Getting a major, non-emergency surgery is a strange experience. One moment you are yourself, living in the body you have always inhabited, even if that body is now dressed in an unfamiliar and unflattering set of garments foisted upon you by the nurses. You are then wheeled into a cavernous room, where you are laid out on a slab for dissemination, surrounded by a motley crew of strangers with covered faces. Some bustle around with arcane metal implements; others pat you on the shoulder and tell you to have good dreams, thereby placing an unnecessary amount of pressure on you not to have bad dreams, in which case you would have failed at one of your two tasks in this scenario. (The other task is, of course, not dying.) And in what seems like moments (but also seems like a very long time, somehow), you wake up confused, unable to move or speak, with your body permanently altered in ways that you will likely never be able to fully understand. In just a few hours of unawareness, your experience of reality is fundamentally changed. There is nothing you can do but try to adjust. 

The last baseball game I watched before I went under was the Mariners home opener. The Mariners played this game against the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox and ace Chris Sale, and they won 12-4. Save for their poor defense, they looked all-powerful. The Red Sox looked uniformly awful. The baseball season is full of these little flauntings of expectation: fun, ultimately insignificant. A larger data set irons everything out in the final reckoning. When I got knocked out for surgery in the early morning on March 29th, I had differently-arranged bones, no titanium screws or plates in my body, and a fundamental, unshakeable understanding that the 2019 Seattle Mariners were not, and the 2019 Boston Red Sox were, a reliably excellent baseball team.

I spent the several days post-surgery in a quasi-real state, drifting in and out of consciousness, oozing blood from various orifices, unable to eat much more than hospital-issue jello. When I got home, I tried to watch some baseball. My attention drifted with such hazy determination that it seemed as though a higher power were directing it away, and even without that, I couldn’t stay awake for three hours on end. As my energy and ability to function gradually returned, I was confronted by the massive backlog of undone tasks and unresponded-to emails that appears when you disconnect from the world for a few days.

And so it happened that I didn’t really get a chance to clue back into the baseball universe until this weekend. The world that greeted me was nothing short of astonishing. While I was gone, the Mariners had become the greatest offensive juggernaut that has ever been seen in the history of professional baseball. The Red Sox, meanwhile, had continued to be awful. Just awful! It was astonishing, an astonishing truth to reckon with, especially while on four different kinds of medication.

One reliable element of this new reality, though, was that the Blue Jays were terrible. The team has a collective wRC+ of 63, which in layman’s terms could be described as “ass.” I have seen the Red Sox beat the Blue Jays many, many, many times, and I have seen Chris Sale dominate the Blue Jays many, many times since he made the move to the Red Sox. In 43 innings pitched against the Jays with the Red Sox prior to this season, he allowed but 11 earned runs, and struck out 37.9% of the batters he faced, which has made for some frustrating baseball-watching experiences as a Jays fan. But as an appreciator of all things Sale — the violence of his pitching motion, the sweep of his slider, his cryptid-like frame and terrifying demeanor, his alleged belly-button piercing — watching him pitch against the Jays is a treat.

And there he was on Fenway’s Opening Day, a day of celebration, a reminder of the indomitable World Series championship team of last season, and a reminder that the team taking the field this season is much the same one. The fans were loud, and the weather was gloomy. This was the first game since my surgery that I had a chance to sit down and really focus on; and this, at last, was comfortingly familiar. The Red Sox were an anchor in my sea of uncertainty, the team connecting my pre-op baseball experience to my post-op existence.

For the first three innings, the game wasn’t much more than a great opportunity to catch up further on my rest. Sale retired the first seven batters he faced. His fastball velocity, a matter of justifiable concern for him this season, was up from his last start (though he still failed to generate any swinging strikes with the pitch). Same old 2019 Blue Jays. Same old Chris Sale. The Red Sox managed to score a pair of runs off Matt Shoemaker; everything was as it should be. Sale struck out Richard Urena to lead off the top of the third.

Then Alen Hanson poked a high slider into left field.

It was not a good pitch — Sale’s slider, like virtually all his other pitches, has not had its characteristic venom so far this season. He has not located the pitch well, and this one, too, was poorly placed, high and hanging over over the center of the plate. The ball was not exactly well-hit either, though, and it was just the one baserunner. No big deal. Nothing to see here.

Then Billy McKinney poked another high slider into center field. This slider was a better one — harder, coming at 81 mph instead of 77, and floating less casually over the plate — and McKinney hit it softly, without much conviction. But now, all of a sudden, the Jays had a rally brewing. (The Jays have had three or fewer hits in four of their 12 games this season.) And on Sale’s first pitch to Freddy Galvis, with the hit and run on, the Jays turned that rally into a scoring play. A sac fly tied the game on the next batter before the inning came to a close.

This sequence of events was bizarre to witness — the hit and run actually working, and the Jays managing to get enough runners on base to make the hit and run a viable possibility. As it turned out, the real break in the fabric of reality was yet to come.

The top of the fourth began with yet another single, this time by Randal Grichuk, off a slider that failed to sweep across the plate, instead hanging up and out of the zone on Sale’s armside. (Last year, 48% of swings generated by Sale’s slider were whiffs; this year, that number has dropped to only 28%. Sale threw 26 sliders against the Blue Jays; he generated five swinging strikes against seven balls in play.) This was promptly followed by a Danny Jansen single on a fastball out of the zone, which was promptly followed by an aborted bunt attempt by Lourdes Gurriel Jr. Perhaps confused by the sudden switch from bunting to not-bunting, Christian Vazquez let the ball bounce off his glove.

Grichuk advanced to third. And after a long plate appearance, which included at least one other failed bunt attempt, Gurriel finally shot a single into right field. The Jays had their second three-hit inning of the day, and they had the lead again.

By this point, I felt like I was losing my mind. While all of these singles were certainly the result of some amount of contact-related BA(d)BIP luck, and the passed ball was certainly not his fault, the fact that Sale was allowing this much contact at all — that, almost two weeks after that fateful game the day before my surgery, he looked almost as bad as he had back then — that the Reliably Excellent Red Sox had the same number of wins as my sad little Blue Jays, and that those same Jays now had the lead — none of it made sense. None of it tracked with the concept of baseball reality I had nurtured through my absence. I wondered if the painkillers were eating away at my brain cells.

A sacrifice bunt moved the two baserunners over. Hanson struck out swinging for the second out of the inning. The put-away pitch was Sale’s first swinging strike generated on a four-seamer this season, yet another fact that makes me feel that I have phased into a different dimension of existence. Sale stood for a moment, his jersey rippling gently in the wind, signifying a peace and tranquility that would never come. He threw to the plate, and Vazquez assumed an ideal catching position.

The ball sprang away. One runner came home; the other, Gurriel, scampered to third — from whence he proceeded to do this.

A straight steal of home, on a ball thrown a mile wide of the plate, after an inning where a catcher was possessed by the departed spirit of Rudy Kemmler, and a team with a .193/.268/.320 collective line put together two three-hit rallies. How does one even react appropriately to this? What’s the precedent?

The inning ended with no further runs, and Sale left the game, but its effects lingered, rippling through the chilly air, through the frequency of the boos that rained down onto the field from the Red Sox faithful. Something was off. This was not what was supposed to be happening. The team faded out for the winter, and when they woke up in the spring — the same team with the same players who had won the World Series — their experience of reality had fundamentally changed.  The Red Sox fell to 3-9, in the cellar of the AL East. Their playoff odds, sitting at 88.7% on Opening Day, have nosedived to 63.4%.

