Kuzul

Not only are we still in the year 2016, but we also haven’t even gotten past the holidays yet. Spring training is but a glimmer on the Major League Baseball horizon.

And yet, I can already make out some of the position battles people will be talking about.

While there’s still plenty of hot stove wheeling and dealing for the league to take care of, enough has gone down to highlight positions that are settled and positions that are not. Let’s focus our attention on the latter and preview 10 position battles that figure to be the most heated come spring training.

First, some ground rules. Position battles on contending teams carry more weight, so the list ahead consists exclusively of such battles. The rankings are unscientific but generally relate to the intrigue of the players and positions involved and the team overseeing it all.

Now then, let’s take it away…

Begin Slideshow

There’s always going to be a reaction whenever star players change hands on the MLB trade market. Heck, it would be weird if people didn’t say, “Wow!” or some other exclamation.

But these days, we’re often saying, “Wow!” not at the reality that such players are being traded but at what they’re being traded for.

We know this because we can round up a bullet-pointed list of prominent examples from this winter, this summer and last winter. Like so…

This Winter

• The Boston Red Sox sent four prospects—including MLB.com‘s No. 1- and No. 30-ranked prospects, Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech, respectively—to the Chicago White Sox for ace left-hander Chris Sale.
• The Washington Nationals sent three prospects, including No. 3-ranked Lucas Giolito and No. 38-ranked Reynaldo Lopez, to the White Sox for center fielder Adam Eaton.

This Summer

• The Cleveland Indians sent four prospects, including No. 15-ranked Clint Frazier and No. 78-ranked Justus Sheffield, to the New York Yankees for ace reliever Andrew Miller.
• The Chicago Cubs sent four players, including No. 17-ranked Gleyber Torres, to the Yankees for closer Aroldis Chapman.
• The Red Sox sent No. 13-ranked Anderson Espinoza to the San Diego Padres for All-Star lefty Drew Pomeranz.

Last Winter

• The Arizona Diamondbacks sent a controllable outfielder (Ender Inciarte), their 2015 No. 1 pick (SS Dansby Swanson) and a well-regarded pitching prospect (RHP Aaron Blair) to the Atlanta Braves for right-hander Shelby Miller.
• The Houston Astros sent six players, including hard-throwing righty Vince Velasquez and No. 83 prospect Derek Fisher, to the Philadelphia Phillies for ace reliever Ken Giles and minor league infielder Jonathan Arauz.
• The Red Sox sent four prospects, including No. 26-ranked Manuel Margot, to the Padres for closer Craig Kimbrel.

The Braves got the most praise for shaking down the Diamondbacks in the Miller trade. But to some degree or another, the sellers in each trade got thumbs-up from all corners of the baseball realm.

And this may not even be a comprehensive list of recent seller-friendly trades. There are cases to be made for the Diamondbacks in the Jean Segura trade, the Kansas City Royals in the Wade Davis trade, the Milwaukee Brewers in the Jonathan Lucroy/Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith trades, the Oakland A’s in the Rich Hill/Josh Reddick trade and the Yankees in the Carlos Beltran trade.

And so on. Point is: It’s been hard to be underwhelmed at what star talent has gone for.

It wasn’t always like this.

Five winters ago, Rany Jazayerli was lamenting at Grantland how teams no longer seemed able to trade star veterans for young studs. Just two winters ago, Dave Cameron of FanGraphs drew up a list of recent big-ticket trades and found the buyer-friendly deals easily outweighed the seller-friendly deals.

As for why this seemed so shocking, Cameron wrote:

It feels like if our default reaction to star player trades is almost always that the seller isn’t getting enough in return, then it’s more likely that our expectations are what is out of whack, and not that every team selling a star player is misreading the market for their player.

Survey says: yup.

While NFL and NBA fans have long obsessed over the next wave of talent playing in the college and high school ranks, it’s more recently that baseball fans have taken to obsessing over the next wave of talent playing in the minor leagues. That’s partially owed to the proliferation of prospect coverage on the series of tubes known as the “internet.”

But it’s also a reaction to reality.

In 2014, FiveThirtyEight’s Neil Paine pointed out that MLB’s star power had been shifting to younger players as the league moved further past the steroid era. And it hasn’t stopped. FanGraphs‘ WAR claims that the last two years have been the best ever for 25-and-under hitters. Young pitchers, meanwhile, have at least guaranteed big radar gun readings.

Of course, this isn‘t just an excuse for fans to grow attached to prospects. It’s also an excuse for major league front offices to do the same.

In cases like the Astros and Cubs, that’s meant tearing down what they had and using the draft and international market to build contenders from scratch. More recently, the Braves, Brewers, Phillies, Padres and now the White Sox have set themselves on that path.

At the same time, there’s also the effect that the second wild card has had since it was introduced in 2012. It’s emboldened more teams to try and contend every year. So while every team now values young talent, there’s also a sharp line between two different classes of teams. There are the few rebuilders and the many contenders.

In an environment like this—one with lots of young talent to go around and some teams having more incentive than others to stockpile it—it may have been just a matter of time before seller-friendly trades became more common. All that was needed was the same thing the Joker tells us connects madness and gravity: a little push.

What happened last winter seems to have done the trick.

Last offseason’s free-agent class was by far the best in recent memory and was paid accordingly. Per Jeff Todd of MLB Trade Rumors, nearly $2.5 billion was spent on free agents. That made the trade market the only place teams could look for relatively cheap impact talent. 

This set the stage for the Kimbrel, Giles and Miller trades, which went down within a month of each other. The trade that sent Chapman from the Reds to the Yankees didn’t fit for extraordinary circumstances, but those three trades effectively pushed the trade market’s scales in favor of sellers.

The summer trade market then provided the perfect environment for other sellers to take advantage. The second wild card created the usual gap between buyers and sellers around the trade deadline, but there was an extra wrinkle this time around. Clubs like the Reds, Phillies, Braves and Padres had largely already stripped themselves of their best trade chips. Other clubs like the Diamondbacks, Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Angels had good players but none really for sale.

The many teams looking to deal for impact talent thus had very few sellers to turn to, creating the ultimate seller’s market. That was good news for the Yankees, especially, who made the gutsy (and correct) call to pull the plug on a mediocre present to take aim at a brighter future.

Which brings us to this winter, in which the seller-friendly trade market has been upheld by an old-fashioned market force: supply and demand.

This winter’s free-agent market is the polar opposite of last year’s market. Keith Law of ESPN.com spoke for everyone in writing it “might be the worst I’ve ever seen.” He specifically lamented the market’s lack of athleticism and starting pitching, the latter of which wasn’t lost on executives.

“The starting pitching landscape this offseason has been a story for what, 18 months now?” Tampa Bay Rays general manager Erik Neander told Jerry Crasnick of ESPN.com. “There’s been as much of an advance-notice publicly as there’s been in a while with respect to a free-agent class.”

This put the White Sox in an enviable position with Sale, and they took advantage of it. While nobody seems to think the Red Sox made a horrible trade, the White Sox may have gotten just as much applause for the return they got. Even Red Sox boss Dave Dombrowski admitted he paid a heavy price.

“There will come a day when Moncada is putting in his 15-year career that we will be saying, ‘The Red Sox, geez, I can’t believe we traded that guy,'” he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today. “So yes, it does complicate it. He’s a great player. If he’s not a tremendous player, I’ll be very surprised.”

The White Sox were in a similar position with Eaton, whose athleticism elevated him amid a market dominated by one-dimensional sluggers. This time, Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post reported the reaction among executives was decidedly pro-White Sox.

“I love Eaton. But I’m pretty shocked,” said one.

The lack of athleticism on the open market likely also helped the Diamondbacks swap Segura for the upside that Walker, a former elite prospect, may still have. Before the winter is over, it’s a good bet that another team will get a big return for a starting pitcher (sideways glance at Jose Quintana).

Another good bet is that life won’t always be this good for the trade market’s sellers. These things go in cycles. The next one will either be the market evening out or shifting back in favor of buyers.

By the same token, the shift in favor of sellers over the last year is something that was likely inevitable and that has been realized by a perfect storm of circumstances.

If nothing else, a reminder that such things don’t happen by accident.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Contract and payroll data courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Cleveland Indians left the rest of the American League in their dust in the 2016 MLB playoffs. After winning 94 games in the regular season, they won seven of eight games en route to a near miss in the World Series.      

But a couple of AL clubs have made key additions since then, so clearly the only thing the Indians could do in response is sign the best free agent remaining on the market.

OK, maybe it’s not the only thing they could have done. But after weeks of will-they-or-won’t-they rumors and speculation, the Indians finally went ahead and signed Edwin Encarnacion on Thursday. According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, the veteran slugger is joining up on a three-year contract:

Cleveland can consider this a discount. According to FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, Encarnacion once had an $80 million offer on the table to return to the Toronto Blue Jays. He was projected by MLB Trade Rumors to sign for even more at $92 million.

The fact that Encarnacion is settling for a $65 million deal might tell us that he overplayed his hand on this winter’s market by rejecting Toronto’s $80 million offer. It certainly didn’t help his case that he was sharing space with a collection of similarly one-dimensional sluggers.

But more to the point, it tells us that Cleveland could see what the rest of us could see: It had an opening for a right-handed slugger who could fit at first base and designated hitter.

That was Mike Napoli’s job in 2016, and he did it splendidly by posting an .800 OPS and tying Carlos Santana for the team lead with 34 home runs. But now he’s a free agent. And while Napoli would have come cheaper than Encarnacion, the extra money spent Thursday has bought a significant upgrade.

This isn’t a scorching take, is it? Nah, I don’t think so.

Encarnacion has hit 193 home runs since 2012, 77 more than Napoli and only four fewer than league leader Chris Davis. By adjusted OPS+, Encarnacion has also been one of the AL’s five best hitters over the last five seasons:

1. Mike Trout: 173
2. Miguel Cabrera: 166
3. David Ortiz: 154
4. Edwin Encarnacion: 146
5. Jose Abreu: 143

Beyond Encarnacion’s ties to draft-pick compensation and his limited skill set, his red flags are his age (34 in January) and his escalating strikeout rate.

But as long as he’s only being weighed against the incumbent Napoli, neither thing is a big concern for Cleveland. Encarnacion is a year younger, and he won’t be anything close to the strikeout black hole Napoli was.

Now, if anyone wants to get technical, the Indians didn’t really need an upgrade as substantial as Encarnacion.

That would imply that they didn’t already have an easy road to a playoff spot in 2017. They did. They’re part of an MLB landscape that, as Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs highlighted, might not feature any division races. They were projected for 89 wins before signing Encarnacion, six more than the next best projection in the AL Central. 

However, Cleveland’s unfinished business for 2017 isn’t winning the division. It’s winning the World Series. 

Two AL teams figured to make that tough. The Boston Red Sox began the winter as a good team and got better after adding Chris Sale and Tyler Thornburg. The Houston Astros also began the winter as a good team and got better with Josh Reddick, Brian McCann and Charlie Morton. Both the Red Sox (93 wins) and the Astros (90 wins) were projected to win more games than Cleveland.

That’s changed. Encarnacion’s signing has boosted the Indians’ projection to 92 wins. They’re right there with the Red Sox and Astros on paper, and even that undersells their World Series aspirations.

This is a team that just won a division title without virtually any help from star outfielder Michael Brantley and only half a season of Andrew Miller’s dominance out of the bullpen. They also won a pennant without any help from Carlos Carrasco and Danny Salazar in the postseason.

They’ll all be back in 2017, and it’s certainly worth noting that guys like Francisco Lindor, Jason Kipnis, Corey Kluber and Cody Allen haven’t gone anywhere. Neither has Terry Francona, who just won his second Manager of the Year award in four seasons in Cleveland.

Signing Encarnacion was really the only big move the Indians needed to make. He obviously helps them on a macro level. On a micro level, he could be a weapon against Boston’s ace lefties (Sale and David Price) and a terror at the bandbox that is Minute Maid Park in any potential postseason matchups.

The catch, such as it is, is that he’s costing the Indians more money than they’ve ever spent on a free agent. He’s also costing them the No. 25 pick in the 2017 draft. This is a heavy price for the normally thrifty Indians to pay.

But if ever there were time for them to do so, it’s right now.

For one thing, the club’s financials are in better shape than they have been in some time. According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, executives estimate their trip to the World Series was worth “tens of millions” of extra dollars. Rosenthal also noted Cleveland “almost certainly” benefited from welcoming Kansas City entrepreneur John Sherman as a minority ownership partner. 

As for the lost draft pick, some consolation there is that No. 25 is a relatively low pick. Further consolation is that now is not the time for Cleveland to worry about stockpiling young talent.

Their goal is to win it all right now. They had enough to do that before signing Encarnacion. Now they have everything they need.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series in 2016. And by looking at their roster, it sure looks like they can turn right around and win another in 2017.

So, they might as well set their sights on the more distant future—specifically on how long they can keep Kris Bryant around with a contract extension worthy of his talents.

The Cubs don’t need their star third baseman to prove anything else. All he’s done in the last four years is make everyone else look bad. Bryant was Baseball America‘s College Player of the Year and the No. 2 pick in the draft in 2013. He was the Minor League Player of the Year in 2014. He was the National League Rookie of the Year in 2015. This year, he was the NL MVP and a World Series champion.

Bryant already owns a .900 career OPS with 65 home runs and 21 stolen bases. The 24-year-old has been one of the most valuable players in baseball since 2015. He also holds a special place in the wins above replacement rankings for third basemen through two seasons:

1. Kris Bryant: 13.6
2. Evan Longoria: 11.8
3. Wade Boggs: 11.7
4. Eddie Mathews: 10.6
5. Art Devlin: 8.9

At the risk of stating the obvious, here goes nothing: Bryant is not only the best player on the Cubs but just the kind of player they should want as their franchise cornerstone.

