You know that old country song, “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away”? That isn’t just true in life. It’s true in … baseball.

So with that in mind, I added two new questions this year to my annual spring preview survey of 36 executives, former executives, managers, coaches and scouts:

• Who was the most irreplaceable subtraction any team endured this winter?

• And who was the best subtraction?

Here are a couple of spoiler alerts: Alex Bregman’s name came up. Pete Alonso’s name came up. But also, Nick Castellanos’ name came up before the Phillies had even subtracted him.

Want to guess who wound up on which list? Read on.

You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone …

It feels like we spend most of our time every spring focused on which players are barging through a team’s locker room door for the first time. But you know what this portion of our survey should help us remember?

That the goodbyes can leave just as big a mark on a team as the hellos.

So when I asked these voters to weigh in on which players they thought would be getting the most Wish You Were Here texts from their old buddies, the results were revealing. Here’s how the voting went.

Most irreplaceable subtractions of the winter

Alex Bregman (Red Sox) — 11
Pete Alonso (Mets) — 10
Kyle Tucker (Cubs) — 6
Framber Valdez (Astros) — 5
Ranger Suárez (Phillies) — 4
Freddy Peralta (Brewers) — 4
Edwin Díaz (Mets) — 3

(Only the top vote-getters are listed here.)

Think of how different the two guys at the top of that list are. Alonso had spent his entire big-league life as a Met, demolishing franchise records, leaving his mark on everyone around him.

Bregman, on the other hand, spent one season with the Red Sox. But he still left a footprint as mammoth as Tyrannosaurus rex. So what does that tell us about how he connects with everyone he touches? Let’s take a deeper dive.

Bregman

“I think losing him hurts the core young guys in Boston,” one voter said of Alex Bregman. (Rick Scuteri / Imagn Images)

As I wrote in part one of this survey series, there’s a reason Bregman nearly won the Best Free-Agent Signing category — for his five-year, $175 million deal with the Cubs — while getting zero votes for Worst Free-Agent Signing. He’s more than just a baseball player. He’s the most magnetic personality in every clubhouse he enters.

So you can replace his at-bats. You can stick someone else at third base. You can divvy up his money. But, as our voters clearly conveyed, when it comes to all the other stuff, you can’t replace that.

• “I think losing him hurts the core young guys in Boston,” said one voter.

• “A major impact,” said another voter, “and a perfect fit in Boston.”

• “I have to go with Bregman,” said a third voter, “because of everything he brings, even off the field.”

Alonso

Will the Mets miss Pete Alonso? “His combination of power/performance and character are tough to replace,” one voter said. (Todd Olszewski / Baltimore Orioles / Getty Images)

Is it possible that the rest of the sport values Alonso more than the Mets did? It’s hard to explain why, but these voters sent that message more clearly than I expected.

I touched on this in part one of the survey, when Alonso and his former Mets teammate, Edwin Diaz, tied for first in the Best Free Agent voting. But what really hit home was when Alonso got a bunch of votes in this category from executives who didn’t even like that five-year, $155 million deal he signed with the Orioles.

• “I wouldn’t view the contract as a good value, nor do I believe it will age well,” said one rival exec. “But I do think his combination of power/performance and character are tough to replace.”

• “He owned that city,” said an American League exec. “Or at least the other half of the city — the half that doesn’t belong to (Aaron) Judge. He was a force in that clubhouse. And essentially, every year, starting in February, you penciled in his numbers. You knew what you were getting. And when you take that out of your lineup, that big run-producing bat, that’s a big hole. That’s huge.”

SURVEY SAID: I should mention that Alonso was one of five players who got votes for both Most Irreplaceable Subtraction and Best Subtraction. But unlike the other three — Bo Bichette, Kyle Tucker, Dylan Cease and Framber Valdez — the Alonso votes came from execs who mostly thought his exit freed up a slew of dollars for the Mets to spend elsewhere. So wait, do they think money is actually an object for Mets owner Steve Cohen? … Has Ranger Suarez’s departure from Philly (for Boston) gotten enough attention? Apparently not, if the votes he got in this portion of the survey are an indication. “That guy,” said one National League executive, “was just so good in the postseason.” … You know who else I learned is really underrated? Brendan Donovan, whose subtraction by the Cardinals via a three-team trade earned him two votes in this category. “He’s a hungry player,” said one rival exec. “Every team that you ever see win has a red-ass guy on it, and he’s that guy.”

