There are a lot of reasons to assume that right-handed Boston Red Sox prospect Michael Kopech is well positioned — or, at least, as well positioned as any young pitcher can be — not only to reach the majors but also to experience some success while there. The velocity is one reason why, obviously. He reportedly hit 105 mph on multiple radar guns earlier this summer. He was sitting at 93-97 during instructional-league play last month. He’s recorded an average fastball of 98.7 mph in the Arizona Fall League. Provided his arm remains attached and in mostly serviceable condition, he appears certain to serve at least as competent reliever.

There are other promising indicators, though. Objective ones. Consider: Kopech was selected 33rd overall in the 2014 draft. Research by Matthew Murphy indicates that players taken between 31st and 35th overall as amateurs produce about two and three wins over the course of their team-controlled years. As for his status as a prospect, specifically, one finds that Kopech was ranked 89th on last year’s edition of Baseball America’s top-100 list. The most recently updated iteration of Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli’s work on prospect valuation suggests a pitcher ranked between 75 and 100 on BA’s list is likely to contribute something like three or four wins before reaching free agency.

Two or three or four wins might not seem like a great result over half a decade, but that’s also just an average figure. There’s a lot of attrition baked into it, a lot of zero-win seasons. The point is that, on average, a pitcher with Kopech’s profile ends up contributing in the majors. That has considerable value.

There’s one more promising indicator for Kopech, though, and it’s not necessarily one you’d expect — namely, his performance so far in the Arizona Fall League, where he’s recorded the highest strikeout rate among starters. Given the circumstances under which it’s played, there are multiple reasons to discount the numbers coming out of the AFL. It’s a developmental league, first of all. The mandate isn’t really for prospects to “win” as much as it is to improve. Plus there’s also the fact of the inflated run environment, which is probably the product of an imbalance in the quality of pitching and hitting prospects and also the product of the weather in Phoenix. Finally, there’s an even more basic reason why to approach Fall League data with some caution: the samples are small. There are only about 30 games in an AFL season — or, the equivalent of a month’s worth of regular-season major-league play. The dangers of extrapolating too much from a single month of data are manifest.

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So I actually ran two different polling projects this week. In one of them, I asked you to reflect on your 2016 fan experience. I wrote about the results of that on Thursday. In the other one, I asked you to look ahead to 2017. The question was pretty simple: For whichever given team, how many games do you expect that team to win?

I tried to make it clear I wasn’t asking about the teams with rosters as presently constructed. I wanted you to fold in some offseason expectations, some additions or subtractions. Of course, we don’t know how the real offseason will go, but we have ideas of what various teams want to do. In any case, I plan to look at numbers like these a few times before Opening Day 2017. Here goes the first analysis!

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Free agency is here. As you’re well aware by now, it’s not a particularly great crop this year, but there are still some solid players out there to be signed, and some interesting high-risk bets to be made by teams that don’t mind a little (or a lot of) uncertainty. To help you get a sense of what we feel the market might look like this winter, we’ve decided to present the results of the Contract Crowdsourcing project along with my predicted contract values in one big list. We’ve previously done these in separate posts, but this year, we thought it made more sense to collect all the information in one place.

In terms of the numbers, keep in mind that the crowdsourced values are generally a good bit lower than what players actually sign for, because the player signs, most often, with the highest bidder, while the crowdsourced results are an average of what our readers think a player should get. My guesses are generally a bit higher than the crowd’s estimate, though that isn’t true for every player. It’s also worth noting that opt-outs are still likely to be a thing this winter, and they’re basically impossible to price into a series like this, so we didn’t really try. You might see guys sign for less than expected, but with an opt-out, which they’re accepting as part of the value of the deal.

Oh, and before we get to the list, I’d like to suggest that you not get too worked up over the ordinal rank of players, especially outside the top 20. There are ~15 to 20 solid players in this class, and then there are just a whole bunch of flawed role players who could be seen as not too different from one another. There are even some guys who didn’t make this top 50 that you could argue are as valuable some of the guys in the 30-50 range. The difference between players on the back half of the list is pretty small, for the most part, so if you think a guy should be No. 29 instead of No. 42, you’re not going to get much argument from me.

Also, the actual rankings themselves reflect my preference; they aren’t sorted by expected contract, either my guess or the crowd’s. There are some players who are going to get paid a lot more or less than their placement on this list indicates, and we’ll cover them in more detail next week when we look at the potential bargains and landmines this class offers.

With all that said, let’s get to the list.

