Last year’s free-agent class was one of the strongest we’ve ever seen. With legitimate aces like Zack Greinke and David Price heading the class plus young outfield talent in Jason Heyward and Justin Upton, a bona fide slugger in Chris Davis, along with a host of other mid-rotation starters and solid position player options, teams spent roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars on free agents in 2016 salaries alone. This season lacks talent at the top and depth in the middle, but that doesn’t mean we should expect to see a lot less spending. Nobody is likely to receive $200 million, but teams have plenty of money to spend and it has to go somewhere.

One way to think about how much money teams have to spend this offseason is to consider the salaries departing from their rosters. The chart below measures the money that has disappeared from clubs’ payrolls. To calculate each figure, I began with every club’s Opening Day obligations from 2016 and identified those players making at least $1 million in 2016 who either (a) were traded during the season or (b) have become a free agent in the meantime. I then added up the salaries of the departing players. This shows how much teams are losing in salary based on departures alone, with data gathered from Cot’s Contracts.

We often think of payroll coming off the books as a benefit for clubs. Player contracts, especially large ones, tend not to be very valuable in their final years. Think about the Los Angeles Angels, for example, who enter the season with $60 million less in obligations. The team had large commitments to pitchers Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson. While both of those pitchers were good at points of their careers, they provided little in terms of on-field value last year. The Angels, if they so choose, can now take the roughly $40 million formerly invested in those pitchers and put it to better use. If we work under the assumption that a win costs $8.5 million in free agency, the Angels could conceivably improve themselves by around five wins by spending that money on contributing players.

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“What was working for you today?” someone asked Rays starter Brent Honeywell after his appearance in the Arizona Fall League’s Fall Stars Game. “Everything,” he said matter-of-factly, and it’s hard to argue. He struck out five in two scoreless frames and showcased his entire arsenal of impressive pitches. A few minutes later, he took me through those pitches, and discussed what’s working and what requires more attention in order for him to contribute in Tampa next season.

Let’s start with the least sexy pitch in his arsenal, the curve. It’s the newest piece, and it’s the one with which the righty has been tinkering this fall. He threw one on strike one to Anthony Alford to demonstrate what the pitch can mean to him — called strikes. “Nobody’s going to swing at a first-pitch breaking ball,” he said. “But I’m not going to throw it a whole bunch.”

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Hello everybody, and welcome to Part 2 of this polling project. Here is a link to Monday’s Part 1, which dealt with teams in the American League. This is the National League half, so, if your favorite team or teams play in the NL, I would very much appreciate your subsequent participation! And if you like a team in the AL, but you missed the Monday post, you still have time to put in your vote before I get around to analyzing the results. This week is all about voting. The other votes you’ve made this week might come with greater stakes, but the individual votes here count for more. Be one of hundreds, after being one of millions!

This should all be simple. To effectively re-state from yesterday, I’m looking for a quick summary of your 2016 fan experience. For every NL team, there is a poll, and for every NL team poll, there are five possible answers. How did you feel about the season that was, when you consider as much as you feel like considering? What effect did the end have on the start or the middle? Are you easily excited by rebuilding movements? Did you just really love having season tickets for the first time? Don’t worry, you can’t get this wrong. Consider your feelings validated. Just let me know what those feelings are before you get on with the rest of your day.

All the polls are below. Click a team name to go straight to that part and bypass the others.

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Since the World Series ended, a few of us have been busy behind the scenes updating all the team depth charts. They’re still not perfect, and they’ve yet to be updated with a few final adjustments, but for the most part, everything’s in decent shape. We have 30 team depth charts that would look pretty good if the 2017 season were to start today. Very obviously, that will not happen! But free agents have been moved off rosters, onto our free-agent squad. Depth pieces within systems have been given appropriate playing-time estimates. What does the MLB landscape look like with the offseason just beginning? Here’s what I’m seeing:

We aren’t yet actually projecting 2017 wins on FanGraphs. We just have WAR projections, but I’ve gone ahead and converted those into team-win estimates. Which is simply the WAR projection, plus a constant. I can’t imagine much in here is surprising, but, sure enough, the Cubs have baseball’s best projection. They’re threatening to push 100 wins again. The Dodgers are right behind them, and then there’s a gap before you get to the Nationals. (Schedule strength is not taken into account for this.)

