Another domino is about to fall in the free-agent pitching market. The market would make tapioca look exciting, yes, but someone has to throw innings for baseball teams, and the Rangers have decided to have Andrew Cashner throw some of those innings for them.

Cashner has spent most of his time with the Padres and was traded to the Marlins around the trade deadline. Good 2013 and 2014 campaigns were followed up by a 2015 that saw a downward trend and then a 2016 that was a minor disaster. His strikeouts per nine fell while his walk rate in the other direction. His 12 appearances with the Marlins went even worse.

But, because of the state of the open market, Cashner was one of the more interesting options. His big fastball has always made him appealing — and, indeed, he’s experienced success for some time. But injuries have derailed him of late and a fastball that once averaged 96 mph is down to 94, per Brooks Baseball.

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Mike Berardino of the the St. Paul Pioneer Press had an American League Cy Young Award vote this year. He filled out his ballot as follows:

1. Verlander
2. Britton
3. Miller
4. Kluber
5. Porcello

I respect Berardino’s ballot. As a matter of fact, I applaud it — and not only because he placed the three starters in the same order I would have. That’s a secondary consideration. Far more meaningful is the fact that he included both Zach Britton and Andrew Miller, and not just one of the two.

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Every year, a discussion of the definition of “value” inevitably comes up in the context of the MVP awards. That discussion is particularly prominent this year with Mike Trout, who was inarguably the best player in the American League, unlikely to win the award because his team sucked. The anti-Trout side of the argument goes: the MVP is for the most valuable player, and you can’t be that valuable if your team didn’t win anything.

But value goes both ways. If the Angels would have had the same season result – no playoffs – with or without Trout, the same can be said for, say, the Cubs and Kris Bryant. Bryant or no Bryant, the Cubs almost certainly would have won their division and probably would have still held the National League’s best record. Bryant, however, is likely to be announced tonight as the NL MVP, whereas Trout will probably get a fourth (!) consolation prize. Bryant wasn’t really all that crucial to his team’s success; his value is diminished by the fact that his teammates didn’t need him!

Now, that argument might sound silly, but I don’t know that it’s that much sillier than the argument against Trout. Taking the word “value” literally, the question becomes: who was most important to their team’s success? If you want to get into the nitty-gritty of value, isn’t that what you’re really asking?

To that end, I created a way of looking at how many wins each MVP candidate contributed to their specific team. I did this by subtracting each player’s offensive runs created (“Off” on our leaderboards) from their team’s runs scored and adding each player’s defensive runs saved (“Def”) to their team’s runs allowed. I then recalculated the team’s Pythagorean record. The result is a sort of wins-above-average-per-162 statistic, specific to the team, which allows us to assess where on the win curve the team would have been left without the player.

The win curve part is important because it allows for a distinction between a player like Bryant, who makes his team’s Pythagorean record budge from 107 wins to 102, and a player like Corey Seager, whose team goes from 90 to 85 – a much more drastic change in playoff chances.

So here are several top performers from both leagues, sorted entirely unscientifically by what looked to me like the most impressive contribution to their team.

For the record, I would vote for both Trout and Bryant. I don’t agree with this line of thinking. This is just another way to look at it, and if you want to make an argument for Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, or Corey Seager, it’s a pretty compelling one.

The obvious caveat is that by using Pythagorean record, this method doesn’t measure exactly what happened, it measures what probably should have happened. That’s a whole ‘nother argument to have in regards to the MVP; we see it pop up as well in the Cy Young race with ERA vs. FIP. Additionally, the exact interactions between team and player are more complicated than just adding and subtracting total runs. This method isn’t perfect. But it’s fun to think about nonetheless.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that my primary role here at FanGraphs is to talk to people within the game and share their thoughts. Many of my conversations are with pitchers. From them, I’ve heard a particular phrase countless times:

“My job is to give my team a chance to win.”

The extent to which such a thing can be quantified is subjective. That doesn’t make it meaningless. In my opinion, the supposition — for lack of a better term — should factor into the Cy Young Award debate.

It’s well known that pitchers have little control over wins and losses. The best they can do is limit the opposition’s run total. They don’t have complete control over that, either, but they do strongly influence it. As a rule, the best pitchers have the lowest ERAs. Again, not a perfect stat, but it tells a big part of the story.

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This morning, the Astros announced that they have signed Charlie Morton to a two year, $14 million contract, bringing the right-hander to Houston to bolster their pitching depth. And as Mike Petriello notes, there’s some obvious synergy here.

Charlie Morton was top 5 (min. 50 thrown) in curve spin last year (2990 RPM). The Astros threw more curves as last year went on. Easy fit. pic.twitter.com/TuS7zjWtm7

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) November 16, 2016

Charlie Morton is a high-spin curveball pitcher. The Astros like high-spin curveballs, using it as the primary reason to bring Collin McHugh into the organization a few years ago, and getting some good value out of that bet. Two years ago, when Eno Sarris wrote about trying to find “The Next Collin McHugh”, he showed a spin-rate table with Morton near the very top.

