The Rangers have had a busy offseason. They’ve guaranteed more than half a billion dollars in new free agent contracts — by far the largest outlay in baseball — and made a major trade for a new starting catcher. Yet despite adding Corey Seager and Marcus Semien to vastly improve the top end of their lineup, and Jon Gray to anchor their rotation, the Rangers lacked for depth. So to address some of the lingering holes on their roster, they signed a handful of additional players over the last week. They inked Brad Miller to a two-year, $10 million contract on Thursday, and Garrett Richards to a one-year, $4.5 million deal on Sunday with a $9 million club option for 2023 and a $1 million buyout. They also signed Greg Holland, Charlie Culberson, Matt Carpenter to minor league contracts over the last week. Those five players add some much needed depth to their roster.

Miller, Carpenter, and Culberson all seem like additions to address the loss of top prospect Josh Jung, who was expected to challenge for the starting third base role in camp. He tore the labrum in his left shoulder in late February and underwent surgery to repair the injury, sidelining him for most if not all of the season. After trading Isiah Kiner-Falefa, the in-house options to replace Jung were Andy Ibáñez and Nick Solak, both of whom have shown at least some promise in the recent past. Bringing in some additional spring competition for the position provides the Rangers an opportunity to find the right fit in 2022.

Each of the players above can play multiple positions, giving the Rangers plenty of options to fill out their lineup. There isn’t room for all six of those players on the Opening Day roster, so the competition for those few spots will be fierce during the compressed spring. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a topsy-turvy, fast-paced offseason, with the swirling vortex of signings and trades spitting out some of the more memorable moves in recent years. A series of trades sent Isiah Kiner-Falefa all the way to the Bronx. Kenley Jansen to Atlanta came out of nowhere, and Carlos Correa, the biggest name of the offseason, ended up at a surprising destination with an odd contract.

But as it turned out, this offseason had one last twist in store for us. After weeks of relative silence, Trevor Story agreed to a six-year, $140 million contract with the Red Sox that contains a player opt-out after four years — one which Boston can negate by picking up a seventh-year option worth $25 million, or pay a $5 million buyout, bringing the total amount involved to $160 million. The deal does not include a no-trade clause, per the New York Post’s Joel Sherman.

So, you’ve just signed Trevor Story. What are you getting out of him? The answer depends on how you think his former home affected his performance, the park which must not be named: Coors Field. On the surface, it’s easy to glance at his home/road splits and check out. Throughout his career, Story has been a 146 wRC+ hitter at home and a 98 wRC+ hitter on the road. Away from an elevated bastion, he walks less, strikes out more, and makes inferior contact. What a fraud! Read the rest of this entry »

On Saturday, the Miami Marlins added a much-needed source of offense to their lineup, agreeing to terms with outfielder Jorge Soler on a three-year contract worth $36 million. Soler, now entering his age-30 season, had a rough start to the 2021 season, hitting a woeful .192/.288/.370 for the Kansas City Royals. The Braves, meanwhile, basically had to replace their entire outfield halfway through the season, leading to the trade that sent Soler to Atlanta in return for relief prospect Kasey Kalich. Better times were ahead, as Soler hit .269/.358/.524 (132 wRC+) for the Braves down the stretch. Even better was his .948 OPS in the playoffs, including three World Series home runs, which led to a World Series MVP award.

Soler’s deal with the Marlins comes with an important concession in the form of opt-outs after each of the first two years of the contract. He’ll turn 33 during his next deal and ordinary corner outfielders entering their mid-30s don’t typically end up with highly lucrative contracts. Those opt-outs are especially useful for Soler, as he’s a player whose exact level of play is hard to gauge; he spent the first half of 2021 producing like he was barely a Triple-A hitter, but in ’19, he hit .265/.354/.569 (136 wRC+) and led the American League in homers with 48. If he were to repeat his 2019 performance in his first season in Miami and opt out, ZiPS would project a five-year, $110 million contract. That’s a pretty big jump compared to the two years and $24 million the Marlins would otherwise owe him, but as I said, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what Soler’s baseline expectation should be. The contract structure actually incentivizes him to opt-out to a degree; the last year of the contract is only worth $9 million. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently asked a pair of prospects which of their former teammates have the best wheels, and on each occasion a 24-year-old middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox system was on the short list. One had him numero uno. The other deemed the speedster in question as being a step behind his first choice.

