Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Application Developer, Baseball Systems

Department: Information Technology
Supervisor: Senior Director, Application Development
Status: Full-Time, Exempt

Position Summary:
The San Francisco Giants application development team is seeking an experienced software engineer that will impact the Giants major league and affiliate teams. In this role, you will build tooling, product enhancements and work with a team of baseball minds to evolve the Giants’ baseball systems. The Giants are looking for a candidate with a passion for baseball and technology, who will research and develop new solutions to enhance their applications.

Position Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, test, deploy, maintain and improve software applications
• Build and maintain web/mobile applications, core software components, and ETL pipelines
• Analyze and improve efficiency, scalability, and stability of all baseball systems
• Provide excellent customer support for all our baseball systems
• Work on projects from conception to completion including building prototypes
• Shape the future of our baseball platforms

Technical Skills/Experience:

• Cloud Computing: Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, or Microsoft Azure
• General purpose programming languages: Java, C/C++, C#, Python, JavaScript, or Go
• Databases/stores: Microsoft SQL Server, Google BigQuery, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or Redis
• Web application frameworks: Django, Flask, Angular, Polymer, React, or Bootstrap
• Distributed systems and data processing frameworks: Spark, Kafka, Kubernetes, or Docker

Knowledge and Skills:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field or equivalent practical experience
• 4+ years of relevant work experience, including development and/or test automation experience
• Knowledge of algorithms and fundamental computer science concepts preferred
• Strong communication skills and great product sense
• Significant experience in system design as well as scaling systems
• Strong quantitative abilities and existing knowledge of baseball analytics

To Apply:
To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here.

The deadline to apply is Friday, January 11, 2019.

Position: Application Development Assistant

Reports To: Senior Director, Application Development
Department: Information Technology
Status: Part-Time/Non-Exempt

Position Summary:
This individual will focus on projects related to baseball development. Projects may include acquiring new data, working on ETL, or front-end development. Additionally, this individual will assist in the daily support and maintenance of The San Francisco Giants baseball information system.

Position Responsibilities:

• Complete assigned projects related to baseball development and baseball analytics
• Identify new and unique approaches to accomplish baseball objectives
• Document all work so that it can be understood and used by other members of the baseball development team
• Assist in administrative and support tasks related to baseball information systems

Technical Skills:

• General understanding of scripting language and databases.
• Experience in .Net, SQL, CSS and JS a plus
• A technical test will be required as part of the interview process

Knowledge and Skills:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Information Systems, or equivalent experience
• Strong interest in researching, identifying and applying new techniques and strategic uses of technology
• Must be able to work efficiently and multi-task in a high stress environment and easily adapt to shifting priorities
• Self-motivated, detail-oriented, highly organized and deadline driven
• Resourcefulness, desire and ability to learn quickly and acquire new technical skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Technical documentation experience required.
• Patience and ability to satisfy demanding customers while effectively managing workload and expectations
• Team player who prefers a collaborative environment
• Committed to going “above and beyond” to serve the customer and enhance their technical knowledge
• Knowledge of and passion for baseball

To Apply:
To apply, please submit your cover letter and resume here.

Deadline to apply is Friday, January 18, 2019.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the San Francisco Giants.

Please note, this posting contains two positions.

Position: Full-Stack Integration Engineer, R&D

Location: Kent, WA

Compensation: Commensurate with experience; top-end of MLB entry-level developer salary ranges.

Benefits: Healthcare, profit sharing, opportunity for work-related paid travel (all after probationary period).

Start Date: Mid-January, 2019

Full-time salaried and exempt on-site hours of ~50 hours per week. This is not a remote position. Limited ability (20%) to work from home may be available after the probationary period, but significant facetime with athletes and staff is valued. Minor financial relocation assistance is offered in the form of a one-time cash payment to assist with travel.

Description: Driveline Baseball is looking for a skilled full-stack integration engineer to join their growing Research and Development team in Seattle. Driveline Baseball secures contracts with multiple MLB teams year-round, providing external amateur draft reports, player development assistance, and on-site implementation of the physical products they manufacture and develop in-house. Driveline Baseball also trains hundreds of elite collegiate and professional hitters and pitchers in their three building complex in Kent, Washington, 20 minutes south of downtown Seattle.

