I did a presentation in Arizona this weekend for First Pitch Arizona, an event at the Arizona Fall League hosted by BaseballHQ. The presentation served as an introduction to spin rates and exit velocity and so on. I examined the new stat from our friends at Statcast — Barrels — and how Michael Conforto does well by that stat, which attempts to combine exit velocity and launch angles to credit players who make dangerous contact. On the way out, someone asked me, basically: “So if he’s good at barreling the ball, what happened last year? What went wrong on those barrels?” There’s an easy answer and a hard answer.

The easy answer is that even players who are good at barreling the ball don’t barrel it all that often. Conforto is in the top 75 when it comes to barreling, and he barreled only about 11% of his batted balls this year. The elite guys this year — Gary Sanchez, Khris Davis, Nelson Cruz, Chris Carter and Mark Trumbo — barreled the ball around 18% of the time when they put the ball in play. Even among that group, there’s another 80% of batted balls unaccounted for.

That mirrors the difference in home-run rate, sort of. The top two in homers — you might recognize Trumbo and Davis — have a 7% home-run rate, about double that of the 75th guy, Andrew McCutchen (3.5%). But in the gaps between them, you still find interesting players. Conforto, for example, would have been 84th in home-run rate had he qualified, a little worse than (but still comparable to) his barreling rate.

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There are a lot of reasons to assume that right-handed Boston Red Sox prospect Michael Kopech is well positioned — or, at least, as well positioned as any young pitcher can be — not only to reach the majors but also to experience some success while there. The velocity is one reason why, obviously. He reportedly hit 105 mph on multiple radar guns earlier this summer. He was sitting at 93-97 during instructional-league play last month. He’s recorded an average fastball of 98.7 mph in the Arizona Fall League. Provided his arm remains attached and in mostly serviceable condition, he appears certain to serve at least as competent reliever.

There are other promising indicators, though. Objective ones. Consider: Kopech was selected 33rd overall in the 2014 draft. Research by Matthew Murphy indicates that players taken between 31st and 35th overall as amateurs produce about two and three wins over the course of their team-controlled years. As for his status as a prospect, specifically, one finds that Kopech was ranked 89th on last year’s edition of Baseball America’s top-100 list. The most recently updated iteration of Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli’s work on prospect valuation suggests a pitcher ranked between 75 and 100 on BA’s list is likely to contribute something like three or four wins before reaching free agency.

Two or three or four wins might not seem like a great result over half a decade, but that’s also just an average figure. There’s a lot of attrition baked into it, a lot of zero-win seasons. The point is that, on average, a pitcher with Kopech’s profile ends up contributing in the majors. That has considerable value.

There’s one more promising indicator for Kopech, though, and it’s not necessarily one you’d expect — namely, his performance so far in the Arizona Fall League, where he’s recorded the highest strikeout rate among starters. Given the circumstances under which it’s played, there are multiple reasons to discount the numbers coming out of the AFL. It’s a developmental league, first of all. The mandate isn’t really for prospects to “win” as much as it is to improve. Plus there’s also the fact of the inflated run environment, which is probably the product of an imbalance in the quality of pitching and hitting prospects and also the product of the weather in Phoenix. Finally, there’s an even more basic reason why to approach Fall League data with some caution: the samples are small. There are only about 30 games in an AFL season — or, the equivalent of a month’s worth of regular-season major-league play. The dangers of extrapolating too much from a single month of data are manifest.

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So I actually ran two different polling projects this week. In one of them, I asked you to reflect on your 2016 fan experience. I wrote about the results of that on Thursday. In the other one, I asked you to look ahead to 2017. The question was pretty simple: For whichever given team, how many games do you expect that team to win?

I tried to make it clear I wasn’t asking about the teams with rosters as presently constructed. I wanted you to fold in some offseason expectations, some additions or subtractions. Of course, we don’t know how the real offseason will go, but we have ideas of what various teams want to do. In any case, I plan to look at numbers like these a few times before Opening Day 2017. Here goes the first analysis!

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Free agency is here. As you’re well aware by now, it’s not a particularly great crop this year, but there are still some solid players out there to be signed, and some interesting high-risk bets to be made by teams that don’t mind a little (or a lot of) uncertainty. To help you get a sense of what we feel the market might look like this winter, we’ve decided to present the results of the Contract Crowdsourcing project along with my predicted contract values in one big list. We’ve previously done these in separate posts, but this year, we thought it made more sense to collect all the information in one place.

In terms of the numbers, keep in mind that the crowdsourced values are generally a good bit lower than what players actually sign for, because the player signs, most often, 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. 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.

Oh, and before we get to the list, I’d like to suggest that you not get too worked up over the ordinal rank of players, especially outside the top 20. There are ~15 to 20 solid players in this class, and then there are just a whole bunch of flawed role players who could be seen as not too different from one another. There are even some guys who didn’t make this top 50 that you could argue are as valuable some of the guys in the 30-50 range. The difference between players on the back half of the list is pretty small, for the most part, so if you think a guy should be No. 29 instead of No. 42, you’re not going to get much argument from me.

Also, the actual rankings themselves reflect my preference; they aren’t sorted by expected contract, either my guess or the crowd’s. There are some players who are going to get paid a lot more or less than their placement on this list indicates, and we’ll cover them in more detail next week when we look at the potential bargains and landmines this class offers.

With all that said, let’s get to the list.

