“Extend Devers!” they shouted from the streets and the rooftops and the churches and the public houses and the decks of fishing boats and the parking lot of the local Dunkin’ Donuts. “Extend Devers!” they cried for years, as Mookie Betts and Christian Vázquez were traded and Xander Bogaerts, Eduardo Rodriguez, Nathan Eovaldi, and J.D. Martinez left in free agency.

Surely this last stalwart of Boston baseball would not be allowed, encouraged even, to complete his career elsewhere. Rafael Devers is coming off the best offensive season of his career. He’s one of the best hitters in baseball; he’d be the best homegrown player the Red Sox had produced in a generation, had the Red Sox not also produced Betts.

And he’s staying put. News broke Wednesday night that the Red Sox and Devers have agreed to an 11-year, $331 million contract extension that will keep the color of his socks unchanged through the 2033 season. This deal supersedes the one-year, $17.5 million arbitration-avoiding settlement announced the day before. Your pleas have been heard, your prayers answered, your supplications fulfilled. Devers has been extended. Hallelujah. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody can accuse the Mariners of skimping on frontline pitching in an effort to end their epic playoff drought. After signing Robbie Ray to a five-year, $115 million deal last winter, they traded a quartet of prospects for Luis Castillo on July 30. Already this was no mere rental, as the 29-year-old righty still has another season under control before free agency. Or rather had another season under control, because on Saturday, the Mariners announced they had agreed to terms with Castillo on a five-year, $108 million extension.

With the ink on the new deal barely dry, Castillo threw five solid innings against the Royals on Sunday, but faltered in the sixth and was charged with the first three runs of what turned out to be a gruesome 11-run rally that three other relievers tried in vain to contain. The Mariners, who led 11-2 before the onslaught, lost 13-12, dropping them to 3-7 on a 10-game road trip from hell, during which they lost series to the Angels, A’s, and Royals, and sent both Eugenio Suárez and Julio Rodríguez — their two most valuable players by WAR — to the injured list, the former with a fractured right middle finger, the latter with a lower back strain. Sunday’s loss dropped the Mariners to 83-69 overall, but fortunately for them, both the Rays (84-69) and Orioles (79-73) lost on Sunday as well, leaving Seattle four games ahead of Baltimore for the final American League Wild Card slot, and half a game behind Tampa Bay for the second slot.

The outing was the third rough one out of the last four for Castillo, who gave up six runs (three earned) to the White Sox on September 7, and four runs in 4.2 innings to the A’s on September 20. Even so, he’s pitched to a 3.34 ERA and 3.12 FIP in 59.1 innings over 10 starts since the trade, and a 3.06 ERA and 3.17 FIP in 144.1 innings overall. He didn’t make his season debut until May 9 due to a bout of shoulder soreness that sidelined him in the abbreviated spring, but among all pitchers with at least 140 innings, his 76 ERA- is 21st in the majors and his 78 FIP- is 12th; regardless of innings, his 3.4 WAR is in a virtual tie for 23rd among all starters. Read the rest of this entry »

It’ll still be a few months before we see whether Julio Rodríguez wins the American League Rookie of the Year award, but today we got a glimpse of baseball 15 years into the future. As reported by MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Seattle Mariners and Rodríguez have come to terms on a huge long-term contract extension, one that would run to the late 2030s.

Passan ran down the details of the deal, and it’s a complicated one.

THREAD: There’s a lot to digest on Julio Rodríguez’s extension with Seattle, per ESPN sources. The deal could be for 8, 13, 16 or 18 years. It guarantees Rodriguez $210 million. If it maxes out, it will be the largest ever: $470 million. The details are important. Here they are.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 26, 2022

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Just a few weeks after extending third baseman Austin Riley, Alex Anthopoulos and the Atlanta Braves are at it again. This time, the recipient of a long-term deal is one of the team’s two rookie standouts, Michael Harris II. The freshly inked contract runs for a minimum of eight years, with $15 million and $20 million club options in 2031 and ’32 that each carry a buyout of $5 million. All told, Harris stands to pocket at least $72 million; the deal will be worth $102 million if the Braves exercise both options.

That Harris would be signing an extension that takes him into the 2030s in August of 2022 while nearly doubling up the next-best National League rookie hitter by WAR would have been a surprising revelation to someone living in the pre-lockout days. After all, Harris had not yet played above High-A, and while he was excellent in the Sally League, he wasn’t dominating the way Julio Rodríguez was at a similar level of play. But like Rodríguez, it only took six weeks of Double-A ball before Harris was ready to star in the majors.

