When the Padres traded for Jurickson Profar before the 2020 season, they had a hole at second base. By the time the season started (give or take a week), Jake Cronenworth had filled that hole. But luckily for the Padres, Profar was flexible. He played the outfield for the majority of the season, more than doubling his career innings played total on the grass, and backed Cronenworth up at second while putting together the best batting line of his career. In a shortened season with heightened injury problems, his flexibility was exactly what the team needed.

On Friday, the Padres and Profar agreed to reunite, with San Diego signing him to a three-year, $21 million deal that includes opt outs after each of the first two seasons. But while Profar is headed back to southern California, what role he’ll play there remains undecided. A Padres team without many holes has spent the offseason filling in what cracks it has, leaving precious little space for more cooks in the kitchen — or so it seems.

One of the greatest unknowns facing NL teams is the DH rule. Will it come back next season? Opinions vary, and whether you can give an extra player at-bats changes roster construction significantly. The pre-Profar Friars straddled the gap between building for an extra hitter and for traditional rules. Ha-seong Kim, their prize position player signing this offseason, currently profiles as a super-utility player who starts on the bench. He could fill the DH position, but using a middle infielder (Kim is a shortstop by trade) there feels wasteful. Meanwhile, the team’s two corner outfielders, Tommy Pham and Wil Myers, are both mixed in the field. Either of them could slide to DH — Pham played DH during his tenure in Tampa — if the team could find a suitable defensive replacement. Read the rest of this entry »

As the most physically demanding position on the diamond, catcher is fundamentally different than the other non-pitching positions. Combine the need for frequent rest and the higher likelihood of injury, and every team is always in search of more catcher depth. There’s a corollary to that, though: because catching exacts such a toll on the body, few catchers are truly standout stars in the same way that infielders and outfielders are. As an idle example, four catchers were worth 3 WAR or more in 2019, and 66 non-catcher position players crested that mark.

Why bring up this fact? Part of the reason is that it’s interesting to me, and I get to pick what I write about most of the time. The bigger part, though, is that I don’t always get to pick what I write about, and this one happens to be a fortuitous combination of the two: the Astros signed Jason Castro to a two-year, $7 million dollar deal with incentives that could tack on $2 million, and somebody needs to write it up.

At first glance, Castro is exactly the kind of catcher that teams always need: he may not be an All-Star (though he was in 2013), but he’s someone you can count on to punch the clock roughly every other day, delivering enough receiving, enough hitting, and enough being-there-ness to fill roughly half of a catcher platoon. Deals like this are evergreen — heck, Martín Maldonado signed roughly the same deal in Houston last year, and he’ll be Castro’s platoon partner. That said, Castro carries a few interesting notes that give him a chance to be more than just another faceless backstop.

First and foremost, Castro is a lefty. That’s not exactly breaking news — stop the presses, I watched a Jason Castro at-bat and found something new — but it’s indisputably valuable. There simply aren’t many left-handed catchers, even if you count switch hitters; lefties made 1,399 plate appearances at catcher in 2020, as compared to 5,272 right-handed plate appearances. That’s a 21% share of PAs, as compared to a 43% share for lefties in the league as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

Between Jose Quintana, J.A. Happ, and Joe Biden, quite a few old lefties have found new homes lately. The news on Happ came relatively late yesterday, so if you missed the details, he’s now a Twin after agreeing to a one-year deal worth $8 million, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan and MLB Network’s Jon Heyman.

The departures of Rich Hill and Jake Odorizzi left a hole in the back of Minnesota’s rotation. Happ’s a perfectly capable fill-in, though the move does raise questions about whether the Twins are done enhancing their rotation, and whether the team is good enough to retain the AL Central crown as currently constructed.

In nine starts for the Yankees last season, Happ notched a 3.47 ERA and a 4.57 FIP. That second figure was a significant improvement over his 2019 production, as home runs were a major bugaboo for him back when we last had fans: Yankee Stadium’s cozy confines and a drag-free baseball led to a 1.90 HR/9 ratio and a FIP well over five. While his homer rate dropped a tad below 1.50 per nine in 2020, it was the .220 average batters hit on balls in play that buffed up his ERA.

In a way this marks a return to form. More than a decade ago, Happ first made his name in Philadelphia as a starter who significantly outpitched his peripherals; the gap between his ERA and FIP in Philly was so wide that when the Astros acquired him in a trade for Roy Oswalt, all we had to say about him was “while he has some value as a league minimum guy for the next couple of years, he can be replaced.”

