are. The Dodgers continue to loom over this whole thing.

This can obviously change as it goes, but Giants expect a Stanton decision by the end of the week. I’m hearing they continue to view Dodgers, not Cardinals, as biggest threat.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) December 6, 2017

Giancarlo Stanton? Stanton has plenty of leverage. But so do the Dodgers. The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes are unusual, but so is this situation, with Stanton effectively able to hold out until he gets what he wants.

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As much as certain aspects of pitching remain a mystery when it comes to analytics, we’ve figured out a few things about the changeup. Like, movement is good! And like, a bigger velocity gap is good if you want whiffs! Those sorts of relationships can be identified pretty easily. And since movement and velocity become stable really quickly, you can cut this sort of thing into smaller samples and still get meaningful results.

You can ask things like: whose changeup improved the most in the second half, when it comes to things like velocity and movement differential off the fastball? And then you can get answers.

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The most curious entry on Shohei Ohtani’s list of seven finalists is the San Diego Padres. Given the club’s relatively diminutive market and general lack of competitiveness over the last decade, the Padres don’t immediately profile as a destination for a player of Ohtani’s magnitude.

But the Padres aren’t the only outlier. There’s another. If not quite as unexpected as the Padres, the Cubs certainly represent the second-most surprising team on Ohtani’s list.

The Cubs have the market. They also have a recent track record of success and the roster to compete in the future. They represent a geographic outlier among Ohtani’s remaining suitors, though. Of those seven final clubs, the Cubs are located in the eastern-most and coldest-climate city. For a player who seems to have a strong preference for playing on the West Coast and in ideal weather conditions, Chicago is a curious choice.

Ohtani eliminated every other NL East, AL East, NL Central, and AL Central club, en route to selecting his final seven teams. That he retained the Cubs must mean that he really likes something about the team apart from geography and market size. In other words, he really likes something about the Cubs that their decision-makers within the organization can control or sell.

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