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Buy low and sell high. It’s the investing concept we’re all taught at a young age, and it makes everything sound so simple. If you buy assets when their value is about to go up, and sell them when it’s about to go down, then you’ll get rich. Super easy! Everyone should do it! Get excited!

Life, however, is more complicated than that. The high and low points of a trend graph are easy to spot when looking retrospectively, but when you’re in the midst of the graph, determining whether things are about to go up or down is more difficult. Forecasting isn’t as easy as buy low/sell high makes it sound.

So, with that said, let’s talk about Andrew McCutchen.

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After Jeremy Hellickson‘s decision to accept his qualifying offer, Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey’s respective agreements with the Atlanta Braves, and the Houston Astros’ acquisition of Charlie Morton last week, the starting-pitching market in free agency is pretty well depleted. If two 40-plus-year-old pitchers and two other pitchers who’ve produced a single above-average season between them can deplete a class, it’s probably safe to assume that the class in question is pretty dreadful. Last year, eight pitchers signed contracts guaranteeing at least $70 million; this year, we might not see any.

We can get a decent idea of how little there is out there by looking at the projections. Our Depth Chart projections call for 247 pitchers to record at least five starts next season. Of the top 150 — equivalent to five per team — only seven are free agents currently.

For those clubs in need of a starter, there’s 38-year-old Rich Hill, a half-season of optimism courtesy Ivan Nova, and… zero other pitchers forecast to record an average, two-win season. Generally, free agents will not have youth on their side, as it takes six full years of service time to get to free agency, but this group is particularly long in the tooth. Nova is the only one under 30, while five of seven will play next season at age 33 or older — and that doesn’t even include the aforementioned Colon and Dickey.

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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 Washington Nationals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Even without the benefit yet of having acquired new talent through free agency, the 2017 edition of the Nationals looks strong. There are promising young field players in Bryce Harper (5.1 zWAR), Anthony Rendon (4.1), and Trea Turner (4.4), while all five members of the likely Opening Day rotation earn a projection of 2.5 wins or better.

The club’s greatest weakness appears to come in the form of two previous strengths: Jayson Werth and Ryan Zimmerman. Expected to earn about $35 million between them in 2017, they’re projected to produce roughly zero wins. Of course, that’s oversimplifying matters: players are often compensated for wins on the back end of a deal that they probably supplied at the beginning of it. That doesn’t change the situation facing the Nats, however — namely, that left field and first base might offer little for the club this next season.

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Andrew Cashner just signed a one-year deal with the Rangers, the kind of deal you might call a pillow contract, an opportunity for Cashner to bounce back and get on the market with better numbers behind him. That’s the benefit for Cashner. As for the Rangers, they’re happy to get a relatively cheap veteran with some upside for the back end of their rotation.

The only problem with this scenario is that Cashner has spent two years trying to bounce back, and has met with poor results, even on the back of high-velocity stuff that looks like it should do better. There’s got to be a way to get more from 94 and a mullet.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Minnesota Twins farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Slashed .291/.335/.386 in Florida State League in 2016. Also saved 11 runs at shortstop, per Clay Davenport.

Scouting Report
Gordon was one of this decade’s most heavily scouted high schoolers, leaving evaluators extremely comfortable with his skill set and big-league prospects despite a lack of big tools. Scouts, who were obviously aware of Gordon’s parentage, began seeing a lot of him as a freshman when they were scouting Olympia High School senior outfielder Jesse Winker. Gordon was also a regular at all-star games and showcases throughout his high-school career. After four years, teams saw Gordon as a likely, but unexceptional defensive shortstop who would hit for average and maybe grow into some power as he approached his peak.

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It would be fair to label me a skeptic of Dexter Fowler’s defense skills. Despite recording basically average fielding numbers over his two years with the Cubs, Fowler had graded out as a distinctly below-average center fielder in every season of his career before joining Chicago ahead of the 2015 season. In each of the past two years his name has appeared in my early-season defensive-outlier posts, and before last season, I wrote an entire piece wondering if Fowler had actually improved as a defender or if he had merely benefited from better positioning.

Of course, even if the pre-Chicago version of Fowler is the real one, he actually still profiles as a decent player. He has a fantastic walk rate, has exhibited average power as a major leaguer, makes good contact — and, since leaving hitter-friendly Coors Field, has managed to produce a 121 wRC+, well above league average. Dexter Fowler the Hitter and Dexter Fowler the Fielder present two different points from which to begin an analysis of his future value. Let’s take a look at both.

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The Houston Astros have been the most aggressive team of the winter, acquiring Brian McCann, Josh Reddick, and Charlie Morton in the last few days, as they attempt to make their move from contender to division-favorite. The second most aggressive team so far? Probably the Atlanta Braves.

They started off the hot stove season last week by signing Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey to help fill out the back of their rotation. And now, according to reports, they’re aiming for an ace.