There’s no hurry for the Cubs to extend Bryant. He’s not arbitration-eligible until 2018. And thanks to some shady service-time manipulation, Bryant’s not due for free agency until after the 2021 season.

But if nothing else, starting extension talks with Bryant would be a much-needed show of good faith by Chicago.

Though the Cubs were within their rights to keep him in the minors at the start of 2015 and thus extend his club control from six years to seven, Bryant and agent Scott Boras were miffed about it enough to file a grievance.

This spring, Bryant played the good soldier but also let slip his hope that baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement would open a window for him to hit free agency earlier.

“I don’t know if I should speak on any of that, just because I’m still young,” he told Patrick Mooney of CSN Chicago in mid-March. “I’m still trying to figure out the process of how things work. And if that happens, that would be great.”

Bryant didn’t get his wish, as Mark Gonzales of the Chicago Tribune reported Dec. 2 that the new CBA did nothing to alter his situation. Regardless, it may not be long before he becomes considerably less amenable to signing an extension.

He is, after all, a Boras client. Such players have generally been exempt from the recent trend of teams locking up their homegrown stars with big extensions. Boras‘ preference is to take his guys to free agency, where the prices are higher.

And right now, the going rate for superstar free agents is close to skyrocketing.

It’s all about the 2018-19 offseason. That’s when Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson and other notables are due for free agency. The biggest contracts in baseball are worth around $25 million to $30 million per year. The 2018-19 offseason could boost that figure to $35 million to $40 million per year.

Once Bryant and Boras see such figures with Bryant only three years from his turn, there will be little chance they settle for a more team-friendly offer from the Cubs.

Now is just the right time for such an offer.

A ton of money will come off the Cubs’ books after 2017. Also, the short distance between Bryant and his arbitration eligibility and the long distance between him and his free agency could make him willing to trade long-term earning power for immediate financial security.

The most obvious comparison to Bryant’s situation is the one that preceded Mike Trout’s signing a six-year, $144.5 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels in 2014.

That was not only a case of an elite young player who signed for big money, but Trout was also fresh off his first two full seasons and heading into his final pre-arbitration season. His extension bought out all three of his arbitration years and three free-agent seasons.

The money in Trout’s deal ($24.1 million per year) is close to what Bryant and the Cubs could agree on. The difference is that he’s older now than Trout was in 2014, which raises complications.

If Bryant were to sign a six-year contract that started in his first arbitration year in 2018, he’d be giving away only two free-agent years but also setting himself up to hit the market after his age-31 season in 2023. That’s older than most teams like their free agents, which won’t be lost on Boras.

The Cubs could settle for buying only one year of Bryant’s free agency, of course. But if they’re going to spend big on him this early, they’ll want to ensure they get him for more than just one year longer than they’re projected to. And since he’s so far from free agency at this point, there’s also the question of why the man himself would give up any free-agent years.

The best way around these issues? How about copying what the Miami Marlins did with Giancarlo Stanton?

The 13-year, $325 million contract Stanton signed in 2015 is known for being the largest in professional sports history. But due to the opt-out after 2020, it’s really a six-year, $107 million contract with a seven-year, $218 million option. It will be a huge payday if Stanton serves the whole thing, but he has a window to even more riches if they’re there for the taking.

Mind you, the Cubs couldn’t get away with back-loading a similar deal as much as the Marlins did. Bryant’s too good for that.

“Stanton is great, but for me, I’d rather have Bryant over any player in the game not named Mike Trout,” one NL executive told John Perrotto of FanRag Sports in November.

But if the Cubs offered, say, $25 million per year for six years with an opt-out after 2023 and $30 million-plus per year afterward, they could soon have Bryant’s signature on the dotted line. Such a deal would up the ante on the biggest contract in history and also give Bryant a chance to earn even more money.

Whether it’s a shorter deal or a longer deal with an escape hatch, the numbers in any extension for Bryant are going to be either big or bigger. This is what he’s earned after establishing himself as such a special talent, and the Cubs should be more than happy to oblige him.

If this isn’t already a top priority, it should be sooner rather than later.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Contract and payroll data courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Nobody can fault the New York Yankees if they’re getting cold feet with their plan to take the long way back to success, but the best advice for them right now is to stay the course.

That would involve not making a trade for Chicago White Sox left-hander Jose Quintana. As Jon Morosi of MLB Network reported Monday, that’s something the Yankees are at least interested in doing:

What we have here is a team with a square hole to fill casting its gaze on a square peg.

The Yankees added a major piece to their bullpen when they brought back Aroldis Chapman on an $86 million contract. However, even he and Dellin Betances can only pick up so much slack for a starting rotation that’s littered with question marks beyond Masahiro Tanaka.

Quintana would be quite the answer to that problem.

Although he’s so far spent his big league career playing Garfunkel to Chris Sale’s Simon, Quintana’s no slouch. He’s posted a 3.35 ERA across 814.2 innings over the last four seasons. He’s actually produced more wins above replacement than Sale, who turned his Sox from White to Red during the winter meetings, since the start of 2015.

As if that alone didn’t give him enough value, Quintana also offers something that makes baseball executives swoon: cheap control. Including options, his contract runs through 2020 for $37.85 million.

For the rebuilding White Sox, Quintana’s oodles of value are worth a big ol’ bucket of prospects in a trade. Morosi’s right about that being another thing that makes him a fit for the Yankees.

They went into 2016 with a decent farm system and came out of it with an elite one. That was thanks to the Yanks accepting their grim reality and aiming for a bright future by trading Chapman, Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran. When Jim Callis of MLB.com sized up the league’s farm systems in August, he ranked the Yankees’ system at No. 2.

However, there is a difference between a trade that can be made and a trade that should be made. Quintana to the Yankees is certainly the former, but it falls short of the latter.

If anyone were to drop in on Yankees general manager Brian Cashman and tell him as much, he might say they’re preaching to the choir. This was ESPN.com’s Andrew Marchand’s response to the Quintana report:

Cashman touches base for nearly every available player; especially when it is need based. However, the White Sox want a boatload of prospects. The Yankees have been disinclined to trade any of them so, unless that changes, it seems unlikely Quintana will end up in the Bronx.

If so, Cashman would be sticking to what he said in early October about not wanting to take a newly minted elite farm system and immediately empty it again.

“You’d have to be one piece away, and I would not recommend that type of decision-making as we approach the 2017 season,” he said of the possibility of making any big trades, per the Associated Press via ESPN.com. “I think that would be a dangerous approach.”

Still, it’s possible Cashman’s trade finger is itchier now than it was before.

