Braves to Sign Yasiel Puig

A report Tuesday from MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand indicates that Yasiel Puig will sign a one-year contract with the Atlanta Braves. The 29-year-old Puig hit .267/.327/.458 with 24 home runs for a 101 wRC+ and 1.2 WAR while playing for the Reds and Indians in 2019. The former Rookie of the Year runner-up spent most of last season in Cincinnati before heading to outfield-deficient Cleveland as part of the three-way trade that sent Trevor Bauer to Cincinnati and Taylor Trammell to San Diego. The exact financial terms of the deal are not yet available, but it’s unlikely that Puig’s one-year contract is for an exorbitant amount of cash from the team’s point of view.

From a pure “how good is Puig?” standpoint, completely divorced from context, this signing is an underwhelming one. Puig hit the market unencumbered by the possible loss of a draft pick upon signing (he was ineligible to receive a qualifying offer because of the trade), but even still, his free agency garnered a tepid reception this winter. Now, this offseason’s free agent market featured a lot more action than other recent ones, but that was driven by elite free agents such as Gerrit Cole and Anthony Rendon. Teams were still generally uninterested in first basemen and corner outfielders, with few getting multi-year deals and only José Abreu and Nick Castellanos getting more than $20 million guaranteed. Puig drew some interest, but nobody seemed all-in on bringing him in before spring training or when transactions were recently unfrozen.

Puig broke into the majors quickly, debuting less than a year after signing a seven-year, $42 million contract with the Dodgers in 2012. Puig hit .305/.386/.502 with a 153 wRC+ and was worth 9.4 wins over his first two years, a WAR total made even more impressive when you consider he didn’t reach the majors until June. Whether the result of a complicated relationship with his coaches, poor plate discipline, or simply being unable to adjust to pitchers figuring him out, he’s fallen short of his early promise in the years since. From 2015-2019, his .888 OPS dropped to .792 and his 8.5 total wins over five years fell short of his first one-and-a-half seasons. The young Cuban phenom turned into an average player.

Now, that preface may make it sound like I’m down on the signing. I’m not – I think it’s great! Even if Puig isn’t a massive upgrade in pure baseball terms, the fact remains that winning in 2020 requires different roster configurations than is typical. First, National League teams face an unusual challenge: fielding a full-time player at a position that did not exist at the start of the offseason. Yes, NL teams were always going to play some road games against AL teams and need a DH as a result, but nobody envisioned the universal DH being instituted for the 2020 season six months ago. Imagine how people would have looked at you if, back in December, you had predicted “the National League will adopt the designated hitter because of a raging global pandemic.” In terms of free agents who can upgrade a position NL teams suddenly need to field every day, there was little after Puig, so there’s real value in depriving other teams of the possibility.

ZiPS projects Puig’s offense to be nearly identical to Austin Riley’s, with Puig’s Atlanta projection of .270/.333/.481 very close to Riley’s .251/.309/.509 projected line. But I’d argue that depth is more important for success in 2020 than in any season we’ve ever seen. We’ve scaled down from 162 games to 60, but injuries don’t scale down the same way games or projections do. That sore hamstring takes just as long to heal in a 60-game season as it does in 162, so every injury is a greater percentage of a season lost. Nor can we ignore COVID-19 from a baseball standpoint; the fact that a positive test removes a player from the field makes things more volatile, and a prolonged bout of the illness has the potential to end a player’s seasons after just a few weeks have elapsed. What if Freddie Freeman takes a while to get two negative tests in 24 hours? What if other members of the team test positive and have to recover, thinning the outfield? Players’ health in that scenario obviously matters much more than how playing time is allotted, but the virus’ threat likely figured into the team’s roster construction decisions.

In projecting team standings this season, I’ve been very conservative about projecting playing time. We’re in pure guesstimate territory — there’s literally nothing to use as a basis, unless someone smarter than me has figured out an approach — and ZiPS is working under the assumption that an average of two players of every 25 will test positive each month and require a minimum of two weeks to return. Puig does move that needle slightly, an important development in an NL East that looks like a dogfight.

Before the signing, ZiPS had the Braves at 30.1% odds to win the division and the Nationals at 33.2%. Signing Puig flips that, with the Braves moving to 34.2% and the Nationals to 31.5%. And sadly, I think it’s more likely that I’m underestimating the COVID-19 risk than overestimating it, so these numbers could be significantly large if I’m wrong in that direction.

For what is likely a modest amount of money — we will update if this assumption is in error — the Braves moved themselves from a slight divisional underdog to a slight division favorite in the projections. For a last minute signing during a summer ramp-up to the weirdest year we’re likely to see, I’ll take it.