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 St. Louis Cardinals. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

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

Batters
No club outperformed its Base Runs record by a greater amount in 2015 than St. Louis. The numbers suggest that, at a fundamental level, the Cardinals played like an 89-win team. In reality, they won 100 games. This is neither good or bad in itself. It’s just, if the club below seems more likely to record 89 victories than 100 of them, then that’s not actually a sign of decline, but rather equilibrium.

The depth-chart graphic below lacks some of the nuance that Mike Matheny et al. are likely to employ in terms of fielding a team on a day-to-day basis. For example, Matt Adams (357 PA, 0.9 zWAR) appears quite likely to share starts at first base with Brandon Moss (492 PA, 1.2 zWAR), while the newly acquired Jedd Gyorko (522 PA, 1.6 zWAR) is a candidate to work in a platoon with second baseman Kolten Wong (571 PA, 2.4 zWAR).

The appearance of Matt Carpenter (628 PA, 3.8 zWAR) atop the Cards’ batter projections facilitates the opportunity not only to appreciate his career, but also to remember his No. 1 comparable, Corey Koskie. Despite exceeding his rookie limits as a 26-year-old, Koskie averaged 4.1 WAR per 600 plate appearances over the course of a career that was ultimately ended by concussion-related problems. Provided Jim Souhan isn’t purposely misleading everyone, it appears as though Koskie has found some manner of peace as a Planet Fitness franchisee and advocate for bringing greater joy to youth sports.

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Yesterday, Ken Rosenthal published a piece at Fox, suggesting that the St. Louis Cardinals don’t need to chase any more high-end free agents after finishing as runner-up in both the Jason Heyward and David Price sweepstakes. Their willingness to put something close to $200 million in guaranteed money on the table for each of those two players shows that the Cardinals had money to spend this winter, and so far, they’ve also reallocated $92.5 million of that money to three free agents: starter Mike Leake, reliever Jonathan Broxton, and catcher Brayan Pena. As Rosenthal notes, these depth pieces add to an already deep roster, and the team has internal options to replace Heyward.

But I’m going to disagree with my esteemed colleague’s conclusion anyway. In summation of his argument, he wrote the following.

The Cardinals never panic when constructing their roster; people within the industry routinely laud general manager John Mozeliak for staying disciplined. Mozeliak will jump on a remaining free agent only if he views the price as too good to ignore. And if the team stumbles, he can react before the July 31 non-waiver deadline, when he normally does some of his best work.

It is certainly true that the Cardinals can go into the 2016 season with their roster as it stands, and if it proves to be insufficient to keep up with the Cardinals and Pirates, they could go out and make second half improvements, as suggested. However, I’d suggest that taking advantage of a soft market for the remaining free agent outfielders is a better path forward.

Read the rest on Fox Sports.

The Cardinals have signed a Korean right-hander named Seung-Hwan Oh to a one-year deal with a club option. Maybe this won’t be a big deal. After all, he is just a reliever without a trick pitch or big velocity numbers. In any case, the hype machine that sometimes provides a deluge of information on Japanese pitchers has not worked its magic on Oh. We know very little.

We know his nickname is Stone Buddha and The Final Boss — nicknames he got from being an affectless closer with great numbers in Korea. And if we mine the reports and the numbers, we can learn a little more about a pitcher that might end up setting up for one of the best teams in baseball.

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Hall of Fame voting season is over, the results are out, but Hall of Fame discussion season isn’t over quite yet. Maybe that irks you and you just want this all to go away, but if that’s the case, you probably didn’t click on this post to begin with. If you did, just think of this more as the appreciation of a career, tied to some voting results.

It should come as no real surprise that Jim Edmonds fell off the ballot in his first year of eligibility, receiving just 11 votes (2.5%). If you’d been following Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker, you’d have long seen this coming, and it never seemed realistic that Edmonds would actually make it in in the first place. But it’s kind of sad, because Edmonds had a remarkable career, one that stands head and shoulders above the typical “fall off the ballot in the first year of eligibility” career, yet here we are.