The ideal candidate will have interest in both sports science and sabermetrics, with a desire to broaden their horizons into other fields Driveline is pursuing, such as logistics, manufacturing, and rapid prototyping. Candidates will not be judged based on their formal education background, or lack thereof; the best candidates to come through Driveline Baseball have a varied and colorful history with a portfolio of failed, half-completed, and blocked sports projects of all types. Self-starters, initiative-takers, and those with a healthy skepticism of authority fit in well in the R&D department of Driveline Baseball.

Unlike MLB organizations, at Driveline Baseball, the members of the R&D team work directly and regularly with minor and major league players. You will be communicating directly with big leaguers who will depend on your statistical and quantitative reports to improve their training methods and their pitch selection. You will also deal directly with front office executives and will be expected to take a leading role in directing interns and organizing third-party vendors within months of joining the Driveline team.

This isn’t your average software developer position where you’d be siloed in the front office and seen but not heard – you’ll be on the lines of battle, integrating APIs at a standing desk, standing up servers, figuring out why the network is configured incorrectly, and documenting all the processes you’re in charge of. Bonus points for those who can throw batting practice and have fungo skills.

Responsibilities:

• Integration engineering and software development to fold in various APIs across a wide variety of sports data sources to improve player development, performance evaluation, scouting projects, and other initiatives.
• Develop and maintain small-scale RDBMS deployments on VPSes and bare metal alike.
• Assist with Information Technology requests across the 35 person Driveline Baseball team.
• Regular communication with the R&D team, executives, management, college/minor/major league baseball players, MLB/NBA/NFL front offices, and vendors who support the organization.
• Designing tools to lighten the workload of everyone in the organization; working closely with Driveline’s quantitative analysis and project management teams.
• Data mining/reverse engineering private and public data for additional analysis.
• Taking the lead on data architecture and maintenance.
• Taking initiative to expand these fields as you see fit – if it will improve the company, we’ll make the resources available to you.

Qualifications:

• Formal education: None required. High school dropouts to advanced degree holders will be seen as equals, which reflects the company’s structure as well.
• Intermediate to advanced level computer programming and/or software development experience. Experience with R, Python, and PHP strongly preferred.
• Database management and architecture skills. You won’t be required to manage billions of rows and have deep knowledge of sharding, but basic/intermediate devops will be your domain in this role.
• Some understanding of statistical modeling, quantitative analysis, and data science methods.
• Excellent “feel.” That mix of empathy, common sense and likability that makes people trust you.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in modeling sports science tasks, like workload tracking, fatigue measurement, or vision training.
• A GitHub open source portfolio, complete with code and documentation of projects – failed and successful.
• Previous experience working in professional or collegiate sports in any capacity.
• Previous experience as an athlete in any collegiate or professional sport.
• Current self-built management of a Statcast/PITCHfx database, sole or shared with others.
• Data visualization skills.
• Web development skills.
• Management skills – this (especially) includes any retail or food operation management.
• Technical writing skills.
• Highly engaged and accomplished gaming skills. High accomplishments in Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Magic: The Gathering, counting blackjack, chess, online/real life poker, or other games.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this Google form.

Position: Floor Trainer

Location: Kent, WA

Wage: DOE; Full Time, Hourly

Benefits: Healthcare, 10 days PTO

Description: Driveline’s High Performance team improves strength and power development, baseball skills, and movement quality for Driveline athletes. They are learning machines who can apply strength programming to solve skill problems and engage deeply with athletes.

In-gym and remotely, Driveline gets great results training athletes. Strength, skill, therapy and education are foundational elements of those results.

The Floor Trainer reports directly to the Head of Athlete Performance to ensure all elements of athlete programming work in sync with one another. They achieve this by working collaboratively with other trainers and coaches and working daily with Driveline athletes.

Driveline is seeking talented coaches from a variety of backgrounds: strength, pitching, hitting, or manual therapy.

You are highly engaged every day to help athletes achieve their goals.

You can apply strength-based solutions to solve skill issues and vice-a-versa.

You are eager to learn.

You are able to immediately connect with and assess athletes will drive their results and their ability to apply it when they leave our gym.

