Zack Greinke looks to be worth what the Diamondbacks will be paying him. We still don’t have a complete idea of the structure of his contract, so it’s not like everything can be nailed down precisely, but he’s one of the most valuable pitchers in baseball, and he’s going to get paid like it. When you factor in everything he does — pitch, hit, defend — Greinke’s projected contract comes out looking a lot like his actual contract. So, based on our usual estimates, this is a totally acceptable free-agent deal. Good for Greinke, good for Arizona.

Here’s where it gets more complicated: those usual estimates don’t do much to account for team context. Let’s say the going rate for a win in free agency is $8 million. The specific number doesn’t matter. That’s what any team should expect to pay. But you can’t pay everyone free-agent money — that would mean, to expect 40 team WAR, you’d need a payroll of $320 million. $8 million might be the cost of a win in free agency, for every team, but not every team has the same total $/WAR target. As always, the biggest-spending teams have an advantage. Teams like the Diamondbacks need to be more careful.

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Johnny Cueto didn’t want the Jordan Zimmermann deal with an extra year attached, or so the rumors go. That’s interesting, because the two 29-year-old righties are comparable players:

Johnny Cueto vs Jordan Zimmermann, Since 2011

Name	IP	K%	BB%	xFIP	FIP	ERA
Cueto	889.1	20.7%	6.3%	3.58	3.41	2.71
Zimmermann	971.2	19.8%	4.6%	3.58	3.30	3.14

At least by strikeouts and walks, these two are in the same class. Zimmermann’s strikeout minus walk rate is a little better than Cueto’s, even if the dreadlocked one has a better strikeout rate.

These guys look very similar, until you look at the batted ball stats. Over the last five years, 26.5% of Cueto’s balls in play have been hits, while 29% of Zimmermann’s have been. That’s led to a 2.71 ERA for one and a 3.14 ERA for the other.

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What they may lack in impact bats, the Diamondbacks make up for with pitching depth. They have a lot of pitchers with high floors in the upper levels of the minors, and a few in the low minors that should move quickly. A few have top of the rotation potential. The addition of Dansby Swanson to the organization this June does a lot to help reinforce the offensive pipeline, but the team will have to do a better job developing hitters over the next few years.

Their quantity of outfield options is solid, and was something of a logjam in the upper minors this season. That four players who started playing for the team in 2015 make the top eight here is a good sign for their talent acquisition going forward. Look for the pitchers to start making their presence felt in the big leagues in 2016 and 2017, while we wait on some of the lower-level hitting prospects to put things together.

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No, we aren’t just going to do a leaderboard sort for best movement in each direction and call it a day. It’s a little bit more complicated to figure out the best changeups by shape and speed, mostly because it’s all relative. The changeup, as the name implies, functions off of the fastball, as a change of pace and movement. So we need to define anything the changeup does relative to the pitcher’s fastball.

Then we can do a sort and call it a day.

In order to define fastball movement, let’s just group together all of the fastballs thrown by a pitcher. It’s probably more nuanced than that; the concept of tunneling or sequencing shows that pitchers can pair their changeup with one fastball or the other for different results. But some of this comes out in the wash: by averaging movement across fastballs, their selection of different fastballs will weight the movement in the direction of the pitcher’s usage.

So then our x and y movement, and velocity, are defined against this average fastball for each pitcher. Using a minimum of 50 changeups thrown, and z-scores to sum up the values, we can get a list of best changeups quickly.

First, the relievers.

