The top free agent pitcher in baseball is no longer a free agent. After an interminable PR tour, Trevor Bauer has signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, as Jon Heyman first reported. The deal, a three-year, $102 million pact with opt outs after each year, bolsters an already-stout Dodgers rotation and ups the NL West arms race after the Padres’ busy offseason.

It would hardly be honest to write about Bauer without mentioning who he is as a person, so let’s do that first. For lack of a better way to say it, he’s a jerk, a troll. That’s not harsh enough, but it points in the right direction. “Troll” undersells it: time and again, Bauer has stepped up to the line and then gone past it, lashing out and inducing his fans to harass someone before acting shocked at the fallout, claiming innocence.

I won’t detail each individual incident, but suffice it to say that this goes beyond your typical Twitter sniping. The pattern is shockingly similar each time: Bauer takes offense at some perceived slight on social media, berates and otherwise insults the source of that slight (sometimes at great length), and then with a quote tweet, points his fans and followers in the woman’s direction (and it’s almost always a woman), who then proceed to harass her.

Eventually, Bauer issues a banal non-apology about how he never intended to harm anyone and doesn’t believe he did anything wrong, despite the glib falsity of that statement. This isn’t an isolated incident, a poor decision made in his rash youth. It’s a pattern, and a well-documented one.

I’m not here to legislate how you feel about that. I’ll simply invite you to consider how it feels to root for someone who repeatedly takes advantage of his popularity and power to make life worse for people without those things; how it feels to be one of those people. For the remainder of this article, though, I’m going to talk about what this means on the field, on the days where Bauer is pitching, though that hasn’t always been without conflict either. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m going to spend about half this article trying to deceive you. I just thought you should know that upfront. Why? Alex Chamberlain wrote a wonderful article about Kyle Hendricks yesterday, and it reminded me of one of my favorite paradoxical findings about pitching. Now, I’m going to use that finding to bamboozle you — or at least, that’s the plan.

Hendricks, you see, is spectacular at throwing pitches in the shadow zone, the boundaries of the strike zone and the area just outside of it. That’s an obviously useful skill. When you watch a pitcher painting the corners, it doesn’t just feel like hitters are unlikely to make solid contact, it’s actually true. Batters have worse outcomes on the borderline part of the plate than in any other zone.

Here’s a statement that I don’t think is at all controversial: pitchers exercise a lot of control over where they throw the ball. It’s not like exit velocity — mostly batter-controlled — or walk rate, which depends on myriad factors that both pitcher and batter affect. Where a pitcher throws the ball should be up to, well, the pitcher.

It stands to reason that if pitchers control where the ball goes, there will be leaders and laggards at it. As it turns out, there are! As Chamberlain pointed out, no one has thrown a higher percentage of their pitches in the shadow zone (since 2015) than Kyle Hendricks; Marco Gonzales is narrowly behind in second place. Sure sounds like a skill to me. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, one NL Central team has acquired the best defender at a key infield position. He’ll be playing the 2021 season at age-30, and he was below average offensively in 2020, so it’s not as though there aren’t red flags, but great defense doesn’t grow on trees. That’s right: the Brewers signed Kolten Wong to a two-year, $18 million contract, as Jon Morosi first reported.

While Nolan Arenado might have fallen behind Matt Chapman in the third base defense hierarchy, Wong reigns supreme at second. For three straight years, he’s won the Fielding Bible award at second base. Every advanced defensive metric sees him as the best fielder in the game over the past three years. Bigger fan of the eye test? He can do this:

Okay, fine, single defensive highlights are a bad reflection of talent. But he can do this, too:

I could go on all day if there weren’t an article to write. Wong is one of my very favorite players to watch. This is a transaction analysis, though, so I’ll restrain myself, and merely say that our very good defensive projections for Wong might still be conservative. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey everyone, and welcome to the convergence of two recurring segments. It’s the highly awaited crossover between “Can You Believe the Cardinals Got Nolan Arenado for That?” and “Let’s Value Gimmicky Contracts,” two columns I almost assuredly enjoy writing more than you enjoy reading.

