BRADENTON, Fla. – Jose Bautista has always played with an edge.

He has often defied expectations since his age-29 breakout with the Toronto Blue Jays.

So on Wednesday, after a World Baseball Classic tune-up game for the Dominican Republic against the Pirates — the organization with whom he began his career and a club towards which he still bears some resentment — I asked Bautista outside of the visiting clubhouse at LECOM Park if his edge has heightened this spring. His doubters have grown in number as he nears the twilight of his career, and I was curious to learn how the 36-year-old plans to continue to defy odds.

A spring earlier, Bautista was reportedly seeking a six-year, $150 million contract extension. This offseason, coming off a down year, an injury-plagued year, he settled for a one-year deal with an option in his first test of free agency. That he did not have more of a market had to bruise Bautista’s ego. The market spoke to the doubts of the industry about an aging star in an era when every team uses some sort of aging model to guide decision making.

While I visited the topic of Bautista and the defiance aging curves back in January, I wanted to speak to the man himself and and better understand why he believes he a good bet to age more gracefully.

ZiPS is forecasting a modest bounceback, a 132 wRC+ and 2.7 WAR season in 117 games. PECOTA predicts a three-win campaign and .255/.374/.498 slash line in 2017, but suspects he’ll fall off to become a 1.4-win player in 2018.

Should we expect Bautista to beat those forecasts, though? Should we toss away our aging models in deference to the 21st-century athlete, as innovative Pirates trainer Todd Tomcyzk has suggested?

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I’ll admit from the top that this is just an experiment. But anyway, I won’t waste your time. Justin Smoak is 30 years old. He’s coming off a 90 wRC+ and a WAR of -0.1. He already has seven seasons of big-league experience, and in precisely zero of those has he measured in at even one win above replacement. Relative to what he was as a prospect, he’s been extremely disappointing. Last July, weirdly, the Blue Jays signed Smoak to a multi-year contract extension. Here’s a clip from his player page:

RotoWire News: Smoak, who was previously presumed to be in line for a platoon role, is the Jays’ preferred everyday first baseman, Shi Davidi of Sportsnet reports. (2/19/2017)

Strange! But maybe…not so strange? Stick with me. As a hitter, your primary skills involve how often you make contact, how hard you make contact, and where the ball goes after contact. I’ve messed around before with pitch comps, looking for similar pitches based on velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement. In this somewhat similar experiment, I’ve looked for similar hitters to Smoak based on 2016’s exit velocities, launch angles, and contact rates. Same methodology and everything — it’s all based around z-scores. In the big table below, the most similar hitters to Smoak last season, based on this method. I’ve included everyone with a combined comp score of 2.0 or lower.

The single best comparison to Smoak: Freeman, who was and is one of the best players on the Braves. You’ll notice there are but two below-average wRC+ marks out of 17. The overall average wRC+ in this group is 118. The median is 119. Last season, Jose Bautista’s wRC+ for the Blue Jays was 122.

I’ve never looked at players quite like this before, so don’t take this to mean more than it does. It seems, at least, modestly encouraging — Smoak’s exit-velocity numbers were quite good, and he didn’t struggle at all to generate lift. Maybe there’s just something about his approach that holds him back, but then, maybe he’s better than he looked. Given that he’s a slow-footed first baseman, he’s never going to top a WAR leaderboard. Yet perhaps the Blue Jays correctly identified that there’s upside still in there. The track record is what it is, but I can’t very well look at that table and dismiss it.

My regard for Mark Buehrle is growing.

We often don’t fully appreciate people or things while we still have access to them. Buehrle quietly slipped into retirement prior to last season after a remarkable career during which he struck out batters at well below league-average rates, possessed a sub-90 mph fastball for much of his career, and yet accumulated 52 WAR and a 215-160 record over 18 seasons in the majors.

His success was curious, though he was not without his gifts. He could paint corners as well as any starter in baseball. Consider his 2015 fastball location via Baseball Savant:

That’s excellent, but it pales in comparison to Buehrle’s signature skill — namely, the pace at which he worked.

With the mounting concern regarding pace of play from the commissioner’s office, with so much being made of the subject in the media, with pace itself slowing after progress made in 2015, has anyone checked in with the this century’s quickest-working pitcher to get his thoughts on pitch clocks, pace and of a pitcher’s process?

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Here’s the thing about bunting: it can be a good idea if the third baseman is playing too far back. The chance of a hit goes up in that case, and a successful bunt often causes the third baseman to play more shallow in future plate appearances, so future balls in play receive a benefit. That’s one of those games within a game we see all the time in baseball: once the positioning deviates from “normal” by a certain degree, the batter receives a benefit. Then the defender has to change his approach.

This tension created by the bunt illustrates how offenses and defenses react to each other’s tendencies. That same sort of balance between fielder and hitter might be playing out on an even broader scale, however, when it comes to the shift in general.

