“The timid man calls himself cautious, the sordid man thrifty.” – Publius Syrus

The Mets always feel like an organization on the verge of a giant, hilarious meltdown. But for all the drama that can surround the franchise — whether it’s the manager and a pitcher threatening a beat writer or the team’s strange obsession with Tim Tebow — it frequently puts a competent product on the field. So it was in 2019, as the Mets outlasted most of the National League in the fight for the last playoff spot, eventually finishing a respectable 86-76. The Mets enter the offseason with most of that squad returning, but uncertainty about how much they are actually willing to spend will limit the team’s upside.

The Setup

Is there a franchise with a more pronounced tendency to back their way into success? The Mets didn’t fully commit to Michael Conforto until an All-Star appearance in 2017 made their apparent casual disinterest untenable, and there always seemed to be a bit of annoyance at “having” to play Brandon Nimmo. Despite a .329/.381/.471 debut from Jeff McNeil, the Mets spent much of the winter bringing in veterans who man the positions McNeil was likely to play in the majors. In 2020, McNeil and Conforto will be keys to the team’s success, as will a hopefully healthy Nimmo.

After Sandy Alderson’s contract expired, the Mets turned the page on the era and hired Brodie Van Wagenen, the co-head of the baseball division of CAA Sports. Ignoring for a moment the potential conflicts of interest involved in moving from an agency to the front office, Van Wagenen was a bold hire. I don’t usually think of the Mets as visionaries, but I’d rather teams try something new than go with the safe veteran choice. Aside from those aforementioned conflicts, much of the skillset of a good agent ought to extend to being a good front office executive. Agents have to negotiate contracts, so generally ought to have a keen grasp of how players are valued around the league, and the job of player representation necessarily involves some knowledge of modern analytics. Call me biased, but anyone who knew to go out and hire Russell Carleton and Andrew Perpetua has to be at least somewhat knowledgeable. Read the rest of this entry »

“Who doesn’t enjoy going downhill? That’s when you get to stop pedaling.” – Christian Finnegan

Every successful thing has a peak. The Romans had the Pax Romana. Napoleon had the Battle of Austerlitz. The Simpsons had the Who Shot Mr. Burns? cliffhanger. For the early 21st-century Cubs, it was Michael Martinez grounding out on a mild November evening, giving the team its first World Series championship since 1908. Moistened by celebratory alcohol, this was almost certainly the peak for these Cubs, and even a second championship probably wouldn’t touch the magic of this moment.

Since 2016, the Cubs finished each season a bit less successfully than the previous one. The 2017 team dropped four of five to the Dodgers in the NLCS, and the 2018 team’s end came in a wild card game against the Colorado Rockies. The 2019 team didn’t even make it into October.

The club’s dynasty was built on developing players from within and using their big-market financial heft to play in free agency. These two ingredients have faded into the background in recent years as the team’s farm system has been weakened from trades and graduations while ownership has increasingly embraced a more frugal financial strategy. The Cubs are a team in decline, to the point at which they’re just any old NL Central contender, not a behemoth pushing around the Cardinals or Brewers or Reds. Read the rest of this entry »

“Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.” – Albert Camus

The 2018 Boston Red Sox won 108 games and dominated the postseason, going 11-3 and winning the World Series. The 2019 Red Sox…did not. It’s hard to call an 84-78 season an unmitigated disaster. Still, the Red Sox were out of the divisional race by June, resulting in president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski getting his pink slip. Replacing Dombrowski is Chaim Bloom, poached from the Tampa Bay Rays, and a public mandate to get the payroll under the luxury tax threshold. Boston, perhaps more than any near-playoff team in 2019, faces an uncertain future.

The Setup

Winning the World Series is every team’s (eventual) goal, and no matter what the Red Sox had done to follow-up on their big 2018 win, nobody was going to take down that flag. For the sequel, the Red Sox decided to go the route of keeping the band mostly together and hoping people would buy the Greatest Hits album. Whether or not it was due to excessive thrift — the Red Sox were safely over the luxury tax threshold — the team did little in the offseason aside from re-signing 2018 midseason acquisitions Nathan Eovaldi and Steve Pearce.

There’s an argument to be made that a roster that wins 108 games one year ought to be at least a serious contender the following year without too many alterations. The danger of that argument, however, is that a team is far more likely to win 108 games when an excessive number of things go right than when the majority of things go sour. Boston’s farm system wasn’t likely to provide much in the way of reinforcements in 2019, making the cost of either inaction or losing players to free agency higher than it would be for teams with greater internal depth.