Do you miss me yet?

In two decades of conducting this survey, I’d never asked a question quite like this: Who’s the best subtraction any team made this winter? I wasn’t sure how the panel would react to that one. Turns out I struck a nerve.

I’m not sure if this means that people who run MLB teams actually enjoy axing players they’re tired of watching (or dealing with). But more than twice as many players got votes for Best Subtractions than for Most Irreplaceable Subtractions. Who knew! So who monopolized those votes? The returns are in.

Best subtraction of the winter

Nick Castellanos (Phillies) — 6
Marcus Semien (Rangers) — 5
Framber Valdez (Astros) — 3
Luis Robert Jr. (White Sox) — 3
Anthony Rendon (Angels) — 2
Devin Williams (Yankees) — 2
Nolan Arenado (Cardinals) — 2

(Only the top vote-getters are listed here.)

Special Mets subtraction division*

All those Mets veterans heading out the door — 3
Jeff McNeil — 3
Brandon Nimmo — 1
Pete Alonso — 1
Ryan Helsley — 1

(*-See what I did there?)

Castellanos

Nick Castellanos is getting a fresh start with San Diego. But several voters thought the Phillies made the right move in severing ties. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)

Is it legally possible for a guy to win the Best Subtraction voting when he hasn’t even (technically) been subtracted yet? You wouldn’t believe how many voters struggled with that existential question.

All six of the Best Subtraction votes for Castellanos came before the Phillies officially subtracted him, by releasing him last Thursday. So that was interesting.

He also got five more votes in the Most Likely to get Traded This Spring category from voters who just wanted to vote for him for something or other. So I’m guessing if the Phillies had just released him a month ago, he’d have destroyed the field in this category.

But nothing was more amusing than watching the voters who cast those premature Best Subtraction votes struggle with whether I would allow them to do that. For instance …

ONE NL EXEC: “Best subtraction? I would definitely say Nick Castellanos. I mean, we know he’s moving, but he hasn’t yet. So he can’t qualify yet, right?”

THE ATHLETIC: “Hey, it’s my survey. So we can basically make up the rules as we go along.”

NL EXEC: “OK, then Nick Castellanos. Definitely. If that’s OK.”

Semien

Marcus Semien’s double-play partner is now Francisco Lindor instead of Corey Seager. (Rich Storry / Getty Images)

Marcus Semien’s exit from Texas — in a trade to the Mets for Brandon Nimmo — was another hot topic among these voters. Was his personality clash with Rangers shortstop Corey Seager as widely known, in the public domain, as it was inside baseball? Let’s go with no on that, because the Semien votes all came from folks who couldn’t stop buzzing about that.

• “I mean, you could probably blame both of them,” said an AL exec. “But whatever it was, you have to buy into the team first and foremost. I don’t give a (hoot) how good you are. And if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re going to be gone.”

• “Look, I respect him as a player,” said another exec. “He’s durable, and he’s a pro, and all that. But this deal is the Rangers saying they needed to get him out of there. So clearly, they chose Semien over Seager as the guy who had to go. It had clearly been an issue for a few years. Something needed to give. And it was him.”

SURVEY SAID: I could have written a whole “subtraction” column just on the Mets. Besides all those former Mets who got Best Subtraction votes, they also added four players who were on the Best Subtraction list after they got nudged out the door by other teams: Williams, Bichette, Peralta and Robert. … How is it even possible that Rendon got only two votes in this category — unless it was so hard to remember he was even considered an “active” player last year that he slipped off everyone’s radar? … My favorite vote in this category came from an exec who voted for the Rockies — for “subtracting” whatever it was they’ve been doing to build a 119-loss juggernaut and finally going outside their cocoon to hire new president of baseball ops Paul DePodesta and general manager Josh Byrnes.