This week, one NL Central team has acquired the best defender at a key infield position. He’ll be playing the 2021 season at age-30, and he was below average offensively in 2020, so it’s not as though there aren’t red flags, but great defense doesn’t grow on trees. That’s right: the Brewers signed Kolten Wong to a two-year, $18 million contract, as Jon Morosi first reported.

While Nolan Arenado might have fallen behind Matt Chapman in the third base defense hierarchy, Wong reigns supreme at second. For three straight years, he’s won the Fielding Bible award at second base. Every advanced defensive metric sees him as the best fielder in the game over the past three years. Bigger fan of the eye test? He can do this:

Okay, fine, single defensive highlights are a bad reflection of talent. But he can do this, too:

I could go on all day if there weren’t an article to write. Wong is one of my very favorite players to watch. This is a transaction analysis, though, so I’ll restrain myself, and merely say that our very good defensive projections for Wong might still be conservative. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe the Rays are getting nervous. Two and half months ago, they watched Charlie Morton sign with Atlanta as a free agent. About a month later, they traded staff ace Blake Snell to San Diego. Those were the two best starters on a team that leaned heavily on its rotation, but Tampa’s only addition so far this winter has been embattled right-hander Michael Wacha at a mere $3 million. Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have landed one major free agent after another, and the Yankees still look very much like a juggernaut. As of Tuesday morning, Tampa Bay ranked 10th in the American League in our Depth Charts projected WAR standings — fourth in the AL East — just a few months after winning the pennant.

But with spring training (theoretically) fast approaching, the Rays finally signed another starting pitcher on Tuesday, adding a familiar face to the rotation.

Right-hander Chris Archer and the Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a one-year, $6.5 million deal, pending physical, sources tell ESPN.

Archer, 32, returns to the organization where he debuted and found his greatest success.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 2, 2021

To be clear, Chris Archer is no replacement for the starters Tampa Bay lost this winter. He’s posted an ERA over 4.00 in each of his last four seasons and missed all of 2020 after undergoing surgery to treat neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome. Effectiveness in the first season back from that injury — one of the most serious a pitcher can experience — is far from guaranteed. Tampa’s familiarity with Archer, however, made the team willing to bet on the 32-year-old right-hander anyway.

Read the rest of this entry »

From the moment the offseason officially started five days after the end of the World Series, the most predictable headline of the winter was “Nelson Cruz Signs One-Year Deal With the Twins.” It took three months, but last night it finally happened, with ESPN’s Jeff Passan reporting the signing and MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand adding that the deal will net Cruz $13 million.

Cruz, who turns 41 in July, is an ageless wonder, even though that number gives teams looking at eight-figure investments significant pause. Two years ago, he was a free agent after an exceptional run with the Mariners during which he put up a 147 wRC+ and averaged 41 home runs a season. He lobbied hard for a two-year deal, but most teams countered with one-year offers. It was understandable: Cruz has been defying the aging curve for years and has no value beyond the bat, so if Father Time suddenly catches up to him, he becomes a candidate for a quick release. Back in 2019, he was pushing 39 and coming off a declining season in terms of your standard triple-slash line, but the underlying metrics looked good, as his strikeout rate was actually declining, and his exit velocities were in line. Still, most models would not be especially kind to Cruz or any player entering his age-39 season. These are not the years when players start to slip a little; they’re the ones when players fall off the cliff.

Here at FanGraphs, Cruz ranked as one of the top 20 free agents on the market that winter, and I was shocked, surprised and frankly quite impressed to see that ZiPS still saw the good in the player, projecting a minor bounce-back 2019 campaign at .266/.348/.500. The Twins took the plunge by meeting Cruz halfway on his multi-year demand, paying him $14 million for the 2019 campaign with a $12 million option for the following year.

They were rewarded amply. Instead of falling of the cliff, Cruz instead rocketed higher, putting up a career-high OPS of 1.031 and making his 2020 option a no-brainer. The cliff avoided him again that season, and the production was similar.