When it came to the bullpen, inaction would have been an upgrade. Boston’s relief corps was far from the portable fire-starter of this year’s champs, ranking 13th in WAR and sixth in FIP in 2018, but it wasn’t a particularly deep group. The team let Craig Kimbrel and Joe Kelly go, something that 2019 hasn’t exactly forced the organization to regret. Still, the Red Sox needed to replace those contributions somehow, as Kimbrel and Kelly combined from two of the bullpen’s 4 WAR. But Boston didn’t do any of that, instead opting to move the returning relievers up a place, a bit like Darth Vader did with empire personnel every time he lost his temper and force-choked a commanding officer.

The Projection

As someone from Baltimore who grew up rooting against the Yankees, it irked me a bit that even while the Red Sox were winning the World Series, ZiPS thought the Yankees were the better team. That pattern continued in 2019; ZiPS forecast the Red Sox to finish four games behind the Yankees at the start of the season. Of course, Boston’s projected 94 wins were the fourth-most in baseball, so it’s not as if the projection system’s baseline expectation was a disappointing season.

There were, however, some troubling signs in the margins. The rotation projected for a more-than-healthy 18.1 WAR, but ZiPS also saw an enormous gulf after the front five starters. Beyond that group, ZiPS saw non-prospects Matthew Kent and Chandler Shepherd and journeyman reliever Ryan Weber as the team’s best spare options, a troubling ranking considering the propensity pitchers have for breaking. ZiPS loved it some Mookie Betts but saw the team’s lineup as top-heavy, and after Michael Chavis, was unimpressed with the offensive depth. ZiPS’ mean projection for the team was four games worse than the Yankees, but its 10th percentile projection was 10 games worse, which was more a reflection the weakness of the “break glass in case of emergency options” than of the riskiness of the team’s talent.

The Results

Boston started the season by dropping eight of 10 games, failing to win a series outright until they swept the Tampa Bay Rays in late April. Through the end of April, Red Sox starting pitchers posted a 4.73 FIP, better than the likes of teams such as the Orioles, but firmly in the bottom-third of the league. Chris Sale, Nathan Eovaldi, and Rick Porcello all struggled at the start of the season, enough for manager Alex Cora to use a six-man rotation for much of the first half in an attempt to give the starters more rest. Sale recovered somewhat as the season went on, though he never pitched at his usual level of awesomeness; a sore elbow ended his 2019 season early, but as of now, it looks like he has managed to avoid Tommy John surgery. David Price also bowed out early due to a cyst on his wrist that made throwing breaking pitches painful.

A roaring comeback never came for Porcello or Eovaldi. Porcello’s ERA didn’t dip below five after the midseason, and he likely only kept his spot in the rotation because of the various misfortunes of others. Eovaldi missed part of the season with sore biceps, and in order to facilitate a quicker return to action, Boston used him in relief for a spell.

As may have been expected given the team’s lack of depth, once the rotation’s Fab Five fell to ruin, the pitching picture was painted with a bleak palette. Outside Boston’s planned 2019 rotation, the team’s starting pitchers combined for a 6.79 ERA and 23 homers in 119.1 innings. The situation was dire enough that the team banked on Andrew Cashner being able to continue his surprisingly adequate 2019.

He didn’t.

Things were a good deal brighter offensively. Dustin Pedroia was only able to make it into six games, but any contribution was notable. Betts and J.D. Martinez regressed somewhat from their 2018 seasons, but no more than ought to have been reasonably expected by an impartial observer.

Xander Bogaerts had his best season yet, hitting .309/.384/.555 for a 141 wRC+ and 6.8 WAR, with all of those numbers representing career-bests. The Red Sox are lucky they were able to ink Bogaerts to a contract extension in April, as he would certainly have been much more expensive this winter.

It wasn’t all sunny, however. He wasn’t the worst performer on the offense, but Andrew Benintendi was arguably the most disappointing one. In a season that saw 53 players hit 30 or more home runs, Benintendi failed to find another 15 long balls in his bat. He turned some of his liners into fly balls, but a more aggressive approach at the plate hurt his contact numbers more than it helped his bottom line offensive stats. Benintendi looked a lot more like the middle-of-the-pack starter of 2017 than the star-level performer of 2018. He just turned 25 this season, so there’s still time, but as of this moment, I’d struggle to call him a player a team should build around.