Braves are aggressively swapping offers for starting pitchers. Rival officials think Braves and Astros will add the most help this winter.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 16, 2016

More specifically, there’s this from David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

They’ve had talks with teams about trading for still another starter, most notably Chris Sale, 27, a native of Lakeland, Fla. The five-time All-Star left-hander is under contractual control for three more seasons at below-market rates — $38 million total in that three-year span including two option years — and has finished in the top five of the American League Cy Young Award balloting for four consecutive seasons after finishing sixth in his first season as a starter in 2012.

The Braves have also inquired about the Rays’ Chris Archer and Athletics’ Sonny Gray, but Sale is their focus, a person familiar with the situation said.

The price for Sale could be enormous, likely a package including multiple top prospects. The Braves have said they’re not at a point in their rebuild where they’re ready to trade top prospects to fill in gaps, but to get an ace they seem at least willing to consider changing that plan.

On the one hand, this shouldn’t be that surprising: GM John Coppolella is a strong believer in the value of starting pitching, and especially so, in the value of frontline aces. This the kind of pitcher the Braves are always going to be looking for under his watch, and given that they’ve been outspoken that they want to win sooner than later, it shouldn’t be that surprising to see them pursuing players who could significantly improve their roster. Especially with their new stadium opening up next spring, the Braves don’t want to put a bad product on the field, potentially wasting the revenue boost that comes from opening a new ballpark.

But on the other hand, before the team aggressively turns future assets into present value, the Braves should make sure they’re not following in the footsteps of the Arizona Diamondbacks, whose desire to push their window to win forward by a year or two ended up doing a tremendous amount of destruction to the organization.

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Tonight, the results of the voting for the AL and NL MVPs will be announced. In the NL, Kris Bryant will likely win in a landslide, as he was the league’s best player, played on the league’s best team, and put up big numbers in the categories that get the most attention. Daniel Murphy and Corey Seager also had terrific years, but I’d be surprised if either got more than a handful of first place votes. And when Bryant wins, everyone will mostly nod along in agreement, as the process will have worked to select the right candidate.

In the AL, though, it’s going to be a different story. Mookie Betts is probably going to win, and instead of celebrating the accomplishments of one of the best young players in the game, there is going to be outrage. There is going to be yelling. There is going to be anger and frustration. Twitter is going to be a dumpster fire, even more than usual. Because once again, Mike Trout is going to finish second, and the best (human-sized) player we’ve ever seen is going to say something nice about an inferior player who got rewarded for having better teammates again.

And then there’s going to be the same arguments that got trotted out every year. “It’s the Most Valuable Player Award, not the Best Player Award”, they’ll say. And then people will point out that it’s a distinction without a difference, and back-and-forth things will go until everyone gets distracted by a trade or something. And then we’ll do all this again in another 12 months, since the Angels don’t look like they’re really in any kind of position to put Trout in the playoffs. And round and round we’ll go.

Tonight, we could be celebrating the fact that we’ve had the privilege to watch a guy who has outgrown the Mickey Mantle comparison. We could be talking about the obvious greatness of one of the very best baseball players who has ever lived. We could be collectively thankful that we happen to be alive at a time where everyone gets to watch Mike Trout play, to see what an all-time great in his prime looks like.

But unless things have changed more rapidly than we currently think, we’re going to end up debating the meaning of the word valuable, and congratulating Mookie Betts for having the good fortune to be drafted by a team that has other good players too.

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The Cubs won the World Series. I’m sure enough has been made of that. I’m not sure enough has been made of their defense. Or, if you prefer, their hit suppression. Don’t get me wrong, there have been articles about this very topic. But, you know BABIP. By BABIP allowed, the 2016 Cubs were the all-time best. The all-time best, over more than a century. It’s kind of unbelievable what the Cubs pulled off.

Like many statistics, league BABIP changes with the eras. You don’t want to compare raw BABIPs throughout history, just as you wouldn’t want to compare raw strikeout rates, or slugging percentages. I’ve calculated something very simple — the difference between a team’s BABIP allowed and the league-average BABIP allowed. Here’s a table of the top 10 since 1900, and, well, I told you:

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For the second year in a row, I was given the opportunity to cast a ballot for the National League Cy Young Award. For the second year in a row, this was a very difficult task.

Last year, I had to pick between three aces who had historic seasons, finally settling on Jake Arrieta by the tiniest of margins over Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. This year, no pitcher pitched a full season at the level that those three reached a year ago, so this year’s task was more about picking between good-but-flawed seasons rather than trying to decide which great year was the greatest.

And there was no shortage of options. In the end, I strongly considered eight players for the five spots we were asked to rank, and the guys who ended up at six through eight all had very strong cases for spots on the ballot. While the ordinal-rank system will make it look I saw a real difference between the guys ranked #3-#5 and the three notable omissions, the reality is that there was a six car pile-up at the back end of my ballot, and I think you have to split hairs to pick between the three guys who rounded out my ballot and the three guys who just missed.

But, it is an ordinal rank ballot, so let’s go through the ballot spot-by-spot so I can explain my rationale.

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