As of today — or at least something like today — the Arizona Fall League has been underway for about a month. Two stadiums in that league, located in Peoria and Surprise, are equipped with PITCHf/x cameras, all manner of data from which is available at Daren Willman’s site MLB Farm.

What follows is a pair of leaderboards featuring the top velocities among those AFL pitchers — both overall, and also among starters only — who’ve appeared at either of the two aforementioned stadiums. Following those leaderboards are three observations of limited merit.

The pitch type FF denotes a four-seam fastball; FT, a two-seamer. Count denotes the number of the relevant pitch type to have been recorded by PITCHf/x cameras.

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Last week, FanGraphs published the results of our contract crowdsourcing project, as part of which effort readers of the site provided estimates of the years and dollars the top-55 free agents (more or less) are likely to receive during the 2014-15 offseason.

As part of that effort, respondents were also asked if certain eligible players were or were not likely to receive a qualifying offer (worth $15.3 million) from their respective clubs. As of last night, we know the identities of the 12 players who received qualifying offers in real life. Those same 12 players appear below, along with the percentage of crowd respondents who believed the player would receive a qualifying offer (denoted What the Crowd Said) and the percentage of respondents who thought the relevant player would accept a qualifying offer if extended one (denoted as Will He Accept?).

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Melky Cabrera (Profile)
What the Crowd Said
No prediction. Reports were pretty clear that Toronto would make offer.

Will He Accept?
No: 76%. Yes: 24%.

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With the free agent period now open, I’m going to make a habit of throwing up some free agent comparisons that might challenge the perceptions of the relative value of a few players. For various reasons, there are players who have performed pretty similarly, or project similarly going forward, but the general consensus has them as significantly different. I like pointing these cases out.

Let’s start with a pair of right fielders today. According to the Contract Crowdsourcing project, Nick Markakis is expected to sign for $33 million over three years, while Nori Aoki is expected to sign for $14 million over two years. According to Roch Kubotko, Markakis is going to do even better than the crowd thought, as the Orioles are reportedly talking with him about a four year deal; I think we can say with some certainty that Nori Aoki isn’t getting a four year deal this winter.

But now, let’s just look at some data. Here is Aoki and Markakis over the last three years.

There’s an error in the code that caused Aoki to be rated as an abysmal baserunner in 2014 — he wasn’t — so the numbers above won’t match what’s on Aoki’s player page or the leaderboards until the new code gets updated, but I’ve eliminated that error here. And removing that error makes it hard to argue that Markakis has been better at much of anything over the last few years. They’re basically the same type of player, only Aoki has been the better version of it.

They’re both high-contact, low-power guys, though Aoki is even better at avoiding strikeouts, so his BA/OBP are a bit higher. The defensive metrics also like him a bit more, though neither one is a big time asset in the field. Even if you decide that you think they’re equals in the field, that just serves to pull Markakis back up to Aoki’s level.

Markakis is two years younger, so it’s probably fair to project him for a slightly slower decline going forward, but even including the age factor, Steamer still sees Aoki and Markakis as equals, and that’s with the incorrect baserunning number factored into the projection. Factor that out, and Aoki inches ahead a little bit in the battle of slap-hitting right fielders.

But the perception is that Markakis is a lot better than Aoki, and he’s probably going to get paid a lot more. I’m not sure it’s reality, though.

Well, we’ve got our first surprise of the offseason, as right before the deadline to extend qualifying offers, the Rockies announced that they were going to extend that to free agent outfielder Michael Cuddyer. By making the QO, Cuddyer now has a week to determine if he wants to accept a one year, $15.3 million contract, or hit free agency with draft pick compensation attached.

Without the QO, I think Cuddyer likely could have landed a two three year deal, probably in the $10 million per year range. In the Contract Crowdsourcing project, the median forecast was for $18 million over two years, so even if the crowd was a bit low, expectations were somewhere in that range.

Now, though, that contract is basically out the window, as it wouldn’t benefit Cuddyer to accept a second year that only guarantees him $4.7 million more than accepting the qualifying offer. In order to get a deal that would be more valuable than taking the 1/$15M QO, he’s probably going to need to get three years. And ~3/$30M, plus the forfeiture of a draft pick, is a high price to pay for a guy who played in 49 games last year and turns 36 next March.

