A thrilling season and postseason is in the books, and another whirlwind offseason is ready to be set in motion. This would appear to be a good time to take one last look back at 2016 player performance, utilizing granular data to assess pitcher and position-player true-talent levels.

In the coming weeks, we’ll use exit-speed and launch-angle data to show what pitchers and position players “should have” done this season. Starting pitchers are first in the barrel; today, we’ll take a look at AL ERA qualifiers.

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Episode 697
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he previews the offseason by examining the needs of the last two clubs that remained in the 2016 campaign; addresses the contract extensions accepted by the 13 (mostly) younger players who would have been free agents this offseason; and explores the good and bad news for the Chicago White Sox.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 38 min play time.)

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Two relevant facts here are indisputable. One, in this most recent season, the Angels were bad. They won 74 games. By BaseRuns, they “should have” won 71 games. That made them about as good as the Twins and the Braves. Horrible season. Two, baseball fans love a blockbuster. It’s not even unique to baseball. Sports fans love a blockbuster. They love seeing them, they love thinking about them, and they love talking about them. Big trades might be even more exciting than big games.

Connect the points and you end up with Mike Trout trade proposals. The Angels narrative is being driven by the Mike Trout fantasy — that is, the fantasy of Mike Trout being available. This comes up in every one of my chats, and my chats aren’t special. As the reasoning goes, the Angels are bad, and they’re probably going to stay bad, so why don’t they trade Trout to re-stock an empty system? It’s actually kind of convincing. The Angels’ system is in legitimately bad shape.

Yet the major-league product isn’t so terrible. Something not enough people seem to understand: The Angels are under no obligation to blow things up. In large part because of Trout, the Angels are in half-decent shape. Perhaps even better than that. They have a real path to the playoffs as soon as next year.

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Since the start of the 2015 season, there hasn’t been a better hitter on the Mets than Yoenis Cespedes. He’s second among position players in WAR to Curtis Granderson, who has played more than 100 more games with the Mets over that span. As soon as he arrived at the trade deadline in 2015, Cespedes became one of the faces of the franchise, and has become a symbol of the endless possibilities of contention for Mets fans.

He’s likely to command one of the largest contracts of the offseason. Cespedes can hit for average, draws a fair number of walks, and hits for power. He plays standout defense in left field when healthy. That said, he’ll also be playing on the wrong side of 30, and may very well be finishing his expensive contract on the wrong side of 35. Cespedes spent all of the 2016 season with a nagging leg injury originally sustained on a diving effort into the stands for a fly ball. Steamer forecasts just 3.0 WAR for him next year. On a certain level, it seems as if re-signing Cespedes would be a mistake for the Mets.

But it wouldn’t be. In fact, re-signing Cespedes is the best move the Mets could make this winter.

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Heading into the winter, there has been one thing that’s pretty much universally agreed upon; this is a bad free agent class. After chasing Zack Greinke and David Price last winter, the best arms on the market this winter include the likes of Jeremy Hellickson and Ivan Nova. When it comes to just throwing money at veterans in an attempt to upgrade a team’s roster, the pickings are slim this go around.

Naturally, any time there is a diminished supply, thoughts go towards price inflation. And we see this all the time in our daily lives. Gas pipeline bursts? Gas prices go through the roof. Grower strike in Mexico? Avocados now cost like $20 apiece. We need more avocados, people; the lack of guacamole in my life lately has been a real problem.

So, it’s tempting to look at this winter’s sparse free agent crop and think we’re about to see some truly crazy contracts. After all, teams are still making money hand over fist, and there are only so many ways to spend money in baseball, with the path of least resistance being to hand it over the best free agent that will take it. This kind of landscape leads to tweets like this one, from Ken Rosenthal the other day.

Craziest prediction I’ve heard so far from a GM: Ivan Nova, five years, $75M.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 7, 2016

I don’t know, maybe Ivan Nova really will get $75 million. I’d take the under, but Ian Kennedy got $80 million (and an opt-out!) while tied to draft pick compensation, so we can’t really say that anything is completely out of the realm of reason. But, as much as there is a supply shortage of upper-end talent in the free agent market this winter, there is one reason to think that prices might not be as outrageous as some expect. That reason? A reduced supply of free agents also means reduced demand for roster spots to be filled.

