How necessary is it for an MLB front office to pick a direction and stay the course? Based on the responses of 10 general managers I queried on Tuesday, there isn’t a simple answer. A lot of factors go into the decision to rebuild, especially when it’s a complete teardown. Ditto going all in to win now. That typically costs money — a bigger issue for some organizations than others — and often involves trading top prospects, which compromises the future.

A third option is to remain a middle-of-the-road team, not good enough to seriously contend, nor bad enough to seriously build for the future. Addressing short-term needs to go from 80 wins to 82, more often than not, is a recipe for baseball purgatory.

Here is what the executives had to say on the subject.

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Chris Antonetti, Cleveland Indians: “Each team has its own opportunities and challenges within its market. It’s incumbent upon the leadership within that organization to develop a path to success, and that path could look very different in one market than it will in another.

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Last spring, for the first time in a decade, maybe more, no pre-arbitration pitchers signed a contract extension taking away multiple free-agent seasons. There were a few decent candidates in Jacob deGrom, Sonny Gray, and Carlos Martinez, the last of whom just signed a contract extension of his own earlier this winter. None of those players signed last spring, however, and it’s a possible indicator of a chilling effect on these types of extensions. The lack of deals isn’t due to a lack of candidates, though. In fact, a few of the best pitchers in baseball might be prime for long-term extensions.

When attempting to characterize the recent history of such deals, it’s difficult to say what’s a trend and what’s a random event because only two to five players sign extensions of this sort every year. The recent drought might be a product of players and agents beginning to recognize how much clubs were benefiting from signing extensions with younger players. It’s possible, on the other hand, that teams were less likely to dole out guarantees when the outcome of the CBA was in doubt. When Madison Bumgarner signed his extension right as the 2012 season was starting, he was one of five young pitchers to do so. When Chris Sale signed his ahead of the 2013 season, he was the only one. Sale and Bumgarner’s contracts have proved to be two of the bigger bargains in the majors.

When the White Sox traded Chris Sale to the Red Sox for Yoan Moncada, Michael Kopech, Luis Alexander Basabe, and Victor Diaz, they weren’t just trading Chris Sale. The White Sox were also trading Chris Sale’s contract, which included a $12 million salary for 2017 and options for 2018 and 2019 totaling $26 million. If Sale hadn’t signed that contract, he would have been a free agent this winter and received $200 million. San Francisco has no interest in trading Madison Bumgarner — who would have also been a free agent this winter — while they’re contending, so his value to the Giants is greater as a player on the field than in a trade. His contract is similar to Sale’s and so favorable that it had some discussing whether the team should negotiate a contract extension out of fairness, which does have some precedent.

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The intentional walk, as we’ve known it, is dead, and that’s fine. Pitchers no longer will have to lob four baseballs, as a batter can now be put on by means of a simple signal. This will not, of course, turn baseball from being a slow game into being a fast game, but it will take care of a small amount of pointlessly active inaction. While I do understand the appeal of this video:

…such memorable events are incredibly rare. The natural parallel is to the NFL’s extra point, which was made more difficult a short while ago because it used to be a gimme. The NFL did what it could to make the extra point a little more interesting. There was no way for baseball to make an intentional walk more interesting, so the whole active portion of it has been eliminated.

There will be intended consequences, and I’m sure there will also be unintended consequences. Among the lesser-known consequences is that this effectively erases what was probably baseball’s least-enforced rule. So that I am being absolutely clear, this is not a fond-farewell kind of post. I will not miss this rule. Mostly because no one’s ever had to pay attention to this rule.

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Kevin Kiermaier has long been underrated in the mainstream baseball world. He provides value in ways that tend to get overlooked or, at least, receive less attention. You probably know, for example, that Kiermaier is an elite defensive player. You’re probably aware that Kiermaier is an above-average baserunner. You might also know that Kiermaier has recorded a league-average batting line despite having faced the most difficult pitchers and that he owns a pair of piercing green eyes.

The total package is quite valuable. Kiermaier has already produced 13.1 WAR for his career over parts of three major-league seasons. He produced more than five wins in 2015, and per 162 games, he’s a 5.8 WAR/season player for his career.

I’m guessing most in the FanGraphs community consider Kiermaier to be a star. If things go well, everyone else might believe that this year, too.

Yesterday, Baseball Prospectus editor Aaron Gleeman posted some of PECOTA’s top breakout picks for hitters in 2017. Some of them aren’t all that surprising: I think a lot of people suspect there is more in the bats of Byron Buxton and Gregory Polanco and Addison Russell. But one name on the hitters list did jump out at me, and that was Kiermaier’s.

Wrote Gleeman:

WARP has long viewed Kiermaier as one of the most underrated players in baseball and now PECOTA thinks he has a chance to add above-average offense to otherworldly defense. Last season Kiermaier upped his power and plate discipline, but it went largely unnoticed because he hit just .246 and missed two months with a broken hand. If he continues to be plus-20 runs in center field Kiermaier is a star no matter what, but PECOTA sees untapped offensive upside in the 27-year-old. At the 60th percentile he’d reach 6.0 WARP and at the 70th percentile or higher he’d be among the MLB leaders in WARP, combining amazing defense with an .800 OPS.

