Though baseball’s Winter Meetings seem like the playground of the front office executive, there is one other baseball man who’s ubiquitous: the manager. Semi-required to attend media events and an annual luncheon, most of the sport’s managers descend on the meetings to make their mark.

For the most part, they field questions about next year’s lineup, and try to deflect queries about front-office moves. They’ll do a little reminiscing about last year, and a little looking forward to next year. It’s a bit of a dance, since most of the reporters are looking to find out how the roster is going to look on paper, and the person in front of them is mostly in charge of putting that roster on the field.

Still, it’s a great moment to get access to many managers at once. This past August, I asked a collection of players and writers how Bruce Bochy and Joe Maddon — managers with distinctly different approaches and pasts — could both find great success. I thought it would make sense to ask the managers gathered here about their craft, as well.

What has changed about managing? How are the demands on the modern manager different than they once were?

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Brian Cashman wants the Yankees to get younger. Did you know that Starlin Castro is only 25 years old?

Somewhat lost in the shuffle of last night’s winter meetings madness was the trade that sent Castro to the Yankees in exchange for right-hander Adam Warren and utility man Brendan Ryan, mere minutes after Castro had been displaced in Chicago by the Cubs’ signing of Ben Zobrist.

Castro, it seems, developed something of a bad rap in Chicago, and the writing of his departure had been on the wall for some time. It’s easy to forget that Castro is still just 25, though, and for a 25-year-old, he’s accomplished quite a bit. For instance, Castro already has nearly 1,000 hits! Getting to 3,000 essentially makes you a lock for the Hall of Fame, and by age 25, Castro is already one-third of the way there. Through his age-25 season, Castro has accumulated more hits than all but 20 players in baseball history. Of those 20 players, 14 are Hall of Famers, and the other is Alex Rodriguez. Of course, I don’t at all mean to insinuate Castro will achieve 3,000 hits or make the Hall of Fame, but players who a) debut young enough and b) perform at a good enough level to continue to receive playing time generally go on to have rather successful careers.

Anyway, that’s just an anecdote about Starlin Castro that I happen to enjoy. What actually matters is that the Yankees felt an upgrade at second base over Dustin Ackley and Rob Refsnyder was in order, and that the Cubs had a young second baseman to spare. This is how trades come together.

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The reliever period of the offseason is over. We can now move on. Most of the league, it seemed, was waiting on Ben Zobrist’s decision before kicking their offseason into high-gear. Zobrist has made his decision. He’ll be going to the Cubs, on a four-year deal worth $56 million dollars. With Zobrist out of the way, you’ll soon begin hearing Yoenis Cespedes rumors, and Justin Upton rumors, and Alex Gordon rumors. Zobrist was the domino that needed to fall to set the rest of the offseason into action. That much is true for the Cubs, too.

With Zobrist in the fold, the Cubs held an obvious surplus of talent. Too many players for too few positions. The Starlin Castro rumors and the Javier Baez rumors had persisted for so long, and it was clear the Cubs had something else lined up when they agreed to terms with Zobrist. Within the hour, Castro had been shipped to the Yankees for righty Adam Warren and veteran utility man Brendan Ryan.

Castro is simply the fallout from the Zobrist move. Castro’s owed $37 million over the next four seasons, and no longer had a position in Chicago. That’s pricey for a backup. Something had to give. The Yankees needed a second baseman, and the money isn’t much a factor to them, and so they were willing to part with a 28-year-old swingman with eye-popping projections and a utility man on the last legs of his career. Castro should be fine as the starting second baseman in New York, and it’s easy to forget he’s still just 25 years old. Between Castro, Dustin Ackley and Rob Refsnyder, the Yankees shouldn’t need to worry about second base. But the Yankees aren’t the interesting part of the action, here. The Cubs are.

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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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When you come up through the ranks as a young lefty starter, you learn about the importance of the changeup. By breaking away from the right-handed batter, that pitch offers the best way to neutralize the natural platoon advantage those hitters have against you. By the time you get to the big leagues, it’s part of your approach, like it or not. That’s why lefty starters throw changeups 65% more often than righty starters in major league baseball.

If you look at Jon Lester’s career, though, his best years have come when he’s thrown his changeup the least. The flippant reason for that truth might be because his changeup isn’t that great, and his other pitches are better. The long version is much more interesting, though, as it gets to the theory of changeups, and a new concept called tunneling.

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The Chicago Cubs are located within the third-largest media market in the country, have a base of rabid fans supporting the team even in lean years, and — despite having closed the bleachers for much of the early part of the 2015 season — have received greater attendances at Wrigley Field since 2011, in part due to the team’s playoff run this year. While the team has started to have tremendous success on the field, they are moving forward slowly with payroll due to renovations around the ballpark, investments in rooftop bleachers, debt incurred by the Ricketts family when they bought the team, and a below-market television contract that runs out after four more seasons.

That the Cubs are interested in starting their own cable network in Chicago is not a secret. The team’s deal with Comcast runs out after 2019, and they have been setting the stage for an exit. The Chicago Cubs have a long history of airing games locally on WGN, which also found its way on to most cable packages around the country. The Tribune Company owned WGN as well as the Chicago Cubs, and the baseball team provided the company with relatively inexpensive programming that provided a big help to the bottom line.

