Between the end of the World Series on October 27 and the arrival of the Qualifying Offer deadline on November 1, players and teams finalized a whole bunch of decisions on whose options to pick up and whose to decline. As we’ve noted in a few places throughout this site — Craig Edwards’ FanGraphs Audio discussion with Meg Rowley about Kolten Wong, Ben Clemens’ piece on Charlie Morton, and my own roundup of the Qualifying Offers — the set of decisions points to a bleak winter for players, as the loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic is causing cutbacks in payroll and other areas. That said, a whole bunch of players lost their jobs because they underperformed drastically in a short season ahead of an unforgiving market.

Via the data provided by Jason Martinez, who runs our RosterResource section, 34 out of the 40 players with at least six years of service time and either a club option or a mutual option had those options declined by their respective teams this past week. That count excludes both players who were released in-season and thus had their options automatically declined (such as Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw), as well as players who still have arbitration eligibility remaining (such as Domingo Santana). Of the six players whose options were picked up, only three were for salaries of more than $5.5 million, namely the Marlins’ Starling Marte ($12.5 million), the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo ($14.5 million), and the Yankees’ Zack Britton ($14 million, but for 2022 in a mechanism that effectively turned his ’21 salary of $13 million into a mutual option as well). Eighteen of the declined options were for 2021 salaries of $10 million or more, and another seven were for at least $5 million. In other words, this subset of players with club or mutual options of $5 million or greater went 4-for-28 in having those options picked up, if we’re counting Britton.

By comparison, using the same parameters, 33 out of 43 club or mutual options were declined by teams last year, a count that doesn’t include the two mutual options declined by players who went on to sign four-year deals elsewhere (Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas). Of the 10 club options picked up, seven of them were by players with salaries of at least $9 million: Rizzo ($14.5 million), Marte ($11.5 million, picked up when he was still a Pirate), the Indians’ Corey Kluber ($17.5 million), the Twins’ Nelson Cruz ($12 million), the Cubs’ Jose Quintana ($10.5 million), the Nationals’ Adam Eaton ($9.5 million), and the Pirates’ Chris Archer ($9 million); three other players with salaries in the $5.5-9 million range had their options picked up as well. Such was the structure of these contracts that all of those players except Cruz and Quintana had club options after both the 2019 and ’20 seasons, with Marte and Rizzo the only two who had both picked up; Quintana had a similar structure following the 2018 and ’19 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday afternoon, Kevin Gausman became one of six players to be offered a qualifying offer. With tons of uncertainty about the health of the free agent market heading into the offseason, Gausman’s offer was a bit of a surprise to see. To his credit, he put together a phenomenal year for the Giants, posting the lowest FIP of his career in 2020. But he’s also only a year removed from being designated for assignment by the Braves in August of 2019.

On Monday, Jay Jaffe reviewed all six of the QOs offered this year. He concluded that Gausman and Marcus Stroman were the two players who faced a particularly difficult decision about whether or not to accept the offer and return to their previous teams. Stroman’s decision is a little more complicated since he opted out of the 2020 season and last took the mound in 2019. Gausman made 10 starts and two relief appearances in 2020 and made a compelling case that he’s one of the top starting pitching options on the market this offseason. Craig Edwards ranked him the fifth-best starting pitching among this year’s free agent crop.

Gausman’s big year was a welcome development after struggling to put everything together in Baltimore for much of his career. The former first-round draft pick was a hair better than league average by park- and league-adjusted ERA and FIP during his time with the Orioles. But he never really lived up to his pedigree, and he was traded to the Braves at the 2018 trade deadline. He was excellent in Atlanta for the remainder of that season season but really struggled in early 2019, leading to his DFA in August. He was picked up by the Reds and moved to the bullpen, where his stuff played up in short outings. Read the rest of this entry »

As a long, likely-bleak offseason began late last week, many teams opted out of the final year of players’ contracts, often with the seeming goal of beginning this winter with as little committed money on the books as possible. Tampa Bay will not bring back Charlie Morton, one of baseball’s best starting pitchers. Cleveland will not bring back Brad Hand, one of baseball’s best relievers. Some teams will use the money saved on these unexercised club options to pursue other free agents they feel will provide more value; many are likely to simply pocket the savings as a means of recouping what they say the COVID-19 pandemic cost them. The bar for players hoping to land any kind of guaranteed money this offseason appears to be quite high; in the eyes of the Houston Astros, left-handed reliever Brooks Raley cleared it.

