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It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.

Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.

To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.

In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”

Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.

For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.

So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.

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Wil Myers was always going to be the San Diego Padres’ highest-paid player in 2017, regardless of whether he signed a new contract. In arbitration, Myers had around $4 million coming to him, which is quite a bit more than Yangervis Solarte’s $2.1 million, the Padres’ other highest-paid player. Myers figures to provide a 25% increase on the $12 million already guaranteed to other players on the roster. This, of course, ignores the roughly roughly $35 million to be collected by Jedd Gyorko, Hector Olivera, James Shields, and Melvin Upton Jr. as they play for other teams.

Given the incredible financial flexibility the Padres have, it makes sense for the Padres to lock up their best player for the long term, and it appears they’ve done that, announcing a six-year, $83 million deal with Myers, plus an option. Players just entering arbitration like Wil Myers seldom receive contract extensions that buy out multiple free-agent years, so this one is a bit unusual and costly for San Diego.

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The Indians just signed Brandon Guyer to a very modest contract extension. If you know Guyer, it’s for one of two reasons. A small number of you might know Guyer personally. A greater number of you know Guyer for his skill at being hit by things. Guyer is a specialist when it comes to finding an alternate path to first base. Here he is, doing his thing:

Call it cheap if you want, but what works works. Despite being a part-time player, Guyer just led the league in hit-by-pitches. For his career, he’s been hit by a pitch 66 times, while he’s been walked on four balls 61 times. Just last season, Guyer was hit by a pitch in 9% of his plate appearances, a rate which was 10 times higher than the league average. Ten times higher than the league average! Guyer is a statistical weirdo, but you have to love him for it. Unless, you know, you’re pitching.

Guyer is a bit of a competitive annoyance because of his specialty. And yet, as the freaks go, he’s out-classed. Guyer specializes at one arguably cheap way to reach base. Jacoby Ellsbury specializes at another. We’ve gone over this before, but we’re doing it again. Last year, Guyer’s rate of reaching by HBP was 10 times the league average. Last year, Ellsbury’s rate of reaching on catcher’s interference was 94 times the league average. Ellsbury managed one of the most extraordinary statistical accomplishments in the history of the game.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
The advantage, for a club, of embracing mediocrity is that it permits them to allocate plate appearances and innings to players who possess both clear strengths and obvious weaknesses. Odubel Herrera (609 PA, 3.6 zWAR) is perhaps the purest expression of this strategy and its benefits in all of baseball. Acquired by the Phillies in the Rule 5 draft and promptly handed a starting role at a position he’d basically never played, Herrera has produced roughly four wins each of the last two seasons. Szymborski’s computer suggests something approximating a third consecutive four-win campaign is probable. He’s an unambiguous success story.

Beyond Herrera, there isn’t much in the way of present impact talent. Maikel Franco (581, 2.6) is the only other likely starter to receive a projection better than two wins. Of some interest perhaps is the forecast for Cesar Hernandez (541, 1.7). The author of a four-win season in 2016, he’s forecast for only about half that in 2017. This isn’t surprising, necessarily: a not insignificant portion of Hernandez’s value last season was the product of a .363 BABIP and +13.9 UZR. ZiPS calls for a .340 BABIP and -1 fielding mark, instead.

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Here’s something that isn’t new to you: It’s difficult to hit a home run in San Francisco. It’s difficult to hit a home run in any ballpark, but, in particular, San Francisco makes it tough. This information is well understood.

So why don’t we freshen things up with a twist? Not only is it hard to hit a homer in AT&T Park — AT&T makes homers more hard than Coors Field makes them easy. That’s clunky, so to put it a different way, AT&T has the most extreme home-run park factor in the league. The most extreme of the pitcher-friendly places, and the most extreme of the hitter-friendly places, just speaking in terms of distance from the average. We all know the ballpark holds most fly balls, but while we were paying only indirect attention, AT&T became the toughest dinger ballpark in 25 years.

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So Jose Bautista will not receive the six years or $150 million he was reportedly seeking a year ago. According to Ken Rosenthal, Bautista has reportedly reached an agreement on a one-year deal with a mutual option to return to Toronto. Nick Stellini has already addressed some of the implications of the deal for the Blue Jays.

Since the conclusion of the PED era, baseball appears to have returned closer to its roots. Baseball appears to be a young man’s game again. Teams are hesitant to pay for seasons in players’ 30s. Teams prize prospects and pre-arbitration seasons more than ever. Teams are well aware of age curves, and aging models suggest Bautista is probably not the next David Ortiz, as Craig Edwards wrote back in November.

Those factors — plus a down season impacted by injury, plus a market that might have overcorrected against bat-only players — all conspired to limit Bautista’s market. The FanGraphs crowd projected Bautista would sign a three-year, $65 million deal.

But was the industry too skeptical of Bautista’s future this winter? Are the Blue Jays on cusp of a landing Bautista on another bargain of a contract?

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For the better part of the off-season, the Dodgers and Twins have reportedly been trying to strike a fair deal for Brian Dozier. The Twins second baseman is a highly valuable player, but with only two years left of team control, he’s probably a better fit for a contender than a rebuilder, and right now, the Twins are still in the latter category. But, for whatever reason, the two sides seem to value Dozier differently, and as of last week, it appears that both teams have decided there isn’t a fit, at least not right now.

Sources: #Twins, #Dodgers at impasse on Dozier. No momentum toward deal. 1/2

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 10, 2017

Impasse on Dozier does not preclude future talks, but #Twins had wanted to give Dozier heightened peace of mind on status with club. 2/2

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) January 10, 2017

So, with Dozier potentially off the table, let’s see if we can find the Dodgers another second baseman.

