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Just under two weeks ago, when I was writing a piece connecting the unsigned players from among our Top 50 Free Agents list to teams that appeared to have needs, Wade Miley came off the board by signing a one-year deal with the Astros. A similar thing happened in writing that piece’s sequel, covering a handful of the best of the unranked and unsigned free agents, as Brett Anderson pre-empted the publication by re-signing with the A’s on a one-year deal. He’ll cost a pittance, as he’s guaranteed a modest $1.5 million, with another $1 million possible in undisclosed incentives.

Though it feels like he’s been around forever, Anderson just turned 31 on February 1. That said, the 2006 second-round pick by the Diamondbacks (out of high school in Stillwater, Oklahoma) has already spent parts of 10 seasons in the majors. I should emphasize the word parts there because, well, we’ve rarely seen a whole season from him. As a rookie with the A’s in 2009 — a season in which he entered ranked seventh on Baseball America’s Top 100 Prospects list — he made 30 starts and threw 175.1 innings en route to 3.5 WAR. But only once since then has he started 30 times in a major league season. Hell, only once since then has he even reached 20 starts in the bigs: in 2015, he completed a solid 31-start, 180.1-inning campaign for the Dodgers (3.69 ERA, 3.94 FIP, 1.6 WAR). Read the rest of this entry »

On February 1, I checked in on the 10 players who made our Top 50 Free Agents list in November but had yet to sign contracts, attempting to match them up with teams still in need of that missing piece. Since then, the much-anticipated J.T. Realmuto trade has gone down, and the first camps have opened to pitchers and catchers, but none of those 10 players has come off the board. Instead we’re left with an endless swirl of rumors and rationalizations. Bryce Harper has talked to the Padres and Giants, but they don’t want to pay him $300 million! The Yankees have continued to check in on Manny Machado, but won’t improve upon an offer termed “low” by a source close to the player! Mike Moustakas may return to the Brewers! This is quite a party.

Alas, not really. It’s frustrating to watch this broken system playing out, and it has to be even more so for the players — not only the aforementioned ranked ones, but the dozens upon dozens beyond them who are being frozen out as well. These are real people who don’t know yet where they (and their families, in many cases) are going to spend the better part of the next year, and they’re being squeezed to the point of accepting a fraction of the money they might have reasonably expected just a couple of years ago. In many cases, the fates of these unranked, unsigned players are interconnected with the pricier options; a team in the market for rotation help, pursuing the likes of Dallas Keuchel (No. 4 on our list) or Gio Gonzalez (No. 33) might wind up going for one of the starters below if they don’t land their top choice.

As with my previous roundup, what follows here is an attempt to match the best of the rest of those currently unemployed with teams in need, using a combination our projected standings and Depth Charts, MLB Trade Rumors, Roster Resource, Cot’s Contracts, and some imagination. Consider it prescriptive, rather than predictive; the further down the pecking order one goes, the more one may as well be throwing darts. Read the rest of this entry »

“Frank Robinson always went into second like a guy jumping through a skylight with a drawn Luger.”
— Jim Murray, Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1974

Frank Robinson may not have had the mythic grace of Willie Mays running down a drive to center field, or the staying power of Hank Aaron as he chased Babe Ruth’s hallowed home run record, but the mark he left on baseball, through the combination of his supreme talent and white-hot intensity, was of similar caliber. Though he never played in the Negro Leagues, as both Mays and Aaron briefly did, he was the spiritual heir to Jackie Robinson in bringing the Negro Leagues’ hard-charging style of play to the majors, and in blazing a trail beyond his playing days. At the tail end of a 21-year major league career that made him a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Robinson became the majors’ first African-American manager, and he spent more than 40 years working in baseball at the managerial and executive level.

