The curveballs just keep coming at the 2016 Winter Meetings, as Ken Rosenthal just reported a whopper:

Sources: Ian Desmond to #Rockies.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

While we were all trying to process exactly where Ian Desmond would play for the Rockies, since they’re nominally all set at the positions he plays, Rosenthal struck again:

Source: Desmond with #Rockies is multi-year. Likely will play 1B and also OF. Rox forfeit No. 11 pick in draft, first unprotected selection.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2016

This is interesting on so many levels, more of which will be sussed out later in a piece from Nicolas Stellini. What the trade appears to suggest most immediately, however, is that the Rockies are ready to push their chips into the middle of the table as they enter Year Three of the Jeff Bridich Era. This is news. The Rockies have made a habit of lying in the weeds or rebuilding for the better part of this century, having typically stayed out of the deep end of the free-agent market. With the five-year, $70 million commitment to Desmond, they have officially returned.

How much first base Desmond plays will ultimately be determined by whether the Rockies decide to move one of their outfielders. Charlie Blackmon and Carlos Gonzalez constantly see their names in trade rumors, and that’s unlikely to cease now that Desmond is in the fold. But what could perhaps be more interesting is if the Rockies choose to use Desmond in a Ben Zobrist role, letting him shuttle in for Trevor Story to help keep the latter fresh, as well as manning first base and cycling among the outfield spots.

The bottom line is that the Rockies are now officially interesting. They had already been trending that way, but this signing confirms it. They have a rotation that contains four pitchers projected at 2 WAR or better, plus an interesting rookie in Jeff Hoffman, as well as decent starting-pitching depth. The promotions last year both of Tyler Anderson and Jon Gray added much-needed substance to the rotation. They likewise have solid incumbents at second, short, third and the outfield. Now they’ve added Desmond. Their bullpen could be bolstered, but most teams can say that and the Rockies bullpen doesn’t project to be awful. There’s a good chance that there are more moves coming from the Rockies, moves that allow Desmond to shift back to a more natural outfield position, but in any event, there is now very real optimism around the 2017 Rockies.

Travis Shaw stepped in when the Red Sox needed him and provided league-average power and solid defense over the past two seasons. He’s gone now, off to Milwaukee in the trade that saw Boston acquire relief pitcher Tyler Thornburg. But that didn’t stop the Red Sox, who signed a player who is basically his offensive clone in Mitch Moreland to fill his shoes.

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The Red Sox have landed right-handed reliever Tyler Thornburg in exchange for a trio of players: big-league corner infielder Travis Shaw and prospects Mauricio Dubon and Josh Pennington. Here’s how the minor leaguers headed to Milwaukee grade out by my KATOH system. KATOH denotes WAR forecast for first six years of player’s major-league career. KATOH+ uses similar a methodology with consideration also for Baseball America’s rankings.

*****

Mauricio Dubon, SS, (Profile)

KATOH: 4.6 WAR (92nd overall)
KATOH+: 3.5 WAR (138th overall)

After hitting respectably in the low levels of the minors, Dubon broke out big time last year. He opened the year by hitting a rock solid .306/.387/.379 at High-A, pairing a 9% strikeout rate with a 12% walk rate. He continued raking following a June promotion to Double-A, but did so a bit differently. His walk and strikeout rates both trended in the wrong direction, but for the first time ever, he hit for power.

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In valuing relievers, you really have the same two questions that you have with other players — how good were they last year, and how good have they been consistently — but the consistency seems to be even more important. The samples are small and the position ages poorly, so the ability to show production from the pen year-in and year-out is valued highly. Unless you’re Joaquin Benoit, apparently. In that case, you just keep making teams look smart for signing you to smaller deals, because you keep putting up great numbers every year.

The Phillies, who just signed Benoit for one year and seven million dollars, should be happy with their acquisition on both fronts, but particularly when it comes to consistency and track record.

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Any idiot with modest control both over the English language and also Microsoft Excel is capable of writing a weblog post about the implications of Mauricio Dubon’s statistical record as a minor leaguer on his possible future as a major leaguer. The only idiot prepared to do it for FanGraphs.com, however, is the one composing these words right now.

Who is Mauricio Dubon? A different person to everyone he meets, probably, because this is how humans work. Who he is for the purposes of the current post, however, is one of the players received by Milwaukee in a deal that sent reliever Tyler Thornburg to Boston this morning. Travis Shaw is almost certainly the most well-known player acquired by the Brewers. Dubon, however, is likely the best.

As a professional, Dubon almost immediately joined that class of player who presents a challenge to evaluators. He was drafted in the 26th round, has always lacked a carrying tool, and plays what amounts to probably just a fringe shortstop. At the same time, however, he also possesses nearly elite contact skills and — regardless of the position at which he’s being deployed — profiles as a net-positive defensive contributor.

