In 2015, Travis d’Arnaud was one of the league’s best power hitters. His .218 ISO placed him in the neighborhood of sluggers like Joey Votto and Kris Bryant. Following the season, Steamer projected that d’Arnaud’s ISO would be fourth best among catchers, and 24% better than 2015’s league average.

But that power was absent this past year, as d’Arnaud’s ISO fell by two thirds. At .076, it was one of MLB’s worst 10 marks, ranking the Mets catcher amid weak-hitting middle infielders like Dee Gordon, Adeiny Hechavarria, and Ketel Marte. d’Arnaud’s overall output took a huge hit, as his wRC+ sank to 74 this year after reaching 130 in 2015. That 56-point plummet is among the 1.1% worst year-to-year differentials of all time (minimum 250 PA). A decline this severe is unusual — and particularly surprising for a player who looked like a burgeoning star in 2015.

How did this downturn happen? In other cases, we might point to injuries or small sample sizes, but there’s reason to think that more was at play for d’Arnaud in 2016. That’s because he struggled with a longer swing in the 2016 season, generated by his bat wrap.

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If you’ll allow me to make whatever the opposite of a hot take is, I’ll go ahead and assert that Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in the majors. This is almost a law of the universe, at this point — a law I don’t intend to contradict here. As for who’s next on the list, though, there’s more room for reasonable debate. One might ask, “Who’s the second-best pitcher in major-league baseball?”

In fact, I did ask it. According to the highly unscientific poll I took of my Twitter followers, Max Scherzer is an extraordinarily popular answer – and for good reason! Over the past four seasons he’s posted a 2.95 ERA, 2.90 FIP, averaged 263 strikeouts a year, and won two Cy Young Awards. You could also make cases for guys like Chris Sale, Corey Kluber, and the always underappreciated Johnny Cueto. For any of those pitchers to be the second-best pitcher in baseball, though, they’d have to surpass the guy who generates exceptional results while commanding what I might argue is the most jaw-dropping starting pitcher repertoire we’ve ever seen: Noah Syndergaard.

There’s a video-game performance quality to what Syndergaard does on a baseball field that I’m not sure we’ve seen since Barry Bonds retired. We’ve had elite players, sure – Kershaw and Mike Trout are pretty dang good, after all – but there’s a real “this shouldn’t be humanly possible” quality to Syndergaard’s pitching.

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The 2016 season featured the second-most home runs in baseball’s history. Though a few people around baseball want to attribute it to the placement of power hitters higher in the lineup or better coaching based on better data, the evidence that both exit velocity and home runs per contact are up across the league refutes the first, and the evidence of the latter is minor. It’s a bit of an open mystery, but it’s certainly possible that the ball is different now.

In any case, the fact that homers are up is irrefutable. And it’s on the game to adjust. So I asked many of baseball’s best managers a simple question: with home runs up, how have you adjusted how you approach the game? Lineups, rotations, bullpens, hooks: is anything different for them today than it was two years ago?

*****

Terry Collins, New York Mets: No, really doesn’t. The game has changed, that’s the game now: home runs. And we’re lucky we got a few guys who can hit ’em. That’s where it’s at. As I said all last year, our team was built around power, so you sit back and make sure they have enough batting practice and be ready to start the game. We’ve got a good offensive team. Neil. Getting Neil Walker back, that’s big. David back and Ces and Jay and Granderson. We got a bench full of guys that could be everyday players. We’re pretty lucky.

I watched the playoffs, too, and I know what you’re talking about. I talked to Joe Maddon a couple days ago about how the playoffs may change and he said, ‘We didn’t have your pitching. I’ll leave ’em in.’

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Though it’s not entirely clear why, it nevertheless appears to be the case that the direction of a batted ball matters when you’re attempting to model the distance over which that same batted ball will travel. Perhaps it’s because of the “slice” balls exhibit off the bat. Perhaps it’s because they exhibit less slice when batted in the direction of the pull side. Perhaps the geometry of the field is somehow responsible for distorting the results. I don’t know. A physicist would be able to tell you more!

Anyway, direction matters, and so it looks like pulling the ball is good for power, even if you keep launch angle and exit velocity constant. And that’s relevant today because Michael Conforto is relevant today. With the return of Yoenis Cespedes to the Mets, the club has one outfielder too many. Both the Mets and their 29 hypothetical trade partners are probably wondering about Conforto’s future production. Which version of him is real: the one that raked in 2015 and September of 2016 or the one who hit 10% worse than league average for three-and-half-months this past season?

I already found earlier this month that Conforto’s “barreled” balls weren’t ideal — and perhaps that it was a result of having hit too many of them to center and left (i.e. the opposite) field.

But you hear coaches say that “pull power comes last,” that a player develops his ability to pull the ball later in the development process. In fact, Don Mattingly said almost that exact thing about Christian Yelich a few months ago to our August Fagerstrom.