Best Reliever Changeups by Movement, Velocity

Pitcher	FB (pfx_x)	FB (pfx_z)	FB (velo)	CH (pfx_x)	CH (pfx_y)	CH (velo)	Sum Z	CH swSTR%
Brad Boxberger	-3.3	10.6	92.6	-7.8	2.0	79.8	6.7	14%
Shawn Tolleson	-2.6	11.0	92.9	-4.8	4.0	79.8	4.9	15%
Josh Fields	0.1	11.5	94.1	-0.6	3.7	81.4	4.5	8%
Roberto Osuna	-4.2	10.7	95.5	-8.0	6.9	82.3	4.0	16%
Josh Smith	-4.1	7.6	89.9	-8.4	1.9	79.4	4.0	8%
Chasen Shreve	7.3	10.6	91.4	6.3	1.5	82.6	3.5	18%
A.J. Ramos	-3.0	8.6	92.4	-7.5	1.0	85.5	3.5	35%
Jeff Ferrell	-4.1	10.2	93.0	-7.4	4.9	82.4	3.5	20%
Danny Farquhar	-5.0	8.5	92.7	-7.5	1.0	84.5	3.2	24%
Fernando Rodney	-6.7	7.1	94.7	-9.6	3.3	82.7	3.1	17%
Andrew Schugel	-7.9	7.8	91.6	-9.6	2.3	80.5	3.1	23%
Joaquin Benoit	-6.5	8.9	94.2	-7.5	1.9	84.1	3.1	24%
Tyler Thornburg	-0.8	11.1	92.2	-5.8	6.3	83.8	3.0	19%
Arnold Leon	-5.1	9.8	91.6	-4.6	2.8	80.2	2.9	22%
Pat Neshek	-8.5	4.9	89.9	-4.6	3.7	68.4	2.9	9%
Tommy Kahnle	-1.9	7.4	94.8	-7.6	2.8	87.2	2.8	23%
Mike Morin	-4.7	8.9	92.3	-0.5	6.8	71.7	2.8	25%
Deolis Guerra	-5.1	10.0	90.8	-6.7	4.0	80.7	2.8	15%
Daniel Hudson	-6.6	8.3	96.0	-9.9	4.9	84.8	2.7	18%
Erik Goeddel	-3.9	9.2	93.0	-4.7	2.0	84.3	2.5	32%

SOURCE: PITCHf/x

pfx_x = horizontal movement
pfx_z = vertical movement
Sum Z = sum of the z-scores for the differentials between fastball and changeups in x, y movement and velocity
swSTR% = swinging strikes over pitches for the changeup
Minumum 50 changeups thrown in 2015

If you listen to The Sleeper and The Bust, you know I talk about this all the time and do the math in my head. Now the math is there for us on the sheet of paper.

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A few months ago, someone asked me who the most underrated player in baseball was, and after kicking around a few names, I settled on Arizona outfielder A.J. Pollock. Pollock got to the big leagues as a speed-and-defense center fielder who hit well enough to justify a regular gig, and then had his breakout year derailed last season when Johnny Cueto hit him in the hand with a fastball. Since he missed roughly half the season, it was easy to overlook his offensive improvements, but Pollock carried the added power and improved contact rate over to this season, and has developed into one of the very best outfielders in all of baseball.

But Pollock’s 2015 season has been so good that it’s hard to call him the game’s most underrated player anymore. After all, he made the All-Star team this year, and thanks to a .325 average and a decent likelihood of being honored with a Gold Glove at years end, he’s not really flying under the radar anymore. Like Ben Zobrist and Bobby Abreu, Pollock might have been mentioned as the game’s most underrated player so many times that he’s now being properly rated.

But even with Pollock’s graduation to stardom now being pretty widely accepted, I still think the game’s most underrated player might be an outfielder for the Diamondbacks. This time, I’m going with Pollock’s teammate David Peralta.

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Here’s a little thing that steamrolled into a big thing, for just a moment, and then disappeared. I talked to Ender Inciarte many weeks ago, and it set me off on a path that took forever to complete.

Here’s what Inciarte said:

Against lefties, I try to let the ball get deeper and try to hit it the other way. Against righties, I feel like I can use the whole field. I don’t hit a lot of extra base hits against lefties, but I just try to do my job, which is to get on base.

It’s not the craziest thing you’ve ever heard. I’ve heard from many switch-hitters that they are different hitters from each side of the plate, and this is just the non-switch-hitter analog. Against righties, he’s one hitter; against lefties, he’s another.

But two questions immediately came to mind. How extreme is he? And, given his decent platoon splits to date, could he be providing a road map for others to follow?

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“Have you ever heard of a submariner throwing a riseball?”

