In-zone rate is one of the most fascinating stats in baseball. It definitely means something, but you sometimes need to sort through a couple different factors in order to determine just what that something is. If pitchers think they can knock the bat out of your hands, they’ll come right after you inside, but if they’re scared you’ll do damage, then they’ll nibble around the edges. If you chase too much, they’ll look to tempt you outside the zone, but if you make good swing decisions, you can force them to throw it over the plate. Fastballs end up in the zone more often than breaking balls and offspeed pitches, so if you struggle to catch up to velocity, you’ll see more pitches in the zone. There’s always some randomness thrown in for good measure too, but generally speaking, that’s the matrix.

If you combine all those factors, you’ll see that most of the time, players who take big hacks see fewer pitches in the zone than those who just try to put the ball in play. Since 2021, Salvador Perez and Bryce Harper have seen the fewest pitches in the zone, while Myles Straw and Ha-Seong Kim have seen the most. But there are some elite players who combine the best of all worlds: They make good swing decisions and they combine power with contact ability. If you hang it, they’ll bang it, and if you bury it, they’ll spit on it. These players usually end up with a zone rate that’s somewhere in the middle, simply because there is no one good way to pitch to them. Think Joey Votto, Alex Bregman, and our subject for today: Mookie Betts.

If you’re a baker, you might be fond of the kitchen sink cookie: the cookie where you mix anything and everything that might be delicious into the dough. Pecans and peanut butter chips? Sure. Toffee bits and white chocolate? The more the merrier. Betts is baseball’s version of the kitchen sink cookie, studded with athleticism, coordination, savvy, skill, versatility, maybe even some shredded coconut. There’s no such thing as a right way to pitch him. He has weak spots, but he’s excellent at hitting the kinds of pitches that are usually located in those spots because he’s good against every kind of pitch. He’s never excelled against pitches at the top of the zone, but he destroys four-seam fastballs. If you want to beat him up there, you really have to hit the very edge, because if you miss high, he won’t swing, and if you miss low, he’ll clobber it. He’s also had trouble low and away, but again, he’s always been solid against the breaking pitches that most righties try and throw there.

This year, Betts is batting leadoff in front of reigning AL MVP and current Triple Crown candidate Shohei Ohtani and perennial MVP candidate Freddie Freeman. There’s nobody in baseball with better lineup protection, so you could be forgiven for assuming that he has been seeing a lot more strikes this season. He has not. In fact, his zone rate has fallen from 49.1% in 2023 to 45.4% this season. That drop of 3.7 percentage points is tied with MJ Melendez for the second largest among all qualified players, behind only Anthony Volpe, who went from 50% to 46.1%. That leaves Betts with a zone rate in the 13th percentile of all qualified players.

So far, 10.1% of the pitches Betts has seen have been in the waste zone, and 24.4% have been in the chase zone. Both of those numbers are the highest he’s ever recorded. Just 23% of the pitches Betts has seen this year have been in the heart zone. That’s the lowest rate he’s ever recorded, and it’s also eighth lowest among the 196 players who have seen at least 400 pitches this season. Pitchers are avoiding him like never before, and it’s not just that he’s seeing fewer strikes. They’re trying to execute a specific plan.

They’re trying to hit that outside corner. Betts is seeing fewer four-seamers, and more sinkers and offspeed pitches. Those offspeed pitches, as well as the breaking balls he’s seeing, are more concentrated on the outside edge of the plate.

Strictly speaking, this plan is not working. Betts is already sitting on a major league-best 3.0 WAR, and his 193 wRC+ is second only to the 217 mark of the player who is, in theory, protecting him in the lineup. It’s hard to argue that the league has finally figured out a player who’s currently on pace for 12.8 WAR.

However, this plan is absolutely changing the shape of the production Betts is putting up. First, the good news: He’s running a career-high 16.3% walk and a career-low 9.6% strikeout rate. His 1.71 walks per strikeout are miles ahead of Vinnie Pasquantino’s 1.36 in second place. Now the bad news: Betts’ hard-hit rate and 90th percentile exit velocity are down significantly. His pull rate is down to 32.6%, the lowest of his entire career and a drop-off of more than 13 percentage points from 2023. He hasn’t hit a homer since April 12 or an extra-base hit since April 28. Here’s what that looks like in heat map form. The map below shows Betts’ value according to Runs Above Average per 100 pitches.

If you’re a pitcher, that makes it pretty clear: outside good, inside bad. Even with Ohtani and Freeman looming, it might make sense to try to hit your spot on the outside corner and risk giving up a walk. Furthermore, this plan is not without precedent. If you go back and look at the heat maps of the pitches Betts has seen in recent years, one of them jumps out as similar to this season.

