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

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cincinnati / Cleveland / Colorado / Detroit / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis / Tampa Bay / Toronto.

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Unlike the blouse of an Olympic-level figure skater, the Houston Astros’ roster is not studded with bright and/or shining stars. That said, relative to the amount, in dollars, which that same roster is likely to be compensated in 2014 — the field-playing part, at least — they’ll actually provide some value, as none are projected to be worse than replacement-level, either.

As was the mostly the case for the 2013 edition of the Astros, this next season will be dedicated, it appears, to evaluating which of the players on the current roster are worthy of retaining as the club looks ahead to contending in the future. Here’s a summary of ZiPS’ opinion on the matter: Jose Altuve and Dexter Fowler — and probably also Matt Dominguez and Max Stassi — are about average. Jason Castro and George Springer are probably better than that, despite the fact that the latter has recorded zero major-league plate appearances. Everyone else? Not so much.

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Earlier this week, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Houston Astros.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Astros or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Chicago AL / Miami / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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Joaquin Benoit got a two-year, $15.5 mmillion deal to pitch for the Padres this week. The signing didn’t make many waves — after all, Benoit has been a very good reliever the last three years. But three years ago, Benoit’s three-year deal seemed like a head-scratcher. Are there any multi-year reliever signings going on right now that we might look back on as favorably as Benoit’s with the Tigers? Are there any past relievers, future closers still on the market? Who’s the next Joaquin Benoit?

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The 2013 Winter Meetings came and went without a team reaching an agreement with Shin-Soo Choo, the best free agent outfielder available, at least after the signing of Jacoby Ellsbury. During the meetings, reports were coming in from various sources who report on such things that the Rangers, the Reds, and perhaps the Mariners were all kicking Choo’s tires. All of this makes sense. Those were three reasonable destinations for Choo at the time. But the rumors were just that, and nothing was doing on that front as the Winter Meetings came to a close. Then, as the meetings were winding down and people were boarding planes home, USA Today’s Bob Nigtengale tweeted this:

One veteran GM believes that the #Astros will wind up to be the landing spot for Shin-Soo Choo.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 12, 2013

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Between free agent signings, trades, and the non-tender deadline, this past week was ridiculously busy for major league clubs. Surprisingly, the Houston Astros joined the fun by trading for Dexter Fowler and signing Scott Feldman. Jeff Sullivan already discussed the Fowler trade, so we’ll focus on the Feldman signing and what the pair of moves mean for the Astros.

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I imagine that, for a front office exec, there’s nothing quite like the buzz you get from picking up another team’s non-tender and getting value from that player. Maybe it’s just ‘one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,’ but in a business where one sector of the market has to continually work to find value in surprising places, it’s an important moment.

But is there much success to be found in the bargain bin? These are players that their own team has given up on — and we have some evidence that teams know more about their own players than the rest of the league, and that players that are re-signed are more successful. What can we learn from the successes and failures that we’ve seen in the past?

To answer that question, I loaded all the non-tendered players since 2007 into a database and looked at their pre- and post-non-tender numbers.

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When you’re a bad team, you might want to sign good free agents to try to get better. A tricky part is getting those good free agents to want to play for your bad team. Teams don’t get much worse than the current Houston Astros, and according to recent reports, they’ve tried with no success to lure quality players from the market. Thankfully for bad teams, free agency isn’t the only way to improve by addition. Players have to play for you if you trade for them, and later on Tuesday, the Astros picked up Dexter Fowler from the Rockies, at the cost of Jordan Lyles and Brandon Barnes. The Rockies will also send a player to be named later, but I doubt that that will be the interesting part.

Immediately, it seems a bit backwards. Some things we know: at present, the Astros are dreadful, far more dreadful than the Rockies are. Fowler is already getting expensive, and he has two remaining years of team control. Lyles is 23, and he has four. Barnes is 27, and he has five. You’d think it would be the Astros trying to acquire longer-term security, but I think this actually makes more sense for Houston than it does for Colorado. Even if the Astros still aren’t close to contending, it’s never a bad idea to add what you think might be undervalued.

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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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You don’t need me to tell you that the Houston Astros are a terrible baseball team (162-324 over the last three seasons), and you probably already know why. GM Jeff Luhnow and his growing collection of former internet baseball writers have committed to a full-scale, ground-up rebuilding of the talent-sparse organization he found himself with when he was hired in December 2011. That meant trading everything he possibly could for young talent, and it meant going with a young, inexperienced, and inexpensive — down to around $13 million total late in the year — roster as they sacrifice a watchable major league product in service of an increasingly bright future.

That strategy, one that I imagine a majority of FanGraphs readers understand and embrace, has been a source of some controversy in the larger sports world, with semi-regular stories popping up here and there accusing the team of not respecting their fans while they skimp on players and pocket the savings.

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Sure, Game 163 is looming, and it counts as part of the regular season, but aside from some tweaks, the numbers are pretty much in for the 2013 season. We are close enough for at least some simple retrospectives on certain numerical accomplishments from the almost finished season. Some of the metrics involved are more meaningful or useful than others, but this post will not focus on analysis. As long as one does not confuse the listing of some metric below with an endorsement — or a criticism, for that matter — of its value, it is fine to simply take pleasure these accomplishments..

Some of these achievements have more historical resonance than others (and to a certain extent that is in the eye of the beholder). This is not presented as an exhaustive list, either. To begin, though, we do have two all-time marks set by relief pitchers this season.

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