Let’s get the deferred money part out of the way first, because while it’s obviously very important to the Rockies and Cardinals, it has nothing to do with Arenado’s decision-making. He’s getting his cash, and whether the check says Monfort or DeWitt, the cash still spends the same. It won’t affect his decision on whether to rip the whole contract up.

As Jeff Jones reported, Arenado agreed to modify his contract as part of the trade. In 2021, he was due $35 million. Now, he’ll receive $15 million this year, paid directly by the Rockies. He’ll also receive $20 million in deferred compensation, regardless of whether or not he opts out. If he’s still under this contract, that money will be sent to the Cardinals, who will then pay it to Arenado. If he opts out, the Rockies will pay him the $20 million directly.

Finally, if Arenado doesn’t opt out, the Rockies will be on the hook for the $16 million he’s due in 2027. That’s the new year that the Cardinals agreed to as part of the trade, and while it’s unclear exactly why the Rockies chose to pay that part rather than some pro-rated portion of earlier salaries, here we are.

For the Cardinals, this is a great fit. They’d been acting as though cash was a key constraint this year, and getting a year of Arenado at no cost (literally, no monetary cost!) does a good job of making the short-term books work. In the long run, they’re paying him nothing for one year (if he opts out after 2021), $35 million over two years (if he opts out after 2022), or $164 million over seven years.

With that covered, let’s talk about Arenado’s options. The structure is as straightforward as it gets for these kinds of things. After 2021, Arenado will have the option to walk away from the entire deal and become a free agent. If he opts to remain in St. Louis, he’ll get another chance to wash his hands of the deal after 2022. If he still wants to stay, then he’ll be under contract until after the 2027 season.

When Arenado signed his extension two years ago, I covered a probabilistic way of thinking about the value. In the interim, a few things have happened. First, Arenado had a down 2020. Second, Dan “Dr. ZiPS” Szymborski gave me a long-term forecast for Arenado that beats my generic aging expectations. Finally, I’ve added a few bells and whistles to the option model in the interim. For the most part, though, we’re just running it back.

To calculate the value of an opt out, we need a few things. First, a central projection for how good a player will be in the future. ZiPS is all over that. Here’s the next five years of Arenado’s projections:

I’ll assume a standard aging curve after that, which gets us a central tendency for how his career will go.

Next, we need to apply variance. I’ve found in previous studies that projections for players who fit Arenado’s mold — mid-career and projections above 2 WAR — vary with a standard deviation of roughly 1.4 WAR from year to year. We’ll start with projections as a baseline, but to figure out the value of an option — the right but not obligation to do something — we’ll have to simulate 10 million or so different futures, then work out what happens on average.

Finally, we need to figure out how to translate Arenado’s projections into a potential new contract. Converting WAR to dollars misses some team-building effects, and as Craig Edwards showed last year, it’s not as simple as applying a linear conversion. Still, it’s my model, and it’s just for Arenado, not for the dang league as a whole. Let’s start with $8 million per win.

While we’re varying projections, we also need to vary the cost of a win. I assumed that the cost of 1 WAR will increase by an average of $250,000 per year, but with a standard deviation of $800,000. In plenty of years, the cost of a win will go down, even if the overall cost increases over time. There might be, say, a global pandemic, or a shortened season with no fans… wild nonsense like that.

Finally, we get down to brass tacks. When the player reaches his opt out, there’s a simple calculation. Take his new median projection, age it down as appropriate, and come up with a WAR projection for the remaining years of the contract. Multiply that number by the cost per win that we simultaneously calculated, and you have the contract that Arenado would sign, in a perfectly efficient market, if he opted out. I added one quick sanity check: if it’s within $10 million dollars of breaking even, Arenado won’t leave. That represents the uncertainty of finding a new contract, as well as the benefits of familiarity.

