Manny Margot had a breakout within a breakout last year. After accounting for his offensive and defensive contributions, the Padres’ rookie center fielder was worth roughly two wins in slightly less than a full season’s worth of plate appearances. Even for a player who was highly touted as a prospect, producing league-average work at 22 years old represents, in itself, a kind of breakout.

Hidden within that strong end-of-year line was a drastic change in the second half, though. Margot started hitting the ball in the air. That’s a change that has powered many other breakouts. But before we book the skinny center fielder for all of the homers next year, we have to ask: what’s happened with launch-angle surgers in the past?

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Earlier this offseason, the Braves and Dodgers conducted a trade that is likely to have little bearing on the 2018 season in terms of on-field results. Los Angeles sent Charlie Culberson, Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, and Brandon McCarthy to Atlanta; Atlanta sent Matt Kemp the other way. There was a little money involved, too.

It wasn’t so much the precise identities of the players that were relevant to the deal, however, but rather the manner in which it allowed the clubs to curate their payrolls over the next couple years. The trade permitted the Braves to concentrate more of the salary in just the 2018 season while allowing the Dodgers to spread the money out over the next two years, thus avoiding the luxury tax. For taking on the brunt of the payments now, the Braves received whatever production McCarthy will provide this season and whatever production Culberson will provide over the next few. More importantly, however, they relieved themselves of a large financial obligation in 2019.

It’s hard not to look at that trade and see that the Braves are positioning themselves for a contending run starting in 2019. Perhaps that’s the case. There’s a pretty good argument, however, that they should consider accelerating their timeline. It’s possible, with the right moves, that Atlanta could assemble a winning team a year earlier than expected.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about rebuilding teams absorbing bad contracts, bad teams signing good players, an MLB amnesty clause, fans switching team allegiances, pitchers wearing jackets on the bases, how to maximize playing time with a limited number of hits, baseball on an Olympian schedule, how catchers could transition to a world with robot umps, and the effect of facing two pitchers simultaneously, plus a trio of Stat Blasts on the most valuable baseball names, “Mickey Mantle’s Legs,” and extreme batted-ball changes.

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I suppose what I should say is that the Gerrit Cole trade has two perception problems. One, it’s clearly just a bad look for Pittsburgh. It’s generally a bad look when a major-league team has to trade away an established major-league talent, and with Cole and then Andrew McCutchen going out the door, it’s a twin reminder of how the Pirates failed to build on a tremendous run of success. I don’t know how much more the Pirates reasonably could’ve done, but there’s forever that lingering question regarding ownership’s commitment to winning. This is nothing new. It’s a reopening of wounds that never healed.

There’s also, though, another aspect. The Pirates have been heavily criticized for the return package they got for Cole from the Astros. I have no interest in trying to figure out whether the Pirates got the best package possible. I don’t know what else was truly on the table. Maybe more would’ve been available in July; maybe Cole’s stock would’ve dropped. All we know is what the Pirates got. My read of the consensus is that the Pirates didn’t get enough. But my read is also that the Astros have a little something to do with that. Specifically because the Astros are unusually good and deep.

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A little over a year ago, Brian Duensing signed a one-year contract with the Cubs worth $2 million. That’s hardly the kind of commitment that would break the Cubs’ bank, but it was still somewhat surprising that Duensing got such a guarantee, given that he was aging, and hadn’t been very good. He had thrown just 13.1 big-league innings in 2016, and that season he injured his elbow while moving a chair. It wouldn’t have been hard to see Duensing end up as a spring-training NRI. The Cubs, though, took a chance.

It worked out! Duensing had a good year. Appeared in 68 games. Did well. And now Duensing has re-signed, for two years and…$7 million. Compared to the previous contract, it’s more than double the commitment, I know, but it’s still modest, given what Duensing just did, and given what other free-agent relievers have signed for. This has been a slow-moving market, and there’s a strengthening conversation about how players aren’t getting their collective due. You might be tempted to point to Duensing’s deal as evidence.

Yet it doesn’t quite work. Duensing’s deal, it turns out, is rather evidence of something else.

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If you don’t follow college football, you may not be familiar with Baker Mayfield. He is the quarterback for the University of Oklahoma, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, and a player who is expected to be selected in the first round of April’s NFL draft. What is his relevance to the pages of FanGraphs? Well, what is interesting to me about Mayfield is that he might not hire an agent to represent him.

