As I write this, it’s looking increasingly likely that the Nationals will swing in and sign Yoenis Cespedes as a free agent. Reports are circulating that the Nationals have offered a five-year deal, and though that doesn’t mean anything’s finished, the rest of the market hasn’t developed like this. The Mets, according to other reports, are holding at three years, and if that were to keep up, Cespedes wouldn’t have much of a choice on his hands. Players love security, and Cespedes wants the biggest offer he can land.

An interesting side note is that, from appearances, the Nationals’ pursuit of Cespedes is ownership-driven. The owners have made such big moves before, and if Washington’s front office thought it was going to grab a high-profile outfielder, it probably wouldn’t have recently traded for Ben Revere. Adding Cespedes and Revere would leave someone out of a regular job, and that wouldn’t be an ideal circumstance. But it matters only so much how a move happens — what’s more important is what happens next. And the Nationals could soon have to deal with the Cespedes mystery.

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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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A year ago today, things were looking pretty good in Ian Desmond’s world. He was 29 years old and the starting shortstop for the Washington Nationals, heavy favorites to win the National League East. A few months earlier, Desmonds completed his third straight season of at least 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases. Defensive metrics indicated he was roughly average to above average at shortstop, and in terms of overall value, he was sitting on three straight seasons of more than four wins above replacement. In matters related to his bank account, he was just one season from free agency with no other big-name shortstops and a big payday.

But now, after a disastrous year, Desmond is still unsigned and his market is unclear.

There were some signs heading into last season that Desmond was in decline. His wRC+ went from 128 to 116 to 107 from 2012 to 2014, and his strikeouts moved in the opposite direction: 20% in 2012, 22% in 2013 and way up to 28% in 2014. Noticing a decline and expecting a collapse are two different situations, however. This is the list of players who, along with Ian Desmond, produced at least four WAR in each season from 2012 to 2014: Andrew McCutchen, Buster Posey, Dustin Pedroia, Ben Zobrist, Adam Jones, Alex Gordon, Robinson Cano, Miguel Cabrera, and of course, Mike Trout. A year ago at this time, MLB Trade Rumors rated Desmond as the fourth-best pending free agent and mentioned a potential $200 million contract with another good season.

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Sometimes, it’s only natural to wonder why it took so long for a trade to come to fruition. In an ideal world, the Nationals would have found a free agent outfielder with whom they could agree upon terms. In an ideal world, the Blue Jays would have found a free agent reliever with whom they could agree upon terms. Our world is less than ideal, though, and neither team found a fit. So a match was made between the two. Drew Storen will pitch high-leverage innings for the Blue Jays, now. As a result, Ben Revere will slap singles, run fast, and play the outfield for the Nationals.

This isn’t a trade that will make a monumental impact, either way. Revere, at his very best, is something like a three-win player who’s actually more like a two-win player, and the Nationals can keep him for another year after this one if they feel he’s deserving of a fourth trip to arbitration. Storen, at his very best, is something a two-win player who’s probably more like a one-win player, and he’s set to be a free agent after this season. Both will earn somewhere between five and ten million dollars this year. Nothing here moves any kind of needle too much. If it did, it wouldn’t make so much sense.

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One of the many reasons why it’s challenging to evaluate a front office is that it’s hard to know what to do with intent. All the stuff we actually see is results-based observation. This offseason, the Nationals wanted to sign Darren O’Day, but he went somewhere else for similar money. They wanted to sign Jason Heyward, but he went somewhere else for similar money. They wanted to sign Ben Zobrist, but he went somewhere else for similar money. They couldn’t even finish a deal for Brandon Phillips after Phillips wanted too much to waive his no-trade clause. The Nationals have had several plans, but the big thing they’ve actually done is sign Daniel Murphy, pending a physical. According to reports, it’s to be a three-year contract, worth $37.5 million.

You remember Murphy for his whirlwind October. For sure, it was a hell of a story, tracking the rise and fall of an unexpected superstar. If there was a mistake made, it was linking Murphy’s performance to his upcoming free-agent negotiations. When Murphy was white-hot, I remember reading speculation he could land a five-year contract. When he came undone in the World Series, many wondered how much money Murphy had cost himself. The playoffs were never going to be that important, relative to Murphy’s track record. He’s now signing the contract he was pretty much always going to get.

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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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You have a choice. I’ll give you $100 right now, or you can let me flip a coin. If it lands on heads, I’ll give you $250. But if it lands on tails, I’ll give you $20. I’m using a fair coin, so the expected value of flipping the coin is $135 based on the 50/50 odds it lands on heads or tails. If you like risk or are a risk-neutral person, it’s an easy decision to take your chances with the coin because the odds are strongly in your favor. If you’re a risk-averse person, however, you’re more likely to take the sure thing because $135 isn’t a whole lot more than $100, and $100 is a whole lot more than $20.

