The Dodgers just signed Japanese righty Kenta Maeda to a deal that sounds like it belongs in the early 1990s: eight years, $25 million. Not $25 million a year. $25 million. Total. Greg Maddux signed in 1993 for six years and $28 million. That’s how far you have to go back to get a similar deal.

Of course, this is nothing like that deal, because this is 2016, not 1993. The reason this deal is so low is all the risk — risk upon risk, really. But the years, the low guarantee, and even the incentives combine to shift this deal all the way in the other direction. The Dodgers did really well here.

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The real nice thing about having Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke in the same starting rotation, aside from all the wins, is that they allow a team to lose two key starters for the season — Hyun-Jin Ryu to a shoulder injury suffered in spring training and a Brandon McCarthy to Tommy John Surgery after just four starts — without it crippling the team. The Dodgers would’ve preferred Ryu and McCarthy stay healthy, but with top-end talent like the Dodgers had, a lot can go wrong for things to still go right.

This year, the Dodgers had a chance to retain Greinke, but they narrowly missed out, with Greinke heading to Arizona. Whether or not they “missed out” on guys like David Price and Johnny Cueto doesn’t matter; the point is, those guys play for different teams, too. Without Greinke, the Dodgers rotation will be much different than it was in 2015, but in certain ways, it will be very much the same.

You start with Clayton Kershaw. We’re talking pitching here, so you always start with Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw is the best in the world and he’s got a clean bill of health when it comes to his arm, so there’s no better place to start. But after Kershaw, there’s still Ryu, who’s clearly an injury risk, and there’s still McCarthy, who’s clearly an injury risk, and there’s still Brett Anderson, who made 31 healthy starts last year, but made just 32 starts the past four years combined, and so he’s clearly an injury risk.

The Dodgers knew that’s what they had going into the offseason, and their first move to address the rotation, having missed out on the top flight arms, was an attempt to sign Hisashi Iwakuma. Iwakuma’s 34 years old, had an injury history in Japan and hit the disabled list last year, so he’s clearly an injury risk. So much so, in fact, that he failed his physical and the Dodgers decided to move on.

The guy they moved on to ended up being Scott Kazmir, who signed a similar contract to the one the Dodgers were prepared to give Iwakuma. When you think Scott Kazmir, you probably think injury risk. Granted, Kazmir’s averaged 31 starts a year over the past three seasons and has avoided the disabled list, so most recently, he’s been something resembling durable. Yet, still, there’s been the occasional skipped start due to shoulder concerns or early, precautionary removal due to tricep tightness and of course the three years of injuries that derailed Kazmir’s career and left him jobless, not too long ago. After all, the best predictor of future injury is past injury. While he’s been healthy lately, we’ll never live in a world where Scott Kazmir isn’t considered an injury risk.

So, to quickly recap, after Kershaw, the Dodgers had three injury question marks, who they tried to tandem with an injury question mark, but when that didn’t work, they went out and got a different injury question mark. Got it. With that in mind, let’s look at some numbers and graphs.

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It seemed for a time like Scott Kazmir wanted to get himself signed before Christmas. That didn’t happen, but he’ll settle for getting signed before New Year’s — for three years, and $48 million, with the Dodgers being his newest employer. Kazmir joins what could be an all-left-handed starting rotation, not even counting the left-handed Julio Urias. No one would ever suggest you can fill a Zack Greinke-shaped hole with a Scott Kazmir-shaped plug, but there simply wasn’t another Greinke to be had, and Kazmir makes this group better than it could have been.

This is, what, a Tier-2-level transaction? Maybe even Tier 3. I’m not sure because I just invented the scale. But with a move like this, there generally isn’t all that much to be said in terms of player or team analysis. Kazmir is above-average. Occasionally great, occasionally awful. The Dodgers are above-average, too, and should remain that way into the future. Kazmir is getting above-average-player money. All that stuff is obvious, so it’s better to focus on the one most interesting detail. And in this case, I think that detail is that Kazmir can opt out of the contract after this coming season.

