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Tyson Ross was one of the more intriguing names available in this winter’s historically weak crop of free-agent pitching.

At his best, Ross is something of the Rich Hill of sliders. From 2012 to -15, Ross led baseball in slider usage (38.7%) among pitchers tossing at least 300 innings. The pitch was so effective, he was often a two-pitch pitcher.

Among pitchers to throw at least 300 innings, Ross posted the 12th-best swinging-strike percentage in the game (11.2%) during that three-year period, and his 3.34 FIP ranked 34th in the game. Over that same stretch, Ross tallied 9.5 WAR. He was one of the better starting pitchers in the game.

His slider was still effective on the only day he pitched in 2016. Just ask Carl Crawford:

Ross was quietly becoming one of the more valued starting pitchers in the game. Then 2016 happened.

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After having typically appeared in the very famous pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have been released at FanGraphs the past few years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Philadelphia Phillies. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other Projections: Arizona / Atlanta / Boston / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Detroit / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Los Angeles NL / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / Miami / St. Louis / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto / Washington.

Batters
The advantage, for a club, of embracing mediocrity is that it permits them to allocate plate appearances and innings to players who possess both clear strengths and obvious weaknesses. Odubel Herrera (609 PA, 3.6 zWAR) is perhaps the purest expression of this strategy and its benefits in all of baseball. Acquired by the Phillies in the Rule 5 draft and promptly handed a starting role at a position he’d basically never played, Herrera has produced roughly four wins each of the last two seasons. Szymborski’s computer suggests something approximating a third consecutive four-win campaign is probable. He’s an unambiguous success story.

Beyond Herrera, there isn’t much in the way of present impact talent. Maikel Franco (581, 2.6) is the only other likely starter to receive a projection better than two wins. Of some interest perhaps is the forecast for Cesar Hernandez (541, 1.7). The author of a four-win season in 2016, he’s forecast for only about half that in 2017. This isn’t surprising, necessarily: a not insignificant portion of Hernandez’s value last season was the product of a .363 BABIP and +13.9 UZR. ZiPS calls for a .340 BABIP and -1 fielding mark, instead.

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Here’s something that isn’t new to you: It’s difficult to hit a home run in San Francisco. It’s difficult to hit a home run in any ballpark, but, in particular, San Francisco makes it tough. This information is well understood.

So why don’t we freshen things up with a twist? Not only is it hard to hit a homer in AT&T Park — AT&T makes homers more hard than Coors Field makes them easy. That’s clunky, so to put it a different way, AT&T has the most extreme home-run park factor in the league. The most extreme of the pitcher-friendly places, and the most extreme of the hitter-friendly places, just speaking in terms of distance from the average. We all know the ballpark holds most fly balls, but while we were paying only indirect attention, AT&T became the toughest dinger ballpark in 25 years.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Lenny Harris and Jerry Dipoto, then celebrate the end of a long baseball news drought by discussing a few recent and imminent transactions, including the Jose Bautista signing and the Danny Duffy and Wil Myers extensions.

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So Jose Bautista will not receive the six years or $150 million he was reportedly seeking a year ago. According to Ken Rosenthal, Bautista has reportedly reached an agreement on a one-year deal with a mutual option to return to Toronto. Nick Stellini has already addressed some of the implications of the deal for the Blue Jays.

Since the conclusion of the PED era, baseball appears to have returned closer to its roots. Baseball appears to be a young man’s game again. Teams are hesitant to pay for seasons in players’ 30s. Teams prize prospects and pre-arbitration seasons more than ever. Teams are well aware of age curves, and aging models suggest Bautista is probably not the next David Ortiz, as Craig Edwards wrote back in November.

Those factors — plus a down season impacted by injury, plus a market that might have overcorrected against bat-only players — all conspired to limit Bautista’s market. The FanGraphs crowd projected Bautista would sign a three-year, $65 million deal.

But was the industry too skeptical of Bautista’s future this winter? Are the Blue Jays on cusp of a landing Bautista on another bargain of a contract?

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A Blue Jays team without Jose Bautista feels a bit dirty. It’s theoretically possible — and, given the fact that the Blue Jays existed before Bautista donned their uniform, it’s verifiably possible, too. Yet fate seems to have conspired to reunite the bearded bringer of dingers with the Jays. Bautista is reportedly going back to Toronto after finding that his age and rejection of the qualifying offer have dampened his market far more than expected.

After at one point reportedly seeking a contract in the neighborhood of five years and $150 million, Bautista is signing for one guaranteed season at an $18 million clip, with two options that could bring the total of the deal to $60 million. Regardless of whether or not those two years get picked up, he’s beaten the initial $17.2 million qualifying offer. Mutual options are almost never exercised, of course, but Jeff Passan did mention yesterday that Bautista is turning down bigger money to come back to the Jays.

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I’ve encouraged you to believe in Keon Broxton before. In baseball-game terms, that wasn’t even very long ago. So you could accuse me here of being unoriginal, but I’ve prepared a counterargument. For one thing, it’s January, shut up. For a second thing, I bet a lot of you missed my previous summary. And for a third thing, now there’s some new information. This is a Keon Broxton article, and I’ll tell you why I think he’s already the best player on the Brewers, headed into 2017.

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Even on a deal as short as the one to which the Phillies and Michael Saunders agreed this week — he’ll reportedly get $9 million for one year and the club will have the option to re-up him at something like $11 to 14 million — two relevant questions emerge immediately. One: is Saunders healthy enough to believe in? And two: will the power he exhibited last year reappear in 2017?

Well, is he? And will it?

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