In 2021, pitchers tried a similar tack, aggressively going after the outside corner. Betts ended up with a 131 wRC+ — the worst mark he’s had since 2017. If you’re an opposing pitcher with no good options — which is to say any pitcher who finds themselves 60 feet, 6 inches away from Mookie Betts — why not try an approach that has, at least grading by the ridiculous curve of Betts’ stellar production, worked before? Look at how many of his hits (especially his extra-base hits) went to left field last year.

Right field is just a sea of gray outs with a few green singles sprinkled in. In 2023, Betts had a .602 wOBA when he pulled the ball, .396 when he hit it straightaway, and .189 when he hit it to the opposite field. Why not do everything you can to keep him from pulling the ball and encourage him to hit it the other way? Unfortunately for opposing pitchers, this tactic requires a high level of precision. Betts doesn’t seem to mind taking his walks, and on the rare occasions when he does get a pitch to hit on the inner half, he’s making the most of it.

However, there are a few signs that he’s had to adjust to combat this approach. He appears to be setting up closer to the plate this season. In the pictures below, I’ve copied and pasted a second home plate right next to the actual home plate to give a better sense of scale.

In theory, moving a few inches closer means that the inside pitches Betts usually mashes are now a little bit further inside, which should give him less time to turn on them. Furthermore, his chase rate is up a bit from last season, and it has been rising in recent weeks.

This could just be regression. Betts has an 83 wRC+ over his last nine games, but it’s not like he was going to run a 250 wRC+ and a 12% chase rate all season. However, he really is chasing more — not a lot, but more than he did in April and more than he did in 2023. We’ve seen him move closer to the plate, and it’s certainly possible that seeing so few pitches in the strike zone has made him a little bit sick of waiting for his pitch and more likely to swing at something he shouldn’t. We’re only a fifth of the way through the season, and all the numbers you’ve seen so far are likely to continue to regress to the mean. Betts will likely face more pitchers who are bold enough to challenge him inside (or at all). But for now, it looks like he’s still adjusting to this new approach.

Thanks to an eight-run fifth inning that included Andy Pages‘ first major league home run, the Dodgers beat the Mets 10-0 on Sunday to avoid being swept at home. Even so, they’re off to a sluggish start this season after committing nearly $1 billion in free agent contracts this past winter and pushing their payroll to a club record $314 million. Maybe they’re not the juggernaut that figure suggests, though even given their star-laden roster, they came into this season as a work in progress.

The Dodgers entered Sunday having lost seven of their past nine games. They dropped the finale of a six-game midwest road trip to the Twins, then two of three to the Padres at Chavez Ravine, followed by two of three to the Nationals and two in a row to the Mets. The skid undid a 10-4 start, and they were in danger of — gasp — sinking to .500 had they lost on Sunday. They weren’t exactly getting steamrolled by powerhouses, either. The aforementioned teams had a weighted projected winning percentage of .472 at the outset of the season, and finished Sunday having produced a .453 winning percentage outside of this nine-game stretch against Los Angeles.

For the Dodgers, run prevention has been the biggest issue. Even with Sunday’s shutout — their first of the season, with eight dominant innings from Tyler Glasnow and one from Nick Ramirez — they’re allowing 4.54 runs per game, 11th in the National League. While they haven’t allowed runs at that clip over a full season since 2005, they allowed exactly the same number of runs over their first 24 games last year while going 13-11, then picking up the pace and winning 100 games. Déjà vu all over again? Read the rest of this entry »

For more than a decade now, the Dodgers have reigned over Major League Baseball through a combination of top-end talent and robust depth. Versatile role players like Enrique Hernández and Chris Taylor have complemented stars like Clayton Kershaw, Corey Seager, and Mookie Betts, while excellent scouting and player development departments have meant that the team has never had to scrounge for spare parts. That mix has usually kept Los Angeles clear of our Replacement-Level Killers series. This season, however, the Dodgers have a giant hole: the entire outfield. Dodgers outfielders have accrued -0.5 WAR, tied with the Phillies for dead last in baseball. Next time someone tells you to imagine trading Mookie Betts, take a moment to feel sorry for the Los Angeles outfielders, which didn’t even get to trade Betts to the infield; they just gave him away without getting so much as a Jeter Downs in return. Let’s take a look at what’s going on out there, courtesy of our the shiny new splits on our leaderboard.

Well, that’s simple enough. The offense has been terrible, the defense has been not great, and Mookie Betts is a shortstop now. Before we go any further, it is time for me to shout the word April a few times. The stats above are based on just 239 plate appearances. Lots of things are going to change. In fact, one thing has already changed: On Tuesday, the Dodgers called up prospect Andy Pages and started him in center (presumably because they hacked the FanGraphs Slack and knew I was writing about their outfield needs). He knocked an RBI single on his first pitch.

