On Saturday night, the Astros ended the Yankees season with a 4-0 shutout. For New York, even reaching Game 7 of the ALCS was a surprising accomplishment, as this was a team widely considered to still be in rebuilding mode heading into 2017. As a young team who became a good team faster than expected, the easy comparisons are to teams like the 2015 Cubs or the 2008 Rays, and expectations for the 2018 Yankees are now going to be particularly high given the team’s success this year.

And the Yankees are certainly setup well for the future. With Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Greg Bird, they have three enviable offensive building blocks for the middle of their order, and plenty of quality all-around performers like Didi Gregorius and Aaron Hicks, plus the potential upside of Clint Frazier and Gleyber Torres. And that’s just the young hitters. Few organizations in the game have a similar kind of talent base to build off of going forward.

But, similar to the Cubs, there are some legitimate questions on the pitching side of things, and a winter of inaction while counting on the kids to develop further and carry the team to the 2018 World Series is unlikely. The Yankees are both extremely well positioned for the future, but also need to do some real work this winter.

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Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2017-18 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, including a shortstop and some not-shortstops.

Other Players: Yonder Alonso / Alex Avila / Welington Castillo / Zack Cozart / Lucas Duda / Eric Hosmer / Chris Iannetta / Howie Kendrick / Jonathan Lucroy / Mitch Moreland / Logan Morrison / Eduardo Nunez / Brandon Phillips / Carlos Santana / Neil Walker.

Alcides Escobar (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding A. Escobar:

• Has averaged 658 PA and 0.8 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 0.8 WAR per 600 PA* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 0.5 WAR in 629 PA in 2017.
• Is projected to record 0.5 WAR per 600 PA**.
• Is entering his age-31 season.
• Made $6.5M in 2017 as part of deal signed in March 2012.

*That is, a roughly average number of plate appearances for a starter.
**Prorated version of final 2017 depth-chart projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for A. Escobar.

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Kenley Jansen certainly hasn’t been ignored around here. Back in June, for instance, Travis looked at how Jansen’s reliance on a single pitch compares to Mariano Rivera’s. And yet, I still feel like we don’t really appreciate just how great Jansen really is. Throughout this postseason, so much of the focus seems to go to Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner. Or if not them, then colorful characters like Yasiel Puig or feel-good stories like Chris Taylor. Often, Jansen feels lost. Now, maybe that’s just a case of me miscalculating the extent of the coverage he receives or just being far too tired to think straight by the time Jansen gets into games, but I feel like the big righty is a little underappreciated. But if he performs the way that he’s been performing, that may change for good this week.

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It would be easy to assume that the Dodgers bullpen is just another part of the club bought and paid for by means of the organization’s massive and unrivaled resources. With the team’s payroll and competitive-balance expenses coming to roughly $250 million this season — itself a substantive decrease over the $300 million outlays of the 2014-16 campaigns — the Dodgers clearly have the capacity to spend with little restraint. And they’ve certainly utilized some of that financial might to the end of bullpen construction: the club, for example, brought back free-agent closer Kenley Jansen by guaranteeing him $80 million over five seasons.

For the most part, however, the Dodgers haven’t built their bullpen on high-salaried free agents or top prospects. Instead, they’ve mostly cobbled it together with a series of low-risk trades and signings, addressing needs in-season when needed without giving up prospects of significance.

Los Angeles opened up this season with a payroll of about $235 million. Close to $50 million of that total was designated for players no longer on the roster. Of the remaining money, half went to the starting rotation. Another 40% was earmarked for Andre Ethier, Adrian Gonzalez, Yasmani Grandal, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner. As far as the bullpen, there was Kenley Jansen and his big salary, of course. The second-highest salary in the bullpen at the start of the season went to Sergio Romo, though, who was guaranteed $3 million by the club in February. That figure was the third-highest guarantee the Dodgers have made to a reliever since Andrew Friedman took over operations after the 2014 season. That’s three full offseasons, and the second-biggest free agent guarantee the team has made to a reliever was the $4 million for Joe Blanton a few years ago.

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Please pardon this break from playoff-related content.

Writing for Baseball America earlier this month, longtime baseball scribe Tracy Ringolsby reported there’s “building consensus” that MLB is soon headed toward expansion and a 32-team structure and perhaps a 156-game schedule.

There have been rumblings of expansion for some time.

As a guest in the Rockies’ broadcast booth back in August, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred was asked about expansion. He again suggested that the stadium issues in Oakland and Tampa must first be resolved. But once those situations are put to rest, MLB seems committed to expansion. Manfred has said baseball is, ultimately, a “growth industry.” Manfred then, during the broadcast, mentioned other incentives for expansion that this author hadn’t previously heard the commissioner address.

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Collin McHugh wasn’t consumed with worry, but he was concerned. The Astros right-hander had shoulder/biceps tendinitis in the spring, and then his elbow tightened up during a rehab outing in April. Tests didn’t raise any red flags, but it’s hard not to ponder worst-case scenarios when your livelihood is at risk.

Tendinitis is mostly an inconvenience. Tightness can be a prelude to surgery.

“I wouldn’t say it was scary, but I guess you do get a little bit nervous,” admitted McHugh. “Tommy John is so prevalent that I think everyone thinks about that when they feel some tenderness. I’d never had an elbow problem in my life.”

The relationship between his shoulder and elbow maladies was talked about “ad nauseam,” and while McHugh isn’t sure — “everything is so minuscule in your delivery” — he assumes the latter was related to effort level and trying to come back too soon. Opting for caution over expediency, the Astros subsequently kept him on the shelf until July.

My conversation with McHugh turned to mechanics, and to how many feel that continual max-effort makes a pitcher prone to elbow issues more than does increased velocity. Read the rest of this entry »

The Astros are going to the World Series for a number of reasons.

Saturday night marked the culmination of a lengthy, creative, bottoming-out rebuild gone right, a rebuild so extreme it had earned the club the “Disastros” moniker. No one is laughing now.

The Astros are going to the World Series because of the accumulation of hirings, signings, draft decisions, development and strategies executed well. Not everything went perfectly, but this is a game of probabilities, not certainties, and a lot of things went right.

That’s the big picture view. The smaller-sample truth is they needed a Game 7 to win Saturday night to have such a happy narrative be written, to advance to a second World Series appearances in franchise history. The Astros needed to match the moment and they did. Read the rest of this entry »

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on 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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