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The pitcher with the highest fastball spin rate in baseball in 2016 was also the first free agent signed this offseason. Maybe that’s just coincidence — Andrew Bailey was re-signed by the Angels to a modest one-year, $1 million deal with incentives, so it’s not like it required a ton of courting — but there are plenty of front offices who’ve designated at least one analyst to comb through the free-agent wires to find a pitcher with good spin rates. Let’s play along.

Of course, we can only play along so much: the major-league front offices have minor-league spin rates easily accessible in their databases, so they don’t have to go looking far and wide for data. Also, spin rates alone don’t tell the whole story, especially when it comes to changeups and sliders. However, we know this: given equal velocities, the fastball with the higher spin rate is superior fastball — and that looks to be true for curveballs, too. (Check the curveball tab of that linked spreadsheet, courtesy Jeff Zimmerman).

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Yesterday, we looked at the five players I think have the best chance to outperform their expected contracts among this class of free agents. Today, we’re going the other direction, looking at the five players I think represent the biggest chances to be regrettable contracts.

Last year, this was an easier task. With a pretty deep free agent class, it wasn’t that hard to find five guys who looked like overpay candidates, and so I tagged Dexter Fowler, Yovani Gallardo, Justin Upton, Jordan Zimmermann, and Chris Davis as the five guys to avoid. Fowler, of course, was also treated as something of a landmine by the league, and ended up being one of the best bargains of the off-season after re-signing with the Cubs for one year. The other four, though, lived up to landmine status, combining for a grand total of about +6 WAR despite making about $75 million between them.

This year, finding five guys to fit here was tougher. The diminished free agent class means there are just fewer guys who are going to command big deals, and fewer guys getting big contracts means there are fewer guys who will sign albatross deals. So, while we’re still naming five guys to avoid, the magnitude of the problem if a team signs one of these players will likely be a lot smaller; we’re mostly talking overpays of $10 or $20 million or something, not $50 million like some of the guys last year. These guys are probably inefficient signings, but not franchise-killing disasters.

With that said, let’s get to the guys I’d suggest avoiding this winter.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Colorado Rockies 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)

60 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded .199 ISO in Low-A.

Scouting Report
Some amateur evaluators thought Rodgers, the top prep talent in the 2015 draft, was the best overall prospect in the class because they liked his chances to stay at shortstop and eventually hit for more power than Dansby Swanson and Alex Bregman. While the other two have already made their big-league debuts, Rodgers has hit well as a young regular for two pro seasons while maintaining (and, in 2016, improving) a body some thought would fill out and require a move to third base.

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Around this time in 2015, right-hander Jeremy Hellickson had just completed a three-year stretch during which he recorded a cumulative ERA near five and experienced some injury troubles to boot. Following his one and only season in Arizona, he was traded to Philadelphia for a young righty who wasn’t even among the Phillies’ top-25 prospects at the time. There wasn’t a great deal of reason for optimism.

A year later, circumstances are considerably different. Following a three-win season, Hellickson received a qualifying offer from the Phillies — and now the 2017 edition of Hellickson will earn $17.2 million. The results were pretty different, in others words. But what about the process? Are these the same Hellicksons?

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On Friday, we rolled out our list of the top 50 free agents available this winter, with the crowdsourced contract estimates gathered over the last month, along with my guesses as what players will sign for. In the blurbs on each player, I noted a few guys I thought could be good values this year, but it’s always helpful to get it on the record; that way you can see whether I’m worth listening to.

For instance, last year, I identified Rich Hill, Ben Zobrist, and Steve Pearce as bargains based on the contracts we were expecting them to get, and all performed quite well, justifying my faith in their skills. My other two picks? Wei-Yin Chen and Jason Heyward. Yeah.

To some degree, this is the nature of playing in the free agent pool. Even the guys who look like values come with risk, and many times, the reason I think they may be underpriced is because they have some identifiable flaw. When you’re shopping in this kind of environment, you just have to hope your hits are bigger than your misses, and accept that a fairly high percentage of players you sign will end up not being worth the money. But if you get a Hill or a Zobrist, you can get enough value to make up for some of the signings that don’t work out so well.

So let’s try to find some guys who might be undervalued in this class. As other years, I’ll try to sort them by the magnitude of impact, so an undervalued high-end player will rank higher than a similarly underpriced role player; you’re better off landing a Zobrist than a Pearce, for instance. And I’ve included my contract and the crowdsourced projections, along with their 2017 Steamer forecast, as a reminder of what we think the market might pay them this winter.

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One year ago, Yoenis Cespedes was coming off an MVP-like season, having just turned 30 years old. It seemed inevitable he’d sign a large contract. Nevertheless, his market failed to develop. Instead, Cespedes opted to settle with the Mets on a three-year deal for $75 million, an agreement that also included an opt-out clause.

Now, entering the offseason, Cespedes isn’t merely a year older but he’s also coming off a season in which he produced roughly half the wins of his 2015 campaign. Given his age and performance in 2016, it would be reasonable to think his market and future would be less certain than a year ago. In a different market and a different level of certainty regarding his future, though, Cespedes is set to receive the contract most thought he would sign last season.

Determining a player’s value in a vacuum can be a different thing than determining the contract he’s actually likely to receive. For the most part, players in free agency receive more than they’re actually worth; the bidding process rewards/punishes the highest bidder, which is presumably the team with the highest valuation of the player. Cespedes was ranked as the top free agent by Dave Cameron this offseason, and both Cameron and the crowd have estimated that Cespedes will receive a five-year contract worth about $120 million. Now, let’s figure out how much Cespedes will actually be worth over the course of that contract.

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The Toronto Blue Jays agreed to a deal with 23-year-old Cuban prospect Lourdes Gurriel Jr. on Friday. The deal was first reported by MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and the terms of the contract — seven years, $22 million — was first reported by Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

The reports I’ve gotten from international scouts regarding Gurriel are solid, if unspectacular. Scouts see the physical talent to play at second, third, or the corner outfield and one source with whom I spoke thought he’d have a chance of playing center field with reps. His arm is plus and he’s an average runner (above-average underway) with passable defensive actions on the infield.

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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 year we introduced FanGraphs Membership, a voluntary way to to help support all the baseball content we produce each and every day. As a reminder, Membership is achieved through a $20 annual donation to the site — or $3 per month for those of you who prefer short-term contracts! — and we are greatly appreciative of all those who became members when we rolled out the program back in February.

Since we haven’t really mentioned Membership much since the rollout, we wanted to give you guys an update on the program. Beginning today, frequent users of FanGraphs who are not Members will occasionally be reminded that that becoming a Member will help support all the great baseball content at FanGraphs. These messages won’t be overly intrusive or too frequent, but will serve as a reminder that the content and data you’re consuming costs us real money to provide, and you can help ensure that FanGraphs remains a leader in both spaces by becoming a Member.

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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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