Kiermaier’s top age-27 PECOTA comp? Vernon Wells. While the older version of Wells wasn’t productive, the 27-year-old version recorded a 128 wRC+ as a center fielder in a six-win campaign.

If Kiermaier goes from being a plus-plus glove and league-average bat, to a player with a plus-plus glove and better-than-average bat, he will be (or should be) near the top of the AL MVP voting. He finished third in bWAR (7.3) in 2015, but 17th in AL MVP voting.

So is this breakout possible? Maybe it’s already happening.

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Hello and welcome to the second part of this community polling project, in which I ask you all how you feel about the various team projections, now that we’ve included both the Steamer system and the ZiPS system. If you missed it, here’s Tuesday’s polling post, about the American League. Now to examine the National League landscape:

All in all, it seems fairly uncontroversial. Last year’s top six NL teams: the Cubs, Nationals, Dodgers, Giants, Mets, and Cardinals. This year’s projected top six NL teams: the Cubs, Dodgers, Nationals, Giants, Mets, and Cardinals. There hasn’t been much of a shakeup at all, because the majority of the NL is either trying to win now or rebuilding. That being said, just because this looks similar to a year ago doesn’t mean you have to agree with everything. Rosters have changed, and outlooks are altered. This is why I run this project in the first place. Let me know where you disagree. (Also let me know where you agree. That part is important too.)

Again, [copy, paste] something I’d like for you to keep in mind: Please vote according to what we know now. Don’t vote anticipating midseason additions or subtractions. It’s one thing if you think a team will or will not call up a top prospect, but don’t vote planning on trades. I think everything else is self-explanatory, so, have fun. For each team and each poll, I’ll offer brief commentary that serves little purpose since I don’t want to actually bias anything myself. I think that’s it for the intro. Thank you and I love you!

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Over the weekend, Ken Rosenthal wrote that the Royals were not going to simply accept Eric Hosmer’s departure through free agency as inevitable, and were going to attempt to sign him to a long-term extension before he hit the open market. Because Hosmer is represented by Scott Boras, we were treated to the hyperbole of the first baseman as a “franchise player” and the speculation that he might ask for a 10 year deal, a contract which would make the Ryan Howard extension look like the bargain of the century.

Yesterday, in response to that article, Jeff Sullivan gave a good old college try in attempting to justify the idea that Eric Hosmer could be in line for a “mega contract”. Jeff did a good job of showing the ways in which Hosmer could potentially be underrated, and with a big 2017, could be viewed more favorably than he is by the typical FanGraphs reader at this point. I don’t know if he convinced anyone that a 10 year deal for Hosmer wouldn’t be a total disaster, but it was a nice effort.

But in thinking about what a fair contract for Hosmer might be, I began to look for historical comparisons, to see what guys like Hosmer had done in their late-20s and early-30s. In looking for those comparisons, I realized there basically aren’t any, because Eric Hosmer is a historically unique player.

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Three years ago, seven major-league position players who had yet to reach salary arbitration agreed to contracts with their teams, conceding multiple free-agent seasons in the process. Most of those deals have turned into bargains: Matt Carpenter, Jason Kipnis, Starling Marte, and Mike Trout have all played at a high level since then. This came one year after Paul Goldschmidt and Anthony Rizzo signed contracts that have proved to be incredibly valuable, as well.

In the last two years, however, just four players have signed similar extensions. There are quite a few potential reasons, the most likely being that players are more reluctant to sign deals that give away free agency so easily. It’s also possible that teams haven’t found as many potential candidates who are worthy of a long-term investment.

When I looked at potential extension candidates last year, I noted that there weren’t a great many players who were ideally suited for extensions. Only Gregory Polanco and Kolten Wong ultimately signed extensions, so my hypothesis seems to have been accurate. Teams have made up somewhat for lost time this winter, though, as players like Ender Inciarte, Carlos Martinez, and Wil Myers — all of whom were mentioned as candidates last year — reached extensions this offseason. The guarantees doled out by the teams — in particular, the $83 million to Wil Myers and the $51 million to Carlos Martinez — illustrate why signing players to extensions before they reach free agency is much more advantageous for the teams. While the deals for Myers and Martinez could still prove to be bargains, compare the figures they received to the deals signed by position players in the three previous offseasons.

All of these players signed away two — or, in some cases, three — years of free agency in exchange for a decent guaranteed contract. While a couple years might seem like just a small delay to free agency, teams generally received a 60% surplus on every dollar invested in contracts like these, and the recent extensions seem unlikely to break that pattern.

Most of these guarantees are around $30 million or so, which is significantly less than the deals for Myers and Martinez that were signed one year along in service time. Players take a significant risk by turning down money between their second year and third year in the league, as they have to play that season on a near-minimum salary. Once they hit arbitration and benefit from the security that comes along with a million-dollar contract, there’s less incentive to take a guarantee, especially with free agency just a few years away.

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The Yankees were trying last year, as silly as that may have been. They lacked the rotation muscle or offensive firepower to truly compete, but damn if they didn’t have a bullpen. That bullpen, combined with a largely mediocre roster, kept them just within spitting distance of relevancy until the very end. Even after trading Carlos Beltran, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Ivan Nova, the Yankees still managed to hang around and win 84 games.