That said, it’s not too early to look at what’s going on and ask some questions. First of all, Jason Heyward is on the IL with lower back tightness. He hasn’t played since March 30, which means the Dodgers have only gotten to run out their preferred outfield lineup five times. According to Dave Roberts, Heyward’s injury is not improving enough for there to be a firm timetable on his return. Following the injury, the Dodgers claimed Taylor Trammell off waivers from the Mariners, but have only given him six plate appearances. With Heyward gone, Teoscar Hernández has been the everyday right fielder. James Outman and Enrique Hernández have platooned in center. Chris Taylor has started in left, with Enrique Hernández also getting a few starts there against righties. With none of that working, Roberts said on Tuesday that Pages will likely see significant playing time against both righties and lefties.

This seems like the right place to acknowledge how confusing the landscape is in terms of names. There are two Hernándezes, a first-name Taylor and a last-name Taylor, and an Outman who is suddenly living up to his name after all.

Let’s start with the good. Teoscar Hernández is crushing it right now. After a down year in Seattle — possibly the result of having trouble seeing the ball at T-Mobile Park — Hernández signed a one-year deal in January, and is off to a running start. However, it’s early and he has a .314 xwOBA, which would be his worst mark since 2019. So far, Hernández is chasing much less, making a lot more contact, and not sacrificing any contact quality. He may not stay lucky forever, but those underlying numbers are encouraging.

In 2023, James Outman put up a four-win rookie season by doing what we nerds so often ask of hitters: making the most of his hard contact by pulling the ball in the air. As a result, he launched 23 homers and ran a great barrel rate despite below-average contact quality and lots of strikeouts. That also made him a likely regression candidate. Despite a 118 wRC+, he ran a DRC+ of 84. The D stands for Deserved, and this season, his DRC+ is 81. However, it’s way too early to assume that Outman can’t replicate his 2024 performance or find ways to get better in his sophomore campaign. So far this season, he’s hitting the ball a bit harder and his contact rate has improved from infinitesimally small to merely microscopic. Outman isn’t going to run a .242 BABIP all year, and it’s too early to panic about him. However, he needs a platoon partner, and right now, he really doesn’t have one.

Chris Taylor isn’t going to keep running a hilariously low .069 BABIP or a not at all funny -25 wRC+. Even over a short sample size, those are astoundingly unlucky numbers. He’s been extremely aggressive on pitches in the strike zone. That should be a good thing, but he’s made contact with them just 67.7% of the time, leading to a 42.9% strikeout rate. Because he’s walking and striking out like Joey Gallo, Taylor has put only 18 balls in play. That’s a tiny sample size, so it’s too early to do anything more than note that his contact quality has been dreadful. Taylor is coming off a 104 wRC+ in 2023, and he’s only been below 100 once in the last eight seasons.

Enrique Hernández hit his first homer of the season Tuesday night. Maybe the Dodgers can help him find his swing; after all, he hit much better following the trade that sent him from Boston to Los Angeles in 2023. But please understand how big a reclamation project that would be. From 2022 to 2024, Hernández has run a 72 wRC+, making him the sixth-worst hitter in all of baseball (minimum 700 PAs). The players below him could all be more or less described as defensive specialists; they’ve all put up positive WAR totals thanks to good defensive marks (with the exception of Martín Maldonado, whose defensive value is invisible to defensive metrics and quite possibly visible only to MLB managers). But Hernández has been worth -8.9 runs in the field, and -0.9 WAR overall, making the seventh-worst position player overall. That’s not just a replacement-level killer. His ugly defensive numbers at shortstop in 2023 were eye-opening, and if he doesn’t have the glove for center or the bat for left, that’s a big problem.

Lastly, there’s Pages (pronounced PA-hez), who was called up Tuesday. The 23-year-old Cuban missed most of the 2023 season due to surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder, but he’s already hit five homers at Triple-A this season. We have him ranked seventh in the Dodgers system. MLB Pipeline has him ranked higher: third in the system and 96th overall. After discussing Outman and Teoscar Hernández, Pages’ profile might sound familiar. His swing is designed to generate lift, allowing him to do plenty of damage even though he doesn’t boast tons of raw power. Like Outman and Hernández, that also means he’s going to strike out quite a bit. He started in center on Wednesday and has played there some in the minors, but he’s destined for a corner spot long-term, with a big arm that makes right field most likely.

Pages brings one more thing that the Los Angeles outfield sorely needs: youth. Until the arrival of Pages, Outman was the baby, but he’ll turn 27 in a week. Prorated by plate appearances, Dodgers outfielders are 30.5 years old, making them the third-oldest outfield in baseball. The oldest players are also the ones with the biggest question marks. Can Heyward stay healthy, and if he does, can he repeat his 2023 breakout? Are Taylor and Enrique Hernández still useful pieces at this stage of their careers? The overall strength of their roster means that the Dodgers can likely coast to the playoffs even if they keep getting absolutely nothing from their outfield, but that’s not usually how they operate.