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After breaking apart their bullpen in an effort to cut costs, the Reds took a step towards rebuilding it on Tuesday, agreeing to terms with 34-year-old lefty Sean Doolittle on a one-year deal with a base salary of $1.5 million plus as-yet-unspecified incentives. For as modest an expenditure as it is, Doolittle is just the second major league free agent the Reds have signed this winter from outside the organization (Kyle Farmer was signed to a new major league deal after previously being non-tendered). The two-time All-Star has ample experience closing, something in short supply on the Reds’ current roster, but in order to return to any kind of high-leverage duty, he’ll need to rebound from what was largely a lost season.

Doolittle, who spent his past 3 1/2 seasons with the Nationals, made just 11 appearances totaling 7.2 innings in 2020. He landed on the Injured List twice, first missing nearly three weeks in August due to inflammation in his right knee, and then being shelved for the remainder of the season after straining an oblique muscle in mid-appearance on September 10. For what it’s worth — perhaps not much given the sample sizes, though it merits a look to compare to his track record — his average fastball velocity and performance had been trending upwards after the first IL stint, as you can see here:

Doolittle didn’t allow a run over his final six appearances, after being scored upon in four out of five previously, so there’s that, a point to which we’ll return. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey everyone, and welcome to the convergence of two recurring segments. It’s the highly awaited crossover between “Can You Believe the Cardinals Got Nolan Arenado for That?” and “Let’s Value Gimmicky Contracts,” two columns I almost assuredly enjoy writing more than you enjoy reading.

Let’s get the deferred money part out of the way first, because while it’s obviously very important to the Rockies and Cardinals, it has nothing to do with Arenado’s decision-making. He’s getting his cash, and whether the check says Monfort or DeWitt, the cash still spends the same. It won’t affect his decision on whether to rip the whole contract up.

As Jeff Jones reported, Arenado agreed to modify his contract as part of the trade. In 2021, he was due $35 million. Now, he’ll receive $15 million this year, paid directly by the Rockies. He’ll also receive $20 million in deferred compensation, regardless of whether or not he opts out. If he’s still under this contract, that money will be sent to the Cardinals, who will then pay it to Arenado. If he opts out, the Rockies will pay him the $20 million directly.

Finally, if Arenado doesn’t opt out, the Rockies will be on the hook for the $16 million he’s due in 2027. That’s the new year that the Cardinals agreed to as part of the trade, and while it’s unclear exactly why the Rockies chose to pay that part rather than some pro-rated portion of earlier salaries, here we are.

For the Cardinals, this is a great fit. They’d been acting as though cash was a key constraint this year, and getting a year of Arenado at no cost (literally, no monetary cost!) does a good job of making the short-term books work. In the long run, they’re paying him nothing for one year (if he opts out after 2021), $35 million over two years (if he opts out after 2022), or $164 million over seven years.

With that covered, let’s talk about Arenado’s options. The structure is as straightforward as it gets for these kinds of things. After 2021, Arenado will have the option to walk away from the entire deal and become a free agent. If he opts to remain in St. Louis, he’ll get another chance to wash his hands of the deal after 2022. If he still wants to stay, then he’ll be under contract until after the 2027 season.

When Arenado signed his extension two years ago, I covered a probabilistic way of thinking about the value. In the interim, a few things have happened. First, Arenado had a down 2020. Second, Dan “Dr. ZiPS” Szymborski gave me a long-term forecast for Arenado that beats my generic aging expectations. Finally, I’ve added a few bells and whistles to the option model in the interim. For the most part, though, we’re just running it back.

To calculate the value of an opt out, we need a few things. First, a central projection for how good a player will be in the future. ZiPS is all over that. Here’s the next five years of Arenado’s projections:

I’ll assume a standard aging curve after that, which gets us a central tendency for how his career will go.

Next, we need to apply variance. I’ve found in previous studies that projections for players who fit Arenado’s mold — mid-career and projections above 2 WAR — vary with a standard deviation of roughly 1.4 WAR from year to year. We’ll start with projections as a baseline, but to figure out the value of an option — the right but not obligation to do something — we’ll have to simulate 10 million or so different futures, then work out what happens on average.

Finally, we need to figure out how to translate Arenado’s projections into a potential new contract. Converting WAR to dollars misses some team-building effects, and as Craig Edwards showed last year, it’s not as simple as applying a linear conversion. Still, it’s my model, and it’s just for Arenado, not for the dang league as a whole. Let’s start with $8 million per win.

