This very minute, the author has published an episode of FanGraphs Audio in which lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and that same dumb author play the first inaugural edition of the Over/Under Prospect Game. The rules of the game are discussed in greater detail within the pod episode. In short, though, this is how it’s played:

• Contestant A nominates a rookie-eligible player.
• Contestant A also sets an over/under figure for that player’s WAR in 2017.
• Contestant B chooses the over or under.

For sake of simplicity, we limited the game to 10 nominations total, five by Longenhagen and five by me. The only criterion for a nominee was that he retained his rookie eligibility entering the 2017 campaign.

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The Indians have had a successful offseason, as noted by Craig Edwards last week and they kept winning the offseason on Thursday, agreeing with left-handed reliever Boone Logan on a one-year deal with an option, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal.

Entering Thursday, Cleveland had only one lefty in its bullpen, albeit perhaps the game’s best left-handed reliever in Andrew Miller. Now they have two who can miss bats, and presumably Logan can fit a matchup role that will free Miller to be used in a more versatile manner by Cleveland manager Terry Francona.

Last season with the Rockies, Logan held left-handed hitters to a .139/.222/225 slash line and since 2014 he’s limited lefties to a .236/.330/.392 slash line.

Francona said earlier this winter he didn’t just want any lefty added to the bullpen, he wanted an effective one. And according to T.J. Zuppe, Logan was on the Indians’ radar last trade deadline.

Logan didn’t make the cut of FanGraphs’ top-50 free agents this offseason, but he did come in at No. 50 on at CBSSports and ranked 37th according to MLB Trade Rumors. So for Cleveland to sign Logan in February to a one-year deal with an option seems like a winning transaction for a club, which is projected to win the AL Central and return to the postseason.

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Sit ’round the fire, children, and let me tell you a tale. Once there was a man named Wily Mo Peña. He did things like this.

Wily Mo could hit the ball just about as far as anyone. He didn’t make contact very often, but when he did, the ball flew as if someone had set off a brick of C-4 behind it. Wily Mo Peña was a human launching pad, but a flawed one. In 1,845 big-league games between 2002 and 2011, he accumulated just 0.4 WAR. That’s because Peña generally can’t play defense, and he doesn’t walk very much either. He’s a one-trick pony of the highest order, a poor man’s Dave Kingman. It is not surprising that he took his talents to Japan. There he thrived. Now, he has returned.

After taking 2016 off, Peña has signed a minor-league deal with Cleveland, and there’s a clause in his contract that stipulates that he can make $700,000 if he makes the big-league team. He’ll serve as an insurance policy for Edwin Encarnacion and Carlos Santana, given that both sluggers are over 30, though he’ll need to contend with Chris Colabello. Peña should be adequate as a stopgap DH should the big club need him. Ken Rosenthal reports that he and Encarnacion are close and that Cleveland signed him after watching him work out with Encarnacion.

This is a move of little to no significance. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Wily Mo Peña plays a crucial role for Cleveland during the playoff push, to say nothing of imagining a Wily Mo Peña home run winning a World Series game. Peña is a dinosaur sort of player from a bygone era. He is a 90s’ kind of slugger in a younger more athletic game, a game in which the man who led the National League in homers in 2016 may have to retrace Peña’s steps to Japan.

Sports are entertainment, though, and we should celebrate that we may once again be entertained by Wily Mo Peña. Goodness knows the fans in Japan did.

It would be surprising if Peña got more than 150-200 plate appearances with the big club, if any at all. We can only hope that we’re blessed with even just one more massive home run. He may be capable of peppering the massive scoreboard at Progressive Field. All that remains to be seen if he’s given the chance to do so.

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2017 SABR Analytics Conference Research Award winners.

The SABR Analytics Conference Research Awards will recognize baseball researchers who have completed the best work of original analysis or commentary during the preceding calendar year. Nominations were solicited by representatives from SABR, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, The Hardball Times, and Beyond the Box Score.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote.

Contemporary Baseball Analysis

• August Fagerstrom, “The Game Plan: How the Indians Almost Won It All,” FanGraphs, November 4, 2016.
• Ben Lindbergh and Rob Arthur, “Are Juiced Balls the New Steroids?” FiveThirtyEight, July 20, 2016.
• Kate Morrison and Russell A. Carleton, “The Perils of MLB’s Sorting System,” Baseball Prospectus, June 20-23, 2016. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
• Eno Sarris with Bill Petti, “Are Veterans Better at Slump Busting?” FanGraphs, May 25, 2016.
• Jeff Sullivan, “Pitch Framing Was Doomed From the Start,” The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017.

