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As of this writing, the Los Angeles Dodgers have a glaring hole at second base. Hence the persistent trade rumors surrounding the Minnesota Twins‘ Brian Dozier.

Whether the Dodgers acquire Dozier or someone else, the odds are good they’ll add a middle infielder of note before the start of spring training.

For now, though, let’s run down the existing depth chart and look at some key players waiting in the wings.

In addition to second base, there are question marks at the back end of the rotation and some uncertainty in the outfield. However, this roster looks strong enough to compete for a fifth straight National League West crown and the Dodgers’ first championship in more than a quarter-century.

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Alex Reyes’ journey has already taken him from New Jersey to the Dominican Republic to the top of prospect rankings and finally to the major leagues in 2016.

Next stop: the top of the St. Louis Cardinals starting rotation.

OK, so that’s not set in stone. With a healthy Lance Lynn set to rejoin Adam Wainwright, Carlos Martinez, Mike Leake and Michael Wacha in 2017, the Cardinals have five proven starters for five spots. That’s a tough nut for a 22-year-old with only 46 major league innings to crack.

The Cardinals did remove a key barrier in Reyes’ way when they traded Jaime Garcia in December, however. After that, Mike Matheny declared the young right-hander would get his shot.

“He should be a starting pitcher,” the skipper said, via MLB.com. “We’ll see how it plays out through spring training. There are certain guys who have slotted innings set for them, and Alex is going to have those. He’s earned that.”

No kidding. With a 1.57 ERA in 12 appearances (five starts) last year, Reyes was a shot in the arm for a Cardinals pitching staff that had tumbled from the high perch it had occupied in 2015. That’s pretty good as far as first impressions go, and it wasn‘t even enough work to strip Reyes of his rookie status. 

That means Reyes is technically still a prospect. And my, what a prospect he is.

While there was some disagreement about the league’s best hitting prospect going into 2017, Reyes ran away as the best pitching prospect in MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo’s poll of MLB executives.

“I don’t even know who else is a candidate,” said one pro scouting director. “Reyes has the best combo of stuff and results with the stuff.”

Reyes’ stuff has had scouts drooling for years. Baseball America‘s report on him last year, for example, remarked he featured “closer stuff” for six or seven innings when he was at his best. That included a fastball that could climb as high as 100 mph and a 12-to-6 curveball described as a “true hammer.”

In the minors, Reyes used his weapons to strike out 12.1 batters per nine innings. But it wasn’t until he was promoted in August that fans got a proper introduction to his stuff.

It must have been love at first sight for many, as Reyes pitched a 1-2-3 inning that featured a couple of 101 mph fastballs in his debut:

Per Brooks Baseball, Reyes was no longer flirting with triple digits by the time the Cardinals were stretching him out as a starter and long reliever in September. But he was still sitting in the mid-90s. And overall, Baseball Prospectus vouches that Reyes showed a fastball that ranked in the top 10 in average velocity (96.7 mph) and whiff-per-swing rate (26.9 percent).

As for Reyes’ other notorious offering, he used his curveball sparingly by throwing it only about 8 percent of the time. However, the curves he did throw lived up to their “hammer” reputation by ranking here in downward action, per Baseball Prospectus:

1. Alex Reyes: -11.57 in.
2. Mike Fiers: -11.33 in.
3. Seth Lugo: -11.18 in.
4. Chris Tillman: -10.52 in.
5. Evan Scribner: -10.44 in.

That’s what Reyes’ ball-on-string curve looks like in numbers. And now for moving pictures:

The revelation of Reyes’ breakthrough, though, was the quality of two supposedly inferior pitches. 

Although scouts didn’t ignore his changeup during his journey to The Show, the consensus was that it lagged behind his heater and hook. But it was an effective go-to pitch for him against major league hitters. It accounted for 23.7 percent of his offerings and held batters to a .172 average.

Contrary to those of his fastball and curveball, the measurements on Reyes’ changeup aren’t eye-popping. Its effectiveness is more a matter of location and deception. Reyes showed an ability to (mostly) spot it on the glove-side corner of the strike zone, where it worked well in tandem with (mostly) high fastballs because…

Well, let’s let the man himself explain.

“I feel like that [the changeup is] more of a swing-and-miss pitch for me now because hitters have to be geared up for the fastball,” he told J.J. Cooper of Baseball America.

The other pitch that served Reyes surprisingly well is the slider that he broke out in September. He threw it more often than his curveball that month and limited hitters to a .143 average with it.