While we’re varying projections, we also need to vary the cost of a win. I assumed that the cost of 1 WAR will increase by an average of $250,000 per year, but with a standard deviation of $800,000. In plenty of years, the cost of a win will go down, even if the overall cost increases over time. There might be, say, a global pandemic, or a shortened season with no fans… wild nonsense like that.

Finally, we get down to brass tacks. When the player reaches his opt out, there’s a simple calculation. Take his new median projection, age it down as appropriate, and come up with a WAR projection for the remaining years of the contract. Multiply that number by the cost per win that we simultaneously calculated, and you have the contract that Arenado would sign, in a perfectly efficient market, if he opted out. I added one quick sanity check: if it’s within $10 million dollars of breaking even, Arenado won’t leave. That represents the uncertainty of finding a new contract, as well as the benefits of familiarity.

If there were only one opt out, our calculation would be simple. After one year, we simply apply an aging penalty and a random change in projection. Then, we use that to price out a new contract. With only one year before an opt out, things are simple like that.

In Arenado’s case, the odds are stacked in favor of him declining the opt out. The average situation (no change in projection) sees him with a $101.5 million contract after this year. He’d need to raise his 2022 projection by roughly 1.5 WAR to merit a contract that would be worth opting out for. How often does that happen? Roughly 14% of the time.

Let’s look at it more thoroughly. Here’s how much he projects to make in each scenario, including the $35 million he’s making in 2021 regardless:

In that sense, the opt out already in Arenado’s contract is “worth” $6 million. It could be worth more, though. Replace our forecasts with the ZiPS forecasts that ignore 2020 (they used 2019’s rate stats again), and instead things get a little spicy:

Hey, look! If Arenado were projected to be a bit better — and again, injury has at least something to do with why he’s not — then his option would be worth more. Neat stuff!

That’s not why you’re here, though. Or, maybe it is, but that’s not what Arenado’s contract looks like anymore. In agreeing to head to St. Louis, Arenado gained an extra opt out after the 2022 season.

It’s slightly tricky to model nested opt outs like this, where the second one can only be exercised if the first isn’t. In practice, the decision won’t be overly complex. After 2021, Arenado and his agents will model something that looks a lot like the calculations I did above, valuing his existing contract based on his current projections and including a 2022 opt out. That number will come out to something higher than $180 million, because some amount of the time, he’ll opt out after 2022 and get a raise.

With that number in hand, they’ll approximate what he could get on the open market and compare the two. If he thinks he can get more now, on the open market, than the value of his existing contract inclusive of the opt out, he should leave. Otherwise, he should stay and wait the extra year to see what happens.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work well in my framework. In each of my 10 million simulations, computer Arenado would need to run 10 million simulations to work out the value of his option using this Monte Carlo method. That comes out to one hundred trillion simulations, and it doesn’t even add much precision for our trouble. Instead, I’m just setting the cutoff higher; Arenado will need $15 million in prospective gains to pull the trigger on opting out after year one.

How does this change things? Less than you’d think. I previously calculated that Arenado would opt out 14% of the time; he now opts out 12.4% of the time in year one. With more time to vary, and thus a higher percent chance of improving enough to opt out, he also has an 8.2% chance of opting out after 2022. All together, that looks like this:

In the scenarios where Arenado opts out after 2022, he is, on average, quite good. This makes sense, because he’s only opting out in the best 8% of scenarios. If he muddles along, he’s staying. If he has a late-career renaissance, it only stands to reason that he’ll be more valuable. All told, the two opt outs add a projected $13 million to the value of the deal — not bad!

Once more, let’s plug in a more optimistic view of Arenado and see what shakes out. This is Dan’s pre-2020 version, where he’s projected for 5 WAR in 2021:

Again, the better Arenado is now, the higher the chance he opts out, and the more the second opt out is worth to him. In the base case ZiPS projections, a second opt out added roughly $6 million to Arenado’s expected earnings. In this pre-injury case, a second opt out would add more than $17 million.