Yet that’s still a better chance than not. It’s still better than the Rays, who have flapped their slimy ray wings and glided into first place. Sale says that he’s never felt this lost, but the likelihood of him remaining lost forever seems slim. The experience of reality has changed, but most of the time, things have a way of smoothing over, of returning to the way that they’re supposed to be. Most of the time, the statistics normalize; the issues are problem-solved; the physical and mental injuries are recovered from. The pitcher who’s losing his fastball finds different ways to pitch. The cracks where the bones were separated fuse together again. Something has changed — it will heal, eventually. The titanium screws will always be there, but you’ll largely forget they exist. You just have to survive the adjustment period.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Luis Robert, CF, Chicago White Sox
Level: Hi-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 4   FV: 55
Line: 2-for-4, HR, 2 HBP

Notes
Off to hot start, Robert has multi-hit efforts in each of his first four games and has already stolen three bases and homered three times. After watching LouBob a lot last year (first while he rehabbed multiple injuries, then in the Fall League), I grew concerned about how his bat path might limit the quality of his contact (he sometimes struggled to pull pitches he should have) or his rate of contact, which we don’t have a large-enough sample to properly assess because of his injuries. So far, the pull-side stuff hasn’t been founded, as all but two of Robert’s balls in play so far this year have been to the right side of the field, and those were both pop-ups to the second baseman. He’s one of the more physically-gifted players in pro baseball.

Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 2   FV: 45
Line: 5 IP, 2 H, 4 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
We do not think Hernandez is a long-term starter and instead think he’ll be an elite bullpen arm. His fastball often sits in the upper-90s when he’s starting so it should at least stay there if he’s moved to relief and, though his feel for it comes and goes, his curveball can be untouchable at times. Maybe the strong early-season performances of Matt Barnes, Brandon Workman, and Ryan Brasier has stifled some of the disquiet about the Red Sox bullpen, but in the event that they need an impact arm, I think it’s more likely to be Hernandez than a piece outside the org. Some of this is due to the quality of the farm system, but Hernandez might also just be better than a lot of the options that will eventually be on the trade market. Read the rest of this entry »

Late Sunday, the Boston Red Sox and Xander Bogaerts agreed on a $120 million extension, keeping the team’s star shortstop in Boston until at least 2025. While the deal is being reported as worth $132 million, that figure already includes the $12 million Bogaerts was going to make in 2019, so it’s kind of cheating for the sake of headline inflation. There are two other significant contract stipulations: a vesting option for 2026 worth $20 million, and an opt-out for Bogaerts following the 2022 season. The opt-out ensures that Bogaerts will at least have the option to test free agency once somewhere near his prime during his career, his first year of free agency otherwise being his age-33 season if the option doesn’t vest.

Bogaerts is in a curious position for a star player at a key position on a very popular team: he might actually be underrated. When people discuss the top shortstops in baseball, the list rightly starts with Francisco Lindor, who is the best shortstop in baseball, but then you’ll generally hear Carlos Correa and Corey Seager’s names, then maybe some talk about Andrelton Simmons because of his glove. It’s only then that Bogaerts might be thrown in as a “oh yeah, him too” selection. Bogaerts still only has one All-Star appearance, one fewer than Scott Cooper, and only received back-end MVP votes in a single season. Even in 2018, a season in which Bogaerts was hitting .284/.353/.535 in the first-half, he failed to be named to the midsummer classic’s roster.

But over the last five years, by WAR, only Lindor has clearly contributed more on-the-field than Bogaerts has among shortstops. So why this lack of recognition? Call it the Curse of the Well-Rounded. Bogie does nothing truly poorly, but like a number of other all-around talents, he doesn’t have that one obvious highlight to point to in a culture that likes the ten-second soundbite. He’s topped out short of 25 homers, and only hit .300 the one-time. His glove is middling as shortstops go — there’s significant disagreement between UZR and DRS here — and in sabermetric language, his WAR hovers between three and five a year, so no crazy season like Lindor’s 2018 as of yet. There’s no signature postseason home run to hang his hat on. Bogaerts has played the enchilada in a world obsessed with tacos and burritos.

At just 26, Bogaerts ranks highly enough among shortstops through the same age that he’s on a realistic Hall of Fame trajectory. He’s not on the “hit by a bus and get in” path that Mike Trout finds himself on, and there are players who also ranked highly who have fallen or will fall well short of the Hall (Hanley Ramirez, Garry Templeton, Donie Bush, probably Elvis Andrus), but it’s still an impressive list of Cooperstownerati.

At $20 million, the Red Sox get a particularly good deal. Bogaerts likely left some money on the table given the fact that he’s not a two- or three-year player, but one who was only a single season away from free agency. Indeed, as someone who would have hit the market at age 27 and almost certainly is in the top five at his position, one might even characterize $20 million a year as a steal. But don’t take my word for it; what’s the fun of having the magic computer that makes projections if I’m not going to use it?

ZiPS has tended to be fairly close with Red Sox signings this era (for example, it came within $2 million of Dustin Pedroia‘s extension), but this one is a very large aberration. The projections from ZiPS estimate — and this includes the risk of projecting 2020-2025 now rather than after he actually has his 2019 season in the books — that Bogaerts left roughly $50 million on the table. If the projections prove to be accurate, as free agency-year contracts go, Bogaerts’s contract will rank in the upper-echelons of big contracts that worked out well for the team, in the territory of Miguel Cabrera’s first contract. Some of that money comes back to Bogaerts in the form of his opt-out, but his downside is much better than, say, Eric Hosmer, a player with a similar opt-out clause, so it’s less of a hit to the team.

Bogaerts will likely speak more on the subject, but two issues seemed to loom large for him in the decision-making process. By all accounts he enjoys playing for the Red Sox and has shared his concerns about the Bryce Harper/Manny Machado market this winter. Add in uncertainty about baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement and it’s understandable why Bogaerts and other free agents to-be have prioritized getting long-term deals done and in the books.

Does Bogaerts end up in Cooperstown? At this point, ZiPS would say no, projecting him to end up with around 45 WAR with 2429 hits and 264 home runs, a career reminiscent of Toby Harrah’s, who was way better than you think. It’s likely some of that will take place at third base as well, which will probably hurt how he is perceived by voters. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility; ZiPS gives him a 20% chance of passing 65 WAR, a number that would make him a likely Hall of Famer, though not a first-balloter. There are 18 shortstops with 60 WAR and the only ones not in the Hall are Alex Rodriguez (who is not yet eligible and will struggle for non-playing reasons), Bill Dahlen, and Jack Glasscock. I swear I didn’t make up the last guy. A one-in-five chance at a summer speech in Cooperstown ain’t bad.

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller banter about Willians Astudillo making the Twins’ Opening Day roster, whether Astudillo’s uncanny ability to make contact is more mental or physical, and what Oliver Perez and the rest of the remaining LOOGYs can do to preserve their endangered places on major-league rosters when the three-batter minimum goes into effect in 2020, then complete the 30-team preseason series by previewing the 2019 Boston Red Sox (18:40) with Boston Globe reporter Alex Speier, and the 2019 Baltimore Orioles (53:12) with MLB.com Orioles beat writer Joe Trezza.