Contemporary Baseball Commentary

• R.J. Anderson, “MLB Analytics Guru Who Could Be The Next Nate Silver Has A Revolutionary New Stat,” CBS Sports, December 1, 2016.
• Henry Druschel, “There’s no such thing as a small-market team,” Beyond the Box Score, December 13, 2016.
• Rany Jazayerli, “The Curious Have Won,” The Ringer, November 3, 2016.
• Sam Miller, “Cubs win! Cubs won. Now what do we stay alive for?” ESPN.com, November 5, 2016.
• Meg Rowley, “Let Ballparks Get Old,” Baseball Prospectus, May 26, 2016.

Historical Analysis/Commentary

• Patrick Dubuque, “Byron McLaughlin Avoids the Tag,” The Hardball Times, June 22, 2016.
• Tim Healey, “The Doug Mirabelli Trade: An Oral History,” The Hardball Times, April 29, 2016.
• Wade Kapszukiewicz, “Golden Pitches: The Ultimate Last-at-Bat, Game Seven Scenario,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2016.
• Mina Kimes, “The Art of Letting Go,” ESPN The Magazine, October 4, 2016.
• Gerald Schifman, “How Much Hope and Faith Is in Major League Baseball?” The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2017.

Voting will be open through 11:59 p.m. MST on Monday, February 13, 2017. Details and criteria for each category can be found here. Only one work per author was considered as a finalist.

Create your own user feedback survey

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Results will be announced and presented at the sixth annual SABR Analytics Conference, March 9-11, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix in Phoenix, Arizona. Learn more or register for the conference at SABR.org/analytics.

Look, it would be strange if the Rockies didn’t have a weird offseason, right? It’s the Rockies. Weird has been the modus operandi with this franchise for all of recent memory. Even their run to the World Series was unexpected and strange and involved Matt Holliday perhaps not really touching home plate at one crucial point. If the Rockies went out and made a bunch of coherent moves, it might be cause for concern.

Anyways, after signing Ian Desmond to play first base and throwing a lot of money at perfectly pedestrian lefty reliever Mike Dunn, Colorado is bringing in right-hander Greg Holland, because why not? As you likely know, Holland is good at baseball. He was the closer for the Royals during their run of success, and when he was healthy, he was excellent. Holland is the owner of a career 2.35 DRA and has struck out just over a quarter of all the batters he’s faced. When he was healthy, he was one of the best in the business.

“When he was healthy” is the important phrase here. Holland missed all of last year and part of 2015 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. This makes him going to Colorado interesting, because Coors Field is not exactly the first place that comes to mind when one thinks “rebound.” Yet here Holland goes, to ply his craft for the Rockies. He’s heading there on a one-year deal, per Jeff Passan, with a vesting option for a second year. Holland will make  $7 million this year, and could potentially earn as much as $14 million through incentives. The vesting option will presumably depend either on raw innings pitched or the number of games Holland finishes.

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At long last, the Dodgers found a solution to their hole at second base, acquiring second baseman Logan Forsythe from the Rays on Monday night in exchange for top pitching prospect Jose De Leon. This came after months of rumors around a trade involving De Leon and Brian Dozier. The Dodgers had a surplus of starting pitchers and an opening at second, so it was only a matter of time before they dealt the unproven De Leon.

De Leon’s first crack at the big leagues — a four-start cameo in September — didn’t go quite as well as many had hoped. But he breezed through the minors over the last two years. He broke out in a big way in 2015, striking out an absurd 35% of opposing hitters between High-A and Double-A while walking just 8%. That performance made him a consensus top-30 prospect the following winter.

De Leon battled injuries in the first half of 2016, but began dominating again once he returned to the field. In 16 starts at the Triple-A level, he once again posted a strikeout rate well over 30%, along with solid walk and home-run numbers. De Leon proved himself at the highest level of the minors at the tender age of 23. Pitchers who meet that standard often go on to have success in the majors, especially when they miss bats as prolifically as De Leon did.

De leon grades out exceptionally well by my KATOH system. It projects him for 8.1 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method (KATOH) and also 10.1 WAR by the method that integrates Baseball America’s rankings (KATOH+). He’s the 13th-highest-ranking prospect by KATOH+ and the third-highest-ranking pitcher.

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Spring training has gotten surprisingly close, and — in terms of significant activity — the offseason is mostly complete. Just about every team around has a pretty good idea what the opening-day roster is going to look like, which means we’re coming up on projection season. Now, you could argue it’s always projection season, at least here on FanGraphs, but the team projections should, in theory, be better than they’ve been all winter. So let’s work with that.