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

You don’t need me to tell you that the A’s aren’t a good team, nor a particularly entertaining one. Esteury Ruiz, arguably the club’s most fun position player, is down in Triple-A looking to build on his spring training success and become a more consistent everyday player than he was last year, when he led the majors with 67 steals but also had a wRC+ of just 86 and was, as far as DRS is concerned, horrible in the outfield (-20). That leaves the A’s without many players worth tuning in for, with the roster littered with post-prime veterans, waiver claims, and former prospects who’ve lost their shine. But Mason Miller’s career is just getting going, and it’s delightful to watch.

The flame-throwing righty burst onto the major league scene last year with a 3.38 ERA in four starts, including seven no-hit innings against the Mariners in a May outing that was just the third of his career. But a minor UCL sprain kept him out until September, when he was used in two or three inning spurts, topping out at 54 pitches. That perhaps foreshadowed how he’d be used this season, with David Forst saying at the Winter Meetings that he’d likely work out of the bullpen in an effort to limit his innings (and injuries). In the very early going, the move has not only kept Miller healthy, but allowed him to turn on another gear. He’s now pitching with absolute dominance as a reliever instead of teasing it as a starter. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

In one of the quicker conclusions to a headline-grabbing baseball story I can think of, Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, is set to be charged with bank fraud; he’ll reportedly surrender to authorities on Friday, with an arraignment date still to be scheduled.

Mizuhara’s alleged transgressions, which were detailed in a federal affidavit filed Thursday, were even more extensive than had previously been reported. According to the complaint, federal investigators claim that Mizuhara stole more than $16 million from Ohtani (or “Victim A,” as he’s referred to in the document), rather than the initially reported $4.5 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Mookie Betts is on fire right now. Last night, he led off the bottom of the first with a single, stole second base, and scored. He came back up in the third and lashed a game tying homer, which was also the 1,500th hit of his career — because of course it was. He was the catalyst for the Dodgers’ 5-4 win over the Giants. Also, his average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage all went down on the night, because he’s just that hot to start the season.

Through eight games, Betts is hitting an outrageous .500/.605/1.167. None of those numbers make sense. He’s on base more often than not. He’s walking twice as often as he strikes out. His isolated power is .667, a number that barely sounds like a baseball statistic.

To be fair, we’ve only played eight games. These numbers won’t hold up over a full season, obviously. He’s on a heater at the moment, and pretty much everything will tail off. But this season-starting rampage is an all-timer. Here are the top five eight-game starts to a season in the Wild Card era:

Of note, Martinez’s start wasn’t the start of the season; he missed the start of that year with an injury and returned in a blaze of glory. But these are the best performances of the last 30 years, and Betts fits squarely into them. The best seasons of Bonds’ and Walker’s careers started this way. Griffey and Edmonds put up near-peak years after their hot starts. Shelton and Alomar are fun reminders that wow, baseball is wild.
Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

Fun with small samples: Bryce Harper entered Tuesday hitting .000/.154/.000 over his first 13 plate appearances of the season, with five strikeouts. After his second career three-homer game on Tuesday, he’s now at .200/.294/.800, good for a WRC+ increase of 198 points (from -34 to 164).

Harper put the Phillies on his back in a 9-4 win over the Reds, driving in six runs with the three homers — one a grand slam — that combined for 1,209 feet of distance and left the bat at 108, 103, and 108 mph. The grand slam, a left-on-left blast against Brent Suter, made the score at the time 8-1 and allowed the Phillies to cruise to a win using just two pitchers — an important reprieve for an overworked bullpen. Not a bad day on the job, and a much-needed good one for a Philadelphia team that entered the day 1-3 on the young season.

There’s just something so aesthetically appealing about watching Harper hit homers, especially into the raucous crowd at Citizens Bank Park. His long balls aren’t the hardest hit in baseball, nor do they travel the farthest. But seeing his ferocious swing unload and send a ball deep into the Philadelphia night is an unmatched view across the sport. It’s the antithesis of my favorite right-handed home runs to watch: the liners that Giancarlo Stanton smokes. Stanton suddenly turns his hips, flicks his wrists, and launches absolute rockets with what looks like no effort whatsoever. Harper puts his entire body into every swing, hurling his bat into the path of the incoming projectile, torquing what feels like the weight of multiple people to send a ball into flight.

Harper’s future Hall of Fame career has not been without its trials and tribulations. He’s always been a good or great hitter, but there have certainly been seasons where he was more the former than the latter. That’s an awfully high standard to hold him to, but when you’re a first-overall phenom, those are the breaks. Last year, two seasons removed from winning his second MVP award, it took him a few months to regain his power stroke after coming back from Tommy John surgery in record time, but once he did, we were privileged to watch him clobber 16 of his 21 dingers in August and September. And thankfully, this year we didn’t have to wait anywhere near as long for his thunderous bat to come alive.

…

Seeing a team like the Pirates come out of the gates hot is always refreshing, though there’s obviously the context of playing the Marlins and Nationals, not exactly powerhouses. I’m not really convinced that they’re even a .500 team; most teams will have a five-game winning streak over the course of the season, and starting the season with one is no more indicative of a team’s talent level than ending the season with one to avoid 100 losses.

