The Giants are trying to trade for Giancarlo Stanton. To that end, Bobby Evans, Brian Sabean, and Bruce Bochy met with Stanton and his representatives in Los Angeles last night, the Marlins apparently willing to let some suitors make a pitch directly to Stanton, who possesses a no-trade clause. According to multiple reports, the Giants are willing to absorb either most or all of his remaining contract in order to compensate for the lack of high-end talent they have to offer, hoping to appeal to the Marlins’ desire to move as much money as possible rather than focus on talent brought back in return.

The reason the Giants are going all out for Stanton is pretty clear and is summed up in tweets like these:

The 2017 Giants were one of recent history’s weakest teams, in terms of power, once you adjust for the home-run spike that helped everyone else in baseball party like it was 1999. They hit just 123 homers as a team, 27 fewer than the next lowest total (recorded by the Pirates) and 98 fewer than the Dodgers, who won NL West. Thus, every rumor about Stanton and the Giants points out how much they need him, because he would fix the thing at which they were worst last year.

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Free agency, as we know it — as major-league players know it — is under duress.

The current post is related to one I published yesterday on stresses facing the middle-tier player in free agency. But the issue is really larger and more fundamental in scope than that. A comment from an anonymous major-league GM — which appeared in a piece by Yahoo’s Jeff Passan — struck me:

Added a GM: “Teams are smarter. They know how terrible free agency is.”

Those are fighting words: “They know how terrible free agency is.” The union was built on free agency. Even a decade ago, free agency was seen by players as a panacea. Well over a billion dollars will be spent on free agents this winter.

At FanGraphs, we often write about and examine moves from the club’s perspective. When analyzing free-agent signings, trades, etc., we often praise or criticize those decisions from a team-based perspective because we ultimately are concerned with wins and losses, with the process of roster construction. We praise efficiency. We don’t write as often from the players’ perspective. Efficient spending, however, is not a friend of the player.

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Going into the 2017 season, the Washington Nationals would have been right to view their outfield as a strength. With Bryce Harper already present in right, the front office traded a pair of highly prized pitching prospects to add Adam Eaton, as well. The acquisition had the benefit of sending Trea Turner to his natural shortstop position, filling another of the Nationals’ holes. Jayson Werth could still be counted on as the weak side of a platoon, and there were bench bats who could otherwise fill in.

Not many people were talking about Michael Taylor at that point — and rightfully so. He’d dealt with a demotion to Triple-A the year prior in order to iron out his swing, and he was increasingly looking like a prospect who’d failed to live up to expectations. Mark Zuckerman of MASN Sports speculated that he was “at best looking at a spot on the bench” alongside Chris Heisey and Adam Lind.

Things changed quickly on April 30th. General manager Mike Rizzo announced that Adam Eaton would be out for the year after stepping awkwardly on first base while legging out an infield single. Suddenly, the Nationals would be leaning much more heavily on Michael Taylor. He responded very well, putting up three-plus wins over the course of the season, with above-average offense and defense in center field. His emergence not only helped push the Nationals to a playoff spot, but now gives them valuable flexibility heading into 2018.

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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 Toronto Blue Jays. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Batters
While some organizations have had success with a “stars-and-scrubs” approach to roster construction, history reveals that the star-and-scrubs tactic has been considerably less successful. Were Kevin Pillar (616 PA, 2.9 zWAR), Russell Martin (402, 2.4), and Justin Smoak (518, 2.2) to fall even a half-win short of their respective ZiPS forecasts in 2018, however, that’s precisely what would result in Toronto.

Third baseman Josh Donaldson (572, 5.6) is clearly the centerpiece of the Blue Jays’ field-playing contingent. His projected batting line — which, of course, features adjustments both for aging and regression to the mean — would nevertheless place him among the league’s top 20 batters. The fielding number (+6 runs at third base) produced by Dan Szymborski’s computer would render Donaldson the equivalent of a league-average shortstop.

As for what’s missing, the club would probably benefit most immediately from some assistance at a corner-outfield spot. Neither Teoscar Hernandez (553, 1.2) nor Steve Pearce (318, 0.8) profile as anything much better than a strong bench piece at the moment, nor do any superior options exist on the major-league roster.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Willians Astudillo, Shohei Ohtani’s true two-way prospects (look, there’s no other news), MLB’s extraordinarily slow November, and trampoline pitching, then talk to volcanologist Erik Klemetti about how baseball would weather volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and other fascinating but terrifying geologic events.

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Episode 788
Back in February, managing editor Dave Cameron consented to participate, with the host of FanGraphs Audio, in a series of 10 over/under wagers regarding the 2017 season. With that 2017 season now complete, both host and guest review those wagers to determine who’s the best at baseball.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 57 min play time.)

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It was easy enough to understand the Ryon Healy trade on its own. Healy is a good hitter but not a great hitter, and he doesn’t come with much defensive value. The A’s wanted to free up the DH spot so they could move Khris Davis out of the outfield. Emilio Pagan is a talented young reliever, and the A’s organization also picked up a 17-year-old prospect. Pretty normal value exchange, even if it’s fairly uncommon to see division rivals swap so many team-control years. Different needs were met.

Now the A’s have also signed free-agent reliever Yusmeiro Petit. It’s a modest two-year deal with a third-year club option, and the deal was announced later Wednesday. Taken on its own, again, it’s unremarkable. The A’s have said they wanted bullpen help, and now they’ve added bullpen help. Petit just had a very good season. Simple. The kind of move you forget about two days later.

But I’d like to quickly connect the dots. There are two dots. Perhaps they’re meant to be unconnected. I’m going to read into this anyway. What does it mean that the A’s have picked up both Pagan and Petit? The two have a specific similarity.

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There are two ways of looking at this. One, the offseason has been so slow that this is a full-length article devoted to a Diamondbacks trade for Brad Boxberger. Baseball needs to get going. Under ordinary circumstances, this might not get much attention at all. Two, thanks to the baseball offseason being so slow, this trade can get the attention it deserves. Every major-league trade is interesting, because every major-league player is talented. And Boxberger in particular could answer the Diamondbacks’ biggest problem.

Both angles have some truth to them. If things were moving faster, this might not be written as it is. But I’m still glad to be able to shed some light on what the Diamondbacks might be thinking. So: the trade!

Diamondbacks get:

• Brad Boxberger

Rays get:

• Curtis Taylor

For the Rays, it’s a matter of cashing in a player running out of team control. You know how they operate. For the Diamondbacks, it’s about trying to upgrade on the cheap. As you don’t need to be told, there’s no such thing as a truly reliable reliever. Everyone comes with a certain amount of risk and unpredictability. Boxberger might be more unreliable than average. Still, the promise is legitimate.

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The middle class is embattled in America. Wages have stagnated. As a result, the percentage of people residing in the middle tier of income has declined over the past 40 years.

Baseball isn’t exempt from this problem. While even those players receiving just the minimum salary wouldn’t be classified as “middle earners,” context matters in this case. And in the context of baseball’s wages, the middle class is shrinking, too.

There are common obstacles facing baseball’s player pool and workers at large: a willingness among owners to pay a premium for top talent but an effort to replace other areas of the labor force with cheaper alternatives. Efficiency is king.

The ice-cold stove at the beginning of the present offseason, this period of little activity, is perhaps related and of interest.

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