Audio intro: The Weakerthans, "The Last Last One"
Audio interstitial 1: Guided By Voices, "Alex and the Omegas"
Audio interstitial 2: Chip Taylor, "Nine Soldiers in Baltimore"
Audio outro: Neil Young, "No More"

Link to Rob’s article about endangered LOOGYs
Link to SI article about endangered LOOGYs
Link to Ben on early-season Sale vs. late-season Sale
Link to Ben on champions standing pat and the Boston bullpen
Link to Ben and Baumann on the MLB extension spree
Link to listener’s minor-league free agent tracker
Link to Banished To The Pen’s team preview posts
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

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Chris Sale has long been one of the top pitchers in baseball — not only for pure performance but for bang for the buck, as he’s been working under one of the game’s most team-friendly contracts since 2013, which runs through this season. After an uneven season in which he reprised his 2017 dominance until shoulder inflammation limited his availability down the stretch, before capping a rocky October by closing out the World Series-clinching Game 5 against the Dodgers, the wiry southpaw has become the latest star to lock in big money early instead of testing the free agent market next winter or the one after that, following in the footsteps of Nolan Arenado, Mike Trout, and Paul Goldschmidt, all of whom have agreed to nine-figure extensions over the past four weeks. On Friday, Sale and the Red Sox agreed to a five-year, $145 million extension that will take him through 2024, his age-35 season. The deal reportedly includes some deferred money that lessens the impact on the Red Sox’s payroll for tax purposes, as well as an opt-out and a vesting option.

[Update: As some of the details regarding the structure of the contract were not reported until after this article’s original publication on Friday, I have revised this where necessary.]

Sale’s new deal succeeds the five-year, $32.5 million extension he signed in March 2013, his first year of arbitration eligibility. Via the two club options tacked onto that contract, he made $12.5 million in 2018 and will make $15 million in 2019, for a total of $59 million. That’s not exactly chump change, but it’s far below what the White Sox and Red Sox would have paid on the open market for the 34.7 WAR he’s delivered so far under that deal, the third-highest total among all pitchers. The two pitchers ahead of him, Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer, signed seven-year contracts worth $215 million and $210 million in 2014 and 2015, respectively. A similar payday for Sale has been long overdue, something the Red Sox had to know when they acquired him from the White Sox in a December 2016 blockbuster that cost the team infielder Yoan Moncada (who topped our prospect list the following spring and ranked second on that of Baseball America), pitcher Michael Kopech (21st on our list), outfielder Luis Basabe (now sixth on the White Sox list), and pitcher Victor Diaz.

Taking that initial extension, which Sale signed on the heels of a 192-inning age-23 season, wasn’t “the wrong” decision, necessarily. It was a move that guaranteed security for a pitcher whose mechanics and injury risk had already become the subject of much debate throughout the industry, and those concerns didn’t abate even after he signed his deal. Nonetheless, he’s avoided any disaster scenarios, throwing the fifth-highest total of innings in that 2013-18 span (1,196) while never dipping below 4.9 WAR even in the seasons in which he fell short of 200 frames.

In 2017, Sale’s first season with the Red Sox, he became the first AL pitcher to notch 300 strikeouts in a season since the turn of the millennium (308, all told) while leading the majors in innings (214.1), FIP (2.45), and WAR (7.5), though he faded somewhat down the stretch and finished second in the AL Cy Young voting behind Corey Kluber, whose 2.25 ERA (and 8.2 bWAR) carried the day. It was the sixth consecutive season in which Sale had earned All-Star honors and received Cy Young consideration.

Through the first four months of last season, Sale appeared to be on track to finally win the award, starting the All-Star Game for the AL and carrying a 2.04 ERA and 2.08 FIP into late July before missing two starts with shoulder inflammation. Upon returning, Sale threw five innings of one-hit shutout ball against the hapless Orioles, striking out 12 — his 11th double-digit game of the year — on just 68 pitches. But he went back on the DL before he could start again, and the Red Sox, who were running away with the AL East at the time, chose to play it safe. Sale pitched just 12 innings in four September appearances, and finished with 158 innings, four short of qualifying for the ERA title; his 2.11 mark would have ranked second in the league and his 1.98 FIP first, and even with the limited work, his 6.2 WAR ranked second. The shortfall of innings cost him the Cy Young, as Blake Snell and his 21 wins and 1.89 ERA in 180.2 innings brought home the hardware.

The Red Sox’s cautious handling of Sale extended into the postseason, as he totaled just 13.1 innings in three starts, with only his Division Series Game 1 turn against the Yankees lasting longer than four innings. He made two one-inning relief appearances, one in Game 4 of that series and the other in the ninth inning of Game 5, where he struck out the side to seal the Red Sox’s fourth championship in the past 15 seasons.

Repeatedly, Sale and the Red Sox have expressed confidence in the pitcher’s condition. In late August, Sale said that his shoulder felt “like Paul Bunyan’s ox” and in September he said he had no plans to fuss over his mechanics because his shoulder was structurally sound. “There was never any major issue with my shoulder,” he said. “This wasn’t something that happened on a single pitch or a mechanical issue or anything.” As of January, he felt “normal again. Being able to throw free and easy and feel loose … obviously is a nice feeling.”

Apparently the Red Sox are still confident enough in the condition of Sale’s shoulder to commit to him for five years beyond this one, at a salary near the top of the scale for pitchers. While initial reports regarding the contract contained no word of the various bells and whistles beyond some unspecified amount of deferred money, the structure has since been clarified by multiple sources. Sale will be paid $30 million per year for the first three seasons (2020-22), after which he can opt out; if he does not, he will receive $27.5 million per year for 2023-24. His annual salaries can increase by up to $2 million per year based upon his finishes in the Cy Young voting, and a $20 million option for 2025 will vest if he finishes in top 10 in the 2024 Cy Young vote and does not finish the season on the injured list. The deferrals lower the average annual value of the deal to $26.5 million for tax purposes. Based upon that figure, Sale’s AAV trails only those of Justin Verlander ($33 million, for a 2020-21 extension announced hours after Sale’s) Zack Greinke ($32.5 million after deferrals), Kershaw’s latest extension and teammate David Price (both $31 million), Kershaw’s previous extension, which he opted out of after the 2018 season ($30.71 million), Scherzer ($30 million), Jon Lester ($25.83 million), and Verlander again ($25.71 million via his current deal). That said, according to Craig Edwards’ recent inflation-adjusted look at the largest contracts in history, Sale’s deal would actually rank eighth behind the deals of Kevin Brown, Kershaw and CC Sabathia (both pre-opt out), Scherzer, Verlander, Mike Hampton, and Felix Hernandez.

As with Arenado and Goldschmidt, running Sale’s numbers through our contract estimation tool using even conservative parameters ($8.0 million per WAR and just 3% average annual inflation, as opposed to $9 million or more, and 5%) yields an eye-opening valuation:

Where Goldschmidt’s estimate using the same parameters came in 20% higher than his actual deal, the estimate for Sale is around 40% higher. But unlike in the case of Goldschmidt, where applying estimates of $9 million per win and 5% inflation to a ZiPS projection — which is generally more conservative than this model — provided by Dan Szymborski produced a figure that more closely resembled his actual contract, sticking with $8 million per win and 3% inflation for Sale in this model overshoots the mark by even more:

Even while projecting relatively low innings totals, ZiPS sees Sale as half a win more valuable over that timespan than our contract estimation tool does. Indeed, Szymborski says that only Luis Severino and German Marquez (!) project to produce more WAR over the remainder of their careers. Dan’s computer is so sweet on the southpaw that it’s probably sending heart-shaped boxes of chocolate to his locker as I type. Remember, for both of Sale’s estimates I’ve lopped off his 2019 performance, in which he projects to deliver something around $47-$49 million of value while being paid just $15 million.

Based upon that $145 million figure, either the Red Sox are significantly underpaying Sale or expecting a lot less, performance-wise, than the projection systems (for what it’s worth, Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system projects Sale for 22.1 WARP over the 2020-24 period). Which doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable, as they’re the ones with access to his medical file, and the risk of a career-altering injury for a pitcher is ever-present. Working backwards with the ZiPS projection and our conservative $8 million and 3% parameters, a five-year forecast of 17.0 WAR produces a valuation of $147.7 million. At $9 million per win and 5% inflation, 14.0 WAR produces a valuation of $144.2 million.