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Well, the last 48 hours made it sound like Chris Sale to Washington was the deal we should expect, but today’s winter meetings fun; never count on Dave Dombrowski!

Multiple sources now saying that #RedSox have built momentum toward a deal with #WhiteSox for Sale.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 6, 2016

Want to make this clear: #Nationals are not out on Sale. But #RedSox appear stronger at moment.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 6, 2016

The Red Sox are apparently making a late charge to land the White Sox ace, which would be a significant upgrade for a team that was a bit weak in rotation depth last year. And certainly, the Red Sox have the kind of talent Chicago would want; this summer, I speculated that perhaps a combination of Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech could entice the White Sox to move their ace. From that piece.

Boston Red SoxThis one’s pretty easy; the team could start the bidding with either Yoan Moncada (#1 BA/#2 MLB) or Andrew Benintendi (#9 BA/#7 MLB) and go from there. Top 10 hitting prospects are highly valuable assets because they usually combine upside and proximity to the big leagues, and thus are worth something like $75 million; Moncada may be worth closer to $100 million, since he’s the guy who might be the top overall prospect in the game right now.

So the White Sox would be right to demand either in a deal, but even Sale isn’t worth both, so the Red Sox would have to pick which of the two they wanted to keep around, and then add some additional value beyond giving up a terrific young hitter. If Benintendi was the main piece, Rafael Devers (#41 BA/#25 MLB) would be a reasonable piece to add, putting the Red Sox package on part with a Urias/Bellinger or Urias/Verdugo offer from Los Angeles.

If Moncada is the guy they’re sending to Chicago, though, Devers’ value probably pushes the deal past what Sale is worth; his value gets you most of the way to Sale, so the second piece could be a higher risk guy like hard-throwing righty Michael Kopech (#93 BA/#83 MLB), since back-end Top 100 pitching prospects are worth about $15 million. Toss in some sweeteners on top of that, and the White Sox would at least have to think about it, as Moncada and Kopech could give them a pretty great return.

As Rosenthal notes, nothing is done, so this could change again, but the Red Sox with Sale, Price, and Eduardo Rodriguez would be a brutal opponent for teams with left-leaning line-ups. Stay tuned!

Steve Pearce has been very good in two of the last three seasons. The Blue Jays are betting he can be good in the next two, as well, as they have reportedly signed him to a two-year, $12 million deal that likely spells the end of Edwin Encarnacion’s time in Toronto.

This should be a very positive deal for the Blue Jays. Pearce has been prone to injury throughout his career — he he didn’t amass more than 200 plate appearances in a season until 2014 (his eighth in the league) and he dealt with forearm, elbow, hamstring and calf injuries last year — but the Blue Jays have paid him accordingly. Generally speaking, you would expect to see a guy coming off a 136 wRC+ to get more than $6 million per year, but that’s exactly what Pearce is getting. If he produces, the Blue Jays will be getting a steal. If he ends up hurt, as his medical history suggests is likely to happen, the Blue Jays are still OK because they haven’t committed much money to him.

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Carlos Beltran signed with the Astros for a year and $16 million. There is probably plenty to say about this! There’s stuff to say about Beltran so far managing to defy the nature of aging. There’s stuff to say about the Astros being almost overloaded with position players. There’s stuff to say about Beltran returning to Houston after the two separated so many years back. There’s a lot for different people to tackle, but I’m only one guy and I’m also one guy in a hurry, so, here, numbers and plots. The Astros are good!

I mean, the Astros were already good. They were good before they signed Beltran. They were good before they got Brian McCann and Josh Reddick. Now they’re only better. Focusing strictly on offense, I’m going to show you two images. First, here’s one reviewing 2016. This shows total team offensive runs above or below average, that just being a combination of batting value and baserunning value. This is only for non-pitchers so as to try to balance out the leagues.

I highlighted the Astros, who were right around the middle. Specifically, they ranked 16th. Now for the projected future! I know this is to some degree a silly exercise. It’s all based on one projection system, and no team’s offseason is complete, and projections don’t do a great job of accounting for platoons. But this does give you a good idea of where things stand today. Here’s a 2017 projection of the same information as above, based on Steamer projections and our updated depth charts.

The 16th-place Astros now show up as the second-place Astros, and they’re first place in the American League. They’re 22 runs removed from the third-place Nationals, and they’re 27 runs removed from the Red Sox. Once again: the Red Sox will acquire at least one hitter. The Astros are probably finished, as their lineup goes. Anything else they do will probably be about pitching, and there are a lot of hitters left out there for other teams to pick up. But make no mistake — the Astros have built a lineup that’s going to be a daily challenge for any pitcher. There’s new flexibility and new depth, and the lineup might well lack an easy part. The winter meetings haven’t even begun and the Astros look like a terror.

