It’s been a fast offseason for mid-tier pitchers, and that trajectory continued on Thursday with Michael Pineda signing a two-year contract to return to Minnesota. The actual value of the deal will come out to $17.6 million after pro-rating down the 2020 salary due to his suspension:

The first year of Michael Pineda's deal — which is pending a physical — is a prorated $10m. With a 39-game suspension to serve, that means #MNTwins will pay roughly $7.6m in the 1st year of the deal. In reality, it's more like a 2-year, $17.6-million deal for Pineda.

— DanHayesMLB (@DanHayesMLB) December 6, 2019

The weirdness of signing a suspended player and pro-rating salary aside, this looks like a contender for the most team-friendly contract so far this offseason. Cole Hamels, who Kiley listed exactly one slot ahead of Pineda, is going to make more in 2020 than Pineda will over the next two years, and he was arguably worse than Pineda in 2019.

It’s almost beside the point to explain why this signing makes sense for the Twins, but let’s go through the motions quickly. The team’s winning recipe in 2019 was a combination of home runs at the plate and steady starters on the mound. José Berríos and Jake Odorizzi both had standout years, but the rotation was solid 1 through 5: Read the rest of this entry »

Howie Kendrick can hit. Since joining the Nationals in the middle of the 2017 season, Kendrick has put up a .322/.367/.529 batting line with a 130 wRC+ that trails only Anthony Rendon, Juan Soto and Bryce Harper among Nationals with at least 500 plate appearances during that time. Kendrick put on a good show in the postseason as well, winning the NLCS MVP and then hitting a two-run homer in Game 7 of the World Series that gave the Nationals a lead they would not surrender. There appears to be a mutual interest in hoping for a repeat performance, as Kendrick and the Nationals have agreed to a one-year deal for a guaranteed $6.25 million with a mutual option, with Jesse Dougherty reporting the deal first and Bob Nightengale offering the terms.

Heading into the offseason, Kendrick was rated the 26th-best free agent on our Top 50 Free Agent List. Kiley McDaniel thought he’d get a two-year deal for roughly the same amount Kendrick is signing for, while the median crowd estimate nailed the contract with the average a little bit higher. Here’s some of what I wrote in the capsule for Kendrick at the time: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been clear for some time now that the Astros weren’t going to enter the 2020 season with George Springer, Michael Brantley, Josh Reddick, Jake Marisnick, Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez, and Myles Straw all on the roster. There are, after all, only so many spots to fill in the outfield. A trade, then, particularly for Reddick (who’s owed $13 million next year, the last of his contract) or Marisnick (also in the last year of his contract, though for only $3 million) seemed likely. This is that trade, or at least one of them, and it’s with the Mets.

In giving up two minor leaguers (more on them later, with thoughts from Eric) for a year of Marisnick, New York is attempting to shore up what was a black hole of a position for them in 2019. The -0.4 WAR they got from their center fielders was the fourth-lowest mark in the game last year (ahead of only the Mariners, Orioles, and Marlins, who averaged 102 losses), due in large part to Keon Broxton’s horrendous performance in the early part of the season when he managed to accrue -0.5 WAR in just 53 plate appearances. Broxton, who really had no luck at all in 2019, spent the rest of his forgettable season with, funnily enough, the Orioles and Mariners. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of the parade of non-tenders, the Phillies parted ways with two infielders on Monday: second baseman César Hernández and third baseman Maikel Franco. Both Hernández and Franco played important roles in the Phillies’ transitional phase, but in their first attempt at contention this past season, neither player contributed as the team would have hoped. Alas, they are now free agents.

The Phillies’ 2019 infield issues stretched beyond Hernández and Franco, however. Depth was often a problem. They did sign Sean Rodríguez and Phil Gosselin to minor league deals last offseason, and Rodríguez ultimately accumulated 139 plate appearances over 76 games while Gosselin saw 68 plate appearances across 44 contests. They also traded for Brad Miller in June; he made 130 trips to the plate donning red and white pinstripes. All told, these three players received roughly a half-season’s worth of playing time. They were worth 1.4 WAR — a mark that isn’t actually that bad. Still, considering Hernández and Franco themselves were worth just 1.2 WAR, the issues in the Phillies’ infield ran deep.

Philadelphia will almost definitely make a move this offseason to retool their infield for 2020, whether that be for Anthony Rendon, Josh Donaldson, or even someone like Howie Kendrick. One transaction that they’ve already made to bolster their depth was completed last week when the team agreed to a minor-league deal with veteran infielder Josh Harrison, an agreement that includes an invite to major league spring training. Read the rest of this entry »

Before Wednesday, the Atlanta Braves’ winter had been centered around fortifying their bullpen. That strategy made sense — Atlanta’s reliever WAR was just inside the bottom third of baseball last year, so keeping the most important pieces of that bullpen around and adding extra talent around them had to be a priority. The Braves wasted little time in signing Will Smith, arguably the best reliever on the market, to a three-year, $40-million deal, and retained midseason acquisition Chris Martin and 37-year-old Darren O’Day on short-term deals as well. Their focus on keeping the band together applied to other areas of the roster too, as they quickly re-signed catcher Tyler Flowers and outfielder Nick Markakis before bringing in another catcher in free agency by adding Travis d’Arnaud via a two-year, $16-million deal.