“Corbin Carroll, for sure,” was Ryne Nelson’s response to my question, the top pitching prospect in the Arizona Diamondbacks system naming the organization’s top position player prospect. “That dude flies.”

While that answer was anything but unexpected, is Carroll truly faster than David Hamilton, whom Nelson played with in the Cape Cod League?

“I think so,” said the righty. “I’ve never seen them together, but I have watched Corbin get from home to third in what felt like three seconds. Hamilton is definitely up there, but it seems like Corbin is the fastest player I’ve ever seen in my life. He can really burn around the bases.”

So too can Hamilton, whom Kody Clemens played with at both the University of Texas and in the independent Constellation League during the 2020 shutdown. Prior to my conversation with Nelson, the Detroit Tigers prospect had told me that Hamilton is the swiftest he’s taken the field with. Read the rest of this entry »

If Twitter determined reality, Carlos Correa would be a Yankee right now. A week after the World Series ended, he posed for a picture in front of Madison Square Garden wearing blue and gray, with former teammate Martín Maldonado playing photographer. You could see the writing on the wall, and many Yankees fans did.

If friendships determined reality, he’d surely still be an Astro. It was Maldonado with him in New York, and the charismatic catcher had a leg up in the recruiting pitch: he had all offseason to talk to Correa, while teams were maintaining radio silence due to the lockout. Houston came back to the table, too: they made several late offers to Correa in an attempt to woo him back.

But Correa has agency, and the Twins do too. Last night, he shocked the baseball world by signing a three-year deal to play in Minnesota:

MLB source: Free agent shortstop Carlos Correa has reached an agreement with the Minnesota Twins (@Twins) on a three-year deal worth $105.3 million with opt outs after the first two years. Highest average annual value for an MLB infielder.

— Mark Berman (@MarkBerman_) March 19, 2022

Read the rest of this entry »

After a relatively tame offseason, the Padres finally were able to close the deal on a transaction, picking up 1B/DH Luke Voit from the Yankees for minor league pitcher Justin Lange. The 31-year-old Voit, a Cinderella story just a few years ago after heading to New York for Giovanny Gallegos, had his worst season in pinstripes in 2021, hitting .239/.328/.437 and limited to 68 games due to a partial meniscus tear in his left knee. A fifth-round pick in 2020, Lange made his professional debut in the Florida Complex League in 2021, striking out a healthy 12 batters per nine over 22 innings but also walking a less-than-healthy six batters per game.

San Diego’s front office has been aware of the team’s significant weaknesses at the offense-first positions, expressing interest in Michael Conforto and Kris Bryant and said to be thick in the hunt for Seiya Suzuki and Freddie Freeman. The only problem is that, similar to their experience at the trade deadline, the Padres have come up short for their efforts. This winter’s only significant outfield pickup, Nomar Mazara, is not exactly who you want to see start a season high on the depth chart if you’re a would-be contender. And with first base and the outfield corners already not strengths, it’s hard to imagine the Padres being happy about the designated hitter becoming universal in 2022, leaving them scrambling to fill another offensive position. There’s no realistic contender, at least according to our projections, that had a less enviable 1B/LF/RF/DH situation.

Relative to the Dodgers at these positions, the Friars start off 11 wins in the red. With the team reportedly not feeling all tingly about the possibility of Nick Castellanos and the league’s top trade target here, Matt Olson, already off the board, the Padres were quickly running out of options to chip away at some of this deficit. But the Anthony Rizzo signing provided a new opportunity, as it had the effect of removing any real path for Voit to get playing time in New York. Read the rest of this entry »

Freddie Freeman went out on top in 2021, riding in a parade through Atlanta as the unquestioned leader of a franchise he’d taken to World Series glory. He’s coming into 2022 on top, but in a different way. This time, he’s headed to Los Angeles as the newest member of a team he beat in the playoffs last year. But more importantly, he’s doing it with $162 million:

BREAKING: Freddie Freeman has agreed to terms with the Dodgers on a six-year, $162 million deal according to @JeffPassan and me.