It’s not the first time it’s happened. A couple years back, it was Kenny Lofton who fell off in his first year of eligibility. A couple years before that, and perhaps most egregiously, it was Kevin Brown. Dwight Gooden‘s first-ballot exclusion may have come as a bit of a surprise in 2006, and maybe the most famous example of this phenomena was Lou Whitaker’s first-year showing of 2.9% that dropped him from the ballot in 2001.

Edmonds isn’t the first player with a borderline Hall of Fame-worthy career to receive just one turn on the ride, and he won’t be the last. Some of Edmonds’ detractors will reference his laissez-faire, some might characterize it as careless or lackadaisical, attitude. If that’s the case, maybe we care about this more than Edmonds himself. And in some ways, maybe falling off the ballot on your first year is better than falling off in year two or three. Guys who fall off the first time around were never going to make it anyway, and there’s less recognition for the guy who falls off in year three after clinging onto the 5% threshold in years one and two. You fall off in year one with a legitimate case, and you get used as an example in an article.

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Word for a while has been that Mike Leake was looking for a five-year contract worth something in the neighborhood of $80 million. The most recent thing we wrote about him was called The Upcoming Mike Leake Mistake. The Cardinals have now signed Leake to a five-year contract worth exactly $80 million, with a mutual option that won’t be mutually exercised. The Cardinals are without Lance Lynn and John Lackey, and they missed out on David Price and Jason Heyward, so it’s easy to see this as an overpay from a team in an increasingly desperate state. Mike Leake isn’t who you turn to for big, huge upside. He’s Mike Leake. As pitchers go, he’s pretty boring.

Think about it for just one minute, though. It’s fine to have an immediate response. We all have immediate responses. Immediately, nothing seems particularly special about Leake. But the Cardinals have earned some benefit of the doubt, right? They’re not an organization you’d characterize as desperate, or impulsive, or reactionary. They thought their way through this. According to reports, they preferred Leake over Jeff Samardzija. They obviously like Leake enough to give him this sort of long-term guarantee. Let us now attempt to justify this contract. Really, it isn’t that hard.

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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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Note: this post was published earlier today at FOX Sports, before reports surfaced that Heyward has reached an agreement with the Chicago Cubs.

Look towards the top of any list of free agents available this off-season and you’ll find Jason Heyward’s name. There are good reasons for this. Sure, he’s polite at parties, never leaves the seat up, and always holds the door open for the elderly, but it’s more than that. He’s got perhaps the most well-rounded set of skills the free-agent market has ever seen. He’s got a career wRC+ of 118, so he can hit; he’s got some power in there, as well as on-base ability; he’s an excellent baserunner and a superb fielder. There’s really nothing that Heyward doesn’t do well, and when you add his age into the equation, that’s when things get silly, financially speaking. Ah, his age. That’s really the crux of this whole thing.

Heyward is 26 all year, so unlike most free agents, the team that signs him will get his peak seasons. There are some players who have many of Heyward’s abilities but who won’t approach what he’s expected to get. Ben Zobrist, for instance, is an interesting comparison. He’s a good fielder, a smart baserunner, he has some pop in his bat and he’s exhibited about as much on-base ability as Heyward has. He also plays 70 positions despite baseball not having that many. But Zobrist was born in May, 1981, meaning he’ll be 35 years old next season. Heyward was born in August of 1989, so he’ll be 26. This is why Zobrist just signed with the Cubs for four years, $56 million while Heyward is expected to more than double both the total years as well as the AAV of Zobrist’s contract. Imagine if you could go back in time and sign Ben Zobrist for 10 years beginning at his age-26 season. In today’s market, that would be a bargain.

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As the winter meetings drew to a close yesterday, the market for Jason Heyward heated up, and based on reports from around the game, it appears that the three finalists for his services are the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and (surprisingly) the Washington Nationals. The Cardinals interest in keeping their star right fielder has been known for a while, while the Cubs have long been a rumored suitor; Heyward is the kind of player that analytically-inclined organizations are more likely to pay for, and teams don’t get a lot more analytically inclined than the Cubs right now. Besides, with a hole in center field — though Heyward could slide to right field if the team traded Jorge Soler and acquired another CF — and a young core of players poised to put the team on the brink of perennial success, Heyward makes plenty of sense for Chicago.

