Consensuses make me nervous. When everybody agrees, there’s usually a way to profit with a contrarian approach. This season features perhaps the most monolithic consensus I’ve seen in the last decade. Ace starting pitchers are the key to life, liberty, the cosmos, and a rockin’ bikini bod. You can’t possibly contend without at least one ace. Multiple aces are preferred. This leads me to ask a question…

Is 2019 a LIMA year?

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A wild chat transcript has appeared. Throw pokeball!

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This is FanGraphs which means we’re all predisposed to translating reality into numbers. In our world, every event on a baseball field has a run value, and we can assign credit for these events to specific players. We like things to be tidy. A 3.0 WAR player is better than a 2.5 WAR. It’s right there in the numbers.

Except… well… per Dave Cameron, WAR comes with a +/- of about 1.0 over a full season. These are estimates. When comparing a three-win player with a 2.5-win player, it more accurate to say that there’s something like a 60 to 80 percent chance that the three-win player was better. The math is even fuzzier when comparing players of different positions. Especially pitchers and non-pitchers. And let’s not get started on who will be better. Ooh boy.

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For the last couple months, it was popular to wonder aloud – either on Twitter or to a room full of strangers – how Adam Jones remained unsigned. Nobody thinks peak Jones will return, but it does seem like he should perform like a one-win player. That has value, especially when it can be expected to cost about $3MM.

Everybody agreed he belonged on a roster. Selecting an actual fit was where we disagreed. For much of the offseason, I touted him as an obvious solution for the Indians. They’re the only contending club who could have actually improved with Jones. Rebuilding teams tend to shy away from veterans. Even so, he’s a proven clubhouse leader so he made sense for weaker clubs too.

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A few weeks ago, we quietly rolled out our FanGraphs-Plus (FG+) player captions. These are located on most major league player pages, sandwiched between the most recent links and the data tables. We don’t do enough to promote these often insightful and frequently humorous write-ups. And so, I asked my colleagues to identify some of their favorites for inclusion in this article.

My favorite part of this process is everybody’s approach to the prompt. I tend towards the absurd, such as prior to 2017 when I “mistook” Rougned Odor for his brother by the same name (the resultant caption was NSFW). Others like Jeff Zimmerman prefer very straight takes.

For more player caps, search literally any player. You can also read past seasons.

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Major league teams have become increasingly sensitive to roster flexibility. One way to extend the back end of the roster is to have players with options. In most cases, players come with three option years. This means their team can demote them to the minors without penalty. Once an option is used in a given year, that player can be demoted any number of times. For example, the Rays yo-yoed numerous relievers between Durham and Tampa to extend their bullpen.

Once a player has been optioned three times in his career, he is said to be “out of options.” In other words, he can no longer be sent to the minors without passing through waivers. If the player is good enough, he’ll be claimed by another club. They’ll either use him in the majors or try to pass him through waivers again.

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Here is today’s chat transcript.

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It’s time. Dust off your salty #NotBold hot takes because it’s bold prediction season at RotoGraphs. This year, we’re mixing things up by adding… *checks notes* ah, excuse me that was the script for the MTV reality spin off of Bold Predictions. It’s still the same game as past years. I try to name 10 things that are implausible but might happen. Later I lament about how badly I missed.

Last year I went waaaaaay too bold. This time, I’m going back to skirting the bold/not bold line. In my experience, negative predictions are massively more likely to turn out correct than positive ones. To increase the challenge, I’ll be focusing on upside more than downside.

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Yesterday’s post about shopping trades yielded some interesting comments for what I thought was a slam dunk topic. It’s my own fault that certain aspects of the example I used were distracting from the central premise. Write better dummy.

Let’s start by restating things. More than two owners (one of which is the seller) in a 12 team league should know that Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Kris Bryant are available to be acquired in the same trade. Agree? Disagree? Poll!

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Over the weekend, we had a real doozy of a trade in the ottoneu Screw Cancer league. This is not an industry league so I’d like to start by apologizing to the teams involved in the trade. I’d usually avoid calling y’all out in an article, but this is too perfect an example.

To thoroughly bury the lede, let’s quickly talk about today’s lesson before jumping into unpacking this example. It’s one I’ve espoused before on this and half a dozen other sites. Shop your friggin’ trade offers. Especially when you’re trying to sell major assets.

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