In the end, the rotation’s struggles were too much for the offense to overcome. Realistically, even giving Betts and Martinez their 2018 lines wouldn’t have been enough to get the Sox to the playoffs.

What Comes Next?

This question is a pretty big matzah ball for the Red Sox (or whatever the Boston-equivalent of that Seinfeld colloquialism is). The Sox have expressed a public desire to get below the luxury tax threshold for the 2020 season. There’s always the chance that this is a bluff, and that ownership is not really as obsessed with this idea as they’re indicating, but it’s a dangerous game to signal to your paying customers that the product is going to get worse soon.

I’m not sure how this goal can be achieved by just cutting fat here and there. RosterResource projects the Red Sox to be over the luxury tax threshold even if they do nothing this offseason. That means no free agent replacement for Porcello and no veteran signings, short of other moves giving them additional space with which to play. The team is likely to trade Jackie Bradley Jr. and is not-so-subtly shopping Betts. The obvious problem here is that the Red Sox don’t have the in-house replacements to mitigate a JBJ loss, let alone Betts, who my colleague Ben Clemens just argued should not be traded. Betts will fetch real prospects, but if those theoretical prospects could effectively replace Betts in 2019, their current team would likely just play them instead of swapping them for the 2018 AL MVP.

Just as before the 2019 season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel have the Red Sox farm system last in future value. Triston Casas‘ first full professional season was enough to get his FV moved up to 50; the Red Sox didn’t have a 50 FV prospect coming into the season, so that’s something, I guess.

Chaim Bloom’s charge with the Red Sox is to restock the farm system while not throwing in the towel on 2020 or 2021. It’s going to be a challenge.

The Absitively, Posilutely, Way-Too-Early ZiPS Projection – Rafael Devers

Rafael Devers’ 2018 line (.240/.298/.433, 90 wRC+, 1.0 WAR) was underwhelming on its face. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that Devers was only 21 in 2018; any 21-year-old prospect who debuted with those numbers would have been hailed as a 2019 breakout candidate. That’s just what Devers did, hitting .311/.361/.555 with 32 homers, 54 doubles, and a spine-tingling 5.9 WAR. Devers rose to elite territory in average exit velocity (16th in the majors), and there’s still room in his swing to get more loft and turn some of those doubles into home runs. Devers is unlikely ever to be a serious Gold Glove candidate — I won’t say never because of Marcus Semien — but he made great strides in his defense in 2019, cutting his errors by a third.

Devers is a legitimate star at the hot corner and should be a foundational player for the Red Sox over the next decade or so. Coming into 2019, ZiPS had Devers as the seventh ranked third baseman in terms of career WAR remaining, behind Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Jose Ramirez, Alex Bregman, Manny Machado, Matt Chapman, and Kris Bryant. That’s a tough crowd to break into, but I would not be shocked to see Devers ascend into the top five.

Devers’ WAR obviously won’t be quite this stable — this is a projection after all — but that’s the forecast of a top third baseman.

Voting for baseball’s various awards is a small part of BBWAA membership, but it’s an undeniably cool part of it, one of the things you dream of doing when you’re a kid. As a member of one of the BBWAA’s smallest city-chapters, I’ve been fortunate to be asked to vote in most of the years I’ve been in the BBWAA, and it’s a responsibility I take quite seriously. I loved baseball for decades before I was employed in the game’s orbit, so it’s important to me to get my microscopic contribution to its history right.

This year, my vote was for the National League Rookie of the Year award. While you only submit three names on your official ballot and I was reasonably sure of who those names would be, my rough draft contained 10 players. I make ballots that are longer than necessary for the express purpose of making sure I’m exercising proper due diligence. Going into my ballot for the 2017 National League Cy Young award, I did not expect Gio Gonzalez to rank fifth (he was eighth in WAR in the NL), but I felt — and still do — that it should be more than a FIP ranking. There’s a philosophical quandary when it comes to BABIP-type measures, after all, and it’s hard to entirely chuck out success that actually occurred simply because that success isn’t necessarily predictive.

Here’s my final 10-player ballot for National League Rookie of the Year. (Naturally, I only submitted three names, as that’s all the form has space for, and because I didn’t want to leave the BBWAA’s secretary-treasurer, Jack O’Connell, questioning my functional literacy.)