But while I’ll need a lot more time to gather thoughts for the team as a whole, I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far from catcher Henry Davis. The former first overall pick struggled mightily in his debut last year, with a 76 wRC+ and -1.0 WAR in 62 games, almost exclusively playing right field instead of behind the dish. He was worth -9 defensive runs saved, and to my eye, the look matched the metrics: He has a very strong arm, but his reads were rough and he often had to be bailed out by the second baseman when a not-particularly-shallow fly ball was hit his way.

Back at his natural position, Davis looks more comfortable, grading out (in the very early going) as a scratch defender by DRS and very slightly above average as a framer. I also like how well he’s controlled the strike zone through his first 21 plate appearances, with as many strikeouts as walks; both rates are vastly improved from last season. Of course, all of that comes with a small-sample caveat, but you can’t fake exit velocity as a hitter, so it’s worth mentioning that he’s already hit a ball harder (111.5 mph) this year than he did all of last year (109.9 mph).

Tuesday night’s acquisition of Joey Bart should do nothing to unseat Davis’ position as the starting catcher, though perhaps it’s a little more pedigree breathing down his neck than Jason Delay and the currently injured Yasmani Grandal. It is an interesting “ships passing in the night” moment though for two catchers who were taken within the first two picks of their respective drafts.

…

It’s too simple to say that Taylor Trammell is in for a breakout just because the Dodgers claimed him off waivers and should have playing time to offer him with Jason Heyward’s back troubles, but at the same time, there’s probably not a better fit for him. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc revitalized J.D. Martinez’s career a decade ago and also helped Chris Taylor break out, and it’s not implausible to think Trammell could be his next turnaround.

Trammell has a wRC+ of just 83 in his 351 career big league plate appearances, and at 26 years old and out of options, he’s at something of a crossroads. But he was our 61st-ranked prospect at the end of 2020, so it’s not as if the Dodgers have nothing to work with here. They’re hoping to do what the Reds, Padres, and Mariners all couldn’t: Turn Trammell into a quality major leaguer before moving on.

Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto walk into the Dodgers clubhouse in 2032, where… they’re greeted by Will Smith. There’s no punchline to this setup because it’s not joke, as the All-Star receiver has joined those other three Dodgers in inking a deal that’s at least a decade long. On Wednesday, the day before his 29th birthday, Smith agreed to a 10-year, $140 million extension.

Smith has already helped the Dodgers win a World Series and established himself as one of the game’s preeminent catchers. He’s second in WAR among catchers since 2019, the year he debuted, with his 15.8 WAR trailing only the 19.8 WAR of J.T. Realmuto, who took nearly 500 more plate appearances over that same stretch. He’s tops among all catchers for the 2021–23 stretch with 12.9 WAR, a span over which he and Realmuto (who had 12.6 WAR) had nearly identical PA totals. Though he still had one more year after this one before becoming eligible for free agency, he and the Dodgers had wanted to hammer out a long-term deal for a while, so much so that according to MLB.com’s Juan Toribo, the two sides had engaged in extension discussions “each of the last few seasons.”

Smith is coming off an admittedly uneven season. Though his 119 wRC+ was the lowest mark of his five-year career, he posted his second-highest WAR (4.4). He hit .261/.359/.438 with 19 homers in 554 plate appearances, but tailed off after a hot start:

Smith made his first All-Star team (!) on the strength of that first half, but even then, all wasn’t quite well. On April 12, he suffered a concussion when a foul ball hit his mask and missed two weeks of action. Three days after returning, on April 30, he was hit by a Jake Woodford sinker. He suffered a broken rib and an oblique strain but played through them, and doing so created some bad habits with regards to his mechanics. From a September 22 piece by Jack Harris in the Los Angeles Times:

Instead of his typically smooth, compact inside-out swing, Smith said his bat path has been too “out to in” lately, leading to more whiffs and mis-hits on pitches he used to crush.

He said his front side is opening up too much, causing him to cut across the ball instead of driving it with his easy pop.

… Added [manager Dave] Roberts: “There was probably a little bit of guarding [the injury] initially after. And then when you’re talking about the rib, the oblique, that sort of dovetails into some changed mechanics.”

Particularly with the Dodgers’ awareness of his slump, the team probably should have dialed Smith’s workload back a bit more than it did; he matched his 2022 total of 106 starts behind the plate but DHed only 14 times, compared to 25 the year before. He had enough success in ironing out his mechanics that he went 5-for-12 with a double and a triple in the Dodgers’ three-and-out Division Series loss to the Diamondbacks, and he’s off to a 6-for-14 start this year, so there’s no reason to think he’s permanently broken.

