Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. You may have heard about a slew of recent contract extensions to high profile players in Major League Baseball. What’s that all about? We’re here to help.

I just spent all offseason reading about how players weren’t getting contracts!

You totally did! And now Mike Trout, Justin Verlander, Jacob deGrom, Chris Sale, Paul Goldschmidt, Alex Bregman, Blake Snell, Eloy Jimenez and Kyle Hendricks have all signed big extensions in the last week alone.

But these things are related: The winter’s long free-agent freeze-out involving Bryce Harper and Manny Machado contributed to the rash of spring-training extensions. Trout and Verlander both admitted that seeing players linger in free agency all offseason helped them decide to re-up and avoid that uncertainty.

Are all these guys in the same general situation?

Not at all. Jimenez is a rookie, so his extension means the White Sox will feel no need to keep him in the minors to start the season and manipulate his service time to their benefit (though, obviously, their ability to do that works to their favor in negotiations).

Bregman and Snell are both still early on in their big-league careers, and both made waves this spring for expressing disappointment in a league-wide salary structure set to pay them little more than the MLB minimum in 2019. Their new deals give them immediate raises and establish their salaries through their arbitration years. Snell’s $50 million pact puts him in the Rays’ control for an extra season beyond when he would’ve been slated for free agency, and Bregman’s $100 million deal runs two years past when he would’ve hit the market.

Veteran stars Trout, Sale, deGrom, Goldschmidt, Verlander and Nolan Arenado — who inked an 8-year, $260 million extension with the Rockies in late February — were all within one or two seasons of free agency.

Nolan Arenado, who is extremely good at baseball (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, file)

Why are teams suddenly dolling out money if they spent all offseason trying to save it?

Extensions tend to work out better for teams than free-agent contracts. It’s hardly a hard-and-fast thing, but it makes sense: For one thing, players getting extensions by nature tend to be younger than ones that have already reached free agency. For another, teams know their own players and can comfortably guarantee them money without worrying about any unforeseen obstacles to success in their organizations.

Fangraphs’ $/WAR stat aims to estimate what a player’s production would cost in free agency. Most of the new extensions should pay players less than that metric suggests they deserve.

So these foolish players are just accepting less than market value!

Well, no. Or at least, only sort of. Unlike in the NFL, salary figures reported for MLB players represent guaranteed money. So by signing these extensions, players transfer all risk of injury or attrition — financially speaking, at least — on to the teams. Securing the money up front means giving away the potential to earn more in free agency, but there’s obviously value in contract certainty.

Probably our understanding of “market value” needs to change after this past offseason. Teams certainly appear to be using the luxury-tax threshold as an excuse to not break the bank in free agency, but they’ve also just gotten smarter about how they spend their money. It’s unfortunate for a lot of players who expected bigger free-agent windfalls, and there’s reason to believe teams are reaping a greater proportion of baseball’s ever-growing revenue. But these extensions reflect the sport’s new reality, for better or worse.

Is this Moneyball stuff?

Well yeah, but it’s all Moneyball stuff, really. Billy Beane was hardly the first GM to try to use his team’s payroll as efficiently as possible, and his success in doing so helped usher in a league-wide trend toward using every bit of information available to win ballgames. People love to blame stats for all that ails the sport, but it’s silly to fault teams for trying to more accurately assess baseball players.

A lot of the stats shed light on routes for teams to save money while staying competitive — especially the enormous value in developing cost-controlled young players over signing comparable ones in free agency. And the MLBPA did not do enough in the last round of collective bargaining to alter teams’ evolving spending habits. Front offices tend to be so smart now that they’re always going to try to take advantage of whatever system is in place, and the current setup is working against veteran free agents without better compensating players in the first few years of their big-league tenures.

Chris Sale (Troy Taormina/USA TODAY Sports)

I’m not about to feel sorry for someone getting guaranteed millions to play a game

You’re hardly alone. And no one’s forcing these guys to sign their extensions. Their plight pales in comparison to that of the minor leaguers they rely on.

Plus, obviously, there’s a lot that’s appealing to fans about players committing to their teams. If you were on the fence about buying a Paul Goldschmidt Cardinals jersey, you can now do that without fear he’ll be wearing Yankee pinstripes in a year.

But less money going to millionaire players means more money going to billionaire owners, and billionaire owners don’t crush the dingers. There’s clear labor discontent in the game, and the slow winter for free agents and all these extensions both expose the need for big changes in the sport’s next CBA. To maintain the players’ portion of the revenue pie, the union needs to either ensure a much higher minimum salary or change the luxury tax and draft-pick compensation rules to embolden bigger spending.

Can I still be mad about sports?

Of course you can. Two of baseball’s biggest free agents — starter Dallas Keuchel and closer Craig Kimbrel — remain unsigned on the eve of opening day. Is your favorite team telling you it has designs on winning in 2019? Well, it’d undoubtedly be better if it added Keuchel or Kimbrel.