If there were only one opt out, our calculation would be simple. After one year, we simply apply an aging penalty and a random change in projection. Then, we use that to price out a new contract. With only one year before an opt out, things are simple like that.

In Arenado’s case, the odds are stacked in favor of him declining the opt out. The average situation (no change in projection) sees him with a $101.5 million contract after this year. He’d need to raise his 2022 projection by roughly 1.5 WAR to merit a contract that would be worth opting out for. How often does that happen? Roughly 14% of the time.

Let’s look at it more thoroughly. Here’s how much he projects to make in each scenario, including the $35 million he’s making in 2021 regardless:

In that sense, the opt out already in Arenado’s contract is “worth” $6 million. It could be worth more, though. Replace our forecasts with the ZiPS forecasts that ignore 2020 (they used 2019’s rate stats again), and instead things get a little spicy:

Hey, look! If Arenado were projected to be a bit better — and again, injury has at least something to do with why he’s not — then his option would be worth more. Neat stuff!

That’s not why you’re here, though. Or, maybe it is, but that’s not what Arenado’s contract looks like anymore. In agreeing to head to St. Louis, Arenado gained an extra opt out after the 2022 season.

It’s slightly tricky to model nested opt outs like this, where the second one can only be exercised if the first isn’t. In practice, the decision won’t be overly complex. After 2021, Arenado and his agents will model something that looks a lot like the calculations I did above, valuing his existing contract based on his current projections and including a 2022 opt out. That number will come out to something higher than $180 million, because some amount of the time, he’ll opt out after 2022 and get a raise.

With that number in hand, they’ll approximate what he could get on the open market and compare the two. If he thinks he can get more now, on the open market, than the value of his existing contract inclusive of the opt out, he should leave. Otherwise, he should stay and wait the extra year to see what happens.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work well in my framework. In each of my 10 million simulations, computer Arenado would need to run 10 million simulations to work out the value of his option using this Monte Carlo method. That comes out to one hundred trillion simulations, and it doesn’t even add much precision for our trouble. Instead, I’m just setting the cutoff higher; Arenado will need $15 million in prospective gains to pull the trigger on opting out after year one.

How does this change things? Less than you’d think. I previously calculated that Arenado would opt out 14% of the time; he now opts out 12.4% of the time in year one. With more time to vary, and thus a higher percent chance of improving enough to opt out, he also has an 8.2% chance of opting out after 2022. All together, that looks like this:

In the scenarios where Arenado opts out after 2022, he is, on average, quite good. This makes sense, because he’s only opting out in the best 8% of scenarios. If he muddles along, he’s staying. If he has a late-career renaissance, it only stands to reason that he’ll be more valuable. All told, the two opt outs add a projected $13 million to the value of the deal — not bad!

Once more, let’s plug in a more optimistic view of Arenado and see what shakes out. This is Dan’s pre-2020 version, where he’s projected for 5 WAR in 2021:

Again, the better Arenado is now, the higher the chance he opts out, and the more the second opt out is worth to him. In the base case ZiPS projections, a second opt out added roughly $6 million to Arenado’s expected earnings. In this pre-injury case, a second opt out would add more than $17 million.

That’s the gory math of the way this complex contract works. In practice, however, Arenado seems likely to take the Clayton Kershaw route. Kershaw, too, had the choice of opting out of his contract early and becoming a free agent. He used that leverage to get the Dodgers to offer him a new contract, avoiding free agency but monetizing his ability to leave. Even if Arenado improves this year and next, that seems like the most likely eventuality.

What’s an opt out worth? In Arenado’s case, it’s real money in expectation. Add that to the extra contract year that he snagged as part of the deal, and it’s easy to see why the player’s union was okay with him taking deferrals in 2021. Remember, though: even in the scenario where he’s at his best, he still leaves less than half the time. It’s valuable despite being unlikely, and that’s the magic of options.

For years, there’s been one refrain in Anaheim: get Mike Trout some pitching help. The last time an Angels pitcher accrued 4 or more WAR was Garrett Richards in 2014, and there’s been a carousel of arms in the half-decade since. Yesterday, the Angels wholly misunderstood that refrain, sending Jahmai Jones to Baltimore in exchange for professionally cromulent starter Alex Cobb.

