Listen, we can all be adults here. We all understand what’s going on, in that none of us understand what’s going on. The Cleveland Indians are a few hours away from playing Game 5 of the ALCS, a game that could advance them to the World Series, and they’ll be handing the ball to Ryan Merritt in the first inning. Ryan Merritt, a 24-year-old who’s faced all of 37 batters in his major-league career, which began with a mop-up relief appearance against the Texas Rangers back in May of this year. Ryan Merritt, a lefty whose fastball sits at 87 mph and tops out at 90. Ryan Merritt, who has never appeared within the top 10 of an Indians prospects list.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’m some Ryan Merritt expert. Who is? About 48 hours ago, I knew as much about Ryan Merritt as the rest of you. What follows is simply a collection of more or less public information compiled from data, film, and scouting reports. Let’s get to know Ryan Merritt.

The biographical information is always a good place to start. The Indians selected Merritt in the 16th round of the 2011 draft. That’s not a very high round! He was picked 488th overall. He doesn’t have a particularly imposing frame, at 6-foot-0, 180 pounds, though BaseballAmerica’s 2015 scouting report calls it an “athletic frame.” He cracked Double-A last year, and pitched well, to the tune of a 3.51 ERA and 3.25 FIP in 141 innings. In 143 Triple-A innings this year, he ran a 3.70 ERA and 3.82 FIP.

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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 giant and large 2016-17 free-agent market.

Below are links to ballots for five of this year’s free agents, all starting pitchers.

Other Players: Pedro Alvarez / Erick Aybar / Jose Bautista / Carlos Beltran / Billy Butler / Andrew Cashner / Bartolo Colon / Rajai Davis / Ian Desmond / R.A. Dickey / Edwin Encarnacion / Doug Fister / Dexter Fowler / Carlos Gomez / Jeremy Hellickson / Matt Holliday / Austin Jackson / Jon Jay / Matt Joyce / Brandon Moss / Mike Napoli / Angel Pagan / Steve Pearce / Wilson Ramos / Colby Rasmus / Josh Reddick / Michael Saunders / Kurt Suzuki / Mark Trumbo / Justin Turner / Chase Utley / Luis Valbuena / Neil Walker / Matt Wieters.

Rich Hill (Profile)
Some relevant information regarding Hill:

• Has averaged 48 IP and 1.7 WAR over last three seasons.
• Has averaged 6.9 WAR per 200 IP over last three seasons.
• Recorded a 3.8 WAR in 110.1 IP in 2016.
• Is projected to record 6.9 WAR per 200 IP**.
• Is entering his age-37 season.
• Made $6.0M in 2016, as part of deal signed in November 2015.

*That is, a roughly average number of innings for a starting pitcher.
**Prorated version of final updated 2016 depth-chart projections available here.

Click here to estimate years and dollars for Hill.

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Maybe you know who Carl Edwards Jr. is. Maybe you’re a Cubs fan, or remember him from prospect lists. Maybe you wondered who that 120-pound dude with the 95 mph fastball was one day and did some light googling. Maybe you, like me, have stared at this list of top four-seam fastball spin rates in the league so long you know by heart that he’s got the second-most spin in baseball.

Or maybe you don’t know who he is, and you’re just now getting acquainted. One of the first things you should maybe know about are his hands.

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Much has been made of Cleveland’s bullpen usage during the postseason. The attention has been focused primarily on two things: Terry Francona’s willingness to deviate from traditional relief roles, and the lights-out performances of Cody Allen and Andrew Miller.

Not much has been said about the limited looks hitters have been getting against Indians pitchers.

Through seven games, an Indians starter has yet to face an opposing hitter four times in the same game. They’ve faced a hitter three times on just 25 occasions, and 19 of those belong to Corey Kluber. Third-time-through-the-order penalties haven’t been injurious. Red Sox and Blue Jays batters are a combined 3-for-22 with a pair of walks and a hit-by-pitch in their third look. Francona has been masterful at pulling his starters at the right time.

He’s applied a similar approach with his management of Cleveland’s relievers. In Monday’s bullpen game, Francona flip-flopped what has been his postseason convention by using Cody Allen in the seventh, followed by Andrew Miller in a closing role. He had a reason. Read the rest of this entry »

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A table:

Here are the 10 playoff teams, sorted by playoff OPS. You see that all the figures are fairly low — this is always the case, because hitting is tougher in the playoffs. But at the bottom, the Orioles went away after one game. The Mets went away after one game. The Rangers got swept. Then there are the Cubs! The Cubs rank seventh, and they’re by far the worst among the four teams remaining. Point being, the Cubs haven’t hit much. They’re still in a good position, all things considered, but they haven’t hit much.

So what, right? It’s literally 219 plate appearances. It’s literally six games. That’s practically nothing. I just found a six-game stretch around the turn to September where the Cubs hit equally poorly, and nobody noticed. The easiest possible answer here is to point to the size of the sample. But, these are the playoffs, which means all the details matter. And there’s another factor here, one that makes easy and absolute sense.

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A year ago, mentioning Aaron Sanchez and “save” in the same sentence might have been regarded as a commentary on the right hander’s potential future in the closer role. After excelling in the bullpen at the end of 2014, Sanchez moved to the rotation in 2015 and put up a 5.21 FIP in 11 starts, before finding himself back in the bullpen, where he was once again quite good. In 2016, the Toronto Blue Jays again put Sanchez in the rotation, unwilling to give up on a 24-year-old potential ace. Sanchez proved doubters, like myself, wrong and rewarded the Blue Jays with that confidence. Now he’s being asked to keep the Blue Jays’ season alive against former Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber.

Sanchez’s stuff jumps out. Half the time, he throws a sinker that averages 95 mph. He complements that pitch with a similarly fast four-seamer. Between the two, Sanchez brings mid- to high-90s heat on three-quarters of all his pitches. That velocity and that usage is perhaps what caused some concern about lasting as a starter. Only Bartolo Colon threw a higher percentage of fastballs this season among qualified starters. Since 2011, only Colon, Justin Masterson, Lance Lynn, and Ross Detwiler have navigated a full season of starting while also using their fastballs with such frequency. To throw a fastball that often, it has to be good — and Sanchez’s is very good.

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Yesterday, the Diamondbacks introduced Mike Hazen as their new general manager and head of baseball operations, who is taking over for Dave Stewart after a two-year failed experiment in their front office. Hazen was most recently the GM in Boston, serving as Dave Dombrowski’s second-in-command, and has been an integral part of a Red Sox front office that built one of the best young cores in baseball. The Diamondbacks are hoping Hazen will lead them in that direction now, and allow them to build a sustainable winner in Arizona.

But before he can do that, Hazen and his staff will have to determine their course of action this winter, and whether the team is going to try and retool a roster that just lost 93 games or if he’s going to pivot away from the team’s attempt to contend in the short-term in favor of acquiring assets for the long-term. When asked about this at the press conference, Hazen demurred.

“I don’t have a defined view just yet,” Hazen said. “It would be irresponsible for me at this point to sort of say exactly how we’re going to attack the roster.

“We want to bring a championship to this city and state, but we also know that there’s going to be decisions that need to be made. We’ll have more concrete answers on that as we move through the offseason. We’ll see what the landscape is in the marketplace.”

That’s a nifty non-answer, but in reality, it’s also likely the correct one. It doesn’t really make sense to be committing to a certain path on your first day on the job, for one, but also, despite the dumpster fire that was the Diamondbacks 2016 season, it isn’t actually clear what the Diamondbacks should do this winter, and they probably do need to explore both paths.

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