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Last year’s free-agent class was one of the strongest we’ve ever seen. With legitimate aces like Zack Greinke and David Price heading the class plus young outfield talent in Jason Heyward and Justin Upton, a bona fide slugger in Chris Davis, along with a host of other mid-rotation starters and solid position player options, teams spent roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars on free agents in 2016 salaries alone. This season lacks talent at the top and depth in the middle, but that doesn’t mean we should expect to see a lot less spending. Nobody is likely to receive $200 million, but teams have plenty of money to spend and it has to go somewhere.

One way to think about how much money teams have to spend this offseason is to consider the salaries departing from their rosters. The chart below measures the money that has disappeared from clubs’ payrolls. To calculate each figure, I began with every club’s Opening Day obligations from 2016 and identified those players making at least $1 million in 2016 who either (a) were traded during the season or (b) have become a free agent in the meantime. I then added up the salaries of the departing players. This shows how much teams are losing in salary based on departures alone, with data gathered from Cot’s Contracts.

We often think of payroll coming off the books as a benefit for clubs. Player contracts, especially large ones, tend not to be very valuable in their final years. Think about the Los Angeles Angels, for example, who enter the season with $60 million less in obligations. The team had large commitments to pitchers Jered Weaver and C.J. Wilson. While both of those pitchers were good at points of their careers, they provided little in terms of on-field value last year. The Angels, if they so choose, can now take the roughly $40 million formerly invested in those pitchers and put it to better use. If we work under the assumption that a win costs $8.5 million in free agency, the Angels could conceivably improve themselves by around five wins by spending that money on contributing players.

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“What was working for you today?” someone asked Rays starter Brent Honeywell after his appearance in the Arizona Fall League’s Fall Stars Game. “Everything,” he said matter-of-factly, and it’s hard to argue. He struck out five in two scoreless frames and showcased his entire arsenal of impressive pitches. A few minutes later, he took me through those pitches, and discussed what’s working and what requires more attention in order for him to contribute in Tampa next season.

Let’s start with the least sexy pitch in his arsenal, the curve. It’s the newest piece, and it’s the one with which the righty has been tinkering this fall. He threw one on strike one to Anthony Alford to demonstrate what the pitch can mean to him — called strikes. “Nobody’s going to swing at a first-pitch breaking ball,” he said. “But I’m not going to throw it a whole bunch.”

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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 2016-17 free-agent market.

Owing to a combination of surprisingly declined options and also the author’s own incompetence, this year’s contract-crowdsourcing effort continues today, with ballots for three additional free agents.

Jason Hammel (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Hammel:

• Has averaged 171 IP and 1.9 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 2.2 WAR per 200 IP* over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 1.5 WAR in 166.2 IP in 2016.
• Is projected to record 2.2 WAR per 200 IP**.
• Is entering his age-34 season.
• Made $9.0M in 2016, as part of deal signed in December 2014.

*That is, a roughly average number of innings for a healthy starting pitcher.
**Prorated version of 2017 depth-chart projections now available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Hammel.

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Hello everybody, and welcome to Part 2 of this polling project. Here is a link to Monday’s Part 1, which dealt with teams in the American League. This is the National League half, so, if your favorite team or teams play in the NL, I would very much appreciate your subsequent participation! And if you like a team in the AL, but you missed the Monday post, you still have time to put in your vote before I get around to analyzing the results. This week is all about voting. The other votes you’ve made this week might come with greater stakes, but the individual votes here count for more. Be one of hundreds, after being one of millions!

This should all be simple. To effectively re-state from yesterday, I’m looking for a quick summary of your 2016 fan experience. For every NL team, there is a poll, and for every NL team poll, there are five possible answers. How did you feel about the season that was, when you consider as much as you feel like considering? What effect did the end have on the start or the middle? Are you easily excited by rebuilding movements? Did you just really love having season tickets for the first time? Don’t worry, you can’t get this wrong. Consider your feelings validated. Just let me know what those feelings are before you get on with the rest of your day.

All the polls are below. Click a team name to go straight to that part and bypass the others.

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