When Harris was called up in late May, the Braves were still scuffling below .500, 7 1/2 games behind the Mets in the NL East. Atlanta’s outfield beyond Ronald Acuña Jr. was sorely tested, as Eddie Rosario was out with eye surgery, Marcell Ozuna had an OPS hovering around .650, and it felt as if the Baha Men had a hit more recently than Travis Demeritte. Some teams would have taken the path of least resistance and called up journeyman fifth outfielder Delino DeShields or eternal prospect Drew Waters. Instead, the Braves went with the bolder move, calling up Harris. Unlike the other options, Harris was at least playing excellent baseball, hitting .305/.372/.506 in 43 games for Double-A Mississippi. Read the rest of this entry »

If you ever wondered how committed the Braves were to Austin Riley, they expressed their feelings clearly on Monday, agreeing with him on a 10-year, $212 million contract that will keep him in the lineup through at least the end of the 2032 season. After 2021’s breakout campaign, Riley has proceeded to break out once more, hitting .301/.360/.604 for 4.6 WAR in 101 games, that slugging percentage being enough to lead all National League hitters. The Braves also get an option season for 2033.

As a prospect, Riley was at risk, at times, of falling into the tweener gap, that dreaded place where a player doesn’t field well enough to handle third base in the majors but also doesn’t have the bat to be a good starter at first. His runner-runner breakouts have eliminated the chances of that scenario; he’s adequate enough defensively to stick at the hot corner for now, and his bat is more than capable enough to keep him a plus at first or designated hitter.

Like most of the rest of the team, Riley got off to a relatively slow start this season; at one point in late May, his line stood at an unimpressive .224/.309/.436. But from that May 22 nadir, he’s wreaked havoc on pitching staffs around the league, putting up a monster .350/.395/.713 line with 21 homers in 61 games:

Over the last 30 days, nobody’s been more of an offensive force than Riley, and he’s a primary reason that the Mets feel a lot less comfortable in the NL East than they did a few months ago. He’s put himself into the thick of the NL MVP race, and if you believe the ZiPS projections, his onslaught against the league’s hurlers isn’t stopping any time soon:

ZiPS projects that if Riley hit free agency this winter, he’d merit a 10-year, $258 million contract, though he wasn’t going to get quite that much as a consequence of not making it to the open market until after the 2025 season. The computer projects arbitration year salaries of $9.2 million, $15.5 million, and $21.3 million, giving an overall estimate of $202 million over 10 years. In other words, my projections consider this a very reasonable contract, one in which Riley is selling his free agent years to Atlanta at a fair price. If the defensive projections turn out correct, he may need to move off of third base toward the end of his time in Atlanta, but it’s way too soon to start fretting about the exact configuration of 2030’s lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors of a contract negotiations between starting pitcher Joe Musgrove and the San Diego Padres have been percolating for the last month, and those discussions bore fruit over the weekend: With a five-year, $100 million contract extension, the Padres have locked up their best and most dependable starter through the end of the 2027 season.

I discussed a possible Musgrove extension a couple of weeks ago, and not much has changed in the right-hander’s valuation since then, when ZiPS thought that a five year, $126 million contract would be fair for both sides. That makes landing Musgrove for $100 million a nice deal for the Friars, likely the result of some unknown combination of canniness, Musgrove’s comfort at the top of the rotation, and his stated desire to stay with his hometown team (Musgrove is from the San Diego area).

For Padres fans, it must be a relief to get this extension done — even when most of the factors suggest a deal can be reached, there’s no guarantee until there’s ink on the paper. Being from Baltimore, I think back on the acrimonious end to Mike Mussina‘s time in Charm City. Mussina had previously given the O’s a very good deal on a three-year, $21 million contract that bought out a year of free agency, but when he actually did hit the open market, the O’s basically underbid the Yankees, working on the assumption that a hometown discount would be permanently built into his contracts. That the second half of Moose’s Hall of Fame career came with the Yankees still makes me sad! ZiPS projects Musgrove as the best pitcher available in free agency — his projection edges out Carlos Rodón’s — and as with Mussina and the Yankees, all bets are off once the 29 other teams can bid on your franchise pitcher. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rockies conjured up their own trade deadline magic, extending their closer, Daniel Bard, to a two-year contract extension reportedly worth $19 million. Bard, who turned 37 last month, has done a solid job as Colorado’s closer for the second straight season, putting up a 1.91 ERA — though with a considerably less impressive 3.55 FIP — in 37 appearances for the last-place Rockies this season.

Colorado had previously dropped hints that there were not going to be many, if any, trades of veteran talent this week. As this extension highlights, this was not a negotiating position to entice other teams to make more lucrative offers for its most valuable players. At this point, I doubt anyone in baseball thought otherwise, as the Rockies have long been notorious for not treating the trade deadline as an opportunity either to improve the team in a pennant drive or to rebuild/retool to help achieve future goals. For one of the best examples, look no further than last season, when they decided not to trade Trevor Story (to Story’s confusion) or Jon Gray, instead preferring to let the former walk for a compensation pick and, since he received no qualifying offer, the latter move on with no compensation for the franchise.

Don’t get me wrong: for a lot of teams, getting Bard as either a short-term rental or on this exact contract would have been a very good move. If he were not the best reliever plausibly available this week, he was certainly in the top tier, and a wide variety of contending teams with middling-or-worse bullpens, such as the Cardinals, Twins, or Blue Jays, ought to have had an interest in swapping prospects with real futures for his services. Bard’s 1.91 ERA this year is no more “real” than his 5.21 ERA last year in the opposite direction, but he’s an above-average closer, and it’s nice to be able to sign one of those in free agency to a two- or three-year deal at a reasonable price.