Cobb, who is in the last year of a four-year, $57 million contract, reached free agency after years of quiet competence. In the three intervening years, he’s alternated between being competent or hurt. He gets to it in a strange way — few strikeouts, fewer walks, and enough grounders to blot out the sun — but it adds up to something a little worse than average but significantly better than replacement level.

For the Angels, that may or may not be a meaningful upgrade to start the season. Shohei Ohtani will return in 2021, but certainly not for the whole season. When he does, he’ll likely be part of a six-man rotation. The top three starters will be Andrew Heaney, Dylan Bundy, and new acquisition José Quintana. That leaves two spots for other pitchers. Before the acquisition of Cobb, that meant Griffin Canning and Patrick Sandoval. Both are interesting, albeit unproven, options. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Joc Pederson has had a strange career so far. In his six-plus seasons in the majors, he’s put together four solid seasons, with WAR totals ranging between 2.7 and 3.5. He’s done it with his bat — his career .230/.336/.470 slash line works out to a 118 wRC+. Because he’s done it on the Dodgers, however, he’s been no more than a platoon bat most years, and so in our heads, he’s mostly just a part-time player.

Over these six years, he’s been roughly as valuable as Mike Moustakas, Whit Merrifield, or AJ Pollock, all of whom have felt like stars at one point or another. He’s only 1 WAR shy of Michael Brantley, 2 WAR shy of new teammate Javier Báez. It’s hard to fight the lingering sense that he’s never gotten a full opportunity, though. At least, he hasn’t until now — on Friday, the Cubs signed Pederson to a one-year, $7 million deal, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal.

After non-tendering Kyle Schwarber, the Cubs lacked outfield depth, and that’s putting it charitably. Phillip Ervin, who they claimed on waivers in December, was a starter by default. By signing there, Pederson will likely be answering the biggest unknown about his game: can Joc hit lefties? Read the rest of this entry »

For years, rumors have connected Nolan Arenado and the St. Louis Cardinals. Some of it was wishcasting — Cardinals fans have spent the last 25 years expecting (and often seeing) trades for unhappy superstars, and Arenado sure seemed unhappy. Some of it was actual interest — the Cardinals have been in the superstar trade market and the Rockies have been in the move-Arenado market at various points. Today, it’s happening: per The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Arenado has been traded to the Cardinals for five players: Austin Gomber, Mateo Gil, Tony Locey, Elehuris Montero, and Jake Sommers.

The sticking point in any Arenado trade was always going to be capitalism. That’s painting with a broad brush, so let’s rephrase: there’s no doubt that Arenado is one of the best players in the game, but the vagaries of his contract and the math of surplus value combined to limit a potential return. Remember when Giancarlo Stanton got traded to the Yankees for essentially nothing? This would be like that, only potentially even worse.

Arenado is due $199 million over the next six years. That’s a large contract, as befits a player of his stature. If you value one win above replacement at around $8 million (my best estimate at present, though the error bars are huge given the pandemic), Arenado would need to produce roughly 25 WAR over the next six years to break even. We’ve got ZiPS forecasts for the next five of those years:

The numbers fall a little short, which is why finding a trading partner for Arenado has proved so elusive even as rumors of his availability persisted. That doesn’t even take into account a player option that would allow him to become a free agent after the 2021 season; it’s hard to trade a lot for a player who might not be on your team in a year’s time.

Those are the reasons that Arenado was a strange piece to fit in a trade. The counter? Arenado is an awesome player! He’s Nolan Arenado, for crying out loud. Over the last five years, he’s been the seventh-best position player in the game. At 29, he’s not a spring chicken anymore, but he’s still one of the best third basemen out there. Every single team in baseball would be improved by adding him, even if they had to shift a few pieces around to fit him in.

