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What type of contract would Mike Trout have commanded this offseason had he been a free agent? Coming off an MVP-award-winning campaign in which he compiled 9.4 WAR and about to enter just his age-25 season, Trout would have easily been one of the most sought after players ever to hit the open market. And given the state of this year’s historically weak free-agent class, the bidding for Trout may very likely have ended up in the $400-500 million range over eight to ten years.

Considering that Trout signed a six-year, $144.5 million contract extension back in 2014 – an agreement that runs through 2020 – this is just an interesting, but hypothetical, thought experiment, right?

Not necessarily. A relatively obscure provision under California law — specifically, Section 2855 of the California Labor Code — limits all personal services contracts (i.e., employment contracts) in the state to a maximum length of seven years. In other words, this means that if an individual were to sign an employment contract in California lasting eight or more years, then at the conclusion of the seventh year the employee would be free to choose to either continue to honor the agreement, or else opt out and seek employment elsewhere.

Although the California legislature has previously considered eliminating this protection for certain professional athletes – including Major League Baseball players – no such amendment has passed to date. Consequently, Section 2855 would presumptively apply to any player employed by one of the five major-league teams residing in California.

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Matt Wieters’ rookie PECOTA projection is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

I still have it in my possession. While the pages have yellowed in the 2009 Baseball Prospectus annual, Wieters’ .311/.395/.544 slash line is still something to behold. As a 22-year-old at Double-A Bowie, the Georgia Tech product slashed .365/.460/.625. He was the perfect prospect: switch-hitting catcher with power, on-base skills, and above average defense. “Mauer with Power” was the advertisement.

Wieters of course never became that kind of offensive force. He has a career wRC+ of 97 and produced just an 88 wRC+ this past season. Baseball is very often a cruel game. Expectation can morph into resentment.

Still, this is a player with four All-Star berths. This is a player with pedigree. This is a switch-hitter with a strong throwing arm, who threw out 35% of base-stealers last year. His leadership receives high marks. So it’s somewhat surprising that he’s still available in his first taste of free agency.

Or perhaps it isn’t so surprising.

Wieters’ defense is likely more problematic to teams than his so-so bat. According to StatCorner’s framing leaderboard for last season, Wieters ranked 68th among catchers who received at least 1000 pitches, saving -7.3 runs compared to a league-average catcher.

In 2015, Wieters ranked 64th in framing, 8.6 runs below the average catcher.

In 2013, before injuring his elbow in 2014, he ranked 72nd (-10.4 runs above average).

The following video clips document two pitches Wieters received last summer that crossed the lower part of the zone as strikes, according to Statcast, but were called as balls. On both occasions Wieters’ glove appears to take the pitch out of the zone:

And again ….

Wieters hasn’t been an above-average framer since 2011, according to StatCorner. Baseball Prospectus’ framing metrics are more kind but they still rate Wieters as a below-average receiver every season since 2012.

Wieters’ troubles might be tied to his height. Pitches at the bottom of the zone are those that are most often framed successfully. Elite pitch-framing catchers like Jonathan Lucroy and Russell Martin have insisted that getting lower to the ground is key to creating the illusion that a pitch is better than it really is.

Of the top-10 framing catchers last season, eight stood between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-1. Only Tyler Flowers (6-foot-4), and Jason Castro (6-foot-3) were close to Wieters in height. While there are always exceptions to the rule, perhaps in today’s game where framing is valued correctly – or is at least a significant consideration – being a tall catcher is something of a curse.

In 2014 and 2015, Flowers was the only catcher above 6-foot-2 in the top 10 of framing.

Consider the following heat maps of pitches called as balls, as received by the 6-foot-1 Buster Posey, the 6-foot-1 Yasmani Grandal and the 6-foot-5 Wieters last season. Posey and Grandal ranked No. 1 and 2, respectively, in framing rankings by Baseball Prospectus and StatCorner.

Grandal’s heat map:

Posey’s heat map :

Wieters’ heat map:

Pitchers threw 16,524 pitches toward Wieters last season. He allowed 131 pitches that were in the lower third of the zone to be called balls.

Grandal had a similar sample of 15,908 total pitches. Only 62 should-have-been strikes were called balls. And these heat maps are only focused on pitches called as balls; they don’t account for strikes stolen outside of the zone.

