This past year, as a regular for the Pirates, Russell Martin was worth 5.3 WAR, according to our data. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had five-win seasons:

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The year before, also with the Pirates, Martin was worth 4.1 WAR. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had four-win seasons:

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Looking ahead, over almost 500 trips to the plate, Steamer projects Martin to be worth 3.8 WAR. Here’s the list of Blue Jays catchers who’ve had 3.8-win seasons:

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It’s a bit of a dreary history. Ernie Whitt was worth 3.6 wins in 1983. Pat Borders was worth 3.5 in 1990. Whitt was worth 3.4 in 1987. And then that’s it for even three-win seasons. The Blue Jays have never employed a star-level catcher. Now they have one in Russell Martin, who they plucked away from the National League for $82 million over five years. It’s not a sure-fire bargain — no long-term contract to an aging catcher can ever look like a bargain — but with the splash, the Blue Jays have moved up in the AL East, committing to a run toward a tournament the franchise hasn’t seen since 1993.

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If you like big trades with flashy names, this isn’t the post for you, because this one is dedicated to the Tigers swapping second base prospect Devon Travis to the Blue Jays for center field kinda prospect Anthony Gose. Neither Travis nor Gose looks likely to turn into any kind of star, but this trade is still interesting — to me at least — because both look like potentially useful pieces that help fill a need for their new teams.

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A quick look over a list of free agent pitchers produces many different types of arms. Top-end near-aces, mid-rotation stalwarts, backend veterans, and high-ceiling lottery tickets. Brandon Morrow is an intriguing lottery ticket for any team willing to take the plunge. Long on promise but short on results, Morrow is the kind of electric arm that front offices simply cannot resist.

At some point, however, potential and stuff lose some of their magnetism. When a guy’s only thrown 90 odd innings over two years, you start to wonder if maybe he isn’t worth the risk?

The thing about Brandon Morrow, of course, is this has always been the knock on the hard-throwing right hander. Remember, this was a pre-arb pitcher traded to Toronto for reliever Brandon League and a minor league outfielder still yet to surpass double-A.

Like so many other power arms, Morrow flashed brilliance and looked the part of a top-of-the-rotation ace at times. Other times, he lacked command, floundered through laborious starts and struggled to stay healthy.

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The baseball offseason arrived all of a sudden. As the Giants were parading around the streets of San Francisco, I was on my computer writing about the Cubs ditching Rick Renteria to hire Joe Maddon. And then Saturday brought the offseason’s first meaningful trade — Adam Lind to the Brewers, and Marco Estrada to the Blue Jays. I’m going to be completely honest with you. I was excited at first, thinking more of the players in the deal than I wound up doing following further examination. I think I was just excited to have the offseason really get underway, to fill the baseball void. But still, this is a trade, with players you’ve presumably heard of, and it was swung to serve a purpose, so it’s worthy of our consideration. What the heck else do we have to consider?

We’ll get to the Blue Jays’ side of things. We’ll get into more detail. But we can start by acknowledging the obvious, that being the Brewers’ motivation to get a deal done. Lind is slated to be the Brewers’ regular first baseman. Here are the least productive positions in baseball, by our numbers, over the past two seasons combined:

• Red Sox, third base, -2.2 WAR
• Astros, first base, -2.2 WAR
• Yankees, shortstop, -2.7 WAR
• Yankees, designated hitter, -4.3 WAR
• Brewers, first base, -4.6 WAR

I don’t know, either, but it happened. Over two years, Brewers first basemen combined to be worth almost an impossible five wins below replacement. The situation was better in 2014 than it was in 2013, but it’s also better to have your arm cut off than it is to have your arm cut off, successfully reattached, and then cut off again. For the Brewers, first base was a disaster, a disaster without any reasonable internal solution, so the front office acted quickly to address one of baseball’s very greatest needs.

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Melky Cabrera’s season ended on Friday with a broken finger. Normally, “team headed for 22nd straight year out of the playoffs loses second-best outfielder for the final three weeks” isn’t much of a story, but this situation is a little different. Cabrera is about to be a free agent in what looks to be a terrible market for offense, is only entering his age-30 season in 2015, and has had three pretty good seasons in the last four years. He’s been essentially the same hitter as Anthony Rendon has this year. That’s a pretty good resume to take into free agency, and understandably, talk is already focusing on where he’ll be playing next season.

Also understandably, that discussion has mostly centered around the considerable baggage that Cabrera brings with him, notably his 2012 PED suspension and the associated “let’s build a fake website” weirdness that came with it. Buster Olney devoted a column to it earlier this week, interviewing at least one player who complained that the system is set up in such a way that a rule-breaker can still find himself collecting a huge free agent payday. That player suggested that two-time offenders be restricted to one-year contracts in the future, which seems to me to be a thing that will never, ever happen.

