Sometimes, transaction news comes in a torrent. Check Twitter at the right time, and you’ll see four or five reporters confirming that X signed a new contract or Y traded Z to the Dodgers; generally Ken Rosenthal or Jeff Passan will have the news first, or tip their caps to the reporter who did.

In other instances, the news comes as a trickle, as is the case with Steven Souza Jr. Last Friday, Rosenthal reported that the Cubs had agreed to a contract with Souza, and followed that with another tweet indicating that the parties had agreed to a big league deal. As of press time, the details of the contract are still unknown and it appears that Souza needs to complete a physical before anything becomes official. We’ll update this post when we can confirm the particulars.

But this is one of those deals where the financials are secondary, and you just feel good for the player. Souza, you’ll recall, was badly injured in a freak accident during the penultimate game of Arizona’s Cactus League campaign last year. As he came around to score a run in the fourth inning, his foot slipped on home plate. He hyperextended his knee and in the ensuing tumble, tore his ACL, LCL, and posterior lateral capsule, and also suffered a partial tear in his posterior cruciate ligament. Needless to say, his season was over.

It was a blow for the Diamondbacks, who were thin in the outfield at the time, but even worse for Souza, who has constantly battled injuries throughout his career. In just the last five years, he’s suffered a broken hand, a labrum tear in his hip that required surgery, and a nagging pectoral injury that limited his production even when healthy enough to suit up.

It was the pectoral that dogged him throughout 2018, a disappointing follow-up campaign to what had looked like a breakout season. In 2017, finally healthy after hip surgery, Souza put up the best numbers of his career. He hit .239/.351/.459 with 30 homers in Tampa, good for a 121 wRC+ and nearly 4 WAR. The pectoral injury limited him to just 72 games in 2018 though, and his production cratered. He hit just five homers and his wRC+ fell to the mid-80s.

Between the knee injury last spring and Souza’s sub-replacement level production in 2018, a big league deal this winter was no foregone conclusion. As a power hitter with good (but not great) on-base skills and limited defensive value, he has the kind of profile that has struggled to find traction on the free agent market in recent years. He’s also three years and a serious knee surgery removed from his last productive campaign. Now on the wrong side of 30, he seemed like the kind of player more likely to get a minor league offer with an invitation to spring training than a major league contract.

Instead, he’s found the perfect fit with the Cubs, a team that has otherwise almost gone out of its way to avoid the free agent market. Souza’s contract is only the second major league deal they’ve offered this winter (provided that you can’t Ryan Tepera’s split contract as a big league deal), a period in which they’ve neither tried to boost their squad nor traded the kind of impact talent that would help kickstart a rebuild. As Chicago prepares to take one more shot with the remaining core from their 2016 championship team, Souza’s arrival could help paper over some of the cracks in the club’s outfield.

While nothing about Souza’s signing inherently prevents the Cubs from landing a bigger fish, Chicago’s behavior this winter suggests they’re not interested in that kind of deal (and with the news today that Nicholas Castellanos is taking his talents to Cincinnati, there aren’t a lot of big fish left). If this concludes their offseason investment in the outfield, Souza will slot in as one of the club’s two reserves. The Cubs don’t necessarily have an automatic starter at any one outfield position: Jason Heyward, Ian Happ, Albert Almora Jr., and Kyle Schwarber saw quite a bit of time in various spots, and Kris Bryant played some in right and left field as well. Souza has primarily played right field throughout his career, and he figures to spell Schwarber and perhaps Heyward in the corners on days the Cubs face a lefty.

Should that prove the case, Souza’s signing ought to make the Cubs lineup a bit better. He actually doesn’t have particularly large platoon splits: He’s notched a 101 wRC+ against righties in his career and has been only modestly better against lefties (108 wRC+), mostly thanks to a slightly higher batting average and a better walk rate when he has the platoon advantage. But while Souza can hit against everyone, Heyward and Schwarber have really struggled against southpaws:

Provided that Souza’s knee is healthy enough to play the outfield regularly and in some approximation of his previous form, he should be an upgrade on days the Cubs face a lefty and a useful bat off the bench when he’s not starting. In an era of three-man benches, this kind of player feels like a long lost luxury, though the bat-first extra outfielder will likely become more common with 26-man rosters and a new rule that requires teams to field at least 13 position players. If healthy, he should fill the role capably.