An area that had gone untouched was the starting rotation, but as of Wednesday afternoon, that is no longer the case. The Braves signed 35-year-old left-hander Cole Hamels to a one-year, $18-million contract, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Left-hander Cole Hamels and the Atlanta Braves are in agreement on a one-year, $18 million deal, sources tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 4, 2019

Right away, the addition of Hamels brings to mind the upgrade the Braves made to their rotation via free agency last offseason — er, sorry, last June. That’s when Atlanta finally became the team to sign Dallas Keuchel after his extended free agency period, bringing him in on a one-year deal worth $13 million. Keuchel, like Hamels, was a low-velocity veteran southpaw, and after a somewhat rocky first couple of starts, settled in quite nicely down the stretch, earning the chance to start Games 1 and 4 of the NLDS. Read the rest of this entry »

Monday evening during a squall of non-tender news, the San Diego Padres continued to sculpt their 40-man roster during what is likely to be a very active offseason, this time swapping power-hitting “catching” prospect Austin Allen and a player to be named for famous non-tender candidate Jurickson Profar in a deal with Oakland.

From a roster construction standpoint, the deal makes an awful lot of sense for both teams. The Padres had four catchers on their 40-man and were suddenly shallow in the middle infield after they traded Luis Urias to Milwaukee last week. Profar wasn’t as productive as he had been the season before, and Oakland has a tight budget imposed by ownership as well as two young and enigmatic-but-talented infielders coming up in Jorge Mateo and Franklin Barreto. The club also needed catching reinforcement behind oft-injured prodigy Sean Murphy.

Profar, who agreed to a one-year, $5.7-million deal with San Diego after the trade, is now the favorite to be the Padres’ everyday second baseman next year. While his surface-level 2019 production (.218/.301/.410) was down from the previous year (.254/.335/.458), his peripherals (9% walk rate, 14% strikeout rate) were identical, he golfed out 20 homers again (mostly left-handed, though Profar is a better hitter from the right side), and he offers some amount of defensive versatility (2B/LF last year, all over the place the year before), though he’s not a great glove anywhere. As Craig Edwards noted on Twitter, Profar had a horrendous April before he righted the ship and was a slightly above-average offensive performer for the rest of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

The Reds signaled their intentions to compete in 2019 by trading for Tanner Roark, Sonny Gray, and Yasiel Puig, among others. They did compete with a BaseRuns record above .500 that with neutral luck would have put them in contention until the end of the season. They were 4 1/2 games off the division lead at the All-Star break, but a crowded division and a lack of talent relative to their competitors left them with 75 wins at the end of the year.

Cincinnati also announced their intentions to compete in 2020 by acquiring Trevor Bauer at the trade deadline. Bauer is now a part of what should be one of the better rotations in baseball along with Luis Castillo, Gray, Anthony DeSclafani, and Tyler Mahle. Even with a good rotation, the present roster wasn’t going to be enough in 2020, so the Reds struck a big deal with Mike Moustakas for four years and $64 million, as first reported by Jon Heyman and Jeff Passan.

For Moustakas, this deal was a long time coming. Two seasons ago, Dave Cameron and the crowd here at FanGraphs expected Moustakas would get five years and somewhere between $85-95 million. At the time, the Royals third baseman was coming off a 38-homer, 113-wRC+ season, but there were some questions about his defense due to knee problems in addition to the stigma of a qualifying offer. Moustakas ended up settling for one year and a $6.5 million guarantee in returning to Kansas City. He improved his defense in his time with the Royals and Brewers in 2018, but he hit 10 fewer home runs and was just a bit above average on offense. Behind Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson in the third base pecking order, Moustakas again found his market lacking and signed with the Brewers for $10 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Austin Hedges had a disastrous season at the plate. He batted .176/.252/.311, good for a 47 wRC+ that placed him last among batters with at least 300 plate appearances. But Hedges had a remarkable season behind the plate. He was worth 27.3 defensive runs above average, second only to J.T. Realmuto and first on a rate basis among all players in baseball.

WAR gives us a handy way to convert this, and WAR was pretty happy with Hedges in 2019. He was worth 1.4 WAR in 347 plate appearances, which works out to 2.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances. An average player would be worth just under 2 WAR per 600, which means Hedges was above-average despite his sub-Mendoza batting stats.

