First, a brief bit of background for those who haven’t kept up with this minor contract dispute. Back when the Nationals were negotiating with Bryce Harper on deadline signing day in 2010, the haggling went down to the last minute before both sides agreed on a five year, $9.9 million dollar Major League contract. While such deals have since been outlawed by the CBA, they were pretty standard for the best draft picks at the time, and Harper was obviously a pretty great prospect with some significant leverage.

Because he signed a Major League deal, the contract specified guaranteed salaries for 2011 through 2015. However, because the Nationals called him up to the big leagues just a few weeks into the 2012 season, Harper would now qualify as a Super Two arbitration eligible candidate this winter if he wasn’t already under contract for $1.5 million from his original deal. Generally, players who signed these contracts were granted opt-out provisions in case they became arbitration eligible, so that the guaranteed salaries were essentially guaranteed minimums instead, with the player being able to choose the path of arbitration if it would get them higher salaries at that point in the deal.

For example, Rick Porcello used just such a clause to opt-out of the $1.3 million he would have been owed in 2012, choosing to go to arbitration as a Super Two eligible instead. The Tigers ended up paying him $3.1 million to avoid arbitration, which not only gave him more money in that season, but set him up for a higher base to get arbitration raises from, significantly increasing his total salary over the last four years.

Now, that brings us back to Harper. According to the Nationals, Scott Boras forgot to ask for that clause to be included in the deal; Boras denies this, and refused to sign the paperwork when it was sent over in the wake of the agreement. The two sides kicked the can down the road at the time, agreeing that if it became an issue, they would resolve it through independent arbitration. Since Harper is Super Two eligible, it became an issue, and the two sides were scheduled to have their grievance heard tomorrow.

Instead, however, they have settled on a two year contract that seems like a pretty fair compromise: Harper will get the $2.5 million he was projected to make in arbitration this year, but he also agreed to a guaranteed $5 million salary in 2016, a modest raise that limits the exposure for Washington if he has a breakout season this year. Harper gets a little more money up front, and limits his risk in case of an injury or a disappointing performance, while the Nationals defend against having to give him a huge raise next winter if he goes off.

Harper did skip NatsFest this weekend due to his unhappiness with the situation, but I wouldn’t expect this dispute will do much to the team’s chances of signing him long-term. This is the kind of thing that is fairly easily forgotten, especially when the next time these two negotiate, the asking price will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the course of this week, we’ve somehow managed to cover nearly every transaction. But by my count, there are four that we failed to comment on, and that is simply unacceptable. So let’s tackle them, in no particular order:

Rockies trade Josh Rutledge to the Angels for Jairo Diaz

This is one of those rare trades that could end up being a win-win or a lose-lose, so of course I love it. When it went down, Howie Kendrick had not yet been traded, so it was a bit of a mystery as to why the Angels wanted Rutledge. Now that Kendrick has migrated up I-5 however, it makes a lot more sense. Sort of.

I’ve written about Rutledge before, and since I did back in May 2013, he hasn’t really shown much. To wit:

• July 13, 2012 (MLB debut) through Aug. 31, 2012: 150 plate appearances, .345/.360/.634, .419 wOBA, 150 wRC+, 2.0% BB%, 13.3% K%
• Sept. 1, 2012 to present: 797 PA, .242/.298/.357, .291 wOBA, 66 wRC+, 6.0% BB%, 22.5% K%

Rutledge still has a decent 90 wRC+ projection for next season, but it’s unduly influenced by those first 150 PA. Rutledge is still just 26 next year, so it’s not over yet, but we can probably chalk him up as a fluke at this point. The Rockies have somewhat committed to DJ Lemahieu at second, and in a world where Troy Tulowitzki is healthy, they have almost zero use for Rutledge.

The Rockies do need bullpen help though, and getting Diaz could be a nice under the radar move. Diaz jumped from High-A, to Double-A to the majors last season, and struck out more than one-third of the batters he faced at each of the three levels. He also stranded an absurd 86.4 percent of base runners in Double-A, and his FIP still ended up being lower than his ERA. It remained so in the majors, but just for a miniscule sample. He throws just two pitches, and one of them is not a curveball, and he has good velocity separation thanks to his 97 mph cheese. The downside is that it is just 5.2 innings of low-leverage relief work, and he wasn’t a top prospect last year in what was/is a pretty weak Angels farm system, so Rockies fans shouldn’t get too excited. At least, not yet.