— Kiley McDaniel (@kileymcd) March 17, 2022

With this signing, the Dodgers are taking another crack at what they briefly built midway through last season: an offense with an All-Star at every position, the kind of team that doesn’t just have depth but also enviable breadth. Cody Bellinger? He’ll likely bat eighth. Will Smith? He’ll be the most overqualified six hole hitter in the game.

It feels like too much. It feels like overkill. But that’s because we’ve all become accustomed to a style of team-building focused on risk mitigation. Have the best team in baseball? Recent orthodoxy would tell you to consolidate your gains and focus on signing one of your stars to an extension, or fortify your minor league system to help develop the next crop of stars. It’s a popular method because it works; no less a team than the Dodgers showed the benefits of this strategy as they built a powerhouse throughout the middle of the last decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Historically speaking, things have rarely worked out well for the Rockies when they’ve written large checks. Just limiting the timeframe to the past 12 years, the free agent signings of Ian Desmond and Wade Davis were disasters, and they bailed on homegrown stars Troy Tulowitzki and Nolan Arenado well before reaching the halfway point of their long-term deals, having suddenly decided they couldn’t afford to build around them. Yet even with those unhappy examples in mind, it’s tough to comprehend their signing of Kris Bryant to a seven-year, $182 million contract, a deal that was announced on Wednesday.

Even with the signing of Freddie Freeman, the news of which broke later on Wednesday night, the Bryant deal is the offseason’s second-largest thus far, after Corey Seager‘s 10-year, $325 million contract with the Rangers, and it’s forth in average annual value, behind Max Scherzer’s $43.3 million, Seager’s $32.5 million, and Freeman’s $27 million. It’s the second-largest contract in Rockies history, after their eight-year, $260 million extension for Arenado. We’ll get to him.

Bryant has an impressive resumé that includes an NL Rookie of the Year award in 2015, an NL MVP award and a World Series ring a year later, and All-Star appearances in both of those years plus ’19 and ’21. From 2015-17, he ranked among the top position players in the game, batting .288/.388/.527; his slugging percentage and 94 homers both ranked 16th in the majors, while his 144 wRC+ ranked 12th, and his 20.6 WAR third behind only Mike Trout (25.8) and Josh Donaldson (21.8). Yet his career over the four seasons since has been uneven, with injury-marred campaigns alternating with good-but-not-great ones. For that latter period, he’s hit .268/.364/.479 with 73 homers, a 124 wRC+ (tied for 44th), and 11.1 WAR, maxing out at 4.7 in 2019. He’s been a very good player, with power, patience, and defensive versatility. In 2021 alone, he made 47 starts at third base, 35 in left field, 33 in right field, 13 in center field, and 10 at first base.

Still, that latter stretch does not eyeball as the credentials of a player in line for a seven-year, $182 million commitment starting at age 30, not even from a free-spending owner like the Mets’ Steve Cohen. And yet it’s come from the Rockies, who just over 13 months ago traded Arenado — whom the team had signed to that franchise-record extension in February 2019 — to the Cardinals along with $51 million dollars (!) in exchange for five players, four of them prospects. Arenado and the Rockies had been at odds since late 2019, near the end of a 91-loss season that he said “feels like a rebuild,” offending the delicate sensibilities of owner Dick Monfort and then-general manager Jeff Bridich. Their subsequent failure to sign even one major league free agent the following winter only exacerbated tensions, making a parting of the ways necessary.

While an analysis of the Bryant signing shouldn’t be about Arenado, or Trevor Story, the two-time All-Star shortstop whom the team refused to trade last summer before letting him walk away as a free agent, one can’t help but feel as though this is Monfort overcompensating. The Rockies are overpaying a free agent with money that would have been better spent on retaining at least one of those players. Both had six-win seasons as recently as 2019 (versus ’17 for Bryant). Both are within a year of Bryant’s age, Arenado older by nine months, Story younger by 10. And both were homegrown — retaining them would have provided welcome continuity. Bryant may be a better hitter than either of them; even limiting the scope to the past three seasons, his 123 wRC+ outdistances Arenado’s 116 and Story’s 113, and his projection for 2022 is higher. Yet he’s been the least valuable of the three over the past three years because he’s not a top-flight defender at a premium position; his 8.7 WAR for that stretch is a distant third behind Arenado’s 11.1 and Story’s 12.0, and he projects to fall even further behind.