Now, the market has historically overpaid for power, and as a right-handed hitter with the ability to drive the ball, Cuddyer would likely have commanded a premium in free agency. Especially because he also comes with the reputation as a great clubhouse guy and off-the-field intangibles. But we’re still talking about a guy with a Steamer forecast of +1 WAR next year, and that’s assuming he stays healthy enough to play most of the season.

As a player, Cuddyer isn’t all that different from an older Kendrys Morales, though he does offer a bit more defensive value in that he can theoretically run around the outfield a bit. Last year, Morales bet on this skillset getting paid, turned down the qualifying offer, and found out that the market for good-not-great hitters with limited other skills wasn’t what he thought it would be.

Will Cuddyer turn down a guaranteed $15 million from Colorado in order to find out how much more valuable the league sees him than Morales? I’m guessing no. And if he does take the deal, becoming the first player to accept a qualifying offer, the big question then becomes what the Rockies do with their already crowded outfield.

For this week’s Library update, we’ve rolled out a very long thorough glossary entry that offers a brief description and links (where applicable) for every single offensive statistic available on our leaderboards. It’s easy to find our glossary entry on wOBA, for example, but if you want to know what wFB/C is, it takes a little bit of digging to get to the right place.

Now, we have a permanent pages that lists every statistic we have according to the acronym used on the leaderboard. You can jump over to this page at any time and find the corresponding stat or use “CTRL + F” to make your Internet computers do it for you.

As always, should you have any questions, I encourage you to drop a comment below, find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44, or stop by our weekly Q&A chats Wednesdays at 3pm. Enjoy!

It may have originally escaped the reader’s attention owing to how all of the postseason was happening, but MLB.com has featured broadcasts of several Arizona Fall League games and is scheduled to broadcast several more — including one tonight between Surprise and Salt River.

Tonight’s game features what one might reasonably call a surfeit of compelling-type prospects, including Houston third baseman Rio Ruiz, Minnesota second baseman-cum-outfielder Eddie Rosario, and talented Cincinnati batsman Jesse Winker.

Click here for the live feed and here for the relevant box score. Finally here is a schedule of future broadcasts.

On Wednesday, FanGraphs published the results of its contract crowdsourcing effort, an attempt to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2014-15 free-agent market. That post includes the top-55 free agents (more or less) and estimates of the length and size of the contracts those free agents will receive this offseason.

As of this afternoon, only 54 of the players included in that post remain free agents, after Koji Uehara re-signed with the Boston Red Sox. Alex Speier reports:

Two years, $18M for Koji Uehara.

— Alex Speier (@alexspeier) October 30, 2014

The deal is more robust than the crowd anticipated. Uehara’s mean estimate was 1 year and $8 million; his average, 1.4 years and $11.9 million (an $8.5 million average annual value). The crowd missed by either half a year or a full year, depending on how one calculates it, and about $0.5 to $1.0 million per season — or roughly 5-10%.

Jeff Sullivan wrote earlier today about the excellence of Madison Bumgarner’s relief performance last night in Game Seven of the World Series — and over the course of the playoffs, generally. What follows is a similar document to Sullivan’s, except designed for a person for whom reading and thinking are burdensome.

1. Bumgarner’s Fastball Velocity Was Higher in the Postseason
According to Brooks Baseball, Bumgarner recorded an average fastball velocity of 92.76 mph during the regular season. In October, he threw about 1 mph higher, on average — 93.66 mph, according to Brooks.

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If you’re looking for goat horns upon which to hang the Royals Game 7 loss, you should probably start with Madison Bumgarner. He had as much to do with their loss as anyone.

Maybe, if you’re desperate, you look to Royals third base coach Mike Jirschele for holding Alex Gordon at third base in the ninth. Rather than send Gordon home to his all-but-assured doom, he placed the season in the hands of Salvador Perez. Damned if you do, you might say.

But if you need a boneheaded play with immediate and negative repercussions for Kansas City, look no further than the man who slid headfirst into infamy after Joe Panik made a very memorable stop at second base, starting a third inning double play you’re going to get sick of seeing this winter.