From Fagerstrom’s post (bold is mine):

“I still think there’s room for him to grow,” Mattingly explained. “He still hasn’t really truly learned how to pull the ball. When he learns how to pull the ball, he’s going to be really scary. Because they’re not going to be able to do some of the things they do to get him out now when he finds that next angle. Once he gets that next piece in there, he’s going to be one of the best hitters in the game.”

So common wisdom suggests that pull power develops with age. Our data suggests that Conforto barreled too many balls to the opposite field. Is it possible that age will allow Conforto to barrel more balls to the pull side?

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Yoenis Cespedes never really wanted to leave New York, and now he won’t have to. He’s re-signed with the Mets for four years, and it’ll cost the team $110 million and a no-trade clause. It’s the news of the day, and presumably the news of the week, as Cespedes was considered the best player on the free-agent market. Not even that long ago, one wouldn’t have expected the Mets of all teams to be able to make this sort of splash.

They say Cespedes makes an intangible impact. I don’t have much to say about that. They say Cespedes is the straw that stirs the Mets’ drink. I don’t have much to say about that. They say Cespedes might not age very well now that he has his long-term guarantee. I definitely don’t have much to say about that. I want to talk to you about the details. The stupid little crap that might only matter to readers of FanGraphs. Let’s talk about Yoenis Cespedes’ WAR, and how we might be able to make him look better.

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The Mets have Yoenis Cespedes back! That’s great news, in that he’s a good player, they’re a win-now team, and good players help win-now teams win more. But it’s also a problem, because the Mets already had too many corner outfielders even before Cespedes re-signed with the team. With Cespedes back, they now have four guys for two spots, with three of the four being too similar to work as complementary parts. This is no longer depth; this is officially a logjam.

Complicating the problem is that the team also still kind of needs another outfielder; Juan Lagares is the only real true center fielder on the roster, but how much they can count on him is something of a question, given the thumb injury that sidelined him in 2016 and the elbow problems that limited him in 2015. If the team sees Lagares as more of a defensive replacement than a regular, then the team with the most crowded corner outfield in the game is still short a starting center fielder.

So, let’s try and help Sandy Alderson out here, and see if we can find some ways to turn four corners and no CF into a three man group the team can be happy with on most days.

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Well, here we go; the hot stove is starting to fire up.

Optimism growing in Mets camp they can get a deal done with Cespedes, sources say…

— Tim Brown (@TBrownYahoo) November 29, 2016

Sources: Cespedes back to #Mets.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 29, 2016

Sources: Cespedes deal expected to be four year, $110M.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 29, 2016

The Mets had been pretty interested in retaining Cespedes, and he seemed interested in sticking around, and it looks like both parties found a way to make it work even without waiting for the new terms of the CBA to be agreed upon.

At 4/$110M, Cespedes ends up effectively getting close to the deal everyone expected him to get last winter, when you factor in that he got $27.5 million for 2016 on his one-year deal. This is a little bit less than what our expected price was headed into the winter, as Cespedes settled on four years at a slightly higher AAV rather than pushing for a fifth year and getting the total guarantee up slightly. Here’s the blurb we included in our Top 50 free agent write-up, where Cespedes ranked #1 overall.

A year after getting rejected by the league, Cespedes is considered by most to be the best player on the market this winter. He followed up his 2015 offensive breakout with another strong year in Queens, and while his defensive performance took a dive while playing through a quad injury, his recent power spike shouldn’t be viewed with as much skepticism as it was last year. Of course, he’s still built like a linebacker and lower-half injuries are the kinds of things you don’t want to see from a guy who relies on athleticism for a good chunk of his value. So there’s still risk here, which is why we all seem to agree that a five-year deal is the best fit here, even for the top player available.

Criag Edwards went through Cespedes’ comparisons a few weeks back and found him to be worth something in the range of $100 million or so, so this seems like a perfectly reasonable investment for the Mets. He’s a good player, and this is what good players go for these days.

The question, of course, is what the Mets do now with an overcrowded outfield. With Curtis Granderson and Jay Bruce under contract for significant money as corner outfield options, Michael Conforto around as a young player who should fit into a corner spot as well, and now Cespedes, the team is overflowing with left and right fielders. One or even two of those guys are probably leaving Queens now, so with Cespedes back in the fold, the Mets can figure out how to make their roster work again.

It’s no secret that position players are the big prize in this winter’s relatively weak free-agent class. Available top-tier starting pitching is essentially non-existent, but there are a few hitters who will be expected to be a big boon to their new teams. Even then, though, it’s not as if the ranks of available hitters are dripping with star-level talent. I keep going back to free-agent rankings ordered according to 2017 projection systems – here’s our free-agent depth chart and here are MLB.com’s projections – and grappling with the name atop the projections: Justin Turner. Is it actually possible that a 32-year-old infielder coming off his first major-league season as a full-fledged starter is the game’s best available free agent?