As for the contract, it’s the longest ever for a catcher, surpassing the eight-year extensions of Joe Mauer, Buster Posey, and Keibert Ruiz, who came up in the Dodgers’ system, generally a level behind Smith, before being traded to the Nationals in the Max Scherzer blockbuster in 2021. Smith’s deal isn’t nearly as lucrative as either the Mauer or Posey ones for $184 million and $167 million — and that’s without adjusting for inflation, as both of those were signed more than a decade ago. In terms of unadjusted average annual value, Smith’s $14 million a year ranks just 12th among catchers historically and fourth currently, according to Cot’s Contracts. On an annual basis, that $14 million average comes to only about 60% of the $23.1 million that Realmuto, the game’s highest-paid catcher, is making.

That AAV requires adjustment, however, because as with the Ohtani and Betts deals — and those of Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández, so long as we’re on the subject of the Dodgers — a significant amount of the money is deferred. In his case, it’s $50 million, with the team paying out $5 million a year from 2034–43. That reduces the AAV of Smith’s deal to $12.24 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes, about 53% of what Realmuto (who himself deferred half of his $20 million 2021 salary) is making.

Structure-wise, according to MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand, Smith will receive a $30 million signing bonus — half payable on November 15, the other half on January 15 — and be paid $13.55 million this year (replacing the one-year, $8.55 million contract he signed in January), then $13 million a year for 2025–27, $9.5 million for ’28-32, and $9.95 million for ’33. That’s a cool breeze running through Guggenheim Baseball Management’s bank account; in 2028, Betts will be taking home more than three times as much ($30 million), and Yamamoto nearly that ($26 million). While he doesn’t have explicit no-trade protection, he’ll reach 10-and-5 status in mid-2028, and his contract has one other provision that protects him: If he’s traded, the deferred money becomes payable in season, meaning that the acquiring team will take a larger CBT hit unless the two sides agree to a similar arrangement.

Even given the length of the deal, ZiPS is surprisingly optimistic about Smith. Via Dan Szymborski:

That’s 23.9 WAR over the life of the contract, with 17.1 WAR in the first half of the deal, a very strong return. In fact, the ZiPS suggested contract for this projection is $164 million over 10 years, but once the deferred money is accounted for, the Dodgers are paying him the equivalent of about 75% of that in present value. This is a very good deal for them, and if it seems like Smith is getting the short end here, it’s just that the two sides have figured out a mutually advantageous way of structuring the payments. To these eyes, the way it makes the most sense is to think of that signing bonus and the higher salaries of the first four years as one deal that without deferrals averages out to $20.6 million a year over the next four years (which would be the second-highest AAV for a catcher, surpassing Salvador Perez’s $20.5 million), and then about $9.6 million per year for the last six, a little less than the $10.15 million James McCann is making as a well-compensated backup.

Particularly in the wake of the Ohtani contract, I’ve seen complaints that the Dodgers’ penchant for using deferred money is somehow a subversion of the Competitive Balance Tax system — as if that were sacrosanct — and therefore bad for baseball. I don’t find this notion particularly convincing. The league and the owners knew exactly what they were doing when they designed this system; as former MLBPA executive subcommittee member Collin McHugh told The Athletic recently, “They’re better at finding loopholes in the system because that is their job, to maximize profit” for the 30 owners. Does anyone out there actually think that even the most miserly of the multimillionaires and billionaires who own teams got filthy rich without understanding the time value of money and the advantages, tax-related and otherwise, of spreading out large payments? The concept permeates our society; not all of us are fortunate enough to have socked away money for retirement, but at some point, most of us have been encouraged to participate in a pension plan, 401k, or IRA that provides tax advantages and spreads out our income to compensate for lesser earnings down the road.

As for the players and owners, in December the Wall Street Journal’s Linsdey Adler and Richard Rubin reported that the owners have proposed limits on the amount of salary that can be deferred, with one 2021 proposal including a full ban, but the MLB Players Association rejected the idea. Understandably, they have no incentive to give up that right without receiving major concessions in return. Maybe they’d agree to forgo deferrals if the owners were to allow players to reach eligibility for arbitration and/or free agency more quickly, but we all know that’s not happening anytime soon.

Anyway, it’s not like the Dodgers, who now have $915.5 million worth of deferrals on their books for the salaries of Betts, Freeman, Hernández, Ohtani, and Smith, are doing this while avoiding paying the CBT. They’re well past the fourth-tier threshold of $297 million, and figure to be paying taxes annually for the foreseeable future, with increasingly steeper penalties and the risk of an inflexible roster; it’s hardly inconceivable that some of these contracts could go south and cause the Dodgers headaches down the road. As for Smith, he’s now got a handsome deal that rewards him for his place as part of the team’s foundation, with protection from the cumulative impact of so many innings behind the plate. Good for him, and good for the Dodgers.

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley remind people to vote in their preseason predictions game, discuss the completion of the season preview series, and then (10:15) analyze Shohei Ohtani’s remarks from Monday and preview the rest of the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers season with The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya, followed (1:15:31) by a 2024 Colorado Rockies preview with The Denver Gazette’s Luke Zahlmann, plus a postscript on the Diamondbacks signing Jordan Montgomery (1:55:50) and a recap of preview guests’ goals for each team this year (2:01:25).