Primary Job Requirements:

• Facilitating a great gym environment.
• Monitoring athlete workouts and engaging athletes to assess.
• Writing workout plans for athletes who will be executing them with and without your supervision.
• Working with the Driveline research team to continuously improve their training outcomes.
• Create weekly educational talks for training athletes.
• Experience using or teaching Driveline’s programming.
• Administrative duties: scheduling athletes, tracking hours, planning gym time.
• Computer literate and proficient with Microsoft Office or Google Docs.

Physical Requirements:
Candidates applying for this position should be able to lift up to 100 pounds unassisted repeatedly throughout the workday. Also, the physical requirements of this job require frequent walking around, demonstrating and assisting with exercise, throwing and hitting movements; bending, throwing, stretching, lifting, pushing, pulling and squatting are movements performed daily.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Excellent leadership and verbal communication skills.
• One season of coaching experience for a collegiate or professional baseball team (either baseball or strength and conditioning).
• Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist or equivalent.
• Excellent “feel.” That mix of empathy, common sense and likability that makes people trust you.
• A history of independent learning.
• Creative solutions to unique training limitations.

To Apply:
To apply, please complete this Google form.

Driveline is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, creed, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other status protected under local, state, or federal laws. For employees and applicants for employment who have disabilities, Driveline provides reasonable accommodation.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by Driveline.

Last week, as part of a three-team trade, the Indians sent Edwin Encarnacion to the Mariners, and the Mariners sent Carlos Santana to the Indians. Now, that part of the trade was at least partially motivated by money, but both Encarnacion and Santana remain players who could and should have roles on competitive ballclubs. Encarnacion is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 115 wRC+. Santana is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 109 wRC+. They were above-average hitters, if also diminished from their peaks.

On Tuesday, the Cubs signed veteran utility guy Daniel Descalso for two years and $5 million. Descalso is a versatile sort in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 111 wRC+. And as a matter of fact, it should be even higher, since Descalso played for the Diamondbacks, and our park factors haven’t yet accounted for their newly-installed humidor that turned Chase Field into a more neutral hitting environment. You’re probably not used to having to think about Daniel Descalso, but he’s quietly breathed new life into his career.

Read the rest of this entry »

At last week’s Winter Meetings, we redesigned our search bar functionality, and we are launching it today. The search bar location and the main function haven’t changed. The search bar is in the same place, and by default has the most-viewed players. It allows you to search players and blog articles. We did a pretty significant under-the-hood update that returns more relevant results, and while we were at it, we made some interface updates.

If you are interested in the details:

• Players results are weighted by a combination of name match and the number of recent views.
• Active players are in bold. The partial match of a search term is also underlined the player’s name.
• Articles can be searched in a separate window. They are weighted by term matching, number of views, and recency.
• For now, we’ve only included main page articles, not articles from all of our the blogs. The other blogs will be added in the future.
• We included Team Pages in the results!
• The search is also available as a full page: fangraphs.com/tools/search

If you have ever wanted your writing to appear on the pages of FanGraphs, do we have good news for you!

After a brief hiatus, we are relaunching the Community Research page, a blog that features articles from our readers. This means you, your friends, your grandma, basically anyone with a (free) FanGraphs account can submit some baseball words to be run here on the site.

There are a few rules, of course. There are always rules:

• Every article is subject to approval. While submitted works represent a range of topics and exhibit varying degrees of polish, they do need to be appropriate, and meet a baseline of readability and relevance.
• Your submission must be your original work. Please only send us pieces that you have written.
• That said, your article does not necessarily have to be exclusive to FanGraphs. Have a piece from your own blog that you think would fit well here? Send it on over for approval. Just let us know where else it has appeared.
• You may submit a maximum of one article per week. We’d love to run every worthy article we receive, but realistically, we can’t. We appreciate your understanding.

That’s about it. If you have submitted pieces in recent months while the blog was on hiatus that did not run, and you still feel they are relevant, feel free to submit them again. We are starting with a fresh slate of submissions going forward.

If you don’t have a FanGraphs account (seriously, it’s free), you can register here.

Once you have an account, you can submit a post here.

We’re looking forward to sharing your research.

Please note, this posting contains two internship positions.

Intern with the technology, internet, interactive and mobile division of Major League Baseball. In 2015, MLB introduced Statcast, a revolutionary technology that tracks all movements on the field. Statcast automatically tracks every hit ball’s exit speed and distance, every fielder’s range, speed, and arm strength, and every base runner’s movement.

