It’s no secret that, over the last several years, we’ve been seeing more and more high velocity in the major leagues. The league-average fastball keeps getting hotter, thanks to different training techniques, and thanks to different young-player development, and thanks to God knows how many other things. It’s not that everyone now can throw 95; it’s that the guys who can throw 95 are no longer thought of as freaks. Every team has at least a few of them stashed away.

The velocity trend has lifted many boats. As you can imagine, with league-wide velocity increasing, the same has been apparent on the team level. The Pirates, just as one example, have pretty clearly targeted hard throwers, and that’s just a part of their complicated plan. Not every team has participated, however. The Angels haven’t featured too many hard throwers, as Jered Weaver has taken it upon himself to counter Garrett Richards. The Diamondbacks were more finesse-y for a stretch, before picking it up last season. And the Giants have been another exception. Probably the greatest exception — no team has averaged a slower fastball over the last four years. Presumably related to that, the Giants have also thrown the lowest rate of fastballs.

Yet now they’re a team in transition. I’m not saying this is intentional, but looking ahead, the Giants are lined up to be a harder-throwing baseball team. After years of sagging velocity, the 2016 Giants could be almost league average.

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You smell that? It’s baseball’s prospect-list season. The fresh top-100 lists — populated by new names as well as old ones — seem to be popping up each day. With the individual rankings coming out, some organization rankings are becoming available, as well. I have always regarded the organizational rankings as subjective — and, as a result, not 100% useful. Utilizing the methodology I introduced in my article on prospect evaluation from this year’s Hardball Times Annual, however, it’s possible to calculate a total value for every team’s farm system and remove the biases of subjectivity. In what follows, I’ve used that same process to rank all 30 of baseball’s farm systems by the surplus WAR they should generate.

I provide a detailed explanation of my methodology in the Annual article. To summarize it briefly, however, what I’ve done is to identify WAR equivalencies for the scouting grades produced by Baseball America in their annual Prospect Handbook. The grade-to-WAR conversion appears as follows.

Prospect Grade to WAR Conversion

Prospect Grade	Total WAR	Surplus WAR
80	25.0	18.5
75	18.0	13.0
70	11.0	9.0
65	8.5	6.0
60	4.7	3.0
55	2.5	1.5
50	1.1	0.5
45	0.4	0.0

To create the overall totals for this post, I used each team’s top-30 rankings per the most recent edition of Baseball America’ Prospect Handbook. Also accounting for those trades which have occurred since the BA rankings were locked down, I counted the number of 50 or higher-graded prospects (i.e. the sort which provide surplus value) in each system. The results follows.
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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 San Francisco Giants. 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 / St. Louis / San Diego / Seattle / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
When preparing the depth-chart graphics such as one finds below, it’s not always possible to fully represent the manner in which every player is likely to be deployed over the course of a season. In case of the Giants, for example, Buster Posey (606 PA, 6.3 zWAR) is a candidate to receive a number of starts at first base. Yet it’s also probably not inaccurate to characterize Brandon Belt (485 PA, 2.5 zWAR) as the team’s starting first baseman. To include Posey’s name at first wouldn’t have been wrong, at all. But it would have also required seconds — or perhaps even an entire minute — of more work. That’s a minute which the author could have utilized to the end of Googling his name on the internet and further crushing himself under the weight of his own vanity.

Posey isn’t merely the best player on the Giants, but also nearly the whole league. Angel Pagan (473 PA, 0.4 zWAR) definitely isn’t the worst player in the league, but he does appear — per Dan Szymborski’s computer, at least — he does appear to represent the club’s worst projected starter. If anyone cares, Jarrett Parker (515 PA, 1.1 zWAR) is also an outfielder and, despite a forecasted strikeout rate of 39.4%, receives a more encouraging prognosis than Pagan.

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The word “move” is used in the context of an offseason to denote any number of varying transaction types. A trade is a move. A free-agent signing is a move. A player being designated for assignment is a move, or claimed off waivers, or sold to Japan. Players coming and going from rosters are the moves of the winter, and they’re the means by which the public tends to evaluate a team’s offseason.

