The first member of our Top 50 Free Agents list has signed, and as you might expect given that this is baseball and not basketball, it was a minor signing. Robbie Ray is remaining in Toronto after the Blue Jays extended him a one-year, $8 million contract. Depending on what you think of Ray, it’s either a sign of a slow market or a fairly priced reclamation project — for what it’s worth, Craig Edwards projected exactly a one-year, $8 million deal.

For me, there are two interesting parts of the Ray signing. First, Robbie Ray felt this close to breaking into the top tier of starters for years. In his first five seasons with the Diamondbacks, he was frequently exciting and sometimes excellent. He put up a 2.89 ERA in 2017, and it wasn’t some hollow number with concerning peripherals; he induced swinging strikes on 14.2% of his pitches, a career high, and struck out 32.8% of opposing batters.

He also walked 10.7% of opposing batters, and unfortunately, that wasn’t a fluke. He walked 13.3% the next year and a grisly 17.9% in 2020, a sure way to go from inconsistent to ineffective. Missing bats is the most valuable pitching skill, but all the bat missing in the world won’t help you when that many batters are getting a free trip down to first. Read the rest of this entry »

Like most big-league broadcasters, Joe Block got his start down on the farm. The radio and TV play-by-play voice of the Pittsburgh Pirates broke into the business with the South Atlantic League’s Charleston RiverDogs back in 2000. That part of his story is isn’t unique. What is unique is that Block first shared the booth with a blind man.

Looking to break into baseball, Block traveled to Anaheim for the 1999 Winter Meetings after graduating from Michigan State University. Charleston had posted a broadcast intern position, and the fresh-faced Spartan secured an interview with the club’s then-broadcaster. The sit-down went well. Block hit it off with Dave Raymond — now the TV voice of the Texas Rangers — and was offered the job.

As fate would have it, they never got to call games together. Later that winter, Raymond took a job with the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. Replacing Raymond in Charleston was a duo that had worked together with the St. Paul Saints.

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but Jim Lucas and Don Wardlow had been in the minor leagues for a number of years as a tandem,” explained Block. “Don was born blind. He never saw anything in his entire life.”

As an intern, Block’s primary responsibility was doing the pre- and post-game shows. Most appealing among his other duties was the opportunity to do play-by-play when Lucas took time off. What he learned was invaluable, and the unique circumstances played a big part in that. Read the rest of this entry »

In the least shocking development of the offseason thus far, the Red Sox have rehired Alex Cora to manage the team. Not only did the move to bring back the previously suspended skipper appear to be inevitable, but news of it leaked onto Twitter just 22 minutes after Decision Desk HQ became the first verified outfit to call the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden. This was a Hall of Fame-caliber Friday news dump, designed to minimize the attention paid to a transaction that’s clearly defiant, if not cynical.

Put it this way: I’m no Jon Heyman when it comes to the inside baseball of Major League Baseball, but I tweeted a week ago that the Red Sox not rehiring Cora to manage would be an even bigger shock than the White Sox’s strange rehiring of Tony La Russa, who hasn’t managed since 2011. Unlike the situation in Chicago, where owner Jerry Reinsdorf appears to have unilaterally decided to bring back an old crony without interviewing other candidates (or at least announcing that they had done so), the Red Sox were reported to have interviewed several MLB coaches including Mike Bell (Twins), Don Kelly (Pirates), Carlos Mendoza (Yankees), James Rowson (Marlins), Skip Schumaker (Padres), Luis Urueta (Diamondbacks), and Will Venable (Cubs). But despite that crowded field — which grew to “at least nine candidates” who received first-round interviews — it’s fair to wonder the extent to which this was an ownership-driven decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I did a deeply meaningless thing. I ignored our site’s excellent projections — both ZiPS and Steamer do a great job of projecting future performance — and made my own terrible ones using some old methodology. Why? Partially because I’m not smart enough to build my own ZiPS, but mainly so that I could walk through the very basic way projection systems work — not by wishcasting or hoping or by finding some sneaky data point no one else has, but by carefully using and weighing the data we all have.

Of course, that’s a buttoned-down and boring way to think about things. Let’s talk about something fun instead! The top of the 2021 projections I made yesterday is dotted with a bunch of people you’d expect, and since I didn’t even bother park-adjusting it, a few too many Rockies. The impressive Fernando Tatis Jr. comes in at 11th in wOBA, which is cool given he still has a season of zeroes in there. Freddie Freeman is continuing his ascent. But here’s a shocker: there are four Mets in the top 40.

That sounds, well, wrong. The Mets aren’t supposed to be a good offensive team. They’re supposed to be a pitching team, what with Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard atop the rotation (upon Syndergaard’s recovery) and Edwin Díaz locking down the bullpen. There’s just one problem with that narrative: it’s completely wrong. The Mets were, in fact, tied with the Dodgers for the best wRC+ in baseball last year. They finished fifth in position player WAR — the defense wasn’t a strength — but generally hit an absolute ton.
Read the rest of this entry »

As Steve Cohen completes his purchase of the Mets and begins his first offseason, there is going to be considerable speculation that Cohen will use his vast resources to make a splash and try to make the Mets contenders next season. He absolutely should do that, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a plan other than drop cash out of the sky and see which players take it. There are hundreds of free agents, tons of trade options, and many internal decisions on players. While unlimited funds sounds great, Cohen and the Mets will need to target their resources to make the biggest impact for this season and beyond. With that in mind, here’s how I would plan an ideal offseason for the Mets.

Don’t Trade Away Talented Players

When Brodie Van Wagenen got the Mets job, he had an admittedly difficult task to make the Mets into more of a contender without significantly increasing payroll. That meant taking on a bad contract in Robinson Canó’s deal, but also requiring cash to cover some of the costs and sending over players with near-term bad contracts in Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarzak to offset current contracts. Then, top prospect Jarred Kelenic was added all so the Mets could get an elite reliever in Edwin Díaz. In short, the Mets took on huge future salary commitments and gave up future talent for immediate salary relief and a reliever. The Mets shouldn’t have to make those types of moves to acquire talented players. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s November, which means it’s time for an offseason tradition: asking whether some player who had a great season is now better than Mike Trout. Is it a reasonable tradition? Not particularly! But whether it’s Bryce Harper or Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr. or (in the mind of some wildly optimistic scout) Luis Robert, the tenor of the story is the same: this one guy is a good hitter now, and so maybe he’s a better hitter than Trout, the old best hitter.

One way you could handle this pointless speculation is to ignore it. You’d be totally justified in doing so. Trout is great! He had his worst year this year, and he was still great. Thanks for raising this silly question, enjoy the offseason, see you in February.

As you might have guessed based on the fact that this is an article, however, I’m going to do a little more than that. I’m not going to get into the hot-take-ness of it all, but there are ways to examine this question with a little bit of intellectual rigor. Also, while I’ve got you here, I might as well steal whole cloth from an old Tom Tango idea and make some simplistic projections, all the better to understand our site’s more complicated projections with.

The Marcel projection system is named after a monkey, and it also doesn’t exist anymore. But the concept still makes a ton of sense. Take a player’s actual performance in the last three years, do a little weighting, do a little mean reverting, and call it a projection. That probably sounds too simple, but that’s really how Marcel works. It’s not supposed to be the best projection system in the world, merely the minimum sufficient projection system.
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »