This offseason has seen an avalanche of activity early on, with 22 of our top 25 free agents signing before Christmas. But last night, we somehow doubled up. After an undisclosed medical issue held up the official announcement of Carlos Correa’s contract with the Giants, the entire deal fell through, and the Mets stepped into the fray, signing Correa to a 12-year, $315 million deal this morning, as Jon Heyman first reported.

I’ll let that breathe for a second so that you can think about it. The Giants went from laying out $350 million and adding a cornerstone player to their roster for more than a decade to nothing at all. The Mets went from a big free agency haul to an unprecedented one. Correa is going from shortstop to third base, and maybe losing one gaudy vacation home in the process when all is said and done.

The Mets had already spent heavily this offseason to shore up their pitching. With Jacob deGrom, Chris Bassitt, and Taijuan Walker all leaving in free agency, the team had a lot of high-quality innings to replace, and they did so in volume, adding Justin Verlander, Kodai Senga, and José Quintana. Those were in effect like-for-like moves, as was signing Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino and Brandon Nimmo after they reached free agency. The 2023 Mets stood to look a lot like the 2022 Mets in broad shape – most of their additions were either swaps (deGrom for Verlander) or small (Omar Narváez will be a platoon catcher, David Robertson will shore up the bullpen). Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a fan of Michael Brantley. A big, big fan, in fact. He’s the type of hitter that both old school and new school folks adore. He doesn’t strike out and he hardly ever whiffs, but he still swings fast and with a variable bat path. He doesn’t necessarily light it up with his exit velocity, instead thriving by hitting it where they ain’t. On Sunday, he re-signed with the Astros on a one-year, $12 million contract; he can earn an additional $4 million in performance incentives. Basically, if he stays healthy and hits like he has since arriving in Houston in 2019, the deal will end up having about the same average annual value as his previous two-year, $32 million contracts with the Astros. Retaining Brantley is a low risk move. He is the perfect option to complete an already extremely balanced and talented group of hitters. And while he might not be the athlete he once was — his sprint speed dropped all the way down to the 11th percentile in 2022 — all the team needs him to do is stay healthy and hit in the DH spot.

Brantley has been extremely consistent during his four years with Houston; he’s posted a wRC+ ranging from 121 to 132 and been good for a three to four win pace no matter how many games he played. In his first two seasons, he didn’t miss much time at all, playing in 148 games in 2019 and 46 in the shortened ’20. However, his number of games played began to trail off in 2021, dipping to 121, and he only managed 64 in ’22 before requiring season-ending surgery on his right shoulder. After the injury, the Astros missed Brantley, including in the postseason. I know they won the World Series, but there were times throughout the playoffs when their lineup stagnated and could have used some of the variation Brantley provides. Their offense was still deeper than any other team, but if they could have asked for anything, it would have been another lefty to put the ball in play after the heart of the lineup delivered a mass of baserunners.

Of course, Brantley’s ability to play that role in 2023 assumes health, which as we’ve noted, hasn’t been a given. And injuries remain a significant concern after his shoulder surgery in August, the second of his career. No surgery is ever good, but for a hitter, lead shoulder surgery is particularly impactful. When you think about swing mechanics, having relaxed shoulders is key to avoiding too much tension in your upper body. One thing my hitting coaches always used to tell me was to relax from the chest up. Sometimes when hitters try to muscle up and take swings, they tense their shoulders. This can negatively affect a smooth energy transfer, as well as barrel accuracy and deceleration. Your shoulders should be along for the ride, not impeding your swing with roadblocks. Brantley has already overcome shoulder surgery before, but as you age, rehab gets more difficult. It’s obviously a concern. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets, in their shopping spree of an off-season, have brought back yet another player from last year’s squad. Joining the already re-signed Brandon Nimmo and Edwin Díaz, Adam Ottavino has also agreed to run it back with a team clearly willing to upgrade wherever necessary in pursuit of a championship. He will earn $14.5 million over the next two seasons, with the opportunity to opt out after 2023.

Ottavino is coming off of arguably the best full season of his career and a major rebound from his previous two years. From 2013 to ’19, he had a 2.90 ERA and 3.34 FIP as one of the only pitchers who could figure out the nightmare of Coors Field. He spent 2020 with the Yankees and ’21 with the Red Sox, where his performance declined a bit but his peripherals were still above average. His 2022, with a 2.05 ERA and 2.85 FIP, was certainly a return to form, but he did so with a newfound skill that he’s excelled in for the first time in his career: limiting walks.

For the first time since 2016, Ottavino had a single-digit walk rate, and in the span of just one offseason he went from dreadful (seventh percentile) to very good (77th percentile) at avoiding free passes. In addition to bringing his strikeout rate back to the level of his Rockies days, he posted the best full-season K-BB% of his career. Not only are these improvements impressive in the context of his own career, but the jump is also an outlier among all major league pitchers; between 2021 and ’22, only three other pitchers had their K-BB% improve more than Ottavino. Read the rest of this entry »

A day after landing Seth Lugo, the Padres added another versatile player to the fold in Matt Carpenter. The 37-year-old lefty swinger, who rescued his career from oblivion with the Yankees, will serve as something of a utilityman according to MLB.com’s A.J. Cassavell, potentially picking up playing time at designated hitter, first base, and both outfield corners, with the possibility of backing up second base and third base as well.

In a season bookended by a stint with the Rangers’ Triple-A Round Rock affiliate and a fractured left foot, Carpenter hit an astounding .305/.412/.727 with 15 homers in just 154 plate appearances. His 217 wRC+ was the highest of any player who received at least 20 PA in 2022, 10 points higher than teammate Aaron Judge. It was also the highest wRC+ of any player with at least 150 PA since 2005, a cutoff I chose in order to avoid peak Barry Bonds, who topped the mark three times from 2001 to ’04:

That’s mixing a few small-sample seasons in with some MVP-winning ones (Betts, Cabrera, and Harper in addition to Judge), with Freeman in both camps, but that’s kind of the point. What Carpenter did in his small slice of playing time was otherworldly and unsustainable. That it even happened was almost unimaginable given that at this time last year, it wasn’t clear whether he’d ever occupy a major league roster again.

Carpenter was cut free by the Cardinals after hitting a combined .176/.313/.291 (76 wRC+) with 0.2 WAR in 180 games and 418 PA in 2020–21. The team declined his $18.5 million option for 2022, instead paying him a $2 million buyout and ending his 13-year run in the organization that drafted him out of Texas Christian University in the 13th round in 2009. During his 11 seasons in St. Louis, he made three All-Star teams, received MVP votes in three seasons, and outproduced every Cardinals position player this side of Yadier Molina, helping the team to four NL Central titles, six playoff appearances, and the 2013 NL pennant. But he hadn’t hit at even a league-average clip since 2018, making his two-year, $39 million deal a minor disaster, and so it made no sense to push to salvage the deal via its third year.

After his option was declined, Carpenter reached out to longtime NL Central rival Joey Votto for advice on how to reverse his mid-30s decline, as the Cincinnati first baseman had done. In a conversation that Carpenter recalled lasting 3 1/2 hours, Votto gave him a combination pep talk and roadmap to fixing his swing, one that centered around a data-driven approach. While working with hitting gurus Tim Laker and Craig Wallenbrock as well as former teammate Matt Holliday over the winter, Carpenter switched to a new bat and underwent a full mechanical overhaul to improve his swing path and refine his body movement.

As Holliday told the New York Post’s Dan Martin in June:

“Just watching on TV, his front hip was leaving early, which was pulling him out and around even inside pitches… He was missing under pitches that were middle-away and then balls that were in, he was hooking a little too much. As a friend and someone who likes hitting, I told him, ‘This is what I see’ and we talked about hitting and why his average on balls out over the plate had gone down and why he was getting under balls and striking out more than he ever had.