That’s the gory math of the way this complex contract works. In practice, however, Arenado seems likely to take the Clayton Kershaw route. Kershaw, too, had the choice of opting out of his contract early and becoming a free agent. He used that leverage to get the Dodgers to offer him a new contract, avoiding free agency but monetizing his ability to leave. Even if Arenado improves this year and next, that seems like the most likely eventuality.

What’s an opt out worth? In Arenado’s case, it’s real money in expectation. Add that to the extra contract year that he snagged as part of the deal, and it’s easy to see why the player’s union was okay with him taking deferrals in 2021. Remember, though: even in the scenario where he’s at his best, he still leaves less than half the time. It’s valuable despite being unlikely, and that’s the magic of options.

For years, there’s been one refrain in Anaheim: get Mike Trout some pitching help. The last time an Angels pitcher accrued 4 or more WAR was Garrett Richards in 2014, and there’s been a carousel of arms in the half-decade since. Yesterday, the Angels wholly misunderstood that refrain, sending Jahmai Jones to Baltimore in exchange for professionally cromulent starter Alex Cobb.

Cobb, who is in the last year of a four-year, $57 million contract, reached free agency after years of quiet competence. In the three intervening years, he’s alternated between being competent or hurt. He gets to it in a strange way — few strikeouts, fewer walks, and enough grounders to blot out the sun — but it adds up to something a little worse than average but significantly better than replacement level.

For the Angels, that may or may not be a meaningful upgrade to start the season. Shohei Ohtani will return in 2021, but certainly not for the whole season. When he does, he’ll likely be part of a six-man rotation. The top three starters will be Andrew Heaney, Dylan Bundy, and new acquisition José Quintana. That leaves two spots for other pitchers. Before the acquisition of Cobb, that meant Griffin Canning and Patrick Sandoval. Both are interesting, albeit unproven, options. Read the rest of this entry »

The past week’s game of free-agent infielder musical chairs — which sent Marcus Semien to Toronto, Andrelton Simmons to Minnesota, Tommy La Stella to San Francisco, Enrique Hernández to Boston, and Freddy Galvis to Baltimore — did find a couple of contestants staying in place. Cleveland re-signed Cesar Hernandez, while most notably, Philadelphia retained Didi Gregorius, signing the soon-to-be 31-year-old shortstop to a two-year, $28 million deal. In this nearly stagnant market, that rates as the second-largest contract of any free-agent infielder after DJ LeMahieu’s six-year, $90 million pact.

Gregorius initially landed with the Phillies via a one-year, $14 million pillow contract in December 2019, reuniting with former Yankees manager Joe Girardi, under whom he’d played during the transformative 2015–17 stretch of his career. His comparatively quick return from October 2018 Tommy John surgery had yielded a subpar half-season with the Yankees, as he hit .238/.276/.441 with a 69 wRC+ over the final two months of the ’19 season. Not only did that injury scuttle talks of a long-term extension with the Yankees, but his struggles upon returning also meant no $17.8 million qualifying offer on the way out the door.

Gregorius bounced back in rather impressive fashion in 2020, playing all 60 games and hitting .284/.339/.488 with 10 home runs and a 117 wRC+, an excellent approximation of his 2017–18 production. His defense rebounded as well, to something in the vicinity of average:

In all, Gregorius’ 1.4 WAR not only outdid his modest 0.9 from 2019, but it was also tied for 11th among all shortstops; the rankings were clustered so tightly that he was 0.2 from being eighth or 13th, depending on direction.

Read the rest of this entry »

With his eyeblack, dirty uniform, lip-curling grin, and yes, short stature, Dustin Pedroia looked like a kid having the time of his life in the major leagues, and he played like someone would take it all away if he ever let up. In that time, he ran out every tapper to short and chased after every lost cause grounder up the middle. He lived and breathed the game, and if a little thing like a broken foot conspired to keep him out of the lineup, then he’d field grounders on his knees, dammit.

That chapter of his life is now over, as Pedroia announced his retirement on Monday, ending an illustrious career after 14 seasons with the Red Sox. His remote press conference made for an impersonal sunset, though I suppose there’s no more appropriate transition into full-time dad-life than awkwardly pausing mid-presentation while middle-aged adults fiddle with the audio settings on their laptops.

