The Mets signed Todd Frazier yesterday, for two years and $17 million. One interpretation is that this is evidence of how the current free-agent market has cratered. Frazier, over the past three years, has been worth 10 WAR, and he just posted by far his best-ever walk rate. Another interpretation is that this is evidence of how badly Frazier wanted to remain in New York. He’s already got enough money to live on, and this way he’s still close to home, with a starting job on a potentially competitive team. You might say the Mets are kind of caught in the middle, but that’s not as bad a position as it sounds. Teams in the middle can over-achieve. The Mets are in the right place to invest.

The Frazier acquisition does get in the way of Wilmer Flores‘ playing time. Flores has been a fairly good hitter lately, and he’s still just 26. Perhaps this is only a lateral move, then, but really, Flores can still play; now he’s been turned into quality depth. He’s a better hitter than Jose Reyes, and he can help out at first should Adrian Gonzalez or Dominic Smith under-perform. The Mets now are better and deeper, and, compared to Flores, Frazier’s the superior defender.

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If you’ve been wondering just how slow this offseason has been, Travis Sawchik has the answer for you: it is the slowest ever. Writing about the glacial pace of the market, Sawchik addressed both the short-term problem — that too many players need to find jobs — and hinted at possible longer-term issues caused by the current collective bargaining agreement, as well.

Whether the current issues will persist in subsequent years is a good question. Next winter, when Bryce Harper signs for $400 million or something, ownership’s reluctance to spend on the current free-agent class might seem like a distant memory. It is possible that a few of next offseason’s signings, however, will simply paper over issues that are likely to endure for the next half-decade.

One of the prominent theories regarding this slow winter has been that teams are saving up for a run at free agency next winter. That might help explain why, even after all of the current free agents find homes, total league-wide payroll in 2018 is likely to be comparable to 2017’s mark. The theory is that teams could be avoiding major commitments this year to save up for a bonanza next year. Perhaps that’s hypothesis will bear fruit. In order to make up for next offseason to compensate for this winter’s relative lack of activity, two conditions need to be met. First, next year’s crop of free agents will need to be composed of much better players and, second, teams will have to spend well beyond current levels.

Let’s start with the players involved. Harper and Manny Machado headline next year’s free-agent class. There’s really nobody close to those two this year. With each set to turn just 26 years old in 2019, both Harper and Machado seem likely to double the highest guarantee of any player this winter. After that pair, we find Charlie Blackmon, Josh Donaldson, Clayton Kershaw (who has an opt-out), and Dallas Keuchel. Blackmon and Donaldson are a little bit older than their free-agent peers, but both have been excellent in recent seasons.

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“I think prudence and judgment would indicate that those long-term, late-in-career deals in any era have generally not turned out to be very good decisions. I think we’ve been right to [avoid lucrative free agent deals]. I think we’ll be even more right in the next era.”

— Pirates owner Bob Nutting

“We believe [the players’ revenue share] is well below 50 [percent]. Show me a team, after you go through the general fund without selling a ticket, that’s not making $120 million. So where is it going?… Where are [owners] spending it?”

— Agent Scott Boras

This author gathered those quotes for a story that appeared on May 30, 2015, in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

For many players, trouble did not then seem to be on the horizon. When I asked then-Pirates player rep Neil Walker about teams running their operations more efficiently and the possibility of owners taking a greater share of revenues, Walker seemed untroubled. “Frankly, at this point,” he said, “we don’t see it as much of a concern.”

To be fair, owners went out and guaranteed a record $2.4 billion to free agents that following offseason. But then the trouble really began to bubble up for players. Spending declined by a billion dollars the following winter and sits at $746 million to date this offseason, according to Spotrac. As Craig Edwards recently noted, MLB Opening Day payroll could decrease for the first time in a long time.

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As ESPN’s Christina Kahrl noted last week on Twitter, perhaps it is spending that is the new market inefficiency.

After all, who anticipated that Brewers would be responsible for the greatest free-agent deal to date? And tonight, another team in something of a no-man’s land has made its second splash of the New Year, perhaps sensing opportunity.