The Yankees did end 2016 on a positive note, riding a boost from Gary Sanchez and other youngsters to a 40-34 record in the second half. And while he’ll be sticking around through at least 2019 and possibly through 2021, signing Chapman was more of a win-now move than a win-later move.

Right now, the Yankees are on the Kansas City Royals/Chicago Cubs path to success. But from the above seeds could grow a desire to shorten the road to contention.

FanGraphs’ projections for 2017 now have the Yankees in the “not quite in it, not quite out of it” range with an 83-79 record. Adding Quintana would put them closer to the Red Sox in the AL East power structure and perhaps elevate them above all other American League wild-card contenders.

But at what cost? Glad you asked, Anonymous Internet Person.

Craig Edwards of FanGraphs put the rough estimate for Quintana’s surplus value on top of his contract at $80 to $90 million. That’s not far off what the White Sox received in the Sale trade, which netted them No. 1 prospect Yoan Moncada and more, and it makes it possible to guess at what the Yankees would have to give up to get Quintana.

Going off the prospect values offered by Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli at The Point of Pittsburgh, the Yankees would likely have to base an offer around a hitter ranked in the 11-25 range of Baseball America‘s top 100. Such players carry $62 million in surplus value.

Per Baseball America‘s most recent top 100, that would mean a trade based around shortstop Jorge Mateo (No. 19) or outfielder Clint Frazier (No. 21), with shortstop Gleyber Torres (No. 27) possibly being close enough to make the grade.

And that’s just to start.

The Yankees might have to add outfielder Aaron Judge (No. 42) or outfielder Blake Rutherford, a 2016 first-round pick who checks in at No. 51 for MLB.com. If not, surely the worst secondary piece the White Sox would settle for is left-hander Justus Sheffield, who’s No. 69 for Baseball America.

The upside of sacrificing this much prospect depth would be a couple extra wins on the Yankees’ 2017 projection. But not even a trade for Clayton Kershaw would be enough to make up the gap between them and the Red Sox, which currently stands at 10 games. To be safe, the Yankees would need more.

To be sure, they could indeed add more. They would still have pieces to trade for another starter. They could also sign one of the market’s remaining sluggers (Edwin Encarnacion, Mark Trumbo, et al) to lengthen out their lineup.

But if the Yankees were to go that route, they’ll have fallen right back in the same trap that necessitated them finally stockpiling prospects in the first place. They would have a team that would be good without being heavy favorites now, and which would have little young talent or payroll space with which to fix problems in the future.

The alternative is remaining patient and building something much stronger from the ground up.

The Yankees have already started doing this with Sanchez, Judge and Greg Bird lined up for regular roles in 2017. When their other young talents arrive, they’ll be sitting on a young core the likes of which the franchise hasn’t seen since the Core Four materialized two decades ago—yes, it has been that long.

It worked for the Royals. It worked for the Cubs. If they let it, it can work for the Yankees too.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

I hate to break it to the following MLB teams, but, um, well…it may be too late for them to save their best-laid plans for the winter.

In fairness, the hot stove season isn’t a walk in the park. It’s more like a stroll through a minefield. Things don’t always go as planned even for teams that carefully chart their courses.

We’re here to talk about four such teams. Their situations are largely different, but what they have in common is they’re now left to pick up the pieces from grand offseason plans that have fizzled. Some are in deeper trouble than others, such as the…

Miami Marlins

The Marlins were the little engine that could in 2016, staying in second place in the National League East until late August. But they started slipping in September and then experienced an unthinkable tragedy when ace pitcher Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident.

Mourning came first, but the Marlins were eventually going to have to address what was a mediocre starting rotation even despite Fernandez’s efforts. That put them in a bind with a free-agent market devoid of top-of-the-rotation talent.

Thus, the Marlins settled for a couple of depth signings with Edinson Volquez and Jeff Locke. Per Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports, their plan to get around their lack of starting talent was to instead filter talent into their bullpen. They wanted a “super pen.”

Not a bad idea! The Marlins bullpen was powerful and effective in 2016, averaging an NL-best 94.0 mph in fastball velocity with a solid 3.63 ERA. If they could add Aroldis Chapman or Kenley Jansen, they would indeed have a super pen that could downplay their weak starting rotation.

Well, nobody can say they didn’t try.

Heyman reported the Marlins were willing to go above $80 million to sign Chapman, but he took $86 million from the New York Yankees instead. According to Joe Frisaro of MLB.com, the Marlins offered Jansen more than the $80 million he accepted from the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Like that, the Marlins whiffed on the guys who could have granted their wish. Plan B is looking less audacious.

The Marlins have signed Junichi Tazawa, who is perfectly serviceable but no more than that. Frisaro reported they’ve also signed Brad Ziegler, who is better but still not the shutdown reliever Miami desires.

The only way the Marlins can get back on that path is by turning to the trade market, where big targets like Zach Britton and David Robertson reside. But this is unrealistic. With a farm system that Baseball America ranked at No. 29 going into 2016, the Marlins are not well off with prospects. Also, it’s not good for their leverage that the word is out how badly they want an ace closer.

The Marlins might have had a shot at upsetting the 2017 NL East race if they’d gotten their super pen. But now whatever shot they have will be of the long variety. The Marlins weren’t better than the Washington Nationals or New York Mets in 2016, and they haven’t gotten better this winter.

But speaking of teams in the NL East with closer trouble…

Washington Nationals

Mind you, the Nationals aren’t quite in the same boat as the Marlins. They began the winter in a better place after winning 95 games and the NL East in 2016. They’ve also advanced forward. Despite some bellyaching to the contrary, their trade for Adam Eaton is just fine.

And yet Washington’s offseason is just as easily defined by its misses as by that one hit.

At one point, Heyman reported it had a “clear lead” in the sweepstakes for Chris Sale before he went to the Boston Red Sox. Per Heyman, it also made a run at Andrew McCutchen that didn’t pan out.

By that point, the Nationals had already missed out on re-signing Mark Melancon to fill their closer hole. According to ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark, that prompted a run at Wade Davis. They then turned to Jansen after the Chicago Cubs traded for Davis. According to Sherman, he turned down more money to return to the Dodgers.

The good news despite all this is that a closer is all the Nationals need.

Getting Eaton instead of McCutchen filled their center field vacancy. Getting Sale would have been nice, but a rotation that posted a 3.60 ERA in 2016 didn’t need him. Also not to be forgotten is their decision to trade for a healthy Derek Norris rather than re-sign an injured Wilson Ramos to play catcher. As is, the Nationals are easily projected to win the 2017 NL East race at FanGraphs.

But while another NL East title would be nice, it’s a World Series the Nationals are after. And if recent Octobers have made anything clear, it’s that nothing helps translate regular-season success to postseason success quite like a deep and talented bullpen.

With only Shawn Kelley and Blake Treinen possessing reliable arms, the Nationals don’t have one of those. Their best options for fixing that now reside on the trade market, where they figure to encounter a problem referenced above: a lack of leverage relating to their desperation being out in the open.