It wasn’t exactly a straight line between then and now, but Happ again looks like a durable innings eater who can provide something approximating league average production out of the rotation. He’s 38 now, but hasn’t shown too many signs of aging. His velocity has dipped a tick over the last two years, though he’s within half a mile per hour of the gas he had in his Blue Jays days. He’s barely missed a start over the last three years and just posted the highest swing-and-miss rate of his career. Steamer, ZiPS, and intuition all have him pegged as the fourthiest No. 4 starter who ever slotted into the fourth spot of a rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Blue Jays made the biggest free-agent move of the offseason late Tuesday night by signing George Springer. By the next morning, they looked like they were on the verge of adding his friend and former teammate Michael Brantley too. But reports early Wednesday that he had put pen to paper turned out to be a bit too aggressive, and while he did end up signing by day’s end, it wasn’t with Toronto. Instead, Brantley is returning to Houston on a two-year, $32 million contract, as first reported by FOX 26’s Mark Berman.

While Brantley would have helped Toronto’s offense, he’s a bit of a better fit for the Astros. After signing Springer, the Jays already had four major league-quality outfielders in him, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Teoscar Hernández, and Randal Grichuk. Adding Brantley would have meant putting him at designated hitter every day (or trading a good player away), which would hurt roster flexibility if Vladimir Guerrero Jr. can’t handle third base and also taken playing time away from Rowdy Tellez. Brantley wasn’t a horrible fit, but given the options still available and potential needs in the infield and the rotation, the Blue Jays didn’t have to have him.

Where he plays is less of an issue for the Astros, who already have a regular DH as long as Yordan Alvarez is healthy. What they really needed was a leftfielder, and Brantley was far and away the best option on a market full of replacement-level options. He was a DH more than he was on the field last season, but that was more out of convenience than necessity due to an early-season quad injury that cost him a dozen or so games, the emergence of Kyle Tucker, and the presence of veteran Josh Reddick. Since 2017, Brantley has graded out as average by UZR and well above-average by DRS, and his -8 Outs Above Average at Statcast make him a roughly average corner outfielder. His defensive skills will decline as he ages, and his speed is gone, but he should still be able to handle playing in the field. And he’s been relatively healthy the last three years after suffering through multiple injuries earlier in his career.

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Another day gone by, another former Cubs starting pitcher joining another team. Three weeks ago, Chicago shipped away its ace by trading Yu Darvish to the Padres for Zach Davies and a quartet of prospects. On Monday, it watched two more rotation members find new employers in free agency, as Jon Lester signed with Washington and Tyler Chatwood inked a deal with Toronto. One day later, a fourth veteran starter is officially out the door, with left-hander José Quintana signing a one-year, $8-million contract to join the Angels, as reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.

Quintana, who will turn 32 next week, pitched in just four games in 2020 while dealing with thumb and lat injuries. That’s hardly the norm, though: The thumb injury was a freak laceration suffered while he was washing dishes and resulted in the first IL stint of his nine-year career. Otherwise, he’s been the portrait of durability, averaging more than 192 innings per season from 2013 to ’19, with his lowest total being 171 in that last year. That durability would be welcome in Los Angeles, which has been notoriously unable to keep pitchers on the mound: Since 2017, just two Angels starters have eclipsed 150 innings in a season.

Being able to pile up innings is a valuable trait by itself, but there is more to Quintana than quantity. In the middle of the last decade, he was sneakily one of the best pitchers in baseball, with his 18.2 WAR from 2014 to ’17 ranking sixth in that span. It took a bit for people to take notice of him, though, because the White Sox teams he pitched for didn’t win many games, and because he was overshadowed in his own rotation by Chris Sale. Since writers and analysts love to talk about which guys they supposedly aren’t talking about enough, Quintana eventually became a staple of columns decrying his underappreciation. By the time the White Sox traded him to the Cubs in 2017, Jeff Sullivan theorized in this space that, to whatever degree Quintana actually was underrated, he would cease to be if he excelled while pitching for a pennant chaser.

Not much has gone according to plan for the Cubs since then, though. The team’s young core never made it back to the World Series, and the general manager, skipper, and a lengthy list of key players have left the organization. The prospects they traded to sustain a contender during those years, meanwhile, have blossomed in their new organizations, including Eloy Jiménez and, to a lesser extent, Dylan Cease, two of the players the Cubs exchanged for Quintana. Jiménez is already terrorizing pitchers in the majors, and Cease still has plenty of potential in his arm. It might have been easier for Cubs fans if Quintana were simultaneously earning Cy Young votes and making All-Star teams, but he did neither of those things, and by falling short of those lofty expectations, his acquisition gets labeled as a historically bad move for the franchise.

