It was a little over three years ago that I first took a look at this question. The article was a hit!

Now I think it’s time to run the numbers again. People change. Situations change. Statistical projections change. Mike Trout is fantastically good. He is probably the best player in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another three seasons. Albert Pujols used to be fantastically good. He’s not so much anymore. He was just one of the worst players in baseball, and he’s under contract with the Angels for another four seasons. You know where this is going. You’ve probably wondered about this before, even though the hypothetical is stupid and unrealistic.

Trout isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he has no-trade protection. Pujols isn’t going to get traded. Aside from everything else, he also has no-trade protection. But let’s say the Angels wanted to make a trade. Let’s say they wanted to package the two players together. Does Pujols’ negative value outweigh Trout’s positive value? Would the Angels trade these players, combined, for nothing? Again, this is stupid. Let’s dive in.

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Trey Mancini had a successful first season with the Baltimore Orioles. The 25-year-old University of Notre Dame graduate hit .293/.338/.488, with 24 home runs. Last week he was rewarded with a third-place finish in American League Rookie-of-the-Year balloting.

Every bit as notable is the fact that he played the majority of his games as an outfielder. Coming into the year, Mancini had served exclusively as a first baseman or designated hitter. At 6-foot-4, 215 pounds, he profiled as a slightly more athletic version of Mark Trumbo.

Neither would dispute the comparison. When I talked to the Orioles teammates late in the season, both agreed they have a lot in common. The body types, the determination to overcome their defensive limitations, the plus power and the strikeouts, the hot and cold streaks. By and large, Mancini is Trumbo 2.0.

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Trey Mancini: “This season has been a whirlwind, for sure. Changing positions in spring training and learning to play the outfield at this level has been the coolest experience I’ve ever had. I grew up a first baseman — I’ve been a first baseman all my life — and nobody really thought much of me switching positions. People didn’t think I was athletic enough.

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Last week, I released my top-50 list for the free agents available this offseason, including both my own and our community’s forecasts for the contracts those players will receive this winter. Over the next couple of days, I’ll provide a few names that I think look like particularly good or bad bets based on our contract expectations.

Today, we’ll do the expected bargains. I think that, last year, my picks turned out okay. I had Justin Turner and Rich Hill as the two best bets for the price, with Neil Walker, Brett Cecil, and Matt Holliday rounding out my top five. Walker was pretty good when healthy, but health is part of why he took the Mets qualifying offer. Cecil was lousy early in the year but ended up being fine overall, while Holliday was the opposite, posting a good first half until injuries caused him to collapse in the second.

Of course, my track record isn’t always that good, and several of the players I identify as potential bargains below will probably be terrible next year. So it goes when signing free agents. But if I had some money to spend this winter and were looking to make my team better in the short-term, here’s where I would be looking to spend it.

As always, more credit is given for higher-impact players; getting a bargain on a role player isn’t as useful as finding a good everyday guy. On to the list!

Outside of the top few arms available, this starting pitching class is mostly filled with pitch-to-contact starters who a contender should slot in at the back of their rotation. There are some solid innings-eaters around who will get paid for their ability to produce solid results in bulk, but if a team wants to shop in these waters, I’d suggest Fister as a lower cost option than most of his peers.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a Shohei Otani “deadline” and Braves prospect Ronald Acuna, then bring on FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron to discuss a dispute about WAR and valuing players between Bill James and sabermetric stat sites, the evolution of awards (and Hall of Fame) voting, why Dave expects certain teams to dictate the way the winter unfolds, and the free agents he sees as notable bargains or busts.

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If the Giants weren’t 2017’s biggest disappointment, it’s only because the Mets lived their own waking nightmare. The Giants remain a popular product, but with popularity comes expectations, and the Giants have been garbage for a year and a half, in large part because the home-run spike seems to have passed them right by. Fast-forward to the present day, and the Giants find themselves in a situation of some urgency. They want to maintain their market share in the region, and they could stand to add some dingers. The Giants haven’t hit many dingers. They don’t want to spend another year in the basement.

It seems like the stars are aligning almost perfectly. When the Giants have needed help the most, there has become available a certain player, a certain dinger-hitter and league MVP, a lineup-changing colossus who’s rumored to want to play out west, around where he grew up. It’s no secret the Marlins are looking to trade Giancarlo Stanton, and it’s no surprise the Giants are deeply involved in the mix. Nothing has yet actually happened, but the two current favorites would have to be the Giants and the Cardinals. They’re the suitors who’ve been most aggressive.

And yet I’m not sold the Giants make such great sense. One can speculate only so much about a move that would be undoubtedly complicated, but the Giants don’t find themselves in an enviable position. Acquiring Stanton could be an awfully dangerous commitment.

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“I know all teams have plenty of money.”

—Giancarlo Stanton

This season’s National League MVP, Giancarlo Stanton, recently addressed rumors that Miami might trade him, noting that the club could immediately become a postseason contender with the addition of pitching. His suggestion that all teams have plenty of money certainly appears to be a response to speculation that the Marlins intend to slash payroll a few months after having been purchased for more than a billion dollars.

It also stands to reason that he was commenting upon the fact any club could theoretically afford to acquire Stanton and the $295 million remaining on his contract. In one sense, he’s probably right. Revenues in baseball are at an all-time high. For a number of reasons, however, there’s not a direct correlation in baseball between revenues and spending.

One main reason is the competitive-balance tax, formerly known as the luxury tax. The cap for the tax has increased at only about half the rate of MLB payrolls. Accordingly, more teams find themselves up against a tax that was made more painful in the last CBA. Those taxes have pretty drastic effects on the trade market for Giancarlo Stanton, putting some teams out of the bidding and making the cost for others high enough that a competitive offer might be unreasonable.

Two years ago, Nathaniel Grow wrote an excellent piece about the implications of the luxury tax this century, showing how many teams used the tax as a cap, which has driven down spending relative to revenue over the last decade. In the last few years, the tax threshold has grown at a very slow rate, such that, by the end of the current CBA, teams with an average payroll will find themselves just a single major free-agent signing away from transcending it. The graph below depicts both average team payrolls and the tax threshold since 2003.

Over the last 15 years, payroll has grown at a pace 50% faster than that of the competitive-balance tax amount. However, the chart above actually overstates the rate at which the competitive-balance threshold has grown. From 2003 until the beginning of the previous CBA in 2011, the luxury tax grew at a rate pretty close to MLB payrolls, even if it did depress salaries compared to revenue. Beginning with the CBA that started in 2011 and the new CBA, which goes through 2021, the competitive-balance tax has seen barely any growth, especially when it comes to payroll.

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