I’ve long been greatly interested in Jonathan Lucroy, so now I find myself greatly interested in his situation with the Brewers. The Brewers, as you know, are bad, and they’re prepared for being bad, and though Lucroy is decidedly not bad, he’s got just two more seasons of control, and he’s coming up on 30 years old. It makes sense for Lucroy to be on the market, therefore, and this is something I wrote about a month ago for Fox. It’s a complicated spot for Milwaukee, given Lucroy’s up-and-down year and concussion, but Lucroy should be able to bring back a haul.

The team I’ve heard connected most often is the Rangers, who are a clear contender, but who could use some more affordable help. Robinson Chirinos is a fine-enough catcher, but Lucroy is better, and he could also spell Mitch Moreland at first when there’s a lefty on the mound. The Rangers would love to have Lucroy on what’s left of his cheap contract. The problem to this point: from what I’ve heard, the Brewers have been asking for entirely too much. The ask has been a non-starter, so Lucroy remains where he’s been.

Yet, let’s make an assumption: MLB executives are reasonable people. So they can arrive at reasonable deals, and the Brewers surely understand there’s some risk in keeping Lucroy around into the year. What this post is about, then, is trying to find a fit between the Rangers and the Brewers. It’s not like the Rangers are the only interested team, but they might be the most interested. Let’s run through some possibilities, together. How might the Rangers and Brewers be able to pull something off?

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Phase II of the 2015-16 free agent and trade markets has begun, with Alex Gordon re-upping with the Royals, and the rumor mill is again beginning to churn after a brief holiday-related respite. The elite and upper-middle-class arms have already secured their positions for 2016 and beyond, but some of the other middle class arms remain on the market.

The three free agent pitchers who are subject to draft pick compensation but are still likely to sign long-term deals are lefty Wei-Yin Chen and righties Yovani Gallardo and Ian Kennedy. At this stage in the game, it is likely that all three will need to settle for terms below consensus projections. Earlier this week, we took a look at Chen’s situation; today, we’ll dig a little bit deeper into Yovani Gallardo’s true value.

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Colby Lewis sits among the 20-worst pitchers by strikeout rate among qualified pitchers over the last two years. He has the second-worst ground-ball rate among that group. He has the fifth-worst fastball velocity. He basically only has two pitches, and only one of them rates as above-average on whiffs or grounders currently. He’s fifth on the Rangers’ starting-pitcher depth chart currently, and the team would probably admit that they are hoping that Chi-Chi Gonzalez and/or Nick Martinez take that job from him.

The point is, you wouldn’t think he was best in the league at anything.

The good news for our own personal senses of rankings and skills and value and Colby Lewis? That thing that he’s good at is something that people don’t think is really a skill.

Still. He’s been good at this thing, even as his ERAs over the last two years have been poor. And this thing? If you can repeat it, it’s good.

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In a rather surprising move, the Texas Rangers signed 29-year-old relief pitcher Matt Bush to a minor league contract last week. Yes, the same Matt Bush who the Padres took first overall in the 2004 amateur draft. Bush had previously spent 34 months in prison for DUI charges stemming from a hit-and-run incident that took place in March of 2012.

The recent history of first overall picks is largely a history of successes. Justin Upton (2005), David Price (2007), Stephen Strasburg (2009), Bryce Harper (2010) and Gerrit Cole (2011) all blossomed into some of the best players in the game, and Carlos Correa (2012) appears to be on a similar trajectory. Even the busts — like Delmon Young (2003), Luke Hochevar (2006) and Tim Beckham (2008) — often turn into big league players who have their moments in the sun.

Bush, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of a success story. He was originally drafted as a shortstop, but hit a paltry .219/.294/.276 in parts of four seasons in the low minors before the Padres pulled the plug on him. From there, he caught on with the Blue Jays, and then the Rays, who tried him out as a relief pitcher. He pitched pretty well in 65 minor-league innings over two years, but not well enough to get any big league consideration.

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At the winter meetings, I asked a small collection of managers about the evolution of the role, and all of them — save perhaps Mike Scioscia — spoke to the importance of communicating with the media and with their players.

But that story had a longer scope, and a more universal one. I also asked them about a smaller more immediate thing — I asked many of them what they had learned this year, on the job. And for those just coming to the job, what they have tried to learn before they first manage a game.

Of particular note was what former position players did to learn about pitching, and vice versa. Managers have to communicate with all sorts of different players, and yet they came from one tradition within the game. And each has spent time developing themselves in their present role.

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You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

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After having typically appeared in the very hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past couple years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Texas Rangers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Cincinnati / Kansas City / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / Toronto.