The reality, though, is that Quintana was still pretty good during his time on the North Side. He was the Cubs’ best pitcher over the remainder of the 2017 season, and though the following year was his worst as a major leaguer, he still managed a 4.03 ERA, 4.43 FIP and 1.7 WAR. His 2019 season looked more like his White Sox days, as he posted 3.5 WAR, a 3.80 FIP and a 4.68 ERA, the latter of which was hurt by his left-on-base rate being nearly nine points lower than his career average. Last year was a lost one for Quintana, but as disappointed as some Cubs fans may be in his tenure with the club, his numbers haven’t deteriorated over the years the way some would think.

Quintana was regarded as a model of consistency with the White Sox, and those days aren’t over. He still succeeds with the same general mix of pitches he always has, and his velocity is steady.

Yet Quintana’s contract with the Angels suggests skepticism within the industry. He got the same deal as Robbie Ray, who is coming off a 6.50 FIP in 51.2 innings last year, and fell a few million short of Corey Kluber, Drew Smyly and Mike Minor. Those pitchers arguably possess greater upside, but it’s still surprising to see his durability and consistency not get him a larger reward. In his Top 50 Free Agents list, Craig Edwards suggested one year and $11 million for him, while the crowdsource median handed him two years and $20 million. The vast majority of free agents have been able to beat their projections this winter, some by a lot, but Quintana fell well short.

The beneficiary of that is Los Angeles, which is perpetually in search of quality pitching help. Angels starters had the second-worst ERA in baseball in 2020 after missing out on the Gerrit Cole sweepstakes last winter and getting only five outs out of Shohei Ohtani before he was shut down for the year. Dylan Bundy proved to be a good pick-up from Baltimore, and Griffin Canning and Andrew Heaney put together solid seasons, but others like Julio Teheran and Patrick Sandoval struggled badly at the back of the rotation.

Quintana will slot in somewhere in the middle of what manager Joe Maddon says will be a six-man rotation in 2021, and his performance could hinge on which direction the Angels’ defense tilts behind him. In 2019, Statcast’s Outs Above Average metric ranked Los Angeles fifth in baseball. Last year, it was dead last. The infield combination of David Fletcher at second, Anthony Rendon at third and newly-acquired José Iglesias at shortstop has the potential to be very good, but the outfield is less certain. Justin Upton is on old legs, Mike Trout’s defense can fluctuate wildly from year to year, and neither Jo Adell nor Jared Walsh look like good fielders in right. Quintana can be quite successful in Los Angeles, but his style of pitching will put some extra responsibility for his numbers in the hands of an uneven group of fielders.

Even if the Angels can get vintage Quintana, they could still have trouble reaching the playoffs if he’s the last starter they add this winter. Trevor Bauer is the most obvious fit here, since he’s far and away the best pitcher available in free agency. But if he’s outside their intended price range, the team could still try to use the trade market to add to the top of its rotation, the way it did with Bundy a year ago. I think Quintana is still better than he’s getting credit for, and better than this contract would indicate. But like in Chicago, the problems in Los Angeles are too big for him to solve by himself.

The last time he was a free agent — and one of the top free agents in the game, at that — Jon Lester struck gold, and so did the Cubs, who won their first championship in 108 years in the second season of his six-year, $155 million deal. This time around, the stakes are much lower. On the heels of a disappointing 2020 campaign, Lester didn’t even crack our Top 50 Free Agents list, but per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, he’s leaving Chicago to take a one-year, $5 million contract with the Nationals.

The exact terms and structure of the deal have not been officially announced, though Passan also reported that it includes a mutual option for 2022 for an as-yet-undisclosed amount. USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that the deal actually pays Lester just $2 million in salary for 2021, with $3 million in deferred money due in 2023. The Cubs have already paid Lester a $10 million buyout on his $25 million mutual option for 2021.

Lester, who turned 37 on January 7, is a nine-time postseason participant, six-time All-Star and three-time World Series champion with 193 career wins and 2,397 career strikeouts, but he’s coming off the worst of his 15 major league seasons. Though he went to the post 12 times and ran his streak to making an essentially full complement of starts for the 13th straight year, he was cuffed for a 5.16 ERA (116 ERA-) and a 5.15 FIP while striking out just 15.8% of the hitters he faced, the third-lowest mark of any qualifying pitcher. His drop of nearly six percentage points relative to 2019 was the fourth-largest among the 22 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title in both seasons:

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A day after signing Tyler Chatwood to solidify their options out of the bullpen, the Toronto Blue Jays made a much bigger splash by signing Kirby Yates to a one-year contract worth $5.5 million and an additional $4.5 million in potential performance bonuses. Yates’ addition may have been overshadowed just a few hours later by the massive contract Toronto signed with George Springer, but adding Yates to the bullpen has the potential to make a significant upgrade to a team weakness. Between 2018 and 2019, Yates was the best reliever in baseball. He posted a 1.67 ERA backed by a 1.93 FIP. He was the only qualified reliever during that two-year span to have a FIP below two, he accumulated a league-leading 5.2 wins, and racked up 53 saves as the Padres’ closer.