This weird dichotomy — excellent player, middling trade chip — explains the strangeness of this deal. Though the terms of the deal aren’t final, the Rockies are reportedly sending roughly $50 million to the Cardinals as part of the trade, and Arenado has agreed to defer some of his compensation to further sweeten the financial pot for St. Louis. The Cardinals gave Arenado an extra opt-out and an extra year reported at $15 million in exchange. There are all kinds of wild financial things going on in this deal, but let’s skip all that for now and focus on what St. Louis is getting on the field.

The highlight of this trade is pretty clear: the Cardinals just got a new best player on their team. The NL Central is up for grabs this year, and the four teams with a realistic shot at it have spent the offseason doing a whole lot of nothing. Adam Wainwright, who signed earlier this week, was the first player the Cardinals inked to a major league contract all offseason. Read the rest of this entry »

The White Sox were one of the most exciting teams in baseball last year; a youthful, exuberant squad that broke up the Minnesota/Cleveland hegemony in the AL Central with a solid pitching staff and an unending barrage of crushed, smoked, and blistered baseballs. They led the league in position player WAR, and it was a team effort — seven different Chicago players had more than 100 plate appearances and an above-average batting line.

Notably absent from that group: Yoán Moncada, the one-time top prospect in baseball. He still put together a solid season — he hit .225/.320/.385, good for a 96 wRC+, and played stellar defense at third base — but after his breakout in 2019, 2020 can only be viewed as a disappointment.

I’ve got good news for people who are hoping Moncada turns things around: I know one of the main contributors to the problem (well, two, actually, but we’ll cover the second at the end of the article). I also have bad news for people who are hoping Moncada turns things around: it’s the same problem as always, and one that I hoped he had put in the past. Moncada simply doesn’t swing enough.

If this doesn’t sound like a common problem to you, well, yeah, it’s not. We as fans (and analysts) want batters to have a “good eye,” to avoid swings at devastating secondary pitches that they can’t do anything with. That’s the downfall of many a prospect, but Moncada has never had that problem.

Every year of his big league career, Moncada has chased fewer pitches than league average. This isn’t some trick of the count, either. Most batters chase more frequently when they’re behind in the count. Moncada chases less:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ah, relievers. Can’t predict them, can’t live without them. Between the changing demands of a modern game and the fact that bullpen arms seem to fluctuate randomly between unhittable and unreliable, everyone always needs more relievers. Both New York teams, set at many other positions, made moves to bolster their bullpens yesterday. The Yankees are signing Darren O’Day, while the Mets are adding Aaron Loup (pending a physical).

Let’s address O’Day first. Only two days ago, the Yankees traded Adam Ottavino to the Red Sox for a bag of baseballs. Actually, it was worse than that: they traded Ottavino and a prospect and $850,000 to the Red Sox for future considerations. As Dan Szymborski detailed, the Yankees made that trade to dodge the Competitive Balance Tax, but doing so left a right-handed hole in their bullpen.

One thing that no one can dispute is that Darren O’Day is right-handed. That has, in fact, been his calling card for 13 major league seasons: O’Day breaks right-handed batters down, end of story. Over his lengthy career, he’s held them to a .248 wOBA, with a 27.5% strikeout rate doing most of the heavy lifting. His sidearm delivery is a rarity these days, and it turns righties into… well, into whatever you want to call Bobby Dalbec on this swing:

That goofy (though not in a skateboarding sense) arm angle turns an 86 mph fastball into a devastating weapon, a pitch that batters think will hit them in the leg before it explodes up and away. He complements it with a sweeping slider he commands well to his glove side, a useful counter when hitters start to adjust to the unexpected release point.

The last time O’Day allowed even league average production to opposing righties was in 2011, when he faced only 43 of them. ROOGY is an overused term — at this point, even LOOGYs hardly exist — but O’Day might be the rare pitcher who fits the bill.

By using O’Day strategically against righty-heavy patches of the opposing lineup, the Yankees hope to get a steady diet of strikeouts and weak fly balls. Unlike most sidearmers, O’Day works up in the zone, something which surely adds to batters’ confusion. It’s not so much the velocity, the location, or the delivery; the combination of everything is simply too strange to deal with.