The television industry, and in particular the sports television industry, have changed over time, rending the broadcast of games on WGN less beneficial. Regional sports networks began swooping up the rights to local baseball games, putting more and more games on cable. The regional sports networks gained much of their revenue from subscriber fees as opposed to traditional advertising, and cable providers felt these stations were necessary to give to subscribers as part of the basic cable bundle. This meant that the Tribune Comany airing games on WGN, while a cable channel to those outside of Chicago, was not maximizing revenue by putting games over the air in Chicago.

In 2004, Comcast Sportsnet Chicago (CSN Chicago) was formed. At the time the Tribune Company still owned the Cubs. CSN Chicago’s ownership was split between the local clubs. Right now, the split is 20% each to the owners of the Cubs, White Sox, Bulls, and Blackhawks, with the remaining 20% to NBC/Universal. Jerry Reinsdorf has the biggest share at 40%, as he owns both the Bulls and White Sox. The Cubs kept about half of their games on WGN, but opted out of that contract when it was up after the 2014 season. The Cubs negotiated their current contract with WGN and the local ABC affiliate so that they would expire after 2019, the same season as their deal with Comcast.

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The Mets just made the formula look pretty simple. You want to win in the playoffs? You have to hit, especially at the right times. You have to be good in the field, and you have to be aware on the basepaths. And you have to have good pitching, and you want to give the ball almost exclusively to the good pitchers. Baseball looks pretty simple when a team does literally everything well, and while you don’t want to just project the Mets’ NLCS performance ahead into the World Series, there’s no denying the fact that the Mets didn’t just beat the Cubs — they clobbered them. They outplayed the Cubs everywhere, and the Cubs would probably be the first to tell you that.

There’s obvious consolation for the Cubs and their fans. If there are any teams set up better for the future, you’re talking about maybe just the Dodgers, and this was a Cubs team that arguably arrived a little ahead of time. There are going to be more opportunities, and there are very likely going to be some NLCS wins. This pain will fade; the future’s too beautiful. One year ago, the Royals felt worse. Now they’re on the verge of getting back to the Series. You know all this stuff. Four losses aside, the Cubs are doing fine.

Yet before we all start to look ahead, to next week and to next season, I want to take a quick chance to reflect on the NLCS that just wrapped up. I don’t do this to rub anyone’s noses in it. I do it just because I think it’s interesting. Within a historical context, just how noncompetitive was this series?

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Ask Joe Maddon, and he’ll tell you what’s wrong. To this point, the Cubs have simply been out-played. The Cubs have been out-pitched, they’ve been out-hit, and they’ve been out-executed in between. The Mets have played quality baseball, not giving the Cubs very many openings of any significance, and that’s a sure-fire way to end up with a 3-0 series standing. When a team like the Mets blends ability with smarts, that makes for a hell of a foe.

Quietly, over the course of the year, the Mets were an above-average baserunning team, but they weren’t much of a stolen-base team. In the playoffs, and especially against the Cubs, the Mets have turned their aggressiveness up, responding to worse hitting conditions by trying to squeeze everything they can out of being on base. Tuesday night, a pivotal play was Yoenis Cespedes stealing third base in the sixth inning of a tie game. The Mets didn’t used to do much stealing of third, but Cespedes would come in to score on a wild third strike, and his would be the winning run. It was an important event, and somewhat stunning for the ease with which Cespedes advanced.

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To think, we got to do this just over a week ago, after a Jason Heyward home run. Now we’re in a similar situation. Tuesday night, the Cubs lost a tough one to the Mets, falling behind three games to none in the NLCS. So the Cubs find themselves in the worst position possible, and they’re fully aware of the history, but for whatever it’s worth, Kyle Schwarber just became the Cubs’ all-time leader in postseason dingers, and he got there by going deep against a really outside pitch from Jacob deGrom. It’s not really much consolation. How do you feel about your accomplishment, Kyle Schwarber?

“I’m not really looking at that right now,” Schwarber said.

Right. The last thing Schwarber wants to focus on is a dinger in a loss. The last thing the Cubs overall want to focus on is a dinger in a loss. The last thing Cubs fans want to focus on is a dinger in a loss. But, look. I’m not invested in this. I don’t play for the Cubs, and while I’ve rooted for the Cubs before, they’ve never been my favorite team. I get paid to obsess over stupid little details. So, following: a whole bunch of them. Though the Cubs ultimately lost, Schwarber’s home run was remarkable, and that’s right in my wheelhouse.

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So far this October, we have been treated to some great playoff games.  Most of us watched these games at home in our living room, or perhaps at the local sports bar.  A select few of us have had the chance to watch the games live at the stadium.  Due to the high demand for playoff tickets, most teams conducted some type of lottery to determine who gets to purchase tickets at face value.  Those who aren’t lucky enough to win the lottery can still get into the stadium by purchasing tickets on the second-hand market.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there is a lot of variation in the second-hand cost of playoff tickets between the different teams.  There are many factors that go into this variation, including regular season ticket cost and how recently the team has gone to the playoffs, among other things.  For example, the Cubs have had the highest playoff tickets prices this year, which is due to the fact that they have a passionate fan base, and that they haven’t been to the playoffs since 2008.

I wanted to see if it would be possible to create a model that predicts the cost of ALDS/NLDS ticket prices based on other factors.

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