MLBAM is looking for summer interns to join in the continued development and evolution of Statcast. With a wealth of ground-breaking new data and metrics, they are looking for people who can analyze, validate and provide meaningful context around it. This is an excellent opportunity for anyone who has an interest in baseball statistics, metrics, and data.

Position: 2019 Summer Internship – Statcast Data Analytics

This position is located in New York, NY and is a paid internship.

Required Skills and Experience:

• At a minimum current college sophomore entering junior year in the fall of 2019 or Current Grad or MBA student.
• Baseball fan Strongly Preferred.
• Proficiency in SQL, R, or Python.
• Some familiarity with baseball tracking systems, especially Pitch F/X and Statcast.
• Ability/desire to learn new skills and technologies quickly.
• A self-starter that’s highly accountable and will take ownership of delivering your work.
• Critical thinking skills and the ability to apply analytical insights to improve data.
• Self-learner, independent, and have outstanding problem-solving skills.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

To Apply:
To apply, please visit this site and complete the LinkedIn application.

Position: 2019 Summer Internship – Data Science Internship, Baseball Data

This position is located in New York, NY and is a paid internship.

Basic Qualification:

• Undergraduates and Masters students studying Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or other relevant STEM degree.
• A self-starter that’s highly accountable and will take ownership of delivering your work.
• Ability/Desire to learn new skills and technologies quickly.
• Experience with R, Python or SQL.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience programmatically structuring and cleaning data, and not just analyzing highly cleaned data sets.
• A strong foundation in probability, statistics, and algorithm development.
• Understanding of statistical and predictive modeling techniques such as generalized linear modeling, decision trees, association rules, clustering, regression, machine learning, probability networks, and neural networks.
• Experience with numpy, pandas, and scikit Python libraries.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability and willingness to spend nights and weekends watching baseball while monitoring Statcast data.

To Apply:
To apply, please visit this site and complete the LinkedIn application.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by MLBAM.

Position: TrackMan Data Operations Intern

Location: Stamford, CT

Join TrackMan Baseball’s Data Operations team as a paid intern for the 2019 baseball season. You will have a vital role in a growing, fast-moving, entrepreneurial company that is breaking new ground in sports. In this position, you will primarily be responsible for reviewing and verifying TrackMan data from a significant number of major and minor league baseball, NCAA, and international stadiums during the 2019 baseball season. This internship will give you the opportunity to progress with the company.

The internship starts in early February and finishes at the conclusion of the major league baseball season. Interns are expected to work 8 hours a day and 5 days a week, and weekend availability is required. An hourly rate of $12.50 will be offered.

About TrackMan Inc.
TrackMan Inc. is a US-based subsidiary of TrackMan A/S and is based in Stamford, CT, about 30 miles north of New York City. TrackMan A/S has developed a range of products for the golf market and is considered the gold standard in measurement of ball flight and swing path. TrackMan’s golf products are used by top touring professionals, teaching pros, broadcasters and governing bodies.

TrackMan, Inc. introduced 3D Doppler radar technology to the baseball industry and the technology is now used by all major league baseball organizations and is a component of MLB’s StatCast system. TrackMan, Inc. is revolutionizing baseball data and has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, FanGraphs, and ESPN.

Requirements:

• Thorough knowledge of baseball.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to work well with others.

Desired Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor or Master’s degree in Statistics, Mathematics or a related field.
• Strong knowledge of databases, SQL, and R statistical software.
• Python or other scripting language experience.

This is a great opportunity for anyone eager to break into the baseball community and acquire valuable experience with data available exclusively to professional baseball franchises. Based on your performance and openings within the company, you will also have the opportunity to continue working with TrackMan after the internship concludes. During the internship you will work with the entire TrackMan staff and gain further knowledge of how the company operates. Full training will be provided.

To Apply:
To apply, send a resume and cover letter to tol@trackman.com and copy cmc@trackman.com. No phone calls please.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by TrackMan.

A year ago, Lance Lynn was coming off a 2017 during which he made 33 starts, pitched 186.1 innings, and put up a 3.43 ERA. He ended up taking a one-year, $12 million contract with the Twins. Coming into this winter, Lynn just finished making 29 starts, with 156.2 innings en route to a 4.77 ERA. In response, the Texas Rangers have agreed to a three year, $30 million deal with the right hander. TR Sullivan reported the sides were close and Mark Feinsand came through with the contract terms.