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For the first three months of last season, Joc Pederson looked like a future star. At the All-Star break, Pederson was hitting .230/.364/.487 and his 137 wRC+ placed him 12th among National League batters. In the last 20 years, the only players younger than Pederson to hit 20 home runs faster than Pederson (95 games) are Albert Pujols, Adam Dunn, Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Correa, and Chris Davis, per Baseball-Reference’s Play Index. In the second half, however, things unfolded quite differently: Pederson recorded 219 terribly unproductive plate appearances, leading to questions about whether the league had figured Pederson out.

Pederson’s strikeouts rose as steadily as he did through the minors, topping out at 27% in his last Triple-A season in 2014 before he was promoted to the majors. The rise in strikeouts was accompanied by a a rise in walks and power, and that pattern continued in the first half of last season with a 16% walk rate and a 29% strikeout rate. Pederson’s first half surge did not last into the summer months, as both his BABIP (from .282 to .232) and ISO (from .257 to .122) plunged — although his walk and strikeout rates remained unchanged.

While it would be easy to point to Pederson’s BABIP decline and hope for a turnaround, there are too many other peripheral statistics that point to a general drop in Pederson’s ability last season. Pederson’s line-drive rate dropped from 18% to 14% from the first half to the second half, his infield-fly percentage went from 10% to 23%, and his soft-contact percentage moved from 15% up to 29% in the second half. His exit velocity was 93.5 mph in the first half, ranking behind only Giancarlo Stanton, Yoenis Cespedes, Ryan Braun, Miguel Cabrera, and Jorge Soler among players with 100 at bats. In the second half, however, it dropped to 89.3 mph, per Baseball Savant.

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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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Despite losing out on Zack Greinke, the Los Angeles Dodgers look to have one of the best teams in major league baseball. While Jeff Sullivan made a reasonable case recently for the Chicago Cubs as the best team in baseball currently, the Dodgers are right there with them, even without the benefit of a major move. But now that the Hisashi Iwakuma deal has fallen apart and led Iwakuma to reunite with the Seattle Mariners, the Dodgers need pitching. They were rumored to be involved with the Atlanta Braves for Shelby Miller and rumors still surround the pursuit of Jose Fernandez and pitchers in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. It’s possible, however, that it’s Matt Harvey who could best solve the Dodgers’ problems.

Despite likely losing Yoenis Cespedes and Daniel Murphy to free agency, the New York Mets also have a very good team returning next year. By our Depth Charts projections, the Mets have the fifth-best team in baseball, less than a win behind division-rival Washington Nationals. The club has a really good shot at repeating as division winners, with a rotation of Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, and Noah Syndergaard leading the way, and a returning Zack Wheeler and Bartolo Colon as insurance. The team has a solid infield, shrewdly picking up Neil Walker, and they should be able to cobble something semi-productive out of Asdrubal Cabrera and their returning middle infielders at shortstop. The team does have a bit of a hole in center field, and the offense, without Cespedes or Cespedes, doesn’t look all that great. The Mets might still have some financial concerns going into next season. It’s possible, though, that the young and cheap and talented Joc Pederson could solve the Mets’ problems.

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Yesterday, the Dodgers were involved in the three team trade that sent Todd Frazier to the White Sox, presumably because the Reds preferred a different type of prospect than what Chicago could offer. Andrew Friedman and his gang essentially acted as brokers for the other two teams, and took a commission for helping facilitate the trade, upgrading their own stock of prospects in the process.

But when a win-now team chooses to upgrade their prospect stock over simply just acquiring a guy like Frazier for themselves, it raises questions about what the overarching strategy really is. And when Andrew Friedman says stuff like this, the questions seem to be even more legitimate.

Friedman, asked if he is any more comfortable trading elite pitching prospects today than he was yesterday: "Yeah."

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 16, 2015

Of course, to be fair, Friedman also said this.

Friedman said he knows some teams are interested in players Dodgers acquired today but trade is not necessarily precursor to another.

— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 16, 2015

Ken Rosenthal, the most connected guy out there, published a piece not long after suggesting that this deal might help the Dodgers pursue Jose Fernandez. Based on what the asking price was during the winter meetings, however, perhaps we should actually be looking at the other Florida team when looking for a partner in a mega-trade for the Dodgers.

