Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Tampa Bay Rays.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Rays or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Houston / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York NL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Toronto.

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As we’ve talked about a whole bunch of times, the pitching market is at a standstill right now, as teams await a Masahiro Tanaka resolution. Free agents are waiting to maximize the size of their markets, and teams are waiting because they’d prefer not to be reduced to chasing one of the free agents instead of Tanaka. Tanaka, baseball has decided, is much better. Additionally, the trade market is quiet, especially the one for David Price, because while teams do of course see Price as an ace, getting him would require giving up players, and teams are more comfortable just giving up money. So Tanaka is the primary focus.

It stands to reason there could be one more run at Price after Tanaka makes a decision. Every team but one will be left without a new Tanaka on it, and there just aren’t many starters like that available. But where once a Price trade seemed like a foregone conclusion, here’s Buster Olney on Tuesday:

Increasingly, rival executives are convinced that David Price will remain with the Rays for the 2014 season. “Ninety percent chance he stays,” said one rival official. “The [trade] market hasn’t materialized.”

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After having typically appeared in the entirely venerable pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections were released at FanGraphs last year. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Tampa Bay Rays. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Atlanta / Baltimore / Boston / Cleveland / Los Angeles NL / Miami / Minnesota / New York AL / Philadelphia / San Diego / Seattle / St. Louis.

Batters
Certain clubs over the past 20 or so years have featured celebrated pairs of teammates: Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire*, for example, who played together on the late-80s Oakland clubs or David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez on the mid-aught Boston ones or, more recently, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder with Detroit. It’s entirely possible, however, that the combination of Evan Longoria and Ben Zobrist is more formidable than any of those in terms of all-around production. Defensively, based on their ZiPS projections, each is at least as valuable afield as a league-average shortstop (and a bit more than that, in Longoria’s case).

With regard to the precise location of certain players on the depth-chart graphic below, one is compelled to acknowledge that, as in recent seasons, manager Joe Maddon is likely both to utilize platoons more than is suggested by that same graphic and also probably to use the DH slot for the sake of flexibility rather than as a lineup spot merely for, say, Matt Joyce alone. It would be interesting to see outfielder and right-handed-batting Brandon Guyer receive a substantive number of at-bats after several decent offensive seasons at Triple-A.

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Over the past three seasons, the modus operandi for the Tampa Bay Rays has been to find a one-year solution at first base in the clearance bin of the offseason market. In 2011, that came in the form of adding Casey Kotchman on a minor league deal and watching him produce a 2.4 win season. In 2012, the team upped the budget and spent $7.25M to bring back Carlos Pena a year after he left via free agency, but Pena struggled through a 0.7 win season. Last season, James Loney was brought in on a $2M deal, and turned a profit with a career-best 2.7 win season.

The first base situation has been as much as a revolving door as the closer role has been with the club. Until Fernando Rodney repeated as the team saves leader last season, the team had had a different pitcher leads the team in saves each year under Maddon. While they have had repeated success with the closer role, the situation at first base has been a bit different.  As Joe Maddon often says about these types of situations, the Rays meatloafed the first base situation.

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The thing we know is that David Price is going to be traded. That much is a virtual certainty, for all of the reasons you already understand. The things we don’t know are all of the details. We don’t know where he’s going to be traded to, and we don’t know what he’s going to bring back. We don’t know when the trade is going to happen, and we don’t know if there’ll even be a trade this offseason. Would the Rays be daring enough to move Price during a competitive regular season? Would they be daring enough to wait to move Price until the next winter? Who feels a greater sense of urgency — the team with Price, or the teams that would like to have him? Behind the scenes, there’s probably a lot of activity, but from the outside it feels like nothing has budged for a matter of weeks.

Oh, and there’s another thing we know. David Price has been outstanding. Truly outstanding, since he graduated into the majors. He’s posted four consecutive seasons of at least 180 innings and at least an average ERA, and the reality is that he’s mostly exceeded those marks with relative ease. Over the four seasons, he’s averaged 208 innings and a 78 ERA-. Price has been one of the game’s great workhorses, and that’s a big part of how the Rays are selling him. You get Price, and you can write his next season’s numbers in ink.

