This year’s free agent market provided few options for teams seeking center fielders. Only 36-year-old Brett Gardner made our Top 50 Free Agents list, and he’s played a significant number of innings in the corners. The non-tendering of Kevin Pillar added another option, but he’s a slightly below-average performer and forecasts to be the same this season. None of the other major league free agents projects for even a win above replacement next season. All of that combined to make Shogo Akiyama potentially the best — and possibly the only — full-time starting center fielder available for a team hoping to contend. The Reds have been very clear about their wish to contend in 2020 and with multiple question marks in their outfield, Akiyama and Cincinnati have reportedly agreed on a three-year deal. The cost isn’t yet known, but reports have thrown out figures in the $15 million to $20 million range.

Akiyama comes to the Reds without a posting fee due to his tenure in Japan. He will be 32 years old in April, though he’s been incredibly durable the last five years, playing in the maximum 143 games each year and averaging 674 plate appearances per season during that time. He’s put up at least 20 homers in each of the last three seasons, though his isolated slugging percentage dropped by about 50 points in 2019 compared to the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Scouting reports are mixed on Akiyama’s present skillset. At Sports Info Solutions, Wil Hoefer wrote the following as part of his scouting report:

The good news on that front is that Akiyama has starting outfielder tools right now. His quick hands and good bat speed give him above-average game power and hit tools, albeit with some concerns about rigidity in his wrists and his occasional issues falling out of the batter’s box on contact. He’s an above-average runner in his early 30s, and while he does show good range and jumps in center, advanced defensive metrics–which should be taken with a grain of salt since they are a fairly new phenomenon in evaluating NPB players–are lukewarm at best and show a decline in Runs Saved from his earlier years in center field.

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This winter’s free agent class was once full of starting pitching. The offseason began with starting pitchers representing 10 of the top 20 free agents overall, and 21 of FanGraphs’ Top 50 Free Agents. After Dallas Keuchel signed with Chicago White Sox, Hyun-Jin Ryu, 40-year-old Rich Hill, and Homer Bailey were the only ranked starters remaining, and only Ryu represented a good bet for production next season. With many teams still in need of reinforcements for their rotations, competition for the lefty’s services was likely strong. Among potential contenders, the Twins and Angels presented the greatest need for a starter, but it was the Blue Jays who surprised and reached agreement on a four-year deal worth $80 million, per Jeff Passan.

Ryu will turn 33 years old in March, so the end of this contract will take him through his age-36 season. He’s got a complicated injury history (he hit the injured list again for a short time last season), but a strong 2019 combined with his status as the last man standing on the free agent market allowed him to far exceed the $48 million crowdsource median ($59 million average), as well as Kiley McDaniel’s $32 million estimate. In Ryu’s free agent capsule, Jay Jaffe noted the factors working in the left-hander’s favor, as well as those working against him, as he headed into free agency:

After being limited to 15 starts in 2018 due to a severe groin strain, the portly port-sider pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title for the first time since his 2013 rookie campaign. He didn’t just qualify, he led the NL with a 2.32 mark despite fading late. Through July, he posted a 1.53 ERA and 2.85 FIP, but that ballooned to 4.60 and 3.83 over the final two months, with a 10-day IL stint for neck soreness thrown in. Ryu’s success isn’t quite as enigmatic or unorthodox as his process, which includes rarely throwing bullpens between starts. Via a five-pitch arsenal, with his changeup the real star, he’s exceptional at limiting hard contact; his average exit velocity of 85.3 mph ranked in the 96th percentile, his .282 xwOBA in the 81st. His strikeout rate was a modest 22.5%, but he walked an NL-low 3.3%, so his 19.2% K-BB% ranked 12th, and his 3.10 FIP fourth. After accepting a qualifying offer last fall, he’s well-positioned for a multi-year deal despite the questions about his durability.

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Gerrit Cole just signed a nine-year, $324 million contract with the Yankees that ranks as one of the biggest in the game’s history. To compare contracts, however, some context is required. In the strictest sense, Cole’s deal is the second-largest in free agent history, behind only Bryce Harper’s $330 million last season. It’s the fourth-largest contract in baseball history, with Mike Trout’s contract extension earlier this year and Giancarlo Stanton’s $325 million deal back in 2015 joining Harper’s ahead of it. In dollars, it is ahead of Alex Rodriguez’s $252 million contract in 2001, as well as his $275 million deal from 2008. But the game’s finances have changed a lot since 2001, when the average major league payroll was just $67 million. Payrolls have increased by two-and-a-half times that amount, with league revenues growing even more than payrolls. So how does Cole’s deal really stack up? We can use payroll information to put Cole’s contract alongside Alex Rodriguez’s, and more evenly compare them.