Audio intro: El Warren, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial 1: Tom Rhoads, “What Did Shohei Ohtani Know?”
Audio interstitial 2: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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When free agent Matt Chapman signed with the Giants this past weekend, most of my analysis focused upon the ups and downs of his 2023 season and the nature of his contract, which looks comparatively team friendly. One thing I underplayed in the analysis was the extent to which San Francisco’s winter stands out relative to the competition. Even before the addition of Chapman, the Giants had spent more money on free agents than any other team besides the Dodgers, and likewise project to receive more WAR from those additions than any team besides their longtime rivals.

Based on the data in our Free Agent Tracker, the Giants have now committed $261.25 million in guaranteed salaries: $113 million to center fielder Jung Hoo Lee, $44 million to righty Jordan Hicks, $42 million to DH/outfielder Jorge Soler, and $8.25 million to catcher Tom Murphy; this accounting does not include the major league salaries that shortstop Nick Ahmed or lefty reliever Amir Garrett will get if they make the big league roster; last month, they each signed minor league deals as non-roster invitees. San Francisco’s additions may not be as eye-catching as signing either Carlos Correa or Aaron Judge would have been last offseason, and the team still projects for a middle-of-the-pack 82 wins after going 79-83 last year, but the Giants may not be done spending some of the money that was burning a hole in their pockets. They remain interested in Blake Snell, especially in the wake of injuries within their rotation.

Of course, the Dodgers blow the field away when it comes to spending, even if we stick to the adjusted salaries once deferred money is factored in, with a total of $853.2 million: $437.83 million to Shohei Ohtani (down from a sticker price of $700 million), $325 million to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, $20.434 million to outfielder Teoscar Hernández (down from $25 million), $10 million to Clayton Kershaw (with incentives that can increase the value significantly for both 2024 and ’25), $9 million apiece to Ryan Brasier and Jason Heyward, $8 million to Joe Kelly, $7 million to James Paxton, and $4 million to Enrique Hernández.

Here’s a look at the 30 teams’ free agent spending. Note that, as above, these figures factor in the applicable deferrals but not incentives, escalator clauses, or split-contract salaries from minor league deals:

As you can see, five teams committed less than $10 million each this winter, and of the bottom seven teams, four (the Orioles, Rays, Twins, and Marlins) made the playoffs last year. Free agency isn’t the only route to improve a team, but particularly with regards to the Orioles, one can empathize with fans who are disappointed that last year’s success hasn’t translated into a shopping spree to improve their odds of getting back to the postseason.

The 30 teams have committed a total of $2.74 billion to free agents so far, and even though that figure will increase once Snell and Jordan Montgomery sign, overall spending will still be lower this offseason than in recent ones. Based on the data at RosterResource, teams spent $4 billion last offseason ($2.22 billion on the top 12 free agents alone) and $3.22 billion in the lockout-interrupted offseason of 2021–22. For this winter, spending works out to an average of $91.38 million per team, but that figure is skewed by the top teams to such an extent that the median is just $49.25 million; only nine teams exceeded the mean.

Beyond the dollars, I thought it would be worth revisiting some free agent accounting we’ve done in the past, regarding WAR added and lost in free agency. This isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds, as we’ll soon see.

This is the most basic accounting, lumping together players signed to major league deals and those who had to settle for minor league ones; the latter inflates the counts of some of these teams well into double digits. It’s worth noting that where players spent time with multiple teams in 2023, I’ve only counted their WAR with their last team on the outgoing side, but their full-season WAR on the incoming side. Consider the case of Jeimer Candelario, who produced 3.1 WAR for the Nationals and then 0.2 WAR for the Cubs. To these eyes, crediting the Reds as adding a 3.3-WAR player properly conveys the impact of a substantial addition. The question is whether to count the Cubs as losing 3.3 WAR (via a player they acquired without intending to retain) or 0.2 WAR (reflecting the transient nature of a late-season addition). I went with the latter option.

The total number of outgoing free agents shown above (277) doesn’t include 11 additional players from the KBO and NPB, eight of whom have signed (all but Trevor Bauer, Adam Plutko, and Yasiel Puig), meaning that from among that total, 73 — about 25% — are unsigned. Most of the unsigned are fairly low impact players, in that just 13 produced at least 1.0 WAR last year, with Montgomery (4.3), Snell (4.1), Brandon Belt (2.3), Mike Clevinger (2.2) and J.D. Martinez (2.2) the only ones above 2.0. Meanwhile, 35 of them produced zero or negative WAR, though to be fair, that was often in limited opportunity.

While the eight foreign players who have signed are counted in the total number of signed free agents above, they didn’t produce any WAR within MLB. Thus, the fact that three teams outrank the Dodgers in terms of net free agent WAR comes with the caveat that the Los Angeles total doesn’t include Yamamoto.