Too many shifts in the game, and the players begin to adjust. They develop more of a two-strike approach, they find a way to put the ball in play on the ground the other way, or they make sure that they lift the ball if they’re going to pull it. There’s evidence that players are already working on lifting the ball more as a group, pulling the ball in the air more often than they have in five years, and have improved on hitting opposite-field ground balls. So maybe this next table is no surprise.

The league has improved against the shift! The shift is dead! Or, wait: the league has actually improved as a whole over this timeframe, and the difference between the two is still about the same. And every team would take a .292 wOBA against over a .297 number. Long live the shift.

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Over at the fantasy blog, they’ll be publishing their annual bold predictions soon. Those posts, as usual, will cater to the roto side of things. They’re fun to write. And, even though I’m no longer editing RotoGraphs anymore, I’d like to continue the tradition. So I’ve decided to do a version that’s aimed more at the real game.

Let’s stretch our imagination and make some predictions that are a little bit sane (they should be rooted in reality to some extent), but also a little bit insane (since the insane happens in baseball every year anyway). Back when I did this for fantasy, I hit 3-for-10 most years. Doubt I do it again, for some reason.

What follows are my 10 bold predictions for 2017.

1. Dylan Bundy will be the ace he was always supposed to be.
Once picked fourth overall and pegged as the future ace of the Orioles, Bundy had a terrible time in the minor leagues. Over five years, he managed only 111 innings between injuries. There was Tommy John, of course, but lat strains, shoulder-calcification issues and between-start bouts of elbow soreness have dogged him throughout, as well. At least he was good while he was in, with an ERA in the low twos and great rates to support those results.

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It’s exciting to have so many statistics available to us when we’re trying to evaluate our favorite players. From the players’ perspective, though, it’s probably more exciting when those statistics allow them to improve themselves. From that point of view, metrics like launch angle and spin rate probably have a certain appeal that some others don’t: they provide a measurement of something that might help a player understand his game and get better.

There’s one problem, though — with spin rate, at least. Indications are that it’s difficult for a pitcher to change his in any material way. Still, as Jeremy Jeffress may have found, it can provide a window into betterment.

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If you come to this site, or are something more than just a casual baseball fan, you likely know that Josh Donaldson is pretty great at this whole baseball thing. With four straight top-10 American League Most Valuable Player Award finishes, and one actual MVP Award in his trophy case, this should seem pretty straightforward. And yet, relative to how good he is, I feel he’s still a little underappreciated. So in that spirit, I wanted to dig in a little on just how good he is. The answer is that he’s been historically great.

Let’s start, as we often do, with a table.

Donaldson didn’t become a regular in the majors until his age-27 season. That was back in 2013, four seasons ago. Since then, he has been one of the best players of all-time for his age. Look at him right there, nestled between Greg Maddux and Mickey Mantle. What?

Before we get to the players who appear on this table, though, let me give you a quick sampling of the players who aren’t on it: Jeff Bagwell, Miguel Cabrera, Steve Carlton, Lefty Grove, Eddie Mathews, Mike Piazza, Cal Ripken, Alex Rodriguez, Tom Seaver, Duke Snider, Tris Speaker, and Cy Young, just to name a few. When was the last time you thought of Donaldson as superior to A-Rod? Obviously, I’m not saying that Donaldson’s career is better. In the time he’s been a regular, however, he been nearly as good as possible.

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It’s no secret that this winter has not been kind to veteran hitters, particularly those with limited defensive ability. Mike Napoli is still a free agent, as are Chris Carter and Pedro Alvarez. Brandon Moss just signed with the Royals yesterday, getting a backloaded $12 million on a two year deal. Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista, and Mark Trumbo all took significant discounts relative to their initial asking prices. As we discussed a few weeks ago, the market for offense-first players was remarkably poor this year, to the point where it could be seen as an overcorrection; perfectly useful players are signing for less than what similarly valuable players with different skills are getting paid.

What is perhaps most interesting about this development, however, is that the teams who could are most in need of a first base upgrade are also teams that should be trying to squeak out every marginal win they can find.

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It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.

Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.

To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.

In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”

Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.

For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.

So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.

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So Jose Bautista will not receive the six years or $150 million he was reportedly seeking a year ago. According to Ken Rosenthal, Bautista has reportedly reached an agreement on a one-year deal with a mutual option to return to Toronto. Nick Stellini has already addressed some of the implications of the deal for the Blue Jays.

Since the conclusion of the PED era, baseball appears to have returned closer to its roots. Baseball appears to be a young man’s game again. Teams are hesitant to pay for seasons in players’ 30s. Teams prize prospects and pre-arbitration seasons more than ever. Teams are well aware of age curves, and aging models suggest Bautista is probably not the next David Ortiz, as Craig Edwards wrote back in November.

Those factors — plus a down season impacted by injury, plus a market that might have overcorrected against bat-only players — all conspired to limit Bautista’s market. The FanGraphs crowd projected Bautista would sign a three-year, $65 million deal.

But was the industry too skeptical of Bautista’s future this winter? Are the Blue Jays on cusp of a landing Bautista on another bargain of a contract?

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