Over the course of a few days during the winter meetings, it seemed like all that was happening was that free-agent relievers were signing multiyear contracts. And not just multiyear contracts — reasonably expensive multiyear contracts. Both Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw got three years. An incomplete selection of the relievers who got two: Brandon Morrow, Tommy Hunter, Juan Nicasio, Joe Smith, Anthony Swarzak, Steve Cishek, and Pat Neshek. These are all good pitchers. They deserve what they’ve gotten. But people are still relatively unaccustomed to seeing non-closers get $8 million a year. This is the bullpen age, indeed.

As the run on relievers was taking place, a common refrain was that teams were looking to sign the next Brandon Morrow, or the next Anthony Swarzak. Not that Morrow or Swarzak didn’t still get their money, but neither was considered valuable a year ago. They popped up, almost out of nowhere, and they became deadly weapons. So, teams figure, why wouldn’t there be other pop-up relievers? Why spend so much on a guy if you think you can find the next bullpen breakthrough?

Every team is looking for the next pop-up. It’s not easy to spot success before success. The Rangers think they have someone in Chris Martin, and I wrote about him, but he’s been terrific in Japan. It’s a different sort of gamble. Wily Peralta and Yovani Gallardo have signed with the Royals and Brewers, respectively, but they might still start. I don’t know if they’re necessarily considered the same kind of pop-up targets. This all leads me to Tom Koehler. I wanted to find a pitcher who’s been identified as a potential next Swarzak or Morrow. The Dodgers signed Koehler for $2 million, and if he hits all his incentives as a reliever, the salary tops out at $2.95 million. He’s under control for 2019, and the Dodgers see him in the bullpen.

Koehler, this past season, was bad. He had an ERA of almost 7. The bulk of his career has been spent as a starter, and there’s a perfectly good chance his 2018 goes off the rails. And yet the Dodgers think they might see something, something that could handle high-leverage situations. What is it the Dodgers are thinking? I’d like to give it my best guess.

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The Dodgers made a big trade with the Braves over the weekend, and Jeff Sullivan did a great job of illustrating how, for Los Angeles, it mostly represented a trade of debt this season for debt next season. The deal allows the club to avoid the tax threshold for a year, resetting their penalty and allowing them (if they choose) to cross back over the threshold next year at less cost.

There’s certainly a reason they’d make that choice: next year’s offseason features a number of top free agents, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper chief among them. But we’re not done yet with the current offseason yet, and it’s an offseason following a World Series appearance for the Dodgers. What’s left for them to do? And what does Walker Buehler’s curveball have to do with it?

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Every Friday, for a couple of hours, I host a FanGraphs live baseball chat. Yesterday, I held my first chat in the aftermath of the winter meetings. The previous Friday, I held my last chat before the winter meetings. Within that chat, here’s a question that popped up:

We might never know Tom’s true identity. But, Tom, if that is your real name — good going. You came awfully close.

With five players involved, this is a big trade for two teams to make. But then, if we’re going to be realistic, this isn’t about the players at all. This is a swap of money, or, more accurately, this is a swap of debt. There is short-term debt, and there is shorter-term debt.

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It looks like the Cubs have signed Brandon Morrow for two years and something like $22 million, as Jeff Passan and Jon Heyman are reporting. Right now, he’ll slot in as their fourth closer in four years. He should be excellent, considering how superlative his stuff was out of the pen last year, and really for most of his career. But there’s that other question that has dogged him for most of his career, too: just how healthy will he be?

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In the next few days, it’s expected that Giancarlo Stanton will decide whether he’s going to waive his no-trade clause to join the San Francisco Giants or, less likely, the St. Louis Cardinals. Those are the two teams that have struck deals with the Marlins, and both made their pitch to him in person last week. Stanton has appeared to be holding out hope that the Dodgers would get into the mix, though to this point, no public reports have suggested they’ve seriously engaged the Marlins in discussions.

The Dodgers’ reticence likely has to do with their CBT tax position. Acquiring Stanton would put them over the tax threshold again, and, as I laid out in my argument for why the Dodgers should be interested, acquiring Stanton would probably force the team to choose between re-signing Clayton Kershaw or making a big run at Bryce Harper in free agency next winter. And according to Ken Rosenthal, the Marlins aren’t interested in taking back any current payroll in a Stanton deal, as they try to trim their 2018 player expenses to under $90 million.

But despite the Marlins’ apparent tunnel vision here, there still might be a way for both sides to get what they’re looking for, and it’s one of Friedman’s go-to moves: the three-way trade.

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I think we all understand the present circumstances. The Marlins are trying to trade Giancarlo Stanton in order to clear payroll, and they’ve reached general agreements with both the Cardinals and the Giants. From the Cardinals, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. From the Giants, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. There are differences, obviously, but right now you’d think there are only these two finalists. Stanton has full no-trade protection, but he doesn’t want to stick around where he is, and so we’re getting to a decision point. Stanton will soon need to pick St. Louis or San Francisco.

