Position: Oakland Athletics Junior Software Developer

Location: Oakland
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Position: Miami Marlins Baseball Operations Analyst

Location: Miami
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The Nationals just used Adam Lind as a bat-first, left-handed first baseman and bench bat. Lind turned in a 127 wRC+ against righties. His career wRC+, overall, is 111. Against righties, it’s 126, and against lefties, it’s 56. The Nationals turned down Lind’s $5-million option for 2018, making him a free agent. There was a $0.5-million buyout, meaning it was basically a $4.5-million decision.

The Nationals have now signed Matt Adams as a bat-first, left-handed first baseman and bench bat. It’s a $4-million deal, with an additional $0.5 million in incentives. In other words, it could be a $4.5-million decision. Adams just turned in a 126 wRC+ against righties. His career wRC+, overall, is 111. Against righties, it’s 123, and against lefties, it’s 58. Matt Adams is…this is the same profile. Basically the same profile for basically the same money. The Nationals dropped Adam Lind to pick up another Adam Lind. The one upside about Adams is that he’s five years Lind’s junior. I assume that’s what made the difference, even though Lind was already the familiar one. Smart business. Tough business.

There’s not much that needs to be said about a part-time player. It’s certainly funny that Adams has the same career wRC+ as Eric Hosmer, given their divergent contract expectations, but Hosmer has been better lately, and Adams needs to be strictly platooned. Hosmer, as you could imagine, projects to be better moving forward. Still, I want to highlight one aspect of the comparison. Hosmer and Adams are both first basemen. How about their defense?

Hosmer has a very good defensive reputation. He’s won four Gold Gloves, and he has a 57 overall rating in the historical Fan Scouting Reports. Since 2011, 39 different players have played at least 2,500 innings at first base. Hosmer’s rating is tied for fifth-best, with Anthony Rizzo and Mark Teixeira.

Adams does not have a very good defensive reputation. He was briefly tried in the outfield, but the less said about that, the better. He’s never won a Gold Glove, and he has a 37 overall rating in the historical Fan Scouting Reports. That rating is tied for 27th-best, or 12th-worst. The fans think that Adams has been below average. He definitely lacks Hosmer’s general athleticism.

And yet! If you sort by DRS over a common denominator, Adams ranks eighth, and Hosmer ranks 30th. If you sort by UZR over a common denominator, Adams ranks 10th, and Hosmer ranks 33rd. If you blend the two, then Adams ranks 10th, and Hosmer ranks 32nd. According to the advanced defensive numbers, there’s a significant difference between Matt Adams and Eric Hosmer, in Adams’ favor. He rates as the better defensive first baseman. Against what I assume would be all odds.

I’m not saying that anything is gospel. There are legitimate complaints about the advanced defensive metrics these days, in particular among infielders. We can’t just outright dismiss the eye test, and we can’t dismiss that the baseball industry holds Hosmer’s first-base defense in such high regard. But still, after all this time, there’s an explanation that’s missing. The best numbers we have say that Adams is considerably better than Hosmer is. The numbers are far from perfect, yet they also can’t be trashed. Perception is a hell of a thing.

Anyway, Adams will be a backup, behind Ryan Zimmerman. He will probably be fine.

The Giants have acquired Evan Longoria from the Rays in exchange for major leaguer Denard Span, plus prospects Christian Arroyo, Matt Krook, and Stephen Woods.

Below are the KATOH projections for the prospects received by Tampa Bay. WAR figures account for each player’s first six major-league seasons. KATOH denotes the stats-only version of the projection system, while KATOH+ denotes the methodology that includes a player’s prospect rankings. In total, my KATOH system projects these prospects for a combined 2.4 WAR (2.2 by KATOH+) over their first six years in the majors.

*****

Christian Arroyo, IF (Profile)
KATOH: 1.5 WAR
KATOH+: 1.8 WAR

Arroyo missed a large chunk of 2017 due to multiple hand injuries and hit just .192/.244/.304 in 34 games with the Giants. Even without accounting for his small-sample big-league struggles, though, Arroyo’s track record doesn’t portend particularly great things. He hit a punchless .274/.316/.373 at Double-A in 2016 and his small-sample success at Triple-A last year was largely aided by his .427 BABIP. Arroyo’s youth and contact skills make him interesting, but he has very little power or speed and has already more or less moved off of shortstop.