“After a few days, there was a different sound off the bat and the ball was traveling much better… He was getting carry on the ball with different spin and it was more true.”

Once the lockout ended, Carpenter signed a minor league deal with the Rangers, one that guaranteed him a salary of $2 million in the majors. After missing the cut for Opening Day, he accepted an assignment to Round Rock, where he hit .275/.379/.613 with six homers in 95 PA, but the team didn’t see fit to call him up. By mutual decision, he was released by the Rangers on May 19, then signed with the Yankees a week later, after they placed Giancarlo Stanton on the injured list with a right calf strain. Carpenter debuted that day, homered off the Rays’ Jeffrey Springs the next day, and just kept slugging; his first three hits, and eight of his first 12, were homers. Despite playing only sporadically during the periods when Stanton was healthy, he continued to wield an incredibly potent bat, making 16 starts at DH, 11 in right field, three apiece in left field and at first base, and two at third base; he also pinch-hit 12 times.

The storybook comeback came crashing to a halt when Carpenter fouled a Logan Gilbert pitch off the top of his left foot on August 8. He completed the plate appearance but didn’t play again before the end of the regular season. While the Yankees included him on their postseason roster, his 1-for-12 showing with nine strikeouts amply illustrated that he needed more time to get his rhythm back.

I’ll get back to the performance, but first, the contract. Carpenter is guaranteed $12 million in 2023–24, with incentives that can take the deal to $21 million. Via The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, he’ll receive a $3 million signing bonus, a $3.5 million salary for 2023, and a $5.5 million player option for ’24. For both seasons, he gets an additional $500,000 for reaching plate appearance thresholds of 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, and 550; what’s more, each of those thresholds that he reaches in 2023 also increases his 2024 base salary by another $500,000.

Thus, if Carpenter makes 400 PA in 2023, he’ll earn $8 million and then have a $7 million player option for ’24. If he has a 550-PA season, he’ll make $9.5 millon in 2023, and if he picks up his $8.5 million option and then reaches 550 PA again, he’ll earn a total of $11.5 million in ’24, reaching the $21 million maximum for the package. Even if he doesn’t max out, that’s a pretty impressive payday under the circumstances.

Carpenter’s arrival adds yet another moving part to a San Diego roster that was upended by the Xander Bogaerts signing earlier this month. That pushed Ha-Seong Kim from shortstop to second base and Jake Cronenworth from second to first, and more or less ensured that Fernando Tatis Jr. primarily plays the outfield. While Carpenter appears likely to see the bulk of his time as the team’s DH, he could spot at first against some righthanders, which would return the lefty-swinging Cronenworth to the keystone and put the righty-swinging Kim on the bench. Carpenter doesn’t seem like much of a threat to take significant playing time away from Tatis (whose PED suspension still has 20 games to go) or Soto in the outfield corners, but he could fill in while one of them DHs or gets a day off.

As to how productive he can be in San Diego, it’s worth considering how Carpenter did what he did in New York. He hit the ball pretty hard in general (13.7% barrel rate, 42.1% hard-hit rate, 89.8 mph average exit velocity), but the key was putting it in the air with great frequency while playing half of his games in a ballpark that specifically rewards lefthanders for doing so. Among hitters with at least 150 PA, his 60% pull rate led the majors, and his 53.3% fly ball rate was third. All 15 homers — nine in Yankee Stadium, six on the road — came via pulled fly balls:

Carpenter hit just 25 pulled fly balls, but his 761 wRC+ on them ranked third in the majors, behind only Judge’s 902 (including 31 homers on 48 such balls) and Nathaniel Lowe’s 883 (17 homers on 26 such balls). Both of those guys had over 400 batted ball events in 2022, so their pulled flies represented a much smaller fraction (11.9% for Judge, 5.8% for Lowe) than for Carpenter (26.3%).