Raley’s $2 million club option (he’ll make just a $250,000 salary in the minors) for the 2021 season isn’t close to the double-digit price tag that Morton or Hand’s would have cost their clubs, but the specific figure in play here doesn’t feel as important as the fact that Houston was willing to pay Raley in the first place. His numbers this season — a 4.95 ERA and 3.94 FIP in 20 innings — aren’t anything special. Other relievers with similarly-priced club options and perfectly good 2020 production, such as Javy Guerra and Darren O’Day, were turned loose by their respective clubs. In a depressed spending environment, the prices for high-leverage relievers this winter could turn out to be low. For Houston to commit to Raley before free agency even begins shows the team must see something valuable in him.

The Astros were already demonstrating their belief in Raley when they used him rather aggressively during this year’s surprisingly deep playoff run. In the ALCS alone, Raley pitched in four games, holding the Rays without a run across three innings while striking out six and walking two. That usage — particularly in close games — was reflective of just how thin the Astros had become at the back of their bullpen, but it also showed how fond Houston had grown of Raley in his short time with the team.

If this year’s postseason was the first you’d ever heard of Raley, you probably aren’t alone. And if you got curious and looked him up, you may have been surprised to learn just how long he’s been around. The 32-year-old lefty was a sixth-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2009; he pitched sparingly for them in 2012-13 before being placed on waivers. His run on the waiver wire saw him shuttled to the Twins and then the Angels, but neither found a home for Raley on their big league roster. Lacking interest from MLB squads, Raley answered a call from the Korean Baseball Organization’s Lotte Giants, who offered him a rotation spot he never relinquished. From 2015-19, Raley started 151 games with the Giants, proving to be a durable, if not necessarily dominant, starter. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since we updated the OOTP Brewers, my experiment with crowd-managing a team in an online Out Of The Park Baseball league. We did just okay; our 83-79 record was good for second in the NL Central, but didn’t come close to yielding a Wild Card slot — too bad we didn’t have this year’s expanded playoffs system.

What lessons can we learn from the season? First, our pitching depth was severely tested, in a way that suggests we should focus more heavily on cultivating Triple-A talent in the future. Corbin Burnes, Brett Anderson, Jeff Samardzija (a mid-season acquisition), Alex Claudio, Tim Hill, and Devin Williams all ended the season on the 60-day disabled list, and Josh Lindblom missed three months early on. We withstood the storm somewhat by acquiring Kevin Gausman, but he’s headed into free agency this offseason — more pitching depth feels like an absolute necessity.

Additionally, this season showcased one of the Brewers roster’s biggest weaknesses: a lack of secondary difference-makers behind Christian Yelich. Keston Hiura and Brock Holt hit decently well, but Hiura also missed time, and Lorenzo Cain was alternately injured and ineffective before finally missing the last two months of the season. When Yelich went down for eight weeks, the offense simply had no driving force.

Unlike the starting pitching, that’s not an easy contingency to plan for. When a team with Milwaukee’s payroll signs a star to a long-term deal, they don’t have a lot of recourse in case of injury or ineffectiveness. We did sign Hiura to an extension this year, but that can only go so far. As Yelich goes, so will go the Brewers, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

With that in mind, I have two priorities for the offseason: acquire a major-league starting pitcher and hunt the waiver wire and Rule 5 draft for pitchers who can start the season as relievers but double as back-of-rotation depth in the event of injury. The Brewers roster simply didn’t have enough pitching to withstand this year’s injury bug, and I’d like to avoid that going forward.