Right now, all we have available is Steamer. We’re still a little while away from ZiPS getting folded in. But Steamer isn’t stupid, so, looking at that, we see the following teams projected to bring up the MLB rear: the Padres (66 wins), the Brewers (67 wins), and the Reds (69 wins). No one else is projected right now for a win total in the 60s, and while the White Sox would end up down there if they sold Jose Quintana, that hasn’t yet happened, so we shouldn’t assume anything.

You could argue the three worst teams are on the right tracks. All of them are openly rebuilding, and none of them think they’re going to win in 2017. Keith Law just ranked the Padres’ farm system No. 3 in the game. He ranked the Brewers at No. 6, and he ranked the Reds at No. 8. I don’t think many people thought the Reds would come in so high! There they are, though. Lots to hope for in the future.

But what about the near-term future? How good could these teams be in the year just ahead? None of them plan to win, but, miracles happen. To get to the point: I consulted my spreadsheet of team projections going back to 2005. That’s 12 years, and over that span, I found 26 teams projected to win no more than 70 games. Here’s a big (sortable) table of how all those teams did:

On average, the teams were projected to win 68 games. On average, they actually won 68 games, with an average BaseRuns win total of 68. Pretty good, all in all, by which I mean, pretty bad. The medians are also in agreement.

Of note: The worst projected team was even worse than expected. Of greater note, though, is that three of these 26 teams finished over .500. That’s about a 12% success rate, if that means anything to you. The 2012 Orioles are the greatest success story included, because they outdid their projected win total by an unbelievable 23. They made the playoffs! Their win totals leading up to the season in question: 69, 66, 64, 68, 69, 70. Between 2007 – 2011, no team in the American League won fewer games than the Orioles. Between 2012 – 2016, no team in the American League has won more games than the Orioles. That year in 2012 was when the whole story of the organization was flipped on its head.

The 2010 Blue Jays were only a little outdone. They beat their projection by 20 wins, and just looking at BaseRuns, they finished better than the 2012 Orioles. Those Jays were thought to be somewhat rebuilding, after ridding themselves of J.P. Ricciardi, and no team would expect to win after trading away Roy Halladay. The Jays played just one month that year with a sub-.500 record.

And then you’ve got the 2008 Marlins, before they decided to identify just with Miami. What the 2008 projections knew was that, in December 2007, the Marlins traded Miguel Cabrera to the Tigers. But the projections didn’t think the run prevention would improve by 124. It wasn’t a playoff season, but it was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been.

In all, 26 projected bad teams. Of those, 23 were at least mostly bad. Odds are, the Padres, Brewers, and Reds will be bad, too. But let’s just say, for simplicity, there’s a 3-in-26 chance for each given team to do better than .500. It would follow there’s about a 30% shot for at least one of these teams to do better than .500. Wouldn’t that be something? I’ll pick the Brewers, and live with it.

How good is Kevin Kiermaier, defensively? Kevin Kiermaier is this good, defensively: Since 2003, 148 different players have played center field for at least 1,000 innings. Kiermaier leads all of them, so far, in UZR per 150 games. In case you’d like a second source, Kiermaier also leads all of them in DRS per 150 games. DRS actually likes him even more than UZR does. Obviously, because Kiermaier isn’t yet 27, we haven’t seen his decline phase. At some point, he will become a worse defender, because at some point, he will wake up and be a 75-year-old man. But Kiermaier is like an outfield Andrelton Simmons, except that, oh, by the way, Kiermaier can also hit a little.

It’s fun to examine the great ones. It’s fun to examine when the great ones are great, and sometimes it’s even more fun to examine when the great ones are not great. So I rolled over to Baseball Savant to check out Kiermaier’s plot of base hits allowed. This is a new feature, and an awesome one, and here’s what shows up for Kiermaier’s 2016:

By hang time and distance, pretty much everything here is some variety of a difficult play. Or, for many, an impossible play! There’s only one missed play that counts as either routine or easy, and you see it there within the red circle. Curious, I asked Daren Willman if he could tell me when that play occurred. He gave me the information I needed. What catch did Kevin Kiermaier miss? We rewind to early August.

The ball hung up for more than six seconds. That’s a lot of time, and it allowed Kiermaier to cover more than 100 feet of ground. Here’s a screenshot of right around where Kiermaier started, with a dot to indicate where the ball bounced off the fence.