But when someone’s batting line is as poor as Hedges’, there’s an impulse to say that WAR doesn’t capture everything. Hedges isn’t a bad hitter; he’s an exceptionally bad hitter. He had a 47 wRC+! Six pitchers had better batting lines last year. My former colleague Sheryl Ring pointed this out recently, and opined that NL teams simply couldn’t afford to carry a bat that poor in addition to the pitcher’s spot. This made me think several things at once. My first thought was “Of course not! WAR works.” My second thought was “Actually yeah, two pitcher-level batters in a row would be awful. I’m not sure that a linear stat could handle that.” My third thought was: time to do some analysis.

At a high level, it’s clear that wRC+ isn’t simply additive. Consider a team with four batters who always walk or hit a single, and five batters who always strike out. This is an extreme example, of course, but that team would have a roughly average wRC+. It would also be an incredibly potent offense if you stacked your four productive hitters together; it would average something like 7.5 runs a game depending on the timing of singles and walks.

Of course, if you sequenced your hitters poorly, it could also average zero runs per game. When we’re looking at extreme examples (and Hedges is extreme, though not nearly this extreme), the order really does matter. How should one deal with this? It’s a bit of a cliche, but: very carefully. Read the rest of this entry »

Two winters ago, the Rangers weren’t looking to contend, but they were looking for undervalued pitching. They gave reliever money to starter-turned-very-good-reliever Mike Minor in early December to join the rotation with a three-year, $28 million deal that has proved to be a massive bargain, as Minor’s 6.7 WAR over the last two seasons ranks 29th among all pitchers. Last December, the still-rebuilding Rangers signed Lance Lynn, whose very good FIP in 2018 was marred by an ugly 4.77 ERA across stints with the Twins and Yankees, to a three-year deal worth $30 million. Lynn delivered with a seven-win season and a fifth-place finish in the AL Cy Young award voting. Now the Rangers have reached a three-year deal with Kyle Gibson worth $30 million, according to Jeff Passan, with Jon Morosi first reporting the team and player.

How Gibson fits in with Lynn and Minor goes beyond just the identical contracts. Over the last two years, Gibson put together a pair of solid 2.6-WAR seasons with the Twins, but a low BABIP in 2018 meant a 3.62 ERA, while a higher one last season resulted in a 4.84 ERA that made him look worse than he deserved. Gibson’s strikeout rate climbed to 23% with his walk rate dropping to 8%, all while maintaining his high groundball rate. His home run rate went up in a fashion consistent with the rest of the league. With his sinker, assuming a good infield defense (yet to be determined, given that the Rangers likely aren’t done making moves), he should put up very good numbers even in a hitter’s park (we don’t yet know how Texas’ new ballpark will play).

Gibson’s peripheral numbers aren’t the only aspect of his game that could make him an underrated signing. The prescient Kiley McDaniel had this to say in FanGraphs’ Top 50 Free Agents post:

It’ll surely hurt the Division Champion Twins to lose 9.6 WAR and 60% of their rotation with Gibson, Odorizzi, and Pineda hitting free agency. Gibson was the player with the most helium amongst team-side analyst-types consulted for the first iteration of this list. Some have him over Keuchel, in part because his 92-95 mph heater gives more margin for error in games, in projecting his future, and in projecting a role in a playoff rotation. His ERA indicators suggest he’s a sub-4 ERA type and he’s made 25-plus starts six years in a row. Gibson seems like a solid candidate for a sneaky big and/or early deal from a club confident he offers the best value among the 10 or so starters with a solid chance at a multi-year contract.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, we published a piece detailing how MLB’s proposal to reimagine the minor leagues would alter in-person access to professional baseball across the country. We were interested in how many people would lose their ability to watch affiliated baseball in person, or see that access shift from the minor leagues to more expensive major league parks. To arrive at those numbers:

[W]e took the geographical center of each ZCTA (a close relative of ZIP Codes used by the Census Bureau). We calculated the distance as the crow flies from each ZCTA to each ballpark in America, both in 2019 and in MLB’s proposed new landscape. From there, we took the minimum of all of those distances for each ZCTA. That gave us the shortest distance to baseball for each geographical center. We then matched the distance with the population of each area.

In the piece, we acknowledged the limitations of linear distance. It doesn’t account for natural barriers, like say, mountains or lakes, or things like the placement of roads. And, as several folks pointed out on twitter and in the comments, not all road conditions are created equally. How long it takes to drive 50 miles in the Washington D.C. metro area varies widely from how long that same distance takes in rural Montana. What’s more, residents of those respective areas likely view a 50 mile drive differently; if you have to travel a ways to go grocery shopping, your understanding of how burdensome a 100 mile drive to your “local” minor league ballpark is probably different than it is for someone who lives in a place with a meaningful rush hour and amenities that are closer at hand. So while linear distance is a good approximation of how the access landscape would change in the new minor leagues, we wanted to take a stab at being a bit more precise. Read the rest of this entry »