This is another pitch that doesn’t have otherworldly measurements. But albeit in a limited sample, he showed it’s the breaking pitch he has better control of. Whereas his curveballs were all over the place, his sliders routinely broke off the glove-side corner.

That means Reyes impressed with four pitches from either a sheer electricity perspective or from a command-and-sequencing perspective. With an arsenal that loaded, it’s no wonder opposing hitters were so overwhelmed.

It would’ve been good enough if Reyes had dazzled only with his rate of 10.2 strikeouts per nine innings. But even his solid .283 batting average on balls in play doesn’t capture how well he managed contact. Per Baseball Savant, the average exit velocity off him was an MLB-low 84.9 mph.

Since hitting Reyes’ stuff is such a challenge, arguably the best strategy against him is for hitters to keep their bats on their shoulders.

Although Reyes’ stuff was as advertised last season, it’s less encouraging that his control was also as advertised. He walked 4.6 batters per nine innings in the minors and stayed that course by walking 4.5 per nine innings in the majors.

That’s no way to be efficient, and it also lessens his margin for error. Clearly, this defect needs fixing.

However, that doesn’t seem to be a major undertaking.

Reyes isn’t walking batters because he’s a small dude with a high-effort delivery. Even his listed size of 6’3″ and 175 pounds seems conservative, and he shows his strength and athleticism with every pitch. He puts as much effort into throwing a baseball as Average Joe does into changing the channel.

As Christopher Crawford and George Bissell of Baseball Prospectus noted upon Reyes’ arrival, his challenge is maintaining a consistent arm slot. That should be a matter of making simple tweaks rather than undergoing a major mechanical overhaul.

That’s to say Reyes isn’t far away from the leap between dominating in a small sample size and dominating over a larger one.

I’ll leave it to Wainwright (via Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal) to explain what that means:

As everyone will have noticed by now, there’s no argument here.

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

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After finally running out of even-year magic in 2016, the San Francisco Giants don’t have many questions to answer before they try to conjure some odd-year magic in 2017.

After filling their closer need by signing Mark Melancon, the Giants should only have a couple roster spots up for grabs when they arrive for spring training next month. That makes it easy to spell out their depth charts on paper, which is what we aim to do.

Ahead, we’ll run through the favorites for San Francisco’s 25-man roster and the players who have first dibs should any spots open up. At the end, we’ll look at the next wave of players who will be in camp looking for work this spring.

That’s all there is to it, so let’s get to it.

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The Chicago Cubs will be the last team to visit President Barack Obama in the White House before he leaves office on Jan. 20. 

According to NBC 5 Chicago’s Mary Ann Ahern, the Cubs—who hail from Obama’s hometown—will meet with the 44th president on Monday, Jan. 16. 

Although Obama is a noted Chicago White Sox fan, he publicly supported the Cubs during their come-from-behind World Series run as they took down the Cleveland Indians in seven thrilling games:

First Lady Michelle Obama also tweeted her support of the Cubs in the midst of their historic championship run:

In December 2016, the Chicago Tribune‘s Paul Sullivan reported the Cubs were working to try to arrange a meeting with Obama before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. 

“Because of the respect the organization has for the White House and for the president, it’s something you’d like to see if we can make it happen,” Cubs spokesman Julian Green said, per Sullivan. 

And with Obama’s final days in the Oval Office currently winding down, it’s only fitting that a team from the Windy City would be the last to make the trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 

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Maybe Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Manny Ramirez and others who were on the cutting edge of the performance-enhancing-drug era eventually will be voted into the Hall of Fame by the general electorate. Maybe last month’s election of former commissioner Bud Selig will be the tipping point.

But that’s nonsense.

And it’s largely a non sequitur.

One new “narrative” to emerge this winter in advance of next Wednesday’s announcement of the 2017 Hall of Fame voting results is this: If Selig, who oversaw the game when it reeked of cheaters who distorted the record book, is in the Hall of Fame, then it gives voters who in the past have not supported the steroid crowd the green light to reverse course.

But it isn’t that clear-cut. Selig, like fellow Hall of Famer Tony La Russa three years ago, whose greatest managerial successes came with PED-enhanced players in his lineups, was put into the Hall of Fame by a small, 16-person veterans committee, not by the general electorate.

I was not on those committees and did not cast a vote for them. So why should that compel me to cast votes for those who clearly cheated the game and their fellow players when I haven’t done that in any of my previous 17 years of voting?