The Braves, Diamondbacks, and Nationals all reportedly have shown interest in Wieters. But if this were 2007 and not 2017, Wieters might already have a lucrative contract secured.

Perhaps Wieters entered the game at the wrong time. Teams have had pitch-tracking data for a decade now, they have more smart people working in front offices. Formerly hidden skills like receiving are no longer undervalued. Martin’s five-year, $82 million contract from two offseasons ago made that abundantly clear. (Recall that his previous deal was a two-year, $17 million pact with the Pirates, signed after he had essentially the same defensive performance coming out of New York.)

Wieters is in part available because he did not live up to what were perhaps unfair expectations of his bat. Wrote Kevin Goldstein of Wieters, his No. 1 overall prospect in 2009: “How many catchers in modern baseball history have profiled to hit third in the lineup of a championship club?”

Wieters is perhaps in part available because his agent is Scott Boras, who is often patient and will wait for a market to develop for his client.

But he’s available also because the industry has changed what it values behind the plate.

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 Chicago White Sox. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

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

Batters
The White Sox have dealt two of their best players this offseason, and reports indicate that at least one more trade is likely. As a result, these ZiPS projections serve not only as a preview for the 2017 edition of the club but also as an instrument to better evaluate trade value. Corner infielders Jose Abreu (652 PA, 2.9 zWAR) and Todd Frazier (634 PA, 3.4 zWAR) would appear to be most appealing in this regard. Both receive above-average win projections (the top-two figures among Chicago field players) while also featuring contracts that compensate them at something less than market rate.

Among those members of the team who are almost certain to return in 2017, shortstop Tim Anderson (586, 2.2) earns the top forecast. ZiPS offers little encouragement regarding Anderson’s plate discipline — calling for a walk and strikeout rate of 2.7% and 27.8%, respectively — but projects sufficiently strong batted-ball skill (.348 BABIP) and defense (+4 runs at short) to render Anderson a solidly average player.

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Every year, we run lots of pieces here in the FanGraphs family of blogs. We take a look at the “best” of them each week, but that’s fairly subjective, and there’s also an effort to spread the love, since a true “best of” post would just be 10-15 articles by Jeff Sullivan every week, and that wouldn’t be an entertaining exercise. Not even for Jeff.

This article is something we try to do every year, though sometimes I forget. This is all about the numbers — which posts were the most popular? We’ll do an overall top 15, since we do 15 posts for the “best of” post, with some honorable mentions as well. We’ll start at No. 15, because if nothing else, I want to make you scroll you down the page a little. Just in case it’s not clear, this top-15 list is going to be limited to pieces which were posted in 2016.

No. 15 (Mar. 29)
Let’s Find Rusney Castillo a New Home, by Dave Cameron
Sadly, Rusney Castillo did not find a new home, though he did hit better in the second half in Triple-A. I’m still not ready to give up on him, but Boston’s outfield is beyond crowded, so this story might not have a happy ending.

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Mike Mussina never won the Cy Young Award. He made the All-Star team only five times over his 18 years in the big leagues. He won 20 games just once, in the final season of his career. His career ERA mark is closer to 4 than it is to 3. In other words, it’s not difficult to see why Mussina hasn’t been inducted into the Hall of Fame yet, given the traditionalism of the electorate. There have been many worthy candidates who’ve accompanied Mussina on the ballot since he first appeared there, of course. Nine players have been elected since Mussina first became eligible, all of them slam-dunk candidates.

Whatever the arguments against him, though, Mike Mussina is almost surely a Hall of Famer. Hall of Fame voting has already technically concluded, so this column serves less as an appeal to voters and more of a general appraisal of the situation, if nothing else. Also, have you seen baseball news lately? I haven’t either, so here we go.

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To this point, the Blue Jays’ winter hasn’t really gone as they had hoped. The team made a strong push to re-sign Edwin Encarnacion right out of the gates, but when he turned down a reported $80 million over four years in order to test the market, they decided that they needed to make sure they didn’t get left without an alternative option, and so they pounced on the worse-but-cheaper Kendrys Morales, giving him $33 million over three years instead.

When the news leaked, I explained why I wasn’t a big fan of the signing.

With Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista, the Jays have two DH-type players that they could have signed to much more lucrative long-term deals, but Morales presents a much cheaper option, giving the team the flexibility to spend the extra $40 or $50 million on an outfielder, bullpen upgrades, or both. Instead of putting their money into one better player, the Jays look like they’re again going to bet on depth.

In general, I think that plan can often work out, especially if you have some serious holes on the roster that need addressing, as the Jays do. In practice, though, I’m not sure if I’m as excited about spending $33 million on Kendrys Morales as part of a spread-things-around approach.

…

So, yeah, $33 million for the age 34-36 seasons of a decent hitter who can’t run seems like not a great use of funds to me. The team could still make this plan worthwhile if they spend the savings on a quality regular or a couple of good role players, but Morales himself just isn’t that good.

By giving Morales just a portion of what the team had allocated for Encarnacion, the Jays should still have some money to spend in order to round out the roster. Just the difference between their DH offers total $47 million, which should be enough to get them an upgrade (or two) over Ezequiel Carrera and Melvin Upton in the outfield. Of course, you won’t get a superstar for that kind of money — Josh Reddick got $52 million, for reference — but there’s at least enough money left to make the decision to not let Encarnacion’s market play itself out look a little less awkward.

After all, it’s easy to crush the Blue Jays for giving Morales $33 million when Encarnacion ended up signing for $60 million, but that is using information not available at the time to say that the Jays should have anticipated that Encarnacion’s market was going to crater. I don’t know that it was something that should have been reasonably forecasted, given his consistency, durability, and the fact that MLB teams have generally paid well for his skillset. I projected Encarnacion would get 4/$84M this winter; the crowd projected 4/$90M. It’s fair to say that the Jays perhaps should not have seen Morales as a target so good they couldn’t let him get away, limiting their options in the process, but I think once Encarnacion turned down 4/$80M, they probably were correct to think that they were better off going another direction, since similar players to Encarnacion have not aged particularly well.

But right now, with Encarnacion in Cleveland on a contract the Jays clearly would have signed in a heartbeat at the start of the winter, the series of decisions that led to this point are easy to take issue with. Sure, they have some money to spend, but they now have a worse old DH, a 1B platoon of a bad player and a frequently injured guy, and they still haven’t found any corner outfielders. On January 3rd, this all doesn’t look great.

But in looking forward, I wonder if this isn’t actually going to work out just fine for the Blue Jays. Because, barring some unforeseen new bidder for Jose Bautista, the Jays might end up getting the better of their two star sluggers back, with perhaps enough money left over to make their team better than if they had been able to re-sign Encarnacion to begin with.

As Jeff Passan wrote recently, Jose Bautista (at his original asking price, anyway) has been essentially rejected by the league, and has found himself without any real serious suitors through the first two months of the winter, and is reportedly now open to talking about a one year deal. If he has a bounce back 2017 season and hits free agency next winter without a qualifying offer attached — the new CBA states that players can’t be offered a QO more than once in their career — he could very likely do better overall than by taking a discounted multi-year deal this winter, even though he’ll be another year older.

And a one year deal with Bautista is just about the perfect option for the Jays. For all the talk of Bautista aging and his skills declining, he just put up a 122 wRC+ in a down year, which is still pretty good. For context, the Jays have been frequently mentioned as a possible landing spot for Jay Bruce, since they tried to trade for him last spring, and as a corner outfielder with one year left on his deal, he’d fit what the Jays are looking for. Except in the best offensive season of his career (2010), Bruce put up a 124 wRC+, the only time he’s ever put up a better offensive season than what Bautista did last year. A broken-down, playing-through-injury Bautista was basically as good a hitter as Bruce at his absolute best.

If the Jays can really get Bautista for something like $20-$25 million on a one-year deal, they’ll likely be better off than if they had re-signed Encarnacion and traded for Bruce (or someone of his ilk) to fill the hole in RF. The Jays were never going to bring back both of their star sluggers, so if they had landed Encarnacion at that $20 million a year price tag, the replacement outfielder would probably have ended up being roughly equal in price and value to Morales. Landing Bautista for something close to the Encarnacion salary for 2017, without the multi-year commitment on the more expensive player, would give the Jays similar expected performance without nearly as much long-term risk.