Regardless of the projections, the contract adds one more hefty salary to the Red Sox payroll, which for tax purposes already has $105.5 million worth of commitments for 2020 and $106.0 million for 2021, primarily via the deals of Price (an AAV of $31 million), J.D. Martinez ($22 million), Nathan Eovaldi ($17 million), Dustin Pedroia ($13.75 million), and Christian Vazquez ($4.517 million). That’s before any extension or arbitration raise for Mookie Betts (who has just one more year of club control), and without counting the pending free agencies of Rick Porcello or Xander Bogaerts, though it’s worth noting that Martinez can opt out after this season. If the Red Sox, who already project to be about $31.6 million over this year’s Competitive Balance Tax threshold — so far over that they incur a surtax — are going to avoid progressively larger tax bills, they’ll have to make some tough choices in the near future, and find some lower-cost players to fill out their roster. Keeping Sale, alongside Price and Eovaldi, almost certainly means letting Porcello walk, and Bogaerts, too, because as a Scott Boras client, the likelihood of his agreeing to a team-friendly extension appears to be slim.

As for Sale, he doesn’t have to remain in perennial Cy Young contention to make this deal worthwhile, but the fact that he’s been able to do so is what’s made him so attractive a player in the first place. He’s earned his big payday, and while he might have received an even bigger one by going on the market, the inherent risks of pitching make this a sensible move for him as well.

We’re just a week away from actual major league baseball games and two weeks from Opening Day, and the free agent market is about spent. Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel remain free agents for now, the only two available players projected for two or more WAR on our depth charts. Even lowering the bar to a single win only adds two additional names in Carlos Gonzalez and Gio Gonzalez.

Unless your team is willing to sign Keuchel or Kimbrel, any improvements will have to be made via a trade. And since pretty much every team could use an improvement somewhere, it’s the best time of the year for a bit of fantasy matchmaking until we get to post-All Star Week.

Note that these are not trades I predict will happen, only trades I’d like to see happen for one reason or another. Until I’m appointed Emperor-King of Baseball, I have no power to make these trades happen.

1. Corey Kluber to the San Diego Padres for Wil Myers, Josh Naylor, Luis Patino, and $35 million.

One of the reasons the Kluber trade rumors so persistently involved the Padres this winter is because it made so much sense. The idea was that Cleveland had a deep starting rotation and an offense that looked increasingly like that of the Colorado Rockies, with a couple of MVP candidates and abundant quantities of meh elsewhere.

On the Padres side, the team’s lineup looked nearly playoff-viable in a number of configurations with the exception of a hole at third base. The team was awash in pitching prospects but had a drought of 2019 rotation-ready candidates.

These facts have largely stayed unchanged with the obvious exception of San Diego’s hole at third base. The Padres aren’t far away from contending, and while signing Keuchel is cleaner, revisiting Kluber is a bigger gain.

At four years and $28 million guaranteed after the trade’s cash subsidy, Myers actually has some value to the Indians, who have resorted to fairly extreme measures like seriously considering Hanley Ramirez for a starting job. Most contenders aren’t upgraded by a league-average outfielder/DH, but the Indians would be. Cleveland can’t let Kluber get away without taking a top 50ish prospect, and Naylor is a lot more interesting on a team like the Indians, which has a lot of holes on the easy side of the defensive spectrum, than he is on one that wants to be in the Eric Hosmer business for a decade.

Unfortunately, in the end, I expect that Cleveland wasn’t as serious about trading Kluber as they were made out to be and would likely be far more interested in someone who could contribute now, like Chris Paddack. And Paddack makes the trade make a lot less sense for the Padres, given that they have enough holes in the rotation that they ought to want Kluber and Paddack starting right now.

2. Nicholas Castellanos to the Cleveland Indians for Yu Chang, Luis Oviedo, and Bobby Bradley.

The relationship between Castellanos and the Tigers seems to oscillate between the former wanting a trade and both sides wanting to hammer out a contract extension.

Truth is, trading Castellanos always made more sense as the Tigers really aren’t that close to being a competitive team yet, even in the drab AL Central. Castellanos is not a J.D. Martinez-type hitter, and I feel Detroit would be making a mistake if lingering disappointment from a weak return for Martinez were to result in them not getting value for Castellanos.

While one could envision a future Indian infield where Jose Ramirez ends up back at second, and Chang is at third (or second), I think the need for a hitter, even if the first trade proposed here were to happen, is too great. Oviedo is years away and Cleveland’s window of contention can’t wait to see if Bradley turns things around.

3. Dylan Bundy to the New York Mets for Will Toffey and Walker Lockett.

I suspect that if the Mets were willing to sign Dallas Keuchel, he’d already be in Queens. In an offseason during which the Mets lit up the neon WIN NOW sign, they’ve confusingly kept the fifth starter seat open for Jason Vargas for no particular reason.

Rather than wait for Vargas to rediscover the blood magicks that allowed him to put on a Greg Maddux glamour for a few months a couple of years ago, I’d much rather the Mets use their fifth starter role in a more interesting way. Bundy has largely disappointed, but there’s likely at least some upside left that the Orioles have shown little ability to figure out yet.

Toffey would struggle to get at-bats in New York unless the team’s plethora of third-base-capable players came down with bubonic plague, and given that the team isn’t interested in letting Lockett seriously challenge Vargas’ role, better to let him discover how to get lefties out on a team that’s going to lose 100 games.

4. Mychal Givens to the Boston Red Sox for Bryan Mata.

Boston’s bullpen was a solid group in 2018, finishing fifth in FIP and ninth in bullpen WAR. But it’s a group that is now missing Kimbrel and Joe Kelly, two relievers who combined for 2.2 of the team’s 4.9 WAR. The Red Sox haven’t replaced that lost production, and while they talk about how they really think that Ryan Brasier is great, they already had him last year. Now he’ll throw more innings in 2019, but that will largely be balanced by him not actually being a 1.60 ERA pitcher.

The Red Sox have dropped to 22nd in the depth chart rankings for bullpens, and although ZiPS is more optimistic than the ZiPS/Steamer mix, it’s only by enough to get Boston to 18th.

The Orioles are one of the few teams who might possibly be willing to part with bullpen depth at this point in the season and Givens, three years from free agency, gives the Red Sox the extra arm they need. Mata is a fascinating player, but he’s erratic and Boston needs to have a little more urgency in their approach. The O’s have more time to sort through fascinatingly erratic pitchers like Mata and Tanner Scott.

5. Madison Bumgarner to the Milwaukee Brewers for Corey Ray and Mauricio Dubon.

You know that point at a party when the momentum has kinda ended and people have slowly begun filtering to their cars or Ubers, but there’s one heavily inebriated dude who has decided he’s the King of New Years, something he proclaims in cringe-worthy fashion to the dwindling number of attendees?

That’s the Giants.

The party is over in San Francisco, with the roster not improved in any meaningful way from the ones that won 64 and 73 games in each of the last two seasons. The Giants are probably less likely to win 90 games than George R. R. Martin is to finish The Winds of Winter before the end of the final season of Game of Thrones.

You can’t trade Bumgarner expecting the return you would for 2016-level Bumgarner, but you can get value from a team that could use a boost in a very competitive National League.

6. Mike Leake to the Cincinnati Reds for Robert Stephenson.

An innings-eater doesn’t have great value for the Mariners, who are unlikely to be very October-relevant. The Reds seem like they’ll happily volunteer to pick up the money to keep from trading a better prospect; they can’t put all their eggs into the 2019 basket.

With Alex Wood having back issues, a Leake reunion feels like a good match to me, and with Stephenson out of options, he’d get more time to hit his upside in Seattle than he would with a Reds team that really wants to compete this year.

