Evan Gattis was probably never fast. That is, he wasn’t fast in comparison to many baseball players he was around while coming up through the minors. He certainly isn’t fast now, and at this point, we can confidently say that he probably never will be. And that’s fine, because speed isn’t really his game: coming into the 2015 season, he had zero stolen bases and one triple in his career. We’re all familiar with how Gattis contributes in other ways, like hitting baseballs 450 feet. Yet despite his lackluster speed, by the end of the 2015 season, he updated his career statistics to read zero stolen bases – and 12 triples.

In the span of one season, Gattis increased his triples total by a factor of 12. Because of that fact, this was a big story for most of the season; a simple internet search yields many articles ranking and commenting on his ever-increasing number of triples during 2015. Today, instead of viewing and ranking each one, we’re going to go deep on how strange and rare it is for someone as slow as Gattis to do this.

To begin with, we’re going to use a statistic called Speed Score. Very simply put, it’s a way of measuring a player’s speed and baserunning ability. Speed Score is on a scale from zero (walks around the bases) to ten (fastest/best baserunning human who has ever lived), so it’s fairly easy to grasp, and it tends to make some intuitive sense. There are a few main factors that go into a player’s score: stolen base rate, number of stolen base attempts, triple rate, and double play rate being a few of the main ones. To give you some examples, the best qualified hitter by Speed Score since 1920 is Jarrod Dyson. If you’ve watched the playoffs during the past two seasons, you know how fast Dyson is. The worst players by Speed Score are usually catchers, with Chris Snyder (who mainly played for the Diamondbacks in the early-to-mid 2000’s) at the very bottom.

So let’s see where Gattis fits into this Speed Score spectrum. First let’s look at the first two seasons of his career combined – 2013 and 2014. Here are the worst position players by Speed Score in those two years (minimum 750 plate appearances), with the number of triples each player hit:

We have three designated hitters here, a catcher, and a first baseman. Then we have Evan Gattis. We said before that he wasn’t fast, but let’s put it another way: Gattis was one of the very slowest — and worst — baserunners by Speed Score during 2013 and 2014. He was around the first or second percentile in the majors. These ten players above hit a combined three triples during these two seasons — basically, these types of players very rarely hit triples (and that helps bring their score down as well). Gattis actually improved remarkably by Speed Score in 2015, getting all the way up to 3.9 (46th percentile!) — but we can be quite confident that most of that increase was due to the number of triples he hit, and not other factors, like his aptitude at stealing bases (which did not improve).

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On February 27th, 1997, the cover of the then newly-released March issue of Sports Illustrated featured two baby-faced baseball players — with the headline “Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez head up the finest group of shortstops since World War II.” The next season, Nomar Garciaparra had his breakout, and he joined the two in what was an embarrassment of riches at the position. Three years later, the trio was elected to the 2000 All-Star Game — a recognition of what was one of the finest multi-year periods by a group of three shortstops in the history of the game.

A historical convergence of that type of talent happens rarely in baseball, and it happens far more rarely at one position – and in just one league. During any particular season, there are usually only a certain number of players that are above a particular production level. Take, for example, the number of players that produced at least 6.0 Wins Above Replacement in 2015. We’ll focus on 6.0 WAR because above that level we consider production to be in the realm of a possible “MVP” performance.

In 2015, there were only ten players in all of baseball who had greater than 6.0 WAR. In 2014, there were only nine, and in 2013 there were also ten. Some years have more players and some years have fewer, but the point is that there are usually few players who are in this upper echelon of production. It’s also important to understand that shortstop is usually a less talented position than others on the field: the skill set to be successful both offensively and defensively at shortstop simply narrows the range of potential players down. Case in point: there hasn’t been a full-time shortstop with at least 6.0 WAR since Hanley Ramirez and Derek Jeter both topped that mark in 2009.

In 1998, Jeter, A-Rod, and Garciaparra all had over 6.0 WAR. They were all shortstops. They were all in the American League. The confluence of circumstances that came together for that to happen should be celebrated by its own holiday. In fairness, 1998 was a ridiculous year for great position players – there were 24 players with at least 6.0 WAR – the result of both great timing and, well, steroids. Still, there has rarely been a time when talent among American League shortstops – and shortstops in general – was more top-heavy than in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s.