Robinson passed away on Thursday at the age of 83 after battling cancer. Since 2015, he had served as a special advisor to the Commissioner and the honorary president of the American League, the final lines on one of the fullest resumés any player has ever assembled. Read the rest of this entry »

Nolan Arenado has ranked among the game’s elite third basemen for the past four seasons, and he’s already made headlines this winter. Last week, he and the Rockies averted an arbitration hearing when he agreed to a $26 million salary for 2019, a record for an arbitration-eligible player. Now, there’s optimism in Denver that the team could reach a longer-term deal that would keep Arenado in purple. It’s a move that not only would be in character for a franchise that has made a concerted attempt to keep its iconic players, but could also impact this winter’s frigid free agent market.

Arenado, who will turn 28 on April 16, is coming off a .297/.374/.561 showing with 38 homers, a 132 wRC+, and 5.7 WAR in 2018. He led the NL in home runs for the third year out of the past four, and while that feat owes much to Coors Field (he has an 87-71 home/road home run split in that span), improved plate discipline has helped him increase both his wRC+ and WAR every year since his 2013 rookie season. Last year’s incremental steps forward owe much to Arenado’s career-best 10.8% walk rate, more than double his 2013-15 mark (5.0%); that increase has keyed a 52-point rise in on-base percentage from his first three years (.318) to his last three (.370).

And then there’s the leather. Arenado has won a Gold Glove in each of his six seasons, and has won the Platinum Glove as the NL’s top overall defender, in each of the past two years; he also took home the Fielding Bible Award as the majors’ top third baseman annually from 2015-17. While UZR doesn’t value his defense nearly as highly as DRS (career totals of 37.6 and 109, respectively), the two marks converged last year (5.8 and 5, respectively). Beyond the numbers, his highlight clips are appointment viewing. Here is the MLB Network compilation of his dives, spins, barehanded grabs, and seemingly impossible throws that accompanied Arenado’s 2018 award wins:

And here’s perhaps his most famous play, his April 14, 2015 over-the-shoulder-and-over-the-tarp-roll catch of a foul ball:

This is an excellent, entertaining player, a franchise cornerstone who has helped take the Rockies to back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time in club history.

After making $17.75 million last year as part of a two-year, $29.5 million extension signed in January 2017, Arenado sought $30 million in arbitration, with the Rockies countering at $24 million. Even if he’d lost a hearing, he would have surpassed Josh Donaldson’s $23 million salary from last year with the highest one-year salary for an arbitration-eligible player. According to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, Arenado and the Rockies settled at $26 million after a face-to-face meeting:

Since then, Monfort has publicly expressed hope for the possibility of a long-term deal. On Monday, he told the Denver Post’s Patrick Saunders, “I’m optimistic that we are close enough that something will come about. It’s in Nolan’s hands, but my last impression with him is that this is something he wants to do.” While stressing that there was no timetable to complete a longer deal, Monfort added, “[W]hat I took out of [the meeting] was a good, sincere [attitude] of, ‘Let’s get this behind us, then let’s go on to the next step and see if we can work something out there.'”

Per to Saunders, Arenado recently said, “I think the future is much brighter in Colorado than it’s been in the past. That excites me and makes me very aware of what’s going on here.” Indeed, an impressive nucleus of young, affordable starting pitching (Kyle Freeland, Jon Gray, German Marquez, Tyler Anderson, and Antonio Senzatela) and the development of shortstop Trevor Story have been key elements of the Rockies’ recent success; that core is under club control through 2021 and ’22. What’s more, the team’s TV revenue situation is better than has been previously reported; the Rockies are making $40 million per year now, not $20 million, which was tied for last among the 29 US teams in Craig Edwards’ 2016 roundup. The team’s current deal runs through 2020, and negotiations for a new one are expected to get underway this summer.

With such a revenue stream, Monfort seems to feel that the Rockies can support a payroll that includes a major commitment to Arenado on a long-term deal. While Cot’s Contracts projects the team to set a franchise record with an Opening Day payroll just over $143 million — up from around $137 million in 2018 (14th in the majors) and $127.8 million in 2017 (15th) — the Rockies have only $40 million committed for 2021, and $23 million for ’22, though of course, the salary increases of their many arb-eligible players will increase those figures.