What’s most likely to happen is the Nationals going into 2017 without a true closer and winging it. Risky, but at least that sounds better than the situation in Pittsburgh…

Pittsburgh Pirates

The Pirates fell hard from grace in 2016, winning 20 fewer games than they did in 2015. Starting pitching that was normally good went bad, and McCutchen went from an MVP-caliber player to a replacement-level player.

It sure seemed like the Pirates were committed to solving the latter issue by trading McCutchen before his value can sink any further. A deal with the Nationals seemed inevitable during the winter meetings.

That fell through, and it’s prompted the club to start singing a different tune.

“Our intent coming in here was to have Andrew McCutchen in our lineup going forward. No one changed that,” Pirates general manager Neal Huntington said, via Adam Berry of MLB.com. “It’s unlikely that someone changes that going forward. We’re not going to close the door, but we’re not going to be making calls.”

If the latest from Heyman is any indication, the Pirates may indeed be taking a hardline stance on not wanting to force a trade:

With proper leverage, the Pirates might find a team willing to grant their wish. But with the Nationals filling their center field need with Eaton and the Texas Rangers filling theirs by re-signing Carlos Gomez, it doesn’t help their cause that the two best fits for McCutchen are now accounted for.

As for how McCutchen is holding up, it seems all the rumors put a chip on the former MVP’s shoulder.

“I didn’t like almost being traded,” he said Dec. 10, via Pirates Breakdown. “I don’t know anything outside of Pittsburgh. It’s very tough. It can be a part of the game.”

There’s a bridge to be repaired here. What could make that harder is that, per Heyman, the Pirates also want to discuss moving McCutchen out of center field and into a corner outfield spot. A sound idea, but awkward timing.

Meanwhile, the Pirates have done nothing to shore up their starting pitching woes.

Their best hope is to re-sign Ivan Nova, but even he could be outside their price range. MLB Trade Rumors projected him to earn $52 million this winter. That’s $13 million more than the Pirates have ever paid a free agent.

The Pirates could dip into their considerable prospect depth to try to make a splash on the trade market. But after it took a huge haul for the Red Sox to get Sale, it would probably take everything the Pirates had to land Jose Quintana or Chris Archer.

As if the Pirates needed another headache, third baseman Jung Ho Kang was recently arrested for DUI and is only a few months removed from a sexual assault allegation. Hint: Go buy stock in aspirin.

From rough seas in the Steel City, there ain’t no mountain high enough to keep us from diving into the weird times in Motown…

Detroit Tigers

Rather than give way to speculation the Tigers would break up after a second straight postseason-less year in 2016, GM Al Avila seemed to promise early in the winter they would.

“We want to get younger. We want to get leaner. We want to run the organization without having to go over our means,” Avila said in November to MLB.com’s Jason Beck. “We want to stay competitive, but at the same time, this organization has been working way above its means for some time.”

Like that, it was easy to see all Detroit’s chips on the table. Justin Verlander was an option for starting pitcher-needy teams. Ian Kinsler was an asset on the second base market. Miguel Cabrera, J.D. Martinez, Victor Martinez and Justin Upton could be marketed to teams in need of power.

Several weeks later, though, they’re all still there. And likely for good.

Due to his age and the size of his contract, Verlander will not yield the assets Sale did for the White Sox. The open market being loaded with sluggers has seemingly crushed the demand for Detroit’s sluggers. Kinsler has an obvious fit with the Dodgers, but his no-trade clause is a big hurdle in the way of a deal.

This puts the Tigers in a position to stay the course for 2017. With a good chunk of their core already past the age of 30, it’ll basically be a last hurrah.

Trouble is, the Tigers don’t project to be very good. FanGraphs has them down for 83 wins, putting them well short of the Cleveland Indians in the AL Central power structure.

Beyond merely being another disappointment, 2017 also has the capacity to set the Tigers’ future back by a few years. If all the above players regress from their 2016 performances, their trade value will slide accordingly. Whereas the Tigers might have been able to get talent for them now, they may only be able to dump their salaries later. That would be no help to a farm system that needs it.

Assuming they remain open for business, there’s still time for the Tigers to deal some of their veterans and take their first step toward a new era. But it seems more likely that step will not occur, pushing that new era even further into the realm of abstraction.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

If you were to cross paths with Jose Bautista and offer him a penny to play a game of catch, you might have just made the leading offer for his services.

This is, of course, a gross exaggeration of how bad a time the slugger is having on the free-agent market. But by all accounts, he’s not having a good time. The MLB offseason is a week removed from the winter meetings, and his final destination is as much a mystery now as it was when his odyssey began in earnest on Nov. 14.

That was the day Bautista, 36, and fellow veteran slugger Edwin Encarnacion rejected qualifying offers from the Toronto Blue Jays. That meant spurning a $17.2 million salary for 2017 in favor of the riches the open market typically showers on anyone with a powerful bat. With an MLB-high 249 home runs since 2010, Bautista surely fits the bill.

But rather than run to embrace him, teams have avoided him like Adrian Beltre avoids head rubs.

The Boston Red Sox could have signed Bautista to fill David Ortiz’s designated-hitter shoes and to take aim at the Green Monster. That’s apparently what Bautista was hoping for, as Peter Gammons reported at Gammons Daily this week that he “wanted to work something out” with Boston.

But that didn’t pan out. The Red Sox took care of that opening when they signed Mitch Moreland to play first base and bumped Hanley Ramirez to DH.

But then, maybe the Red Sox weren’t the best fit for Bautista anyway. Maybe he would fit best with a club that could use him at DH and in right field, where he’s been a mainstay since 2010. No three fits stand out quite like the Cleveland Indians, Baltimore Orioles and Texas Rangers.

The Indians, however, don’t seem nearly as interested in Bautista as they are in Encarnacion, who Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports rightfully highlighted as a perfect fit for them.

As for the Orioles, it seems even their front office can neither forget nor forgive the activities Bautista has been known to engage in when he’s not hitting dingers. Here’s general manager Dan Duquette, via Blue Jays play-by-play man Mike Wilner:

There may be a similar sentiment in Texas. Conversations between the Rangers and Bautista’s agent didn’t go anywhere, according to Jeff Wilson of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, via ESPN.com (the Wilson article has since been deleted). Maybe the Rangers couldn’t guarantee Rougned Odor wouldn’t punch Bautista again.

With all the clear fits seemingly off the board, it’s on to the merely possible fits. Jon Paul Morosi of MLB.com reported this week that there’s not much going on there either. The New York Yankees, San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers aren’t particularly interested. The Chicago White Sox and Philadelphia Phillies might be able to use Bautista, but neither is in a hurry to win.

The sheer dryness of Bautista’s market feels like it should be surprising. Or at least, among the many things our pre-2016 selves would be shocked to discover if they traveled forward in time.

But in reality, well, this all makes sense, doesn’t it?