10. Kevin Newman (.308/.353/.446, 110 wRC+, 2.4 WAR)

Several other players could have taken the final spot on my imaginary ballot. Some readers will probably object to me leaving off Sandy Alcantara and his 2.4 WAR, but his worse xFIP (5.17) than FIP (4.55) meshes with something that ZiPS saw in Alcantara’s 2019. The system is exceptionally skeptical of Alcantara’s low HR/9, and while I don’t dismiss performance that isn’t predictive outright, there were a lot of excellent back-ballot candidates, and it was enough for him to miss the ballot. You can even shave another couple of runs off from his -0.2 WAR as a hitter.

Merrill Kelly lost -0.6 WAR as a hitter, enough to demote the reliable-if-unexciting innings-eater. Dakota Hudson‘s FIP-ERA difference was simply too large for me to overlook. Adrian Houser got too much of his value from low-leverage situations. Christian Walker’s numbers weren’t thrilling for a first baseman. Some of these objections are quibbles, but this was a very close decision. In the end, I went with Kevin Newman, who hit as well as Walker did while playing three infield positions. Given how volatile defensive numbers are, I didn’t want to be overly reliant on one year’s worth of data at short, which is what I’d have ended up doing in a straight WAR ranking.

9. Mike Yastrzemski (.272/.334/.518, 121 wRC+, 2.2 WAR)

Of the players on the ballot, Li’l Yaz is the one of whose future performance I’m most skeptical. Teams have been wrong about minor league veterans many times in the past, but I’m still not sure they were completely wrong about Yastrzemski. A .251/.342/.442 career line in Triple-A doesn’t scream starting major league corner outfielder, but I can’t deny that his performance actually happened. He also put up his 2.2 WAR in relatively few plate appearances. And it’s worth noting that ZiPS has always liked his defense in the corners, and there’s a real chance that his true ability may be closer to his DRS (+8) than his UZR (+0.8), adding a few runs of value. Read the rest of this entry »

“Unhappiness lies in that gap between our talents and our expectations.” – Sebastian Horsley

If you had any questions about where in their rebuilding cycle the Phillies saw themselves as being, the signing of Bryce Harper and the trade for J.T. Realmuto should have been big clues. Philadelphia planned to build on 2018, a surprisingly competitive season that ended in an even more surprising total collapse and residual, Fortnite-related stress. Instead, the Phils ended up winning just one more game than last year, a failure that ended manager Gabe Kapler’s brief reign.

The Setup

The Phillies had every reason to look forward to the offseason after 2018. The year may have ended on a sour note due to a late collapse, but there were plenty of optimism. Unlike the team’s luck-infused 71-91 record in 2016, its surge to an 80-82 record had some real force behind it. With the exception of Carlos Santana, the entire starting lineup was still in their 20s, Aaron Nola had stepped into Cy Young contender territory, and the team’s young bullpen arms were beginning to work out.

And most importantly, the Phillies had “stupid money.” These aren’t even my snarky words, but a direct quote from ownership. In an offseason when most teams were looking to refinance their mortgages, the Phillies planned to build a fancy new casino. No free agent was out of reach, and while it took them until nearly March to close the deal, the team landed Harper on a 13-year, $330 million contract.

But the Phillies weren’t aggressive in the market otherwise. Andrew McCutchen was brought in for three years and $50 million, and David Robertson was scooped up for two years to make the front end of the team’s bullpen look a bit scarier. But one thing was missing in free agency: another starting pitcher to join Nola. Read the rest of this entry »

12:02

Dan Szymborski: Greetings, there is no baseball!

12:02

Dan Szymborski: But there is pretend baseball that may lead to future baseball.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Unless, you know, the world ends in March or something. But then you won’t be aware of no baseball so our demise works out also!

12:03

Dan Szymborski: I like existing, but no longer needing to finish cleaning out the basement is cool too.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Our Split Leaderboards are just the tincture you need for revitalization, good sir!

Read the rest of this entry »

“How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life.” – Marcus Aurelius, (translated from The Meditations)

The Arizona Diamondbacks didn’t enter last offseason with a plan to burn everything to ashes and then burn the ashes. After all, being able to choose how to rebuild is one of the benefits of not waiting until circumstances have eliminated more appealing options. Arizona remained in contention despite trading Paul Goldschmidt last offseason and shedding Eephus god Zack Greinke in July, and the club looks like a viable Wild Card contender entering 2020.

