Let’s begin with the news: Josh Hamilton is a free agent no longer. As of Thursday, he’s agreed to a five-year contract with the Angels reportedly worth $125 million. That breaks down easily to come out to an average annual value of $25 million. As of Wednesday, the Rangers looked like the favorites to get Hamilton locked up, and it was said that Hamilton would give the Rangers a chance to match any offer before he committed himself to another organization. According to Jon Heyman, the Rangers were actually given no such chance, as they were simply told that Hamilton was leaving. Reports suggest the Rangers wouldn’t go higher than four years. The Angels gave five. Five is greater than four.

Now let’s follow with some recent history. The Angels weren’t even mentioned seriously as a Hamilton suitor until Thursday morning. It looked like it would be the Rangers, with the Mariners and the Phillies somewhere on the dark-horse periphery. In fact:

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One of my favorite* old writer techniques was when people would try to analyze Zack Greinke’s decision-making process based on the fact that he had social anxiety disorder. It was as if the condition made Greinke more understandable, as opposed to less. “Greinke would never want to play in a large market,” people would assert. “He wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Zack Greinke, most recently, has been a free agent. Zack Greinke just reportedly signed a six-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $147 million. As markets go, Los Angeles is pretty big.

* least favorite

Greinke was the market’s best available free-agent starter, so in that sense it’s not a surprise that he wound up with the Dodgers, since the Dodgers have all of the money. Even your money is the Dodgers’ money now. They even took your laundry quarters. In recent days, this wasn’t so clear, though, as it was down to the Dodgers and the Rangers, and there were indications that Greinke preferred Texas. But those indications were just rumors, and the smart bet would’ve been on the team with all of the money. The team with all of the money was and is the Dodgers.

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The Phillies have a hole at third base, and Michael Young is a man without a position in Texas. These two problems look to be coalescing into a trade between the Rangers and Phillies, where Texas would ship Young to Philadelphia in order to give him the chance to have a regular gig again, and they’d receive a little bit of salary relief in the process. The Rangers would still be on the hook for $10 million of the $16 million he’s due in 2013, a natural response to the fact that Young was Major League Baseball’s worst regular player in 2012, but they’d free up a roster spot, save a bit of money, and give one of the franchise’s most popular players a chance to keep his career going in a new city. From that perspective, the deal makes a world of sense for Texas.

But, despite Young’s dismal 2012 season, I like this deal for the Phillies as well. As I noted on ESPN Insider yesterday, there’s a decent list of recent performers who have apparently fallen apart in their mid-30s, only to rebound the next season and regain most of their pre-faceplant production. While Young was genuinely terrible last year, we also need to keep in mind that single year performance isn’t the best indicator of future performance, and any decent projection should be informed by his success prior to 2012 as well as his failure last year.

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Not exactly the biggest news of the winter meeting, but the Rangers agreed to sign Joakim Soria to a two year contract today, and Danny Knobler suggested that it would be in the $8-$9 million range, and Alden Gonzalez adds that Texas got a team option for a third year in the deal as well. This is a bit of an unorthodox move, as Soria had Tommy John surgery in April, and is unlikely to be ready for the start of the 2013 season. In general, guys coming off surgery have to settle for one year deals, then get bigger contracts once they’ve proven they’re healthy. Ryan Madson, for instance, just signed a one year deal with the Angels, and his timeframe is pretty similar to Soria’s.

However, just because it’s unusual doesn’t make it a bad idea. Often times, these one year deals turn out to be good value buys for the signing team, as the injury issues serve to drive the player’s leverage — and consequently, his price — significantly below what similar healthy players are signing for. Under the previous free agent compensation system, a team could extract one year of value from a good reliever, then collect draft pick compensation after they walked in free agency the next year. Now, though, the qualifying offer drastically reduces the chances of compensation for a relief pitcher, which drives down the team’s incentives to churn the bullpen each winter.

So, I wouldn’t be overly surprised if two year, low AAV deals become a bit more common, as teams try to get a low cost healthy season as the benefit to paying for the cost of rehab. Even if Soria only throws 20-30 innings in 2013, having him potentially available for the postseason and then having him locked in for $4 or $5 million in 2014 could make this a pretty nice bet for Texas, and the overall guarantee is low enough that it won’t be a killer even if Soria never does return to previous form.