Or neither. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but Stanton grew up and played high-school ball around Los Angeles. We’re not familiar with Stanton’s actual thoughts, but the consensus opinion is that Stanton’s ideal outcome would be a trade to the Dodgers. To this point, we haven’t heard much about the Dodgers’ trade interest. Stanton wouldn’t be the type of add they typically make. And yet, here we are. The Dodgers continue to loom over this whole thing.

This can obviously change as it goes, but Giants expect a Stanton decision by the end of the week. I’m hearing they continue to view Dodgers, not Cardinals, as biggest threat.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) December 6, 2017

Giancarlo Stanton? Stanton has plenty of leverage. But so do the Dodgers. The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes are unusual, but so is this situation, with Stanton effectively able to hold out until he gets what he wants.

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The Giants want to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. So do the Cardinals. Both teams have reportedly agreed to the “framework” of deals with the Marlins, meaning that if Stanton waived his no-trade clause, a deal could be completed to either team in short order. But as of this point, Giancarlo Stanton is still a Marlin, and the prevailing line of thought is that he’s stalling for time, hoping that his hometown Dodgers decide to get in on the action.

Certainly, Stanton would make the Dodgers better. He produced more WAR by himself (+6.9) than the team got from their entire outfield — Cody Bellinger and Chris Taylor racked up a good chunk of their WAR while playing the infield — and would certainly represent an upgrade over some kind of Joc Pederson/Kiké Hernandez platoon that the team is currently slated to run out in left field. By keeping him away from the Giants, they wouldn’t have to subject their left-handed rotation to facing him 19 times a year. And they’d again be the clear favorites to win the NL West, and probably the NL pennant as well.

But to this point, it doesn’t seem like the Dodgers have gotten involved in a serious way. While things could always change, LA currently seems somewhat content with the possibility of Stanton joining their arch-rivals, preferring to continue their plan of spreading their payroll around rather than concentrating their spending on a few top-tier players. But in looking at their situation, I think there’s actually a case to be made for the Dodgers to swoop in and take Stanton for themselves.

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Jeff Sullivan has found that framing data is going insane. Jeff has also previously written about the rise of the framing floor. And perhaps none of this should comes as a surprise. As the value of pitch-framing has become more apparent, clubs seem to have valued the skill more, emphasizing catcher presentation both in development and in their assessment of players. The narrowing of the advantage for some clubs was probably inevitable.

Still, there remain some players with a consistent year-to-year individual advantage at the position. Players like Yasmani Grandal and Yadier Molina and Buster Posey. And in 2017, there remained a sizeable gap between framing Haves and Have Nots.

After signing Matt Wieters to be their primary catcher last offseason, the Nationals suffered a 30-run decrease in framing runs from 2016 to 2017. Last season, only the Rockies were worse than the Nationals by that measure among postseason teams.

Readers of this site are likely familiar with Wieters’ framing issues. This author alone has addressed them at least three times: prior to last offseason, prior to the trade deadline, and during the postseason. And even though Wieters exercised his $10.5 million option earlier this offseason, the Nationals could still stand to upgrade at the position.

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The Detroit Tigers are shedding veteran contracts and restocking what had become a depleted farm system. That’s good news for the team’s future. It’s bad news for their fans in terms of watching winning baseball. As with any rebuild, near-term pennant contention isn’t part of the plan.

Al Avila is approaching the situation with a stiff upper lip. As unpleasant of a task as it might be — no one likes to lose — Detroit’s GM accepts the fact that in order to get better, his team first has to get worse. That’s why he traded J.D. Martinez, Justin Verlander, Justin Upton, Justin Wilson, and even his own son. And he’s not done dealing.

During the General Managers’ Meetings in Orlando, Avila praised both the prospects he’s been acquiring and the young talent that has already begun contributing at the big league level. He then went on to suggest the latter group might not want to invest too heavily in Detroit-area real estate. Read the rest of this entry »

When Travis Sawchick asked you which question was most important on Shohei Ohtani’s questionnaire, you answered overwhelmingly that the team capable of keeping him healthy — or of convincing Ohtani that they’d keep him healthy — would win out. Travis went on to use a metric, Roster Resource’s “Roster Effect” rating, to get a sense of which team that might be. The Brewers, Cubs, Pirates, and Tigers performed best by that measure.

Of course, that’s just one way of answering the question. Health is a tough thing to nail down. To figure out which team is capable of keeping Ohtani the healthiest, it’s worth considering the possible implications of health in baseball. Roster Effect, for example, considers the quality of the player and seems to be asking: which rosters were affected the most by poor health? That’s one way of approaching it. Let’s try a few others and see who comes out on top.

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