Nationals trade Ross Detwiler to Rangers for Chris Bostick and Abel De Los Santos

Banished to the bullpen last season, Detwiler didn’t have the kind of pitch mix and/or stuff that plays up in the bullpen, and he was essentially buried on Matt Williams’ depth chart. He ranked ninth out of 12 Nats relievers in gmLI (leverage when entering the game). In other words, the Nationals didn’t need him. So they flipped him to Texas, who most certainly does need starting pitchers.

Aside from the walking injured, Martin Perez and Matt Harrison, Detwiler now becomes the Rangers’ third-best starter behind Yu Darvish and Derek Holland. If that sounds like an indictment of the Rangers’ current roster, well it is, but that’s why they’re trying to upgrade it. Detwiler gets a lot of ground balls, but his xFIP routinely paints him as someone who seems like he should be allowing more home runs than he does, and moving from Nationals Park (home run park factor of 97) to Globe Life Park (106) will certainly test that out.

De Los Santos is probably the prize in the deal for Washington, and he received a brief mention in Kiley’s Rangers’ prospect piece back in August. Here’s a video Nathaniel Stoltz shot of him early last season:

Phillies trade Antonio Bastardo to Pirates for Joely Rodriguez

Earlier in the week, the Pirates signed a lefty starter in Francisco Liriano, and then they went out and got a lefty reliever in Bastardo.

Bastardo should help in Pittsburgh, whose relief corps had just the 20th-best FIP in the game last year against left-handed batters. The great thing about Bastardo though is that he is not just a LOOGY. For his career, he has near-identical 3.34 and 3.33 FIPS against lefties and righties, respectively, and he has thrown 55 more innings against right-handed batters. His K-BB% is four percent better against lefties, but it is certainly not necessary to remove him when a right-handed batter steps into the box. In fact, last season, he was better against righties than he was lefties.

In return, the Phillies get Rodriguez, who has been a notable player in the past. He didn’t do much in his Double-A debut that was worth hanging your hat on, as he struck out just 5.2 percent more hitters than he walked, but he did improve in his brief time in the Arizona Fall League. He is essentially the exact kind of player the Phillies should be targeting in these sorts of deals — possibly high impact wild cards that are within striking distance of the majors.

Cardinals sign Mark Reynolds

Did you know that Mark Reynolds hit 22 home runs last year? Yeah, he totally did, for the Brewers. Myself, I had forgotten all about Reynolds, but he actually had himself a nice little season, putting up a 1.6 WAR figure that was his best mark since 2010. Oddly, much of it was on the strength of his defense at both first and third base. Unless Reynolds found the fountain of flexibility and/or youth at age 30, I wouldn’t put too much stock in those numbers repeating themselves, but there are certainly worse bench players to have. Reynolds was one of just two players to have a BABIP at .218 or under and still post a 80 or better wRC+. That .218 BABIP easily represented a career low, and may be due to a lack of line drives hit last year, but if his BABIP regresses back up to his career norms, he could end up being a very useful bench bat indeed.

It’s probably fair to say that, among the panoply of transactions which occurred this past week, that those produced by Thursday’s Rule 5 draft — which event marked the end of this year’s Winter Meetings — weren’t the most notable.

That said, even since 2006 (when an extra year of protection was added under the new CBA), the Rule 5 draft has produced both an MVP (Josh Hamilton) and Cy Young (R.A. Dickey). Probably flawed research by the author suggests that, on average, at least one selection within the draft will average a win or better per season following same.

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While certain parts of sporting media have welcomed a wide variety of sabermetrics, it looks as if almost every corner of the baseball word is integrating a few choice metrics into their broadcasts. One of those, which is the focus of this week’s Library update, is batted ball data.

It’s growing increasingly common to see line drive rate, ground ball rate, or fly ball rate dropped into casual baseball conversations outside of the analytics community, which makes this new entry on batted ball statistics for pitchers a useful tool for those just learning about these numbers. What does it mean to say a pitcher is a ground ball pitcher? How are ground balls different from fly balls for a pitcher? Follow the link to learn about the classifications, uses for the data, limitations, and handy reference points.

As always, please comment below if you have questions, find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or stop by our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chats, Wednesdays at 3pm.