No, I’m not talking about Eric Hosmer’s slide into first base, slowing him down enough for the Giants to record two huge outs. I’m talking about Lorenzo Cain, seconds earlier during the very same play.

We all remember the incredible diving and flip made by Panik, tossing to Brandon Crawford for the force. Crawford made a strong throw to just nail Hosmer. It took a video replay to determine he was really out. It’s a play that will remain in Giants lore forever.

Every split second matters on this play. And yet there is Cain, with the entire thing developing right in front of him, sliding headfirst into second base. The Giants shortstop is able to comfortably plant and fire a strike to first. If Cain makes even a passable attempt at a takeout slide, the chances of converting this improbable double play shrink even more.

It was a mistake, simply put. A brain cramp on the bases at an inopportune time by a player who perhaps contributed more to the Royals postseason surge than any other. There really isn’t any excuse for it, mind you. Cain must, at the very least, disrupt the play and make any relay throw a little more difficult.

With Bumgarner looming and the Royals offense predicated on taking advantage of every opportunity, this play was a killer. Easy to say in hindsight, but there’s no real excuse for Cain’s thoughtless base running in this situation.

Update:

Here is the Statcast breakdown of this play. Hosmer’s only out by .02 seconds even after sliding headfirst. Crawford is able to get rid of the ball after 0.77 seconds. If he’s dodging a takeout slide, that surely goes by more than two hundredths of second, right?

The Blue Jays have have a strong recent track record of taking failed hitters and turning them into franchise cornerstones. In 2008, they traded minor league catcher Robinzon Diaz to Pittsburgh for Jose Bautista, then watched him turn into Joey Bats. In 2009, Edwin Encarnacion was one of three players they acquired from the Reds in exchange for Scott Rolen, but they ended up having to re-sign him as a free agent after the A’s claimed him on waivers and then released him two weeks later; that move has worked out pretty well, I’d say. So now they’re trying it again, claiming Justin Smoak off waivers from the Mariners.

The Mariners put Smoak through waivers for two main reasons:

1. They had a $3.6 million option on him for 2015 that was unlikely to be exercised, so they would have had to pay a $200,000 buyout to void the final year of the contract.

2. He’s kind of terrible.

Okay, maybe point #2 is a bit of hyperbole. There are worse players in baseball than Justin Smoak, and he was a pretty decent prospect not too terribly long ago. But Justin Smoak is a remarkably slow-footed first baseman, so to be a valuable contributor in the big leagues, he needs to hit. And he just hasn’t. Over the first five years of his career, he’s posted a wRC+ of 94, putting him in the same group as Vernon Wells, Brennan Boesch, and Peter Bourjos, among others. If he could run like Bourjos or even play the outfield in a reasonable manner, he’d have some value, but as a plodding first baseman, a 94 wRC+ is basically replacement level.

In fact, that Smoak has lasted as a regular this long is kind of amazing. Over the last 50 years, 92 first baseman have been given 2,000 or more plate appearances by the end of their age-27 season; of that group, Justin Smoak ranks 89th in wRC+, ahead of only Travis Lee, Casey Kotchman, and Dan Meyer. Kotchman was an elite defensive first baseman, while Lee was a very good baserunner relative to his peers; Smoak is neither of those things, so he ranks behind both in WAR at this point of his career. Only Meyer produced fewer WAR through this point among first baseman who got this many chances, and from ages 28 to 32, he would produce another -2.0 WAR over 900 plate appearances before finally getting forcibly retired.

So, yeah, the comparisons for Justin Smoak aren’t good anymore. He had promise as a college player and minor leaguer, but he hasn’t shown enough power to justify the rest of his skillset, which essentially requires power to play in the big leagues. The good news is that Toronto is a much more friendly place to hit than Seattle, and the Blue Jays have had success with these reclamation projects before. Even if they can just get his BABIP up from the .260 to .280 range, he could be a useful part-time player.

If you have money to burn, $3.6 million to see if there’s any glimmer of hope left in Smoak isn’t the worst idea ever. The Blue Jays better not count on this working, though, because history suggests that guys who get this many chances and fail to take advantage probably aren’t worth many more chances.