In marked contrast to the White Sox, whose history under Jerry Reinsdorf I examined on Monday, the Rockies haven’t shied away from sizable long-term commitments. Granted, Monfort and his brother Charlie were merely minority partners until December 2005, when they bought out Jerry McMorris, the team’s principal owner since 1993 (before that, oy, there’s a story). During the McMorris era, the Rockies signed free agents Larry Walker (six years, $75 million in April 1995), Mike Hampton (eight years, $121 million in December 2000), and Denny Neagle (five years, $51 million, also in December 2000) — of which only the first deal went well, the last two disastrously — and extended franchise icon Todd Helton (nine years, $141.5 million, covering 2003-11). The Monforts were the principal owners when the Rockies extended Troy Tulowitzki (10 years, $157.75 million deal in 2010), as well as Charlie Blackmon (six years, $108 million last April), and when they added free agents Ian Desmond (five years, $70 million in December 2016) and Wade Davis (three years, $52 million in December 2017). In terms of guaranteed money, all of those deals besides those of Neagle and Davis exceed the largest guaranteed contract ever signed by the White Sox, Jose Abreu’s six-year, $68 million pact from October 2013.

Whether on the watch of McMorris or the Monforts, not all of the Rockies’ big contracts have unfolded for the better. Some of that has to do with the particularities of playing at altitude — pitches don’t break as much, and athletes’ bodies don’t hold up as well — and some of it has to do with flawed evaluations of the players in question. At a time when so many teams are wringing their hands about spending money, it’s still noteworthy that the Rockies have stepped up to keep their top players. Extending Arenado, and assuming the risks that come with it, would be more in keeping with their style than (to return to my previous example) the White Sox signing Bryce Harper or Manny Machado.

Of course, Arenado has to agree to a deal for this all to come to fruition, and it’s a bit ominous to think of how the relatively grim landscapes of the past two winters might be helping to fulfill the vision that the owners colluded in the mid-1980s to make happen: star players staying with their teams instead of testing the market and creating bidding wars. Still, free agency isn’t an obligation that every star has to fulfill; the combination of comfort and a record-setting salary in a competitive situation isn’t something to be taken lightly.

On that note, if an Arenado extension is completed before Machado signs, it would likely set a new baseline for third basemen (by topping Alex Rodriguez‘s $27.5 million average annual value) and perhaps for all position players (by topping Miguel Cabrera’s $31 million AAV). That, as Rosenthal pointed out, will make it harder for any team in pursuit of Harper or Machado to argue that those younger, higher-profile players should be paid less money.

After the past two winters of slow (or even negative) growth, it’s difficult to put too much faith in long-term estimates, but using the FanGraphs Contract estimation tool with very conservative parameters — $8.0 million per WAR, and just 3% average annual inflation, as opposed to $9 million or more and 5% — suggests a valuation approach $300 million:

Dialing the inflation back even further, to 1%, yields a $279.7 million valuation, and cutting the dollars per WAR figure to a retrograde $7.0 million with that minimal inflation in place still yields $244.7 million. In other words, even using extremely modest assumptions, an eight-year deal for Arenado (presumably incorporating this year’s salary) should bypass Cabrera’s eight-year, $248 million extension.

Another byproduct of an Arenado extension might be a change in the Yankees’ current approach. Circa late November, Rosenthal suggested that their lukewarm pursuits of Harper and Machado — due to a logjam of outfielders in the former case and the infamous “Johnny Hustle” comments in the latter — was because they were more interested in pursuing Arenado (who’s about 18 months older than Harper and 15 months older than Machado) once he reached free agency. In January, SNY.tv’s Andy Martino wrote that Yankees might be working on an even more immediate timeline, “[P]eople briefed on the Yankees thinking say that GM Brian Cashman — who did not respond to a request for comment — has internally discussed the possibility of trying to trade for Arenado either now or during the season. One source said that the teams have likely talked already, but neither Cashman nor Rockies GM Jeff Bridich have confirmed this.”