About a year ago, I attempted to put Alex Rodriguez’s contracts in present-day payroll terms by adjusting them to 2019 dollars based on the average team’s payroll each season. Since that post, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Nolan Arenado have all signed large deals; I added them to the list in this post. After Mike Trout signed his extension, I updated the post again. In light of Gerrit Cole’s signing, another update is necessary. Read the rest of this entry »

Since the start of the 2016 season, Corey Kluber has been baseball’s sixth-best pitcher by WAR. That’s despite making just seven starts last year. Even over the last three seasons, he’s still in the top 10 and just two years ago, his 5.5 WAR ranked eighth. One season lost to injury later, Corey Kluber’s trade value plummeted. Despite no strong trade offers, an indication of Kluber’s perceived low value around the league, Cleveland didn’t want to keep their former ace and dealt him for the best offer available to the Texas Rangers. Here’s the deal, as first reported by Ken Rosenthal.

Rangers Receive:

• RHP Corey Kluber

Indians Receive:

• RHP Emmanuel Clase
• OF Delino DeShields Jr.

To help frame Kluber’s talent as it stands right now, here are the righty’s ZiPS projections as supplied by Dan Szymborski:

Kluber will be 34 years old in April. Even before the 2019 season began, there were questions about his effectiveness. He posted that 5.5 WAR season is 2018, but his velocity and swinging strike dropped in 2019. His 2017 represented a career year, but going from a 34% strikeout rate that season to a 26% strikeout rate in 2018, along with slightly diminished velocity moving into his mid-30s, likely prevented Cleveland from trading him last offseason when no team was willing to blow them away. While it might have been reasonable to expect a slightly diminished Kluber in 2019, predicting he would be hit by a comebacker that would break his forearm is more of a fluke. An oblique injury during rehab meant that Kluber didn’t make it back to the majors, taking his on-field expectations and trade value to new lows.

If we were to look at Kluber’s value through the lens of the projections, the return for Kluber is light, but not unconscionably so. Emmanuel Clase is an exciting reliever. Ben Clemens wrote about him in August, after he threw this 101 mph cutter:

He is still just a reliever, though. He was graded as a 40+ FV player on our 2019 midseason update, and Eric Longenhagen told me he’ll probably be a 45 this offseason. Clase will be 22 years old in March and will be making the minimum salary through 2022. Generically, a prospect like Clase would be worth around $4 million or so in present value. Kluber’s projections minus his salary above provide a $16 million surplus in present value. We could be generous and assign Clase a bit of extra value for having already making the majors, making his success more likely, but we’ll probably still come up short relative to Kluber’s projected value.

There were reports that Cleveland had asked the Angels for Brandon Marsh, a 50 FV prospect who is in the top 100 on THE BOARD. Looking just through the prism of prospect surplus value, Marsh is too much to give up for Kluber based on Kluber’s expected performance. Cleveland perhaps should have gotten a little bit more objectively, but they were never going to get a haul dealing him this winter. Claiming Cleveland should have gotten more because Kluber’s trade value is high is question-begging. The question actually raised by this deal is if Kluber’s current trade value is so low, why on earth would Cleveland bother to deal him now? The answer likely isn’t a great one for Cleveland as an organization.

After consistently keeping payroll in the bottom quarter of major league teams for the early part of the decade, Cleveland jumped close to league average after making the World Series in 2016. Attendance rose by roughly 400,000 fans after the payroll increase and the team kept most of those gains in 2018 as payroll remained steady. Last offseason, the club dropped payroll by more than $20 million and failed to address glaring weaknesses in the outfield; attendance at Progressive Field dipped by 200,000 and Cleveland barely missed the playoffs. While the offseason isn’t complete, the team is down another $20 million-plus in payroll thus far.

What’s most bizarre about this Kluber trade is that if he weren’t already on Cleveland, the team would be an ideal landing spot for him. They are a small-market club with a good team trying to make the playoffs. Taking on a one-year commitment for $17.5 million and having an option for a second year at a similar cost for an ace one season removed from a very good season feels like a no-brainer. It’s a low-risk, high-reward deal that a team like Cleveland should be all over. Kluber might not pay dividends, but if he recaptures some of his prior form, it turns Cleveland from a good team into a great one. If he’s good, but Cleveland is not, then his trade value next season will be well above where it is right now. This deal says that either Cleveland has no faith in Kluber as a pitcher or that cutting payroll is more important than trying to win. Even if it is the former, there’s still arguably a chance that Kluber contributes next season. If it’s the latter, and last offseason fails to provide Cleveland with the benefit of the doubt, that’s just bad for baseball.