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Position: Kansas City Royals Baseball Operations Senior Analyst, Quantitative Analysis

Location: Kansas City
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The Giants had a hole at third base. The Rays are cutting payroll and looking to the future, again. So today, they struck a deal.

Source: Giants get Evan Longoria for Christian Arroyo, Denard Span, Matt Krook and Stephen Woods.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 20, 2017

Longoria has $86 million left over the remaining five years of his contract, so Span’s inclusion is a salary offset in order to help the team stay under the CBT threshold. The Rays are also sending an undisclosed amount of cash in the deal, so we’re exactly sure how much of that $86 million the Giants are picking up.

Longoria is still a nice player, projected for +3 WAR in 2018, but I do wonder if the Giants should have just signed Todd Frazier instead. For comparison, here are their numbers over the last three years.

Both the crowd and I thought Frazier would sign for 3/$42M, or roughly half of what Longoria is still owed. Signing Frazier wouldn’t have cleared Span’s money off the books, of course, but they probably could have gotten a comparable player for a less significant financial commitment without surrendering with any real talent.

Of course, neither of the pitchers in this deal look like much, and Christian Arroyo has always struck me as wildly overrated, so I don’t think the Giants gave up tons of long-term value here. But given that they aren’t that close to contention, I’m not sure Longoria moves the needle enough to justify taking on this kind of money. Even with Longoria, the Giants still aren’t very good, and now they have even less money to spend to fix their dreadful outfield.

How do you respond when your fiercest rival picks up Giancarlo Stanton? Well, I don’t care how you respond. Here’s how the Red Sox have responded.

Red Sox re-signed Mitch Moreland to a two-year deal.

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) December 18, 2017

Mitch Moreland, two years, $13 million. If he hits all his incentives, it’ll be $14 million instead. This isn’t something that would take the Red Sox out of the running for every free agent, but this does seem to take the Sox out of the running for Eric Hosmer. We’ll get to that.

I think there are two ways to look at this. If you want to be optimistic, you might note that Moreland injured a toe in the middle of June, and then that toe injury seems to have cascaded into a knee injury. Moreland’s 2017 splits are of some significance:

Before the injuries, Moreland was really quite good! The Red Sox might figure that Moreland is healthy again, so they might figure they’ll get more of that early-season edition moving forward. At 32, Moreland isn’t young, but he’s not so old you’d expect him to fall flat on his face. There’s still some power in there, he improved his walk rate, and he’s long been a good defender at first base. It’s possible to look at this and conclude the Red Sox have a potential bargain on their hands.

Yet Moreland is coming off a 0.9 WAR season. This is where you go if you want to be pessimistic. Moreland has been in the majors for eight seasons, and only once has he been worth at least one win above replacement. His career WAR is 5.1, over 3,338 plate appearances. That’s 0.9 WAR per 600. Based on the Steamer projections, on a per-600-PA basis, Moreland ranks as the 42nd-best first baseman. There are 30 major-league baseball teams. You can see the upside in how Moreland got started this past year, but he doesn’t have a very encouraging record. This would appear to be an investment in veteran mediocrity.

The Red Sox could still conceivably try to go after J.D. Martinez. They’d have to move an outfielder, or move on from Hanley Ramirez. Neither is too high a hurdle. But the Hosmer angle is also important, because it doesn’t seem like Hosmer has a very large market at all. Maybe I’m just misreading things, or maybe it’s a consequence of Scott Boras’ sky-high price tag. In theory, if it came down, more teams could get involved. But by far the hottest suitor has been San Diego, and the competition they face might be…limited…to…Kansas City. Boston had been included in there, as a big-budget team with a positional need, but now they’re out. At this point I’d be pretty surprised if Hosmer didn’t end up with the Padres. That’s a weird sentence.

Anyhow, Hosmer is for another day. This day is for the Red Sox re-signing Mitch Moreland. It’s not a move that doesn’t have upside. That’s about as much as I think I can sell it.

Hello there. If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you might remember me. Back in 2014 and 2015, I did prospect stuff here. Then, at the end of 2015, I had to say farewell, having been hired to work in the Atlanta Braves front office. After spending a couple of years back inside baseball, both in the office and as a cross-checker, I’m pleased to announce that I’m rejoining the FanGraphs staff, effective today.