A strong offseason could have made Chicago the favorites in a tight but mediocre NL Central; instead, the club’s self-imposed austerity has helped keep the race wide open. For a relatively small transaction, the Souza deal says quite a bit about how the Cubs view themselves. Signing Souza at all demonstrates that the organization is willing to make improvements around the edges of a team that should win 80+ games and compete for a spot in the playoffs again. But the lack of bigger moves indicates that management is ready to pivot if the Cubs stumble out of the gate; Souza’s signing only corroborates that course.

Next week, the Dolan family, owners of the Cleveland Indians, are being honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Greater Cleveland Sports Awards. The criteria for determining the winner of that particular prize is vague; it usually goes to a retired player. The Dolans are the only ownership group to have won it.

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The Cincinnati Reds are a proud franchise in the midst of a tough run. A small market team in one of the league’s smallest cities, they’ve posted a losing record in each of the past six years. They haven’t won a playoff series in 30. TV ratings are solid — nothing attracts more eyeballs on a summer night in Cincinnati than Reds baseball — but fans haven’t had much to cheer lately. Franchise icon Joey Votto appears to be playing out the string. The Reds, even in a mediocre division, were buried in fourth place last season.

The Cleveland Indians are also a proud franchise, and they’re on a splendid run. They too are a small market team in one of the league’s smallest cities. But they’ve been plucky. The Tribe have notched seven consecutive winning seasons, and were a game away from a championship back in 2016. TV ratings are robust, the second-highest in all of baseball. Promising young players line the roster and shortstop Francisco Lindor is one of the game’s precious few superstars. The Indians missed the playoffs last season, but were relevant into the season’s final week and entered the winter with plenty of talent on hand.

So far this winter, Cincinnati has spent $100 million on Mike Moustakas, Wade Miley, and Shogo Akiyama. Cleveland has spent less than $10 million and dealt Corey Kluber for a reliever and an extra outfielder. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night, the Texas Rangers made another nifty signing in their humble but effective winter. Robinson Chirinos, coming off a career season in his Houston sojourn, will return to his roots this spring. He inked a one-year deal worth $5.75 million, with a $6.5 million team option for 2021; the contract also includes a $1 million buyout if the Rangers choose not to exercise the option.

Chirinos is one of those players who’s both older and better than you think. A career part-timer until 2018, the 35-year-old has quietly emerged as one of baseball’s best hitting catchers at an age most players fade into retirement. He has a very modern offensive game: He’s content to work the count, draw a few walks, take a few more strikeouts, post the occasional Insta, and smack a dinger every 10 days or so. He’s finished with a wRC+ above 100 in each of the last five campaigns, and among catchers with at least 1,000 plate appearances over the last three years, only seven have been better with the stick:

If all of that sounds like a way to avoid talking about his glove, guilty as charged. Per our framing metrics, Chirinos is one of the worst receivers in the league. This is not a minority view either, as Baseball Prospectus’s framing numbers track very similarly. He’s given away nearly 50 runs over his career from his framing alone, and while he improved a bit last season, he’s very much a bat-first option behind the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

The Washington Nationals have had a busy winter. The defending champs had several departing free agents to negotiate with, and while they couldn’t hang on to Anthony Rendon, they had better luck with Stephen Strasburg, Howie Kendrick, and (as of two days ago) Asdrúbal Cabrera. Washington has also inked a few non-incumbents, most recently infielder Starlin Castro. Last Friday afternoon, the Nationals and Castro shook hands on a two-year agreement worth a total of $12 million. It’s a short-term contract for the (somehow only) 29-year-old, and there are no options or incentives to lengthen or sweeten the deal.

It feels like an eon since Castro debuted as a 20-year-old hit-tool wonder for the Cubs. At the time, the consensus on the Dominican was that, given his lack of power and solid glove at short, he’d have to hit .300 to be a good player. Initially, the projection held: In the early years of his career, he made All-Star teams when his average neared or crested .300 and was approximately replacement level when it didn’t.

But Castro’s post-Chicago tenure has played out a little differently. He slid over to second upon joining the Yankees in 2016, and has barely featured at short since. He’s also grown into more power with age, twice topping 20 homers in the last four seasons. That extra power has partially compensated for a dwindling average, and ultimately the overall value of his production hasn’t dipped too much even as its shape has shifted quite a bit. Read the rest of this entry »

Financially savvy or cheap? Like beauty, the fundamental essence of thriftiness lies in the eye of the beholder. In truth, either adjective adequately describes the Blue Jays under the stewardship of club president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins. In their teardown, the Jays have done much to rebuild the farm system and add a youthful vigor to the big league team. Recent trades to unload veteran talent, most notably the Kevin Pillar and Marcus Stroman deals, were difficult but justifiable moves for a team unable to compete in the short term.