7. Melvin Adon to the Washington Nationals for Yasel Antuna.

Washington keeps trading away highly interesting-yet-erratic relievers midseason in a scramble to find relief pitching. Why not acquire one of those guys for a change and see what happens? Stop being the team that ships out Felipe Vazquezes or Blake Treinens and be the team that finds and keeps them instead.

The Giants have a bit of a bullpen logjam and realistically, a reliever who can’t help them right now isn’t worth a great deal; relief is a high-leverage role and by the time Adon is ready, the Giants will likely be a poor enough team that it won’t matter. They may already be! Antuna gives them a lottery pick for a player who could help the team someday in a more meaningful way.

In what will be its 16th season suspending players for taking performance enhancing drugs, Major League Baseball has given Steven Wright an 80-game suspension. Tests revealed a growth hormone in Wright’s system. Wright indicated he didn’t know how the PED entered his body, but accepted the suspension. 2019 will mark the second straight year in which Wright will begin the season with a suspension; he missed 15 games in 2018 after violating the league’s domestic violence policy.

Without Wright, the Red Sox depth in the bullpen will be tested. I tried to test the depth of the Red Sox myself, but I almost broke both of my arms trying to swim in a pool of baseball players.

Jay Jaffe just wrote about the Red Sox bullpen as it relates to their lack of pursuit of Craig Kimbrel, despite losing the aforementioned closer as well as Joe Kelly.

Nobody new of any note has come into the fold besides Jenrry Mejia, who signed a minor league deal in January after being reinstated from a PED-related, lifetime ban that cost him the past 3 1/2 seasons. Via our depth charts, the primary pool of relievers appears to consist of lefties Brian Johnson and Bobby Poyner, and righties Matt Barnes, Ryan Brasier, Heath Hembree, Tyler Thornburg, Hector Velazquez, Marcus Walden, and Brandon Workman, with knuckleballer Steven Wright coming along slowly after arthroscopic surgery on his left knee [update: and also suspended for 80 games due to a PED violation] and Carson Smith not available until sometime in midseason as he works his way back from last June’s shoulder surgery.

Jaffe took a look at the ‘pen’s depth chart and noted the projections were not very good. Wright’s 0.1 WAR projection doesn’t make his suspension seem like a big loss, but knuckleballers might be a difficult bunch to project given the lack of comps. The Red Sox were certainly planning on using him and saw something beyond what our projections see, or at least, saw something better than their other in-house options, which include little help from the minors.

While Wright wasn’t expected to start, it’s also worth noting the Red Sox have almost no starting pitching depth either. They have a very good starting five with Chris Sale, David Price, Nathan Eovaldi, Rick Porcello, and Eduardo Rodriguez, but almost nothing beyond that. Boston should be a very good team this season, but their pitching staff has some weakness to it. Wright’s suspension isn’t likely to affect much, but it does hurt their depth just a little bit more, and in what is likely to be a tight division, small losses can have big impacts.

With just over three weeks before Opening Day, Craig Kimbrel remains a free agent, and the Red Sox, whom he helped win the World Series last fall, don’t have a bona fide closer. For as sensible as a reunion might seem, it’s unlikely to happen, as the Red Sox appear more willing to experiment with late-inning roles among relatively untested pitchers than to invest heavily in a dominant pitcher who nonetheless showed signs of decline last year, or to increase their considerable tax bill. It’s a set of choices that’s very 2019, to say the least, though the bullpen will need a breakout performance or two for their plan to succeed.

Kimbrel, who turns 31 on May 28, is coming off a season in which he saved 42 games, his highest total since 2014, and made his seventh All-Star team. But he struggled after the All-Star break (4.57 ERA and 3.58 FIP in 21.2 innings), and finished with the highest FIP (3.13) and home run rate (1.01 per nine) of his career and the second-highest ERA (2.74) and walk rate (12.6%). While his knuckle-curve remained unhittable (20.9% swinging strike rate, with batters “hitting” .082/.176/.098 on 68 PA ending with the pitch), the average velocity of his four-seam fastball slipped to 97.5 mph, his lowest mark since 2011, and the pitch was hit comparatively hard (.171/.292/.388) while accounting for all seven of the homers he yielded. In the postseason, he surrendered runs in his first four appearances before discovering that he was tipping his pitches; he corrected the problem by setting up with his glove at his waist, and was scored upon in just one of his final five October outings.

Fixed though he may be, Kimbrel has produced just one season out of the past four (2017, when he posted a 1.43 ERA and 1.42 FIP) that’s in the ballpark of his 2011-14 stretch, when he was the game’s top reliever (1.51 ERA, 1.52 FIP, 11.1 WAR). He entered the winter reportedly seeking a six-year deal worth over $100 million, a price tag that might have been a pipe dream even without his relatively shaky platform season given the frosty turn of the free agent market.

Not helping matters is that three of the majors’ highest-spending teams are already rather spent in the closer market, namely the Yankees (who signed Aroldis Chapman to a five-year, $86 million deal in December 2016), Dodgers (who re-signed Kenley Jansen to a five-year, $80 million deal in January 2017), and Giants (who signed Mark Melancon to a four-year, $62 million deal in December 2016). According to Forbes’ end-of-year figures, those teams are respectively ranked sixth, fourth, and third in payroll, with the two teams ahead of them, the Nationals and Red Sox, the only ones who actually exceeded the $197 million Competitive Balance Tax Threshold. More on both of those teams momentarily.

While a recent rumor that Kimbrel was willing to sit out the season if no team met his price was quickly debunked, he remains unsigned, and interest from teams like the Phillies and Braves has hinged on short-term deals. The latter, the team that drafted and developed Kimbrel, hasn’t done anything substantial to fix a bullpen that was below average last year, beyond hoping that midseason acquisition Darren O’Day, acquired as a poison pill in the Kevin Gausman trade, has recovered from season-ending right hamstring surgery. The unit’s current projection of 2.6 WAR ranks 16th out of 30 teams. The Phillies’ bullpen, which most notably added free agent David Robertson as well as former Mariners Juan Nicasio and James Pazos, are projected for 4.2 WAR.

The Nationals, who according to Cot’s Contracts are projected to be $10.5 million below this year’s $206 million CBT threshold, have maintained interest in Kimbrel, and given their recent bullpen debacles and their current reliance on oft-injured Sean Doolittle and Tommy John surgery returnee Trevor Rosenthal, they appear to have need for the fireballer. They would likely need to make a salary-cutting move or two to give themselves some breathing room under the tax threshold, particularly given that as three-time offenders, they will pay a 50% marginal tax rate on the overages.

And then there’s the Red Sox, who according to Cots are already [puts on special payroll-viewing goggles] nearly $31.6 million over the threshold, facing not only a 30% marginal tax rate as second-time offenders but also a 12% surtax for being between $20 million and $40 million over. Re-signing Kimbrel to even a one-year, $9 million deal would not only push them out of that range and into one that, if I’m reading this correctly, boosts their surtax to 42.5%; it would also mean that they would also have their top pick in the upcoming June amateur draft moved back 10 places. All of which seems rather draconian. MLB Trade Rumors, which uses slightly different payroll figures via Roster Resource, estimated that to pay Kimbrel a one-year, $17.5 million salary (thus exceeding Wade Davis‘ $17.33 million to set an AAV record for relievers) would cost an additional $11.564 million in taxes. Woof.

So that’s not happening, and while we wait for some other team to meet Kimbrel’s price — my money is still on Atlanta — Boston’s bullpen is worth a closer look. Last year, with Kimbrel in tow, the unit ranked a modest sixth in the AL in WAR (4.9), but third in FIP- (92), fourth in ERA- (83), and fifth in K-BB% (15.3%). In losing Kimbrel and the often erratic Joe Kelly, who after leading the team with 65.2 relief innings signed a free agent deal with the Dodgers, the team has shed a pair that accounted for 21.8% of their bullpen’s innings and 44.9% of their WAR (1.5 for Kimbrel, 0.7 for Kelly).