Of course, another ideal fit for Kluber is the Texas Rangers. Kluber’s salary goes up $1 million with the trade to $18.5 million, but that’s basically what Madison Bumgarner just received, except for five seasons. The team option is now a vesting one should Kluber get to 160 innings and doesn’t end the season on the injured list, though if that happens, the option would look like a good deal. The vesting option shouldn’t lower Kluber’s trade value as the innings requirement still serves to raise the floor of the deal by decreasing the chances of being stuck with two poor seasons. Texas isn’t good right now, but they have a rotation that doesn’t need Kluber, with Lance Lynn, Mike Minor, Kyle Gibson, and Jordan Lyles as their top four. They could have gotten another low-end starter and still had one of the better rotations in the game. That low-end starter might increase the team’s floor, but for a club trying to get back into contention in what should be a tough division, raising the ceiling might be more important.

The Rangers still have a lot of work to do on the position-player side, but they now have one of the 10-best pitching staffs in baseball. Giving up Clase and a near-replacement-level outfielder in Deshields is a hard move not to make. A lot of other teams might have been able to put together similar offers, but it is possible many systems, like the lower-level heavy Angels, just couldn’t match up with the 2020 value Cleveland was looking for. That helps explain why Texas might have been able to pull off this deal where other teams couldn’t, but it doesn’t do much to help understand why Cleveland made this deal at this time when Kluber’s value to them should have been much higher than what he returned in trade. What ended up being good for the Rangers also seems pretty bad for baseball.

With the Red Sox trying to cut payroll and increase profits at the expense of the on-field product, it would make sense that the team might try to deal one of their most expensive players. David Price put up a very good season for the Red Sox in 2016 and helped the club win the World Series in 2018, but he made just 22 starts last year and began the offseason recovering from surgery on his wrist. When he did pitch this season, Price was effective, with a 3.62 FIP and 2.6 WAR despite just 107 innings, but the 34-year-old only threw 24 innings after the All-Star Break and his health is a huge question mark. Despite those concerns, Jeff Passan is reporting that teams are inquiring about the possibility of acquiring the left-hander.

The Boston Red Sox continue to pursue ways to shed salary, and multiple teams have targeted starter David Price, sources tell ESPN. He is owed $96 million over the next three years. Red Sox could either attach player with value or potentially pay down some of Price's remaining $.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2019

Given the present injury concerns, determining Price’s trade value is a bit difficult. Dan Szymborski provided the following ZiPS projections for Price over the next three seasons:

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While Silver Slugger awards reward the best hitters at every position and Gold Gloves are awarded to the best fielders, there hasn’t been a single award for the best player in every role. Now there is. Major League Baseball unveiled a pair of All-MLB teams on Tuesday at the Winter Meetings, with the squads including a player at each position to go along with a full five starters and two relievers. Since the main other piece of news today has involved Scott Boras’ love of birds, let’s take a quick look at the All-MLB teams and see what WAR has to say.

Here are the teams:

The 2019 All-MLB First & Second Teams!

LOVE seeing this concept for baseball… Love the idea of honoring the full season's contributions from players, MLB-wide.

More info on the honorees from @castrovince:https://t.co/vz7VU4eYsj pic.twitter.com/lU2nHncwnB

— Sarah Langs (@SlangsOnSports) December 10, 2019

Let’s run them down position by position. Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Strasburg entered the Nationals organization in 2009 as a 21-year-old super-prospect, an essentially finished product ready to pitch in the majors. A decade later, he has more than lived up to the hype, averaging four wins per season even after missing nearly all of the 2011 season due to Tommy John surgery. The decade culminated with Strasburg’s best season, 36.1 brilliant postseason innings, and a World Series championship. After opting out of the final four seasons and $100 million owed to him under his previous contract, the Nationals made Strasburg’s return their top priority, with the team and player agreed to a record $245 million deal covering the next seven seasons as first reported by Jon Heyman. Ken Rosenthal reports that Strasburg also receives a no-trade clause with multiple award incentives with annual salaries of $35 million with $80 million in deferrals spread out equally over the contract to be paid with interest. Joel Sherman has indicated the deferrals will be paid in the first three years after the contract’s end.

In his post earlier this afternoon, Dan Szymborksi posted Strasburg’s ZiPS projections for the duration of the deal. Those projections gave Strasburg an impressive 27.5 WAR for his age-31 through age-37 seasons. According to Szymborksi’s projection, the $245 million figure is essentially a fair one. But the deal is still surprising for its magnitude. When FanGraphs crowdsourced free agent contracts for the Top 50 Free Agents post, the median contract estimate for Strasburg came out to $140 million with an average of about $154 million; Kiley McDaniel’s prediction came in at $150 million. With Strasburg and Gerrit Cole the only bonafide aces available, and multiple teams willing to dole out large sums of money for those aces, the market for Strasburg was evidently robust. As Scott Boras looks set to pit the Yankees and Angels against each other for Cole, Strasburg sat waiting as a potential backup option. Rather than run the risk of losing Strasburg to the Cole runner-up, Washington opted to jump the market and paid to avoid a potential bidding war.

