In 2015, there were fewer pitchers (74) qualifying for the AL and NL ERA titles than in any season going back to 1995 (70). In any given season, the number of first-time ERA qualifiers is about a quarter of that population. This last year was no exception, as 18 pitchers qualified for the ERA title for the first time.

What was unique about 2015 was the high quality of those first-time ERA qualifiers. AL first-timers included Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar, Taijuan Walker, Collin McHugh, Trevor Bauer and Marco Estrada. Their NL counterparts included Jake Arrieta, Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Kyle Hendricks, Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha. There are some heavy hitters on those two lists; you might have to go back to the Class of 1984, which boasted Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser, Mark Langston, Mike Moore and Oil Can Boyd among its members, to find a comparable group at the top.

This week and next, I’m going to attempt to reach into the large population of zero-time ERA qualifiers to identify the top breakthrough candidates for 2016 in both leagues. Today, it’s the American League, and the Orioles’ Kevin Gausman.

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At the kind of money he wanted, Chris Davis basically had a one-team market. Other big-spending teams didn’t have openings at first base, and other big-spending teams weren’t buying Scott Boras’ pitch of Davis as a versatile could-be outfielder. The Orioles sensed even a month ago they would be bidding against themselves, and they attempted a couple leverage plays to try to force Boras’ hand. Yet Boras won, as he almost always does. Here’s what’s being reported: Davis re-signed with Baltimore for a seven-year deal worth $161 million. Somehow, the commitment got bigger from what was reported weeks back. The Orioles were the only team around $150 million, and Scott Boras got them to add on more.

That makes it kind of a bad look for Baltimore. The easy takeaway is that Peter Angelos just got played. And at the end of the day, it’s highly unlikely another team would’ve been willing to come close to this, had the Orioles walked away. But for one thing — however much this is worth — this does send a good message that the Orioles will spend to keep good players around. People have doubted that in the past, and now Davis joins Darren O’Day as a returning key player. And there are other factors, as well, in support of the idea this isn’t a certain catastrophe. This isn’t quite a straight-up $161-million commitment. There are, let’s say, special considerations.

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This morning, after a long and protracted negotiation that finally resulted in the team threatening to pursue alternative free agents, the Orioles reportedly agreed to re-sign their slugging first baseman Chris Davis. The price? $161 million over seven years, giving Davis the same annual average value as Jason Heyward, the winter’s best available position player. And Davis was able to land this contract despite the fact this contract is probably going to be a disaster and that the market for hitters has been quite frigid this winter.

Given the limited suitors looking for a first baseman, the remaining crop of quality outfielders, and the risks surrounding Davis’ skillset, this might be Scott Boras’ most impressive victory over reason yet. As an agent, he has perfected the ability to go around the baseball operations department, dealing directly with owners who simply don’t have the same level of knowledge as the people they employ to run their team on a daily basis. Except in this case, even Peter Angelos had to know he was bidding against himself.

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Let’s face it — there’s no way not to feel uncomfortable about the Chris Davis sweepstakes.

I’m not just referring to how the Orioles and Davis seem to be at something of an impasse. I’m not just referring to how Davis has to this point been unable to drum up much of a market. It’s just, this is going to require a lot of money, and it’s hard to know what Davis is going to be. He’s as much a boom-or-bust player as you can find: Last year, he hit as well as Jose Bautista; the year before, he hit as well as Jed Lowrie. He’s been bad and he’s been an MVP candidate, and there’s a whole lot of space in between.

I don’t think player comps can be much help. For one thing, there just aren’t very many. Davis is an unusual player, historically speaking, given his massive power and his massive strikeout side effect. Maybe the two best comps are Jim Thome and Ryan Howard, and their careers went in completely opposite directions. Those comps are as unhelpful as Davis’ recent track record. He could turn out really amazing. He could be a disaster. This isn’t particularly illuminating.

Davis is 230 pounds of uncertainty. The extent of his success will be determined by what happens with a handful of swings every season, and there’s a lot of room for that to go right or wrong. Basically, there’s no achieving actual comfort. There’s only pursuing artificial comfort. That comes out of just learning more information — more knowledge has to be a good thing, right? — so let’s take a look at something that’s been going on under the hood. Let’s learn more about Davis, even if it might not ultimately help to understand what his future’s going to be.

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There were only four of them. Blown saves, that is. I presume you’ve read the title. Zach Britton blew four saves last year, which actually isn’t a particularly noteworthy fact. Britton blew four saves in 40 tries, which is great, but it certainly wasn’t the best, and Britton blew four saves the year before too, in one more try. It’s great but not spectacular, especially relative to Britton’s season as a whole, which was both great and spectacular and plenty of other adjectives like awesome (in the literal sense of actually inspiring awe) or remarkable or astonishing or breathtaking or historic. Britton struck out nearly a third of all batters he faced and posted the highest ground ball rate in history. That’s spectacular. “History” in this case dates back to just 2002, but Britton stands alone at the top by a comfortable margin, 3.5 standard deviations above the mean and a full standard deviation above the guy in third place. History doesn’t reach back super far in this instance, but given the magnitude of his lead, we can expect Britton’s place in history to continue for some time, given Britton doesn’t go and break his own record.

The save is a mostly silly statistic anyway, which by proxy makes it’s cousin, the blown save, equally frivolous. But what if I told you that simply by watching how Zach Britton blew his four saves in 2015, you’d come away knowing more about Zach Britton, more about the nature of saves and blown saves, and maybe more about other things, too? Well, you’d either continue reading the blog post or you wouldn’t. That’s what would happen if I told you what I just told you. I’d prefer that you continue reading the blog post, but let’s be honest it’s 2016 and you’ve probably got a phone to look at, so really you could just scan the moving pictures and get the gist. I’m not gonna lie to you. Just know that my words would feel left out and sad. 🙁
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With the holiday break coming to an end, Phase II of the 2015-16 free agent and trade markets is about to kick off in earnest. As noted by August Fagerstrom earlier today, player movement is likely to be heavier than in the typical January, with plenty of top free agents, particularly on the position player side, still on the market.

The first wave of free-agent signings was particularly kind to starting pitchers, both at the top and middle of the market. Still, a handful of starters — Wei-Yin Chen, Yovani Gallardo and Ian Kennedy at the forefront — remain available. Does the market have enough suitors and dollars to satisfy those three? Today, we’ll look at the first of those three, who has spent all of his stateside career with the Orioles.

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The week between Christmas and New Year’s is traditionally a quiet one in baseball circles, as most home offices are closed, and many top executives vacation far, far away. This year hasn’t exactly been typical, with one big trade (Aroldis Chapman to the Yanks) and one reasonably significant free agent signing already in the books (Henderson Alvarez to the A’s) and another one pending a physical (Daniel Murphy to the Nationals).

There are still many big name free agents yet to sign on with their new clubs, and most of them are of the position player variety. Outfielders Justin Upton, Yoenis Cespedes and Alex Gordon, to name just three, are still on the board. So is first baseman Chris Davis, whose recent offensive contributions outstrip even those three. The Orioles reportedly offered Davis in the vicinity of $150 million over seven years to remain in the fold, only to be rebuffed. Has that offer clogged up position player free agency? And is an investment of that magnitude in this sort of player a wise one?

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Aroldis Chapman throws a changeup, and I’ve written before about how unfair that is. It’s not the best pitch in baseball or anything, but because Chapman’s fastball might be the actual best pitch in baseball, it seems almost impossible to defend against both the heater and the change, not to mention the slider. When you have to prepare for 100, I don’t know how you adjust on the fly for 88, with the same throwing motion. My favorite fun fact from a couple years back is that, of all the swings against Chapman’s changeup, just one made contact.

Chapman isn’t the game’s only elite reliever, and he’s not the only elite reliever with a signature pitch. When you have an elite reliever with a signature pitch, you can imagine it’s difficult to try to hit anything that isn’t the signature pitch. Take Zach Britton, who within a couple months went from potential waiver bait to shutdown closer. This past year, Britton took another step forward, leaning heavily upon his sinker. It’s becoming a famously dominant sinker, which has been a wonderful development for Britton’s non-sinker.

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In light of the tremendous success of last week’s edition of Let’s Find a Home — for which we took about 20 minutes to send Johnny Cueto eagerly off to San Francisco — I thought it would be right neighborly to take on a different, lonely, sad free agent this holiday season. So, people, won’t you help me find a new happy home for Chris Davis? He’s tall, he hits homers, and he is completely potty trained! Adoption fees start at $150 million.

There’s an alternate reality somewhere out beyond our galaxy (yes, I saw Star Wars a few days ago) where Chris Davis is taking one year “rebuild his value” offers from a few teams after another unsuccessful season. In that galaxy, Chris Davis is Mike Napoli, and when he signs, it doesn’t merit a press conference, only a few lines from his new manager amidst discussion of other business. That’s where things were headed for Davis after 2014. He was worth not quite a full win that season, batting below .200, just reaching a .300 on-base percentage, and slugging a hearty (for a middle infielder) .404. This came following a seven win season. Seven! Wins! Chris Davis posted a seven win season then wasn’t worth a single win the next season. Ahhhh baseball!

Then last season, Davis was worth 5.6 wins. Ahhhh baseball reprise! Chris Davis is your friend who insists on driving but doesn’t understand the subtlety required by brake and acceleration pedals. His car lurches forward off the line then, as soon as he sees anyone slowing in front of him, he slams on the breaks. Can you pay that guy like he’s a champion race-car driver?

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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 Baltimore Orioles. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Cincinnati / Kansas City / New York AL / Philadelphia / Pittsburgh / Texas / Toronto.

Batters
If there’s one thing that irks Dan Szymborski, it’s when people cast aspersions against great Polish-American war hero Casimir Pulaski. If there’s a second thing that irks him, however, it’s when people calculate the sum of the WAR figures displayed in the depth charts of these ZiPS posts, add those totals to 47.7 (i.e. the win total of a hypothetical replacement-level club), and then regard the result as Szymborski’s unambigious win projection for the team in question. Bad form, is what Szymborski has to say about that maneuver.

That caveat having been made, what one finds upon revisiting last year’s ZiPS post for Baltimore is that the club’s depth-chart projections accounted for roughly 34 WAR — which figure, added to 47.7, equals 81.7. Meanwhile, here’s the Orioles’ final record from 2015: 81-81. And their BaseRuns record, also: 79-83. What appears to have happened, at the most basic level, is that Szymborski’s computer regarded Baltimore as almost a perfectly average team and then Baltimore performed like almost a perfectly average team.

This is bad news for the current iteration of the club, which accounts for only about 27 WAR (i.e. seven fewer wins than last year) on the depth chart below. Among the position players, there’s a great deal of uncertainty after Adam Jones and Manny Machado. Indeed, right field and designated hitter actually receive negative-win projections. So, not ideal. That said, there’s some positive uncertainty, as well — particularly in left fielder Hyeon-soo Kim, whose combination of contact ability and power invite comparisons to the best version of Nick Markakis.

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