So, yeah, Morton and the Astros are a natural fit, and it’s easy to think about what Houston might be able to do with a guy with a good sinking fastball and a curve that should be a put-away pitch. But in reality, unless the Astros can figure out how to make Morton’s curveballs get lefties out, they might have just signed Bud Norris with health issues instead.

Since Morton debuted in the big leagues in 2008, no pitcher (minimum 350 innings pitched) has been worse against left-handed hitters. His sinking fastball dives right into a lefties wheelhouse, and despite the spin, his curveball hasn’t been effective at getting them off balance so they don’t just crush his fastball. Against right-handers, his repertoire is quite effective, but against lefties, he’s basically throwing batting practice.

That doesn’t make this a terrible gamble for the Astros. If they think they can fix Morton, and get him to stop running a .350 BABIP against LHBs — yes, that’s his career average — then maybe there’s some upside as a back-end starter. And if they can’t, maybe they’ll be able to convince him that he could be a quality reliever, using him mostly as a right-handed specialist. The ability to perhaps convert him into a quality bullpen arm if the starting experiment continues to fail gives his signing a chance to work even if they can’t make him Collin McHugh 2.0.

But the Astros already have a deep bullpen full of right-handed arms. What they really could use is another quality starting pitcher. Unless the new CBA bans left-handed hitters, I’m not sure I’d count on Morton being that guy.

Here’s a fun fact for you. There’s so much talk about the Mets and Yoenis Cespedes. About how Cespedes is so important to the Mets, about how the lineup can’t function without him. I’m not going to argue that Cespedes isn’t important. Great player! But if you look at last year’s Mets position players, the leader in WAR was Neil Walker. Only Noah Syndergaard had a higher WAR on the team, and Walker barely played two-thirds of the season.

So the Mets are probably pretty happy with the news that Walker has accepted their $17.2-million qualifying offer. Walker becomes the second of two players to accept the QO this offseason, joining Jeremy Hellickson. Hellickson might be thinking ahead to a midsummer trade. Walker wants to win the World Series where he is.

The only reason we’re here is because Walker had back surgery. He’s a 31-year-old middle infielder with a brand new scar, and he didn’t play a game after August 27. If Walker had stayed healthy and kept up his performance, he would’ve had zero trouble finding three or even four guaranteed years. But things being what they were, Walker sensed the market would be more cautious. There’s not even great demand for second basemen in the first place, at least not among contenders, and Walker has a new red flag. It makes plenty of sense for him to take the money, and then look ahead to a healthy season, after which the QO system is likely to have been modified.

The surgery is the unknown here. I don’t know what we can reasonably be expected to make of it. I don’t know how Walker feels about his back. I don’t know how the Mets feel about his back. I assume the Mets wouldn’t have made the offer if they thought Walker might never play second base again. I have to think that Walker will resemble himself on the field. If he does, well, the last three years, he’s run a wRC+ of 120. That puts him around Nolan Arenado, Chris Davis, and Ben Zobrist. He’s not a baserunning plus, but he’s also not a baserunning minus, and he might be only a modest liability in the field. The numbers think last year he was actually quite good. The numbers kind of struggle to make sense of infields these days, with players constantly moving around, but Walker has played second almost exclusively. He can handle the position if he can move well enough.

If his back holds up, Walker will be okay. He’ll get his contract next season, after making more money than he’s ever seen in 2017. If his back doesn’t hold up, well, $17.2 million is a hell of a guarantee. By making the offer, the Mets acknowledged they think Walker will probably be fine. By taking the offer, Walker acknowledged the surgery would depress his market. There’s only one way for such a red flag to be lowered.

The Mets will presumably now turn their full attention to Cespedes and a reliever or three. They might never escape all the injury-related question marks, but perhaps next year those questions might have fewer negative answers.

It’s probably no secret that I like to run polling projects, as a means of crowdsourcing various questions. From time to time, I’ll run posts that include polls for all 30 teams, and as soon as those posts get published I can’t wait to get a chance to analyze the data. It’s fun to see what the data says about the questions being directly asked, but that’s not the only use. We can also examine demographics!

In some polling posts, you’re free to participate however much you want. In others, though, I ask you to self-identify as a fan of a specific team, or of specific teams. For example, in a polling post about which teams might beat the projections, I’m fine with everyone voting for everyone. But when it comes to, say, fan excitement ratings, then I’m just looking for you to vote about your own favorite team. Very obviously, I can’t actually control how you vote, but the numbers show that you all do a pretty good job of playing along.

So with that being said — here’s a small meta-analysis. I looked at the numbers from all of my polling projects in which you were expected to vote for just one or two teams. This only goes back a couple years, but by looking at participation, we can see where the audience loyalties are. Which fan bases are over- or under-represented around these parts? Wonder no more!

It’s important to note, again, this covers just a couple of years. Within those years, the Blue Jays have been successful, and the Cubs have been wildly successful, so, yeah, that sort of makes sense. But the Cubs have had the highest turnout, followed by the Jays, followed by a massive gap until you get to the Red Sox. They might as well be even with the Mariners. At the left are the fans who’ve been around and most eager to participate in polling projects.