I’ll come back to that issue, but first let’s note the teams at the extremes. Ahead of the Dodgers are three teams who had a bunch of players hit the open market, but who were at best minimally productive in 2023, and who all went out and made at least a few solid moves. Of the dozen Reds to test free agency, including the still-unsigned Joey Votto, only Harrison Bader produced even 1.0 WAR in 2023, and he nonetheless was 0.2 wins below replacement after being acquired from the Yankees. On the other side, in addition to Candelario, the team shored up its pitching by adding starters Nick Martinez and Frankie Montas, relievers Brent Suter and Emilio Pagán, and more — not big moves, but enough to put them at the top. The Cardinals shed five players, most notably Dakota Hudson, and overhauled their rotation by adding Sonny Gray, whose 5.3 WAR as a Twin tied Kevin Gausman for the AL lead, as well as Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn; they also added Keynan Middleton to the bullpen and staffed their bench with Brandon Crawford and Matt Carpenter. Of the eight Royals who became free agents, only Zack Greinke produced 1.0 WAR, but they beefed up their pitching, with starters Seth Lugo and Michael Wacha; their lineup, with Hunter Renfroe; and their bench, with Adam Frazier and Garrett Hampson to their bench. These moves won’t win them the division, but they’re at least proof of life.

The Dodgers’ figures on both sides of the ledger are inflated by their keeping Brasier, Enrique Hernández, Heyward, Kelly, and Kershaw, but they did shed the still-unsigned J.D. Martinez and Julio Urías, replacing them with the market’s two most expensive players. The Diamondbacks re-signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and didn’t lose anybody who produced at least 1.0 WAR for the team, while the only departing Giant to meet that threshold was Sean Manaea.

At the other end of the spectrum, it’s striking that the bottom five teams include three AL postseason participants plus one NL team that barely missed it. Whether they won it all or fell short, their offseasons have resulted in some downsizing of payrolls and perhaps expectations.

In the wake of last year’s $255 million flop, the uncertainty regarding their local broadcast deal, and the death of chairman Peter Seidler, the Padres gutted their pitching staff, with Snell, Lugo, Martinez, Wacha, and closer Josh Hader among those departing, along with catcher Gary Sánchez, whom they plucked off the scrapheap and who had his best season since 2019. Most of the money they’ve spent this offseason was on their bullpen, with Wandy Peralta, Japanese lefty Yuki Matsui and Korean righty Woo-Suk Go joining the fold. The Twins shed Gray, Kenta Maeda, and Tyler Mahle from their rotation, and both Donovan Solano and Michael A. Taylor remain unsigned but unlikely to return; meanwhile their most impactful addition is first baseman Carlos Santana. The Blue Jays let Chapman depart, along with Belt, Hicks and Whit Merrifield; they cobbled together a lower-cost third base solution, which includes the incoming Justin Turner and Isiah Kiner-Falefa, retained center fielderKevin Kiermaier, and took a flier on Cuban righty Yariel Rodriguez, who spent three seasons in NPB. The Rangers may still re-sign Montgomery, but for now he counts only on the outbound side, and they also shed relievers Aroldis Chapman, Chris Stratton, and Will Smith, plus catcher/DH Mitch Garver. Their rotation is full of question marks as they bank on Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Mahle having strong returns from surgery. Veteran righty David Robertson should bolster the bullpen, and Garver’s departure is mitigated by the eventual arrival of top prospect Wyatt Langford.

Since the impact of the foreign free agents isn’t reflected in the table above, I took one more look at the landscape using projected WAR on the incoming side. Instead of taking it straight from our Free Agent Tracker — that uses Steamer, which is available in time for the opening bell of the offseason, but not ZiPS, which takes longer to prepare — I took the more labor-intensive route by swapping in our Depth Charts projections, which takes an average the two systems:

Despite accounting for Yamamoto, the Dodgers actually fall in the rankings due to known injuries (Ohtani won’t pitch in 2024, while Kershaw could be out until August) and regression (Brasier and Heyward, particularly), while the Giants surpass them with the addition of Lee. Also notable on the upper end are the Mets, mainly due to anticipated rebounds from Manaea, Bader, and Luis Severino. On the other side, the Orioles stand out more than in the previous table, mainly because the only free agent they signed to a major league deal, Craig Kimbrel, is projected to regress. Given that both Kyle Bradish and John Means have been sidelined with elbow injuries to start the season, it seems possible the O’s could add a low-cost starter who might boost their standing here a bit.

Thanks to our tools at FanGraphs, free agency is easy to track, even if I’ve made it more labor-intensive for this exercise. It’s hardly the only route by which teams improve, however. For example, the Orioles traded for Corbin Burnes, who may outproduce any of the starters who were signed. But in the big picture, the patterns I’ve illustrated offer us plenty of hints about what to expect from the upcoming season.