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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 Houston Astros. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Kansas City / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
Whether by accident or design, the current iteration of the Astros does appear nevertheless to reveal a clue as to the method by which the club’s roster has been constructed. Per ZiPS, there are two sorts of player among Houston’s starting nine: those whose projected WAR figures can be rounded comfortably to three wins or higher, and those whose forecasts are rounded merely to a single win. Only two players (Evan Gattis and Jon Singleton) occupy the latter group and — again, whether by coincidence or not — they also happen to occupy those positions which require the least defensive skill (or, in the case of designated hitter, no defensive skill at all). One could reasonably make a case that the club has prioritized acquiring and/or developing players with some manner of defensive value. The case may not be correct, but at least it’s capable of being presented with tolerable credulity.

One player who possesses considerable offensive and defensive talent — and who was also a rookie in 2015 — is shortstop Carlos Correa. On the verge of entering just his age-21 season, Correa is the recipient of the top projection among the club’s entire roster, forecast to produce roughly five wins in 2016 on the strength not merely of average shortstop defense but also the team’s best batting line. Owing to how none of us is immune from the icy grip of the Reaper, Correa won’t be great forever. That said, he appears entirely capable of approximating those early versions of Troy Tulowitzki who avoided injury.

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The first time Dallas Keuchel broke out, it was because he found a new pitch. Moving from the curve to the slider really pulled his arsenal together. The second time he broke out, it was for reasons that were both more complicated but also just as conventional — it looks like Keuchel merely threw fewer pitches inside the zone, while getting batters to reach and swing just as much. More swings on pitches outside of the zone means more misses and more strikeouts.

All of that is nice, but it’s hard to know which breakout is easier to believe. Our intuition probably tells us that the first is less delicate — he needed a breaking ball, and he found a good one, and it should remain good. But batters could adjust more easily to the second one, couldn’t they? Just lay off more of those balls?

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Last week, I wrote a piece about Derek Fisher, who was supposedly part of the package going back to Philly in exchange for super-reliever Ken Giles. Now that the dust has finally settled on that trade, we’ve learned that Fisher wasn’t actually involved. So I basically wrote about Derek Fisher for no reason in particular. Instead, the Astros included former first-overall pick Mark Appel. A couple of guys named Arauz — Harold and Jonathan, going to Philly and Houston, respectively — were also included.

It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Appel since he went first overall back in June of 2013. Between 2013 and 2014, he pitched to a 5.93 ERA and 3.86 FIP over 121 innings, with most of his work coming in A-Ball. His ERA and FIP converged last season, when he put up a 4.45 ERA and 4.30 FIP between Double-A and Triple-A. All told, Appel’s struck out 20% of opposing batters, and has walked 8% over the past two and a half years — roughly the same as an average minor leaguer.

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It wouldn’t be fair to say the ALDS game against the Royals was representative of the Astros’ bullpen, because that would be mean and wrong, but there was a definite lingering sense of unreliability. The Astros bullpen finished among the very best in WAR, but it was in the bottom half by WPA, and feelings mirror WPA better than anything else. Nor is this exactly a new problem — the last five years combined, the Astros bullpen is last in baseball by WPA at -22. The Mets are second-worst at -9. The bullpen hasn’t been a real strength for some time, and now the Astros’ bullpen actually matters. They’re no longer positioned to just see what sticks.

What’s the quickest way to upgrade a bullpen? Add one of the league’s true elite relievers. If he’s young and cost-controlled, all the better. Jeff Luhnow has talked a few times about wanting to diversify his group of relievers, bringing in someone overpowering. Enter Ken Giles. The Astros were circling around Giles for seemingly weeks, and now he’s about to be theirs, coming from the Phillies in exchange for Vincent Velasquez, Derek Fisher, Brett Oberholtzer, and Thomas Eshelman. In large part, it comes down to Giles and Velasquez. Giles is the proven power arm, with years of control. Velasquez is the unproven power arm, with real potential to start.

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In Major League Baseball, the market tends to correct itself as clubs gain greater knowledge of players and their value. If aging players are less successful, the market for that group might slow a bit. Bullpen arms become more or less desirable depending on their scarcity. Increased revenues tend to move everyone up the pay scale. It is important to understand how and when to make adjustments in value as run-scoring environments, finances, and aging patterns change.

That is all well and good for those who run organizations and those who follow the game closely, but the arbitration process is much less nuanced. The non-tendering of contracts to Pedro Alvarez and Chris Carter, along with the trade of Mark Trumbo, are all the result of a failure to adjust — within the arbitration process, specifically — as the market slowly corrects for the overpayment of defensively- (and sometimes offensively-) limited home run hitters whose overall effectiveness has dimmed.