That strategy might not work as well in San Diego. Where Yankee Stadium is 314 feet down the right field line and 385 to right-center, Petco Park is 322 feet down the right field line and 391 to right-center. And that’s before considering the park’s notorious marine layer, which brings in cool, moist air and suppresses home runs — something not accounted for in Statcast’s expected home runs stat, which shows Carpenter matching his season total of 15, 14 of which would have gone out in San Diego based on distance and angle. By our park factors, which use five years of data, Yankee Stadium had a home run factor of 109 for lefties, and Petco
95; by those of Statcast, which are based upon three years of data, the gap is even wider, 118 to 96.

ZiPS isn’t tremendously optimistic about Carpenter’s production, which shouldn’t be a surprise given the sample sizes feeding it; after all, he preceded those 154 PA of videogame numbers with 910 that produced just an 87 wRC+:

Via Dan Szymborski, ZiPS values that production at $8.2 million on a two-year deal, though the low playing time is obviously a factor; if Carpenter reaches the higher percentiles of his 2023 projection, he’ll play more frequently. At a baseline of 400 PA, ZiPS projects a contract worth $12.8 million over two years, which is more in the ballpark of his deal, though if he’s good enough in 2023, he could opt to pursue something even more lucrative.

The Padres are banking that the things Carpenter did to overhaul his swing will make it more likely he can remain a productive hitter, if not a guy who homers at a Bonds-like rate. His addition pushes the team’s payroll to $266.7 million for Competitive Balance Tax purposes, about $6.3 million short of the third tier of penalties. Padres ownership has shown that it’s not too concerned about such matters at the moment, particularly if such moves give the team a better chance to win at a time when the Dodgers have suddenly gotten cost-conscious, to say nothing of how the Giants must be reeling from the shock of the Carlos Correa switcheroo. There’s no guarantee Carpenter can remain a big bat, but at the very least, the NL West’s deepest roster has gotten deeper.

In order to understand Jordan Lyles’ two-year, $17 million contract with the Kansas City Royals, you need to understand this: Baseball, unlike other sports, is not governed by a clock.

A rosy, romantic articulation of this fact has been a cliché within the sport for generations. Other, newer, cruder sports are bound by the oppressive temporal strictures that make our lives into a brutal struggle, but not baseball. Baseball proceeds at whatever pace the game requires, aloof from the petty concerns of time. This distance allows grown men to revert to gleeful childhood. The crack of the bat, the smell of fresh-cut grass, and so on.

The truth is somewhat more sinister. Because baseball operates outside the bounds of time, there is no escape unless the game is completed. Mere desultory attendance will not suffice — progress must be made or the game will not allow you to leave. You cannot take a knee, or rag the puck, or kick the ball really high to kill the clock. There is no clock. Baseball is like Jumanji. Complete the objective or you will be trapped within the game until you die. Read the rest of this entry »

Right-handed reliever Mychal Givens is returning to the Orioles. The deal is for one year and $3 million, with a mutual option for 2024 worth $6 million. If he declines the 2024 option, he receives a $1 million buyout. If he accepts and the Orioles decline their end, he receives a $2 million buyout. Baltimore’s 40-man roster is full, so the team will need to make a move to clear space for him.

Coming off a 2022 season in which he posted a 3.38 ERA and a 3.96 FIP over 61.1 innings, Givens provides some experience to a young Baltimore bullpen that features standouts like Dillon Tate, Cionel Pérez, and closer Félix Bautista. Baltimore’s relief corps was ninth in the league with a 3.49 ERA in 2022, with a 3.72 FIP and 3.53 SIERA that ranked seventh and 13th, respectively.

