Andy Marte died in a car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 33 years old. Yordano Ventura died in a separate car accident in his native Dominican Republic. He was 25 years old. Those are the facts, and those are the ages, but the ages are presented as if they mean anything. Any lost life is a life lost too early, and there exists no formula to calculate a level of sadness. The baseball community is in mourning, as it has been too many times.

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On MLB Network Monday evening, contemporaries Dan Plesac and John Smoltz opined that Bo Jackson could have been a Hall of Famer, at least a regular All-Star, had he committed to baseball.

Jackson produced a career wRC+ of 111 and 7.7 WAR over parts of eight major-league seasons, hardly the stuff of bronzed immortalization in Cooperstown. But had Jackson fully committed to the sport, what could he have been? What could he have done?

Who is going to bet against a guy who can scale a wall?

Or accomplish this ….

The Bessemer, Ala., native was drafted by the Yankees in the second round of the 1982 draft but elected to attend Auburn. He did many impressive things at Auburn, starring in track and football, winning a Heisman Trophy. But he also posted a 1.364 OPS as a junior. He was drafted by the Royals in the fourth round of the 1986 draft after being selected first overall in the NFL draft. Jackson said publicly he would not sign with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

And he didn’t sign.

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It’s true that, if you look at the free agents who remain unsigned this offseason, you’ll find a lot of power still available. Franklin Gutierrez, Mike Napoli, Mark Trumbo: all three produced an isolated-slugging figure greater than .200 last season. All three are projected by Steamer to produce better than a .195 ISO in 2017. All three have yet to find a team for the 2017 season.

Given the general demand for power, you might wonder why so many of these sluggers don’t have jobs yet. A look both at the supply and the demand in the league reveals a possible cause, however: handedness. There might be an obstacle, in other words, to matching those free agents with the right teams.

To illustrate my point, let me utilize the depth charts at RosterResource. What’s nice about RosterResource, for the purposes of this experiment, is that the site presents both a “go-to” starting lineup and also a projected bench. Here’s a link to the Cubs page to give you a sense of what I mean.

In most cases, a team will roster four non-catcher bench players. Looking over the current depth charts, however, I find 15 teams with only three non-catcher bench players on the depth chart (not to mention five additional bench players who are projected to record less than 0 WAR). For the purpose of this piece, let’s refer to these as “open positions.”

Fifteen! That’s a lot. It means we’re likely to see quite a few signings before the season begins. Of course, not all these openings are appropriate for the power bats remaining on the market. Most of those guys are corner types, if they can play the field at all, while some of those 15 clubs have needs at positions that require greater defensive skill.

For example, Anaheim might need an infielder or a third baseman for their open bench spot. The White Sox need a right-handed center fielder to platoon with lefty Charlie Tilson. Detroit needs a center fielder, maybe a right-handed one — and in the process of writing this piece, they got one in the form of the newly acquired Mike Mahtook maybe. If Mel Rojas Jr. can’t play center in Atlanta, they need a (right-handed?) center fielder, too. The Yankees may need a third baseman — and, if not that, definitely someone with some defensive ability on the infield.

So that reduces the number of open positions to 10. That’s 10 slots that could be filled by an offensive piece with little defensive value. Here are the teams that, by my estimation, have an opening for a slugger: Baltimore, Boston, Chicago (NL), Cleveland, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Tampa, Texas, and Toronto.

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It’s no secret the Royals have been facing a challenging offseason. They came in with so many critical players entering their contract years, and they’re also a lower-budget operation with a mediocre farm system. A month and a half ago, I wrote an article entitled “The Royals’ Last Ride.” Some sort of transition appeared inevitable. The Royals would need to work incredibly hard if they wanted to have a chance to win down the line, without sacrificing too much from 2017.

Now, there’s plenty to like about how the transition has gone. The overall situation is still difficult, to be sure, but the Royals got four years of Jorge Soler for one year of Wade Davis. They got four years of Nate Karns for one year of Jarrod Dyson. And now, maybe most significantly, the team has extended Danny Duffy, with a five-year deal covering four years of would-be free agency. Duffy is the best starting pitcher in the organization. He has it in him to be one of the better starting pitchers in the league.

