To be clear, there are two job postings here.

Position: Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Research & Development Intern

Location: Milwaukee
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Position: St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Operations Fellowship

Location: Jupiter, Fla.
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Well, here we go; the hot stove is starting to fire up.

Optimism growing in Mets camp they can get a deal done with Cespedes, sources say…

— Tim Brown (@TBrownYahoo) November 29, 2016

Sources: Cespedes back to #Mets.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 29, 2016

Sources: Cespedes deal expected to be four year, $110M.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 29, 2016

The Mets had been pretty interested in retaining Cespedes, and he seemed interested in sticking around, and it looks like both parties found a way to make it work even without waiting for the new terms of the CBA to be agreed upon.

At 4/$110M, Cespedes ends up effectively getting close to the deal everyone expected him to get last winter, when you factor in that he got $27.5 million for 2016 on his one-year deal. This is a little bit less than what our expected price was headed into the winter, as Cespedes settled on four years at a slightly higher AAV rather than pushing for a fifth year and getting the total guarantee up slightly. Here’s the blurb we included in our Top 50 free agent write-up, where Cespedes ranked #1 overall.

A year after getting rejected by the league, Cespedes is considered by most to be the best player on the market this winter. He followed up his 2015 offensive breakout with another strong year in Queens, and while his defensive performance took a dive while playing through a quad injury, his recent power spike shouldn’t be viewed with as much skepticism as it was last year. Of course, he’s still built like a linebacker and lower-half injuries are the kinds of things you don’t want to see from a guy who relies on athleticism for a good chunk of his value. So there’s still risk here, which is why we all seem to agree that a five-year deal is the best fit here, even for the top player available.

Criag Edwards went through Cespedes’ comparisons a few weeks back and found him to be worth something in the range of $100 million or so, so this seems like a perfectly reasonable investment for the Mets. He’s a good player, and this is what good players go for these days.

The question, of course, is what the Mets do now with an overcrowded outfield. With Curtis Granderson and Jay Bruce under contract for significant money as corner outfield options, Michael Conforto around as a young player who should fit into a corner spot as well, and now Cespedes, the team is overflowing with left and right fielders. One or even two of those guys are probably leaving Queens now, so with Cespedes back in the fold, the Mets can figure out how to make their roster work again.

Here are the prospects changing hands in last night’s deal between Seattle and Atlanta as evaluated by KATOH projection system. KATOH+ represents a player’s WAR projection over his first six years in the majors and includes said player’s Baseball America’s ranking as a variable.

*****

Alex Jackson, RF, Atlanta

Jackson has struggled to make contact ever since the Mariners popped him sixth overall back in 2014. He hit decently in his second crack at Low-A last year, but KATOH is alarmed by his 27% strikeout rate. The fact that he’s a right fielder who neither steals bases nor grades out well defensively also hurts his case. He’s hit for decent power, but the statistical negatives far outweigh the positives. Of course, Jackson was viewed as one of the best prospects in the country a mere two-and-a-half years ago, so it’s likely he still has some potential that isn’t showing up in his on-field performance. The traditional KATOH also projects him for 0.4 WAR.

KATOH+ Projection for first six years: 0.4 WAR

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The Angels presently project to have baseball’s worst bullpen. Now, they know it’s a potential weakness, and they’re going to make further moves to try to shore things up, but some time ago the front office did re-sign Andrew Bailey for a year and $1 million. It’s terribly unexciting, and this isn’t even new. Again: old transaction! But I thought about this when I read a new Mike Petriello article about Statcast stars. Here we are.

Seth Lugo got a mention in the article. From a Statcast perspective, Lugo is fascinating, because his curveball generated easily the league’s highest average spin rate. We don’t yet know quite what that means, but it’s not dull. Now, what about fastball spin rate? Justin Verlander had the highest average among starters. Carl Edwards Jr. thrived with his high-spin fastball out of the bullpen. And yet, while Edwards ranked second in average fastball spin, Andrew Bailey ranked first. His fastball averaged 2,674 RPM. The league-average four-seamer came in at 2,264 RPM.

Now, Bailey wound up with an ERA over 5. That’s a problem, and that feels like it ought to be more meaningful than some spin-rate metric. Bailey hasn’t had a positive WAR as a big-league reliever since 2011. He’ll turn 33 years old next May. When the Angels first re-signed Bailey for 2017, I came to this very screen, and I almost wrote an InstaGraphs post, but I stopped myself. I’m not picking Bailey as some ultra-sleeper. But there’s just enough for me to be intrigued. The same goes for the Angels, who plucked Bailey from the Phillies late in the summer. After making the move, Bailey’s cutter gained three miles per hour. His curveball gained a tick. And, with the Angels, in a small sample, Bailey threw 70% strikes. For the season overall, he threw two-thirds of his pitches for strikes. That’s what he did at his peak between 2009 – 2011.

Bailey’s top velocity is down a mile or two from earlier in his career, but now it seems like he could have the strikes back, and the fastball spin should make it hard to square up if hitters have to stay concerned about the other pitches. The increased velocity should help that, and even last season, Bailey generated one of the higher foul-ball rates, which is a sort of compromise between a ball in play and a swinging strike. Foul balls for pitchers are more good than bad. Bailey showed more than he had in a while, and his best version was a quality closer. This package might give the Angels a decent setup guy.

