The Marlins gave Edinson Volquez two years and $22 million. Now, I know what you might be thinking: The Marlins might have to issue bigger guarantees in order to convince players to join them. But I don’t know that for sure. What I do know for sure is that Volquez turns 34 next summer. Last season he had a worse-than-average ERA, a worse-than-average FIP, and a worse-than-average xFIP. Those same three things apply, also, to his overall career numbers. Volquez isn’t much. Fifth starter, perhaps.

The Pirates have given Ivan Nova three years and $26 million. Now, I know what you might be thinking: I should add in the modest performance-based incentives. But I just want to deal with the guarantee. Nova turns 30 in a matter of weeks. Last season he had an average ERA, an average FIP, and a better-than-average xFIP. This was supposed to be a terrible offseason to look for free-agent starters, but the Pirates still seem to have gotten something of a deal.

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Somewhere around two years and $6 million a year: those appear to be the terms for a certain kind of match this offseason. A match between budget-conscious teams seeking to acquire meaningful (if flawed) talent and players willing to forgo a bigger one-year deal in order to gain an extra year of security. Matt Joyce, Steve Pearce, Wilson Ramos, Sean Rodriguez, even Junichi Tazawa — they’ve all given us brief glimpses into above-average work, and longer looks at less exciting work.

In a way, Daniel Hudson fits right into this collection of players: according to Jeff Passan, he received a two-year, $11 million deal from the Pirates. If he’s their closer for the next two years, that will be a bargain; he could also return hardly anything. In either case, discussing the deal in such simple terms is selling his story way, way too short.

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The Pirates almost traded Andrew McCutchen. That’s all anyone could really think about when McCutchen was present at the Pirates’ annual PirateFest, the Saturday after the end of the winter meetings. Maybe the public never should’ve had any idea in the first place, but teams leak information, and the McCutchen rumors ran rampant. It made the occasion a little awkward, an occasion where fans would prefer to simply embrace the homegrown superstar, free of complicating thoughts. It’s anyone’s guess how much longer McCutchen might last where he is.

The reality of the Pirates’ situation is that the commitment to McCutchen probably isn’t forever. He’s under contract one more year, with a club option after that, and it’s hard to see the two parties together in 2019. It would’ve made plenty of sense for the Pirates to make a deal last week. It also made plenty of sense for the Pirates to hold off. It would now appear McCutchen will at least open the next season in Pittsburgh. Beyond that, it’s murky, but no one yet has to say their goodbyes.

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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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Teams have gotten pretty good about handling trade rumors. The teams themselves don’t operate any differently, but whenever any big name is discussed, you just about always hear the team isn’t shopping him. Rather, the front office will frequently indicate it’s open to anything. “Listening to offers,” as if there’s any other way. Big names still get traded as often as ever, but teams try to reduce anxiety in the meantime. They don’t want people stressing out until or unless there’s something worth stressing over.

The Andrew McCutchen offers have taken on a different feel. At first, it felt like, all right, maybe the Pirates would be open to trading him. But Wednesday, reports emerged that the Pirates are the ones being aggressive. I don’t know if that’s coming from the Pirates organization or somewhere(s) else, but this is pretty unusual. Pair that with the news that Austin Meadows will be playing an outfield corner and you definitely get the sense McCutchen’s days with the Pirates are numbered.

As Ken Rosenthal and others have written, it looks more likely than ever that McCutchen’s going to be dealt. If it happens, it would hardly be a shock to see it happen before the end of next week’s winter meetings. McCutchen is still to be considered a premium outfielder, so any number of teams would love to pick him up. After examining the landscape, though, I don’t see a better fit than the Nationals.

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$11.5 million is what the Braves will give Sean Rodriguez over the next two years, and that seems fine even if he reverts to a utility infielder that faces mostly lefties. But there’s a few things Rodriguez did right last year, and if he does those things right again, he’ll be worth much more than the money he’s due. A team like the Braves needed to make a signing like this.

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Buy low and sell high. It’s the investing concept we’re all taught at a young age, and it makes everything sound so simple. If you buy assets when their value is about to go up, and sell them when it’s about to go down, then you’ll get rich. Super easy! Everyone should do it! Get excited!

Life, however, is more complicated than that. The high and low points of a trend graph are easy to spot when looking retrospectively, but when you’re in the midst of the graph, determining whether things are about to go up or down is more difficult. Forecasting isn’t as easy as buy low/sell high makes it sound.

So, with that said, let’s talk about Andrew McCutchen.

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The season’s most lopsided game was a Clayton Kershaw start. That shouldn’t surprise you — the Dodgers were good, and Clayton Kershaw was great, and the Dodgers with Clayton Kershaw were fantastic. As a matter of fact, five of the season’s 10 most lopsided games were Clayton Kershaw starts. His opponents in those games: Bud Norris, Jered Weaver, Brandon Finnegan, Chad Bettis, and Tom Koehler. Four of those games, the Dodgers won. They lost the Kershaw/Koehler game. It was nearly the season’s biggest upset.

For every game all year long, we publish pregame win probabilities. At first, they’re based on general team projections, and the starting pitchers. Then they update to account for the actual starting lineups. Every calculation includes a home-field-advantage boost of four percentage points. This year, there were 58 games in which the favorite was given at least a 70% chance of winning. Our math predicted 42 wins. In reality, there were 43 wins. The odds work pretty well, provided you don’t take them too seriously. They’re wonderful estimates.