Athletics Media Relations and Broadcasting Coordinator Zak Basch almost had a crazy look in his eye as he asked. But as soon as I understood what he was asking, there were two intense people in that Oakland dugout, contemplating insane things. Because it’s almost an impossible idea, the riseball released from a submarine angle. They physics of releasing the ball down under makes it almost impossible to get backspin on the ball, and backspin is what gives fastballs “rise” — backspin helps the ball drop less than you’d expect, given gravity.

That’s why, when you ask current submariners, they mostly just shake their head. “I’ve heard stories of this myth before,” laughed Javier Lopez of the Giants. He struggled to name any active low-slot pitchers that have ever thrown a riseball on purpose.

But it’s not impossible. Basch, a former pitcher for the University of Nevada (Reno) himself once threw one in game action, and it only took a couple dozen failed attempts to get there. Just to get an idea of how difficult it is to get backspin on the ball from that angle, Basch modeled the delivery and spin for a traditional submarine fastball and then how you might throw a rising fastball.

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We keep learning more about baseball. Every year, we learn things we didn’t know. Every year, we have new data to back up things we might’ve already suspected. The level of knowledge is ever-increasing. You’d think that might make baseball analysis easier. The more you know, the more you should be able to say, right? It’s true, now we can say more — and we can say more with data. But if anything, all this knowledge is making everything more complicated. The more we learn about the game, the more we learn about the gray areas. The more we learn about the gray areas, the more we have to hedge against making strong, conclusive statements.

So it’s more complicated to do player analysis, and it’s more complicated to do transaction analysis. At least, it’s more difficult to assign the winner and the loser of a transaction. There are generally too many different things at play. I think it’s notable, then, when strong conclusions are still reached. It’s notable to me when the analytical community comes down strongly on one side of something, because situations are grayer than ever. It must mean something when a firm consensus is reached despite all the complexities.

With decreasing frequency do writers come out strongly against a given transaction. So it’s worth reflecting on the trade that sent Doug Fister from the Tigers to the Nationals. That one didn’t make any sense. That was a pretty clear steal, on the Nationals’ part. Everybody agreed the Tigers didn’t get enough. I know, because I was one of them. The deal looked terribly lopsided at the time, which is something we don’t get to experience so much anymore.

And you know what? It probably was lopsided. The Tigers probably didn’t get enough. The trade legitimately sent waves through the industry. But you have to look at where we are now. Regardless of whether this could’ve been predicted: Robbie Ray looks like he might be emerging. Ray’s talent is coming to the surface.

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Over the weekend, the Diamondbacks made a pretty controversial trade, selling Touki Toussaint to the Braves in exchange for $10 million in salary relief. I wrote up my thoughts on the deal on Monday, noting that while it’s certainly possible that the Diamondbacks have more information about Toussaint than other teams, it still seems like they simply misread the market value of a prospect in making this deal.

If you didn’t think that’s what happened a few days ago, you can be sure of it now, because in Ken Rosenthal’s latest column, Stewart says some things that, for a baseball executive to say publicly in 2015, are absolutely remarkable. And should scare the crap out of Diamondback fans.

Per Rosenthal’s column, here’s the entire text of what Stewart said in regards to trading Toussaint.

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Since Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart took over baseball operations for the Arizona Diamondbacks last year, their moves have come under considerable scrutiny. Questions have been raised about the Diamondbacks plan, but not with as much regard to its execution. The questions surrounding the Diamondbacks’ moves have been confusing enough that some wondered if the Diamondbacks had a plan in mind at all. The club looked to be attempting a quick rebuilding process. How they plan to achieve that goal is finally becoming a little more clear.

When the Cubs and Astros took bad teams and completely deconstructed their rosters, choosing to lose for a while and re-stock the organizations, their plans were easy to see. After a full offseason, multiple in-season trades, and the recent major-league draft, the Diamondbacks’ plan, or at least their goal, has come into focus. The Diamondbacks are not interested in a long, drawn out rebuilding process. Their main interests look to be cutting salary and adding players who are ready to contribute now or will be ready to contribute in the near future. They might not be ready to win now, but they appear to be attempting a swift rebuild to make the team competitive.

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