On the right, the opposite of that. One of every 54 participants has identified as a fan of the Rockies. One of every 53 participants has identified as a fan of the Padres. The teams over there mostly aren’t very good, and a lack of success is going to depress online reading and engaging, but I bet the lowest teams aren’t surprising. I’ve mentioned before that certain teams just don’t seem to have strong Internet communities, at least as far as overlapping with FanGraphs goes. I know there are Rockies fans, but they can be difficult to reach.

I don’t have anything else. I just got the idea to create a little bar chart. As you were!

We have our first qualifying-offer acceptance of the offseason, and it’s Jeremy Hellickson who’s taken $17 million to stay put for another year. He’ll remain with the Phillies for now, and get paid rather handsomely to do so.

A guarantee of $17.2 million isn’t bad at all for a pitcher with Hellickson’s past. He was a somewhat interesting commodity given that he was coming off easily the best year of his career. Hellickson threw 189 innings of 3.71 ERA ball — or 3.98 FIP ball, if that’s more your speed. DRA, however, rated him at 4.34. Basically, Hellickson pitched like a middle-back-end guy and got a little lucky. Because this year’s stable of free-agent pitchers is largely composed of Rich Hill and a band of merry — if also raggedy — men, Hellickson would have probably had more than a few suitors had he declined the qualifying offer. The Phillies made him the offer assuming that he would — and that they would, in turn, collect the draft pick attached to it, cashing it in this coming summer.

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Gary Sanchez may or may not be named American League Rookie of the Year tonight. Either way, the New York Yankees catcher made a huge splash in his truncated campaign. In 53 games, he slashed .299/.376/.657 and clubbed a whopping 20 home runs.

Sanchez’s season has drawn comparisons to 1959, when San Francisco’s Willie McCovey copped National League honors. The erstwhile Giants slugger played in just 52 games, but he was every bit as brilliant in that short time. After being called up on July 30, McCovey slashed .354/.429/.656 and hit 13 round-trippers. With no other strong candidates on the ballot, he was a unanimous selection as top rookie.

He wouldn’t have won the award under today’s rules. The accolades almost certainly would have gone to Vada Pinson.

Since 1971, rookie status has been defined as having had fewer than 130 at-bats, or fewer than 50 innings pitched, in previous seasons. A player must also not have been on an active roster for more than 45 days prior to September 1.

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On Friday, news broke that the Blue Jays signed Kendrys Morales for three years and $33 million. Morales is clearly a quality hitter, but he can’t really do anything else, so Dave thought it was a bit of an overpay. Okay! Keep that in mind.

On Saturday, the Mariners traded for Danny Valencia. Kendrys Morales is 33. Danny Valencia is 32. Valencia is projected for a salary of $5.3 million in his last year of arbitration. This past year, Valencia was a better hitter than Morales was. Over the past two years, Valencia has been the better hitter. Over the past three years, Valencia has been the better hitter. Over the past four years, Valencia has been the better hitter. The evidence would suggest that Valencia is at least as good as Morales at the plate, and Valencia isn’t limited to being a DH. He’s also a slightly better runner. It would seem to make him the better player, even though he’s going to cost so much less.

From the Blue Jays’ perspective, there’s some value in having Morales locked in for a while. They have a DH for the foreseeable future. And there’s another aspect to this — Valencia, in the past, has been somewhat polarizing. It’s not that all of his teammates have hated him, but some of his teammates have hated him, and Morales is an easier fit into a clubhouse. It’s not a coincidence that Valencia is so well-traveled. But the Mariners are betting on production, figuring that any other issues can be dealt with later, and as a part of betting on production, they’re betting on Valencia’s recent transformation. It used to be, Valencia was a platoon guy, who brutalized southpaws. A couple years ago, it looks like he figured things out.

Valencia has looked like an everyday player, and he’s going to be treated like an everyday player. Over the past two seasons, he’s been as good a hitter as Buster Posey, Kyle Seager, and Christian Yelich. The drawbacks are that Valencia won’t be a defensive plus at first base or in the corner outfield, but he certainly fits a hole on the roster, and his 2017 will be affordable.

It hasn’t been hard to see that the A’s were going to move Valencia somewhere. Because of his surplus value, he wasn’t acquired for free. For giving up Valencia, the A’s are receiving Paul Blackburn, a 22-year-old righty who’s not regarded as a top prospect. What Blackburn doesn’t do is miss a ton of bats. What he does do is keep the ball on the ground, and he’s kept his walk rates low. He feels a lot like another Kendall Graveman, a guy who could become an established major leaguer in a hurry. Graveman made just 11 combined starts between Double-A and Triple-A. Blackburn just spent a whole season in Double-A, but he gave up just eight homers. He could be depth as soon as next season, and the A’s are no strangers to needing extra starting pitching. Blackburn could help them in the future more than Valencia ever would.

So it’s a neat little exchange. Depending on how you interpret Valencia’s clubhouse concerns, he might be a genuinely underrated player. Blackburn, also, might be differently underrated, but the Mariners don’t have a lot of shiny prospects to sell. The Blue Jays, I’m sure, are happy to have Morales. Maybe they very much didn’t want Valencia back. It’s enough to make you wonder, though.