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I detected a real sense of impatience as far as the Dodgers were concerned. Not impatience on the part of the Dodgers — rather, impatience on the part of people observing the Dodgers. Not that they’d been totally quiet, but they had been inactive. Now, Wednesday, the Dodgers have gotten themselves involved in a doozy. It’s a three-way trade, with the best player neither leaving the Dodgers, nor joining them. Instead, the Dodgers helped facilitate the Reds sending a quality third baseman to the White Sox. The full player breakdown:

White Sox get:

• Todd Frazier

White Sox lose:

• Francelis Montas
• Trayce Thompson
• Micah Johnson

—

Reds get:

• Jose Peraza
• Scott Schebler
• Brandon Dixon

Reds lose:

• Todd Frazier

—

Dodgers get:

• Francelis Montas
• Trayce Thompson
• Micah Johnson

Dodgers lose:

• Jose Peraza
• Scott Schebler
• Brandon Dixon

Frazier to Chicago, three Chicago prospects to Los Angeles, three Los Angeles prospects to Cincinnati. It stands to reason the Dodgers had to get involved because the Reds and White Sox couldn’t find an easy match straight up. Implying the Reds are higher on, say, the Peraza centerpiece than they would’ve been on a Montas centerpiece. These things can be kind of complicated to analyze, but let’s go team by team.

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As everyone reading this is by now undoubtedly aware, Monday’s proposed blockbuster trade that would have sent Aroldis Chapman from the Cincinnati Reds to the Los Angeles Dodgers is on hold, following reports that the star closer was allegedly involved in a domestic incident with his girlfriend back in October. Although the Reds remain free to trade Chapman pending Major League Baseball’s investigation of the incident under the league’s new domestic violence policy, the market for Chapman is reported to have predictably dried up as teams wait to learn what type of punishment the pitcher will face.

It remains unclear how much, if anything, the Reds knew about the allegations against Chapman prior to Monday’s media reports, or if the team took any steps to notify potential trade partners of the incident. Nevertheless, the episode has raised questions regarding the extent to which teams are expected to disclose unfavorable information of this sort to one another during trade discussions.

As is so often the case, this is an area in which MLB operates a bit differently than most other industries.

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Zack Greinke is one of the best pitchers in major league baseball, and as a result, he had no shortage of suitors before ultimately signing a contract in excess of $200 million. In addition to money, the Diamondbacks also surrendered their first-round pick next year, the 13th overall selection. While it would not be quite true to say that Greinke cost “only money,” the Diamondbacks did not give up a single active player in order to acquire Greinke.

Cole Hamels, both the same age as Greinke and roughly as effective over the course of his career, was traded over the summer. Hamels’ cost was not “only money,” as the Texas Rangers gave up six players, including three high-end prospects (and Matt Harrison’s contract), for Jake Diekman and the opportunity to pay Cole Hamels around $100 million over the next four years. While the costs come in different forms, we can compare the two to see how the trade market this past summer compared to this offseason’s free agent market for Greinke.

The Los Angeles Dodgers prioritized Cole Hamels at the trade deadline, but subsequently missed out by refusing to part with their best prospects. The team then prioritized bringing Greinke back, only to be outbid by division rival Arizona. The cost for both players was high, and it is difficult to say whether the Dodgers made a mistake passing on both players, but we should be able to compare the costs for both to see if the Dodgers could have kept a comparable pitcher for less than the amount Greinke received in free agency.

As far as comparisons go, Greinke did have a better year in 2015, but their cumulative WAR graphs (shown below) reveal two remarkably similar careers in terms of value.

In addition, both players are projected to do well next season. By Steamer, Greinke is set for a 4.2 WAR while Hamels comes in a bit behind at 3.6 WAR for the 2016 season. Using those projections as the baseline for future production, we can get an estimate for their value over the next few years. With deferrals, Greinke’s deal turns out to be $194.5 million over six seasons, per Ken Rosenthal. Given the consistency of both Greinke and Hamels, for the purposes of this analysis, we will assume the players will age well.

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