One of the more eye-opening deals of the winter so far is Brian Wilson re-signing for eight figures with the Dodgers. It isn’t just that Wilson is coming off a year in which he barely pitched due to injury rehab. He’s good, and he looks to be healthy now. What makes it weird is that Wilson is in line to be a setup guy, behind one of the best relievers in baseball. Kenley Jansen is almost literally unhittable, so injury is the only thing that could conceivably stop him in 2014. Wilson is getting paid a lot, then, to not be a closer, even though he has a long closing background.

Wednesday, the Padres signed Joaquin Benoit for two years and $15.5 million. Benoit is a good relief pitcher, and a proven closer. The tricky part is that the Padres already had a proven closer in the perfectly adequate Huston Street. Benoit, like Wilson, is getting paid a lot to not be a closer, at least from the outset. And he’s getting paid a lot by a team that doesn’t have a budget anywhere close to the one the Dodgers do. On the face of it, the Padres make for a strange destination.

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After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the San Diego Padres. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cleveland / Minnesota / Philadelphia / St. Louis.

Batters
San Diego’s leader by WAR in 2013 was Chris Denorfia, with a 3.9 mark — for which reason it feels odd to view him as part-time/platoon-type player entering 2014. Yet, that’s how the author has classified him in the depth-chart graphic below and how ZiPS seemingly regards him, as well — insofar, that is, as it doesn’t foresee the outfielder duplicating his career-best season, at all.

Of some difficulty with regard to understanding the 2014 iteration of the Padres is estimating precisely how playing time will work out between the team’s two catchers. ZiPS’ computer math suggests that Yasmani Grandal is probably the second- or third-best player on the whole club. That said, he underwent surgery on his ACL in August that could require up to a year of recovery. Fortunately for San Diego, Nick Hundley himself isn’t a particularly significant downgrade. Still, that’s a lot of talent to possess at one position while others could certainly afford to be upgraded.

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When the A’s acquired Craig Gentry from the Rangers earlier today, it seemed somewhat clear that another outfielder would have to be moved. With Coco Crisp, Josh Reddick, Yoenis Cespedes, and Seth Smith already taking roster spots, there was maybe not a lot of room for Gentry, even with a DH spot to utilize. Something had to give. For the time being, that something is Seth Smith. In a straight-up deal, the A’s sent Smith down the coast to San Diego in exchange for — you guessed it — a reliever.

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The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

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The news is breaking now. It seems that Josh Johnson has gotten $8 million dollars from the Padres to pitch in 2014, according to Jerry Crasnick. By itself, that is an interesting match — Johnson gets to go to the National League and reboot his value in a pitcher’s park, and the Padres get a high-variance player for a little bit more than the price of a win.

But then I heard a little nugget about the contract, seconds before my internet went out and Jeff Passan broke the news while I was mashing my keyboard frantically: The Padres get a $4 million option on Johnson in 2015 if he pitches fewer than seven starts in 2014. That little nugget contains multitudes.

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Full, immediate disclosure: it’s actually a tie. When you think unhittability, you might think batting average against, or slugging percentage against, or something. Me, I prefer contact rate, because it’s elegant and simple. Contact rate measures how often batters hit the baseball when they attempt a swing. Most simply, that’s the whole point of a swing. A pitcher who gets a lot of missed swings can rightly be said to be unhittable. Other metrics might penalize for wildness, or just take other matters into account. For pure unhittability, I like looking at the rate of contact, and among National League starters, the lowest rate of contact allowed partly belongs to Francisco Liriano, at a hair above 71%.

Liriano’s tied with somebody else, and it’s not Matt Harvey or Clayton Kershaw. I’m going to be writing about that somebody else, because Liriano’s a lot more familiar. Liriano’s long been hard to hit, and he’s had a breakthrough season for the Pirates after coming over on the cheap. Don’t get me wrong, Liriano’s been surprising, but the guy with whom he’s tied has been a bigger surprise after also joining his current team on the cheap. I’m not sure even the Padres knew what they were getting when they dealt for Tyson Ross.