In theory, if Arenado does cement his desire to stay in Denver long-term, the Yankees could circle back to Machado, whose list of suitors for a long-term deal appear to consist of the White Sox, Padres, Phillies, and a conspicuous lack of other teams. Then again, if Cashman and company have shied away this long, one expects they’ll concoct some other rationale for bypassing Machado and Harper. And it is worth noting that the possibility of signing Harper and Machado was offered as a potential rationale for not signing free agents last winter. While his resume is certainly impressive, it will be interesting to see if Arenado can avoid a similar fate. There’s always another young buck coming, after all, and Mike Trout is only under club control through 2020.

On the other hand, if Arenado and the Rockies don’t get a deal done, it will be very interesting to see how the summer plays out. With the Giants and Diamondbacks both rebuilding, and the Padres possibly looking to spend their way to an earlier competitive window by signing one of the big two free agents, the NL West probably won’t be the three-team race of yesteryear. A Rockies team that’s out of the playoff hunt could conceivably trade Arenado at the July 31 deadline — or even in August, given his huge salary — if he suggests he plans to move on next winter anyway. A Rockies team that’s still in the race for a Wild Card spot or even the NL West flag (something the Rockies have yet to win) as Arenado eyes the horizon would face quite a quandary.

In all of this, we have yet to hear Arenado definitively say that he wants to stick around, but that’s not uncommon. There’s no reason for him to surrender leverage until he’s secured what he wants, and besides, his real talking on that score will be done with a pen and a contract. Until then, this is all just cloud talk, though amid so much cynicism, it’s quaintly refreshing to hear a star and a team at least thinking aloud about sticking together.

With most of the game’s top-spending teams apparently determined to remain on the sidelines instead of wooing either Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, the White Sox have been conspicuous in their reported pursuit of both. That’s a surprise, given both the team’s recent lack of success and their historical avoidance of big contracts, but late last month, general manager Rick Hahn acknowledged that fans would likely be disappointed if they didn’t land one of the winter’s big fish.

Given that the White Sox haven’t finished above .500 since 2012, and that last year, their second year of a long-term rebuilding program, they lost 100 games — their highest total since 1970 — it might seem like an odd time to spend big money. Then again, at a time when so many teams appear to have lost their checkbooks, if Chicago’s desire to spend is sincere, they may be tapping into a market inefficiency. Considering their history under owner Jerry Reinsdorf, however, it’s fair to be skeptical until the ink is dry on a contract for either Harper or Machado.

For starters, note that of the 30 teams, only five have yet to sign a player to either an extension or a free agent deal worth more than $72 million:

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Even before this week’s polar vortex hit the Midwest and the Northeast, the hot stove had failed to generate adequate heat. It’s the second winter in a row that this has happened, this time with a much stronger free agent class. With less than two weeks to go before pitchers and catchers report to spring training, more than 100 free agents remain unsigned. According to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark, 16 teams haven’t signed a free agent to a multi-year deal, and 23 haven’t done one longer than two years. This isn’t just a matter of teams waiting out a handful of players in order to get a slight or even steep discount to fill that last need; it’s yet another sign of an increasingly dysfunctional relationship between the union and the league. As if in concert, big-spending teams such as the Dodgers, Yankees, and Cubs are suddenly turned austere, as if the goal were to fly tidier balance sheets over their ballparks, instead of championship banners.

Even some of the winter’s best free agents have yet to find a home. It’s not just Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, who ranked first and second on our Top 50 Free Agents list, who remain unsigned. Even after the Astros inked Wade Miley to a one-year, $4.5 million deal on Thursday, a total of 10 players within the top 50 are still without a home — setting the three pitchers on that list aside, that’s almost enough to fill out a makeshift lineup if the versatile Marwin Gonzalez can play two positions at once. Here’s the list, with the previous and projected WAR totals and crowdsourced contract information taken from our big board:

This isn’t an especially aged group or one facing imminent declines. Aside from the top two players, none of them projects to wind up anywhere close to a nine-figure deal, and while some of this group may still be unsigned specifically because certain teams are waiting for the biggest dominoes to fall, that explanation only goes so far.