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The phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” originated in an Arthur R. “Pop” Momand comic strip in 1913. For better than a century, the phrase has characterized the attempt by many Americans to match or exceed the assets and social status of those in close proximity to them, namely their neighbors. (Of course, now you can keep up with all the Joneses on social media.)

The Chicago Cubs have created much envy in the NL Central. They are the neighbor with the new infinity swimming pool, the shiny new luxury car parked in the three-car garage, and the remodeled kitchen complete with a $10,000 range. They had a lot of parties last summer and generally seemed quite popular.

There cannot be a greater feeling of envy toward the Cubs than in St. Louis. The Cubs are a threat to the Cardinals’ sustained excellence over the last decade, perhaps the most impressive run in the sport since the Atlanta Braves’ MLB-record 14 consecutive postseason berths in the 1990s and early 2000s.

We know the Cubs are coming off a World Series title and a 103-win regular season. The Cubs retain their core and have few weaknesses. The Cardinals won 86 games last season, missing the postseason for the first time since 2010.

With a passionate fanbase that’s unaccustomed to watching a rival neighbor accumulate such wealth, now would seem the time to act boldly and irrationally and emotionally if the Cardinals front office were ever to operate in such fashion. On the contrary, the Cardinals have been cautious, having made a total of zero 40-man roster transactions since December 12. While the Cardinals did raid the Cubs for a significant asset in Dexter Fowler, St. Louis has otherwise operated in a relatively low-key fashion this offseason.

Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak has been asked one question over and over again this offseason, MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch reports: has he done enough to catch the Cubs?

“I always feel like it’s sort of dangerous to simply chase your neighbors,” Mozeliak said. “That phrase — ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ — can be dangerous, right? I think the best strategy is try to build a club that you think has a chance to win your division, get to the postseason. Obviously, a lot of things have to happen along the way, and part of that’s good fortune. Part of that is playing well. You look back to last year, some of those things we just didn’t do that well.”

By taking on too much debt, by making extravagant purchases, and trading too much of tomorrow in a quest for immediate satisfaction, Keeping up With the Joneses can have dire consequences. The Cardinals, probably wisely, are apparently not willing to try and keep up with the Cubs via a dramatic and bold offseason. It’s perhaps why the Cardinals remained on the “periphery” of the Chris Sale talks, according to Jon Heyman. Moreover, baseball is crazy and unpredictable. The Cubs might suffer some serious regression in 2017.

But right now the Cubs are a heavy favorite and the Cardinals – and every other team in the division – have a significant gap to bridge.

So what to do?

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I recently took a vacation, which meant I recently missed some Mariners trades. The trades weren’t conditional upon me being somewhere else; they were conditional upon the passage of some amount of time. The Mariners subtracted from the pitching staff to add to the outfield. They then subtracted from the outfield to add to the pitching staff. Later, they subtracted from the minors to add Mallex Smith, then they subtracted from Mallex Smith to add Drew Smyly. I was asked last Friday why the latest pair of moves didn’t go down as a three-team maneuver. I don’t know, but, this way, Jerry Dipoto gets to double-add to his tally.

In general, baseball fans are mostly preoccupied with the goings-on surrounding their own favorite teams. Plain and simple, it can be hard to know much about everything else that’s taking place. Dipoto, though, is transcending that, developing an active trader reputation that fewer and fewer can ignore. It’s become a punchline, Dipoto sometimes resembling a caricature of himself. It’s tempting to compare Dipoto to a hummingbird, but as luck would have it, a hummingbird has recently taken up temporary residence outside our bedroom window. A picture:

Even a hummingbird can sometimes be seen sitting still.

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It’s that time of year again! This past Friday was the filing deadline for arbitration-eligible player contract offers. Once these numbers are published, I like to create a data visualization showing the difference between the team and player contract filings. (See the 2016 version here.) If you are unfamiliar with the arbitration process here’s the quick explanation from last year:

Teams and players file salary figures for one-year contracts, then an arbitration panel awards the player either with the contract offered by the team or the contract for which the player filed. More details of the arbitration process can be found here. Most players will sign a contract before numbers are exchanged or before the hearing, so only a handful of players actually go through the entire arbitration process each year.

The compiled team and player contract-filings data used in the graph can be found at MLB Trade Rumors.

Three colored dots represent a different type of signing: yellow represents a mutually-agreed contract signed to avoid arbitration, red represents the award of the team’s offer in arbitration, and blue represents the award of the player’s offer. A gray line represents the difference in player and team filings. Only players with whom teams exchanged numbers on January 13, 2017 will have grey lines. These can be filtered by clicking the “Filed” button.

The “Signed” button filters out players who have signed a contract for 2017; this will change as arbitration hearings occur. Finally, “All” includes every player represented in the graph. This year Jake Arrieta and Bryce Harper had the two largest contracts ($15.367M and $13.625M, respectively), but they both signed contracts before the filing deadline. This causes changes on the x-axis scale on the “Signed” and “All” tabs compared to the “Filed” tab, which is scaled to contracts under $10M.

The chart is sorted either by contract value or by the midpoint of the arbitration filings. The midpoint is the average of the two contracts and determines which contract the arbitrator awards based on his assessment of the relevant player’s value. The final contract value takes precedent over the midpoint since this represents the resolved value. Contract extension details will be written out over the data points. For our purposes, an extension is a multiyear deal that can’t be shown on the graph, since we are looking only single-year contracts for 2017.

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