Carlos Beltran didn’t play in Triple-A. Technically, that isn’t true — Beltran appeared in five games with Omaha in the year 2000. But by that point, he was already a major-league regular. Beltran didn’t make the classic stop in Triple-A, and, for that matter, he didn’t make the classic stop in Double-A, getting called up after just 47 games with Wichita. They were 47 deeply impressive games, and the Royals couldn’t wait to use the 21-year-old center fielder for themselves. The Royals couldn’t have known then just how long it would be until they’d be relevant, but they knew they weren’t good. They also knew Beltran might pull them out of the ditch.

I don’t know for how long baseball people have been saying that the ball always finds the new guy, but when Beltran subbed in for his big-league debut on September 14, 1998, the first batter immediately hit the ball in his direction. So, also, did the second batter. With that, Beltran recorded his first-ever putout. Minutes later, he had his first-ever hit; minutes after that, he had his first-ever run. In just the next inning, he drew his first-ever walk. Beltran didn’t start the game, but he still made the most of it, and although debuts make for lousy predictors, the signs were right there. At arguably too young an age, Carlos Beltran hit the ground running.

Two decades later, Beltran has announced his retirement. He’s 40 years old, now, and he just won his first-ever World Series. There was really nothing left for Beltran to do. Beltran will presumably one day occupy a spot in the Hall of Fame, because along the way — and it was a long way — Beltran was just about everything.

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“The best for the group comes when everyone in the group does what’s best for himself and the group.”

–American mathematician John Nash

Shohei Ohtani is fascinating for a number of reasons. We start with the dual talent, of course.

While injury limited him to just five starts as a pitcher in 2017, he struck out 29 and allowed only 13 hits in 25.1 innings — as a 22-year-old. He produced a .332/.403/.540 slash line in 230 plate appearances. In 2016, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. He also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs in 323 at-bats in 104 games.

He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.

While Clay Davenport’s deadly accurate statistical translations don’t appear to be available for 2017 NPB play, Davenport’s 2016 translations are available to the public.

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Welcome to FanGraphs’ top-50 free-agent rankings. I’ve been doing this exercise for a few years, and last year, we combined my projected salaries and rankings with the results of our contract crowdsourcing series. We’re doing that again this year, presenting you both the average and median estimated salaries provided by our readers alongside my own guesses at what these guys will sign for.

Keep in mind that the crowdsourced values are generally a good bit lower than what players actually receive, because the player generally goes with the highest bidder, while the crowdsourced results are an average of what our readers think a player should get. My guesses are generally a bit higher than the crowd’s estimate, though that isn’t true for every player; in particular, I think a bit more will be spent on the guys perceived as the best few free agents and less will be spent on the role-player types at the bottom of the list.

It’s also worth noting that opt-outs are still likely to be a thing this winter, and they’re basically impossible to price into a series like this, so we didn’t really try. You might see guys sign for less than expected but with an opt-out, which they’re accepting as part of the value of the deal.

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Episode 783
The prolific Travis Sawchik traveled to Houston in order to cover the World Series for FanGraphs.com, charging various and sundry expenses to the site in the process. Was it worth it? That’s the most important and maybe only question asked on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 1 hr 10 min play time.)

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Regular readers of this column may recall the law school aspirations of Milwaukee Brewers prospect Jon Perrin. When he was featured here in May 2016, the Oklahoma State graduate was dominating Midwest League hitters — he’d fanned 47 and walked just one in 36 innings — but he was nonetheless contemplating saying goodbye to baseball. Perrin had applied to Harvard Law, and if accepted he was “probably going to be out of here.”

As we later reported, that didn’t happen. Perrin received a letter of rejection from the prestigious institution, and went forward with his pitching career. Harvard’s loss is proving to be Milwaukee’s gain. The 24-year-old right-hander spent this past season with Double-A Biloxi, continuing his stingy ways. In 105-and-a-third innings, he issued 21 free passes while fashioning a 2.91 ERA.

Perrin was pleased with his performance.

“I feel I proved that I can get advanced hitters out,” said Perrin, who relies heavily on his sinker. “A sub-3.00 ERA at the Double-A level is nothing to spit at. I had some up and downs and fought through an injury, but was able to finish on a strong note. I can’t complain.”

His Juris Doctor plans haven’t gone away. They’re simply on the back burner. Perrin was accepted into the University of Kansas’s law school program this past spring, and while he’s “100% committed to baseball,” he knows that a playing career only lasts so long. Once the spikes are hung up, he’ll begin his legal studies in his home state. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week, we publish in the neighborhood of 75 articles across our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the latest Shohei Otani news, the contract requests of free agents J.D. Martinez and Jay Bruce, the Tigers’ MLB-worst World Series odds, and changes in catcher-framing stats, then review the results of Jeff’s survey on 2017 fan satisfaction.

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While next offseason’s historic free-agent class will create quite the hot-stove spectacle — maybe the most memorable in the free-agency era — the current class isn’t without intrigue, either. Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani are likely to be the top prizes. That said, first base is shaping up to be an interesting position, too.

Yonder Alonso, Lucas Duda, Eric Hosmer, Logan Morrison, and Carlos Santana, are each available to bidders on the market. Hosmer is the top brand name amongst the group and had the best season, recording a 4.1 WAR and 135 wRC+ in 2017, each mark a career best. Hosmer is among the young players in the game who elected not to trade in earning potential for security in the form of a pre-arbitration contract extension, and he’s being rewarded by entering the market in his prime, having just completed his age-27 season.

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