Another issue, and one I believe too few people understand when it comes to Hall of Fame voting, is that voting is a one-man (or woman), one-ballot exercise. This isn’t groupthink, and it isn’t (and shouldn’t be) some sort of organized movement to try to push a single agenda through.

Personally, as long as the so-called “character clause” is included in election rules (“Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character and contributions to the team(s) on which he played”), I do not intend to vote for those buried in steroid guilt or under a mountain of circumstantial evidence.

Now, if some of those players wind up being voted into the Hall despite my stance, that’s how the breaking ball breaks. If Bonds, or Clemens, or anyone else shows up one day on the stage at Cooperstown, if that’s the will of the voters, then it will not be a time to rant and rave and throw fire and brimstone. It will be a time to celebrate them, even if some of us disagree with the choice.

This is a miserably difficult topic, and like so many other issues in this country right now, it is a bitterly divisive topic. There are no foolproof, correct answers. But I believe each voter must come to terms with their conscience. Some of those whom I respect the most in the baseball-writing business, including some close friends of mine within that group, vote for known steroid users and always have. I disagree with them, and they with me. And they have very good reasons, and I respect their opinions. That’s life. Not everyone is going to see things your way.

Some voters, who rightfully are uncomfortable with the baseball writers’ doubling as the “morality police,” have asked the Hall of Fame to issue guidelines regarding the vote. Hall officials have responded that they are very pleased with the way the writers have conducted the voting over the decades and are refraining from issuing guidelines.

To me, however, the Hall issued its guidelines long ago with the aforementioned character clause. If one day the tide turns and I’m in the minority, so be it. If one day Bonds, Clemens and Ramirez are elected to the Hall, a part of me will be relieved and happy, because it’s not right for a Hall of Fame not to include the very best players. But it’s less right to turn a blind eye to the cheating, and that includes everyone from the commissioner to the owners to the players’ union and the media.

In the end, as with any vote, you must assess what’s important, assimilate the information and come to a conclusion in which you can look yourself in the mirror. So that’s a big part, as always, of how I filled in this year’s Hall of Fame ballot.

Jeff Bagwell

This is his seventh year on the ballot, and it is the first time I voted for him. Bagwell, along with Mike Piazza (who was elected to the Hall last year), is one of those gray-area players about whom there has been some steroid suspicion but never any proof. As such, from his first year on the ballot, I wrote that I would wait a few years before voting for him while waiting for any new information to surface. It hasn’t, and he’s never been formally linked to steroids. As Jay Jaffe notes in his always essential JAWS Hall of Fame evaluation method, Bagwell ranks as the second-best first baseman in the post-World War II era.

Bagwell missed election last year by a mere 15 votes, and after Piazza’s induction, Bagwell should clear the bar this year. He won the 1994 NL MVP award and ranked in the top 10 in voting five other times, including finishing in the top five twice. His career on-base percentage of .408 ranks 39th all-time.

Vladimir Guerrero

Maybe the best bad-ball hitter in baseball history, Guerrero could do damage to pitches an inch or two off the ground, an inch or two over his head or anywhere in the strike zone. He was a marvel to watch, easily one of the most dominant hitters of his era, doing it for both average (.318 career average) and power (449 career homers).

He hit .300 or higher in 13 seasons, including 12 in a row from 1997 to 2008. He hit 30 or more homers eight times and knocked in 100 or more runs 10 times. Before his legs started to deteriorate, Guerrero also put together two 30-homer/30-steal seasons (and he had one 39-homer/40-steal season).

He led the league in intentional walks five times, signifying how respected he was by rival clubs. As B/R colleague Danny Knobler notes, Guerrero in 2006 compiled as many unintentional walks as intentional walks (25 of each), which doesn’t make him overly friendly to modern analytics. Nor does his play in right field measure up that well in the advanced stats field, though he made up for part of that with his exceptionally powerful arm. Nevertheless, Guerrero’s power and dominance put him on my ballot.

Trevor Hoffman

Tough crowd, the voters, when it comes to closers. It was utterly predictable last year that Hoffman would not reach the 75 percent threshold needed for election based on history: Nobody who pitched exclusively as a reliever throughout his entire career has ever been elected to the Hall on his first ballot. John Smoltz and Dennis Eckersley each worked as a starter at times during his career. Hoffman never did.