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The last 15 months have not gone particularly well for Greg Holland. Coming off a solid return from Tommy John surgery with the Rockies in 2017 — albeit one with a lesser second half than first — he bypassed a reported multiyear offer to return, then was met with a frosty reception amid a free agent market that was generally more hospitable to relievers than other players. He finally signed a one-year, $14 million deal with the Cardinals after Opening Day, but struggled to the point of being released on August 1. After salvaging his season at least somewhat with a strong showing with the Nationals over the final two months, he hit free agency again. On Monday, the 33-year-old righty reportedly agreed to a one-year, $3.5 million-plus-incentives deal with the Diamondbacks, pending a physical. It’s a living, but ouch.

Admittedly, it’s suboptimal to carry a season with a 4.99 ERA, 3.83 FIP, 0.3 WAR, and just three saves into a market flooded with alternatives coming off stronger showings, but one might have thought that the Scott Boras client could have built upon his late-season resurgence in Washington and the lack of a qualifying offer this time around. Then again, it was presumably Boras’ misread of Holland’s market last winter that got him into this jam in the first place. At least this time, he’s going to spring training.

By not signing until two days after Opening Day last year — and that only after Luke Gregerson was lost to a hamstring injury — Holland missed the entirety of exhibition season, and after making just a pair of tune-up appearances with the Cardinals’ Hi-A Palm Beach affiliate, he walked four out of the five batters he faced in his April 9 debut. He didn’t get his first save chance until April 27, but he blew that, and he never assumed the full-time closer role. He never found his control in St. Louis, and a three-week stint on the disabled list for impingement in his right hip, from late May to mid-June, didn’t help. All told, in 32 appearances totaling 25 innings with the Cardinals, his walk, strikeout, and earned run totals were identical: 22 (7.92 per nine) — not what you want. Six days after being released, he joined the Nationals, and at least righted the ship, posting a 0.84 ERA and 2.97 FIP while striking out 31.3% of hitters in 21.1 innings as the team played out the string.

The key, or at least one of them, was a more reliable slider that generated more chases and less zone contact when he backed off using it quite so heavily:

 
According to Brooks Baseball, while with St. Louis, Holland’s slider was hit for a .268 average and .357 slugging percentage, with a 19.8% whiff rate (37.3% whiffs per swing), while with Washington, the slider yielded an .081 batting average (all singles) with a 25.2% whiff rate (48.5% whiffs per swing). His fastball became less of a meatball with the transition as well (.342 AVG/.463 SLG before, .208/.375 after, with a whiff rate climbing from 4.2% to 10.7%); via Baseball Savant, his xwOBA dropped from .354 with the Cardinals to .239 with the Nationals. Granted, we’re dealing with small samples in terms of innings and pitches, with the latter ranging from 30 plate appearances ending with fastballs in Washington to 60 PA ending with sliders in St. Louis, but whatever changed did seem to work, allowing him to recover his first-half 2017 form — when he earned All-Star honors with the Rockies — if not his magic with the Royals. Life is just different when your fastball averages 92.9 mph instead of 96.9 (his average in 2013, according to Pitch Info).

On that note, it’s worth a brief historical review. Once upon a time, Holland ranked among the game’s elite relievers. From 2011 — his first full season in the majors — to 2014, he posted ERAs below 2.00 three times out of four, with FIPS below 2.00 twice. Over that span, only three pitchers (Craig Kimbrel, Eric O’Flaherty, and Wade Davis) outdid his 1.86 ERA, and only Kimbrel surpassed his 1.92 FIP and 9.1 WAR. In August 2012, he assumed the closer duties for the Royals, and over the next two seasons became a key part of their march to respectability, aided by a dominant bullpen. He made the All-Star team in both 2013 and ’14, ranking second in the AL in saves each year. In 2013, he led all relievers in FIP (1.36) while ranking second in WAR (3.0), while in 2014, after placing within the top handful in ERA, FIP, and WAR, he went 7-for-7 in saves while yielding just one run and four hits in 11 innings while striking out 15 during the Royals’ postseason run.