Lynn’s change in fortune may come as something of a surprise, but there were a number of factors working in his favor this winter that moved him toward a bigger deal. First, he was stuck with a qualifying offer last offseason, which still seems to limit potential suitors even as the penalty for teams signing has been reduced. Second, the free agent market a season ago, particularly for pitchers, was incredibly cold, with nearly all of the big pitchers not signing until February or later. This year, Patrick Corbin got the big money rolling; Nate Eovaldi soon followed. Charlie Morton also came off the board today, and there are rumors that JA Happ and the Yankees are close. There was decent depth in the starting market, but teams appear to be scooping up the decent pitchers early, making more of a market for Lynn.

The final factor in Lynn’s favor was his performance in 2018, which was better than the season before. As Dan Szymborksi noted in our assessment of the Top 50 Free Agents,

Unsurprisingly, Lance Lynn’s 4.77 ERA this past season more closely matched 2017’s 4.82 FIP than the 3.43 ERA he recorded that same year, amassed in large part due to the .244 BABIP that he, luck, and the Cardinal defense conspired to produce in 2017. But in one of those poetic twists of fate, his peripherals were actually considerably better in 2018, Lynn’s strikeout rate cresting the batter-per-inning mark for the first time in years and matched by a similar bump in velocity. I think that if a team lands him for Kiley’s two-year, $18 million estimate, they’ll actually be quite happy with the results.

The crowd was a little more generous than McDaniel, predicting a $27 million guarantee that still undershot Lynn’s deal. It’s possible Lynn’s lack of a spring training contributed to his slow start; after the first month of the season, he put up a very good 3.34 FIP and a solid 4.13 ERA. He was even better with the Yankees after the deadline trade, striking out 26% of batters while walking only 6%. With the exception of the 2016 season, which he missed due to Tommy John surgery, and his first season back in 2017, Lynn has been a consistent 3-plus win player and an innings eater. His offerings aren’t complicated, throwing a wide range of fastballs, but he’s been successful with that for most of his career.

Lynn is a fly ball pitcher, which could cause him some trouble with the Rangers, but if he’s anywhere close to the player he was with the Cardinals, $30 million over three seasons is going to be a bargain. If Lynn had signed a four-year deal for $42 million a year ago, that might have been a little under expectations, but fairly reasonable given the year he had. It took him two offseasons to get that guarantee, but taking a one-year deal last winter rather than a slightly higher guarantee for two seasons looks to have worked out for the righty. For a rebuilding Rangers team, Lynn might be a workhorse who lasts long enough to see their next window of contention, or he might be a trade chip over the next few years if he pitches like he did down the stretch last season.

From 2009 through 2014, Troy Tulowitzki’s 27.7 WAR ranked 12th among position players. The players ranked around Tulowitzki at that time present a decent snapshot of his standing today. At 10 is Dustin Pedroia, who didn’t play in 2018. Behind Pedroia is Matt Holliday, who was semi-retired for much of last season. Behind Tulo is Chase Utley, who just retired, and behind him is Albert Pujols, who has been a replacement level player since 2015. Given that company, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise that Troy Tulowitzki was granted his release by the Toronto Blue Jays today.

What is somewhat surprising is that Tulowitzki was released with the Blue Jays owing the former star shortstop $38 million over the next two years, including a buyout on an option for 2021. Tulowitzki didn’t play at all last season, and as Jay Jaffe noted in August, the track record of shortstops who miss entire seasons in their 30s is not good. He also noted just how good Tulowitzki was in his 20s.

The bad news is that the likelihood of ever seeing 2009-14 Tulowitzki again appears remote, which is a shame, because that guy looked as though he had a shot at Cooperstown. Through his age-29 season, he had accumulated 37.8 bWAR, 16th all-time and ahead of 12 of the 21 enshrined shortstops. He may well wind up this generation’s Nomar Garciaparra. The Boston icon had complied 41.2 bWAR through age 29 (the 2003 season), close to the seven-year peak standard for Hall of Fame shortstops (42.9); in fact, Garciaparra’s actual peak score of 43.0 edges past it. But because his career ended after his age-35 season, he finished with 1,771 hits, 220 homers and 44.2 WAR, numbers too low for Hall consideration. Tulowitzki (1,389 hits and 224 homers) isn’t even to Nomah’s level yet.