But the Jays have also come under criticism for leaning a bit too far into the rebuild. They were all set to play the service-time manipulation game with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (a hamstring injury allowed them to delay his call-up without resorting to that tactic) and have been so aggressive in culling their veterans that Anthony Alford, with all of 59 career plate appearances to his name, is now the club’s longest tenured player. The makeover led an obviously delighted Shapiro to gush: “The combination of young talent along with the lack of future commitments, it will never be this again. It’s just for this moment.”

Surprisingly soon after achieving that spiritual high, the Jays started adding major league players. The big signing was Hyun-Jin Ryu, but they’ve made other moves to fill out their hollow roster. The additions of Chase Anderson and Tanner Roark give them a respectable rotation, and by signing of Travis Shaw, Toronto may well lengthen the middle of the lineup. Taken together, these moves make the Jays quite a bit better in the here and now. I don’t know if I’d call them playoff contenders quite yet, but it’s been a far more expeditious winter north of the border than many anticipated.

Shaw signed a one-year contract for $4 million, with incentives that could carry the deal to nearly $5 million if he plays well. Of course, he was only available for that price because he was non-tendered by Milwaukee after his horrible, no good, very bad 2019 season. After producing 3.5 wins in 2017 and 2018, his production fell off a cliff:

For a player who was only 29, the regression was as surprising as it was dramatic. Few players pumpkin overnight and the ones who do usually aren’t in their 20s, nor holding their own at a demanding defensive position.

Knowing nothing else, signing Shaw makes sense for a rebuilder like Toronto, particularly given the terms. It’s a classic pillow contract, a one-year, low-dollar commitment that won’t disrupt the club’s burgeoning young core. A third basemen by trade, Shaw will likely slide across the diamond to first to fill the vacancy left by Justin Smoak’s departure. The new man will get a chance to start and rebuild his value after a nightmare season, a mutually beneficial proposition; if last season proves an aberration, the Jays can flip Shaw for a prospect near the deadline. For his part, Shaw would then hit free agency without his 2019 numbers looming over his recruitment.

The challenge here is that Shaw didn’t merely have an off year, or put up lousy numbers after battling an injury. Rather, he was simply one of the worst players in the league last season. Among players with at least 250 plate appearances, only Mike Zunino offered less at the plate:

Everywhere you look, there’s a damning statistic. He struck out in 33% of his plate appearances, which is troubling on its own and also nearly double how often he fanned in 2018. His .157 batting average was the lowest in the league, which is bad, though not nearly as bad as the fact that his .270 slugging percentage also brought up the rear.

But a glance at Shaw’s batted ball profile suggests that all may not be lost just yet. His average exit velocity has barely budged throughout his major league career, and he actually set a career best in 2019, at 88.7 mph. His hard hit rate was only a tiny bit lower in 2019 than in previous seasons. For what it’s worth, he hit just fine in Triple-A after a midseason demotion.

Shaw had two problems last year, and they may well be related. The first is that he swung and missed far too often, and way more than he normally does. He made contact 70% of the time he swung last year, which is bad relative to the league and terrible compared to his career norms. There isn’t a key split here, mostly because none of them are good: He didn’t swing any more often (on either pitches in or out of the zone) but he missed a whole lot more, and his whiff rate rose on fastballs, offspeed pitches, and breaking balls. The uptick in missed fastballs was particularly substantial, from 18% of the time in 2018 to nearly 30% last year. Interestingly, a lot of those increased whiffs were concentrated in the upper part of the strike zone and above. His whiff rate was worse just about everywhere, but the difference is especially glaring above the belt:

That feeds into the second problem, which is what happened when he did connect. Always a guy who put the ball in the air a lot, Shaw’s average launch angle shifted from 16.6 degrees to 24.5 degrees (the league average was 11.2) in 2019. That was the second highest launch angle in baseball, and as you’d expect, it produced a corresponding increase in fly balls and popups from previous campaigns.

Critically, this change was clearly counterproductive for Shaw. On this site, we’ve often covered how hitters try to change their launch angle in an effort to hit more balls in the air, and how this tends to lead to a better offensive output. But there’s a limit to how high you want to go. It’s not necessarily that Shaw climbed into dangerous territory — Rhys Hoskins had the third highest launch angle last year, and Edwin Encarnación and Mike Trout occupied similar real estate — but it may well be dangerous territory for him. After all, Shaw was a pretty darn good hitter pre-2019, and with a higher launch angle than most bears. Raising that launch angle produced more harmless flies and far more swings and misses, particularly up in the zone, as we’d expect from a player using a steeper swing plane. All of this suggests that he wasn’t getting his bat in the hitting zone for nearly long enough.