Mostly, I just want for more people to know about Bailey’s spin. Spin can go only so far — consult Bailey’s recent ERAs. But Bailey just got to blending spin and strikes, and his stuff played up in September. From a projection standpoint, Bailey isn’t very good. From a more scouty perspective, there could well be something left in the tank. The best starting point is always an interesting fastball, and Bailey’s is more interesting than most.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, I wrote an article about how Chris Sale had been hurt last season by lousy receivers. That was an interesting observation from the data, but it wasn’t the only interesting observation from the data. According to Baseball Prospectus, Sale lost the second-most runs from his pitch-framers. Brandon Finnegan, however, pitched to the worst strike zone, his framers costing him an estimated 7.8 runs. Meanwhile, from the same source, Madison Bumgarner pitched to the best strike zone, his framers helping him by an estimated 11.0 runs. That’s a 19-run difference from catchers alone.

Maybe you don’t believe the spread was really that big. It’s easy to believe there was some spread — Bumgarner pitched almost exclusively to Buster Posey, while Finnegan pitched to Tucker Barnhart and Ramon Cabrera. One should also be wary of putting everything on the catchers. Pitchers with better command are easier to receive than pitchers with worse command, and Bumgarner throws with greater accuracy than Finnegan does. So, in part, the zones were the pitchers’ fault. But one thing we know for sure is that, in the end, Bumgarner’s strike zone was more generous. Arguably the most generous. So here is how the Bumgarner and Finnegan called strike zones compare:

Pretty interesting! Here is an alternate view of the same information. Note this is also from the catcher’s perspective. This shows called-strike rates out of all called pitches:

Both pitchers are southpaws. Bumgarner got the far better zone high. He got the far better zone arm-side. He got the far better zone low. Glove-side, it’s about equal, if not in favor of Finnegan. That’s of some note — Finnegan wasn’t losing strikes everywhere. It seems like he frequently tried to target that glove-side edge, but he’d often miss, and his catchers were probably worse at receiving missed locations. So it goes. It’s another example of a point to be debated. Bumgarner got the way more generous strike zone than Finnegan did. Some of this is because Bumgarner hit his spots better than Finnegan did. That reflects well on Bumgarner’s talent! But with an automated strike zone, the gap in performance between the pitchers would’ve been narrowed. Bumgarner’s zone would’ve been worse, and Finnegan’s zone would’ve been better. You either like the way things are, or you don’t. They’ve been this way forever, even if we’ve only recently taken to measuring it.

An estimated gap of 18.8 runs. This compares the two extremes, but there was about the same difference in WAR last year between Max Scherzer and Carlos Martinez. Individual ball and strike calls seldom make a big difference in the moment, but, holy hell, can the differences ever add up.

Position: Boston Red Sox Baseball Operations Analyst (focus on Pitching Development)

Location: Boston
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Position: Inside Edge Baseball Operations Intern

Location: Minneapolis
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Earlier today, I published an article about the season’s worst home run. The criteria was very simple: I just selected the home run with the lowest recorded exit velocity, courtesy of Statcast. I think that position is fairly defensible, even if there might be other ways to identify other bad home runs. It’s subjective. Sorry!

Having that post go up all but demands the posting of the opposite. At the very least, I figure the community is curious. The opposite of the home run hit with the lowest exit velocity is the home run hit with the highest exit velocity. And the opposite of the worst home run is the best home run. I don’t know if this position is so defensible, but, I had to use this headline, just for consistency.

This home run is less interesting than the weak one, because this is just a really good home run. Hence this being an InstaGraphs post, instead of a FanGraphs post. The home run was hit by Carlos Gonzalez, against Zack Greinke, in Arizona, on April 4. It was the season opener for both the Rockies and the Diamondbacks. Gonzalez hit his home run at 117.4 miles per hour. You may watch it now.

The healthy version of Giancarlo Stanton is a Statcast darling. Over Statcast’s brief history, Stanton leads the majors, by far, in the number of batted balls hit at least 115mph. Gonzalez, though, comes up a distant second, which still counts as second. So Gonzalez is no stranger to absolutely stinging the baseball, and this home run was better than any Stanton hit in 2016. Stanton owns the next-hardest homer, at 116.8mph. Then there’s a tie at 115.9mph, between George Springer and Avisail Garcia. It’s interesting to see Gonzalez going deep here in a full count — you might think, with two strikes, he’d somewhat cut down on his swing. He did nothing of the sort, and Greinke made a horrible location mistake.

Greinke knew pretty quickly what Gonzalez had done to him.

Now here’s where it gets extra fun: If you watch the highlight clip, the Rockies announcers joke about the ball’s exit velocity and launch angle. They didn’t know those numbers at the time. They were right that the ball had a high exit velocity — it had the highest exit velocity, among dingers. And they were right that the ball had a low launch angle — it had the lowest launch angle, among dingers. It’s a two-fer! Gonzalez hit the ball 14.2 degrees above the horizontal. The next-lowest homer was hit 15.2 degrees above the horizontal (Kevin Pillar). A shot from the side:

It wound up standing as a very extraordinary home run. It was the sort of batted ball you’d think would be a well-stung double, but it just never came down, registering a Statcast distance estimate of 420 feet. One more time, the ball was hit 117.4mph, with an angle of 14.2 degrees. The average baseball this year hit 420 feet had an exit velocity of 105.4mph, with an angle of 26.9 degrees. Gonzalez just beat the living crap out of a terrible full-count pitch, and this is one of the reasons why he’s not simply a product of Coors Field. You can’t fake his contact quality. He makes some of the very best contact around. Congratulations, Carlos Gonzalez, on your very good dinger.

Position: Oakland Athletics Baseball Operations Analyst

Location: Oakland
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