The Mets entered Monday forecast to finish 80-82. They’ve passed the offseason firmly entrenched in that space between the Haves and Have Nots, a space fewer teams seem interested in inhabiting. But with the addition of Todd Frazier, they appear to have paid relatively little for a player who can help at third or first base, positions at which Asdrubal Cabrera and Dominic Smith, respectively, sat atop the club’s depth chart entering the day.

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The Marlins have already had what would be a record-setting sell-off. Not only have they completely dismantled arguably the best outfield in baseball; they’ve also traded away a quality second baseman about to move to center. So, in a sense, the Marlins’ teardown has involved the trading of four starting outfielders, and there’s only so much meaningful selling left to do. Dan Straily could get something, sure. Justin Bour is better than his pretty much non-existent reputation. Yet the one jewel left is J.T. Realmuto. He’d be the ticket to one last Miami blockbuster.

Realmuto is a catcher who turns only 27 years old in a month and a half, and he’s got another three seasons of club control. As a player, Realmuto is incredibly valuable, and, even more, he’s expressed an interest in getting the chance to play for someone else. Even though Realmuto’s actual leverage here is low, the Marlins wouldn’t hesitate to grant his wish, should the right offer come along. And, say, wouldn’t you know it, but the Nationals could use a quality backstop! Matt Wieters probably shouldn’t be that guy. Miguel Montero isn’t likely to be that guy. The Nationals have been included in catcher rumors all offseason long.

It seems like there should be a reasonable fit. And maybe something here will actually happen. It’s just that there’s a stumbling block: The Nationals are already perhaps too good.

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Mike Shawaryn hadn’t put much thought into it. Finger pressure is instrumental in his success, both as a pitcher and as a musician, but how the two intertwine isn’t a subject he’d addressed. Not until I broached the subject this winter.

A 22-year-old right-hander out of the University of Maryland, Shawaryn is one of the top prospects in the Red Sox system (Baseball America has him No. 8; Eric Longenagen expects to rank him similarly when he puts together his forthcoming Red Sox list). Displaying a power arsenal, he fanned 169 batters in 134-and-two-thirds innings last year between low-A Greenville and high-A Salem.

When he’s not blowing away hitters, Shawaryn is playing the piano and the saxophone — and he’s a neophyte with neither. Boston’s pick in the fifth round of the 2016 draft has been tickling the ivories and blowing on a sax ever since his elementary school days in South Jersey.

Both instruments require dexterous fingers. Ditto pitching, where you’re gripping and releasing an object whose movement is influenced by the placement of digits on seams. Is there a direct correlation?

“I’ve never really thought about it like that, but the feel of the ball in your hand is obviously important,” Shawaryn said after first contemplating the idea. “Now, kind of connecting the dots, I’d say it’s the piano more so than the saxophone. The pressure you put on the keys determines the sound of it, the shape of the music. That’s probably helped me develop a type of feel in my fingers for the seams on the ball — what fingers I need to put pressure on to influence the shape of a pitch.”

And then there are rhythm and tempo. Pitchers change speeds within an at bat, and musicians change speeds within a song. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I wrote a post about how the opportunity should be there for some low-spending team to buy a prospect. There are high-spending teams looking to shed expensive commitments, and there are lower-payroll teams who ought to have some nearer-term financial flexibility. The example I leaned on most heavily was the Dodgers and Matt Kemp, since the Dodgers would like to move Kemp if they are to re-sign Yu Darvish and still avoid exceeding the competitive-balance-tax threshold. There’s nothing controversial in here. If anything, it’s all terribly obvious. Of course the Dodgers would like to dump Kemp’s salary, and of course some other teams would be interested in assuming some dead money if it came along with younger value.