Batters
The Texas Rangers outperformed their Base Runs record by seven wins this past season, resembling on the peripheral level more a league-average club than a division-winning one. That’s not to discredit their accomplishment, at all. It does, however, begin to explain how a team that won 88 games and returns literally all its positional starters — how such a team could look so ordinary by way of computer algorithms.

It certainly isn’t an advantage for Texas that they have a considerable portion of their payroll allocated to four merely decent players. Elvis Andrus, Shin-Soo Choo, Prince Fielder, and Josh Hamilton are expected to earn roughly $88 million collectively this year and yet to produce fewer than six wins as a group. That’s approximately $15 million per win — or nearly double the current estimated win valuation of the market.*

None of this, of course, is to impugn Adrian Beltre, who famously once played both Daedalus and Icarus in a community theater production of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

*Note: I’ve neglected to mention here that a portion of Fielder’s and nearly all of Hamilton’s contracts are being subsidized by other clubs. Naturally, that changes the dollars-per-win calculus. What it doesn’t change is the projections themselves.

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Though baseball’s Winter Meetings seem like the playground of the front office executive, there is one other baseball man who’s ubiquitous: the manager. Semi-required to attend media events and an annual luncheon, most of the sport’s managers descend on the meetings to make their mark.

For the most part, they field questions about next year’s lineup, and try to deflect queries about front-office moves. They’ll do a little reminiscing about last year, and a little looking forward to next year. It’s a bit of a dance, since most of the reporters are looking to find out how the roster is going to look on paper, and the person in front of them is mostly in charge of putting that roster on the field.

Still, it’s a great moment to get access to many managers at once. This past August, I asked a collection of players and writers how Bruce Bochy and Joe Maddon — managers with distinctly different approaches and pasts — could both find great success. I thought it would make sense to ask the managers gathered here about their craft, as well.

What has changed about managing? How are the demands on the modern manager different than they once were?

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Zack Greinke is one of the best pitchers in major league baseball, and as a result, he had no shortage of suitors before ultimately signing a contract in excess of $200 million. In addition to money, the Diamondbacks also surrendered their first-round pick next year, the 13th overall selection. While it would not be quite true to say that Greinke cost “only money,” the Diamondbacks did not give up a single active player in order to acquire Greinke.

Cole Hamels, both the same age as Greinke and roughly as effective over the course of his career, was traded over the summer. Hamels’ cost was not “only money,” as the Texas Rangers gave up six players, including three high-end prospects (and Matt Harrison’s contract), for Jake Diekman and the opportunity to pay Cole Hamels around $100 million over the next four years. While the costs come in different forms, we can compare the two to see how the trade market this past summer compared to this offseason’s free agent market for Greinke.

The Los Angeles Dodgers prioritized Cole Hamels at the trade deadline, but subsequently missed out by refusing to part with their best prospects. The team then prioritized bringing Greinke back, only to be outbid by division rival Arizona. The cost for both players was high, and it is difficult to say whether the Dodgers made a mistake passing on both players, but we should be able to compare the costs for both to see if the Dodgers could have kept a comparable pitcher for less than the amount Greinke received in free agency.

As far as comparisons go, Greinke did have a better year in 2015, but their cumulative WAR graphs (shown below) reveal two remarkably similar careers in terms of value.

In addition, both players are projected to do well next season. By Steamer, Greinke is set for a 4.2 WAR while Hamels comes in a bit behind at 3.6 WAR for the 2016 season. Using those projections as the baseline for future production, we can get an estimate for their value over the next few years. With deferrals, Greinke’s deal turns out to be $194.5 million over six seasons, per Ken Rosenthal. Given the consistency of both Greinke and Hamels, for the purposes of this analysis, we will assume the players will age well.

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On July 7th, 2006, a 23-year-old righty made his major league debut against the Tigers. He entered the game in relief and immediately began putting up 99s on the radar gun. It wasn’t enough, however, to prevent Chris Shelton from singling to shortstop and beating out the throw. Brandon Inge also wasn’t afraid of the velocity, as he hit a ground-rule double to center. The young righty was now flustered. He hit Curtis Granderson to load the bases. He paced around the mound, gathered himself, and then rallied to strike out Placido Polanco, get a weak grounder from Ivan Rodriguez, and strike out Magglio Ordonez to end the threat.

On that day, Mark Lowe began a journey that started with the Mariners and continued on to the Rangers (in the Cliff Lee deal), and then the Dodgers, Angels, Nationals, Rays, Indians, Mariners (again), and Blue Jays. And now, almost ten years later, the Tigers have signed him with a two-year deal to be their setup man. It’s been quite a trip for him.

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