And when I say overpaying… we’ll get to that, but first, Bryant’s 2021 season. After battling nagging injuries — back stiffness, left elbow, left wrist, and more — through a dismal 2020, during which he managed just a 75 wRC+ (.206/.293/.351), he was much better last year, though his power fell off notably after a July 30 trade to the Giants amid the Cubs’ ongoing fire sale. He hit .267/.358/.503 (129 wRC+) before the deal, and .262/.344/.444 (113 wRC+) after. While he posted his best barrel rate (10.3%) and average exit velocity (88.2 mph) since 2016, those aren’t exactly remarkable numbers, with the former ranking in the 67th percentile, the latter in just the 29th.

As for the size of his contract, in our Top 50 Free Agents roundup, Ben Clemens predicted Bryant would receive an eight-year, $200 million deal, while the median crowdsource had him at six years and $150 million. Outside the FanGraphs fold, MLB Trade Rumors had him at $160 million over six years. In a lockout-fevered exercise connecting free agent hitters to teams, however, Dan Szymborski noted that his ZiPS-driven valuation — his multiyear projection times a dollars per win estimate — was for just $67 million over four years, though he himself predicted it would take more to sign him, coming in at $90 million over four years. While the AAVs from Ben, Dan (not ZiPS), and our crowdsource aren’t really that far apart, ranging from $22.5 million to $25 million, the ratio of the amounts at the extremes was larger than two to one.

I’ll admit I had forgotten about all of those numbers when the news of Bryant’s deal came down, particularly when Dan handed off his seven-year projection:

This is for Bryant as a left fielder, since the Rockies have reason to be happy with Ryan McMahon’s stellar defense at third base last year. Projecting Bryant at third doesn’t change much, with an extra 0.2 WAR in three of the first four seasons but some of that coming off the back end. The valuations for the two projections: $67 million for the left field version and $70 million for the third base one, both more than $100 million shy of the investment the Rockies just made. Sweet fancy Moses.

I asked Dan if he could recall similar instances of projected valuations that far below the actual deals, and he cited the $200-million-plus pacts of Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, and Alex Rodriguez (post-opt-out), particularly recalling Pujols’ valuation coming in at $131 million for his 10-year, $240 million deal. On Ryan Howard’s five-year, $125 million extension, ZiPS was “only” $75 million under. What those contracts all had in common was that they hailed from an era before analytics had permeated front offices. The only recent contract Dan could recall that overshot ZiPS by such a wide margin was that of Eric Hosmer; with Dan valuing Hosmer’s opt-out at $17 million, his estimate came in at $81 million for what he treated as a $161 million deal (instead of $144 million). None of those contracts, even the contemporary one, aged well. In that light, if Bryant’s deal is that far above projections, yikes.

But maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Bryant did put up 3.6 WAR last year, and 4.7 in 2019; that’s 8.3 WAR over two seasons separated by a 34-game struggle while the player and the rest of the world were an utter mess. Maybe ZiPS is putting too much stock in that, and maybe he starts this deal with two or three seasons in the four-win range before tapering off as he moves down the defensive spectrum.

It’s worth noting that according to Statcast, Bryant has outslugged expectations; last year, he outdid his .449 xSLG by 32 points, and in 2019, he outdid his .457 xSLG by 64 points. In those two years, he added a combined 11 homers beyond expectations (six last year, five in 2019). While one could look at that and believe that the 2016 edition of Bryant, with the .554 slugging percentage and .566 xSLG, isn’t coming back, perhaps the increased carry for fly balls at high altitude will pay off for a player with a career groundball/fly ball ratio of just 0.81. Sure, maybe my rose-colored glasses are smarter than Dan’s machine. As evidenced by those other estimates I cited, it’s not like the entire industry views him as ZiPS does — some intelligent people really do see him as a player worth investing $150 million or more.

