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In a weak free agent class, no team looked as vulnerable to being picked clean in free agency like the Dodgers; by our rankings, they were potentially set to lose the #2, #6, and #8 free agents in this class, in Justin Turner, Kenley Jansen, and Rich Hill. Last week, they made sure they’d bring back at least one of the three by signing Hill to a three year, $48 million contract; today, it sounds like they’re going to get the other two as well.

Sources: #Dodgers close on both Turner AND Jansen.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 12, 2016

Hear #Dodgers Turner were close at 4 yrs, $64M, but could be higher total with deferrals to keep current value down.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) December 12, 2016

Dodgers source confirms 5yrs $80m with Jansen

— Jim Bowden (@JimBowden_ESPN) December 12, 2016

In prior years, the Dodgers preferred to eschew free agency, making trades to round out their roster instead, often taking on salary in order to build up their base of young talent. This year, the Dodgers are just using their hoards of cash to keep their roster together. The three will cost about $50 million per year for the next three years, then Jansen and Turner will cost about $35 million per year for the final two years of their deals, so clearly, the Dodgers resources are being put to use here.

But it’s also worth noting that, for what they’re getting, these seem mostly like pretty good deals. I had Turner and Hill rated as my top two free agent bargains headed into the winter, and that was at presumed prices of 4/$82M for Turner and 2/$48M for Hill. In the end, they got both for significantly less than what I expected.

You can certainly quibble with giving $80 million to a reliever; the odds of Jansen still being a lights out reliever in a few years are pretty slim. That one is definitely a win-now move with some likely long-term pain associated with the cost of acquiring an elite bullpen arm. But whatever overpay you think Jansen might be getting, Turner is likely to offset that with his expected savings.

At 4/$64M, Turner is getting just a bit more than Josh Reddick, but, uh, Turner is a lot better than Reddick.

Our projections from the Top 50 free agents post.

Turner is not that much worse of a hitter than Edwin Encarnacion, only he can also play the field. The power isn’t the same, and teams continue to pay less for singles and doubles than home runs, but Turner gets to a similar overall value, and when you toss in the ability to play third base, 4/$64M in this market seems like a steal.

We’ll have more on these signings once they become official, but the Dodgers have made it clear that they’re going for it again, and this time, they’re just doing it the old fashioned way.

While you were off doing something else over the weekend, the Angels picked up a new second baseman. Granted, their new second baseman was to be someone else’s bench player, so we’re not talking about a blockbuster, and that same would-be bench player had just expressed frustration over losing his starting job. And so Danny Espinosa was sent to California, with the Nationals picking up Austin Adams and Kyle McGowin.

You want to know another way to know this wasn’t big? The Nationals made a trade for Angels prospects. As we all understand, the Angels don’t have prospects, and here Adams might be the one who’s slightly interesting. He’s been a tough-to-hit Double-A reliever with significant control problems. The Nationals didn’t get a lot for Espinosa’s final year of team control. The Angels, though, should probably be pretty happy. They’ve plugged what had been a gaping hole, and Espinosa suffers from a perception problem.

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Last Wednesday, the Nationals solved their center field problem by trading several of their best pitching prospects to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Adam Eaton. Last Friday, the Cardinals solved their center field problem by giving a bunch of money to free agent Dexter Fowler. Before signing Fowler, the Cardinals tried to trade for Eaton. Had the Nationals not been able to complete a deal for Eaton, they presumably would have been in on Fowler. So, with two teams making different decisions about big investments into how to land a center fielder, let’s compare the two players and the costs it took to acquire them.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Detroit Tigers. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Chicago NL / Houston / San Diego / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
Since 2009, only three different players have led Detroit batters by WAR: Miguel Cabrera (2009-13), Ian Kinsler (2014, -16), and J.D. Martinez (2015). According to Dan Szymborski’s computer, here are the probable top-three Tigers batters by WAR in 2017: Miguel Cabrera (583 PA, 4.0 zWAR), Ian Kinsler (631, 3.9), and J.D. Martinez (590, 3.1). That is, one finds, the precise same collection of players.

What does that say about a club generally? About this club specifically? Nothing definitive. That said, Detroit has developed a reputation in recent years for placing the majority of their eggs into expensive, aging baskets, and then the remainder of the eggs into whatever baskets happen to be lying around. The construction of the current roster — which pairs some well-compensated veterans like Cabrera and Kinsler with a replacement-level center-field platoon of Tyler Collins (463, 0.0) and JaCoby Jones (458, -0.1) — would appear to carry on that tradition.