It’s a long story how this all worked out, but suffice to say that this was the right time for this move and I’m very happy how everything turned out. I enjoyed my time with the Braves, but am excited to be able to contribute here and be part of this community again.

However, I won’t be coming back to be the Lead Prospect Analyst as I was before.

Eric Longenhagen has capably taken that job and made it his own. Eric deserves all kinds of credit for his work, and I’m thrilled that I’ll get to work with him here. I will definitely be contributing prospect content in collaboration with Eric — and yes, I’ll be helping with the organizational prospect lists — along with some other ambitious plans that are coming together, including a project I teased over two years ago. I may also show up in pieces that aren’t specifically prospect related, but are interesting player evaluation (or valuation) situations.

You’ll be hearing a lot from me in the coming weeks as I jump back into the writing world. I’m excited to be here again, and look forward to talking baseball with all of you.

Lastly, I wanted to express some gratitude. Thanks to David Appelman and Dave Cameron for taking another chance on me here at FanGraphs, and thanks to the Braves for giving me a memorable couple years with their organization.

The Angels have been hunting around for a third baseman. Today, they found one by signing a shortstop.

Source: Cozart deal with #Angels is for three years, $38M. LAA just announced signing.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 15, 2017

Zack Cozart’s timing of his breakout was a bit unfortunate, as most contenders are already set at SS, so he found his home with a winning team by agreeing to play next to one of the few guys who can legitimately push Cozart off the position. Andrelton Simmons and Cozart playing side by side is going to be a pretty special left side defense combination.

That said, any time there’s a position switch, we don’t know exactly how the skills are going to translate. While Cozart has been an excellent shortstop and likely will be excellent at third as well, there could be some diminishing returns here, with his range less well utilized at third than it was at second. And I will continue to have some reservations about how much of his offensive breakout should be counted on, given that Cozart had the third-largest gap between his wOBA and his xwOBA in MLB last year.

Given that offense is a bit more expected at third base, Cozart might end up closer to a Chase Headley type than Angels fans are hoping for, though younger Chase Headley was still a perfectly solid player, and 3/$38M for that kind of production is just fine.

And realistically, if Kinsler gets hurt, this gives them some 2B depth, as Cozart should shift to the other middle infield spot, and then they could play Luis Valbuena at 3B again. So this does give them some protection at both middle infield spots while also upgrading 3B. It’s a nice little signing at this price, and should help set the Angels up as legitimate Wild Card contenders. They just shouldn’t expect to slug .550 ever again.

Well, this is unexpected.

Source confirms: Carlos Santana in agreement with #Phillies, three years, $60M. First reported: @JonHeyman.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 15, 2017

I’ve argued all winter that Santana was going to do a lot better than the 3/$45M the crowd projected for him, and put him at #1 on my Free Agent Bargains post, as I thought the expectations of what he would sign for were just too low. And obviously the Phillies agreed, pushing up to the same deal the Indians gave Edwin Encarnacion last winter. 3/$60M is a perfectly fair price for what Santana is, and might still actually be a good deal.

But there’s no way around this; the fit in Philly is weird and doesn’t really make sense. Santana is a short-term value, a guy who can help a team win right now, but probably won’t age extremely well. We currently have the Phillies projected for 74 wins. Santana doesn’t push them into playoff position.

And given that they already have Rhys Hoskins at first base and a crowded outfield, it’s not actually clear where Santana is going to play, or if the redistribution of talent to get him in their line-up will be a significant improvement. They could stick Santana at third, I guess, but he was horrible there, and Cleveland pulling the plug on that experiment should be a red flag if that’s the plan.

If it’s not the plan, then Hoskins is probably headed back to the outfield, a position they didn’t think he could play last year, which is why he spent four months in Triple-A destroying minor league pitching. And while he might be better than expected out there, he’s probably not going to be good, and he’d displace either Aaron Altherr or Nick Williams, both of whom look somewhat interesting.

So, yeah, I don’t know. Carlos Santana is good. This price is fine, and maybe even a bargain. Every contender with an opening at first base should have been in on this. The Phillies aren’t a contender and didn’t have a need at first base, so now this is going to force other things to happen, and unless those other things are turning one of their OFs into a super valuable pitcher, I’m not sure this actually makes them much better.

It’s impossible to judge this until we know the plan. But that we don’t know the plan makes this a little bit weird right now.