The Orioles selected Givens out of high school in the second round of the 2009 draft. Originally a shortstop, he missed a couple of seasons after injuring his thumb sliding into first, strengthening the arguments of baseball curmudgeons the world over. He converted to pitching in 2013, reached the majors two years later, and made an immediate impact, posting a 1.80 ERA and 0.9 WAR in just 22 appearances. Over his first four big league seasons, his 5.1 WAR was 15th among all relievers. Read the rest of this entry »

The Padres continued has been a productive offseason on Monday, closing a deal with veteran right-hander Seth Lugo for two years at just over $15 million, with a player option after the 2023 season, according to The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya. After 12 years with the Mets, the 33-year-old leaves the only club he’s ever known for an opportunity to start in San Diego after spending the bulk of the last five seasons out of the bullpen. The Padres, meanwhile, add another versatile arm in a winter during which, in addition to signing Xander Bogaerts, they’ve already agreed to new contracts with a pair of 2022 postseason standouts in swingman Nick Martinez and setup man Robert Suarez, who earned himself a five-year, $46 million commitment after an excellent rookie campaign. Lugo, who comes at a similar AAV but a shorter commitment, has an opportunity to slot into the back end of a starting rotation that lost Sean Manaea and Mike Clevinger after underwhelming short stints with the club.

For the Padres, the addition of Lugo also represents a victory over the rival Dodgers, who were reported to have been in the mix for the right-hander right up until A.J. Preller sealed the deal. San Diego, well on its way to owing more in luxury tax payments in 2023, seems intent on making a run for the division title after ousting the 111-win Dodgers from the postseason last year. Per our depth charts, Lugo’s projected 1.2 WAR improved the Padres’ starting staff — one led by Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, and Blake Snell — from a projected ranking of 14th in the majors to 12th, leapfrogging the Dodgers and the Verlander-less Astros, and drawing them just about even with the Giants. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, the Athletics signed right-handed reliever Trevor May to a one-year, $7 million deal. He joins Aledmys Díaz and Jace Peterson as short-term veteran signings for the rebuilding A’s, but while Díaz is coming off of a fairly typical season for him and Peterson is coming off of his best, May will be looking to rebound after a poor 2022 showing.

Given that the A’s still have a ways to go before entering competitive territory again, one of the motivations behind these signings, besides obtaining more mentors for the up-and-comers, is likely to provide trade deadline fodder. Díaz and Peterson will most likely draw some interest if they retain their current levels of performance; the former has been around a 100 wRC+ for quite some time now, and the latter has had a few decent years at the dish and could increase his value further by cementing his gains with the glove. Either way, the floor is relatively high for these utilitymen, but their range of outcomes is narrow. May, however, has the potential to be either a non-factor or quite valuable come July. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Benintendi presents as a good table-setter option for the White Sox. Signed by Chicago’s American League entry on Friday, the no. 17 player on our 2023 Top 50 Free Agent rankings is a good fit for an underachieving team that could use better on-base percentages near the top of its lineup. While batting average-heavy Tim Anderson will presumably remain the leadoff hitter — this despite a career 3.6% walk rate and .316 OPB — someone who can consistently get on base in front of the thumpers can only help.

Benintendi had a better 2022 season than a lot of people realize. In 521 plate appearances split between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees, the left-handed-hitting outfielder logged a 122 WRC+ — this despite a .399 SLG and only five home runs — which was a mere point lower than his career high. Matching that wRC+, as well as his .373 OBP, would be worth the reported five-year, $75 million deal.

Benintendi will turn 29 next July, so there is a real possibility that his best years are ahead of him. Cecil Cooper presents as a best-case comp. Through age 28, Cooper — a left-handed-hitting first baseman who established himself in Boston before playing two seasons in Milwaukee — had 73 home runs and a 116 wRC+ (Benintendi currently has 73 home runs and a 109 wRC+.) From age 29 through age 33, Cooper put up a 141 wRC+ with 123 home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Like several other players from the 2018 World Series champion core of the Red Sox, J.D. Martinez has found himself wearing a different uniform in a new city. After finishing out his five-year contract with Boston, he has agreed to a one year, $10 million contract to be the Dodgers’ designated hitter and reunite with his former hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc. That name might not ring a bell to you, but Martinez’s ascent as a hitter came after the work he did with Van Scoyoc before the 2014 season, when he officially broke out as a hitter with a 154 wRC+ with the Tigers. Martinez will also reunite with another teammate, Mookie Betts, whose work with Van Scoyoc led to a bit of a power breakout as well.