While Pedroia officially hung up his cleats yesterday, an early retirement was inevitable from the time he underwent knee replacement surgery last December, and really ever since Manny Machado’s spikes stripped the cartilage off of his femur back in 2017. At the time, we didn’t know how devastating that slide would prove. He only missed three games at first, and his numbers were mostly good over the rest of the season.

But the damage to his knee caused extraordinary pain all year long and required multiple trips to the Injured List. Pedroia was no stranger to battling through injuries — he played the entire 2013 season with a torn UCL in his thumb and many other maladies before and after. This was different though. The damaged knee noticeably limited his mobility and sapped his power. He said that playing through the thumb injury was “like a massage” by comparison, and he never recovered from exerting so much pressure on his knee that year. Extensive rehab got him on the field for bits and pieces of the 2018 and ’19 seasons, but only as a shell of himself. This winter’s knee replacement has allowed Pedroia to walk without pain again, but at a heavy cost: Just 37 years old, he’ll never be able to run again. Read the rest of this entry »

Quinn Priester has gained a lot of helium since ranking seventh on our 2020 Pittsburgh Pirates Top Prospects list. Thanks to stellar showings at the alternate camp and instructs, the 6-foot-3, 215 pound right-hander has climbed into the middle of Baseball America’s and MLB Pipeline’s Top 100s. (Our 2021 Pirates offseason list hasn’t run yet, but according to Eric Longenhagen, Priester will feature prominently and will grace this year’s Top 100.) Just yesterday, Jim Callis wrote that some scouts have told him that Priester — the 18th overall pick in the 2019 draft — could emerge as the best pitching prospect in baseball in 2021.

Priester, who’ll celebrate his 21st birthday this coming September, was featured here at FanGraphs 12 months ago. Last week, he caught us up with the strides he’s made since that time.

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David Laurila: You were at the alternate site last summer. What was that experience like?

Quinn Priester: “It was about two weeks, so it wasn’t a whole lot of time, but it was super big for me. I got to be around older guys, some who have been in the big leagues, that have experienced things I haven’t. I’ve only had half a season with two short-season teams — I haven’t come close to a minor-league season of 144 games — so I’m behind the learning curve in that respect.”

Laurila: What can you learn from being around more experienced players?

Priester: “Just the way they prepare. They have intent with every throw, because they know how valuable those throws are over the course of the season. Wasting throws is going to lead to more soreness, and stuff like that. It was cool to literally see how to play catch again, and not just be the high school kid who throws really hard. It was about getting in the work that I need to get in, like staying behind fastballs and making the most out of the couple of curveballs I’ll throw in catch play. Rather than just throwing, I was having direction and a goal. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since Michael Brantley left as a free agent after the 2018 season, Cleveland has had an extremely difficult time fielding a competent outfield. During the past two seasons, the team’s outfielders have collectively accumulated just four WAR in total, the sixth worst mark in the majors. Those struggles go back even further than the last two years, though. In the past decade, Cleveland has had just six qualified outfielders post a wRC+ over 100; five of those seasons were from Brantley, and the sixth was from Shin-Soo Choo back in 2012.

That long stretch of outfield futility may come to an end in 2021, as Cleveland agreed to a one-year, $8 million deal with Eddie Rosario last Friday. Fans in Northeast Ohio should be well acquainted with Rosario, who has spent his entire career with the division-rival Twins, and who should immediately provide some stability and an infusion of talent to an outfield that sorely needs it.

In six seasons with the Twins, Rosario posted a 106 wRC+ and 11.4 WAR. That may not look like much on the surface, but he took a big step forward in 2017, cutting his strikeout rate from 25.7% the year before to 18.0% and upping his ISO from .152 to .218. His numbers from that season on: a 111 wRC+ and 8.1 WAR. Excepting the shortened 2020 season, he’s hit more than 24 home runs in every year of that span, and his strikeout rate has continued to drop. While that power and contact are nice, they’re borne from an extremely aggressive approach at the plate that’s limited his career walk rate to just 4.7% and made him an extremely streaky hitter at the plate. When his balls are falling in for hits, his peaks can be high, but that means his overall production is at the whims of the BABIP gods.

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