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Earlier this week, you were asked to place some votes, and some of those votes were placed on FanGraphs. I ran a polling project identical to the one I ran after the 2015 World Series, and many thousands of you participated, for which I am grateful. On a team-by-team basis, I asked you how you felt, in general, about the season that was. Here’s a sample poll:

Part of the fun of these projects is sparking some discussion. But most of the fun of these projects comes from eventually analyzing all the results. That’s what we’re here for today. I’ve got my spreadsheet and plots all together, so, away we go!

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Every year, the Hall of Fame ballot and subsequent results general considerable attention — as they probably should. The writers have the first opportunity to decide who will enter the Hall, and they generally admit the best players. But the BBWAA alone doesn’t have a say. Of the 247 players enshrined in the Hall of Fame, the writers have selected only 116 in the traditional fashion we see today. Another 45 gained entry through special Old Timers and Negro Leagues votes. Three players were selected in a runoff procedure that used to be performed if no player was elected. Both Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente were elected in special votes.

That leaves 80 players who were selected via the so-called Veteran’s Committee. That committee has changed its rules over the years and is now known as the Eras Committee. This year, five players are up for election: Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Mark McGwire, and Orel Hershiser.

From 1953 through 2001, the Veteran’s Committee selected 77 players for the Hall of Fame, averaging a player and a half per year. The committee’s selections, however, were accompanied by complaints that the elections diluted the Hall, ultimately accepting too many players. The Hall responded by creating tougher standards for election through the Veteran’s Committee and, over the last 15 years, only three players were inducted by that means: Joe Gordon, Ron Santo, and Deacon White. While those tougher standards might have been necessary in the short term, the freeze made it very hard for players to gain entry, delaying Santo’s election, for example, until after his death. More changes have been made over the past few years, in part to deal with changes made to the Hall of Fame ballot limiting the number of years for which a player can appear on the writers’ ballot.

There are currently four eras, per the Hall’s definition: Today’s Game (1988-present), Modern Baseball (1970-1987), Golden Days (1950-1969), and Early Baseball (1871-1949). Candidates for Today’s Game will be considered this year (2016) and in another two years (2018); candidates for Modern Baseball will be considered next year (2017) and again in two years following that (2019); candidates for the other two, older eras will be considered in four years (2020). If the current iteration holds up longer than that, the plan is to consider the two more recent eras twice in five years, with the Golden Days considered once every five years and the Early Baseball considered once every 10 years.

This year’s committee, consisting of 16 writers, executives and Hall of Famers, is considering 10 candidates who need at least 75% of the vote and members can vote for up to four candidates. That last rule could make it difficult for the players, however, because of the five other names that appear on the ballot and which belong to a collection of non-players. Here are the names of those managers and executives: Davey Johnson, Lou Piniella, Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, John Schuerholz.

As for the players, we have four Hall of Very Good-type players and one Hall of Fame-caliber player who has admitted to PED use.

Harold Baines

Harold Baines played 22 years in the majors and compiled 2,866 hits and 384 homers. Only 15 players in Major League Baseball history have recorded greater figures than Baines in both of those categories, and the only ones not in the Hall of Fame have either never been eligible for election (Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Beltre) or have other issues clouding their candidacies (Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro). The same is true for 38 players who rank ahead of Baines in hits. Baines was a good hitter throughout his career, but he stopped playing regularly in the field after age 27, and spent his time at designated hitter thereafter.

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Let’s start with some facts. The Rockies didn’t play .500 baseball this year. In fact, they played .463 baseball by going 75-87. They allowed more runs than they scored, had one of the highest bullpen ERAs in the game (even after adjusting for park), and still have to wear those hideous black vests every now and then. The vests are probably the largest area of concern for the team, but we’ll focus on the actual playing of baseball right now.

Despite the above, the Rockies have a fair amount of hope for the future. The 2016 season marked the arrivals of heralded prospects such as David Dahl, Jeff Hoffman, and Trevor Story. The team boasted a lineup that looked fearsome on paper, unless you adjust for Coors Field. (Even without adjusting for Coors, Gerardo Parra and his .271 OBP weren’t great.) 

Of course, it also included Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Carlos Gonzalez, DJ LeMahieu, and the aforementioned Dahl and Story. That’s more than enough to build around. The Rockies also have the benefit of being able to look forward to the premiers of highly rated prospects such as Ryan McMahon, Raimel Tapia, and (a bit further down the line) Brendan Rodgers over the next few years. Any number of these young players could also serve as trade chips to bring in more pitching. With owner Dick Monfort going on the record to say that Colorado will be operating with a larger budget than ever before, it’s time to start thinking about just how close this team is to contention.