Screw it, I can’t even keep up anymore. While I was writing my opus on the Matt Kemp trade, about 55 more things have happened, and we’re all sleep deprived and running on fumes, so I’m throwing in the white flag on trying to write these all up separately. Consider this the December 11th transaction hub. I’ll update this as things come in, and you can use this as a place to tell me about the 15 deals I missed while I tried to breathe.

The Tigers made their trade with the Reds to get a starting pitcher, but it was Alfredo Simon going to Detroit to replace Rick Porcello. Simon has outperformed his peripherals for 500 big league innings, but he doesn’t look like a great bet to be more than a serviceable back-end starter. To acquire one year of his rights, the Tigers gave up infielder Eugenio Suarez and pitching prospect Jonathan Crawford. Nice little move by the Reds.

Cincinnati wasn’t done, though, trading Mat Latos to the Marlins in exchange for Anthony DeSclafani and Chad Wallach. Kiley McDaniel, on those two.

Just saw RHP Anthony DeSclafani (near MLB ready back end piece, 90-93) and C Chad Wallach (big guy, light bat, may be MLB backup) in AFL.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) December 11, 2014

Latos’ velocity and strikeout rate both took big wrong turns in 2014 after he began the year on the disabled list, so there’s all kinds of red flags here. If he’s healthy and gets his velocity back, he could be a good pitcher again, but it’s one year of a health gamble for the Marlins. I can’t say I’m a fan of what they’ve done the last 24 hours.

And finally, according to Buster Olney, the Red Sox have rounded out their rotation by signing Justin Masterson to a one year contract. Like Latos, Masterson is a pitcher with a good track record who had a lousy 2014 season, so this is an upside play, only Masterson didn’t cost the Red Sox any talent to acquire. He’ll join Rick Porcello and Wade Miley in providing depth that the Red Sox didn’t have previously, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they still pursued a front-end guy to upgrade over Clay Buchholz or Joe Kelly.

Oh, and the Royals apparently got close to signing Kendrys Morales while I wrote the last paragraph. $17 million for two years, so basically, the everyone-gets-an-extra-year inflation continues. You apparently have to be near death to settle for a one year deal anymore.

And now there’s this.

Source: Ervin Santana finalizing a four-year deal for around $54 million with Minnesota.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2014

Hey, I got one, kinda. I had Santana landing a 4/$52M contract from an AL Central team, though it was KC, not Minneosta. In this market, for what Santana is, this feels about right. Average is expensive now.

The Tigers needed another outfielder. The Red Sox needed starting pitching, and needed to trade an outfielder or three. The fit seems reasonable, and so now it appears that Detroit and Boston have exchanged Yoenis Cespedes for Rick Porcello, with the Tigers getting two additional players as well. And to add to the intrigue, the Tigers are reportedly simultaneously shipping several prospects to Cincinnati in exchange for a starting pitcher. While we don’t know all the names involved, it seems like the final details might be something like this.

The Red Sox get Rick Porcello
The Tigers get Yoenis Cespdes and maybe Mike Leake or Mat Latos
The Reds get prospects.

The facts, as we kind of know them now.

Porcello turns 26 in a few weeks and is headed into his final year before he becomes a free agent; he’s projected to earn $12 million in his final trip through arbitration. He’s developed nicely into roughly a +3 WAR starter by avoiding walks and getting groundballs, while also flashing some strikeout ability in 2013, but that didn’t carry over to last year. He’s a durable and effective innings eater, with perhaps a little bit of upside remaining beyond that.

Cespedes is 29 and is also going to be a free agent at years end, though unlike Porcello, the Tigers won’t be able to make him a qualifying offer as part of the terms of his contract. Cespedes will earn $10.5 million in 2015, so he’s slightly cheaper than Porcello, but the difference is minimal. Like Porcello, he’s settled in as a +3 WAR player, and he projects to perform at about that level next year.

So, really, this is a swap of two similarly valuable pieces, both in their walk years, both making about the same money. The qualifying offer potential makes Porcello a little more valuable, which is why Boston is kicking in a pair of prospects, but we shouldn’t expect them to be deal changing talents. The Red Sox turn a +3 WAR player they didn’t need into one they do, while the Tigers found it easier to replace Porcello with whichever Reds starter they’re acquiring than find another outfielder besisdes Cespedes.