Whether the feelings of that unnamed player are correct or not — you can probably guess my feelings on the subject — is kind of beside the point, because the fact is that Cabrera will go into free agency without any official restrictions, just unofficial reservations. While there’s some real reasons to question about him going forward, he’s also about to enter a market that is almost totally devoid of outfield offensive talent. Cabrera’s going to get paid, and it’s going to make a lot of people unhappy.

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Check out some recent versions of this series with Dilson Herrera, Jorge Soler and Rusney Castillo (though he’s still in the minors). I made the cutoff for a write-up a 50 Future Value, meaning a projected peak role of 8th/9th inning reliever, #4 starter or low-end everyday player. Take a look at recent prospect lists for the Rangers or Rockies to get a better idea of the distinction between 45 and 50 FV. The last of the 50 FV prospects is generally around the 150th best prospect in the game.

Joc Pederson, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Hit: 45/55, Game Power: 45/55, Raw Power: 60/60, Run: 55/50, Field: 50/50+, Throw: 50/50+

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The Toronto Blue Jays season is a two-part story. What began as a pleasant surprise quickly descended into a lucid, waking nightmare. Two Blue Jays’ outfielders heading into free agency embody each of those characteristics. While Melky Cabrera is putting together a brilliant platform season before heading to free-agency, Colby Rasmus seems to have spent all the good will he earned with his strong 2013 campaign.

Rasmus, as you probably know, was terrific last year. He hit 23 home runs and posted nearly 5 WAR in just 120 games. He looked every bit the future star the Blue Jays thought they had when they acquired him at the 2011 trade deadline. Unfortunately for Rasmus, his 2014 looks much more like his forgettable seasons in the woods following his 2010 breakout as a 23-year-old in St. Louis.

The soft-spoken Jays center fielder has long been a magnet for criticism and scrutiny, due in no small part to his frank father/coach/mentor and to the personality clashes with his former manager and Hall-of-Famer, Tony La Russa. On the field, Rasmus is a devoted tinkerer at the plate and the author of wildly divergent periods of production.

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We’re talking about pace-of-game again, in light of the recent vote to identify the next commissioner. Baseball games are taking longer and longer, with replay and constant shifting only adding to the length, and while certain fans believe it’s no issue because that’s just the beauty of baseball, this is one of those areas where you need to look at the big picture, and most people would prefer that games take less time. Baseball games now have a greater duration with the same amount of action, and that’s not the stuff of anyone’s dreams.

Cutting down on game length isn’t as easy as identifying that baseball should want to cut down on game length. The commercial breaks are always going to be there, because they need to be. Teams aren’t going to be real receptive to ideas that limit bullpen usage and flexibility. Every so often someone brings up the idea of a pitch clock, and maybe that’s the sort of step that needs to be taken. The best target for time reduction are all the seconds that pass between pitches. At least, that’s how people frequently feel. They don’t feel like that so much when Mark Buehrle’s on the mound.

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When our other prospect writers submit scouting reports, I will provide a short background and industry consensus tool grades.  There are two reasons for this: 1) giving context to account for the writer seeing a bad outing (never threw his change-up, coming back from injury, etc.) and 2) not making him go on about the player’s background or speculate about what may have happened in other outings.

The writer still grades the tools based on what they saw, I’m just letting the reader know what he would’ve seen in many other games from this season, particularly with young players that may be fatigued late in the season. Often, those will be the same grades. The grades are presented as present/future on the 20-80 scouting scale and very shortly I’ll publish a series going into more depth explaining these grades. – Kiley

Nick Ciuffo, C, Princeton Rays (Rays Rookie-Advanced)

Ciuffo was the Rays’ 21st overall pick out of a South Carolina high school in 2013 ($1.97 million bonus) and was a near wire-to-wire first round pick from the summer showcase season to draft day, after a standout prep career where he drew a scholarship offer from the local Gamecocks before he played in high school.  While his swing and frame aren’t necessarily as pretty as other prep hitter first round picks, Ciuffo made plenty of contact with above average raw power and showed the tools to stick behind the plate with an above average to plus arm.  Scouts often compared him to A.J. Pierzynski as a solid-across-the-board backstop with everyday upside.

Hit: 20/45, Raw Power: 55/55, Game Power: 20/45, Speed: 40/35, Field: 45/50+, Throw: 60/60   – Kiley

Ciuffo is a potential plus defensive catcher who might offer enough bat to make a real impact.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

In this piece, I look at three 18-and-under up-the-middle prospects.

Summary
This athletic, projectable glider has made moderate inroads at the plate and has plenty of time and projection to allow for additional progress.

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