That said, whatever your feeling on closers—and I’ve graded them harshly in the past (I did not vote for Lee Smith, and I do not vote for Billy Wagner)—601 career saves is a staggering number. Hoffman is a Hall of Famer; the only question is how long it will take him to reach 75 percent of the vote. This year? Next year? Stay tuned.

Jeff Kent

I voted for Kent because his 351 career home runs as a second baseman rank him as the all-time leader at the position. That said, I’m still not 100 percent comfortable with myself for having started voting for him a couple of years ago. He played in an offense-oriented era in which new ballparks became more hitter-friendly, and defensively he was no gem.

As I wrote last year, he was a very good player. But one of the best of all time? Some numbers suggest yes. But body of work overall…he’s borderline, no question.

Edgar Martinez

Along with Bagwell, the biggest change in my ballot. This is the first time I’ve voted for Martinez, and it is his eighth year on the ballot. Not sure if that’s a him-problem or a me-problem—maybe a little of both.

Bottom line: In the past, I withheld my vote because, to me, if you’re a one-dimensional player (read: closer or DH), your numbers had better be off the chart in whatever area you specialize. Martinez’s traditional numbers are not. He finished with only 2,247 hits and 309 homers. Both are light in terms of a DH and the Hall.

Yet every year, Martinez is one of the guys I have agonized over. Three things spurred me to change my mind late in the game on him.

First, his .418 career on-base percentage. While the homers don’t knock your socks off, that on-base percentage does. He ranks 21st in history. That’s the number that kept nagging at me during the years I did not vote for him. It’s sensational.

Second, Martinez’s 1995 Division Series against the New York Yankees was one for the ages. He hit .571 (12-for-21), reached base 18 times in five games and knocked in 10 runs. Furthermore, his 11th–inning double clinched the series for the Mariners in Game 5, which helped turn Seattle into a baseball city and spurred taxpayers to vote for what today is Safeco Field. It was one of the greatest baseball moments in the history of Seattle, and while that does not fit into your traditional statistics, there should be room in the Hall of Fame for that kind of history.

Third, too many of Martinez’s peers during the time in which he played have told me over the years that he was the best hitter they ever saw, or that he should be a Hall of Famer, or some combination of the above.

The latest came last spring during a long conversation with Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida. I was working on a piece on Red Sox DH David Ortiz in advance of his retirement and spoke with Reggie about Ortiz. It was during that conversation when Jackson, unsolicited, passionately told me that not only does Ortiz belong in the Hall, but so does Martinez.

All of this, over all of these years, has conspired to convince me that maybe I’ve been wrong in not voting for Martinez, and I’m fixing that now.

Fred McGriff

One of the greatest hitters of his era, McGriff‘s biggest problem is that the guys who were gobbling steroids during the 1990s put up enough cartoon numbers to shove McGriff into the shadows and relegate him, nearly, to forgotten-man status. Maybe if he had hit just seven more homers to reach that big ol‘ round number of 500, he would get more Hall of Fame support. As it is, he checked in at just 20.9 percent of the vote last year, far below the 75 percent needed.

Still, 493 homers make a pretty good case. He ranks 28th all-time, and as I wrote last year of McGriff, remove some steroids frauds from the list and he comes close to cracking the all-time top 20. Not a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, to be sure, but borderline. And borderline enough that I would vote for him.

Mike Mussina

Time and place, to me, make Mussina more of a candidate than you might think. That time and place were…the 1990s and the 2000s, and the American League East. Pitching in a loaded division against some of the best New York Yankees teams of all time, and against many other bashers, and then pitching for the Yankees against historically good Boston Red Sox clubs, and more bashers, Mussina compiled 270 wins and a sterling 3.68 ERA. He was as consistent as a metronome, compiling 11 seasons of 15 or more victories.

While I know wins aren’t as sexy as they once were based on today’s analytics, to rack up that many means Mussina was in the game enough to make a difference on a heck of a lot of occasions. We know starting pitchers have been underrepresented in Cooperstown since the inception of the DH, and Mussina certainly is deserving.

Tim Raines

Raines is the best leadoff hitter this side of Rickey Henderson, and his .385 career on-base percentage is good enough to play on any team. His stolen-base rate of 84.7 percent ranks second-best all-time among those with 300 or more attempts.

Raines received 69.8 percent of the vote last year, and he’s still got some running to do: This is his 10th and final year on the ballot. If he doesn’t bump up to 75 percent of the vote, his Cooperstown fate will be left in the hands of future veterans committees. Here’s hoping he cruises into one more base this winter—a plaque in Cooperstown.