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Earlier this week, you were asked to place some votes, and some of those votes were placed on FanGraphs. I ran a polling project identical to the one I ran after the 2015 World Series, and many thousands of you participated, for which I am grateful. On a team-by-team basis, I asked you how you felt, in general, about the season that was. Here’s a sample poll:

Part of the fun of these projects is sparking some discussion. But most of the fun of these projects comes from eventually analyzing all the results. That’s what we’re here for today. I’ve got my spreadsheet and plots all together, so, away we go!

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Every year, the Hall of Fame ballot and subsequent results general considerable attention — as they probably should. The writers have the first opportunity to decide who will enter the Hall, and they generally admit the best players. But the BBWAA alone doesn’t have a say. Of the 247 players enshrined in the Hall of Fame, the writers have selected only 116 in the traditional fashion we see today. Another 45 gained entry through special Old Timers and Negro Leagues votes. Three players were selected in a runoff procedure that used to be performed if no player was elected. Both Lou Gehrig and Roberto Clemente were elected in special votes.

That leaves 80 players who were selected via the so-called Veteran’s Committee. That committee has changed its rules over the years and is now known as the Eras Committee. This year, five players are up for election: Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Mark McGwire, and Orel Hershiser.

From 1953 through 2001, the Veteran’s Committee selected 77 players for the Hall of Fame, averaging a player and a half per year. The committee’s selections, however, were accompanied by complaints that the elections diluted the Hall, ultimately accepting too many players. The Hall responded by creating tougher standards for election through the Veteran’s Committee and, over the last 15 years, only three players were inducted by that means: Joe Gordon, Ron Santo, and Deacon White. While those tougher standards might have been necessary in the short term, the freeze made it very hard for players to gain entry, delaying Santo’s election, for example, until after his death. More changes have been made over the past few years, in part to deal with changes made to the Hall of Fame ballot limiting the number of years for which a player can appear on the writers’ ballot.

There are currently four eras, per the Hall’s definition: Today’s Game (1988-present), Modern Baseball (1970-1987), Golden Days (1950-1969), and Early Baseball (1871-1949). Candidates for Today’s Game will be considered this year (2016) and in another two years (2018); candidates for Modern Baseball will be considered next year (2017) and again in two years following that (2019); candidates for the other two, older eras will be considered in four years (2020). If the current iteration holds up longer than that, the plan is to consider the two more recent eras twice in five years, with the Golden Days considered once every five years and the Early Baseball considered once every 10 years.

This year’s committee, consisting of 16 writers, executives and Hall of Famers, is considering 10 candidates who need at least 75% of the vote and members can vote for up to four candidates. That last rule could make it difficult for the players, however, because of the five other names that appear on the ballot and which belong to a collection of non-players. Here are the names of those managers and executives: Davey Johnson, Lou Piniella, Bud Selig, George Steinbrenner, John Schuerholz.

As for the players, we have four Hall of Very Good-type players and one Hall of Fame-caliber player who has admitted to PED use.

Harold Baines

Harold Baines played 22 years in the majors and compiled 2,866 hits and 384 homers. Only 15 players in Major League Baseball history have recorded greater figures than Baines in both of those categories, and the only ones not in the Hall of Fame have either never been eligible for election (Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Beltre) or have other issues clouding their candidacies (Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro). The same is true for 38 players who rank ahead of Baines in hits. Baines was a good hitter throughout his career, but he stopped playing regularly in the field after age 27, and spent his time at designated hitter thereafter.

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Let’s start with some facts. The Rockies didn’t play .500 baseball this year. In fact, they played .463 baseball by going 75-87. They allowed more runs than they scored, had one of the highest bullpen ERAs in the game (even after adjusting for park), and still have to wear those hideous black vests every now and then. The vests are probably the largest area of concern for the team, but we’ll focus on the actual playing of baseball right now.

Despite the above, the Rockies have a fair amount of hope for the future. The 2016 season marked the arrivals of heralded prospects such as David Dahl, Jeff Hoffman, and Trevor Story. The team boasted a lineup that looked fearsome on paper, unless you adjust for Coors Field. (Even without adjusting for Coors, Gerardo Parra and his .271 OBP weren’t great.) 

Of course, it also included Nolan Arenado, Charlie Blackmon, Carlos Gonzalez, DJ LeMahieu, and the aforementioned Dahl and Story. That’s more than enough to build around. The Rockies also have the benefit of being able to look forward to the premiers of highly rated prospects such as Ryan McMahon, Raimel Tapia, and (a bit further down the line) Brendan Rodgers over the next few years. Any number of these young players could also serve as trade chips to bring in more pitching. With owner Dick Monfort going on the record to say that Colorado will be operating with a larger budget than ever before, it’s time to start thinking about just how close this team is to contention.

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Earlier this year we introduced FanGraphs Membership, a voluntary way to to help support all the baseball content we produce each and every day. As a reminder, Membership is achieved through a $20 annual donation to the site — or $3 per month for those of you who prefer short-term contracts! — and we are greatly appreciative of all those who became members when we rolled out the program back in February.

Since we haven’t really mentioned Membership much since the rollout, we wanted to give you guys an update on the program. Beginning today, frequent users of FanGraphs who are not Members will occasionally be reminded that that becoming a Member will help support all the great baseball content at FanGraphs. These messages won’t be overly intrusive or too frequent, but will serve as a reminder that the content and data you’re consuming costs us real money to provide, and you can help ensure that FanGraphs remains a leader in both spaces by becoming a Member.

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