The open market does love to pay sluggers, but usually that’s in part because there are only so many of them to go around. That’s not the case this winter.

Bautista is sharing the market with not just Encarnacion, but reigning MLB home run champ Mark Trumbo, reigning National League home run co-champ Chris Carter and quality sluggers like Mike Napoli, Brandon Moss and Pedro Alvarez.

Then there’s the draft-pick compensation that Bautista chained to his ankle when he rejected his qualifying offer. Most teams would have to surrender a first-round pick to sign him. Only Encarnacion and Trumbo share that distinction, and they have two advantages.

One: They’re younger. Encarnacion is headed for his age-34 season. Trumbo, for his age-31 season.

Two: Encarnacion and Trumbo are coming off a healthier and more productive season than Bautista. 

Bautista’s skills didn’t completely diminish in 2016. He continued to draw a ton of walks. And by posting a career-high 41.0 hard-hit percentage, he showed he still has plenty of pop in his bat.

On the downside, Bautista needed two disabled list stints for a bad toe and a bad knee. This is in addition to a slow recovery from a 2015 shoulder injury that limited his throwing ability.

“It’s using it when you need to, having the history of the injury last year, on an unnecessary throw, there’s more of a conscious effort on my end to just make the necessary throw,” he told Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca in April.

This compromised the one valuable talent Bautista had on defense, so it’s no wonder he finished with below-average metrics for a second straight year. He’s likely finished as an effective everyday right fielder.

Stemming from a report by Rick Westhead of TSN Sports, there was buzz during spring training about Bautista demanding a five-year, $150 million extension from the Blue Jays. He never was going to get that. Given how much his value was crippled in 2016, it’s now fair to wonder if he’ll even get a third of that this winter, as MLB Trade Rumors projected he would.

The state of Bautista’s market is such that, as MLB.com’s Gregor Chisholm reported, the Blue Jays aren’t even willing to top the $17.2 million he would have been paid had he accepted his qualifying offer. His hopes for doing better rest on a couple of scenarios.

One is that a team with a protected draft pick comes calling. But that’s where his hopes are slim. The Los Angeles Angels need their DH spot for Albert Pujols. The Tampa Bay Rays have an opening but are eternally short on cash. None of the other teams in the top 10 is a good fit.

The other hope is that one of the aforementioned teams comes around. The Indians, Orioles and Rangers are the best bets to do so. But with draft picks hanging in the balance, none have incentive to offer more than the Blue Jays, who don’t stand to lose a pick, are offering.

Could the Blue Jays up the ante? Possibly, but Bautista can’t pressure them by pointing to a DH opening. The Blue Jays filled that with Kendrys Morales. Right field is still open, but the Blue Jays know as well as anyone that Bautista can no longer hack it out there.

For Bautista, the bright and sunny thought to keep in mind is that there’s still a lot of winter left. Teams can be talked into things. Failing that, there’s always the possibility of a freakish occurrence that provides a Prince Fielder-esque bump.

But the way things have gone so far, Bautista will soon be an expert in thumb twiddling if he isn’t already. He’ll find a home eventually, but for now he’s the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Los Angeles Dodgers are going to be good in 2017. For fans of the franchise, this must be at once comforting and beside the point.

The Dodgers being good has been a fact of life for the last four seasons. They’ve averaged 92 wins per year, captured four National League West titles and made two trips to the National League Championship Series. That’s one more than the Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos have made in 48 years of existence.

The problem, of course, has been ascending from good to great.

Coming close to the World Series is nice, but you know what they say about coming close only counting in horseshoes and hand grenades. It’s been 28 years since the Dodgers both went to the World Series and won it—a long streak for such a storied franchise.

Not to mention one that’s been keeping its payrolls well north of $200 million since 2013. And the Dodgers recently ensured they’ll be right there again in 2017.

They committed $48 million to left-handed starter Rich Hill at the winter meetings last week. On Monday, they agreed to spend another $80 million on closer Kenley Jansen and $64 million on third baseman Justin Turner. Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com calculated that Los Angeles is slated for a $230 million luxury-tax payroll in 2017. And that’s with holes still remaining on its roster.

My initial take on the Dodgers filling three big holes by re-signing Hill, Jansen and Turner was that they secured a spot among the NL’s elite clubs in 2017. I stopped short of putting them on the same level with the Chicago Cubs because, well, the Cubs are really good.

They won 103 games in 2016. They then dispatched the Dodgers in the NLCS en route to their first World Series title in 108 years. Their roster has since taken some hits—but none they can’t recover from. It’s that simple.

Or seemed to be, anyway. After the Jansen and Turner signings, FanGraphs’ projections for MLB‘s top teams in 2017 looked like this:

It’s advised to take these figures with a grain or two of salt. But if we’re going to read into them—and we are—the general idea on display isn’t totally unbelievable.

The Cubs can look to Albert Almora and Kyle Schwarber to replace Dexter Fowler’s defense and offense in the aggregate, but his departure left them without a leadoff hitter. Wade Davis is arguably as good of a closer as Aroldis Chapman, but he’s not markedly better.

Elsewhere in the bullpen, the addition of Koji Uehara may be offset by the loss of Travis Wood. The Cubs have added Brian Duensing to fill his shoes, but he likely won’t match Wood’s extreme lefty-slaying ability. Based on his track record, Mike Montgomery, who is stepping into Jason Hammel’s rotation spot, provides no real gain and another loss for the bullpen.

While the Cubs have made seemingly no improvements, the Dodgers have made at least one big one.

Their starting rotation wasn’t an abomination in 2016, but it was a source of consternation for much of the year. Kenta Maeda was the one guy who stayed healthy and consistent. Clayton Kershaw was brilliant when he pitched, but a back injury limited him to 21 starts. Hill was excellent after he came over from the Oakland A’s in a deadline trade, but he made only six starts. Elsewhere, it was a revolving door of starters who had varying degrees of success.

It should be a different story in 2017. If nothing else, the Dodgers can rest easy knowing their ace is OK.

“I had an injury, and it’s not injured anymore, so now you keep going,” Kershaw told Ken Gurnick of MLB.com last week.

If Kershaw is his usual self and Hill makes at least 20 starts, the Dodgers will have one of the best one-two punches in the majors for most of 2017. After that, they’ll have Maeda’s reliability and healthy versions of Scott Kazmir, Alex Wood and Brandon McCarthy. They also have quite the wild card in Julio Urias, who quietly excelled in 2016 after taking a minute to find his footing in the majors.

As such, there could be something to the early projection that the Dodgers will have the best starting pitching in the league in 2017. The club’s lineup and bullpen, meanwhile, should be no worse than they were in 2016.

The former only has a hole at second base, where Chase Utley left a relatively low bar to clear. And by retaining Jansen, Los Angeles ensured games will continue to flow to one of the sport’s best relief pitchers.