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When the Rays acquired Nate Karns from the Nationals back in 2014, the story was that he had fastball velocity and a power curve, and we’ll see about the changeup. We saw the changeup, and it was good enough, and the curve was as advertised. Unfortunately, something happened to the fastball along the way.

The Rays sent Jose Lobaton and Felipe Rivero to the Nationals for that curveball and hoped on the change. The change looked good in 147 innings for the Rays in 2015, so the Mariners took a leap that offseason, sending Brad Miller, Logan Morrison and Danny Farquhar to the Rays for Karns, right-hander C.J. Riefenhauser, and center fielder Boog Powell. Now, after a poor year, Karns has been traded again — to the Royals, this time — for outfielder Jarrod Dyson.

What happened last year, when Karns had an ERA over five? The curve and the change were fine in Seattle! But in the meantime, something may have happened to Karns’ fastball. And it could have to do with useful spin. Kansas City has to hope that what broke is fixable.

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

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Los Angeles AL / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
As noted over the last month in these pages both by Jeff Sullivan and then Craig Edwards, the Kansas City Royals currently employ a number of players who are likely to become free agents after the 2017 season. What the ZiPS projections featured here do is reinforce the relative importance of those pending free agents to Kansas City’s likelihood of winning games. Because, consider: of the nine field players forecast to record a 1.0 WAR or better in 2017, five of them — Lorenzo Cain (503 PA, 3.1 zWAR), Jarrod Dyson (303, 1.9), Alcides Escobar (652, 1.3), Eric Hosmer (648, 1.3), and Mike Moustakas (381, 1.6) — aren’t signed by the club past next year. Over half the team’s core, in other words, is likely to depart.

That adds some urgency to the 2017 campaign. Unfortunately, Dan Szymborski’s computer doesn’t offer much grounds for optimism. Besides Cain, only Alex Gordon (529, 2.1) and Salvador Perez (561, 3.3) are projected to break the two-win threshold among the team’s position players. The prospective starters at second base and designated hitter, meanwhile — Raul Mondesi (410, -0.3) and Jorge Soler (346, 0.2), respectively — mostly profile as replacement-level types.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the Kansas City Royals farm system. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from my own observations. The KATOH statistical projections, probable-outcome graphs, and (further down) Mahalanobis comps have been provided by Chris Mitchell. For more information on thes 20-80 scouting scale by which all of my prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this. -Eric Longenhagen

The KATOH projection system uses minor-league data and Baseball America prospect rankings to forecast future performance in the major leagues. For each player, KATOH produces a WAR forecast for his first six years in the major leagues. There are drawbacks to scouting the stat line, so take these projections with a grain of salt. Due to their purely objective nature, the projections here can be useful in identifying prospects who might be overlooked or overrated. Due to sample-size concerns, only players with at least 200 minor-league plate appearances or batters faced last season have received projections. -Chris Mitchell

Other Lists
NL West (ARI, COL, LAD, SD, SF)
AL Central (CHW, CLE, DET, KC, MIN)
NL Central (CHC, CIN, PIT, MIL, StL)
NL East (ATL, MIA, NYM, PHI, WAS)
AL East (BAL, BOS, NYY, TB, TOR)

55 FV Prospects

Relevant/Interesting Metrics
Recorded 30 strikeouts in 22 big-league innings.

Scouting Report
Strahm saw a 148% uptick in innings as a sophomore at Neosho CC in 2012 and pitched complete games in 11 of his 14 starts (though many of them were not a full nine innings). Strahm dominated and his stuff ticked up as the year went along. (All told, Strahm added almost 15 mph to his fastball between his senior year of high school and his sophomore year of JUCO.) Nevertheless, he lasted until the 21st round of June’s draft. He began experiencing discomfort in his elbow during the 2012 offseason and was misdiagnosed with a stress reaction when in fact he needed Tommy John, which he ultimately received in the summer of 2013. He missed all of 2014 recovering.

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The Houston Astros figure to be one of the better clubs in baseball this next season. They had a strong team last year and have added Carlos Beltran, Brian McCann, and Josh Reddick in the meantime. Presumably, that makes them a stronger team.