You might think that a sidearmer throwing high in the zone to lefties — three batter minimum and all — would undo all the good that O’Day does against righties. You’d be right — O’Day has been brutal against lefties as his career has worn on. Since the beginning of the new lively ball era in 2015, he’s allowed 1.5 HR/9 against lefties, good for a 4.67 FIP (ERA isn’t really compatible with splits like these). For comparison, his FIP against righties over the same window is a stellar 2.61.

The onus is on the Yankees to find good spots to use such a situational reliever, but the opportunities will certainly be there. Consider the rosters of the Yankees’ three division rivals (sorry, Orioles). The Blue Jays signed righties George Springer and Marcus Semien to join righties Bo Bichette, Teoscar Hernández, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., while the Red Sox have only three lefty batters on their roster. The Rays — well, yeah, the Rays will be a problem. Even then, though, sending O’Day out to face a dangerous righty with two outs will often be worth the gamble — he’s bad against lefties, but not enough to offset his mastery of righties.

At $2.45 million, O’Day doesn’t need to set the league on fire to meet expectations. The Yankee bullpen is strong at the top — Aroldis Chapman, Zack Britton, and Chad Green provide quantity and quality, and two of them are even lefties. If O’Day can contribute 40 to 50 innings of right-handed filth, the Yankees will be pleased — that’s Ottavino production at a quarter of the price.

Speaking of New York teams signing situational relievers, the Mets signed Aaron Loup, who will become the only left-hander in an already-excellent bullpen. Calling him reverse O’Day misses the mark — he throws harder and doesn’t display such extreme platoon splits. Still, though, bringing in a southpaw in an all-right-handed bullpen tells you what the Mets want from Loup: come in against opposing leftys, sit them down, and tread water against the righties.

Okay, fine, there’s one major similarity between Loup and O’Day:

Like his new borough neighbor, Loup comes at hitters from a novel angle. Unlike O’Day, he lives in the bottom of the zone with a sinker. He complements his fastball, which sits around 92 mph, with a cutter, curve, and changeup that he uses almost exclusively against righties — the last time he threw a changeup to a lefty was in 2017.

The terms of Loup’s deal haven’t yet been disclosed, but they’ll likely closely mirror O’Day’s contract. So, too, will his role, though this time I mean mirror in the sense of the same thing in reverse. Loup will face dangerous lefties and then try to survive against the righties who follow them, shielding the Mets’ top relievers from the slings and arrows of outrageous Juan Soto highlights.

Neither of these deals are going to turn into wild, runaway success stories. Neither player is going to garner Cy Young votes. But teams need innings out of the bullpen, and both the Mets and Yankees are in competitive divisions. Filling those innings with quiet competence might be the difference in a game or two, and a game or two might be the difference in the playoff race.

How might these signings backfire? It all depends on what you mean by “backfire.” The most obvious downside is that O’Day and Loup might simply not be very good. O’Day throws a mid-80’s fastball and Loup is a 33-year-old reliever who struck out only 22.9% of opponents last year. It would hardly be shocking for one of these pitchers to be a roster casualty within the year — a few bad weeks, a pressing need for 40-man space, and that might be that.

Short of that, the downsides are all opportunity cost. If you’re out of the Loup market, you might be in the market for an exciting call-up from Triple-A. Giving innings to known and medium quantities is all well and good, but it lowers your odds of making exciting discoveries with that roster spot. The odds of O’Day turning into the next hot reliever du jour are essentially nonexistent.

For two presumptive playoff teams, however, that’s a negligible downside. It’s fun to discover new young relievers, but the downside is no joke: they might be bad! For teams far from contention, volatility is good. If you’re right in the thick of things, though, reliever volatility is definitely not where you want to be. By lowering their odds of failure, the Yankees and Mets are increasing their chances of success. Not bad for two sidearmers.