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Since the middle of 2009, the Cardinals’ left fielder has been Matt Holliday. Injuries kept Holliday from playing a full season each of the last two years. For that reason and perhaps others, the team decided not to exercise his $17 million option, instead paying a $1 million buyout. Similarly, the team opted not to give a qualifying offer to Brandon Moss, who hit 28 homers but also struck out 30% of the time, somewhat limiting his value offensively. As a result, the Cardinals entered the offseason with two starting outfielders, Randal Grichuk and Stephen Piscotty, and a hole. Following Ian Desmond’s deal for $70 million with Colorado and the White Sox’ trade of Adam Eaton to Washington in return for major package of prospects, the Cardinals elected to fill that hole with Dexter Fowler on five-year contract worth $82.5 million.

Fowler is coming off the best campaign of his career, having slashed .276/.393/.447 and produced a 129 wRC+ for the Cubs while recording average defensive numbers in center field. The result: nearly a five-win season. Fowler’s best attribute on offense has been his ability to get on base. He has a career walk rate at 13%, and of active players with at least 2,000 plate appearances, only Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, Carlos Santana, Mike Trout, Jose Bautista, and Joey Votto have walked more frequently. He has generally been a high-BABIP player, only once (2015) recording a mark lower than .320. He doesn’t steal a lot, but he does so with an acceptable success rate, has hit double figures in every big-league season, and has posted good baserunning numbers throughout his career.

His success getting on base will make him an ideal fit for St. Louis, who have been itching to move Matt Carpenter down the order since Carpenter’s power surge in 2015. The team tried to shoehorn some players who weren’t good fits occasionally last season, but Fowler’s numbers profile well in the leadoff spot. Fowler should also help the Cardinals’ baserunning, which was awful last season. Also ideal for the Cardinals is Fowler’s aging profile. This deal will take Fowler through his age-35 season. Fortunately for St. Louis, Fowler’ skills at the plate should age pretty well. I looked for Fowler comps when I profiled him earlier in the offseason, and I found that hitters like Fowler have historically recorded a 110 wRC+ from ages 31-34.

Whether this turns out to be a good deal for the Cardinals isn’t likely to depend on Fowler’s bat, but his glove. The Cardinals wanted to find a center fielder capable of moving Randal Grichuk to a corner-outfield spot and improving the team’s defense. Fowler should improve the club’s outfield defense relative to the 2016 season, but there’s considerable debate over how well Fowler’s glove profiles in center field. Fowler’s defensive numbers in Colorado and Houston were pretty terrible; the last two seasons in Chicago, on the other hand, they’ve been close to average. Generally speaking, using three years of defensive numbers will give you the best idea of a player’s defensive talent level, but there has been a strong narrative to Fowler’s improved positioning helping him get to a lot more plays in the outfield.

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With Chris Sale now employed by the Boston Red Sox and Adam Eaton preparing for a season with front-row tickets to the Presidents Race, there can be no question about the current objectives of the White Sox. The stars-and-scrubs strategy they’ve employed for the past few years can now be viewed as an abject failure as the team revamps and retools by cashing in those aforementioned stars for players like Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, and Yoan Moncada, who figure to be key future contributors.

The term “fire sale” is a bit cliché, but it’s undeniable that there is an “everything must go” sense of urgency to what the White Sox are currently doing. Which means it remains likely that Jose Quintana’s days in the South Side are likely numbered and first baseman Jose Abreu may soon be out there door. If you’re placing odds on White Sox players likely to be traded in the near future, however, none will have higher odds than third baseman Todd Frazier.

The power-hitting Frazier is entering his final year of arbitration and will be 31 years old when Opening Day rolls around. According to the arbitration projections run by Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors, Frazier is likely to command a salary next year in the ballpark of $13.5 million. Over the past three seasons, Frazier has hit 104 homers – a figure that is second only to Josh Donaldson’s 107 among major-league third basemen. His ISO (isolated power) since 2015 is .241, or just a shade above Kris Bryant’s .238 ISO. Securing the services of a player with that kind of pop to man the hot corner on a one-year, $13.5 million contract would be an absolute coup in the free-agent market, but will the White Sox be able to convert that into a decent return in the trade market?