The most popular name to cite as this year’s “best” free agent is Yoenis Cespedes. He appears atop Dave Cameron’s top-50 free-agent rankings and all indications are that he’s the most likely player to lock-down a nine-figure contract before next year. Edwin Encarnacion is also available, and all he’s done is hit more homers over the last five seasons (193) than every player in the game except Chris Davis (197). But then there’s Justin Turner. As Cameron said when he listed Turner as the best potential free-agent bargain this winter: “Turner looks like this year’s Ben Zobrist: a good player who will get underpriced because he doesn’t feel as good as he actually is.”

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Baseball players are human beings and – here’s some bad news about the human race – human beings are flawed. Perfection in human form does not exist and, consequently, neither does perfection in baseball-player form. The greatest players the world has ever known still have weaknesses on the field (and off it, for that matter). Some weaknesses are unfixable – sorry, Ben Revere, but you’re never going to be a power hitter – but some weaknesses can be addressed. Players who make improvements can elevate their projected value, which can come in handy during free agency. This year, one free agent who has answered questions about a long-standing perceived weakness and stands to benefit financially is Yoenis Cespedes.

A year ago, Cespedes underwent a power surge. He’d always been a 20-homer guy, but, for the first time, he crossed the 30-homer threshold. He also set a career high in isolated power (ISO) with a .251 mark that ranked 12th among 141 qualified hitters. The great news for Cespedes is that he’s been able to sustain his heightened level of power this year by putting up a .251 ISO for the second consecutive season.

The better news for Cespsedes, though, is that, in addition to strengthening an area in which he’d always shown some ability, he also demonstrated impressive improvement in an area of perceived weakness: walks and on-base percentage (OBP). From 2013 to 2014, Cespedes’ OBP hovered around .300; last year it increased to .328 thanks in large part to the influx of home runs (and their effect on his batting average). This year, however, Cespedes brought his OBP up to .354, a level he hasn’t reached since he posted a .356 OBP in his rookie season. The obvious cause of this impressive boost has been a dramatic reversal in his walk-rate trend.

In 2015, Cespedes’ walk rate bottomed out at 4.9%; this past year, it soared to a new career high of 9.4%. One of the key questions facing teams interested in signing Cespedes this winter, then, is whether the boost is real. It goes without saying that a player with good power and decent OBP will be worth more to a team than a player with good power and poor OBP. Which type of player should teams expect from Cespedes going forward?

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Here’s a fun fact for you. There’s so much talk about the Mets and Yoenis Cespedes. About how Cespedes is so important to the Mets, about how the lineup can’t function without him. I’m not going to argue that Cespedes isn’t important. Great player! But if you look at last year’s Mets position players, the leader in WAR was Neil Walker. Only Noah Syndergaard had a higher WAR on the team, and Walker barely played two-thirds of the season.

So the Mets are probably pretty happy with the news that Walker has accepted their $17.2-million qualifying offer. Walker becomes the second of two players to accept the QO this offseason, joining Jeremy Hellickson. Hellickson might be thinking ahead to a midsummer trade. Walker wants to win the World Series where he is.

The only reason we’re here is because Walker had back surgery. He’s a 31-year-old middle infielder with a brand new scar, and he didn’t play a game after August 27. If Walker had stayed healthy and kept up his performance, he would’ve had zero trouble finding three or even four guaranteed years. But things being what they were, Walker sensed the market would be more cautious. There’s not even great demand for second basemen in the first place, at least not among contenders, and Walker has a new red flag. It makes plenty of sense for him to take the money, and then look ahead to a healthy season, after which the QO system is likely to have been modified.

The surgery is the unknown here. I don’t know what we can reasonably be expected to make of it. I don’t know how Walker feels about his back. I don’t know how the Mets feel about his back. I assume the Mets wouldn’t have made the offer if they thought Walker might never play second base again. I have to think that Walker will resemble himself on the field. If he does, well, the last three years, he’s run a wRC+ of 120. That puts him around Nolan Arenado, Chris Davis, and Ben Zobrist. He’s not a baserunning plus, but he’s also not a baserunning minus, and he might be only a modest liability in the field. The numbers think last year he was actually quite good. The numbers kind of struggle to make sense of infields these days, with players constantly moving around, but Walker has played second almost exclusively. He can handle the position if he can move well enough.

If his back holds up, Walker will be okay. He’ll get his contract next season, after making more money than he’s ever seen in 2017. If his back doesn’t hold up, well, $17.2 million is a hell of a guarantee. By making the offer, the Mets acknowledged they think Walker will probably be fine. By taking the offer, Walker acknowledged the surgery would depress his market. There’s only one way for such a red flag to be lowered.

The Mets will presumably now turn their full attention to Cespedes and a reliever or three. They might never escape all the injury-related question marks, but perhaps next year those questions might have fewer negative answers.