Setting the valuation aside, one can be happy that Bryant, whose free agency was delayed by a year due to the Cubs’ service-time manipulation, is getting his big payday. He’s a very entertaining player who will hit some towering home runs and give Rockies fans a star to cheer for following the departures of Arenado and Story. Undoubtedly, in the short-term he makes the Rockies better and more watchable. This is a team that lost 87 games last year, one whose outfielders combined for a major league-worst 81 wRC+, and just 3.8 WAR. Left fielder Raimel Tapia may have blazing speed, but he hit for a 76 wRC+ and produced 0.3 WAR. Center fielder Garrett Hampson was a worse hitter (65 wRC+) but ever so slightly more valuable due to defense (0.5 WAR), and right fielder Charlie Blackmon was a long way from his All-Star days (94 wRC+, 1.5 WAR). Plug Bryant in for any of them and it’s an upgrade of at least a couple of wins.

The problem is that still won’t be nearly enough to catch the Dodgers, Giants, and Padres (oh my!). Even with a rotation that has three reasonably solid starters (Kyle Freeland, Antonio Senzatela, and Austin Gomber) behind staff ace Germán Márquez, that unit projects as the majors’ eighth-worst, and they’re several roster additions away from being a team that can contend. Assuming Blackmon slides into the DH role, they need two good outfielders, a shortstop to replace Story (they’re not winning anything with late-stage José Iglesias there, sorry), and a much better bullpen than the one that currently projects as the very worst in the majors.

So the real question is where do the Rockies go from here? Will Monfort continue to spend money to build around that rotation, which has Márquez under control through 2024, Freeland through ’23, and Senzatela through ’27? Can a front office that experienced a regime change last year (Bridich resigned in late April, replaced by long-time vice president of scouting Bill Schmidt) and recently fired its head of analytics, Scott Van Lenten, after just seven months, point them in the right direction? Or will Monfort and company decide in 2024 or ’25 that it’s just too tough to build around another aging and expensive star and make another trade that sets the franchise back (though as with Arenado, they’ll need Bryant’s buy-in, as his deal features a full no-trade clause)?

Those questions are unanswerable at the moment. What we know is that Bryant has found a home via a big contract, and that the Rockies have gotten a substantial upgrade via a very good player. How that will all pay off is anyone’s guess.

In the days since the lockout lifted, baseball has seen a flurry of trades and free agent signings. It’s a lot to sort through, so to assist you in finding anything you may have missed, I’ve rounded up all of our post-lockout transaction pieces in one place. You’ll find links to some of our offseason, free agency, and prospect resources listed first, followed by a team-by-team listing of the transaction analysis that involved your favorite squad. In instances where we dissected a move across multiple pieces — hello, Matt Olson — you’ll see those pieces grouped together. This piece will be updated as more players find new homes and we publish new work.

As always, all of the pieces and tools listed here are free to read and use but took time and resources to create. If you enjoy our coverage and are in a position to do so, we hope you’ll sign up for a FanGraphs Ad-free Membership. It’s the best way to both experience the site and help ensure its sustainability. Now, on to the roundup! Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, the A’s made the biggest trade of the year when they sent Matt Olson to the Braves. This morning, they kept the momentum going and made the second-biggest trade of the year. Matt Chapman is headed to Canada in exchange for a four-prospect return:

Blue Jays deal for Matt Chapman is done. Kevin Smith, Gunnar Hoglund, Zach Logue and Kirby Snead are headed to Athletics, per source.

— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) March 16, 2022

Oakland doesn’t do anything by half measures, and with Olson and Chris Bassitt out the door, the team was in competitive limbo. Toronto was in search of a new infielder after Marcus Semien left in free agency. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the potential fit here, and the two teams were linked in trade rumors for much of the locked-out offseason.

From the Jays’ perspective, this trade gets them exactly what they wanted. After losing two of their top starting pitchers in free agency, they signed Kevin Gausman and Yusei Kikuchi to fill holes in the rotation. That still left them with a diminished offensive group, and there weren’t any obvious free agent fits to spruce things up. It may have been a coincidence, but as the Jays pursued Freddie Freeman and Kyle Schwarber, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was spotted doing third base drills, a sign of how intent the Jays were on shoehorning another hitter into their lineup, positional fit notwithstanding. Read the rest of this entry »