Scott Boras’s life is currently populated by buses to Playoffville, a mythical creature named J.D. Kong, and squirrels in trees with nuts. It’s time, in other words, for teams to get out the checkbook and start paying his clients.

How much those teams can spend will become more clear over the coming weeks. But we can estimate now. By looking at how much every team has on the books currently, it’s possible to identify those teams in the best position to make major moves, either by taking on a contract like Giancarlo Stanton’s or signing a big-name free agent such as Jake Arrieta, Yu Darvish, Eric Hosmer, or J.D. Martinez.

Last winter, there was considerable uncertainty with regard to spending, as the new CBA hadn’t yet been formalized. The players and the owners eventually reached an agreement, and while the implications of that agreement have yet to be fully fleshed out, we have a greater understanding of its effects than we did last year at this time. Teams know how much they can expect to pay and receive in revenue sharing. Big-market teams, meanwhile, have a much better idea of how much they might have to pay in taxes with competitive-balance tax amounts and penalties all spelled out. That could lead to a little more spending this winter than we saw last offseason, but teams could also be saving up for next year’s superior free-agent class, trying to avoid some tax penalties, or simply rebuilding.

To start, let’s take a look at current payroll commitments as teams start to spend more for next season. The chart below depicts a combination of guaranteed salaries and estimated arbitration salaries for each club — plus whatever extra payroll would be required at the league minimum to create a full roster. Data care of Cot’s Contracts.

The figures we see here aren’t all that surprising. The big-money Dodgers, Giants, Nationals, Red Sox, and Yankees lead the way. Way down at the other end we find the the lower-revenue Athletics, Brewers, Padres, and Rays along with the rebuilding Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Phillies, the latter having committed less than one-fifth the amount of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Gabe Kapler’s prospects as Phillies manager, Aaron Judge’s hard hitting, various end-of-season awards results, MLB’s baseball-studying committee, and Shohei Ohtani’s value to AL and NL teams and the difficulty of gaming the CBA to sign him, then answer listener emails about an Ohtani sign-and-trade, homegrown value vs. free-agent value, intentional walks in the automatic-IBB era, the best games to time travel to, and an odd three-way trade.

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Giancarlo Stanton is your 2017 NL MVP. Barely.

The Marlins outfielder edged out Cincinnati’s Joey Votto by two points (two!), for a final total of 302 to 300. Votto and Stanton each received 10 first-place votes. The latter, however, received 10 second-place votes; the former, just nine. The individual ballots are here.

According to the BBWAA, there have been only two closer NL MVP races than the 2017 edition: in 1979, when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell tied and, in 1944, when Cardinals shortstop Marty Marion topped Cubs outfielder Bill Nicholson by a single point.

You could pick either Votto and Stanton and not err egregiously. Paul Goldschmidt was the third NL MVP finalist. Despite producing an excellent season in his own right, he was a cut below by most measures.

The voters selected Stanton. They recognized a fine player, the preeminent home-run artist in the year of the home run. If I had a vote (I did not), I would have placed Votto on the No. 1 line.

Stanton led the majors in home runs (59). If RBIs are your thing, he led the majors there, too (132). He closed off his stance and made real gains in contact and zone discipline. He was more than just a slugger.

Also in Stanton’s favor is the level of his opponents. He faced a slightly higher quality of competition according to Baseball Prospectus’ Quality of Pitchers Faced metric, holding a 107 to 103 edge.

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What’s so remarkable about Corey Kluber’s second Cy Young Award, the receipt of which was announced Wednesday evening, is he won it despite missing a month of the season. At the All-Star break, it looked like Sale in a runaway, but Kluber found another level and produced one of the great Cy Young comebacks of all-time. That’s how dominant he was from the point at which he returned in June through the end of September following a trip to the DL with a back strain.

How good was Kluber?

Starting with that appearance against Oakland on June 1, Kluber struck out 224 batters (!). That’s 224 strikeouts in two-thirds of a season. That’s 224 strikeouts against 619 batters faced, good for an astounding 36.2% rate. He walked only 3.7% of those same batters.

The difference between Kluber’s strikeout and walk rate (K-BB%) from June to September was 32.5 points. To put that mark in context, consider: among all pitchers, only elite bullpen arms recorded Craig Kimbrel, Kenley Jansen and Chad Green better marks for the season. (It should be noted that Chris Sale led MLB starters over the whole season with a 31.1-point differential. Kluber finished second to Sale among starters, with a 29.5-point mark.)