As for the pitching side, they don’t appear to be content yet. They have Dallas Keuchel at the front of the rotation. Lance McCullers is good, but had elbow problems last season. Collin McHugh is fine, Mike Fiers a little bit less fine. Charlie Morton and potentially Joe Musgrove also appear in the mix. The team could probably use one more good pitcher.

As such, it should come as no surprise that, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com, that the Astros have tried to trade for a starting pitcher. From McTaggart’s piece:

The Astros are trying to land a starting pitcher, but aren’t willing to trade Bregman. That has made things rather difficult. Among some of their targets are Jose Quintana, Jake Odorizzi, Chris Archer, Danny Duffy and Yordano Ventura. The team has the prospects to get a deal done and is likely to make a move at some point.

One of these things is not like the other. Here are those pitchers’ WAR totals from last season.

It would certainly appear from the data here as though Yordano Ventura isn’t particularly good. At the very least, you could say he had pretty forgettable season in terms of creating wins. He did incite a benches-clearing brawl earlier in the season — and, after multiple, similar incidents, it’s certainly possible he deserved more than the eight-game suspension he received for throwing at Manny Machado.

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Yesterday, while ruminating about the Royals opportunities this winter, I suggested the following.

If I’m Kansas City, I’d rather send Davis to a team like the Cubs or Dodgers, a team that doesn’t really have a ninth-inning guy with whom they’re currently comfortable, and would pay a bigger premium for the upgrade they’d get in their bullpen. The idea of swapping Davis for Jorge Soler and something else is more interesting to me, for instance. Soler is, in some ways, the outfield version of Kolten Wong at this point; a mid-20s guy who hasn’t shown he can be an above-average regular yet, but has a long-term deal at cheap prices that makes him somewhat useful even if he just is what he is. Except Soler still has mythical upside: if he figures out how to hit like people think he could hit, his value would skyrocket.

The Royals, it seems, had similar thoughts.

Sources: #Cubs close to acquiring Wade Davis from #Royals for Jorge Soler.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

The deal isn’t done quite yet, because reviewing the medicals on a guy who went on the DL twice last year with elbow problems is no minor matter. But assuming the Cubs are confident that Davis is healthy enough, the deal sounds like it will go through, and likely as a one for one.

Source: #Cubs' trade with #Royals, if completed, will be straight-up: Davis for Soler. No other players.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

So, let’s talk about Soler and Davis. In a challenge trade, it’s usually hard to pull off a win-win deal, given that the performance of the two players isn’t going to be identical. This one, though? This looks like this could work well for both teams.

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There are a few teams in baseball that just don’t trade with each other, at least not in any meaningful way. The Cubs and White Sox don’t send impact players to their crosstown rivals. The Dodgers and Giants would rather do anything else besides strike a significant trade that might help the other, to the point where you only have to go back four trades between the two franchises before you find a deal that involved Jackie Robinson. Yes, that Jackie Robinson; the deal was voided when Robinson refused to report to the Giants.

Less well known, the Cardinals and Royals also mostly just ignore each other in trade talks. They’ve made four trades together in the last 21 years, involving immortal players like Jose Martinez (twice), Tony Cruz, Jamie Romak, Victor Marte, and Jason Ryan. Back in December of 1995, the Cardinals helped facilitate a three-way trade in which the Royals got Mike Remlinger from the Reds, a move so essential that Remlinger actually never pitched for Kansas City, as he was claimed back on waivers by the Reds before the 1996 season started.

Realistically, the last significant trade between the two franchises was in February of 1993, when St. Louis sent Felix Jose to Kansas City for Gregg Jefferies. Both players had been roughly average players the year before, but Jefferies turned in a +5.4 WAR season in 1993 for St. Louis, while Jose put up a -0.9 WAR season in KC. The Royals apparently decided the Cardinals were not to be trusted after that, and we’ve now gone 23 years without a significant move between the two organizations.

But in reading Jeff’s post yesterday, and thinking about what the Royals could do this winter besides just sit around and hope things break their way, I started to think that Dayton Moore and John Mozeliak should thaw the ice. It’s time for the Royals and Cardinals to make an interesting trade again.

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