On April 26, Koehler and the Marlins went into Los Angeles and beat Kershaw and the Dodgers. Before the game, the Dodgers’ chances of winning were 74.3%. On July 22, Zach Eflin and the Phillies went into Pittsburgh and beat Gerrit Cole and the Pirates. Before the game, the Pirates’ chances of winning were 74.4%. There is no meaningful difference between these numbers. The calculation error is far greater than one-tenth of one percentage point. But, a difference is a difference. A leader is a leader. I have no choice but to designate that game on July 22 as the biggest upset of 2016.

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According to our playoff odds, there are currently 13 teams which feature playoff odds below 2%. As that number grows throughout the month, an increasingly large percentage of baseball fans will be bidding farewell to the hopes that this is the year for their preferred teams and looking to adopt other rooting interests. There’s no full replacement for the satisfaction of your team winning in October, but playoff baseball is still worth enjoying as much as you can. So, for whom do you root this month?

In recent years, Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated has popularized Team Entropy — spending your September rooting for the chaos generated by ties testing the limits of baseball’s tie-breaker system. With a range of 5.5 games separating the seven teams atop the AL Wild Card standings, Team Entropy is as in play as ever. The theoretical implications of a three- or four- or five-way tie for a Wild Card spot are delightful to imagine. It would be a blast to watch and, as someone with no skin in the game this year, I’d enjoy the hell out of it. That said, my strongest loyalties lie with another team — I’m not Team Entropy, I’m Team Cinderella.

For me, there’s no more exciting storyline than a September longshot bucking the odds and finding its way into the postseason. Two years ago, the Pirates had roughly a 20% chance to make the postseason on September 3rd according to The Baseball Gauge and then proceeded to secure themselves a spot in the Wild Card game. But I’d argue an even more exciting September Cinderella storyline unfolded a year before that when the 2013 Indians finished off the season by winning 15 of 17 and beating out the Rangers for a Wild Card Spot despite possessing 15% playoff odds at the start of that final 17-game run. Now that’s my idea of brilliant September baseball.

It’s been a few years and, though it may be a virtue, patience is certainly no fun. It’s time for a new September Cinderella team, so let’s go searching for one. For this exercise, I’m considering the cases of the five teams with playoff odds currently in the 3%-20% range.

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A year ago, when the Pirates were alive in the playoff race, they made what felt like a fairly uninspiring deadline trade for J.A. Happ. Happ was almost a giveaway, and no one really batted an eyelash about the Pirates’ tiny upgrade, but then they made some very minor tweaks and Happ pitched the rest of the season like one of the better starters in the league. There was, at one point, an actual conversation about whether Happ should start the one-game playoff opposite Jake Arrieta. Things were weird.

This year, with the Pirates alive in the playoff race, they made what felt like a fairly uninspiring deadline trade for Ivan Nova. As I recall, news broke after the actual deadline had passed, and it was a small story because Nova didn’t have a lot of value. Nova, also, was almost a giveaway. The move drew criticism, with many saying the Pirates weren’t doing enough. Ivan Nova, after all, is no Chris Sale.

Guess what? Nova has started five games for Pittsburgh, and in those games the Pirates are 5-0. He’s run a sub-3 ERA, and while his strikeouts haven’t spiked, he’s sitting on one walk. One walk, out of 121 batters faced. Nova walked three of 23 batters in his final start with New York. All of a sudden, the Pirates have turned Ivan Nova into a strike machine, and it’s funny what happens when you have a pitcher who consistently gets ahead. The batters, you see, do worse.

As with Happ, the Pirates haven’t had to do anything drastic. Nova’s repertoire looks mostly the same. Nova’s delivery looks mostly the same. Ray Searage himself has said that Nova’s been easy to work with because there’s just not much to do. If the Pirates have done anything, it’s just encourage Nova to pitch with more confidence. Through July of this year, Nova ranked in the 15th percentile of all pitchers in rate of pitches thrown while ahead in the count. In August, Nova ranks in the 88th percentile. Where he was consistently behind, now he’s consistently ahead. This is all very fundamental.

We can look at Nova’s rolling zone rate over time:

The Pirates have Nova working in the zone more often. As for a rolling-average plot of first-pitch-strike rate:

First-pitch strikes more often. And the differences here aren’t huge. I’m going to show you pitch-location heat maps, comparing Nova through July to Nova in August. You can tell that the heat maps are, I don’t know, siblings? They’re just definitely not twins.

The Pirates have Nova working up a little more, and they’ve shifted him a bit, over the plate. Where Nova, previously, was a nibbler with his fastball, now he’s less focused on trying to stay on the edges. Very generally, Nova still has a familiar-looking pitch pattern, but there’s just more confidence there, so there’s more aggressiveness, too. He’s not a strikeout pitcher, and he’s not going to be a strikeout pitcher, but there’s nothing wrong with a low-walk pitcher who can work in the 90s. The Pirates can generate outs behind him.

The explanation might be obvious. Nova no longer is pitching in the American League, and he’s no longer working in AL East ballparks. PNC Park is very forgiving, and maybe Nova just needed to believe that not every fly ball is a threat. This doesn’t necessarily have to be Ray Searage magic. Maybe the Pirates simply identified the right guy to add. Nova hardly cost them anything. Now he’s working to cost some other team a potential playoff spot.