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Logan Morrison came up with glove, power and patience and a big twitter presence. It was exciting. Then he was injured, the power waned, and he used that twitter account to upset his franchise. Now he’s a Mariner, traded for Carter Capps. And all of this means something for the Mets and Ike Davis.

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The hot stove raging inferno season has included a lot of activity so far, but despite all the moves and the rumored moves, there hadn’t been a lot of reported activity around the winter’s biggest trade chip, at least until last night. That’s when Jeff Passan reported that talks with Tampa Bay about acquiring David Price were expected to heat up soon, naming the Mariners, Dodgers, Angels, Rangers, Pirates, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays among interested teams. But the more interesting part of the story was this:

The 28-year-old Price immediately would be the most sought-after name on the trade market, and teams expect him to net a far bigger package than the Wil Myers-headlined deal Tampa Bay received from Kansas City last season. Despite the potential for $30 million in salary over the next two seasons before he hits free agency after 2015, Price is a rare commodity – an available ace – that is drawing interest accordingly.

The Wil Myers deal was one of the worst overpays in trade in recent history, and Passan is suggesting that people are expecting the Rays to land a “far bigger package than the Myers-headlined deal” for David Price. Suffice it to say that I don’t think teams should view egregious overpays as market-setting preedents, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to base their offer for Price on analysis that goes something like “Shields got Myers, and Price is better than Shields, so Price should cost more than Myers.” So let’s talk about what Price should return in trade.

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Every team in the American League East came into the offseason with unsettled situations behind the plate. The Orioles have been trying to figure out whether nor not to deal Matt Wieters. The Yankees made a huge addition by adding Brian McCann. The Blue Jays just made their own improvement by replacing J.P. Arencibia with Dioner Navarro. That left the Red Sox and Rays, each of whom already had a nifty backstop, but a nifty backstop incapable of handling the bulk of the workload. That is, after the Rays re-signed Jose Molina, anyway. Tuesday, the teams have made their additions, with the Sox picking up A.J. Pierzynski and the Rays dealing for Ryan Hanigan. Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s still looking for a home, but he’ll at least be going to a different division.

Initially, this was going to be a straight-up comparison of Pierzynski and Hanigan, since they have few things in common, but one important thing shared. Then reality made things more complicated, with Hanigan being part of a three-team trade, and with Hanigan agreeing to a three-year contract. No longer is this just about 2014. But despite the complicating circumstances, I do still think it’s worth examining why Boston and Tampa Bay did what they did, and how the moves are pretty alike.

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It seems like a foregone conclusion that David Price won’t be with the Tampa Bay Rays when spring training begins next year. In previous seasons, Tampa Bay has dealt Edwin Jackson and Matt Garza as the team entered costly years in the arbitration process. The Rays also traded James Shields to address team depth, despite his rather affordable contract, which means there’s plenty of history to suggest a move is in Price’s future.

Some of the statements put out there in recent weeks include concerns about Price’s declining velocity, about diminishing returns on value and whether the team can afford to keep the pitcher for even one more season. There’s no masking the fact Price threw with less velocity in 2013, even after returning from a stint on the disabled list while he recovered from a triceps strain. Price returned from the DL intent on becoming a more efficient pitcher, and he did so with aplomb. In fact, only Cliff Lee threw a higher percentage of strikes in the season’s final three months.

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The Phillies re-signed Carlos Ruiz to a 3-year, $26 million deal. Also: Brayan Pena and Geovany Soto have locked down their 2014 teams (the Royals Reds and Rangers respectively). And now it appears Jose Molina is in the final stages of returning to St. Pete for another two years of expertly framed and eh, who cares about blocking? pitches.

So where does that leave the catching market? As far as I have seen, the Yankees, Red Sox, Rockies, Angels, Rangers (still), Blue Jays and Twins have all been connected with free agent catchers on MLBTR. Using their handy free agents leaderboards (with a few additions), we can examine the remaining free agent catchers and try our hand at predicting the right fits for each.
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