A bunch of rebuilding clubs are at the other end. The Brewers look worst here overall, while the Twins look like the worst in the American League. There are 10 teams that project between 76 – 81 wins, so that might represent the bubble. Any of those teams might elect to sell, or to try to push forward. Of some note here, the Astros get the best projection in the AL West, followed by the Angels. The Angels projection is precarious, given the health questions around Tyler Skaggs, Garrett Richards, and Matt Shoemaker, but you can see how they could have a path.

The point isn’t to reach any strong conclusions. Don’t place any bets based on these projections at the beginning of November. Rather, I think these are most useful as a baseline. These are the rosters the clubs will be adding to and subtracting from over the following months. Last season’s records don’t matter anymore. Whatever the Blue Jays do next won’t be tweaking an 89-win ballclub. It’ll be more like it’s tweaking an 81-win ballclub. Of course, you can argue with that number, but it’s an estimate. It’ll be interesting to compare the spring-training projections to these projections, to see which offseasons made the biggest differences on paper.

Have fun. But don’t have too much fun. This is how the teams all project. And all of the teams will change.

Today at 5 p.m. E.T. is the deadline for teams to make a qualifying offer (QO) to their free agents. For years, this decision was straightforward: teams handed offers to anyone remotely worth it. Why not? Every player rejected them. It was a free draft pick.

Meanwhile, evidence mounted that players should adjust their strategy of “always reject.” Nelson Cruz, Stephen Drew, and Kendrys Morales (among others) showed that rejecting the offer wasn’t always a good idea. These players cost themselves big time.

Can you imagine the frustration they felt at reaching free agency only to see a big payday slip through their grasp? This year’s free agents are watching and learning. And teams are watching and learning with them.

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With all due respect to Cameron Maybin, Carlos Ruiz, and Vidal Nuno, the offseason isn’t really underway yet. Roster tweaks are being made, sure, but the blockbuster moves are some time off, and for the majority of people, the 2016 season remains fairly fresh in the memory. The World Series is less than a week in the rear-view mirror, so I wanted to seize this chance to run the same polling project I ran after the end of the 2015 season. It’s time for me to analyze your fan psychology. All I need is your collective participation!

This is a post for fans of teams in the American League. The National League post will go up early Tuesday morning. If your favorite team plays in the AL, please take a moment to provide your response. If both your favorite teams play in the AL, please take two moments. If all three of your favorite teams play in — you see where this is going. You’re not an idiot. You read FanGraphs.

This should be very simple. It’s also probably something you could overthink, but I just want to know how your fan experience was over the last several months. Did you have a good time with baseball in 2016? Did baseball beat the emotional crap out of you? Was your favorite team a disappointment? Is it even possible for your favorite team to disappoint? Did you love going to the ballpark no matter what, or watching a new game every evening? There are so many variables that could go into this, but I’m going to guess the right answer will come to you. I’ll analyze all the results later this week. Thank you in advance for being good and helpful people.

All the polls are below. Hopefully the anchor text works to send you to your team directly!

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The Cleveland Indians finished the regular season with 777 runs scored. That qualified as fifth-most in the majors. Their lineup was more speed than power — they led the American League in steals — but they weren’t exactly the 1959 Go-Go Sox. The club logged over 500 extra-base hits, and they finished fourth in the junior circuit in both wOBA and wRC+.

Ty Van Burkleo deserves much of the credit. Cleveland’s hitting coach for each of the past four seasons, the 53-year-old Van Burkleo espouses an approach built on patience and controlled aggression. There’s an overall philosophy. At the same time, however, he recognizes that each hitter has strengths he needs to optimize.

Van Burkleo shared his views on hitting in two separate conversations. I spoke to him on the eve of the World Series, and again when the team was at Wrigley Field.

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Van Burkleo on why the Indians offense was productive: “As a group — as nine guys in the lineup — everybody competes together. It’s not relying on just one or two guys to carry the load. We’ve had 11 walk-offs and I think they’ve been by nine different guys. Somebody is doing their part every day.

