Right-hander Tyler Chatwood signed with the Cubs today for three years and around $40 million, according to Jon Morosi. The contract is about what one might expect. Dave Cameron, for example, called for Chatwood to receive $10 million a year for three years. The Cubs have given him more annually than Cameron expected. But for one of the youngest pitchers on the market, it’s not absurd.

But there’s also another reason for optimism regarding Chatwood’s near future besides just his relative youth. Given the tools at our disposal, there appears to be evidence that Chatwood’s stuff hasn’t fully translated into results.

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Earlier this very week, I ran a polling project. The question being asked was simple: What do you think of your favorite team’s front office? That is, the front office, independent of ownership. The front office, independent of things the front office doesn’t control. We all have opinions. None of us have actual concrete answers. The question is simple and impossibly complicated. But so many of you voted, and I promised to analyze the results. That’s what we have here — sort of a crowdsourced FanGraphs community front-office power ranking.

There’s no real perfect way to evaluate a front office. Never has been. FanGraphs tried to do it before, by gathering input from a bunch of its own writers, but that was eventually put to a stop, because it was too controversial. We can’t know, we can’t know for sure, but the results here are still significant. What’s truly being measured is how people perceive the various front offices. Wouldn’t you like to know about the perceptions, league-wide? Wonder no more. Here’s what we have, according to, at least, a strongly sabermetric audience.

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In the next few days, it’s expected that Giancarlo Stanton will decide whether he’s going to waive his no-trade clause to join the San Francisco Giants or, less likely, the St. Louis Cardinals. Those are the two teams that have struck deals with the Marlins, and both made their pitch to him in person last week. Stanton has appeared to be holding out hope that the Dodgers would get into the mix, though to this point, no public reports have suggested they’ve seriously engaged the Marlins in discussions.

The Dodgers’ reticence likely has to do with their CBT tax position. Acquiring Stanton would put them over the tax threshold again, and, as I laid out in my argument for why the Dodgers should be interested, acquiring Stanton would probably force the team to choose between re-signing Clayton Kershaw or making a big run at Bryce Harper in free agency next winter. And according to Ken Rosenthal, the Marlins aren’t interested in taking back any current payroll in a Stanton deal, as they try to trim their 2018 player expenses to under $90 million.

But despite the Marlins’ apparent tunnel vision here, there still might be a way for both sides to get what they’re looking for, and it’s one of Friedman’s go-to moves: the three-way trade.

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Riley Pint has a golden arm and a sky-high ceiling. The 20-year-old right-hander reaches triple digits, which helped prompt the Colorado Rockies to take him fourth overall in the 2016 draft. He’s the best pitching prospect in the system and a potential big-league ace.

The numbers don’t reflect that. Since signing out of an Overland Park, Kansas, high school, Pint is 3-16 with a 5.40 ERA and a 1.70 WHIP. This past season, he walked 59 batters in 93 innings at Low-A Asheville. To say he’s a work in progress would qualify as an understatement.

Are the Rockies concerned? I asked Zach Wilson, the club’s director of player development, for his appraisal of the youngster’s development.

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Zach Wilson on Pint: “Numbers are numbers, and in the development world, they don’t tell the whole story. As a matter of fact, they tell very little of the story. Walking [59] guys in fewer than 100 innings is going to raise a red flag to somebody staring at a stat line, but this was a 19-year-old in his first full season — and we were aggressive with him. The numbers weren’t a concern to us whatsoever. This was just a small part of the global developments scenario for Riley. He made strides.

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A couple weeks ago, I asked my colleague Jeff Zimmerman to help me find some Shohei Ohtani comps and make a projection for Ohtani based upon the Davenport Translations of his 2016 NPB stats. Remember, Ohtani missed much of last season due to ankle and thigh injuries. Per Davenport, Ohtani’s 2016 numbers equate to the following MLB performance as a then-age-21 hitter: 324 at-bats, 14 home runs, 34 walks, 89 strikeouts, a .306/.367/.512 slash line, and 133 wRC+. He’s 23 now.

I was trying to answer whether Ohtani would produce more relative value as a DH in the AL or as a pitcher not only batting but also pinch-hitting in the NL. (And, yes, he might end up playing in the field in the NL.)

Here’s the full list of performance comps Zimmerman provided for Ohtani the Hitter:

2016 Comps
Adrian Beltre
Aledmys Diaz
Tyler Naquin
Hanley Ramirez
Corey Seager
Andrew Toles

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To make it clear right off the bat, this has nothing to do with Shohei Ohtani or Giancarlo Stanton. This has nothing to do with the current offseason market, and, frankly, this has nothing to do with baseball from any of the past few decades. This is just built around a historical fun fact, but, you know, we all need breaks. And we all need improbable fun facts.

You can probably think of a few baseball coincidences on your own. One I personally can’t forget is that both Ken Griffey Jr. and Stan Musial were born on November 21 in Donora, Pennsylvania. There’s Roberto Clemente’s career ending at exactly 3,000 hits. I don’t know what you do and don’t remember, but I have a coincidence to add to the list. It takes a little explaining, but I think the destination is worth it. Maybe you won’t agree in the end, but I’ve been thinking about this since I found it by accident during a podcast last week. I feel compelled to speak my truth. I have to share this little statistical story.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about a baseball earthquake in Cleveland and the Miles Mikolas and Mike Minor signings, debunk myths about NPB pitchers and Pud Galvin, and answer listener emails about Shohei Ohtani and Chief Wahoo, Ohtani loopholes, Jerry Dipoto trading his way to Ohtani, the DH and Ohtani, free-agent players prioritizing factors other than money, how the Tigers could win the 2018 World Series, Jose Altuve’s high batting averages, “hit by pitches” vs. “hits by pitch,” paying up front for a 35-year-old Mike Trout, and Adam Jones’s comments about his slow pace between pitches, plus a “Stat Blast” about extreme NPB walk-drawer Kensuke Kondo and post-emails banter about Rafael Palmeiro’s amusingly far-fetched comeback attempt.

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I think we all understand the present circumstances. The Marlins are trying to trade Giancarlo Stanton in order to clear payroll, and they’ve reached general agreements with both the Cardinals and the Giants. From the Cardinals, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. From the Giants, the Marlins would get talent and salary relief. There are differences, obviously, but right now you’d think there are only these two finalists. Stanton has full no-trade protection, but he doesn’t want to stick around where he is, and so we’re getting to a decision point. Stanton will soon need to pick St. Louis or San Francisco.

Or neither. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but Stanton grew up and played high-school ball around Los Angeles. We’re not familiar with Stanton’s actual thoughts, but the consensus opinion is that Stanton’s ideal outcome would be a trade to the Dodgers. To this point, we haven’t heard much about the Dodgers’ trade interest. Stanton wouldn’t be the type of add they typically make. And yet, here we are. The Dodgers continue to loom over this whole thing.

This can obviously change as it goes, but Giants expect a Stanton decision by the end of the week. I’m hearing they continue to view Dodgers, not Cardinals, as biggest threat.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) December 6, 2017

Giancarlo Stanton? Stanton has plenty of leverage. But so do the Dodgers. The Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes are unusual, but so is this situation, with Stanton effectively able to hold out until he gets what he wants.

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