It’s a trend that started early in 2019. At FanGraphs, we’ll often talk about how spring training numbers are meaningless, and usually they are. At the very outer fringes of the extremes though, we can sometimes detect something meaningful, for either good or ill. Such was the case with Shaw last year, who struck out 25 times without a walk in 52 trips to the plate. He hit the ball pretty well when he did connect last spring, which somewhat masked the issue at the time, but in hindsight it’s clear that this was a season-long problem for him.

Despite the depths of his struggles, this seems like a reversible trend. It’s far easier to fix glaring and identifiable problems than to grasp for solutions in the dark. Toronto’s challenge is to either help Shaw make more and better contact with the swing plane he employed in 2019 or to help him return to what worked in previous seasons. Simply knowing what to do doesn’t ensure that Shaw can do it, of course, but at least it’s a theoretically fixable issue. We’ve seen plenty of players successfully adjust their launch angles and there’s no reason to think Shaw can’t do the same.

Ultimately, for one-year and $4 million, this is the kind of move rebuilding clubs should be lining up to make. If Shaw doesn’t hit, the team can swallow the money and find someone else to man first base. But even modest improvement makes this a bargain of a contract, and given Shaw’s underlying batted ball indicators and recent history of success, there are plenty of reasons to think he can bounce back. A return to form won’t necessarily propel Toronto to the top of a very competitive AL East, but combined with a number of promising young players, it would go some way toward making the Blue Jays a fun club to watch in 2020. Between that and his potential re-sale value, what’s not to like?

The Minnesota Twins have re-signed soon-to-be 37-year-old reliever Sergio Romo to a one-year deal worth $5 million, as first reported by Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com. His contract includes an option for 2021, and allows him to earn up to $10 million total. You may feel like you’ve read this a hundred times this winter, but Romo is the latest free agent to sign for more money than our crowdsourcing forecast projected ($3 million in this case).

The right-hander pitched well for the Twins last year after a midseason trade brought him to Minneapolis. In 27 games, he threw 22.2 innings, posting a 3.18 ERA (146 ERA+) and a 3.35 FIP, along with tidy strikeout and walk totals. He took over as the eighth-inning guy pretty much as soon as he reached town, and earned a couple of saves as well.

A 12-year veteran, Romo is one of the greybeards now. Among active relievers, his 709 games played are the fifth most in baseball (Francisco Rodriguez, who played in 948, is listed as active on Baseball Reference, though he hasn’t appeared in the majors since 2017) and only Tyler Clippard and Fernando Rodney were called upon more often in the 2010s. As you’d expect, he’s been consistently durable throughout his 12-year career, pitching in 60-plus games in eight of the last 10 years. He hasn’t had a serious injury since 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

Milwaukee has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of the league’s austerity on the free agent market in recent seasons. A damp market gave the Brewers an opportunity to sign Lorenzo Cain to a team-friendly five-year deal in January of 2018, and their new center fielder’s 5.7 WAR campaign proved instrumental in a season Milwaukee won the NL Central by a single game. General manager David Stearns turned an even tidier trick last winter, inking Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas to one-year pillow contracts in January and February respectively. Both made the All-Star team and they combined for 8 WAR as the Brewers again narrowly clinched a playoff berth.

Critically, the Brewers haven’t succeeded by aggressively courting free agents, but rather by waiting out the competition and swooping in with palatable offers to desperate players at the dawn of spring training. Cain surely entered his recruitment period thinking a nine-figure offer was a strong possibility, and neither Grandal nor Moustakas hit the market hoping for anything less than a multi-year deal. As prices fell, Milwaukee pounced. In capitalizing on a cool market, the Brewers were able to meaningfully augment their ballclub without incurring significant costs, and the result was a rare breakthrough to the playoffs.

Milwaukee won’t be able to run it back with the same strategy in 2020. As we’ve covered elsewhere, the free agent market has rebounded significantly this offseason. Unlike in recent years, many of the marquee players are already off the board, and for pretty big money, too. The league has already committed approximately $1.5 billion to players: That’s nearly a billion more than this time last year, a free agency period that ended with around $1.8 billion in total commitments. With plenty of mid-tier free agents still on the board, the pattern has been established: Good players are getting more money and more years than they have over the two previous seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

The return of a vibrant free agent market has been the story of the offseason thus far. In recent days, we’ve seen three $200-plus million deals, including two record-setting contracts for pitchers and a $245 million contract for Anthony Rendon. Alongside, we’ve observed the continuation of a pattern established early this winter, where most players on our Top 50 Free Agent List have beaten their projected salaries. That hasn’t been true in every case: Josh Lindbloom just signed for more years and a lower AAV than we expected. But he’s one of the few exceptions. From Gerrit Cole to Tanner Roark, most players have signed for more money than we anticipated. Even Blake Treinen, who the Athletics didn’t even tender a contract to, inked an eight-figure deal on the open market.