As has been the case, it’s going to come down to how the rotation holds up. They’ll try to make an addition. It might not work, maybe not in the winter, but when a team isn’t sure how much it can trust its starters, the best you can do is to assemble lineup and bullpen depth. That’s what the Astros have done, and that’s why they look like possible, if not probable, AL favorites. It’s not a bad place for Beltran to seek that elusive World Series.

For two or three days, I’ve been sitting around, waiting for the Nationals to make a big trade. This isn’t the one I was expecting, but, the hell with it, as long as I’m here anyway, the Nationals have picked up Derek Norris from the Padres, at the cost of Pedro Avila. Avila is as 19 as any other 19-year-old, and last year he was fine as a low-level starting pitcher. You know the rest of this. Intriguing stuff, many years away. I will not be discussing Avila again in this post.

Norris is the more interesting of the two. The Nationals wanted a catcher to pair with Jose Lobaton, and Norris can slide right in for cheap. The Nationals will have him for two years if they want, and this year he’ll cost about $4 million. Not much. But, the thing I didn’t expect: Norris was baseball’s worst hitter last season.

That is, if you go by results, and if you set a minimum of 400 plate appearances. The minimum is arbitrary, so, you might say someone else was worse. But Norris did the least with the most playing time. I’m not sure how that escaped my attention as it was playing out, but actually, yes, I am sure how, because Norris played for the Padres, and why would I have been paying attention to them? Norris was dreadful, as you can see in this table.

He finished 203rd out of 203. It was an extremely brutal offensive season, and, related to that, Norris had a career-worst strikeout rate. Yet, it wasn’t all terrible. Fancy yourself an optimist? I like to subtract soft-hit rate from hard-hit rate. Here is a selection from that leaderboard, with the same 400-PA minimum.

No one’s impressed by being close to Marwin Gonzalez, but, Anthony Rizzo? Robinson Cano? Carlos Santana? Wilson Ramos was actually right after Cano. By this measure alone, Norris’ contact was just like Ramos’ contact. The point being, Norris didn’t fall completely apart. He can still sting the baseball, and his career wRC+ is almost league-average. The Nationals assume there’ll be a bounceback, just as Ramos’ three-year wRC+ marks went from 93 to 63 to 124. Like Norris, the bad, 2015 version of Ramos had a career-high strikeout rate. Last year he was one of the Nationals’ more valuable players.

And Baseball Prospectus also considers Norris something of a defensive plus. While he’s not much for throwing out runners, Norris has put together two strong years of receiving, and it stands to reason that should continue into Washington. Acknowledging that we have no idea if Norris actually calls a good game — he seems above-average defensively, and at the plate, he’s been above-average before. This is a pretty painless buy-low, even if it seemingly removes the Nationals from the justifiably perplexing Ramos free-agent sweepstakes. His tale is a sad one, but the Nationals had to move on.

From the Padres’ perspective, easy space has been cleared for Austin Hedges, who deserves this opportunity. And for Norris, while he still won’t be a full-time catcher, at least now his 2017 job share will come with a contender instead of with a rebuilder. That’s not bad news to take a man into a weekend.

Earlier this week, Baseball America named Dave Wallace their 2016 Minor League Manager of the Year. Wallace led the Akron Rubber Ducks, Cleveland’s Double-A affiliate, to the Eastern League title. It was his third year in Akron, and his sixth at the helm in the Indians system.

The 37-year-old former catcher is moving on. He’s not leaving the organization, but a change of scenery is in order.

“I won’t be managing next season,” Wallace told me earlier today. “That’s something I approached (team president) Chris Antonetti, (general manager) Mike Chernoff, and (director of player development) Carter Hawkins about. There are a few reasons, but the biggest is family. I have two kids, ages six and three, and I need to figure out the best way to go forward with my career, and at the same be the best dad, and husband, I can. My priorities start with them, and baseball comes after that.”

Wallace has been exploring his options with members of the Indians brain trust, who have been “overwhelmingly supportive” of his decision. He hopes to move into a role — quite possibly within the front office — that has a more flexible schedule, allowing him to be home for things like his kids’ birthdays.

He sees his impending job change as more than a family matter. It’s also a hiatus, and a stepping stone in his career. His long-term goal hasn’t changed.

“I want to get exposure to other aspects of the industry,” explained Wallace, who studied human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University. “That can only help me be a more well-rounded manager in the future. One thing that hasn’t changed is my desire to be a big-league manager one day.”