And, the fateful moment, or thereabouts:

There’s a twist here, see. This shows up as a missed play for Kiermaier, but it’s not entirely clear this was Kiermaier’s ball to catch. Certainly, that much wasn’t clear to left fielder Mikie Mahtook, who mis-everythinged his leap. Kiermaier was right there, and it looked like he had a shot, but at the last instant, he held up, with Mahtook taking to the air. What we can’t tell from the broadcast or from the replays is whether either player called off the other. What we can tell is that Mahtook took charge. In most cases, an outfielder here will defer to the guy playing center. He tends to be the defensive captain of the outfield, so to speak. Mahtook defied convention, and Jose Bautista wound up with a double.

Why the miscommunication? It’s impossible for us to conclusively say, and it’s not like the Rays aren’t used to having Kiermaier in center field. But Kiermaier wasn’t used to having Mahtook to his right. This play happened early in the first inning on August 9. The first time this past season that Kiermaier was in center, with Mahtook in left: the first inning on August 9. It took two batters for that alignment to be exploited, and it might not be a total coincidence that Mahtook’s newest baseball future will take place with Detroit. When you get in the way of Kevin Kiermaier’s defense, a team won’t take it lightly.

This is how Kevin Kiermaier missed his easiest catch. The ball was a near home run, and another player tried to leap for it first.

The 2017 Hall of Fame class is a party of three, and voting totals suggest the electorate is becoming more accepting and forgiving.

Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, and Ivan Rodriguez were inducted into The National Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday, as results of the Baseball Writers Association of America’s voting were revealed on MLB Network.

Raines appeared on 86.0% of ballots in his last year of eligibility. His candidacy was promoted passionately by many, including former FanGraphs contributor Jonah Keri.

With Rodriguez’ induction to the Hall on his first ballot appearance — and the appearance both of Barry Bonds (53.8%) and Roger Clemens (51.8%) on more than 50% of ballots for the first time — voters appear to be softening against those suspected of and tied to PED use.

In 2016, Bonds appeared on 44.3% of ballots, Clemens 45.2%.

Yahoo’s Jeff Passan noted only three players who’ve appeared on 50% of ballots at one point have failed, later, to enter the Hall.

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On Monday, I wrote about how the Mariners were moving towards the model used by the Kanas City Royals the last few years, putting a heavy emphasis on outfield defense to help prop up a mediocre rotation. GM Jerry Dipoto added Jarrod Dyson to Leonys Martin and Mitch Haniger, giving the team a starting outfield of three guys capable of playing center field, plus a couple of reserves who have some defensive abilities. So, it was pretty weird when the team announced that they’d traded one of their best prospects, lefty Luiz Gohara, to Atlanta for center fielder Mallex Smith and reliever Shae Simmons.

Smith, like Martin and Dyson, is a speed-and-defense center fielder who has some real offensive question marks. As a low-power guy who ran a 73% contact rate in the majors last year, it’s tough to see him ever developing into more than just a below average hitter who tries to make up for his offensive weakness with stolen bases and diving catches in the outfield. It’s the Billy Hamilton profile, just with a 10 percentage point reduction in contact rate and normal earth-person speed, instead of whatever Hamilton got his ability to run from from.

On a team without a real center fielder, Smith would probably be a useful piece, a flycatcher who could hit at the bottom of the order and hold down his spot while making the league minimum. On the Mariners, though, he made little sense, because he’s not good enough to supplant any of the team’s three starters, and because the team’s starters are already good defenders, there isn’t much room for a late-game defensive replacement. So why would Dipoto trade one of the team’s best young arms for another copy of what he already has? Well, there’s this.

Jerry Dipoto isn't done yet. He's working on another deal that could include Mallex Smith, the OF he just acquired from the #Braves.

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) January 11, 2017

So, apparently, like Friday’s series of trades that went together, the Mariners made a move that allows them to make another move. Speculatively, Cleveland could certainly use a guy like Smith, allowing them to push Tyler Naquin back to a corner outfield spot, or perhaps the Tigers would like Smith as an alternative to Anthony Gose, even though Gose is a warning about getting too excited about speed-and-defense prospects who can’t make contact. There are teams out there who Smith makes sense for; Seattle just isn’t one of them.

Right now, turning a left-handed pitching prospect with premium velocity into a 4th OF and a reliever doesn’t look like a great idea, but we’ll apparently have to wait and see what Smith fetches in this apparent second deal.

If you’re the Braves, though, you have to be pretty thrilled about this. Even if Simmons might have some real value as a potential high-end reliever, turning him and a guy blocked by Ender Inciarte into another high-upside pitching prospect is a pretty nifty move. While we don’t know exactly what the Mariners are doing, it seems pretty clear that the Braves saw a chance to turn a couple of spare parts into a potential core piece, and jumped on it when they could.