Obviously, the names in the Cincinnati trade could change things, but on first glance, this looks like a reasonable deal for everyone. The Tigers turn more future value into a short-term upgrade, the Red Sox realgin their roster towards more pitching, and the Reds perhaps admit that it’s time to rebuild.

After a couple of weeks of rumors, the Padres have reportedly come to terms with the Dodgers on a deal that will bring Matt Kemp to San Diego.

San Diego Union-Tribune reporting agreement on Kemp to #Padres – Kemp and Federowicz plus about $30M for Grandal, Wieland and third player.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2014

Matt Kemp is due $107 million over the next five years, so if the Dodgers are kicking in $30 million, the Padres are essentially picking up Kemp at 5/$77M. The crowd estimated that the Dodgers would have to pick up $47 million in order to move Kemp, so the Dodgers have not only saved more money than expected, but also acquired several pieces of real talent in return.

The quick facts, then I’ll get started on a longer post analyzing the deal.

Kemp is 30 years old, so the Padres are picking up his age-30 to age-34 seasons. He has a career 128 wRC+, but a strong performance last year pushed that mark to 140, the 15th best total in MLB last year. Unfortunately, he also plays defense, and not particularly well, as Mike Petriello covered earlier this week. Kemp’s value as a corner outfielder will depend on whether he can be at least reasonable with the glove; if he can, the offensive production makes him an above average player. If he’s as bad defensively as the metrics have suggested, then Kemp is essentially an average player overall.

For the right to pay an aging, average — or maybe a bit better than average — big leaguer $77 million over the next five years, the Padres gave up Yasmani Grandal, Joe Wieland, and a third player.

Grandal is 26 and a switch-hitting catcher with a career 119 wRC+ in 777 plate appearances, though he’s been closer to above average than excellent at the plate the last two years. He controls the strike zone and has decent power, so he’s managed to be an above average hitter the last two years even as he’s run fairly low BABIPs. The big jump in his strikeout rate last year is a bit of a concern, as his contact rate fell to 75%, but at a .175 ISO, the power was strong enough to offset the rise in strikeouts.

Grandal also rates exceptionally well by catcher framing metrics, so while he’s not very good at controlling the running game, he may be a better defensive catcher than his reputation. Grandal is under team control for four more years, and will be eligible for arbitration next winter.

Joe Wieland is an interesting arm who hasn’t been able to stay healthy. He had Tommy John surgery in 2012, and then had surgery for a stress reaction in his elbow after a setback in his rehab. He’s missed most of the last two years, during which he’s been accruing Major League service time while on the DL, so he’s now a Super-Two arbitration player and will be eligible for free agency in four years.

The third player is unknown, but should probably be assumed to be a lesser piece.

2015 Steamer Projections

Matt Kemp: 555 PA, 128 wRC+, +2.1 WAR
Yasmani Grandal: 393 PA, 111 wRC+, +1.5 WAR
Joe Wieland: ? IP, 3.96 ERA, 0.0 WAR

I’ll have a full write-up on this soon, but suffice it to say that I love this trade for the Dodgers and don’t really get it at all for the Padres. They get a big right-handed slugger, but I’m not sure they got any better, and they spent $75 million for the right to be differently bad.

The Dodgers have had one insanely busy day. They have a new middle infield, for one, but along the way to acquiring Howie Kendrick, the team shipped off Dan Haren, opening up a spot in their rotation. That spot was open for about five hours before Ken Rosenthal reported this.

Sources: #Dodgers close to four-year deal with free-agent RHP Brandon McCarthy.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2014

The deal will reportedly pay McCarthy $48 million over those four seasons, which gives him a slight premium over what Francisco Liriano got from the Pirates earlier this week. As a fellow talented-but-regularly-injured starter, Liriano and McCarthy seemed destined to sign similar-ish contracts — I guessed 3/$42M for McCarthy and 3/$39M for Liriano — and ended up fairly close in AAV, with McCarthy leveraging his strong finish to the year into a fourth year with the Dodgers.

Not surprisingly, the four teams rumored to have pursued McCarthy the hardest were the Red Sox, Yankees, Pirates, and Dodgers; all four organizations put significant value on statistical analysis, and the nerdy stats make him look far more attractive than his traditional numbers. Specifically, that glowing 2.87 xFIP that ranked 9th best in baseball last year. If you can get past ERA as an evaluator of pitching talent, McCarthy’s 2014 performance is extremely encouraging.