While his poor-for-him 2016 season and the league’s muted interest in his services might help push the narrative that Bautista is reaching the end of his career, both ZIPS and Steamer see Bautista as roughly a +3 WAR player next year, with similar offensive projections as Encarnacion. While reasonable people could certainly prefer Encarnacion, and it’s fine to wish the team had gotten him for the 3/$60M that Cleveland ended up paying, it’s hard to argue that Bautista at 1/~$20M is not an even better option. Even if it’s closer to $25 million, that’s still a reasonable price for a high-level hitter.

And then, with another year of information about how well his body is actually holding up, the Jays could decide whether to keep him in Toronto for the end of his career, or allocate that significant chunk of their budget elsewhere next winter; an option they would not have had if they had re-signed Encarnacion.

Right now, it’s easy to look at the Jays’ winter and say that they should have done things differently. And some of us were even saying that the Morales signing was questionable when it happened, not just after Encarnacion’s price ended up coming down. But whether by good fortune or because they anticipated that Bautista might have a tough road in free agency, the Jays might end up in a better position for both 2017 and long-term than if Encarnacion had taken their original offer. If they get Joey Bats back on a one year deal, we might still question some of the decisions that got them to this point, but the end result might just be better than if they had gotten their way from the start.

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While the 2016 campaign is over and the flurry of moves after the season has come to a halt for the moment, a whole year’s worth of data remains to be examined. Today’s post is an easy one and a fun one. Let’s find the best pitches that were thrown regularly last year.

Before we begin: the word “results” appears in the headline, but I’m not going to use results judged by things like singles and doubles and the like. The samples gets pretty small if you chop up the ball-in-play numbers on a single pitch, and defense exerts too much of an influence on those numbers. So “results” here denotes not hit types, but rather whiffs and grounders.

I’ve grouped all the pitches thrown last year, minimum 75 for non-fastballs, 100 for fastballs. I combined knuckle and regular curves, and put split-fingers in with the changeups. So the sample per pitch type is generally around 300 — a lot less for cutters (89) and a bunch more for four seamers (500) — but generally around 300 pitches qualified in each category. Then I found the z-scores for the whiff and ground-ball rates on those pitches. I multiplied the whiff rate z-score by two before adding it to the ground-ball rate because I generally found correlations that were twice as strong between whiff rates and overall numbers like ERA and SIERA than they were for ground-ball rates.

The caveats are obvious. Pitches work in tandem, so you may get a whiff on your changeup because your fastball is so devastating. This doesn’t reward called strikes as much as swinging strikes, so it’s not a great measure for command. On the other hand, there isn’t a great measure for command. By using ground-ball rate instead of launch-angle allowed, we’re using some ball-in-play data and maybe not the best ball-in-play data.

But average-launch-angle allowed is problematic in its own way, and ground-ball rate is actually one of the best ball-in-play stats we have — it’s very sticky year to year and becomes meaningful very quickly. Whiff rates are super sexy, since a swing and a miss represents a clear victory for the pitchers over the batter — and also because there’s no room for scorer error or bias in the numbers. And while the precise way in which pitches work in tandem remains obscure in pitching analysis, we can still learn something from splitting the pitches up into their own buckets.

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Travis Sawchik has distinguished himself in recent years as one of the sharpest minds in baseball journalism, exhibiting his intelligence not only by way of his work for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review but also with his book Big Data Baseball. He has recently joined FanGraphs. We’re happy to have him.

My wife, two-year-old, and I share the holiday season with our families, alternating Christmas Day between each respective side like a college-football home-and-home series. Christmas was spent with my in-laws in Georgia this year, which meant we visited my parents a week earlier at my childhood home in Concord, Ohio, a suburb east of Cleveland.

There, the unfinished basement remains something of a shrine to the Cleveland Indians, particularly the 1990s-era teams of my youth. There are laminated Cleveland Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal section fronts documenting postseason triumphs adhered to the cinder-block walls. There are autographed items – including signatures from Ruben Amaro and Jerry Dipoto – and a sequence of photos details the rise of Progressive Field from an old market and warehouse district just south of the city center in the early 1990s. The basement is something of an archaeology of fandom. It’s also the only place Mom would allow for such clutter. Though covering the sport as a member of the press diminishes enthusiasm for any one team, I was raised to be a fan of the sport. I still very much am.

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