The calculus for the outlook of the upcoming season is constantly changing throughout the offseason as these myriad moves transpire. When a team signs a star free-agent pitcher, we know that that team is several wins better than they were the day before. When a rebuilding club trades away its slugger in the final year of his contract for prospects, we understand that they’ve dropped a couple wins for the upcoming season.

But there’s another sort of move that happens during the offseason that’s more subtle, and it, too, changes the calculus of the upcoming season, though it often seems to be overlooked. We spend so much time and effort analyzing who “won or lost” the offseason that it’s easy to forget how much change should be expected from a team’s returning players. The Rangers didn’t go out and sign Yu Darvish this offseason, but he is expected to be a valuable addition to this year’s roster, an extra four or so wins added without any kind of traditional offseason move. Without doing anything, the Rangers rotation looks significantly better than it did at the end of last year.

Six years ago, Dave Cameron wrote a short post on this site titled 2009 Is Not a Constant. I recommend you read it, and sub in “2015” for “2009” when applicable, but here’s a relevant passage anyway:

We all know about career years and how you have to expect regression after a player does something way outside the ordinary, but regression doesn’t just serve to bring players back to earth after a big year.

Regression “fixes” a lot of problem spots from the prior year, even if the team doesn’t make a serious effort to change out players. The Royals got a .253 wOBA out of their shortstops a year ago. I don’t care how bad you think Yuniesky Betancourt is, you have to expect that number to be higher this year. They didn’t do anything to improve their shortstop position this winter, but the level of production they got from the position in 2009 is not their expected level of production for 2010.

…

You cannot just look at a team’s prior year won loss record – or even their pythagorean record – make some adjustments for the off-season transactions, and presume that’s a good enough estimator of true talent for the 2010 team.

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Way back on April 11 of last year, when the Matt Williams-led Nationals were still World Series favorites and Jed Lowrie was still the starting shortstop for the Astros, an unassuming at-bat took place between Matt Carpenter and Johnny Cueto in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cueto, facing his 45th batter of the season, quickly got ahead in the count, 0-2, spotting consecutive fastballs on the outer edge against which Carpenter could only muster a foul ball. Carpenter, who led the league in pitches per plate appearance in 2014, with 4.4, took a third-pitch fastball just inside for ball one. Then another fastball, outside, for ball two. Then a similar fastball, this one a bit lower and still outside for ball three. With the count now full, Carpenter took one more pitch, a low slider, for ball four, laid down his bat and took his base.

It’s not the kind of thing that makes fans jump up out of their seats, or really have any kind of reaction from their seats. It’s just a walk, seemingly as unremarkable as any other, especially given Carpenter’s role in the event, if not for the fact that it came after an 0-2 count, something Chris Sale only let happen once in 854 batters faced last year. Cueto did it in his second start, and then nine more times throughout the course of the year, more than anyone else in baseball save for Baltimore’s Ubaldo Jimenez.

Cueto was one of only four pitchers to break the 10-walk threshold after 0-2 counts, joining Jimenez, Trevor Bauer and Gio Gonzalez. Given enough tries, a hardcore baseball fan probably could have guessed those three names. Bauer, Gonzalez, and Jimenez are the kind of guys who issue plenty of walks all season long, so they’re the kind of guys one might expect to issue plenty of walks after 0-2 counts, too. Those three each routinely post walk rates close to or north of 10%. Cueto, on the other hand, walked just 5% of his batters last year, and is known for possessing impeccable command.

Going back several seasons, Cueto’s place on the leaderboard of 0-2 counts lost to walks remains equally eye-popping:

Cueto is the only pitcher in the top five with an overall walk rate under 8%, and therefore leads the top 10 in the percentage of his total walks that come after he’s ahead of the batter 0-2. Putting that into more perspective: since 2013, Cueto’s walked 129 batters, and 15% of those walks started out as an 0-2 count. As effective and entertaining as Cueto may be, this must be the sort of thing that’s downright maddening for fans, coaches, and teammates alike.

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For the next five minutes, convince yourself that Barry Bonds retired following the 1998 season. Perhaps he suffered a bad injury in the offseason prior to spring training in 1999. Maybe he got tired of playing baseball and wanted to become a farmer. Make up whatever fantastic story you want to about his life after 1998 — just don’t have it include playing major league baseball.