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The Braves seem committed to fielding a competitive product next year. I don’t think we see eye-to-eye on this — the way I figure, it’s not yet time for the Braves to attempt to push forward. But I also can’t bring myself to be too critical of an operation that wants to build a winner for its fans, so I’m just looking for the Braves to keep from getting too aggressive. There’s nothing wrong with making affordable upgrades. And the Braves have made their first, signing R.A. Dickey for one year and a guaranteed $8 million. Dickey is back to being a starter in the NL East.

This is not about the Braves suddenly being a great team. This is not about Dickey suddenly being a great starter. But, you know what kind of shape the free-agent market is in, with regard to starting pitchers. You’ve seen some of the numbers thrown around when talking about Ivan Nova. Nova is a lock to get three years, and he could get four, or even five. And, well, Nova’s almost 30. Dickey just turned 42. But last year, Dickey had the worse ERA- by just four points. Over the past two years, Dickey has been better, by 10 points. Over the past three years, he’s been better by 19 points.

As far as just 2017 goes, I’m not convinced Nova will be better than Dickey. I know, I know, Ray Searage magic and everything, but Nova’s track record is unimpressive, and his contract will come with a ton of risk. Dickey isn’t nearly so risky. He projects to be basically the same as Jeremy Hellickson, Jason Hammel, Edinson Volquez, and Andrew Cashner. Dickey has been basically the same pitcher in Toronto for four years, and he practically never misses a start. With any knuckleballer, you think of the pitch as being unreliable. Pitch-to-pitch, that might be true, but Dickey himself is remarkably consistent.

He’s something in the vicinity of an average pitcher, and you can put him in for 30+ starts in ink. The Braves might not yet be within that competitive bubble, but last year, no other baseball team used as many starting pitchers as they did. They entered the offseason with an assortment of question marks behind Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz, and Dickey is a useful stopgap. Maybe he won’t teach a younger player a nifty changeup grip or whatever, but there’s value in reliability. There’s value in fielding a better major-league product, and the Braves got Dickey without giving anything up. It’s not a bad way to start the push.

If the Braves want to win 80+ games in the season ahead, they need to make so many improvements. This is one they can cross off. Pitchers who are equally average are going to receive far bigger commitments, and they are unlikely to look very good.

Neil Allen will return as Minnesota Twins pitching coach in 2017. Expect to see more Tampa Bay Rays influence as a result.

Allen spent eight years coaching in the Rays system before coming to the Twin Cities prior to the 2015 season. He’s already incorporated a changeup philosophy since his arrival. The next steps — based on a conversation I had with him this summer — will likely include an increased emphasis on fastball command at the minor-league level.

Allen shared with me his thoughts on pitcher development, including how certain philosophies were implemented in his old organization. Given the success the Rays have had bringing quality arms to the big leagues, it should come as no surprise that he’d like to see many of them embraced within the Twins system.

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Allen on process and reports in Tampa Bay: “The philosophies come from the higher-ups. The general manager, the manager, and the pitching coordinator would get together and start the program. It would be explained to the coaches and we’d take it to the field. It was up to us — it became our responsibility — and if we didn’t see improvement in individuals, well, we had to answer to that. Why isn’t this guy getting better?

“After every game, there would be reports to fill out. We would report on consistency, on strikes, on location, on arm action. They would get those reports in Tampa Bay every night. They could see the amounts and percentages, as well as our comments on things like the depth of the breaking balls, the movement and arm speed on the changeups, the location of the fastballs. I don’t know exactly what they would do with the data, but every pitch that was thrown in the minor-league system that night was recorded.”

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The GM Meetings are in progress, and another offseason of frantic player movement seems about to begin in earnest. In the meantime, let’s continue our offseason series of granular BIP-based player performance evaluation.

Earlier this week, we used exit speed and launch angle data to analyze how ERA-qualifying AL starting pitchers “should have” performed in 2016. Today, we take a similar look at qualifying NL starters.

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The next good hitter to come from South Korea almost came to the majors a year ago. Maybe “almost” is taking it too far — ultimately, nobody placed a bid. But the hitter was posted, then, so the opportunity was present. The hitter is now a free agent. The opportunity is present once more.

You’ve heard what people have been saying about this year’s free-agent market. It’s miserable, especially toward the top, and the other day Keith Law said it’s one of the worst classes he can remember. One player can’t make the difference, short of that one player being, say, Mike Trout or Shohei Otani. This is going to be the winter of trade rumors. But the free-agent market doesn’t only include minor leaguers and major leaguers with American track records. You shouldn’t overlook the 29-year-old Jae-Gyun Hwang, because he just made himself substantially better, and he’s there for the bidding.

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