Nobody new of any note has come into the fold besides Jenrry Mejia, who signed a minor league deal in January after being reinstated from a PED-related, lifetime ban that cost him the past 3 1/2 seasons. Via our depth charts, the primary pool of relievers appears to consist of lefties Brian Johnson and Bobby Poyner, and righties Matt Barnes, Ryan Brasier, Heath Hembree, Tyler Thornburg, Hector Velazquez, Marcus Walden, and Brandon Workman, with knuckleballer Steven Wright coming along slowly after arthroscopic surgery on his left knee [update: and also suspended for 80 games due to a PED violation] and Carson Smith not available until sometime in midseason as he works his way back from last June’s shoulder surgery.

None of those pitchers besides Mejia, who saved 28 games in 2014 but did not even get a non-roster invitation to Boston’s big league camp, has much major league closing experience. Thornburg owns 13 career saves, all from 2016 with the Brewers, before he was traded (for Travis Shaw) and missed all of 2017 and half of ’18 due to surgery to correct thoracic outlet syndrome. Barnes owns two saves, Waldman and Wright one apiece, and that’s it, though some of the aforementioned pitchers did close in the minors. This apparently does not faze the Red Sox, who may not anoint a single pitcher for ninth-inning duties. From the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier:

As the Red Sox contemplate how they’ll handle ninth-inning responsibilities in a post-Kimbrel world, the team seems increasingly open to the possibility of taking a flexible approach to the later stages of the game rather than making an unwavering commitment to one person for the last three outs.

Manager Alex Cora reiterated on Sunday morning that he has “a pretty good idea of what I want to do” with the ninth inning, but that the topic is one that is currently subject to organizational debate — a conversation driven less by how individual pitchers perform in spring training than by what the organization is willing to do with them. He opened the door to the possibility of using matchups to dictate the back end of the bullpen structure.

“We know who [the relievers] are. We know the stuff. It’s just about the plan. The plan will be out there on March 28th,” Cora said, referring to the Opening Day date against the Mariners. “It’s just a matter of, see what we’re going to do as an organization, what plan we’re going to do, how comfortable are we with a closer or mixing it up, or getting people out in certain situations? We still have a lot of days to see how we feel about it.”

Those well-versed in Red Sox history may recall the team’s ill-fated 2003 “closer by committee” plan, which fared poorly and ultimately led to the late May acquisition of Byung-Hyun Kim from the Diamondbacks. As Speier points out, current pitching coach Dana LeVangie was that team’s bullpen coach. But those were different times, and the past few years have seen teams show more open-mindedness about late-inning reliever usage, with roles — including who finishes the ninth — less rigidly defined. Ninth-inning-wise, think the 2016-18 Indians, with Andrew Miller (or, when Miller was hurt in 2018, Brad Hand) occasionally taking save chances instead of Cody Allen; or last year’s Cubs, with Pedro Strop, Steve Cishek, and Jesse Chavez all used to cover for the second-half absence of Brandon Morrow; or last year’s Brewers, who had three pitchers (Corey Knebel, Jeremy Jeffress, and Josh Hader) save at least 10 games without manager Craig Counsell relying upon any one of them as his main guy.

There’s no reason why the Red Sox, an organization as analytically inclined as those teams, couldn’t get away with a similar approach, given a manager who’s comfortable with such an arrangement and talented pitchers who can boil the job down to “go in and get outs,” as Hader described his role last year. Cora, who as a rookie manager piloted the Red Sox to a franchise-record 108 wins and a World Series victory over the Dodgers, appears quite qualified and game for the challenge. Barnes and Brasier, the two pitchers most likely to figure into a late-game plan, both sound receptive and upbeat via Speier’s reporting. We’re a far cry from 2015, when Angels closer Huston Street declared that he’d rather retire than be used in high-leverage situations outside of the ninth.

Of course, the success of such a plan isn’t just dependent upon player buy-in but also execution, and it’s there that the Red Sox may have more to worry about. With the personnel on hand, the team’s bullpen projects to rank 23rd in the majors in WAR. Here’s how the key individuals that I mentioned stack up with regards to 2018 performance and 2019 projections:

Much depends upon the continued success of Barnes and Brasier, however they’re deployed. Barnes, a 2011 first-round pick who has spent virtually all of the past four seasons in Boston’s bullpen, more or less ditched his slider in favor of further emphasizing his curve, which generated a career-best 18.0% swing-and-miss rate (up from 12.5% to 13.5% from 2015-17); his 36.2% K rate ranked ninth among the 151 relievers with at least 50 innings last year, while his 2.71 FIP ranked 22nd.

Brasier didn’t join the Red Sox bullpen until July 9 last year, his first major league appearance since September 27, 2013, with the Angels, for whom he made seven appearances that season. In the interim, he lost a year and a half to Tommy John surgery, spent a year and a half in the A’s chain and then a season in Japan, and finally spent half a season closing in Pawtucket, where he pitched his way to the Triple-A All-Star Game on the back of a 1.34 ERA and a 40/8 K/BB ratio in 40.1 innings before getting called up and carrying over a similarly effective performance to the majors. Both pitchers came up big in October, which should lessen fears about whether they can handle the pressure of the ninth inning during the regular season, even if the usage pattern is less regular than your average ninth-inning guy.

It’s the rest of the cast that carries the bigger question marks; most of them project to be more or less replacement level, and they’ll need a few somebodies to step up — perhaps Thornburg rediscovering his pre-surgical form, Hembree avoiding the gopher balls (1.5 per nine over the past two seasons), Smith giving the team a midseason shot in the arm, and so on. Maybe Mejia shakes off the rust and pitches his way to an unlikely comeback. Maybe rookies like Poyner and Travis Lakins (10th on the team’s prospect list) break through. Perhaps president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski can augment this core with an inexpensive signing or a judicious trade, if not in March then by midseason. There’s little doubt that the Sox, even without Kimbrel, have the talent and firepower to repeat as division winners. But particularly if they hope to do so as champions, somewhere within this group, they’re going to have to get a little lucky.

It’s a rare day when a player looks back on a championship-winning season with something approaching regret, but then, Dustin Pedroia didn’t get much chance to contribute to the Red Sox during their World Series-winning 2018 campaign. After being limited to 105 games in 2017, largely due to ongoing discomfort in his left knee, Pedroia underwent an experimental cartilage restoration procedure that was expected to cost him the first couple months of last season. He returned in late May, but played just three games before inflammation forced him back to the injured list, and he spent the rest of the season as a bystander as the Sox overcame his absence while romping to their fourth title in the last 15 seasons.

“I don’t regret doing it, but looking back and knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it,” Pedroia told reporters in Fort Myers last week, referring to the surgery, called osteochondral allograft transfer surgery, which involves grafting cartilage from a cadaver. While basketball and soccer players had undergone the procedure prior to Pedroia, teammate Steven Wright was the only baseball player who had done so.

The 35-year-old second baseman, who had previously undergone surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee in October 2016 (among his numerous other ailments), believes both that he pushed himself too hard and that some of the expectations with regards to recovery times were “a little off.” In retrospect, he believes that avoiding the surgery in favor of longer rest and rehab might have been a more productive route. “It’s a complicated surgery,” said Pedroia. “The cartilage in my knee is great now. The graft is the thing. You’re putting somebody else’s bone in your body. To get that to incorporate fully, there are so many things going into it that.”