Close Calls

A few words about my near misses:

Curt Schilling

This has zero to do with his politics and everything to do with his middling 216 career victories and a whole lot of mediocre seasons. I know some numbers (specifically, his strikeouts) point to Cooperstown, but I would take Jack Morris in his prime any day over Schilling in his prime. And if there is no place in the Hall for Morris…

Ivan Rodriguez

One of the best catchers of all time without a doubt, Rodriguez under most circumstances would be a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. But for now, I’ve got him in a holding pattern, similar to where I had Piazza and Bagwell. In his book Juiced, Jose Canseco details injecting Rodriguez with PEDs. Pudge has since denied taking PEDs, so here’s another gray area.

Because of that, I’m holding off for a bit, and let’s see if any new information emerges and what Rodriguez says about it. He will be on the ballot for 10 years; I’d rather wait a bit for reasons I just stated rather than rush to vote him in right away.

Larry Walker

I looked hard at Walker, and while he’s very close, in my book he falls short of being a Hall of Famer. His offensive numbers were good, especially in the Coors Field years, but he was injured and off the field far too often. During his 17-year career, Walker played in as many as 150 games once, and he played in as many as 140 games just four times. I look at Walker and I see a very good player who could have been great. I do not see a Hall of Famer. His great moments simply weren’t great long enough.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report. Follow Scott on Twitter and talk baseball.

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The New York Yankees remain a team in flux, heading into spring training with a roster that could contend—or fall short of the playoffs for the fourth time in the past five years.

Veterans like Brian McCann (traded) and Mark Teixeira (retired) are gone, replaced by youngsters who are big on upside—but light on experience. That could lead to some growing pains in 2017, but it’s a pain that general manager Brian Cashman believes fans are ready to endure.

“(The fans are) willing to walk through that (the ups and downs) with you as long as they have some legitimate players they can really grow with,” he recently told Mike Mazzeo of the New York Daily News. “We’re really now in a better position to provide a group of talent where hopefully some will really be part of the next championship core.”

Some of those players will be competing for a spot on the 25-man roster this spring. Others still need more minor league seasoning before they can officially join the fray. How will things shake out when it’s said and done?

Let’s take a look.

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Be very, very quiet. We’re hunting wabbits general managers—at least any who might still be awake.

If we didn’t know any better, we’d think there was a freeze on transactions. For baseball’s rumor mill has come to a screeching halt, and there’s no reason to be optimistic that things will pick up soon.

While most contenders have already done their heavy lifting and can head into spring training confident in their rosters, a handful of World Series hopefuls still have work left. With pitchers and catchers set to report to camp in a matter of weeks, not months, the glory of spring training will soon be upon us. 

What follows is a look at some splashy, impactful trades that a handful of contenders should try to pull off before then. Some of these deals have made the rounds as rumor or speculation. Others have not and are the result of our baseball-starved minds having far too much free time.

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For the first time since the 1909 season, the Chicago Cubs will carry the enormous target that comes with being the defending World Series champions.

There’s no shortage of talent returning for the upcoming season, and they will undoubtedly be among the favorites to win it all once again in 2017.

However, there are still some roster questions that need to be answered.

Dexter Fowler, Aroldis Chapman, Jason Hammel, Travis Wood, Chris Coghlan and Trevor Cahill are all key free agents from last year’s squad, while David Ross rode off into the sunset in retirement and Jorge Soler was shipped to the Kansas City Royals in a winter meetings trade.

That leaves the club with some important depth-chart decisions to make this spring as they prepare for the upcoming season.

Ahead is an early look at how said depth chart might unfold, including projected starters at each position, the “next man up” should injury strike, further depth options at each position and an overview of the prospects that are poised to make an impact in 2017.

Think of this as a state of the franchise roughly one month from the start of spring training.

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The Boston Red Sox will roll into spring training with one of the best rosters in the league.

That was assured when they went on a shopping spree during the winter meetings. They added lefty ace Chris Sale, slick-fielding first baseman Mitch Moreland and shutdown reliever Tyler Thornburg to a roster that produced 93 wins and an American League East title in 2016. 

Before the Red Sox can get going on 2017, they need to narrow down the favorites for their 25-man roster and which players will be on the waiting list to get on it should any spots open up.