There are certainly risks involved with signing a pitcher into his mid-to-late 30s. Strasburg has a Tommy John surgery in his past. From 2015 through 2018, he averaged under 150 innings, but innings totals can be a double-edged sword when looking at longevity. Strasburg’s low innings totals in the past can be held against him, just as the 245.1 innings he threw in 2019 can be held against him due to the extra mileage it put on his arm. Ultimately, the Nationals are paying Strasburg for what they expect him to do in the future. As noted above, Strasburg’s projections are good. To get a slightly better sense of how pitchers like Strasburg have performed, I looked for players within two wins of Strasburg’s 18 WAR from age 27 through 30 years old. I took out any player with more than 200 innings than Strasburg’s 662 during that time and looked at players within two wins of Strasburg’s 5.7 WAR total in 2019. I was left with eight players:

Strasburg comes up a bit short in his innings total, though his 50.1 postseason innings aren’t included above. It’s also worth mentioning that the two players closest to Strasburg in terms of innings were Curt Schilling and Roy Halladay. Four of the eight players above are already Hall of Famers. Kevin Brown and Schilling both have good cases for induction as well. Here’s how those eight players performed over their next three seasons:

There isn’t a bust in the group, and the players above actually got better in their early 30s, averaging five wins per season. The worst comp during those years is Bert Blyleven, who still managed to pitch close to 400 innings and average more than three wins per season. It’s possible that showing Strasburg’s near-term future as a largely positive one doesn’t say much that we don’t already know. What about the out years of the contract, when Strasburg’s deal might become a liability? Here’s how those same eight pitchers fared from age-34 through age-37, in what will be the last four years of Strasburg’s contract:

Out of all of Strasburg’s comps, only one pitcher, Shane Reynolds, aged poorly. Roy Halladay’s injuries prevented him from pitching longer, but he still managed 10.5 WAR after his age-33 season. While Randy Johnson’s incredible career is doing a decent amount of work above, the pitchers averaged four wins per year in their mid-to-late-30s. Even looking at the median gives us 3.7 WAR per season during that time. We don’t know for sure how Strasburg will age, and injuries could certainly derail the latter half of his career, but pitchers who have pitched like Strasburg have aged incredibly well. The average WAR totals for these pitchers from age-31 through age-37 was 32.1 WAR with a 28.7 WAR median, even beating the ZiPS projections.

The Nationals are taking a risk with Strasburg, but it’s possible their bigger risk isn’t in signing Strasburg, but in what that signing might mean for the team’s pursuit of Anthony Rendon. Mark Lerner recently indicated the club would not be able to sign both Strasburg and Rendon, though as I noted at the time, even if both were given contracts for $30 million per year, it would represent only $6 million more than they made with the Nationals in 2019. Earlier today, I posed a question to our readers asking who they think the Nationals would be better off pursuing between the two free agents. In the hours that followed, more than 1,000 readers weighed in; by nearly a 2-1 margin preferred Rendon to Strasburg. Tilting the scales even more given what we know now, the expected contract in the poll for Strasburg was $100 million less than what he’s actually set to receive, while Rendon’s contract came in at $210 million. The Nationals probably won’t regret signing Stephen Strasburg, but it’s possible they might regret letting Rendon go, if that’s what transpires.

Even with Strasburg’s $35 million salary (with some deferrals with interest), the Nationals payroll still comes to just $165 million, well below the $200 million-plus payrolls they’ve been carrying the last few years. If the team doesn’t keep Rendon, perhaps they will sign Josh Donaldson, but it certainly looks like the team has payroll room. Outside of Rendon and Donaldson, there aren’t any other impact position players available. The team is roughly one good player away from making themselves favorites in the National League East. Bringing back Strasburg is a positive move for next season and beyond, but they still have a little more work to do if they want to get back to the playoffs next season.

The Nationals just won the World Series thanks in large part thanks to stars Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg. The pair were great for Washington in the regular season, combining for 13 wins; in the playoffs, Rendon posted an excellent 146 wRC+ and Strasburg became a playoff immortal.

The pair also earned around $54 million last season, with $10 million of that amount deferred as part of Strasburg’s contract. With both players now free agents, there are sizable holes for the Nationals to fill, both on the field and in their payroll. After running $200 million payrolls in each of the last three seasons, the club has only $132 million in salaries committed for next season, including arbitration estimates and minimum salaried players. When I looked at the teams with the most money to spend next season, I noted the $80 million gap between the Nationals’ 2020 commitments and 2019 payroll, and had this to say about their potential to spend:

The Nationals have a ton of money to spend coming off a World Series victory, and if they are going to get back to the playoffs, they will need to. If the team wanted, they could bring back both Anthony Rendon and Stephen Strasburg and because they stayed under the competitive balance tax amount last season, the penalties for going over next year are lessened. A big spend by the Nationals seems likely, though it won’t do much to change spending overall given where they were last year.

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