We’re focusing on 1998, of course, because that’s the final year Bonds was considered “clean” by most sources. For our purposes, I’m not going to try to pinpoint specific months or dates: 1999 was the first season Bonds had Greg Anderson as a full time personal trainer, the man who supposedly introduced him to certain PEDs, and there are books written about this subject that can inform a reader on specific timing far better than I can here. For today, the offseason after the 1998 is the delineating line.

——–

It’s the winter of 1998. K-Ci & JoJo are on the top of the charts with “All My Life.” In theaters, You’ve Got Mail reigns supreme. When the news of Barry Bonds’ retirement breaks, newspaper columns talk about how incredible his 13-year career was — often juxtaposed to the outsized personality he showed in the clubhouses of the Pirates and Giants. SportsCenter is particularly watchable, and Stuart Scott and Rich Eisen reflect on what might have been: about how, if only he were able to play for a few more years, Bonds could have been the first player in baseball history to hit 500 home runs and steal 500 bases. What an honor to have been able to watch this guy play, they say to the camera.

Following the sudden shock of his retirement, writers and analysts turn to another subject: Bonds’ Hall of Fame chances. They tally his counting statistics through the 1998 season and compare them against every player since 1871:

Given the exceptional power and speed numbers, as well as his stellar defense, Bonds has the statistics to get into Cooperstown on one of his first few tries. However, there is one issue that raises a flag for voters: his character. Always making the game about himself, Bonds’ history is littered with showing up coaches, arguing about his contracts, and always needing to to be the center of attention. After a couple years of not getting in, comparisons to Dick Allen’s situation starts to surface, but finally — after Bonds has paid his character penance — he’s voted in. A few years later, analysts run the numbers on the best players in history up to their age-34 season with a new metric, Wins Above Replacement. Bonds is the 12th-best player in baseball history up to 1998 by WAR for players aged 34 and under, and he ends up 19th overall with no age cap.

Even though he retired with seemingly so much left to give on the field (he put up 8.5 WAR in his final season, 1998), Bonds is a clear Hall of Famer.

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For the Giants, it’s easy to say this has been an offseason of risk. They’ve invested a fortune in Johnny Cueto, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. They’ve invested a slightly smaller fortune in Jeff Samardzija, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his most recent second half. And now, as of Thursday, they’ve invested a smaller fortune still in Denard Span, suggesting they aren’t too worried about his 2015 injury problems. It’s simple to see how this could conceivably blow up in the Giants’ faces. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Deeply flawed most recent seasons.

Of course, there’s upside to the Cueto deal. Of course, there’s upside to the Samardzija deal. And now, take Span. There’s no getting away from the fact that he spent much of last year hurt, eventually undergoing season-ending hip surgery. But Span wasn’t extended a qualifying offer, so the Giants aren’t losing a draft pick. And it’s a three-year commitment with a $31 million guarantee. There are incentives, and if Span hits them — if he hits all of them — then, over the next three years, he’ll earn as much money as J.A. Happ. There’s upside to the pitcher contracts, but the upside with Span seems plenty more reachable.

Leave aside for a moment the Giants didn’t have a real in-house center fielder. Leave aside for a moment the market isn’t flush with alternatives. There are a few places where I think teams are a little too cautious with their money. I think teams are still too cautious with talented Japanese and Korean players, placing the major leagues on too high a pedestal. And I think teams are too cautious with players who have injury questions. We’ve seen, for example, the Dodgers work to accumulate a bunch of affordable arms with injury backgrounds. That’s taking advantage of what they perceive to be a soft part of the market.

Span fits in a similar place, except he’s a position player, and not a pitcher, so he doesn’t have the usual pitcher concerns. Everybody wants talent and health. It’s expensive to get them both. The Giants are placing a bet on Span’s talent, figuring better health is going to follow.