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On the face of it, extending Will Venable for two years and $8.5 million — as the Padres have done today — is a no-brainer. Even before this year’s mini-breakout, Venable has spent four years being worth something close to two wins per year. Despite the decline coming for the thirty-year-old outfielder, he can most likely manage the two wins over the next two years that it would take to make this contract a winner.

But there’s a chance that this will be a great move for the Padres, and a single game in August might have something to do with remaining promise, despite his age.

In that game, Will Venable made impact plays on both sides of the plate. He robbed Marlon Byrd of a home run in center field in the eighth inning. Then he stepped to the plate with runners on in the ninth inning and hit a game-winning blast off of lefty Pedro Feliciano. Despite the small-sample nature of a highlight game, the skills he displayed on August 18th are part of what could make this deal great. And the player’s appraisal of his own game betrays the chance that he’s still getting better.

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It is tough to criticize the Texas Rangers’ decisions. If the current standings hold up, they will win the American League Westfor the third time in four years. Even if Oakland catches up, the Rangers will still probably make the playoffs for the fourth season in a row. They went to the World Series in 2010 and 2011. No team has a spotless record when it comes to personnel decisions either at the time or in hindsight. Every team enjoys some good luck and suffers some bad luck. These days, no team has a lineup full of superstars or even above-average players. Most teams have to get by with at least one or two mediocre players, usually to save money so that it can be spent elsewhere.

Thus, it is not completely strange that Rangers are making do with Mitch Moreland as their primary first baseman once again. Moreland got off to a hot start this season, but came back to earth with a current seasonal line of .244/.306/.446 (98 wRC+). He is is even starting to lose playing time in a semi-platoon with journeyman Jeff Baker. Moreland was only a bit better last season, which he finished with a 105 wRC+ after splitting first base duties with Michael Young and Mike Napoli. Moreland is pretty much a league average bat, which does not cut it as a first baseman, even if it does not kill the Rangers given their other strengths. As written above, few teams are without a weak spot on the diamond.

Nonetheless, the Rangers would obviously like to be better at first base. From that perspective, it is interesting to see the talented first baseman that came up with Texas over the last decade or so and have since moved on.

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Just so no one’s offended, I want to make one thing very clear: I am not here to be overly critical of Tyson Ross, baseball player. Tyson Ross is a pretty good baseball player, who’s succeeding at his primary job. Right now he’s sitting on an ERA in the mid-2s. Over eight starts with the Padres, he’s averaged a strikeout an inning. He can run his fastball up to 95 or 96, and he’s still young, and he’s a righty who manages to keep lefties on the ground. The Padres added Ross for Andy Parrino and Andrew Werner, and right now they’re probably thrilled. Neither Parrino nor Werner looks like a loss, and Ross might be helping San Diego for a while.

On top of that, Ross has a surprisingly dangerous swing at the plate. Before reaching the majors, Ross hadn’t swung a bat since high school, but he looks like he knows what he’s doing, even if he can be exposed by breaking stuff. He takes a strong enough hack to get announcers’ attention. Recently he lined a single off Zack Wheeler. He’s hit a couple line drives off Patrick Corbin, and he slammed a Clayton Kershaw pitch off the wall in center field. When Ross swings and connects, he can put a legitimate charge into the baseball, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him one day club a home run.

But, boy oh boy, has Tyson Ross ever sucked at bunting.

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In the beginning, there was Jose Molina. For real though, he’s really old. Molina hung around, and then baseball was invented, and then people figured out how to measure catcher pitch-framing, and then, initially, Molina really shined. Molina’s numbers blew everyone else’s out of the water, and so Molina became something of a cult favorite, and so on and so forth. You know how this story has gone. You know how Molina has become sort of popular, and you know how Molina is playing a lot for a contending team. Molina’s still really great at framing. It’s probably what he’s most great at.

Over time, I myself started to champion Jonathan Lucroy. Not because I thought Lucroy was better than Molina, but because I thought the two were roughly equivalent, and Lucroy didn’t get enough attention or respect. It seems to me Lucroy is one of baseball’s more underrated all-around players, and even still this year, Lucroy has been helping the Brewers’ pitching staff suck just a little less than it might otherwise. Lucroy’s still good, of course. Molina’s still good, of course. One doesn’t simply forget how to frame. But I was surprised when I took a peek at the 2013 pitch-framing leaderboards.

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