The Setup

The D-backs faced a Goldschmidt-sized conundrum after the 2018 season. The longtime middle-of-the-order slugger was a year from free agency, and the team couldn’t have been thrilled at the prospect of an extension for an aging first baseman, a deal likely to eclipse $25 million a year. The 2018 team went just 82-80 with Goldschmidt, and the improving farm system was still far from elite, so it made the decision to trade a single year of America’s First Baseman if the right package came along. The Cardinals made the winning offer in the form of Carson Kelly, Luke Weaver, Andy Young, and a Competitive Balance Round B pick; in Weaver and Kelly, Arizona received two players with the potential to contribute immediately in crucial roles, softening the loss Goldschmidt.

While there was some concern from the fan base that this move heralded the start of an old-fashioned fire sale, nothing quite so dramatic actually materialized. Endless rumors swirled around Greinke, but Arizona wasn’t, and the team was more than happy to have its ace return for the 2019 season. Arizona saw Christian Walker as the best candidate to replace Goldschmidt at first, and with Walker out of options, the team hoped he’d make a case for a starting job in spring training (he did). Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I discussed a few of the qualifying offer decisions facing teams and players this offseason. Yesterday, we learned which players found themselves on the receiving end of a QO. What happened and, given my analysis last week, what are the potential consequences? Let’s take a look.

Received a Qualifying Offer

The Obvious Ones
Anthony Rendon, Gerrit Cole, Josh Donaldson, and Stephen Strasburg all received offers. I think I’m on fairly safe ground by assuming all four will be turned down and that none of these players will have their markets seriously altered or damaged by the loss of a draft pick.

José Abreu
José Abreu is the one player I didn’t address last week who I probably should have. I didn’t actually expect there was much chance of the White Sox making this offer. Abreu should absolutely accept this contract; Nelson Cruz was considerably older last winter, but was had just had a better season and came with no loss of a draft pick, and received just a one-year, $14.3 million deal with a team option.

ZiPS suggests Abreu could fetch a one-year, $10 million contract, considerably less than the qualifying offer; that also doesn’t account for the value of the lost of a draft pick. I suspect Abreu accepts, lest he becomes one of the top candidates this winter for the free agent who doesn’t sign until June.

Madison Bumgarner
Madison Bumgarner was an obvious recipient of a qualifying offer, but he’s worth noting separately due to the likely consequences it will have for his next contract. I didn’t include Bumgarner’s projection in the previous piece, but given that Steamer just came out with a 2.1 WAR forecast for the left-hander in 2020, it’s probably worth demonstrating that Steamer’s not an outlier:

This projection is for a neutral park, which matters for Bumgarner more than most. Bumgarner is more of a fly baller now than he was during his best years and doesn’t throw particularly hard, which is risky in a park that isn’t death to home runs. For his career, Bumgarner has a 58% higher HR/9 on the road than at home and with nearly a decade in the majors, that’s enough of a sample to declare it a concern instead of mere noise. ZiPS doesn’t explicitly use home/road data for individual players but it does see Bumgarner’s tendencies, valuing him at about 0.7 WAR per season more in San Francisco than in a neutral park. When you take the value of the draft pick into account, I’m not sure that Bumgarner is an obvious choice over Wade Miley given otherwise identical contracts.

Jake Odorizzi
The Twins made the smart move and extended a qualifying offer to Jake Odorizzi. The loss of a draft pick for the signing team adds risk to Odorizzi’s decision. The ZiPS projection for the right-hander’s next four years (8.7 WAR) is better than Dallas Keuchel’s four-year projection was entering free agency last winter (8.5 WAR). The situations aren’t identical, but the experiences of Keuchel and other second-tier free agents with compensation attached ought to at least serve as a warning to Odorizzi.

Perhaps I’m being too optimistic, but I still think Odorizzi can get a contract in the four-year, $70 million range, even with the lost draft pick. I’d rather have Odorizzi now than Jake Arrieta after his final season with the Cubs and while it took until March, Arrieta still squeezed a three-year, $75 million deal out of the Phillies. If Odorizzi wants to roll the dice, it may not be the worst idea to take Minnesota’s offer and bet on himself to match 2019’s 4.3 WAR. If he does that two seasons in a row and enters free agency without any strings attached, he might be able to pass the $100 million mark.