And, of course, with a 38-year-old Joe Nathan lined up to closer in 2013, injury or performance issues are always possible, and this gives the Rangers a secondary option for the second half of the season if Nathan needs to be replaced. Given the high cost of closers at the trade deadline, making this kind of deal now to prevent yourself from having to pay those exorbitant rates later could end up saving the team value in the long run, especially if Soria returns to form and can provide value as the team’s closer in 2014 and 2015.

There’s not a whole lot of question right now regarding just who is the top free-agent starting pitcher available. When in doubt, follow the Dodgers. It was thought that re-signing Zack Greinke would be the Angels’ main offseason priority. They’re still interested, but they might be priced out. The Dodgers are in there and flashing their wallets. The Rangers might be just as interested. The Nationals are involved to some kind of extent. Greinke is the available free-agent ace, and everybody else is, at best, second-tier.

For the teams looking for quality starting pitching that miss out on Greinke, there are alternatives, who could be signed or traded for. Ryan Dempster is a free agent, and a good deal older than Greinke. Kyle Lohse is a free agent and he’s going to cash in to some degree. Among trade candidates, R.A. Dickey could be tremendously valuable, James Shields could be similarly valuable, and Jeremy Hellickson might or might not be extremely valuable, depending on your interpretation of his statistics. But there’s another quality free agent, the same age as Greinke, who could be of nearly as much value for a considerably lesser cost.

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Way back in Ye Olden Days of 2008, Geovany Soto was the Cubs’ Rookie of the Year catcher. He hit for average, power, drew walks, and played acceptable defense behind the plate. He was just 25 years old. The best seemed to be to come.

Four years later, Soto got non-tendered by the Rangers, then reportedly turned around and signed a one-year, $3 million contract with them. For a contending team like Texas with a sizable payroll budget and in need of a catcher, the issue is not so much about the money. Rather, given the dearth of other catching options either internally (especially with Mike Napoli reportedly signing with Boston) or externally, the issue is whether Soto is good enough to be a regular starter for the Rangers in 2013.

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A couple of minor transactions have floated by mostly un-noticed on the wires recently, and probably for good reason. Mickey Storey was claimed by the Yankees from the Astros, and Cory Burns was traded to the Rangers from the Padres for a player to be named someday. Neither of these relievers cost much, nor will they end up closing for their new teams. They’re mostly just flotsam pieces of spaghetti to fling at the wall. There’s a link between these two relievers, and it’s a thread that will run through most fungible, cheaply acquired players in baseball — neither reliever has a fastball.

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Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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There are free agents whose markets are presently almost complete mysteries. I haven’t the foggiest idea which team might be most likely to sign Josh Hamilton, and odds are the same goes for you. Then there are the free agents whose markets seem better known. B.J. Upton appears to be nearing a decision, and we have a pretty good idea of who he’s deciding between. And Mike Napoli’s market includes three teams, if reports are to be believed. He’s already met with the Mariners, he’s already met with the Red Sox, and he’s shortly to meet with the Rangers. More suitors could emerge, but that’s the picture right now.

Napoli is a somewhat high-profile free agent, being a power hitter capable of playing behind the plate. He’s also a somewhat in-demand free agent, so I thought it’d be a good idea to run a little Mike Napoli Q&A. We all want to know as much as we can about the various free agents — there is much to know about Mike Napoli, just as there is much to know about everyone.

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The Rangers are in the unique position of being both a “win now” and “win later” team. Their current roster with Adrian Beltre, Nelson Cruz, Joe Nathan, and others is good enough to win in 2013, but they’re also set up for the future with guys like Jurickson Profar, Martin Perez, and Mike Olt. They also have a handful of players who bridge both the “win now” and “win later” groups, including Yu Darvish, Elvis Andrus, Ian Kinsler, and left-hander Matt Harrison.

Harrison, 27, has been the team’s best pitcher over the last two years, so it wasn’t a surprise when Jeff Wilson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last week that the two sides are in “preliminary negotiations” about a contract extension. Harrison is arbitration-eligible for the second time this winter, but more importantly he is on pace to become a free agent after the 2014 season. He will have just turned 29 when that rolls around, and if he continues to pitch like he has these last two seasons, he’ll be in line for a huge free agent contract.

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