The Nationals weren’t really attached to Heyward much at all until yesterday, when Jon Heyman outed them as the mystery team in this chase. The team apparently jumped in on the outfielder after losing out on Ben Zobrist, and would likely slot Heyward in as their center fielder as well, creating an elite trio along with Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth. The Nationals have been looking to add another left-handed bat to their line-up, and with Michael Taylor maybe best suited for a fourth outfielder role at this point, signing Heyward is perhaps the easiest path to solving that problem while also upgrading perhaps the weakest spot on the team.

But where does he fit the best? Who needs him the most, and should be incentivized to pay the highest price? Let’s look at all three options.

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The Chicago Cubs clearly had two primary areas in need of improvement at the beginning of this offseason: starting pitching and center field. The word was that the Cubs were in on David Price, but we know that didn’t happen, and so instead the Cubs went with a more cost-effective choice in John Lackey.

For the rest of the Cubs offseason, that means two things. For one, the rotation appears to be complete. It’s now deeper than last year’s, still has two aces at the top, and doesn’t have an obvious hole. Of course, if something came up, the Cubs could still improve, but no longer does the need exist for another starter, of any caliber. What the Lackey move means, also, is that the Cubs have some extra money to spend in the outfield. If they were in on Price, that means they were prepared to spend somewhere in the range of $200 million, and on Lackey, they spent just $34 million.

It should come as no surprise that talks have turned to Jason Heyward.

Patrick Mooney of CSNChicago reported that “the Cubs have envisioned Jason Heyward batting leadoff and playing center at Wrigley Field” and that they’ve “had Heyward on their radar for a long time.” Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times asked general manager Jed Hoyer about the financial implications of going after a top outfielder, and Hoyer responded that “We have some available resources. I think that much is clear.” Jesse Rogers of ESPN thinks it’s more likely the Cubs wind up with Heyward than Dexter Fowler. All of this has come out within the last 24 hours.

In addition, the Cubs are bidding against the rival St. Louis Cardinals, and the effects of the Cubs potentially acquiring Heyward would be two-fold, in that it would also mean the Cardinals weren’t acquiring him.

Clearly, the pieces are in place here. Heyward to the Cubs, on the surface, makes a great deal of sense. Theo Epstein stated back in October the desire to improve the team’s outfield defense, and Heyward has rightfully earned a reputation as an excellent defender. The interesting part, though, is that the Cubs are clearly interested in Heyward as a center fielder, given the existence of Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler in the corners, and 97% of Heyward’s major league innings have come in right field. He’s started just 30 games in center field, and his price tag is going to be somewhere around $200 million. That’s a significant investment to make when you’re planning to play a guy in unfamiliar territory. It’s a significant investment no matter where you’re planning to play him, but it might be viewed as especially risky given the circumstance.

But should it be?

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Dig around enough and you can make any transaction kind of interesting. Everybody in the upper ranks of professional baseball, after all, is only there because they possess extraordinary talent. Everyone has promise, so everyone can make a difference, so everyone deserves a certain amount of attention. Yet moves are considered relative to one another, and I’m not going to lie to you — Tuesday’s trade between the Padres and the Cardinals isn’t one you’ll think about very much. This is a move that’ll get lost in all the thoughts about dealing for Jose Fernandez.

From the Padres, the Cardinals are getting Jedd Gyorko and a bit over $7 million. From the Cardinals, the Padres are getting Jon Jay. Gyorko lines up to be a utility infielder, perhaps a platoon partner for Kolten Wong. The hope is that he does a little more than Pete Kozma or, earlier, Daniel Descalso. The Padres wanted out from under Gyorko’s long-term contract. Jay lines up to be a semi-regular outfielder, perhaps a platoon partner for Melvin Upton. He’s a free agent in a year, and the Padres seem unlikely to contend, and the Cardinals included Jay to offset some more money. Based on the intent of this deal, it’s forgettable. It’s an exchange of money and role players.

The shame, if you want to call it that, is both Gyorko and Jay are interesting. And I mean beyond just being professional ballplayers. Neither will be treated as much, but there are points of significance here. Jay has an interesting background. Gyorko might still have an interesting future.

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