The Dodgers have plenty of younger value. Plenty of options, for designing a reasonable Kemp package. This would be precisely the hold-up; other teams want more than the Dodgers have so far been willing to give. Where I ran into some resistance was when I talked specifically about Wilmer Font. That is, Wilmer Font, as a would-be Matt Kemp offset. Font is a 27-year-old righty with seven innings of major-league experience. In those seven innings, he’s allowed nine runs. He’s nowhere high on any prospect list. Even more, I’m given to understand he’s out of options!

Let me quickly try to explain myself. I know that Font seemed like a weird guy to bring up. And I have no idea how many teams might actually be interested in him. But I know for a fact the answer’s not zero. Font has been on few radars, but he’s coming off a truly incredible season.

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“When you’re talking about free agency you’re talking about aging players and the trend of overpaying a player’s aging curves has come to an end across baseball.”

— Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins

“Everybody wants to look up and scream, ‘collusion.’ Everybody wants to look up and scream, ‘This isn’t fair.’ But sooner or later, you have to take responsibility for a system you created for yourself. It’s our fault.”

— Brandon Moss on MLB Network Radio

There have been eight work stoppages in MLB history.

Since the first of those, a strike in 1972 that lasted 13 days and 86 total games in duration, baseball has enjoyed its longest stretch of labor peace. Since the cataclysmic 1994-95 strike, which lasted 232 days and wiped out the World Series for the first time in 90 years, there has been no interruption in play. Revenues have grown exponentially since that strike. By some measures, the sport has never been more popular. No one wants a repeat of 1994-95, when there was no postseason and replacement players showed up for spring training the following February.

But if there were a doomsday-style, labor-unrest clock, it would be inching closer to midnight this winter.

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I probably don’t need to rehash here the stuff we’ve been writing all winter instead of writing about free-agent signings. We all know the market has been remarkably slow. We all know the theories behind the slowness. Most of those theories are probably correct to some extent.

What’s curious to me — and what prompted this article — is that, even after all of the free agents sign, there is a very real possibility that total payroll might actually decrease from a year ago. That’s pretty rare and the implications much worse than I had anticipated.

Near the beginning of the offseason, I took a pretty simple look at how much teams might be willing to spend in free agency. To get those numbers, I took Opening Day payrolls from last season and added 5% to every team — that is, roughly the observed rate of annual inflation of the game over the last few decades. With those numbers, I looked at current team commitments, including arbitration estimates, to get a sense of how much room every team had to spend.

This graph was created with payroll numbers from Cot’s Contracts:

Three months later, that graph is a bit outdated. The market has been slow, yes, but teams have nevertheless made some moves affecting payroll.

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Earlier this week, we learned about how Lars came to join the Sydney Blue Sox. Today, in the sixth of what is now planned as an eight-part series, the itinerant slugger-cum-wordsmith introduces us to Feathers, Tank, Chuckles, and Numbers. He also explains how his sightseeing plans went awry.

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Lars Anderson: “My ‘permanent’ living situation was still being sorted out when I arrived in Sydney. For the first two nights, I crashed at Tony’s high-rise apartment that he shares with his exceedingly cool wife, Katie. The apartment overlooks Parramatta, a groovy, multicultural neighborhood 30 minutes from the heart of Sydney. Tony is originally from Adelaide. Tony is also an assistant coach for the Australian national team, occupying that role for almost two decades. From what I’ve gathered, he’s a ‘who’s who’ in the baseball community here and seems to be garner nearly unanimous respect.

“When Tony isn’t managing in the ABL, he is a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and is in charge of all players in the Pacific Rim. He spends his summers scouting in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Australia.

“In my limited time around him, I see why he has earned said respect: he’s been accommodating beyond reason with me off the field. On the field, he is even-keeled, honest, positive (yet stern and serious in the right moments), and he supports and defends his players. After a tough loss in Brisbane, we walked into the locker room to find that there was no postgame meal. Tony, frustrated with the loss and the way Brisbane had played host, walked outside and yelled, ‘Give us some fucking food! You kicked our ass on the field, you could at least throw us a bone off of it!’ The team erupted in laughter, and the bitter taste of defeat was lessened by his calculated antics. It was an uncanny bit of leadership.

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