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The 2016 season featured the second-most home runs in baseball’s history. Though a few people around baseball want to attribute it to the placement of power hitters higher in the lineup or better coaching based on better data, the evidence that both exit velocity and home runs per contact are up across the league refutes the first, and the evidence of the latter is minor. It’s a bit of an open mystery, but it’s certainly possible that the ball is different now.

In any case, the fact that homers are up is irrefutable. And it’s on the game to adjust. So I asked many of baseball’s best managers a simple question: with home runs up, how have you adjusted how you approach the game? Lineups, rotations, bullpens, hooks: is anything different for them today than it was two years ago?

*****

Terry Collins, New York Mets: No, really doesn’t. The game has changed, that’s the game now: home runs. And we’re lucky we got a few guys who can hit ’em. That’s where it’s at. As I said all last year, our team was built around power, so you sit back and make sure they have enough batting practice and be ready to start the game. We’ve got a good offensive team. Neil. Getting Neil Walker back, that’s big. David back and Ces and Jay and Granderson. We got a bench full of guys that could be everyday players. We’re pretty lucky.

I watched the playoffs, too, and I know what you’re talking about. I talked to Joe Maddon a couple days ago about how the playoffs may change and he said, ‘We didn’t have your pitching. I’ll leave ’em in.’

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There’s a genre of baseball discussion known as the “fun fact.” You might also call it “trivia.” A player is the first to accomplish a particular feat in 40 years; another is the only one to reach a notable career mark in a particular season. The genre doesn’t demand rigorous analysis; it’s merely a collection of interesting tidbits which may or may not be relevant in more thorough discussions. Some fun facts are amazing and others are forced to the point of farce.

There’s another genre of baseball discussion we’ll call “can he keep doing this thing?” analysis. This is very familiar to the loyal FanGraphs reader. We do this kind of thing all the time. We notice a player trying something new and try to determine if it’s meaningful. This article will subject Cesar Hernandez’s 2016 season to both sorts of discussion.

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Sherman Johnson, seen here beginning a terrific double play, wasn’t selected in the Rule 5 draft.

The purpose of this post is to notify the right-thinking members of the public that, contradictory to what “sense” and “reason” would appear to dictate, that Angels infielder and future major-leaguer Sherman Johnson was not selected in baseball’s Rule 5 draft this morning.

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About a month ago at this site, Dave Cameron argued that any offers for Andrew McCutchen this offseason would likely reflect McCutchen’s potential for a rebound from a poor and (until recently) anomalous 2016 season. Last week, Jeff Sullivan argued that the Washington Nationals represented an ideal fit for McCutchen. Finally, this past week, it seemed — for a time, at least — as though a deal between the Pirates and Nationals would come to fruition, with the latter club prepared to offer major prospects for the former’s star.

The deal didn’t happen, though, and the Nationals, after having negotiated for and failing to get Chris Sale from the White Sox, ultimately acquired Adam Eaton from that same team. That haul, or something close to it, could have gone to Pittsburgh in the Pirates’ quest to contend beyond 2017. This seems like a bad outcome for the Pirates, but it could prove to be a blessing in disguise for a team that still has a shot at contention next season.

The conventional wisdom around the Pirates’ interest in trading McCutchen is that they perhaps know something the rest of us don’t about one of the best players of the last decade. From 2011 through 2015, Andrew McCutchen averaged nearly seven wins above replacement per season. That’s a Hall of Fame-level peak, but last season, McCutchen’s bat went from spectacular to slightly above average. Add in below-average defense, and at the still-young age of 29, McCutchen went from Hall of Fame to below average in the blink of an eye. Given the height of the aforementioned peak, it’s entirely reasonable to expect a bounce-back season for McCutchen. That Pittsburgh would move McCutchen might suggest that the bounce back isn’t quite as likely as one might think. I’m not so sure.

The Pirates are in a unique situation: they have a corner outfielder in Starling Marte who could play quite capable defense in center field, another young corner outfielder in Gregory Polanco who has improved in his time in the majors, and one of the best prospects in baseball in Austin Meadows, who also plays the corner outfield. Marte is locked up through 2021 on a cheap, team-friendly deal. Polanco is in the same situation through 2023, and if the team calls up Meadows sometime in 2017, they will retain his services through the 2023 season. Andrew McCutchen has two team-friendly seasons left, totaling $28.5 million. While his 2016 campaign was disappointing, his value on the trade market remains incredibly high.

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