Marcell Ozuna
The Cardinals gave Marcell Ozuna his QO and even though I don’t think his next deal will get within spitting distance of $100 million, the market for interesting, young-ish corner outfielders isn’t exactly deep, making Ozuna one of the more compelling options. I’d be surprised if he accepted.

Will Smith
I think the Giants’ decision to make Will Smith an offer was the right one. The question now whether Smith accepts and in this case, I think he should. It’s a fair one-year salary for an excellent closer and if 2019’s crazyball returns, Oracle Park is one of the safest places to be. Playing for the Giants will affect his save totals going into free agency, but really, how many teams are using save totals for evaluation purposes anymore?

Zack Wheeler
There was no trademark Mets unpredictability here, with the team extending a qualifying offer to Zack Wheeler just as it should have. It’s extremely unlikely that Wheeler accepts and, at least based on the ZiPS projections, appears headed for a deal somewhere in the five-year, $100 million range. I would personally have ranked Wheeler as the third-best starting pitcher available after Cole and Strasburg in our 2020 Top 50 Free Agent Rankings rather than Bumgarner, as Wheeler projects better over the next four years, in both their respective home parks and in a neutral one.

Did Not Receive a Qualifying Offer

The Yankees Trio
Suggesting that thrift will remain the watchword in New York, the Yankees did not extend qualifying offers to Didi Gregorius, Brett Gardner, or Dellin Betances. I still think the Yankees ought to have at least made an offer to Gregorius, who averaged 3.7 WAR in his first four seasons in New York. Gregorius will be just 30 for the entirety of the 2020 season and has to be tempting for a team with a short-term shortstop problem.

Kyle Gibson

As expected, the Twins did not extend a QO to Kyle Gibson, though the right-hander will still likely end up with a one-year deal. It might surprise you, but Gibson’s 2.6 WAR in 2019 was identical to his 2018 WAR. ERA-influenced perceptions are still a thing! Like Lance Lynn last winter, I think there’s a chance that Gibson is one of the best value signings for a team this winter.

Cole Hamels
I think Chicago made a mistake by not extending a QO to Cole Hamels. I know the Cubs have decided to do a whole song-and-dance routine about their so-called budget constraints, but they should have jumped at the chance to bring Hamels back so cheaply. There are no internal options that are better bets for 2020 than Hamels, and a better option in free agency will cost more. Would the Cubs be so curiously cheap if they didn’t already have the World Series win?

Rick Porcello
Despite my speculation as to what the case for an offer for Rick Porcello would consist of, I didn’t think there was ever a real chance the Red Sox would take this risk. With J.D. Martinez not opting out of his contract, the Red Sox may not have made the offer even if Porcello was a considerably better pitcher.

Wade Miley
Without a draft pick encumbering Wade Miley, I’d expect him to get a decent-sized, one-year deal in the range of $8-$12 million. Considering the last six weeks of the season, I don’t think he’ll get a multi-year deal.

Do you think the end of the baseball season results in a nice vacation for front offices? Poppycock! Horsefeathers! Archaic 19th Century Declaration of Shock! Hundreds of players will be able to offer their services on the open market after the post-postseason quiet period ends in a few days. With those free agency entrants comes a significant decision for teams: whether to extend qualifying offers to their departing free agents. And unlike paying your water, electric, or taco bill, it’s an actual choice that has to be made.

For those who don’t have the qualifying offer rules committed to memory, a refresher is in order. If a free agent spent the entire season on one team’s roster and has never before received a qualifying offer, his team can choose to extend to him a qualifying offer in order to receive draft pick compensation should he elect to sign with another team.

If a team makes a free agent a qualifying offer and received revenue sharing, they get a pick after the first round of the draft if the player is guaranteed at least $50 million by his new team. If they did not receive revenue sharing, their comp picks comes after the second round. If the team did not receive revenue sharing and did not exceed the luxury tax, they get a post-round two pick no matter the free agent’s new contract. The increasingly rare number of teams that exceed the soft salary cap luxury tax threshold pick after round four.

The qualifying offer is a one-year deal equivalent to the average of the salary of the top 125 highest-paid players in baseball. For the first time ever, the qualifying offer went down this year as owners realize that not paying for stuff is a lot more fun than paying for stuff, even if it doesn’t always result in winning baseball games.