For what it’s worth, Wright, who was limited to 53.2 innings last year by three separate trips to the injured list for left knee inflammation (as well as a 15-game suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy) and missed the entire postseason, is similarly less than enamored with the results of his cartilage restoration surgery, which took place on May 8, 2017, 5 1/2 months prior to Pedroia’s. “It’s been tougher mentally than physically,” he told reporters last week. “It’s a game where it’s tough on your body, but then when you’ve got a flat tire going out there trying to pitch, it makes it a little bit tougher.” Wright later said that his knee currently feels like it’s been from a flat tire to a spare.

In anticipation of Pedroia’s early-2018 absence, the Red Sox retained July 2017 acquisition Eduardo Núñez in free agency, but both he and utilityman Brock Holt struggled in the role, to the point of topping my Replacement Level Killers list in late July. To that point, Sox second sackers had combined for a sad-sack -0.7 WAR. On July 30, they traded for the Tigers’ Ian Kinsler, who was replacement-level as well, though he did represent a defensive upgrade. In all, the eight players Boston used at second base — a cast rounded out by Brandon Phillips, Tzu-Wei Lin, Mookie Betts (!), and Blake Swihart — combined to hit .252/.308/.350 for a 75 wRC+ and -0.3 WAR. Only the Giants and Tigers were worse in the last two categories.

All of the participants save for Phillips and Kinser (who signed with the Padres) remain on the Red Sox’s 40-man roster. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told reporters last week that he’s not expecting Pedroia to play 150 games. “We’re hopeful that he’s a 125-game player at this point,” said Dombrowsk. “We do feel we have some people who are solid and can fill in. To fill in if [Pedroia] plays 120, guys like Holt, a guy like Nunez coming over there. Even some depth with Tzu-Wei Lin in our organization we like a great deal.”

Our current depth charts projections, which feature Pedroia getting 74% of the team’s plate appearances at second base, forecast him for a .272/.344/.390 line with 2.0 WAR, and for the group as a whole to return 2.5 WAR, good for 12th in the majors. While the Red Sox would probably be overjoyed if things unfold that way, history suggests there may be less reason for optimism. Along the lines of what I did for Troy Tulowitzki last August, I asked Dan Szymborski to put together a list of infielders who are over 30 — shortstops and third basemen as well as second basemen, in order to start with a larger pool than the Tulo study — and missed all or nearly all of a season, then returned to the majors. I used 100 plate appearances as the upper limit for the “missed” season (Pedroia had 13), and confirmed with a variety of resources that the players’ absences were due to injuries, not detours to foreign leagues or mere attrition. As before, I considered only players from 1980 onward. The resulting list of 18 players was less than encouraging, to say the least:

One can wave off individual results here and there on various grounds. Sports medicine has improved vastly over the past four decades, and in considering Pedroia, it’s debatable how much we can extrapolate from players’ failures to recover from injuries to other body parts, such as Jeter’s ankle, the shoulders of Burleson, Glaus, and Perry, or the elbows of Fernandez, Howe (who also underwent ankle surgery), and a quartet of Tommy John surgery recipients (Furcal, Izturis, Santana, and Velarde). We can also debate the propriety of comparing the fates of players who were 30 or 38 at the start of these sequences to that of a 34-year-old.

Even so, within the timeframe, I couldn’t find any examples of an over-30 infielder who was significantly above replacement level both before missing most or all of a season and then again in his return year. Gonzalez (the “Sea Bass” one) underwent microfracture surgery in his left knee in March 2008 and did post a big 3.0 WAR season in 2010; he’s in this table twice thanks to a 2012 torn ACL. And Velarde, who underwent Tommy John surgery, totaled about 10 WAR from 1999-2001, but both needed at least one more year to recover form.

That said, three players who had dreadful seasons pre-injury did rebound substantially upon returning. Lansford, the regular third baseman for the A’s from 1983-1990 (including their three pennant-winning teams from 1988-1990) was pretty lousy in the last of those seasons, then suffered serious right shoulder and left knee injuries while snowmobiling in Oregon in January 1991. A’s vice president Sandy Alderson said at the time, “Carney’s contract doesn’t say he can snowmobile and it doesn’t say he can’t,” adding that the team declined to pursue terminating his employment. Lansford played just five games in the 1991 season, but returned for a solid 1992 season before retiring.

Fernandez, who racked up 43.5 WAR in a career that spanned from 1983-2001, endured a career-worst season as the Yankees’ starting shortstop in 1995, then fractured his right elbow in March 1996. The Yankees turned to the 22-year-old Jeter, who went on to win AL Rookie of the Year honors while helping the team win its first championship in 18 years. Fernandez missed the entire season, then resurfaced with the Indians in 1997, hitting for a 93 wRC+ with 2.1 WAR; he spent three more years in the majors and accumulated 4.9 WAR.

Spezio, a useful infielder for the Angels (6.6 WAR from 2000-2003), struggled in the first year of a three-year, $9.15 million deal with the Mariners (67 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR in 415 PA) in 2004. Between being relegated to a backup role by the free agent signings of Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson, missing 10 weeks due to an oblique strain, and then drawing his release in late August, he was limited to 51 PA in 2005. Divorce, depression, and substance abuse — the last two of which would further derail his career years later — were contributing factors to his 2005 struggles. Nonetheless, he played a significant role for the Cardinals’ 2006 championship team, posting a 123 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR in 321 PA.

Even with that trio in my quick-and-dirty study, the group of players I identified averaged a meager 83 wRC+ and 0.2 WAR in their returns. Limiting the player pool to those whose pre-injury seasons were worth at least 1.0 WAR, which clears out some light hitters whose careers were essentially on their last legs anyway, the averages are 81 wRC+ (down from 105 pre-injury) and 0.0 WAR (down from 2.4) — an even steeper drop that probably owed something to more complete players getting longer leashes.

All of which is to say that if history is a guide, the 2019 Red Sox may not get anything close to the Pedroia they’re used to, the one who has never really had a below-average season. Even in his most injury-wracked campaigns, when his bat has been about average (98 wRC+ in 2014, 101 in 2017), he’s played at a three-win pace, solidly above average if not up to the standard that helped him make four All-Star teams and win four Gold Gloves from 2008-14. That said, even a slog of a season is unlikely to mean the end of the line for Pedroia, given that he’s still owed $40 million through 2021 via the eight-year, $110 million extension he signed in July 2013.

If Pedroia can recover some semblance of form, the stakes are high; he still has a shot at a Hall of Fame berth. He’s got the hardware (AL MVP, AL Rookie of the Year, three World Series rings, two of them as starter), but with 1,803 hits, he needs two seasons worth of playing time to reach 2,000, a number that has functioned as a bright-line test for Hall voters when it comes to post-1960 players. Likewise he’s still short in JAWS. He’s 19th among second basemen at 47.3, 9.6 points below the standard, but he’s only 2.0 WAR below the seven-year peak standard (42.4 versus 44.4). Given Chase Utley’s retirement short of 2,000 hits, Kinsler’s fade, and the PED suspension of Robinson Cano, none of this era’s aging second baseman have clear paths to Cooperstown, but a functioning if not fully resurgent Pedrioa would be best positioned to change that.

Of course, talk of any resurgence is premature when discussing a player whose availability can’t yet be taken for granted. If he’s batting leadoff on Opening Day, per manager Alex Cora’s promise for when he’ll return, Pedroia will have hit the first big mark.

When publishing our lists — in particular, the top 100 — we’re frequently asked who, among the players excluded from this year’s version, might have the best chance of appearing on next year’s version. Whose stock are we buying? This post represents our best attempt to answer all of those questions at once.