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The San Francisco Giants have made a decent amount of noise this offseason, signing two of the five biggest starting-pitching contracts in free agency this year. Bringing in Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija certainly solidifies a rotation that needed help. Last season, Madison Bumgarner, Chris Heston, and Jake Peavy made just over half (82) of the Giants’ starts and were worth about eight wins above replacement, most of that from Bumgarner. The other 80 starts came primarily from Ryan Vogelsong, Tim Hudson, Matt Cain, and Tim Lincecum, and that group was below replacement level. Bolstering the rotation makes a lot of sense for the Giants, but the team now appears unlikely to pursue a major signing for the outfield, leaving it as the team’s primary weakness.

Having just one weakness instead of two is a positive development for the Giants, but perhaps the brightest spot for the club heading into next season is not their newfound rotation depth, but the return of an emergent infield after some breakout seasons last year from Brandon Crawford, Matt Duffy, and Joe Panik. Add in Brandon Belt, and that quartet in the field more than tripled their production, going from 5.7 WAR in 2014 to 18.1 WAR this past season. The lack of pitching depth and the issues in the outfield kept the Giants out of the playoffs, along with an unusually high bar for entry — if they had won 84 games in 2014, they still would have qualified for the postseason — but their infield was amazing and should be again next year.

The graph below shows the FanGraphs Depth Chart projections for every infield in Major League Baseball (catchers included). As we might expect, the Giants rate very highly.

The Chicago Cubs, with Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Addison Russell, and newly signed Ben Zobrist, look to be the class of MLB when it comes to the infield, but the Giants are not that far behind. There is a decent gap between the Giants and the Josh Donaldson-led Blue Jays. Unfortunately, the outfield is not quite as promising.

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On Monday, the San Francisco Giants reportedly agreed to terms with free agent starter Johnny Cueto on a six-year contract that will guarantee him $130 million, a pretty nice haul for a pitcher who struggled significantly in the second half of the year. And when you factor in that Cueto also obtained an opt-out after the second year, which could allow him to re-enter the market after the 2017 season and land a significant raise if he pitches well over his next 400 innings, this deal offers a lot of reasons for Cueto and his representatives to be happy with how the market has developed.

However, it’s interesting to see Cueto sign with the Giants for $130 million, when just a few weeks prior, his agent had publicly stated that a reported six year, $120 million offer from the Diamondbacks was a “low offer for the market”. In fact, his agent made it sound like they were going to be aiming quite a bit higher.

“It was a low offer for the market,” Dixon said. “We didn’t have to think hard to reject that offer. Arizona wanted to do something fast, but we didn’t want to take something below market value for a No. 1 starter, and with the recent events, I think that time gave us the reason.”

Agents are known for public comments that may not be reflective of reality, since their job is to get as much money for their clients as possible, not be objective sources of information. But in light of Dixon’s comments, it’s worth noting that Cueto actually took a smaller guaranteed income by accepting the Giants’ offer than he would have received if he had taken the Diamondbacks’ offer, due to the very different tax climates in California and Arizona.

For high-earners like Cueto, California has the highest marginal tax rate of any state in the country, coming in at 13.3% of all income over $1 million. Meanwhile, Arizona has one of the lowest tax rates in the country, with their highest marginal rate topping out at 4.5%. Of course, the tax code is complex, and it’s never just as simple as looking at the top marginal rate to figure out equivalent offers between teams in different states.

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Two weeks ago, the San Francisco Giants were in the midst of a push to try and steal Zack Greinke away from the Los Angeles Dodgers. With a strong offensive core in place, upgrading the pitching staff was the obvious move for the team this winter, and pairing Greinke with Madison Bumgarner at the top of the rotation would have given the team one of the best pitching duos in baseball. However, their dreams of landing Greinke were dashed when the Arizona Diamondbacks came in and blew away the competition, offering a six year and guaranteeing $206 million in salary; neither the Dodgers nor the Giants were reportedly anywhere close to that number.

Over the last couple of weeks, their backup plan has come into focus; sign two good pitchers instead of one great one. First, it was Jeff Samardzija, and then yesterday, it was Johnny Cueto, with the team agreeing to guarantee $220 million to the pair over the next six years; significantly more than they were willing to spend on Greinke by himself, in fact. And this brings up an interesting question: since the Giants apparently had $220 million to spend on starting pitching this winter, would they have been better off just outbidding the Diamondbacks to land the ace they wanted, or is spreading the wealth around a better plan?

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