The decision to make a free agent a qualifying offer has real consequences for players and teams, sometimes disastrous ones. The Cleveland Indians let Michael Brantley walk scot-free after the 2018 season, unwilling to risk “having to” sign a player coming off a 3.5 WAR season to a reasonably priced one-year contract. Brantley was worth 4.2 WAR in 2019; the Indians were patching holes in their outfield the entire season. Cleveland finished three games behind the Wild Card road team, the Tampa Bay Rays, so you can do the math there. Read the rest of this entry »

“A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.” – Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

Of all the realistic playoff contenders in 2019, the one that surprised me the most was the Texas Rangers. I have a feeling the Rangers were equally startled. Without successfully developing a new rotation from within or reaching the point when the wallets would be opened for prime free agent talent, the Rangers spent much of 2019 with realistic Wild Card hopes. Texas played under the .500 mark after the All-Star break and fell safely out of postseason contention, but you can’t say it wasn’t enjoyable.

The Setup

It’s always hard to say goodbye to your greatest victories. The Rangers have a rich and storied history of decent-but-unspectacular success since moving to Texas. Never triumphant as the Washington Senators II: Electric Boogaloo, the team had plenty of interesting eras populated with fascinating seasons, but it took until the 1990s for the team to make the playoffs and nearly another 15 years for the team to start winning there. While I’d be hard-pressed to call the 2010s Rangers a true dynasty, five playoff appearances in seven seasons, including two World Series, is a track record a lot of teams would envy.

But anything that can’t last forever won’t. The team’s core faded or departed, and by the time their most recent winning season rolled around in 2016, the Rangers were mainly running on the fumes of past squads. Not helping matters were two giant financial gambles meant to forestall the decline that I argued were monumental blunders: swapping Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder and signing Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $130 million contract.

The team avoided doing the full slash-and-burn rebuild, hoping instead that a few of the youngish players such as Joey Gallo and Rougned Odor were part of the foundation for the next contending Texas team. Developing a new rotation was slower progress, and the veteran fill-ins meant to eat innings mostly bombed in 2018. Ten pitchers started at least five games for the 2018 Rangers, but only three returned to the team in 2019: Mike Minor, Ariel Jurado, and Yohander Méndez. Jurickson Profar was shipped out to enhance minor league depth. Otherwise, the team’s most significant offseason move was a three-year, $30 million contract with Lance Lynn; Shelby Miller’s one-year deal was of the lottery ticket variety. Bringing in Lynn was an interesting FIP vs. ERA gamble, for while Lynn added a run in ERA from 2017 to 2018, he also subtracted a run in FIP.

The Projection

At the start of the season, ZiPS was quite pessimistic about Texas’ chances of cobbling together an adequate rotation. At 68-94, ZiPS gave the Rangers the second-worst chances of making the playoffs in the American League, only barely escaping the rounding-to-zero humiliation of the Baltimore Orioles. While there was a very good argument to be made that the Rangers had more going for them than the AL Central also-rans, they also played in a significantly tougher division.

ZiPS expected little from the pitching staff after league-average Mike Minor/Lance Lynn projections, and while the offensive projections were slightly less bleak, only Joey Gallo was forecast to eclipse the two-win mark. Even the team’s younger hitters, like Rougned Odor and Nomar Mazara, had serious concerns that held down the projections. When would Odor stop going into half-season slumps? How do you shape Mazara’s raw power into a more refined version?

Better seasons were on the menu — a large market team with a new park would be unlikely to cry poor — but the computer did not see one of those as coming in 2019.

The Results

The Rangers didn’t burst out of the gate in 2019, but they played far better baseball than I expected. I was quite harsh about the team keeping Hunter Pence on the roster over Willie Calhoun, but Pence had a lot more baseball remaining than I expected and hit .294/.353/.608 before a groin injury sidelined him in mid-June. Minor and Lynn weren’t just adequate, but elevated the rotation to near-adequacy in the first half of the season, combining for 232 innings with a 3.22 ERA. Minor made the All-Star Game for the first time in his career, and Lynn spent much of the season leading the American League in FIP.