For Martinez, the reunion comes at a good time. After a big bounceback season in 2021 where he was hitting the ball consistently hard with a ton of success, his power took a significant step back. His hard-hit rate tailed off by about eight percentage points, his xwOBACON was his lowest in a full season with Boston, and he converted fewer of his fly balls into home runs. That amassed to a home run drop off from 28 to 16 despite only 38 fewer plate appearances. Martinez, being the extremely talented hitter he is, still put together a 119 wRC+, but that loss of thump at age 35 suggests that the downturn is coming. The hope for both him and the Dodgers is that some of that power and forceful impacting of the baseball can be recovered with Van Scoyoc.

The most glaring regression from 2021 to ’22 was in damage done in the heart of the plate. Looking at Martinez’s Statcast’s Swing Take profile, you can zero in on the run values in each area of the strike zone for any given hitter. Typically, hitters of his ilk will crush mistakes in the heart of the zone. In the simplest way possible, that is what it takes to a be a good big league hitter; pitchers will make mistakes, and you need to make them hurt.

What makes you special is if you can do anything in addition to that. Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus has an informative piece about that exact topic. Basically, both good and great hitters do damage in the heart of the plate, but the difference between the two is that additional skill of crushing bad pitches. Martinez can’t expect to have sustained success if he is producing a -2 run value in the heart of the plate as he did in 2022. He needs to get closer to his +34 runs in 2021.

When breaking it down further between fastballs and breaking balls, we can get a little more insight into exactly what happened in the heart of the plate for Martinez. His swing rates stayed relatively the same on both pitch types, but the damage done on both varied; he was actually better on fastballs in the heart of the plate in 2022 (.442 wOBA) compared to 2021 (.390 wOBA) despite the overall downturn in production. Both those rates were well above the league average in each season.

The real issue here was only being pedestrian against breaking balls, with a .363 wOBA against them in the heart of the plate was only 15 points higher than the league average of .348. That was unlike Martinez; the path he creates with his swing is made to hit these pitches out of the park, or at least into the gaps. In four full seasons between 2017 and ’21, he hit 29 home runs on breakers in the heart of the plate and had a .502 wOBA; in 2022, though, he went deep just twice, with near-average production. No hitter needs to be excellent against breaking balls overall, but if a pitcher leaves a cookie over the middle of the plate and you can’t hit it, there is some cause for concern.

Will that be what Martinez works on? My guess: When he is in the cage, I think his focus will be on elongating his bat path further in front of the plate to pull breakers from left-center to the left field line, rather than strictly thinking about hitting breakers. There is a slight difference between the two.

Beyond that, it’s fascinating to think about the impact Martinez could have on his teammates. If you haven’t listened to him talk about hitting, then I strongly suggest you do. He is one of a handful of hitters in baseball who not only has an advanced level of understanding of swing mechanics, but can also communicate that understanding to others with words and visual assistance. That skill, while not seen in the box score, can make a huge difference when he has time to break down his video. But perhaps what is even more valuable about it is he can share his thoughts and knowledge with his teammates if they’re open to hearing it. Some that come to mind who might benefit from Martinez’s wisdom are Gavin Lux and Miguel Vargas. The former feels like he is close to a breakout, and the latter is a young, impressionable hitter looking for a shot to make him stick out among the rest of the Dodgers’ depth options.

Martinez’s approach to hitting is all about cleaning up bat path and swing mechanics rather than looking at a micro issue and trying to fix only that. By addressing the swing in general, those other problems should take of themselves. The good thing for him is that he is in the perfect place to do this now: with a team that gets hitting, and with the hitting coach who helped him dominate the AL East.