Of course, the entire season wasn’t about the Brewers. Ten teams made the playoffs in this league, and it was a pretty wild field. The NL had its fair share of chalk — you’ll hardly be surprised to know that the Dodgers won their division — but it also featured one notable upstart. The Pirates finished second in the NL and won the Central, paced by a devastating pitching staff (first in the NL in starting pitching ERA, fourth in overall pitching WAR) and an offense bolstered by a midseason addition of Marcus Semien. Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Hall had a long and remarkable career, and at 90 years young, his memory remains strong. There’s a lot for him to reminisce about. Originally an infielder/outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates — he debuted in 1952 — Hall converted to the mound in 1955 and went on to pitch for 16 big-league seasons.

A right-hander who both started and relieved, Hall had his best years with the Baltimore Orioles, with whom he had 65 wins, 60 saves, and a 2.89 ERA over two stints and nine seasons. His career culminated with three consecutive Fall Classics, the middle of which saw Baltimore beat the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970 World Series. All told, Hall pitched eight-and-two-thirds postseason innings without allowing an earned run.

Hall discussed his career shortly before becoming a nonagenarian in late September.

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David Laurila: You pitched for a long time, but only after starting your career as a position player. How did that come about?

Dick Hall: “Well, there was no draft when I signed with the Pirates in the fall of 1951. I then started playing in their minor league system in 1952, and after my
second season — after the 1953 season — they sent me down to Mazatlán, Mexico
to get further experience. I was a second baseman/outfielder in those days. Mazatlán almost sent me home, but then I changed the grip on my bat and started hitting home runs. Mazatlán calls Pittsburgh and said, ‘We’ll keep him after all.’

“I set the league home run record, so they welcomed me back the next year. I told the manager, ‘Look, I pitched all the time in high school, college, and semi-pro,’ so if he wanted, I could pitch. One Sunday we were up in Hermosillo, which is a few hours from Arizona, and we played a four-game series which included a doubleheader on Sunday. We carried four pitchers. We had a Cuban pitcher, a Mexican pitcher, and two from the United States. Anyway, on Sunday they scored a couple runs early. Our starting pitcher ran into huge trouble, so the manager called me in from center field. I ended up pitching six-and-a-third innings and gave up one single. Read the rest of this entry »

In the latest sign that this offseason could be a difficult one for free agents due to the industry-wide loss of revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, just six players received qualifying offers from their 2020 teams prior to Sunday’s 5 PM Eastern deadline. That’s the lowest total since the system was put in place in 2012, not that anyone should fret the loss of something that makes player movement more difficult. The six — Trevor Bauer, Kevin Gausman, DJ LeMahieu, J.T. Realmuto, George Springer, and Marcus Stroman — have until November 11 to accept or decline the one-year, $18.9 million offers. While historically, the odds strongly suggest that most of those players will decline them and move on, Gausman and Stroman stand out as two players who could accept them and return to their respective teams.

I’ll get to the players and the decisions themselves, but before that, there’s a lot to unpack. To review, the qualifying offer system was introduced for the 2012-16 Collective Bargaining Agreement and then revised for the 2017-21 CBA. It’s the latest mechanism in a battle that’s as old as free agency itself, for not only does it compensate the team who lost a major free agent by awarding them a draft pick, it penalizes the team that signs him by costing them a draft pick, and acts as a drag on player salaries because at a certain point, the cost of the lost draft pick(s) is substantial relative to the expected value of the player. That the updated rules make a player who has previously received a QO ineligible to receive another one is a clear acknowledgement of that fact.

The value of the one-year qualifying offer is based upon the mean of the top 125 player salaries (full-season salaries, not prorated ones). A player issued a QO can accept and return to the team for whom he played in 2020 at that price, or he can decline it and sign with any team (including the one from whom they rejected the offer), with his old team receiving a draft pick whose placement is based upon the size of the subsequent contract. If a qualified player signs a deal for at least $50 million, his old team gets a draft pick between the first round and Competitive Balance Round A. There were no such picks in the 2020 draft, but in ’19, those picks were numbers 33 and 34, while in ’18, they covered picks 31-35, meaning that they yielded around $9-10 million in future value. If a qualified player signs a deal for less than $50 million, the compensatory draft pick follows Competitive Balance Round B, which takes place after the second round, and which in 2019 covered just pick number 78, and in ’18 fell in the 75-78 range, worth somewhere around $3-3.5 million.