Holland did not get to pitch during the Royals’ 2015 championship run. His velocity dipped from its typical 95-96 mph average into the low 90s in late August, and he was soon discovered to have suffered a partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament. He tried to pitch through it — reportedly, he had been experiencing elbow discomfort as far back as August 2014 — but went to the sidelines in mid-September, yielding the closer’s job to Davis, and on October 2 went under the knife. He didn’t re-emerge until signing a one-year, $7 million contract with the Rockies in January 2017, a deal that included a mutual option, more on which momentarily.

Holland burst out of the gate in 2017, converting 23 straight save chances with a 1.09 ERA through June 14. He made the NL All-Star team on the strength of a 1.62 ERA and 2.80 FIP; a dreadful 9.1-inning, 14-run stretch in August blew up his second-half stats (6.38 ERA, 4.99 FIP), but he helped the Rockies snag an NL Wild Card berth, and finished with a league-high 41 saves along with a 3.61 ERA and 3.72 FIP (72 ERA- and 81 FIP-).

When Holland signed with the Rockies, he had a $10 million mutual option for 2018, with a $1 million buyout. By reaching either 50 games pitched or 30 games finished, that option converted into a $15 million player option, about on par with his total take in 2017 ($15.1 million) thanks to his having earned $9.1 million in incentive bonuses thanks to his 61 appearances, 58 games finished, and 2017 NL Comeback Player of the Year award. Holland declined the option and the $17.4 million qualifying offer that followed. Later he reportedly snubbed a three-year, $51 or $52 million deal from the Rockies, though whether that was a firm offer or a “conceptual” one (as Buster Olney phrased it) is up for debate. The Rockies instead signed Davis to a three-year, $52 million deal in late December — thanks, old pal — and a better offer apparently never came Holland’s way.

Hence, the mess in which Holland wound up, though he was hardly alone in misreading the market. The exact details of his new contract are unknown at this writing, but he can earn a maximum of $3.5 million in incentives, some of which probably depend upon his returning to closer duty. With Brad Boxberger departed in free agency (unsigned at this writing, actually), it’s not clear yet whether he or Archie Bradley, who excelled in a setup role, will be manager Torey Lovullo’s top ninth-inning choice. If Holland can stay healthy and maintain his old form, he stands to be quite a bargain for the Snakes regardless of his role, but one can’t help imagining that if he could play out the last year-and-change again, he’d be in a much better position than he is today.

Save for the actual inductions of this year’s six honorees — the late Roy Halladay, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, and Mr Unanimity, Mariano Rivera, elected by the BBWAA last week and Harold Baines and Lee Smith by the Today’s Game Era Committee last month — the Hall of Fame circus is leaving town, at least until the July 19-22 induction weekend in Cooperstown. Before it departs, however, it’s time engage in my sixth annual attempt to gaze into the crystal ball to see what the next five elections will hold.

Admittedly, this is an exercise requiring some amount of imagination and speculation, though it is grounded in my research into the candidates and the history and mechanics of the voting. Having said that, the past half-decade of changes to the process raises the question of how valuable that history is, at least as a road map. As a response to the logjam of qualified candidates, the Hall’s own truncation of candidacies from 15 years to 10 — less to clean up the ballots than to move the intractable debate over PED-related candidates out of the spotlight — and its rejection of any variation from the long-standing 10-slot rule, the writers have responded by setting and breaking records for slots used per ballot, and for ballots filled to the max. As a result, the BBWAA has elected 20 players over the last six years, five more than in any other six-year stretch in voting history. We’ve had three quartets elected over the past five years, compared to two (plus the original 1936 quintet) over the previous 78 years.

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