Let’s add another wrinkle. It’s the same choice, but if you choose the coin flip, you have to wait a month. The dollar amounts are the same, but now there’s a time component. To get the value of the coin flip, you need to apply a discount factor to the $135. For some people, that discount factor is pretty close to one, but it might be much lower if you’re strapped for cash and the $100 would dramatically improve your life in the present.

Major league players face a much higher stakes version of this decision when their club comes to them with a contract extension. Do they take a sure thing now, or do they wait and gamble on themselves? While we’re focusing a lot on the 2015-2016 free-agent class this month, there are eight players who could have been free agents for the first time this year but instead chose to cash out early by signing extensions. Did they make the right decision?

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As the winter meetings drew to a close yesterday, the market for Jason Heyward heated up, and based on reports from around the game, it appears that the three finalists for his services are the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs, and (surprisingly) the Washington Nationals. The Cardinals interest in keeping their star right fielder has been known for a while, while the Cubs have long been a rumored suitor; Heyward is the kind of player that analytically-inclined organizations are more likely to pay for, and teams don’t get a lot more analytically inclined than the Cubs right now. Besides, with a hole in center field — though Heyward could slide to right field if the team traded Jorge Soler and acquired another CF — and a young core of players poised to put the team on the brink of perennial success, Heyward makes plenty of sense for Chicago.

The Nationals weren’t really attached to Heyward much at all until yesterday, when Jon Heyman outed them as the mystery team in this chase. The team apparently jumped in on the outfielder after losing out on Ben Zobrist, and would likely slot Heyward in as their center fielder as well, creating an elite trio along with Bryce Harper and Jayson Werth. The Nationals have been looking to add another left-handed bat to their line-up, and with Michael Taylor maybe best suited for a fourth outfielder role at this point, signing Heyward is perhaps the easiest path to solving that problem while also upgrading perhaps the weakest spot on the team.

But where does he fit the best? Who needs him the most, and should be incentivized to pay the highest price? Let’s look at all three options.

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We are living in a golden age of youthful, historic talent, especially among position players. From the Cubs’ deep group led by Kris Bryant to Manny Machado in Baltimore, a critical mass of impact talent has entered the majors in recent seasons. Last week, we put the career of this group’s standard-bearer, Mike Trout, into some sort of historical perspective. This time around, let’s do the same with the guy who had an even better 2015, National League MVP Bryce Harper.

Mike Trout snuck up on a lot of people in the 2009 draft. His athleticism was unquestioned, but believe it or not, Trout’s bat was the one tool that wasn’t a slam dunk during his amateur career. He swung and missed an awful lot against relatively ordinary high school talent in New Jersey, and hadn’t built up the requisite high-end wooden bat tournament dominance that one might expect out of a very-top-of-the-draft guy. Therefore, he didn’t go at the very top of the draft; he went 25th overall to the Angels.

No such doubts existed regarding Harper. He was barely a teenager when he was bombing 500 foot drives, albeit with an aluminum bat, in a home run hitting contest at Tropicana Field. He was locked in as a Scott Boras client at a very early age, and his precocious nature can perhaps be best summed up thusly: he was the first overall pick in the 2010 draft out of the two-year College of Southern Nevada, a full year before his high school class graduated. That’s a man-child for you.

This obviously set the bar at a very, very high level with regard to his eventual major league performance. So high, in fact, that his perfectly acceptable though not overwhelming 2012-14 performance was seen by some as a disappointment. Then 2015 happened. Any number of superlatives can be applied to his MVP campaign, but perhaps the greatest tribute that could be paid is that he was pretty clearly better than Mike Trout last season, by any measure.

How do Harper’s three good though not great seasons, plus his 2015 for the ages compare to other players at the same age and/or experience level? Let’s look at Harper in the same way we recently examined Trout.

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Bryce Harper was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player. This is because he was almost certainly the National League’s most valuable player. I don’t want to get into the argument about the definition of “value,” and there are some halfway decent arguments that might conclude Harper got topped, but Harper is a wonderfully deserving winner, and his win comes absent any real controversy. The voting was unanimous, I should probably say. Harper got every single first-place vote. Which meant zero first-place votes for Paul Goldschmidt and Joey Votto, who each had maybe the best seasons for a first baseman since Albert Pujols in his prime. The National League had some awesome players! Harper ran away with things.

This was the year Harper reached a new level. It was a level people long suspected would be achievable for a player with Harper’s skills, but you have to realize how uncommon it actually is for a player to perform around his ceiling. Mike Trout has spoiled us, but now Harper’s up there, too, having broken out. Here’s an easy way to visualize this: Before the year, at FanGraphs, we published player projections. Player projections are everywhere, and we had our own numbers. Then players subsequently posted real numbers. It can be fun to compare the actual numbers and the projected numbers, and here’s a table of the 10 hitters who batted at least 500 times and who beat their projected OPS figures by the most:

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