With that in mind, let’s run through the names Red Sox fans should really know and which ones they should also know.

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Chicks, they tell us, dig the long ball. The question is, do MLB offseason shoppers?

So far this winter, the answer has been a resounding “meh.”

Edwin Encarnacion, arguably the best pure power hitter on the market, signed with the Cleveland Indians for three years and $60 million with a $25 million team option and $5 million buyout.

That’s a decent payday, but it’s well below the four years and $92 million MLB Trade Rumors projected. 

At least Encarnacion (42 home runs in 2016) found a home. As of this writing, a busload of sluggers remain unemployed with just over a month until pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

Between Mark Trumbo (47 home runs), Chris Carter (41 home runs) and Mike Napoli (34 home runs), two of 2016’s top-seven home run hitters and three of the top 18 are flapping in the free-agent breeze.

Add Brandon Moss (28 home runs), Michael Saunders (24 home runs), Jose Bautista (22 home runs), Pedro Alvarez (22 home runs) and Adam Lind (20 home runs), and you’re looking at 238 unsigned homers.

“It’s a slow-developing market this year,” Baltimore Orioles general manager Dan Duquette said in a contender for understatement of the offseason, per Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe.

Part of the issue is supply and demand. In addition to those names, there are an array of power hitters potentially available via trade, including the Minnesota Twins’ Brian Dozier (42 home runs), the Chicago White Sox’s Todd Frazier (40 home runs) and the Milwaukee Brewers’ Ryan Braun (30 home runs), to name three.

What about the “demand” part of the equation, though? Aren’t we living in the post-steroid era (or at least the steroid-testing era), when the ability to launch the ball over the fence is a notable, marketable skill?

Up until recently, yes. The last two seasons, not so much.

In 2000, at the apex of the steroid era, there were 5,693 home runs hit across both leagues. By 2014, that number had plummeted to 4,186, the lowest total in nearly two decades.

Then, in 2015, the four-bagger came roaring back to the tune of 4,909 homers, a 17.3 percent jump. Last season, the total rose to 5,610, just shy of the 2000 high-water mark.

If it was juiced players then, could it be juiced baseballs now?

“Some players—not just on our team, we were talking to other players in general—we wondered if the cork was different,” Orioles closer Zach Britton said in July, per Jerry Crasnick and David Schoenfield of ESPN.com. “I know MLB wanted to get more offense in the game, so you can do that without changing a strike zone or something in general? You can somehow change the cork maybe.”

Or maybe performance-enhancing drugs are still prevalent, with newer PEDs outpacing MLB’s testing protocols?

Commissioner Rob Manfred dismissed both notions at his 2016 All-Star Game press conference. 

“We think it has to do with the way pitchers pitch and the way hitters are being taught to play the game,” Manfred told reporters. “You’ve seen some unusual developments in terms of home run hitters being up in the lineup to get them more at-bats. So we think it has more to do with the game this time around, because we’re comfortable we’re doing everything we can on the performance-enhancing drugs front.”

Whatever the cause, the trend is undeniable. Home runs are surging in a big way. Home runs hitters, by extension, are no longer a prized commodity.

It’s telling that Yoenis Cespedes is the only player to land a nine-figure deal this winter. You could argue the Mets were desperate to rescue a dubious offense when they re-upped Cespedes for four years and $110 million. You’d be right.

But Cespedes (31 home runs) is more than a basher. The 31-year-old Cuban is an excellent overall athlete with a strong arm who grades as an above-average left fielder. He can even play center field in a pinch, though his skills there have diminished.

Trumbo, Carter, Napoli and most of the other names listed above are one-dimensional sluggers with minimal defensive skills. Encarnacion, likewise, is a designated hitter who can be stashed at first base. That almost assuredly accounts for the disparity between his and Cespedes’ contracts.

Free-agent position players in general have fallen behind their mound-straddling counterparts, as Cafardo noted:

The priority for most teams is pitching, both starting and relief, so teams tend to take care of what they deem most important first. Teams try to promote from within on offense as much as they can. They’d rather take a chance on a kid than pay a small fortune for a veteran. This isn’t always the best way to go about it, but it’s how it is done.

Every hitter mentioned here will be employed before Opening Day. Prevalence aside, a home run is still the best outcome a big league hitter can hope for in any given at-bat. Chicks probably still dig ’em.

When it comes to maximizing a paycheck in today’s MLB, though, the long ball alone isn’t enough.

All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted.

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