This is the second year that we’re doing this, and we have some new rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been a 50 FV or better in any of our write-ups or rankings. So while we think Austin Hays might have a bounce back year and be a 50 FV again, we’re not allowed to include him here; you already know about him. We also forbid ourselves from using players who were on last year’s inaugural list. (We were right about 18 of the 63 players last year, a 29% hit rate, though we have no idea if that’s good or not, as it was our first time engaging in the exercise.) At the end of the piece, we have a list of potential high-leverage relievers who might debut this year. They’re unlikely to ever be a 50 FV or better because of their role, but they often have a sizable impact on competitive clubs, and readers seemed to like that we had that category last year.

We’ve separated this year’s players into groups or “types” to make it a little more digestible, and to give you some idea of the demographics we think pop-up guys come from, which could help you identify some of your own with THE BOARD. For players who we’ve already covered this offseason, we included a link to the team lists, where you can find a full scouting report. We touch briefly on the rest of the names in this post. Here are our picks to click:

Teenage Pitchers
Torres was young for his draft class, is a plus athlete, throws really hard, and had surprisingly sharp slider command all last summer. White looked excellent in the fall when the Rangers finally allowed their high school draftees to throw. He sat 92-94, and his changeup and breaking ball were both above-average. Pardinho and Woods Richardson are the two advanced guys in this group. Thomas is the most raw but, for a someone who hasn’t been pitching for very long, he’s already come a long way very quickly.

Eric Pardinho, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Lenny Torres, Jr., RHP, Cleveland Indians
Simeon Woods Richardson, RHP, New York Mets (full report)
Adam Kloffenstein, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Grayson Rodriguez, RHP, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Owen White, RHP, Texas Rangers
Mason Denaburg, RHP, Washington Nationals (full report)
Tahnaj Thomas, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates (full report)

The “This is What They Look Like” Group
If you like big, well-made athletes, this list is for you. Rodriguez was physically mature compared to his DSL peers and also seems like a mature person. The Mariners have indicated they’re going to send him right to Low-A this year. He could be a middle-of-the-order, corner outfield power bat. Luciano was the Giants’ big 2018 July 2 signee. He already has huge raw power and looks better at short than he did as an amateur. Canario has elite bat speed. Adams was signed away from college football but is more instinctive than most two-sport athletes. Most of the stuff he needs to work on is related to getting to his power.

Julio Rodriguez, RF, Seattle Mariners
Marco Luciano, SS, San Francisco Giants
Alexander Canario, RF, San Francisco Giants
Jordyn Adams, CF, Los Angeles Angels
Jordan Groshans, 3B, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Jhon Torres, OF, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Shervyen Newton, SS, New York Mets (full report)
Kevin Alcantara, CF, New York Yankees (full report)
Freudis Nova, SS, Houston Astros
Brice Turang, SS, Milwaukee Brewers (full report)
Connor Scott, CF, Miami Marlins (full report)

Advanced Young Bats with Defensive Value
This is the group that produces the likes of Vidal Brujan and Luis Urias. Edwards is a high-effort gamer with 70 speed and feel for line drive contact. Marcano isn’t as stocky and strong as X, but he too has innate feel for contact, and could be a plus middle infield defender. Perez has great all-fields contact ability and might be on an Andres Gimenez-style fast track, where he reaches Double-A at age 19 or 20. Ruiz is the worst defender on this list, but he has all-fields raw power and feel for contact. He draws Alfonso Soriano comps. Palacios is the only college prospect listed here. He had three times as many walks as strikeouts at Towson last year. Rosario controls the zone well, is fast, and is a plus defender in center field.

Xavier Edwards, SS, San Diego Padres
Antoni Flores, SS, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Jose Devers, SS, Miami Marlins (full report)
Tucupita Marcano, SS, San Diego Padres
Wenceel Perez, SS, Detroit Tigers
Esteury Ruiz, 2B, San Diego Padres
Richard Palacios, SS, Cleveland Indians
Antonio Cabello, CF, New York Yankees (full report)
Cole Roederer, LF, Chicago Cubs (full report)
Jeisson Rosario, CF, San Diego Padres
Luis Garcia, SS, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)
Simon Muzziotti, CF, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)

Corner Power Bats
Nevin will probably end up as a contact-over-power first baseman, but he might also end up with a 70 bat. He looked great against Fall League pitching despite having played very little as a pro due to injury. Lavigne had a lot of pre-draft helium and kept hitting after he signed. He has all-fields power. Apostel saw reps at first during instructs but has a good shot to stay at third. He has excellent timing and explosive hands.

Grant Lavigne, 1B, Colorado Rockies
Sherten Apostel, 3B, Texas Rangers
Triston Casas, 1B, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Dylan Carlson, RF, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Moises Gomez, RF, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Elehuris Montero, 3B, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Nathaniel Lowe, 1B, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Tyler Nevin, 1B, Colorado Rockies

College-aged Pitchers
It’s hard to imagine any of these guys rocketing into the top 50 overall. Rather, we would anticipate that they end up in the 60-100 range on next year’s list. Gilbert was a workhorse at Stetson and his velo may spike with reshaped usage. Singer should move quickly because of how advanced his command is. Lynch’s pre-draft velocity bump held throughout the summer, and he has command of several solid secondaries. Abreu spent several years in rookie ball and then had a breakout 2018, forcing Houston to 40-man him to protect him from the Rule 5. He’ll tie Dustin May for the second-highest breaking ball spin rate on THE BOARD when the Houston list goes up. We’re intrigued by what Dodgers player dev will do with an athlete like Gray. Phillips throws a ton of strikes and has a good four-pitch mix.

Logan Gilbert, RHP, Seattle Mariners
Zac Lowther, LHP, Baltimore Orioles (full report)
Brady Singer, RHP, Kansas City Royals
Bryan Abreu, RHP, Houston Astros
Daniel Lynch, LHP, Kansas City Royals
Wil Crowe, RHP, Washington Nationals (full report)
Josiah Gray, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Jordan Holloway, RHP, Miami Marlins (full report)
Tyler Phillips, RHP, Texas Rangers

Bounce Back Candidates
The Dodgers have a strong track record of taking severely injured college arms who return with better stuff after a long period of inactivity. That could be Grove, their 2018 second rounder, who missed most of his sophomore and junior seasons at West Virginia. McCarthy was also hurt during his junior season and it may have obscured his true abilities. Burger is coming back from multiple Achilles ruptures, but was a strong college performer with power before his tire blew.

Michael Grove, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Jake McCarthy, CF, Arizona Diamondbacks
Jake Burger, 3B, Chicago White Sox
Thomas Szapucki, LHP, New York Mets (full report)

Catchers
We’re very excited about the current crop of minor league catchers. Naylor is athletic enough that he’s likely to improve as a defender and he has rare power for the position.

Ivan Herrera, C, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Bo Naylor, C, Cleveland Indians
Payton Henry, C, Milwaukee Brewers (full report)

Potentially Dominant Relievers
These names lean “multi-inning” rather than “closer.” Gonsolin was a two-way player in college who has been the beneficiary of sound pitch design. He started last year but was up to 100 mph out of the bullpen the year before. He now throws a four seamer rather than a sinker and he developed a nasty splitter in 2017. He also has two good breaking balls. He has starter stuff but may break in as a reliever this year.

Trent Thornton, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Darwinzon Hernandez, LHP, Boston Red Sox (full report)
Dakota Hudson, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals (full report)
Sean Reid-Foley, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays (full report)
Colin Poche, LHP, Tampa Bay Rays (full report)
Trevor Stephan, RHP, New York Yankees (full report)
Vladimir Gutierrez, RHP, Cincinnati Reds (full report)
Dakota Mekkes, RHP, Chicago Cubs (full report)
Tony Gonsolin, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
Mauricio Llovera, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies (full report)