The arbitration process tends to favor the traditional stats that place like FanGraphs have tried to de-emphasize. Closers get big paydays in arbitratio, regardless of overall performance. As a result, the St. Louis Cardinals opted to let Steve Cishek go instead of moving to arbitration where he would receive a salary of around $7 million. Home runs and RBI tend to get paid as well, causing an overpayment for those players who rack up those numbers, but have big deficiencies in other areas.

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Last year was the worst year for shopping in the non-tender market since 2007. No player that was non-tendered after the 2014 season was worth even a win in 2015, which hasn’t happened since MLBTradeRumors started tracking non-tenders with their handy tool.

Before we consider it a trend, remember that the year before was the best year for non-tender shopping over the same time frame. Infielder Justin Turner netted the Dodgers three wins, oufielder Sam Fuld nearly did the same for the Rays, now-Cub Chris Coghlan was worth two wins, and catcher Michael McKenry was also nearly average.

In any case, looking over the past non-tender values, a few truths emerge. The best non-tender pickups were above replacement level the year before, for one. And, like Kelly Johnson, Willie Harris, Aaron Miles, and Jeff Keppinger before, they usually had some positional flexibility. Or at least positional value, in the case of the center fielders and catchers.

In that way, maybe last year did buck the trend to some extent. Kyle Blanks (0.8 WAR) and Justin Smoak (0.6 WAR) led the way, and they don’t offer much in positional flexibility or value. Still, last year’s above-replacement non-tenders also included Slade Heathcott (0.5) and Gordon Beckham (0.3).

So who will lead this year’s non-tender market?

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Major League Baseball interrupts this Thanksgiving holiday week to announce that Jed Lowrie has been traded from the Astros to the A’s in exchange for minor-league reliever Brendan McCurry. Perhaps it’s a move you find a little strange — Lowrie is in his 30s, and he’s due real money for at least another couple years. He’s going from one team with a very low payroll to another, and last year, the team adding Lowrie won 18 fewer games than the team shedding Lowrie. Typically you see trades like this in the other direction, but for the Astros, Lowrie was no longer a necessary piece. And the A’s are forever on the bubble, trying to avoid any kind of major tear-down. The A’s want to try to contend again. Having Liam Hendriks and a hopefully healthy Sean Doolittle addresses what last year was a catastrophic problem.

That’s the whole idea, in short. The Astros didn’t need Lowrie, and they’ll take the financial flexibility and the interesting young reliever. McCurry could have a real future, and he could have it soon. The A’s, meanwhile, are happy to have Lowrie back at a modest cost, and they like his flexibility. From one perspective, he gives them depth; from another perspective, he gives them trade options. A healthier A’s team could be a .500 ballclub, and a .500 ballclub is always close to the hunt. Okay, everything checks out.

The thing I find most interesting isn’t the Astros’ position, nor is it the A’s position. It isn’t McCurry, either. It’s Lowrie himself. Just how good is Jed Lowrie, really? There’s room for very reasonable disagreement.

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Dallas Keuchel won a Cy Young last night, becoming the second pitcher in as many seasons to complete the two-year transition of “some guy with a 5.15 ERA” to “American League Cy Young Award winner.” Keuchel’s career turnaround, as was Corey Kluber’s, is absolutely remarkable, though the similarities between the two elite hurlers mostly end there.

Kluber, of course, is a righty, while Keuchel throws left-handed. You think of the way Kluber pitches, and you think of all the strikeouts. You think of the way Keuchel pitches, and you think of all the ground balls. Granted, Kluber gets his grounders, and Keuchel started getting his whiffs this year, too, but their primary methods of success lie on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Despite what FIP may lead you to believe, contact management is a real skill that certain pitchers have. Sure, the ability to miss bats entirely is a more reliable skill, and if you had to take one over the other you’d take the whiffs over the weak contact. But some pitchers miss bats, and some pitchers miss barrels. The best pitchers in the world do both, and that’s how Dallas Keuchel got to where he is today.

The whiffs are easy to see. The pitcher throws the amazing curveball and the batter tries to hit it but doesn’t. That’s a whiff. Do that a bunch of times and you have a bunch of whiffs. Soft contact isn’t quite as obvious. I mean, we can see it when it happens, but how? Why did the ball come off the bat like that? I know this is something people struggle with, grasping what it is exactly that a pitcher does to consistently generate weak contact. I’ve seen it asked in chats, live blogs, on Twitter and in comment sections. Understandably so. There’s only one kind of whiff. There’s like a million different ways the ball can come off the bat.

That being said, there’s plenty of ways we can examine the nature of Keuchel’s contact-management game. For now, we’ll stick to one.

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