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Just a few years ago, in 2011, the two Most Valuable Player awards were given to Justin Verlander and Ryan Braun. They were fine choices, both, but just according to WAR, the two best players in baseball that year were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. Ellsbury, at 27, was a nine-win everyday center fielder. Kemp, at 26, was an eight-win everyday center fielder. Both of them had the look of long-term franchise players, but both stumbled in 2012 and still haven’t returned to that previous level. Now, during the 2013-2014 MLB offseason, both Ellsbury and Kemp appear to be available. And they are, naturally, two of the biggest available names.

Ellsbury, of course, is available as a free agent, and Scott Boras has drawn parallels to the Carl Crawford contract. Ellsbury could be looking at something like six years and $130-140 million. Kemp is available as a trade target, as the Dodgers are said to be shopping Kemp, Crawford, and Andre Ethier in order to better accommodate Yasiel Puig and clear some payroll space. Kemp’s under contract for another six years at $128 million. The Kemp and Ellsbury money could be very similar. Somebody is going to pay that amount to Ellsbury on purpose. Kemp, though, probably can’t be moved without the Dodgers eating some cash. As similar as the two players might look, it’s probable that, at this point, Matt Kemp’s trade value is negative.

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At around 11 pm eastern time last night, Philadelphia television and radio host Howard Eskin reported the following on Twitter:

#phillies GM Ruben Amaro deep in serious talks w #bluejays to acquire OF Jose Batista. Can also play 3rd. Phils would deal OF Dom Brown plus

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) November 13, 2013

As I write this several hours later, no other media entity has followed up on the report, either confirming or debunking, so as I get write this before I go to bed, I am unaware of whether this is a rumor to be taken seriously or something that is more conjecture than reality. So, consider this post less of an analysis of a potential Jose Bautista/Domonic Brown trade and more a collection of thoughts that I’ve had since reading the reactions to the rumor. I will note that these thoughts are mostly directed towards Phillies fans who find abhorrent the idea of acquiring one of the game’s best players.

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A pretty common question we see in FanGraphs chats is what one statistic we’d use to evaluate pitchers, if we could use only one. The truthful answer is always a non-answer: You shouldn’t ever use just one statistic. It’s an unrealistic hypothetical, and good evaluation is done with a blend of different data. But I will say that I tend to look at xFIP early on, just to get a sense of what I’m dealing with. It’s a number that can scrape out a whole bunch of noise. Something I noticed is that, this season, Max Scherzer posted a 3.16 xFIP. Rick Porcello posted a 3.19 xFIP. Both were full-time starters for the same team, and one of them, presumably, is about to win the American League Cy Young Award.

It’s a comparison that’s interesting enough on its own, but adding more significance to the comparison is talk that the Tigers will explore trading one of these two pitchers in the weeks and months ahead. There’s skepticism everywhere that a team like the Tigers would actually think deeply about moving Scherzer, considering everything, but the ace is one year from free agency and he’s represented by Scott Boras. Porcello is two years from free agency, and the Tigers have Drew Smyly just about ready to resume starting. Really, the Tigers aren’t limited to picking one between Scherzer and Porcello, but things could well work out that way. And in talking about this, xFIP is only the start.

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One of the most remarkable things about the Internet is the speed with which news finds its way to updated Wikipedia pages. Even during the MLB playoffs, you can usually find notes about player achievements or umpire errors within a matter of minutes. MLB.com does not operate like Wikipedia, in that not just anyone can go in and change things around. But there is one similarity, in that here’s a screenshot of part of the Twins’ official roster from earlier Monday:

Somebody’s conspicuously absent. Let’s scroll down just a bit:

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The St. Louis Cardinals need a shortstop and have a surplus of talent with no obvious places to fit onto their roster. The Colorado Rockies have a superstar shortstop but need more good players than they currently have. These facts have people — including noted scribe Ken Rosenthal — speculating about what a Tulowitzki-to-STL deal might look like. In fact, it is probably now the most interesting trade rumor of the off-season.

For their part, the Rockies say that they aren’t interested in trading Tulowitzki. When you have one of the best players in the game signed to one of the most team-friendly contracts in the game, there shouldn’t be a huge sense of urgency to unload said player and contract. Over the summer, I rated Tulowitzki as the 13th most valuable trade chip in baseball, sliding in between Miguel Cabrera and Stephen Strasburg. For the Rockies to move Tulowitzki, the offer would have to be substantial.