One of the best bits of news for the Rangers was Joey Gallo finally breaking out. It may seem odd to talk about a player with two 40-homer seasons as a disappointment, but Gallo’s low batting averages — even by 2010s standards — suppressed his on-base and slugging percentages enough to make it a stretch to call him a star. While you didn’t see it in his pure strikeout rate, Gallo knocked a whole quarter off of his out-of-zone swing percentage in 2019. That resulted in him getting far more non-homer hits than usual, enough to add 50 points to his batting average. Gallo’s not a speed demon, but he’s not Albert Pujols-slow either, and combined with his raw power, ZiPS was always befuddled why his career BABIP lingered stubbornly around the .250 mark. It will be hard to maintain the .368 BABIP he posted this year, but I think Gallo’s a more well-rounded hitter than he used to be.

Texas lingered around .500 for most of the summer, but that success was shallow and predicated on riding the bullpen and a small number of elite performances. The non-Lynn and Minor parts of the rotation contributed an abysmal 6.63 ERA. The offense’s 94 wRC+ was largely Gallo-driven, and when he broke the hamate bone in his wrist in July, ending his season with a .253/.389/.598 line, Texas’s offense collapsed; the Rangers put up an 80 wRC+ in the second half, which led only the Detroit Tigers.

Still in contention at the trade deadline, the organization faced a difficult question. Throwing in the towel when your playoff chances are more than theoretical is a tough decision, and if the Rangers were going to stay in the race, they’d have to figure out how to replace Gallo’s bat. The team decided — rightly, in my opinion — not to become buyers, but consistent with their skinny-rebuild, didn’t dump everyone with value. Their one big deadline trade, picking up Kolby Allard from the Braves for reliever Chris Martin, was one that would have been hard for any team to pass up. Likely getting unimpressive offers for Mike Minor in light of the weak return for Marcus Stroman, the Rangers kept the rest of the team together and played out the string.

What Comes Next?

As pleasant as it was to play meaningful baseball in 2019, the Rangers didn’t answer many questions. Picking up Nick Solak was a coup, but Rougned Odor was still undependable, Nomar Mozara’s breakout continued to elude him, and Delino DeShields lost 30 points of OBP over the summer. Elvis Andrus’s .242/.283/.322 second half again raises questions as to whether his 2016-2017 “comeback” was temporary. José Leclerc recovered from his early-season struggles, but I’d be lying if I said I was as high on him entering 2020 as I was in 2019.

I hate to say it about a team that decided not to go the full-tank route, but I feel that 2019’s success will be hard to build on in 2020. You can’t expect Lynn and Minor to match their 2019s, and given their ages and contract situations, winter trades are likely still in the club’s interest. A Calhoun-DeShields-Gallo outfield ought to be fine, but I don’t share that optimism with the non-Solak parts of the infield.

Looking at THE BOARD does not fill me with optimism either. The farm system boasts far more quantity than quality as it currently stands. The team has a whopping 44 prospects with a projected 40-grade or higher, but only a single 50. And that 50, Solak, is already accounted for above. ZiPS only shows significantly more promising results in Leody Taveras. There are no pitching prospects in the top 100 (and nobody I’d quibble with Eric and Kiley over) and few signs of a long-term first baseman or catcher.

The team has money to spend and could theoretically land Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon and Yasmani Grandal, should the mood strike them. The problem is that I’m no longer sure that would be quite enough. Some of their lesser prospects will work out, but when sorting through that many maybes, you need time and a lot of roster space.

I’m not as down on the team’s future as this may make me sound, but I’m very down on its turnaround happening as quickly as 2019’s record suggests.

The Absitively, Posilutely, Way-Too-Early ZiPS Projection – Lance Lynn

I liked the Lance Lynn signing and you can’t claim Texas didn’t win this one. While ZiPS never got too excited about Lynn in 2019, I think a lot of that was due to the nature of the in-season model being simpler than the season-to-season model. Lynn had the best fastball velocity of his career in 2019, a relevant stat for a player whose repertoire largely consists of three fastball variants. His two-seamer/sinker has always been the weakest of the three, with batters hitting nearly .300 against it over Lynn’s career. Lynn dialed back the use of the pitch in 2019, relying more on his bog-standard fastball and cutter. The extra velocity on the regular fastball — Lynn could push it to the high 90s at times — gave him some separation from the cutter. Lynn even added a bit of velocity to his vertically oriented curveball, enough to fool pitch algorithms into sometimes thinking it was a splitter.

The computer’s buying it. Meeting this projection actually makes Lynn one of the most valuable veteran pitchers potentially available this offseason. While I’m not sure whether the team will actually go that route, I think Lynn showed enough to net a package I wouldn’t have thought possible for him a few years ago.