Meanwhile, the quality of the pick lost by the signing team depends upon whether it exceeded the Competitive Balance Tax in the previous season, and whether it receives revenue sharing money. A team that pays the tax will lose its second- and fifth-highest picks, which might amount to around $8 million in future value, while a team that receives revenue sharing will lose its fourth-highest pick, which might be worth closer to $3 million. These are ballpark estimates; you can read the fine print here. Read the rest of this entry »

Let me give you an interesting blind resume. Well, not blind really, because you’ve presumably read the title of this article already, but humor me. Our “anonymous” starter has been one of the best pitchers in baseball of late. Over the last four years, he’s compiled a 3.34 ERA, 3.27 FIP, and 3.46 xFIP. He’s done it with strikeouts — 28.4% and 10.6 per nine innings — and with grounders — his 1.61 GB/FB ratio helps him suppress home runs to the tune of 0.73 per nine innings.

Looking at seasonal production is confusing with 2020, so we’ll use a slightly different benchmark: WAR produced per 30 starts. On that list, our “mystery” pitcher places 20th in baseball over the last four years. Depending on how you define an ace, he might be one; at the very least, he’s been one of the best pitchers in the game.

This isn’t a true blind resume, of course. It’s Charlie Morton. The former Pirates prospect turned his career around in Houston, and he’s done more of the same in Tampa Bay. He’s also developed a reputation as a playoff monster, and while I’m not here to debate whether playoff aces exist, he was excellent this postseason; 20 innings of 2.7 ERA, 2.59 FIP excellence.

Why is this resume relevant? On Friday, the Rays declined Morton’s 2021 club option. Morton was due to earn $15 million in 2021, the result of a complicated contract that could deflate based on Morton’s health. The Rays are, to put it charitably, frugal — Morton was their highest-paid player by far last year, and they’ve had one of the five lowest payrolls in baseball in each of the last 10 years.

That said, let’s delve into Morton to figure out what the team declining his option means. Is it a referendum on Tampa Bay’s voluntary extreme penury? Is it a sign of a cold free agent market to come? Or are the Rays simply unconvinced that Morton will deliver the top-end starter performance he’s shown over the last four years? Read the rest of this entry »

A number of you reading this will share the same opinion: A.J. Hinch was suspended for his role in the Houston Astros cheating scandal, and for that reason he has no business managing a major league baseball team. It’s a reasonable stance. The integrity of the game matters, and while Hinch wasn’t fully on board with the shenanigans — he twice smashed the monitor used to steal signs — he nonetheless shares in the blame. That he didn’t put a stop to the outlawed actions is an indelible stain on his reputation.

On Friday — freshly freed from MLB’s sanctions — Hinch was named the new manager of the Detroit Tigers. Speaking at his introductory press conference, the club’s one-time catcher was understandably contrite.

“I’ve reflected back… from something that was very wrong,” Hinch expressed to a bevy of reporters. “As I told Mr. Ilich, and Al, that’s part of my story. It’s not the Tigers’ story… it’s not a part of the players I’m going to be managing. I’m sorry that they’re going to have to deal with it, [but] that’s our reality. Wrong is wrong, and I feel responsible, because I was the manager. It was on my watch.”

Mr. Ilich is Christopher Ilich, the Tigers’ Chairman and CEO. Al is Al Avila, the club’s Executive VP, Baseball Operations/General Manager. The latter, who’d phoned Hinch 30 minutes after the conclusion of the World Series to request he get on a plane to Detroit, was already well-acquainted with the now-free-to-negotiate candidate. Based on his history with Hinch, Avila wasn’t overburdened by what had happened in Houston. Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond the fact that at the end of each season only one team can be crowned champion, the Dodgers accomplished something that’s become comparatively rare in the age of expanded playoffs: winning the World Series after posting the majors’ best record during the regular season. Not only that, their .717 winning percentage is the highest of the post-1960 expansion era… but of course, that comes with a significant caveat. The shortened and geographically limited schedule makes it difficult to justify measuring this year’s team against the best of all time, but when we consider this Dodgers squad in the context of their recent multi-year run of success — the regular season dominance, the close-but-no-cigar postseason showings — we can make a fair case that they’ve earned a place alongside the best teams of the expansion era.