The CliffsNotes version: The 2017 Dodgers will be a lot like the 2016 Dodgers, except without the starting pitching woes. That plus the non-upgrades in Chicago could close the talent gap between the two teams.

At least on paper, anyway. But while that may not mean much for the regular season, a potential postseason matchup is a different story.

The power of the postseason is its ability to magnify everything, including all the little details of each team’s roster. That tends to turn things that are mere nitpicks in the regular season into fatal flaws in October.

Which takes us back to the Dodgers’ loss to the Cubs in the NLCS.

One of the flaws Chicago exploited was Los Angeles’ lack of quality bullpen depth underneath Jansen. It had been good enough to that point, but the Cubs revealed the middle-relief parade of Joe Blanton, Pedro Baez, Ross Stripling and others to be about as unspectacular as you’d expect a parade of those names to be. They surrendered 18 runs in nine innings of work.

With only Vidal Nuno joining the mix this winter, this issue still needs solving. The free-agent market still has solid options (Greg Holland, Brad Ziegler, Sergio Romo, Joe Smith) who could help.

The bigger issue in need of attention, though, is the Dodgers’ weakness against left-handed pitching.

It was punctuated by an MLB-low OPS against southpaws in the regular season, and it bit them again in the NLCS. The Dodgers offense was undone by its lack of power, and Baseball Savant shows the problem was worse against Chicago’s lefties (.277 SLG%) than its righties (.320 SLG%).

The Dodgers have added Darin Ruf and his .921 career OPS against lefties, but that’s only one part-time bat in a sea of mostly left-handed hitters. Their payroll may be too overextended for a run at any of the free-agent options who could help, but the trade market includes some affordable alternatives: Brian Dozier and Ryan Braun, for example.

If the Dodgers want to leave good enough alone, they’ll enter 2017 with a team that should deliver another 90-plus win season and NL West title. But if the idea is to win the World Series, they need a team that can get through the Cubs.

For that, just a little bit more is required.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Salary and contract data courtesy of Cot’s Baseball Contracts.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Nearly $200 million and exactly three familiar faces later, the Los Angeles Dodgers have retained a roster worthy of the top of the National League power structure.

The first $48 million went into a three-year contract for lefty starter Rich Hill, who continued his late-career revival with a 1.83 ERA in six starts for the Dodgers in the home stretch of 2016. On Monday, Los Angeles committed another $144 million to relief ace Kenley Jansen and third baseman Justin Turner.

As Jim Bowden of ESPN and SiriusXM confirmed, Jansen’s deal is for five years and $80 million:

According to Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports, the reliever’s pact also includes an opt-out after 2019.

Confirmation on Turner’s contract is stuck in the pipeline for the moment. But Joel Sherman of the New York Post teased it will be for four years and $64 million. Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com is hearing the same:

The Dodgers aren’t finished with their offseason checklist. They still need an everyday second baseman. After Josh Reddick’s departure, they could also use corner outfield depth.

For now, though, the Dodgers deserve a tip of the ol’ cap for focusing their offseason maneuvers on the right places and the right players.

Given that he’s a 36-year-old who only twice has gone over 100 innings, Hill comes with durability questions. But talent that’s produced a 2.00 ERA in 24 starts since 2015 made him the most desirable starter on the open market and a good fit for a Dodgers rotation that had depth but needed a proper partner in crime for Clayton Kershaw.

For a player like that, $16 million per year isn’t too much. It certainly sounds better than $16 million per year for a relief pitcher, anyway.

Of course, it’s not the Dodgers’ fault they had to back up a truck filled with that much money for Jansen. Mark Melancon set the market for elite relief pitching when the San Francisco Giants signed him for $62 million over four years. Aroldis Chapman further drove the point home when he accepted five years and $86 million from the New York Yankees.

Simply going with the flow of supply and demand is out of character for a Dodgers front office that favors being analytical and, above all, rational. But, you know what they say about that.

“If you’re always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times.

It’s also not like the Dodgers are spending big on a bad reliever. Jansen has dominated since the start of his major league career back in 2010. He’s taken it to a whole ‘nother level since sharpening his control in 2013, compiling a 2.19 ERA and 7.1 strikeout-to-walk ratio over his last 268 appearances.

Through the lens of FanGraphs WAR, here are the top two relievers in baseball since 2013:

1. Aroldis Chapman: 9.7
2. Kenley Jansen: 9.4

See that difference? That doesn’t look like a $6 million difference to me.

The concern is that Jansen, now 29, will lose zip as he ages. But that’s a smaller concern with him than it is with other relievers. He averaged 93.6 mph on his cutter in 2016 but has been successful even with an average as low as 91.9 mph in 2012.

For Jansen, it’s not about velocity. It’s about movement. Like so:

That movement should ensure Jansen ages just fine. You know, sort of like another reliever who had a world-class cutter even after he was past his peak velocity.

It doesn’t take as many words to justify Turner’s contract. Although his $64 million is nearly $50 million less than the $110 million Yoenis Cespedes got from the New York Mets, it’s going toward arguably the best free agent the market had to offer.

That was Corinne Landrey‘s argument at MLB.com. And mine right here, for that matter. Over the last three seasons, Turner has posted an .856 OPS with 50 home runs while also rating as a strong defender at the hot corner.

Cue Dave Cameron‘s summary at FanGraphs:

Turner is not that much worse of a hitter than Edwin Encarnacion, only he can also play the field. The power isn’t the same, and teams continue to pay less for singles and doubles than home runs, but Turner gets to a similar overall value, and when you toss in the ability to play third base, 4/$64M in this market seems like a steal.

Although he’s already 32 years old, what sets Turner apart from other veteran free agents is how well-preserved he is. He didn’t become an everyday player until the Dodgers picked him up in 2014, which can only help him age gracefully.

With Hill, Jansen and Turner returning to the fold, the 2017 Dodgers will look a lot like the 2016 Dodgers. At worst, that could mean a repeat of a campaign that brought L.A. 91 wins and a fourth straight NL West title.

It’s likelier that even better things are in store.

The Dodgers can expect a lot more from not only Hill but Kershaw as well after a back injury limited him to 21 starts in 2016. They’ll also have healthy versions of Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir and Alex Wood. The young arms of Julio Urias and Jose De Leon contain all sorts of upside.

The Dodgers thus figure to have more than enough pitching to back up an offense anchored by capable veterans (Turner, Adrian Gonzalez and Yasmani Grandal) and explosive young guns (Corey Seager and Joc Pederson).

And since they’ve only used money to flesh out their roster to this point, the Dodgers can now use their farm system to solve their second base conundrum. Brian Dozier and Ian Kinsler are among the available trade options, per Rosenthal. The former fits the Dodgers like a glove.

Even as is, the signings of Hill, Jansen and Turner ensure the Dodgers have enough firepower to remain among the NL’s elite clubs in 2017. The reigning champion Chicago Cubs loom as the team to beat, but the Dodgers are right there with the Giants and Washington Nationals among the clubs that could bring them down.