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I wouldn’t say the Cameron Maybin trade exactly opened the floodgates or anything, but now we do have another trade to talk about. In this one, Carlos Ruiz is going from the Dodgers to the Mariners, and Vidal Nuno is headed in the other direction. You’re not impressed. No one’s impressed. This is a low-profile move, and maybe the most interesting player involved in the whole thought process is Austin Barnes, who’s now going to get a roster spot in Los Angeles. The Mariners are getting a backup catcher, and the Dodgers are getting a relatively soft-tossing reliever. It’s one of the first of many “whatever” moves we’re going to see over the next handful of months.

There’s still something here, though. The way I figure, it’s on the Dodgers’ side. To tackle the Mariners’ side first — they get a year of Ruiz, for $4.5 million. That’s not a bad rate for a reliable backup, and even though Ruiz is almost 38, he just managed a .365 OBP, and he projects to be a half-decent hitter. Pitchers seemingly like working with Ruiz, despite the fact that he rates as a below-average framer. He’s said to have those leadership qualities, he’s a better backup than Jesus Sucre, and he’s reasonable insurance for the unpredictable Mike Zunino. Ruiz makes sense here. You see why the Mariners jumped.

And I think you can see why the Dodgers jumped. In part, this is about clearing space for Barnes. But beyond that — I was asked recently about the market. We all know the market is light on starting pitching, and I was asked if there are more guys out there like Mike Montgomery, relievers you could target and think about putting in the rotation. Nuno might actually fit here. Here’s a plot of 2016 starting pitchers, and I’ve also included a red dot to represent Nuno, overall in the major leagues:

If there’s one thing Nuno has proven, it’s that he’s a strike-thrower. He’s thrown strikes as both a starter and as a reliever, and while he’s never been a swing-and-miss type, his contact rates haven’t been terrible. On top of that, when Nuno moved to the bullpen, his stuff didn’t really play up. It’s easier, then, to imagine him as a starter again, throwing the same pitches around the same speeds. Don’t be too turned off by his home-run rates — he just allowed the same average exit velocity as Justin Verlander and Johnny Cueto. I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at Nuno and think he has some shot of being another Wei-Yin Chen. The core abilities there are pretty similar. Chen signed an $80-million contract.

Nuno is already 29. If he’s going to be Chen, he’d better hurry up. And the Dodgers aren’t hurting for starters, and starting candidates. Nuno isn’t going straight into the rotation, and maybe we’ll just never hear from him again. But Ruiz is an old catcher with one year of control left. Nuno is a younger strike-thrower with three years of arbitration eligibility. You can see why the Mariners wouldn’t mind this move. And you can see why the Dodgers would go for it. The Dodgers’ front office hasn’t forgotten its small-market roots, and they’re always trying to win the surplus-value game. Nuno could be something more than he looks like. The boring moves are seldom quite as boring as they seem.

Not even 72 hours removed from winning the World Series, the Cubs made their first roster shakeup of the offseason – roster decision deadlines wait for no hangover. Yesterday, the Cubs officially declined the $12 million team option on Jason Hammel and will pay the $2 million buyout instead. Typically there isn’t too much surprise with contract options. Ryan Howard at $25 million? Decline. Wade Davis at $10 million? Accept. Declining Hammel’s option was so curious, however, that Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein took a break from his bender to issue 318-word statement on the matter:

The #Cubs today announced that the club has declined the 2017 option on Jason Hammel’s contract. pic.twitter.com/sJ22n2VQ8N

— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) November 6, 2016

Hammel signed a one-year deal with the Cubs prior to the 2014 season, was traded to Oakland with Jeff Samardzija in the Addison Russell trade that July, and then returned to the Cubs on what would’ve been a three-year, $30 million contract had the option been picked up, but which has instead become a two-year, $20 million deal. In his two-and-a-half seasons with Chicago, he pitched 446 innings to a 3.59 ERA, 22.9% strikeout rate, and 5.9 WAR – and added 0.6 WAR with the bat, for good measure. Now, those stats might be disappointing for a top-of-the-rotation pitcher, but Hammel was functionally the Cubs’ fifth starter! Fifth starters aren’t supposed to be this good and the Cubs could’ve had effectively retained him for $10 million (his $12 million option minus the $2 million buyout), so why didn’t they?

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