Especially because it’s supported by an increase in velocity. McCarthy’s average fastball jumped to 93 mph last year, far beyond anything he’d ever done before. The improvement in stuff helps explain the significant rise in strikeouts, and if McCarthy can continue to post a league average strikeout rate while never walking anyone and getting his fair share of groundballs, he’ll likely perform at a level well beyond his $12 million per year salary.

Health is going to be the primary factor in whether this contract works out for the Dodgers, though. McCarthy threw 200 innings last year, making 32 starts and avoiding the disabled list entirely, but he’d made only 40 starts in the two years prior, and his career high was 25. The Dodgers probably shouldn’t assume McCarthy will ever throw 200 innings in a season again, and they’ll have to assume that they’ll need a fill-in at some point if his shoulder acts up again.

So, the question is can McCarthy perform well enough when he is on the mound to justify the stretches of time when he is not, especially under a contract that covers his age-31 to age-34 seasons? Jeff Sullivan will have the full write up on that in a bit.

Well, that didn’t take long. A few hours after the reports came out on the trade sending Dee Gordon to the Marlins for Andrew Heaney and stuff, Heaney was redirected to the Angels in exchange for Howie Kendrick. So, really, instead of trading a second baseman and a pitcher they didn’t want for a bundle of prospects, the Dodgers traded their second baseman for the Angels second baseman and a slightly smaller bundle of prospects.

So, with the smoke (maybe) settled, the two trades essentially turn out to be one three trade. In the end, if we’re at the end, it looks something like this.

Marlins trade Heaney, Enrique Gonzalez, Austin Barnes, and Chris Hatcher for Dee Gordon
Dodgers trade Gordon for Kendrick, Gonzalez, Barnes, and Hatcher
Angels trade Kendrick for Heaney

Jeff already covered the first half of the deal in some depth, so if you’re interested in Gordon or the prospects, read that. The new guy here is Kendrick, so this quick post will focus on him.

In exchange for the six years of Heaney they could have held on to, the Dodgers are getting just one year of Kendrick’s services, but Kendrick is legitimately one of the best second baseman in baseball. At +10 WAR over the last three years, Kendrick isn’t quite in the Cano/Pedroia/Zobrist class, but he’s right there with the next tier of guys, and at 31, shouldn’t be expected to decline from that level in 2015.

Steamer projects Kendrick as a +3.3 WAR player for 2015, and given that he’ll make just $9.5 million next year, he’s a significant bargain for the money. The Dodgers can either approach Kendrick about an extension now, or keep him for the final year of his contract and hit him with a qualifying offer next winter. Given the market value of a win this winter, one season of Kendrick plus the potential draft pick is probably worth something like $25 or $30 million. Don’t sleep on Kendrick’s value as a big time asset.

Whether that’s worth six years of Andrew Heaney depends on what you think of him as a prospect, essentially. If you still see him as a solid mid-rotation starter — and Steamer’s projecting him at +1.4 WAR per 200 innings in 2015, so even incremental improvement over the next few years would get him there — then this might be too steep a price to pay. The Dodgers are definitely better with Kendrick than with Heaney, but a cheap solid starting pitcher has significant value as well.

The Angels essentially took a page out of the A’s playbook with this one, getting worse in the short-term to pick up a potentially solid long-term role player. Kendrick won’t be easy to replace, though, and the Angels don’t have an obvious candidate ready to step in.

All told: the Dodgers got better and added some prospects. The Angels got worse, but also younger and added more team control. And the Marlins got a guy who is fast.

The author — who’s already been alive for 35 years and will probably die pretty soon, relatively speaking — the author, despite his age, has never had occasion to describe one thing as the “jewel” of another thing. Like, even though I visited Croatia this past spring, for example, I was never once compelled to suggest that Diocletian’s Palace is the “jewel” of Split. And even though I live in New Hampshire, for other example, I’ve never felt so overcome by Winnipesaukee to pronounce it the “jewel” of that state’s Lakes Region.

Standing on what are probably the broad, masculine shoulders of Jared Cross and his Steamer projection system, however, it seems totally reasonable — so far as projected WAR for 2015 is concerned, at least — it seems reasonable to describe half-catcher, half-second-baseman Austin Barnes as the “jewel” of today’s Dodgers-Marlins trade.

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