There has been considerable handwringing this offseason about the way the new Marlins ownership group has gone about dismantling any hopes of a competitive club the near future. The front office inherited a borderline playoff contender — one featuring the reigning NL MVP, as well as multiple young, talented, and cost-controlled players — and made no attempt to build a winner in what should be a wide-open Wild Card race in 2018 as well as a wide-open National League East at the start of the following season.

That the Marlins chose a different path is unfortunate for baseball and unfortunate for long-suffering Marlins fans — not to mention the potential Marlins fans who could have been cultivated with a commitment to winning in the long term.

Now that it’s clear that the Marlins have chosen not to field a competitive team in the near term, it is time to examine their current options with J.T. Realmuto and Christian Yelich and begin to analyze their decisions up to this point. As Dave Cameron noted in the aftermath of the Giancarlo Stanton trade to the Yankees, the Marlins did okay with their market value salary dumps.

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“Scouts vs. stats” is an expression that boils a complex, gray issue into clear black-and-white sides,in a way that’s familiar to those who follow political media. In the reality of front-office decision-making, however, this “debate” has been settled for years and the obvious answer was always “both.”

In fact, the issue has moved past simply using both. Until recently, if one suggested that a club should move further toward one side at the expense of the other, anyone could shoot back with a counter example of recent success from the other end of the spectrum. That’s a bit harder do now: two years removed from the Royals’ latest World Series appearance and three years out from the 2010-2014 Giants run, there isn’t a current standard bearer for the traditional point of view, even if that’s just cyclical and I’m using a somewhat subjective label.

The final four clubs standing in each of 2016 and 2017 — the Astros, Blue Jays, Cubs, Dodgers, Indians, and Yankees — would all rank among the top 10 of any industry poll of the league’s most progressive clubs. If you want to argue that their success is the result of variance, a blip, or mere coincidence, this development isn’t just the product of randomness. There’s an actual explanation. In these last two seasons, we’ve seen a fundamental change in the style of play (a greater emphasis on the air ball, quick hooks on starters, more aggressive bullpen usage, etc.) — particularly in the postseason. A progressive club, by definition, will adapt more quickly to such changes.

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It’s January, and the story of the offseason is that it’s actually lived up to its monicker. Outside of Giancarlo Stanton and Shohei Otani’s respective moves to new teams essentially on the same day, MLB clubs have been in hibernation this winter. And so instead of evaluating trades or free-agent contracts, we’re left instead to ponder what is causing the inaction.

The potential culprits are numerous. If you’re inclined to see owners as evil profiteers, it’s easy to talk yourself into a collusion theory. Or this is the consequence of the Players Association accepting a luxury tax that might be acting as a de facto salary cap. Or maybe it’s just that every team has figured out that prices go down as spring training draws closer, so now everyone is trying the same wait-it-out game plan. Or maybe these particular free agents just aren’t that good. Or maybe it’s that next year’s free agents are too good.

Each of those theories seem to have some validity, and I think there’s probably a bit of most of that going on. But I think there’s also an explanation that makes everyone’s passivity perfectly rational: a lack of sufficient divisional competition to create the sort of pressure that justifies high-risk free-agent signings.

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The Blue Jays traded a couple prospects for a versatile infielder this weekend following a season during which their own infielders had trouble staying on the field. That much about the Yangervis Solarte trade makes sense.

What makes a little less sense? A Toronto team projected to finish almost 10 games worse than the best two teams in their division just improved their 2018 roster at a potential cost down the road. It might be a fine trade in a vacuum, but is it a well-timed one?

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If you read this past Sunday’s notes column, you know that Lars Anderson has taken his left-handed stroke — and his storytelling skills! — to Australia. After beginning his escapades in the Southern Hemisphere with the club-level Henley and Grange Rams, Anderson is now playing for the Sydney Blue Sox in the Australian Baseball League. More so, just as he did last summer as a member of the Kochi Fighting Dogs, he is chronicling his baseball experiences on the other side of the world.

Once again, the multi-talented former big leaguer has agreed to share some of his stories with FanGraphs readers. Following up on last year’s well-received Lars Anderson Discovers Japan series, here is the first installment of Lars Anderson Discovers Australia.

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Lars Anderson: “I took my first steps in the Southern Hemisphere in my trusted black flip-flops. The rest of my wardrobe consisted of a thin, long-sleeved shirt and shorts (overdressed by Cambodian standards, but hey, airplanes can be cold). Being that it was, in fact, summer Down Under, I thought I’d be overdressed again. I was wrong and I was freezing.

“The research I had done prior to landing said Adelaide, my new home city, boasts two seasons: cold and super hot. Although it was technically summer, the heat wave had yet to come. I had shipped all of my warm clothes back to the states before leaving Japan so I was high, cold, and dry. A Radiohead remix.

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The Colorado Rockies are acting like a team with expectations for 2018. Before the start of the offseason, Cot’s Contracts projected a salary of $131 million for the team, an all-time high for the franchise. That was before they added $40 million in average annual value by signing Wade Davis, Chris Iannetta, Jake McGee, and Bryan Shaw. The players seem to expect big things as well, and have used this energy in their pursuit of free agents. McGee, according to Patrick Saunders, helped sell Wade Davis on the Rockies saying, “[T]his was a team that was going to win now.”

Now, many questions remain for the Rockies, and those questions have led some to doubt Colorado’s ability to contend. Can the pitching keep up its pace from last year? Can Charlie Blackmon repeat his MVP-type performance? Is Jonathan Lucroy back? While all three of those uncertainties can be addressed by playing the actual games, there’s another question that might have been answered recently.

#Rockies outfielder Dahl (rib/back) cleared to swing bat https://t.co/YEDOKU62RT via @MLB

— Thomas Harding (@harding_at_mlb) January 4, 2018

David Dahl saw only 82 plate appearances in 2017, all at the minor-league level. After a breakout 2016 rookie campaign in which he slashed .315/.359/.500 over 237 plate appearances while adding average defense in the outfield, Dahl was expected to be a key contributor to the Rockies going into the year. There were thoughts of a .300 hitter with 20-20 potential, enough to get most fanbases excited.

Unfortunately, those fantasies had to be postponed. On March 6th of 2017, the Rockies released a seemingly innocuous announcement that Dahl had suffered a stress reaction in his ribcage and would be reevaluated in two weeks. That injury would persist for basically the entire season.

Reports concerning Dahl’s return to health give the Rockies some hope of improving an outfield that was horrendous outside of the aforementioned Blackmon; however, the combination of Dahl’s profile as a hitter and the consequences of missing a full year suggest that enthusiasm ought to be curbed.

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Ben Lindbergh and his Ringer MLB Show co-host Michael Baumann speculate about how the slow offseason will end, answer listener emails about sabermetrics and salary depression, sumo wrestling and the Hall of Fame, and baseball in winter weather, compare the careers of Omar Vizquel and Nomar Garciaparra, and analyze unorthodox new Padres relief pitcher Kazuhisa Makita. Then Michael makes a case for college baseball, and he and Ben talk to Justin Volman, founder and CEO of the Collegiate Baseball Scouting Network, about how he’s assembled and trained a nationwide network of (mostly) college-aged scouts to cover games that MLB scouts might miss.

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