Jaffe held out some hope for a rebound, but that rebound won’t happen with the Blue Jays. Tulowitzki came to Toronto in 2015 in exchange for Jose Reyes and a few pitching prospects as the Blue Jays roared to the playoffs. After a solid 2016 season, Tulowitzki only played for half of 2017 and didn’t play well when he did. His heel trouble caused him to miss all of 2018. He is reportedly in better health now and will try to latch on with some team for the major league minimum next year; Susan Slusser has reported that the A’s are a possible destination.

As for Toronto, the team viewed the money as a sunk cost and decided that some as yet unknown player had more potential as to contribute on the field than Tulowitzki did. Lourdes Gurriel Jr. will get an opportunity to play shortstop if the Blue Jays make no other additions. The club’s 40-man roster now stands at 38 players. Toronto is at least listening to offers for Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez. It could be that the team is looking to add multiple players in a trade who would need to be on the 40-man. It’s also possible the team is about to sign a free agent or needs some extra roster space for the Rule 5 draft later this week. Tulowitzki will try to get an opportunity to play for another team while the Blue Jays try to make better use of his roster spot.

Apart from retaining both Clayton Kershaw, who signed a a two-year extension, and Hyun-Jin Ryu, who accepted a qualifying offer, the two-time defending NL champion Dodgers have had a quiet offseason thus far. They have several needs to fill, with catcher, second base, and the bullpen being the most glaring, and they’re particularly deep both in starting pitching options and in the outfield.

On that note, ESPN’s Buster Olney reported thusly from Las Vegas this morning:

Meanwhile, FanCred’s Jon Heyman added outfielders Alex Verdugo and Chris Taylor to the mix:

Plus, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal mentioned the Dodgers and Reds discussing Yasiel Puig, that after Cincinnati recently plucked his mentor, hitting coach Turner Ward, away from Los Angeles. Rosenthal later added the name of Homer Bailey to the mix as a potential salary dump in a situation that would figure to involve prospects and a more complicated swap:

And finally, DK Sports’ John Perrotto, who covers the Pirates, noted this:

To varying degrees, all of this makes some sense given the tantalizing rumors that have connected the Dodgers to high-profile players such as Indians starter Corey Kluber, Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto, and free agent outfielder Bryce Harper. Let’s break out the tools and build a table:

The WAR projections on our Depth Charts page come with some caveats. The oft-injured Hill’s projection is based upon 159 innings, even though he has averaged 134 in his two full seasons with the Dodgers, while Wood’s is based upon just 58 innings in a swingman role, including 26 appearances but just six starts; he’s averaged 152 innings over the past two seasons. Similarly, Stripling is projected for just 68 innings in six starts and 30 relief appearances, while the projection for Verdugo (the Dodgers’ No. 3 prospect and the game’s No. 49 overall according to the fancy board put together by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel) is based upon just 43 plate appearances at the major league level. Prorating Wood to 150 innings yields 1.6 WAR, doing so for Stripling yields 1.8 WAR, and doing so to 300 PA for Verdugo yields 0.5 WAR.

That’s a whole lot of talent and control on the table, and it doesn’t even include their pair of catching prospects, Keibert Ruiz and Will Smith, one of whom could be moved as well. So the Dodgers have a veritable plethora of options as they try to navigate under the $206 million Competitive Balance Tax threshold if they so choose (Cot’s Contracts pegs them at $190 million and counting). One can envision, for example, the inclusion of Kemp in a trade involving Pederson (or, though it’s much less likely, Bellinger, as they’d probably have to be bowled over by an offer to deal the former NL Rookie of the Year), with the Dodgers picking up some portion of his remaining salary. The Indians and Dodgers are known to have discussed Puig in the past, and according to MLB.com’s Jon Morosi, have shown interest in Verdugo as well. In addition to his skill as a player, Puig could also appeal to the Marlins given Miami’s large Cuban population and the team’s recent rebranding to emphasize the city’s heritage; after all, it’s not like [squints at roster] Peter O’Brien is going to put butts in seats.

Meanwhile, the likes of free agents such as second baseman DJ LeMahieu and reliever David Robertson have been connected to the Dodgers as well, so it seems like it is only a matter of time before they commit to a path and light up the transaction wires.