The Cardinals have substantial talent though. Matt Adams looks like a nice player, but he’s blocked by Allen Craig at first base. Trevor Rosenthal wants to start, but there isn’t an obvious spot for him in the rotation at the moment. If Jaime Garcia is healthy by next spring, the Cardinals won’t even have room for all the starters they already have, not even counting the potential for Rosenthal or Carlos Martinez to transition back out of the bullpen. The team also has Kolten Wong now blocked by Matt Carpenter at second base, and if they end up re-signing Carlos Beltran, they’ll probably have to trade Jon Jay whenever Oscar Taveras proves ready for the big leagues.

So, yeah, the Cardinals have expendable talent that is basically the envy of every team in the sport. They have enough depth that they can probably target any player they want and make a serious offer that at least forces the other club to listen. The real question, though, is should they?

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We all had a good sense going into things last season that the Tigers would have a pretty lousy team defense. The Tigers themselves understood defense wasn’t the priority, and in the end, they allowed the second-highest BABIP in the American League. Yet Max Scherzer, individually, finished at .259. At the other end of the spectrum, the Royals and Cubs featured pretty good overall team defenses. Edwin Jackson allowed a .322 BABIP. Wade Davis allowed a .361 BABIP. Defensive performance, not unlike run support, varies, and different pitchers can get different levels of support from the same group of gloves. Of course, BABIP isn’t explained by defense 100%, but it is a major component. It’s defense, pitching, and luck.

Along similar lines, just as we understand which teams do and do not have good defenses, we’re developing an understanding of which teams do and do not have good pitch-receivers behind the plate. The Braves, for example, have long had quality receivers. Ryan Doumit’s employers, meanwhile, have been a catastrophe. But pitch-receiving performance also varies, in large part just because of our small sample sizes, meaning two different guys on the same staff can end up pitching to different strike zones. So while we’ve talked about catchers here, I want to spend this post talking about pitchers. Which pitchers in 2013 threw to the biggest zones? Which pitchers threw to the smallest ones?

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Right around Opening Day, Forbes publishes its annual report on MLB team valuations. There is information on team revenues, debt, net income, and overall franchise value. The 2013 valuations, published in March, relied on 2012 numbers, plus a bit of forecasting about teams likely to land new, lucrative local TV contracts soon.

Now Bloomberg Business is getting into the act. A few weeks ago, Bloomberg published its own MLB team valuations, along with a terrific infographic comparing each team to the 29 others. Bloomberg also dug a bit deeper, and broke down each team’s revenue into gate receipts, concessions, sponsorships, and media rights. Bloomberg also used 2012 numbers, but reflected higher revenue and valuation figures than Forbes’ report from earlier this year.

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Robinson Cano just turned 31, and the FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign an eight year contract this winter that will take him through 2021, his age-38 season. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he lands a nine or ten year deal, as Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols did a couple of years ago, and ends up getting signed through age-40. And it’s not a controversial statement to say that Robinson Cano is unlikely to still be a highly productive player at that point in his career.

Any team that signs Cano this winter is going to be be guaranteeing him in the range of $25 million per year for years in which Cano should reasonably be projected as a below average player, and maybe even a guy who shouldn’t be starting for a big league team. The negotiations for his services are essentially going to center around how many years a team is willing to guarantee Cano a significant paycheck while expecting almost nothing in return. The team that eventually gets to sign him will be the team that gives him the most “dead money” years.

This is what free agency for elite players has evolved into. Instead of negotiating on annual salary, the market has evolved to negotiate on years. Let’s look at some data, so you don’t have to take my word for it.

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Yesterday, I looked at five players who I thought would be significant bargains if they signed for the expected contract produced by the FanGraphs Crowdsourcing series. Today, let’s go the other direction, and look at five players who I think might be significant overpays at their projected salaries.

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Free Agency starts today. Well, sort of. Teams and agents are now allowed to start fully negotiating with each other, though they’ve been flirting with each other ever since the World Series ended, and no one really comes close to signing with a new team at this point in the off-season anyway. It’s kind of a symbolic opening, but it does bring with it one reliable event: the release of Top X Free Agent lists and predictions. Everyone does them, even though we’re all basically the saying the same thing — Jacoby Ellsbury and Robinson Cano are good players — and our predictions are all mostly useless.

We presented our version a couple of weeks ago, ordered by the total guaranteed dollars expected by our readers in our crowdsourcing project. I don’t necessarily agree with all of the prices or the ordering of the players relative to each other, but rather than present another Top 50 Free Agent list, let’s try something a little different. Today and tomorrow, I’ll go through the crowdsourced expected prices and present the players that I think are worth significantly more and significantly less than the crowd expects them to sign for. Today, let’s start with the guys who I’d target as values, if their market price was their crowdsourced expected signing price.

We’ll go in reverse order, because why not.

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