They didn’t make the playoffs, of course. They did make Gary Sanchez into a national sensation, and they did bring Tyler Clippard and Adam Warren back into the fold for this year’s bullpen. Chapman came back, and then they signed two sluggers (Chris Carter and Matt Holliday) to extremely tradable one-year deals. The Yankees are the Yankees, so they brought back their well-known closer and his 100 mph fastball. They need to have star power at all times and must, at least, give the appearance of trying to compete. Those are the expectations that come with being the Yankees and having an owner named Steinbrenner. According to reports, they came very close to buying instead of selling last year.

An inspection of the team’s roster tells a different story. Last year’s team was brimming with veterans. It was a poor man’s win-now team built around the bullpen, Masahiro Tanaka, and hope. This year, it’s built around a weaker bullpen, Masahiro Tanaka, whatever’s left in Holliday’s bat, and hope that Sanchez can continue to terrorize opposing pitchers while Greg Bird immediately rebounds to 2015 form. That’s all while having an even weaker rotation than last year.

It’s probably not going to happen. Our projections have the Yankees finishing at .500 and tied for last place, and PECOTA foresees an ever-so-slightly better 82-80 finish. Basically, the Yankees appear to be the very definition of mediocre right now. They can try to sell fans on the idea that they’re going to be competitive, and in a way that’s sort of true. The team probably won’t be a total pushover, and if a few things here and there fall the right way, maybe they’re once again on the precipice of being interesting at midsummer’s time. New York would need their many young and relatively untested players all to hit the ground running if they really want to make the playoffs, and they’ll likely need a firecracker of a debut from Clint Frazier, too.

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You’re probably aware of the Dellin Betances arbitration case and the interesting comments Yankees president Randy Levine made afterward. FanGraphs’ Nicolas Stellini wrote about the situation over the weekend.

No player or team likes going through the arbitration. Both parties try to avoid the process if at all possible, as it can create animosity between the camps.

And if you’re a player, you’re perhaps increasingly motivated to avoid allowing a panel of arbitrators determine your salary. Historically, teams beat players in the majority of arbitration cases, according to data compiled by Maury Brown:

Moreover, Brown reported this week that the advantage in favor of the owners has widened in recent years. The process increasingly seems to favor clubs — in part, perhaps, because arbitrators remain behind the times in how they evaluate performance.

Consider this David Laurila Baseball Prospectus Q&A from 2012 with long-time arbitrator Roger Abrams. Abrams suggests that the information presented to arbitrators is typically “not quite sabermetrics” and that arbitrators are not “baseball specialists.”

DL: You used the phrase “not quite sabermetrics,” but can it be assumed that more advanced statistics are presented today than in years past?

RA: It’s a mixed bag. What you don’t want to do is confuse the arbitrators, and some of the sabermetric stuff can be rather confusing. On the other hand, arbitrators can understand the importance of a strikeout-to-walk ratio. They can understand why ERA is a critical stat as opposed to wins and losses, which are meaningless–the pitcher doesn’t win or lose the game; the club wins or loses the game. The pitcher is responsible for earned runs. That is very simple-minded sabermetrics, and that is helpful in salary arbitration. Of course, it’s all glossied up in the submissions, which, frankly, you don’t have enough time to read within 24 hours, let alone digest.

Now, maybe arbitrators are slowly changing how they evaluate performance, but, at best, it’s a slow process that’s probably not caught up to better ways of understanding and measuring player value.

At a time when owners are making gains in percentage of revenue share, the arbitration process — especially in early arbitration years — is one more force working against players.

So does that mean everybody would be OK just eliminating the arbitration system? I’m guessing the answer is “No,” but I do think the players union would benefit from replacing the current system with something that exists in other major pro sports — namely, restricted free agency.

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Time to kick off the latest edition of what’s always my favorite polling project every year. For a while, on the site, we’ve been showing you the Steamer projections. Just in the last day or two, we’ve folded in all the ZiPS data, meaning now we’ve got projections that shouldn’t budge anymore, barring injuries or roster moves. Here is the projected American League landscape!

Overall, I assume things look more or less acceptable. Every division has a clear favorite, and we know the White Sox have initiated a rebuild that’s likely to cause them to suck in the short-term. The Twins, also, could suck in the short-term. The A’s and Rays are forever projecting to play around .500. And so on and so forth. But every year I like to see what the community thinks, because there isn’t otherwise an easy way to express disagreement with the numbers being provided. Do some of the projections just feel wrong to you? Say that in the polls below. We’ll look at the National League on Wednesday, and then I’ll examine all the results at the end of the week.

Something I’d like for you to keep in mind: Please vote according to what we know now. Don’t vote anticipating midseason additions or subtractions. It’s one thing if you think a team will or will not call up a top prospect, but don’t vote planning on trades. I think everything else is self-explanatory, so, have fun. For each team and each poll, I’ll offer brief commentary that serves little purpose since I don’t want to actually bias anything myself. I think that’s it for the intro. Thank you and I love you!

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