That doesn’t mean everything has been patched up between ownership and the players. Teams seem every bit as leery of exceeding the luxury tax as they did last year, a stance best evinced by the Angels’ decision to package first-round pick Will Wilson with Zack Cozart in what amounted to a salary dump. More troublingly for the journeymen of the game, teams non-tendered more arb-eligible players than usual, including productive veterans like Treinen, Kevin Pillar, and Jonathan Villar. Consequently, the market for second-division starters and part-time players is unusually tight and crowded. Even with a resurgent free agent market, it’s a precarious time to be a low-level player in search of a home.

This brings us to Adam Jones, an All-Star turned platoon outfielder in the November of his career. In an era in which rookies are debuting near the peak of their powers, Jones’s career arc looks like the parabola we used to expect as the norm. After peaking as a 4-5 WAR player in his late 20s, he’s steadily declined in recent years:

Read the rest of this entry »

On the eve of the winter meetings, a full month and one major holiday into the offseason, it’s a good time to review what we’ve observed on the free agent market thus far and gauge how that activity portends for the rest of the year. It’s always an interesting question, but one that feels particularly relevant now after consecutive cold stoves and increasingly heated rhetoric from both the league and the MLB Players Association about the game’s economic landscape.

Inevitably, most of the action this winter will be viewed through the prism of whether this offseason feels as strange as the last two, which, if you’ve forgotten, were very unusual. Top free agents got their customary nine-figure offers, and we even saw a couple of record-breaking contracts, as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper inked the sport’s first $300 million free agent deals.

But seemingly everyone else had to scramble for work. In an abrupt departure from convention, teams both spent considerably less money than in winters past and waited significantly longer to solidify their roster. Meanwhile, players signed for dimes on the dollars they could have expected in previous years. Nick Markakis made his first All-Star team and took a pay cut to remain in Atlanta, and Mike Moustakas and Yasmani Grandal settled for one-year deals. Useful players like Denard Span faded away entirely. Revenues around the league were up, but teams had less and less to offer free agents. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Wednesday, the New York Yankees released Jacoby Ellsbury, cutting ties with the oft-injured outfielder even though he still had a year and more than $26 million left on his long-term deal. The Yankees are trying to worm their way out of that commitment, on the somewhat dubious premise that he received treatment from an unapproved physician, so the drama isn’t quite over yet. Either way though, he’s played his last game in New York. Along with Greg Bird and Nester Cortes Jr., Ellsbury was released in order to clear roster space for younger prospects.

By any measure, Ellsbury’s time in the Bronx was a disappointment. He played 120 games only twice, topped the three-win mark just once, and started four playoff games during his tenure. His first season was promising: He took advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short porch in right and parked 16 homers, the second-highest total of his career, en route to a 3.6 WAR season. But injuries and age soon caught up with him. While he retained most his speed and wits on the bases, starting in 2015, his production at the plate dipped noticeably. After falling out of the lineup in 2017, Ellsbury missed the entire 2018 season recovering from an oblique strain and a torn labrum in his hip, and then all of last year while batting plantar fasciitis. He was not expected to contribute significantly to the 2020 Yankees had he remained part of the roster.

In the wake of his release, there have been a few pieces speculating about where Ellsbury ranks on New York’s list of biggest free agent busts. That’s as unfair as it is uncharitable for a player who was pretty good in pinstripes before injuries kept him away from the field.

More to the point, there’s far more about Ellsbury’s career to celebrate than to lament. At his best, he was a breathtaking center fielder and one of the most exciting baserunners in recent memory. His 343 career steals are the seventh-most of any player this century, an impressive total even without considering that he stole successfully more than 82% of the time. He was a big part of two World Series winners and his out-of-nowhere power spike in 2011 fueled one of the best individual seasons of the decade. He stole home not once but twice, and set a major league record by reaching base 30 times on catcher’s interference. He was good, he was fun, and if this is the end for Ellsbury, we’re lucky to have seen him play. Read the rest of this entry »