Writes Mike Florio of NBCSports:

The argument against hiring an agent is simple: Thanks to the rookie wage scale, contracts for incoming players basically negotiate themselves. (Also, agent fees are no longer tax-deductible.)

Earlier today, Nathaniel Grow addressed the difficult situation in which the players union has found itself vis-à-vis owners. “The MLBPA Has No Leverage,” is how Grow titled that post. With baseball having introduced limits on amateur spending and having added recommended bonus for draft bonuses, it’s possible that more high-profile baseball prospects will question whether or not an agent is necessary when entering professional baseball. Several recent first-rounders like Hunter Harvey and Kyle Parker opted to negotiate for themselves and to varying degrees of success.

While negotiating pro contracts for amateur baseball prospects is more complicated than in, say, football as teams try to gauge signability and maximize their bonus pools and agents filter information for prospects, etc., what happens when negotiating major-league contracts becomes less and less about art and more and more about science? How will player representatives add value then?

Is it possible, to borrow Grow’s language, that agents have no leverage, either?

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Boston Red Sox. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
Perhaps more strongly than any club examined to date in this series, the 2018 iteration of the Boston Red Sox resembles its immediate predecessor. For the most part, that’s to the club’s benefit. Last year’s team was projected to receive three or more wins from five different positions, for a total of roughly 19 WAR. This year’s team is also projected to receive three or more wins from five different positions, for a total of roughly 18 WAR. Considering that an average collection of hitters produces 18 wins total in a given season, one is forced to conclude that Boston’s core is strong.

The addition of third baseman Rafael Devers (611 PA, 2.6 zWAR) is quite helpful in this regard. Third base has represented a bit of a black hole in recent years for Boston. Will Middlebrooks (2013-14), Pablo Sandoval (2015, -17), and Travis Shaw (2016) have been the Opening Day starters at third for the Red Sox over that last five years. None have crossed the two-win threshold during that span.

The roster’s weaknesses, meanwhile, remain at the weaker end of the defensive spectrum. Neither first baseman Mitch Moreland (503, 0.9) nor Hanley Ramirez (524, 1.1) profile as anything much better than a platoon type.

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The story of the offseason thus far has been the lack of activity on the free-agent market. As has been thoroughly covered elsewhere, this offseason is the slowest in recent memory, with seven of FanGraphs’ top-10 free agents still unsigned halfway through January.

Not only has this lack of activity generated considerable speculation regarding the cause of the offseason’s glacial pace (with theories ranging from a subpar group of free agents and a lack of competitive races to outright collusion), but it has also triggered talk about what the Major League Baseball Players Association should do in response.

Indeed, as I noted back in 2015, major-league players have seen their share of MLB’s overall league revenue plummet in recent years, with player payroll as a share of league revenues falling from a high of 56% in 2002 to just 38% in 2015. So while this offseason’s lack of activity may be unprecedented, in some respects it is simply the culmination of a trend dating back 15 years.

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Major League Baseball’s salary-arbitration process is a pretty ridiculous exercise. A player and team each submit a figure for how much that player should be paid the following season. At some point not long after that, each party argues in defense of their figure, employing an array of statistics that front offices don’t even use for the purposes of evaluation.

If a team’s representatives successfully make their case, then a panel of arbitrators chooses the number they’ve submitted. If the team fails to sufficiently badmouth their own player, then the panel of arbitrators chooses the player’s chosen figure. Even in the best-case scenario — i.e. when the player and team agree to terms before arbitration — they still arrive at that agreement based upon what would would transpire at a hypothetical arbitration hearing. There has to be a better way.

Travis Sawchik recently proposed the introduction of restricted free agency to baseball, an approach that would likely eliminate arbitration, allowing teams to match offers made by other franchises. Like Travis, I would like to see arbitration abolished. Also like Travis, I am concerned about the middle class of players who seem to be shorted in the current system.

I agree that something needs to be done and that restricted free agency represents a better approach than the one currently in place. That said, I do think there might be a better solution, one that doesn’t entirely dismantle the framework of the present system and yet allows players to receive compensation proportional to their talents.

I think the adoption of a new arbitration-type system might benefit from greater use of a mechanism that was first introduced during the 2012-13 offseason — namely, the qualifying offer.

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