Liking Bard for the rest of 2022 and/or the next two seasons is not the least bit odd; it just makes little sense for the Rockies to be the organization to act on that positive evaluation. Even more baffling is that, when it came to Gray, they never went above a three-year, $35–$40 million offer — one they didn’t even make until the very end of the 2021 season. Valuing a solid starting pitcher only a little more than a solid closer is just the latest example of this organization’s dysfunction. Why trade for a 22-year-old and have to wait 15 years for him to become a 37-year-old veteran when you can just keep the player you have? Read the rest of this entry »

I have something of an annual tradition here at FanGraphs. Once a year, give or take, I write about how Yordan Alvarez is underrated. I can’t help it; he continues to be one of the very few best hitters in baseball, and he continues to get less credit than he deserves. Now, though, he doesn’t need credit, because he has cash — $115 million worth, to be precise — as he and the Astros agreed to a contract extension that will keep him in Houston through 2028:

Slugger Yordan Álvarez and the Houston Astros are in agreement on a six-year, $115 million contract extension, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Contract kicks in next season. Biggest contract ever for a DH and $26M/year for 3 FA years. And Astros lock up a great hitter.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) June 3, 2022

Even though I just mentioned what an excellent hitter Alvarez is, it bears repeating. This year, he’s hitting a scorching .295/.391/.624, good for a 192 wRC+, second in baseball. He’s doing it without a ludicrous BABIP; in fact, his .280 mark looks likely to increase as the season goes on. That makes his offensive production all the more remarkable; it’s easy to post a hot batting line if you’re BABIP’ing .400, but Alvarez does it the old-fashioned way, with walks and extra-base hits.

How does Alvarez get to that massive production? By obliterating the baseball consistently. He’s barreled up a whopping 19.1% of his batted balls this year. That’s Stantonian power, or even a bit better; Stanton checks in at 17.2% since the start of the 2015 season, for example. Since Alvarez came up in 2019, he’s sixth in baseball in barrel rate (among hitters with at least one season qualifying for the batting title), and the guys in front of him are a who’s who of enormous power hitters:

This list does a good job of explaining the possible highs and lows of Alvarez’s production, but it leaves something out. One way to rack up barrels is to be powerful and almost exclusively hit fly balls. Sanó, Gallo, and Sánchez get to theirs that way. So, too, does Trout. He’s become increasingly fly ball-heavy in recent years in an attempt to tap into his power.
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Kyle Freeland and the Rockies were set for a tense arbitration session. He had asked for $7.8 million; they countered with $6.425 million. That was the fourth-largest gap between team and player across all of baseball. But good news for people who don’t like contentious negotiations: That’s all in the past, because both parties agreed to a five-year extension that supersedes the arbitration dispute and should keep Freeland in Denver for the foreseeable future.

The deal, which buys out three seasons of free agency, has all kinds of bells and whistles. At its core, it’s a five-year, $64.5 million contract, which will pay him $7 million, $10.5 million, $15 million, $16 million, and $16 million for the next five years. If Freeland pitches 170 innings in ‘26, he’ll trigger a player option for the 2027 season, which would pay him $17 million. But wait, there’s more! If Freeland finishes in the top five in Cy Young voting in either 2022 or ’23, he can opt out after ’24; if he’s showing Cy Young form, he’d presumably do so.

This deal is somehow the largest contract the Rockies have given to a pitcher since Darryl Kile and simultaneously not one of the top five deals signed by starting pitchers since the end of last season. As befits a deal that is simultaneously large and small, I’m of two minds about it. Read the rest of this entry »

There are so many good young shortstops in baseball these days that it’s easy to lose track. The oldest starter in the top 10 of our positional power rankings is Xander Bogaerts, and he hasn’t turned 30 yet. Eighteen of the top 20 shortstops are under 30. It can feel like every team has one of these guys. But that doesn’t mean they’re not valuable, and the Mariners clearly agree: they recently agreed to a contract extension with J.P. Crawford that will keep him in the Pacific Northwest through the 2026 season.

Crawford is, for lack of a better way to put it, an in-between Mariner. The team’s old guard – Félix Hernández and Kyle Seager, for example – is gone. The new guard – Jarred Kelenic, Julio Rodríguez, Logan Gilbert, et al. – are breaking in now. But Crawford debuted for Seattle in 2019, and saw his first major league action in 2017. He would have reached free agency after the 2024 season, awkwardly in the middle of what the Mariners hope will be their new core’s best years.

The solution seemed obvious, and the deal the two sides worked out fits the mold almost perfectly. The five-year, $51 million pact is straightforward; no options on either side, no escalators, and no buyouts. It will pay him $10 million in each of the first four seasons and $11 million in the last year. Read the rest of this entry »