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If you had Jerry Dipoto in the pool of which GM will make this off-season’s first trade, congratulations, you win nothing because of course he did. Trader Jerry is baseball’s version of the red paperclip guy, attempting to take his team from mediocrity to contention by making a million small upgrades. And his latest deal is particularly interesting, even if it wasn’t exactly a swap of household names.

The deal’s particulars.

Seattle Gets:

Ryon Healy, 1B

Oakland Gets:

Emilio Pagan, RHP
Alexander Campos, SS

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Free agency began a week ago to an expected lack of fanfare. Unlike the NBA, where free-agent deals are often announced minutes after the midnight opening bell, it usually takes a little while for baseball’s hot stove to ignite. Until the GM Meetings, which began this past Monday, free agency is usually dominated by leaked contract demands, contract extensions, and declarations by certain players that they intend to keep playing.

Thus far, the 2017-2018 offseason is no exception. For the moment, we must content ourselves with news of minor-league deals for Kevin Quackenbush and Rubby de la Rosa with Cincinnati and Arizona, respectively.

Alongside the minor-league signings and contract demands, the early days of this offseason have been marked by another annual tradition. According to Orioles beat writer Rock Kubatko, Baltimore has shown “definite” interest in Andrew Cashner and Jason Vargas. The Orioles’ rotation remains a weakness for the club, and as is often the case, the team appears to be targeting mid-level innings-eaters. It also appears to be all they’re likely to afford: due to questionable commitments on the payroll, the Orioles will probably find it difficult to pursue many true rotation upgrades to prop open their closing — or perhaps already closed — window.

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Every winter, hundreds of nondescript ballplayers become minor-league free agents. Players are granted minor-league free agency when they’re omitted from a club’s 40-man roster and have also spent at least six years in the minor leagues. In other words, they’re the ones who weren’t good enough to merit a call-up after several years in the minors, and their organizations suspect they lack the potential to be worthy of a 40-man spot.

Some of these players latch on with new organizations; some of them don’t. But regardless, the overwhelming majority never have much big-league success. Carson Cistulli found that only about 1% of minor-league free agents produce at least 0.5 WAR the following season. Minor-league free agents are the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to player transactions. But there’s an occasional gem at the bottom of that barrel. It’s not unheard of, at all, for a minor-league free agent to make a major-league impact. A few successful examples of players I highlighted in this space last year:

• Wilmer Font dominated the PCL by striking out a jaw-dropping 32% of batters as a starter, earning him a role on the deepest pitching staff in baseball. My money’s on him opening 2018 on someone’s big-league squad.
• Lane Adams recorded 122 plate appearances of above-average production with the Braves, much of that coming as a pinch-hitter.
• Jacob Turner was a serviceable swingman for the 97-win Nationals in the season’s first half (33.2 innings, 4.28 ERA through June 18th).

Using my KATOH projection system, I identified the pitchers from this year’s minor-league free-agent class who showed glimmers of promise in the minors. Since none of these players have any sort of prospect pedigree anyway, I utilized the stats-only version of KATOH. Based on their minor-league numbers, there’s reason to believe they might be able to help at the big-league level sometime soon. This analysis considers only players who logged at least 200 minor-league batters faced in either 2016 or 2017.

For reference, here is my piece from yesterday on minor-league free-agent hitters.

*****

1. Scott Barlow, RHP

Barlow split time between the Dodgers’ Double-A and Triple-A affiliates this past year, pitching to a stellar 3.29 ERA as a starter. He struck out 28% of opposing batters while walking a reasonable 10%. Barlow’s numbers were decidedly worse in his seven Triple-A appearances, but on the whole, his 2017 campaign was excellent for a 24-year-old starter.

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In light both of the ask and the inconsistent performance, the prospect of signing Eric Hosmer should foster trepidation among major-league clubs — a point made by this author last week when expressing a preference for Carlos Santana among this year’s free-agent first basemen.

Scott Boras is reportedly seeking $200 million spread over eight years for a player who, in seven major-league seasons, has produced full-season WAR totals of 0.0 (2014), -0.1 (2016), and -1.7 (2012).

While Hosmer is just entering his age-28 season, while he looks the part, his glove consistently rates below average according to the metrics at first base, and the real concern is whether the bat will consistently play at a star level.

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Episode 784
On Monday, managing editor Dave Cameron published a list of the top-50 free agents for the 2017-18 offseason. Later on that Monday, he discussed it with the host of FanGraphs Audio. This episode is the result of that discussion.

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 42 min play time.)

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