Which is to say, the $192 million they’ve spent to bring back their guys is going toward a good cause.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

In a discussion about just how good the Boston Red Sox‘s starting rotation is, there are two options: Going over it with a fine-tooth comb, or just buying into it as the greatest thing since the last greatest thing since sliced bread.

Given that the genesis of this discussion only began last week, it’s oh-so-easy to choose Door No. 2. 

If by some chance you missed it, the Red Sox acquired ace left-hander Chris Sale in a winter meetings blockbuster. This would be the same Chris Sale who’s finished no lower than sixth in the American League Cy Young voting five years running now. He hasn’t actually won one yet, but that could change.

Not that the Red Sox need that in order to claim a former Cy Young winner in their rotation, of course. David Price won it in 2012. Rick Porcello won it this season. The insta-analysis of them now joining forces with Sale: That’s some trio!

Arguably even the best in baseball, for that matter. But I’ll leave that to Chris Bahr of Fox Sports:

However, this is baseball we’re talking about. The translation rate of offseason hype into on-field results isn’t overwhelmingly positive. Just look at the 2015 San Diego Padres or the 2016 Arizona Diamondbacks. Or rather, please don’t. It’s not pretty.

Strictly based on that principle, some skepticism about Boston’s supposed super-rotation is warranted. Then there’s what the fine-tooth comb turns up.

Although he’s been the best lefty not named Clayton Kershaw since 2012, Sale appears to be past his peak dominance. He’s followed a 2.79 ERA between 2012 and 2014 with a 3.37 ERA the last two seasons.

And it’s no secret that there was a concerning wrinkle in his most recent effort. After pushing his average fastball up to 94.5 mph in 2015, Sale’s average dropped to 92.8 mph in 2016. His strikeout rate also fell, from 11.8 per nine innings to 9.3. 

According to the man himself, this year’s velocity drop was intentional. Sale told Scott Merkin of MLB.com that he wanted to stop throwing “every single pitch as hard as I can every inning, every out.” If so, it’s possible he could turn the velocity back on if the Red Sox asked him to.

What’s more likely, though, is that his best velocity is gone for good. With his age-28 season due up, Sale is already past the point where FanGraphs‘ Bill Petti found that starting pitchers begin to leak velocity. 

The Red Sox are already going through something similar with Price, who they have signed through 2022. He’s fresh off an age-30 season in which he finished with a modest 3.99 ERA. His average fastball was down to 92.9 mph from 94.2. That helped push his strikeout rate further south of its peak.

Worse, bad things happened to Price when the ball was put in play off him. He served up a career-high 30 home runs, and he allowed career-worst hard-hit and pull percentages.

For his part, sitting at just 90.2 mph with his heat didn’t bother Porcello as he carved out a 3.15 ERA in 223 innings in 2016. Nor did he suffer from striking out only 7.6 batters per nine innings. The 27-year-old was the same pitch-to-contact guy he’s always been.

Except, only far more successful than usual. Porcello‘s batting average on balls in play plummeted to a career-low .269. Conventional sabermetric thinking says that what goes down must now come up.

So, there you have it. These are the reasons to worry about Boston’s trio of aces. It could turn out that two of them are past their prime and one of them got seriously lucky when he broke out as an ace.

But for every “Yeah, but…” there’s an equal and opposite “Well, actually…”

Porcello‘s exit velocity and other batted-ball data send mixed signals about how good he was at managing contact in 2016. But after Craig Edwards of FanGraphs dove deeper into the numbers, he calculated that even Porcello‘s adjusted batting average on balls in play still would have been well below average.

That is, he truly earned his roaring success on balls in play. How? By pitching!

“He’s really improved as an overall pitcher,” Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, who also oversaw Porcello with the Detroit Tigers, told ESPN.com’s Scott Lauber in November. “Just the ability to change speeds, I mean, his changeup, his curveball, he cuts the ball. He’s really got a better pulse of changing the [hitter’s] eyesight on various pitches. You really see the growth. I think he’s taken another step further from what he was in Detroit.”

Brooks Baseball backs up Dombrowski on all of this. Porcello does have a cutter now. He does change speeds better than he used to. He is more willing to change eye levels as well.

Put another way: Even Porcello‘s rate of 1.3 walks per nine innings in 2016 doesn’t capture how in command he was when he took the mound. He’s always been a strike-thrower. He’s now a strike-thrower with a purpose.

Same goes for Price. The veteran lefty walked only 2.0 batters per nine innings in 2016, continuing a longstanding trend of him being well under the league average. And despite all the hard contact he gave up, it wasn’t like he was consistently putting the ball right down the middle. Per Baseball Savant, he actually did that far less often than he did in 2015, when he finished second in the Cy Young voting.

So despite his 3.99 ERA, it’s no wonder Price was just aces for most of 2016. He was terrible in his first seven starts. After that, he had a 3.39 ERA in his last 28 starts.

Speaking of finishing strong, it’s a good look that Sale didn’t need an uptick in velocity to go from an 8.9 K/9 in the first half of 2016 to a 9.7 K/9 in the second half. This points to two things.

One: Even with less velocity, Sale’s stuff is filthy. Per Baseball Prospectus, the action on his four-seamer, sinker, changeup and slider all rated as elite. Here’s a taste:

Perhaps because he had been watching Porcello, Sale also started being more proactive changing eye levels in the second half. He began locating his hard stuff (namely his four-seamer) higher and his off-speed stuff lower.

Sale had to take matters into his own hands in part because White Sox catchers were doing him no favors. As Mike Petriello covered at MLB.com, Sale lost more runs to bad pitch framing than any other American League starter.

Simply switching uniforms will help solve that, and Sale could even end up on the other side of the spectrum if Christian Vazquez seizes Boston’s everyday catcher gig. Baseball Prospectus gives him 20.7 career framing runs in the majors, an absurd amount for a guy who’s only played in 112 games.

Vazquez’s framing would obviously also help Price and Porcello. And it’s worth noting none of Boston’s starters should suffer from the team’s defense.

The Red Sox were 12th in defensive efficiency in 2016. The only threat to their defense going forward is Pablo Sandoval returning to third base, but he figures to be on too short a leash to become a major threat. Meanwhile, Mitch Moreland should be a sizable defensive upgrade at first base.

It’s a big ol‘ complicated picture, but the bottom line is that the Red Sox will be happy with their rotation trio if the particulars live up to their most recent performances. Had the Red Sox had Sale, Price and Porcello in 2016, they would have combined for a 3.50 ERA and a whopping 679.2 innings.

There are indeed tangible reasons to believe this won’t happen, but they’re overwhelmed by the essential truth of the Sale-Price-Porcello trio: It’s a group of truly good pitchers. One of them has never thrown hard and the other two don’t throw as hard as they used to, but all three have proved they don’t need power to survive.

In basic terms: Believe the hype. These guys are good.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com