First, here’s the short list that the Dodgers joined, the teams from the Wild Card era that finished the regular season with the majors’ best record, then went on to win the World Series:

Interestingly enough, top teams have survived to pop the champagne corks more frequently since the one-and-done Wild Card Game was introduced in 2012 (three out of eight) than they did during the period during which each league had only one Wild Card team (three out of 17). While that might be a fluke, intuitively it makes sense. Aside from not having home-field advantage in any round, from 1995-2011 Wild Card teams were on otherwise equal footing with division winners, and were even prohibited from playing their league’s top seed in the Division Series if they hailed from the same division. From 2012-19, teams that won the Wild Card Game were then matched against the league’s top seed, usually after expending their ace and thus limiting him to one start in the Division Series. As an aside from this current exercise, I do think this is a strong argument for maintaining the 2012-19 structure going forward, Rob Manfred’s desire to expand the playoffs be damned (and damned it should be).

Moving along, the Dodgers’ .717 winning percentage was an eyelash (.0006, less than a full point) better than the 2001 Mariners with their 116-46 record, and trails only four teams from the pre-1960 expansion era, three of which came in the first decade of the 20th century. The 1906 Cubs’ .762 (115-36) is still tops, but I’m going to dispense with the ancient history for the remainder of this exercise, so my apologies to the 1902 and ’09 Pirates (.739 and .724, respectively) and even the ’54 Indians (.721); even though we’re grappling with a team that played just 60 games, what they did in the larger scheme took place not only in the era of 162-game schedules but also within that expanded talent pool, which includes players of color in significant numbers. Within that post-1960 set, the 2020 Dodgers’ .712 Pythagorean winning percentage also ranks first, 21 points ahead of the 1969 Orioles, but beyond acknowledging that placement, I’m not going to dwell upon the small sample.

With that out of the way, it’s worth considering the place these Dodgers hold, not just for 2020 but for the run that has produced three trips to the World Series in four years. As I noted on Wednesday, they’re the fifth team to lose back-to-back World Series and then return to win one within the same five-year stretch, though of course other teams had similar accomplishments in a different sequence; for example, the 1969-71 Orioles and ’88-90 A’s sandwiched two World Series defeats around a victory. And of course there are teams that had greater success in the postseason within a given range, such as the 1972-76 Reds and 1976-78 Yankees, both of which lost one World Series before winning two, or the 1972-74 A’s and 1998-2000 Yankees, who each won three straight (the latter before losing a fourth), or the 1991-99 Braves, who went 1-4 in five World Series. Read the rest of this entry »

JT Brubaker had a satisfying summer. The 26-year-old right-hander didn’t dominate the stat sheet — neither his 4.94 ERA nor his 4.08 FIP was anything to write home about — but the fact that those numbers came in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform was a reason to smile. A sixth-round pick in 2015 out of the University of Akron, Brubaker debuted in late July and went on to throw 47.1 solid innings. Initially used out of the bullpen, he finished the season having made nine of his 11 appearances as a starter.

Brubaker was somewhat of a question mark coming into the campaign. He tossed just 27.2 minor-league innings in 2019 due to an arm ailment, and as a result garnered no better than a 40 FV and a No. 25 ranking on our 2020 Pirates Top Prospects list. As Eric Longenhagen opined back in February, the Springfield, Ohio native, “should fit in the back of a rotation or in a relief role [and] his health may dictate which.”

Brubaker discussed his debut, and his impressions of a season played amid a pandemic, following his final start of the year.

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David Laurila: How would you describe the 2020 season?

JT Brubaker: “It’s been fun for me. It’s my first year in the big leagues, so I’ve enjoyed it. I feel like players have shown a little bit different side of bonding in baseball. They’re having fun with each other. I’ve seen more teammates laughing and joking with each other. The Cubs, for instance. That’s one team I’ve noticed just hooting and hollering in the dugout — stuff you might not be able to hear when there’s a crowd there.” Read the rest of this entry »