Unfortunately, bone chips in his right elbow limited him to six appearances and just 4 1/3 innings in 2020. The uncertainty surrounding his health paired with his advanced age — he’ll turn 34 in March — explains why his deal seems like a bargain for a pitcher who was just recently one of the game’s premiere relievers. His $5.5 million guarantee falls short of the $8 million average annual value our readers estimated as part of our top 50 free agent exercise, but it’s right around what Craig Edwards thought, though with one less year on the deal. Still, after his outstanding 2019, this one-year pact has to be seen as a bit of a let down for Yates.

Yates was positive after undergoing his arthroscopic surgery. “Everything went really smooth. Everything was very positive,” he told the media in August. It’s likely that Yates’ elbow issues are behind him now that he’s recovered from his surgery. Regaining the level of success he enjoyed during that magnificent two-year span may prove more difficult, but he still has the pitches to be an outstanding reliever for the Jays. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the big puzzle pieces of this offseason fell firmly into place Tuesday night as the Toronto Blue Jays came to terms on a six-year, $150 million contract with free agent outfielder George Springer. Springer, our second-ranked free agent overall, is coming off a .259/.359/.540, 1.9 WAR season in the abbreviated 2020, enough to make him a highly desired player despite the fact that he’ll turn 32 at the end of the 2021 season.

It seems almost like yesterday when I was fielding questions in my chat about whether Springer was a highly touted prospect-turned-bust after a rough first two weeks in the majors that featured a sub-.500 OPS and strikeouts in a third of his plate appearances. In fact, my standard, curt “April” reply originated in response to the initial panic caused by his slow debut. As one would expect from a player with his pedigree, April showers brought May power, and by the end of his second month in the bigs, Springer’s seasonal OPS was up to a much healthier mark in the mid-.800s. His OPS stayed at or above .800 until he was finally stopped in July due to a quad injury that cost him the rest of the 2014 season.

That was pretty much the last thing that stopped him. Starting in 2015, his first full season, Springer hit .274/.363/.494 and 154 homers and 24.7 WAR for the Astros. That’s not even counting his playoff appearances, another half-season of the highest-leverage baseball you can find, where Springer flourished, hitting .269/.349/.546 over those 63 postseason games. His 19 postseason home runs are currently tied for fourth in major league history, though admittedly, there are a lot more playoff games now than when Ted Williams played. All told, Springer’s performance has easily put him in the top 10 among outfielders in recent years. Read the rest of this entry »

The thing about walking 95 batters in 103.2 innings is that it sticks with you. That’s what Tyler Chatwood did in 2018, the first season of his three-year, $38 million contract with the Cubs. While never known for his command, he’d never approached that degree of wildness before that season, and he hasn’t since. In fact, he’s often been pretty good: Over his last two seasons, his ERA- and FIP- both stand at 92, and there are signs that he is getting better. But two years isn’t a lot of time to distance yourself from walking nearly a batter an inning for a full season, especially since Chatwood has also dealt with injury woes. The increased questions about his control and health meant that his second foray into free agency couldn’t get him a tenth of the guaranteed money his first one did, as he signed a one-year, $3 million deal with the Blue Jays on Monday. The actual talent in his arm, however, could prove to be worth much more.

Chatwood’s contract includes incentives that could push its total value to $5.5 million, though the specifics of those incentives haven’t been reported. An educated guess would assume they are based on his innings. As for his role, Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi reported that Chatwood is expected to be used out of the bullpen, as Toronto already has a starting rotation in place consisting of Hyun Jin Ryu, Robbie Ray, Tanner Roark, Ross Stripling and Nate Pearson. Because he’s been a starter for most of his career, Chatwood would probably be first in line to replace one of those five if injuries or ineffectiveness sideline them. If the incentives are innings-based, that essentially turns this into two separate deals — $3 million if he is mostly a reliever, and almost double that if he’s mostly a starter.

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The Angels added some catching depth over the weekend, signing Kurt Suzuki to a one-year contract worth $1.5 million. This will be the 15th season of Suzuki’s career, his longevity the result of an unusually late offensive peak in his mid-30s that has largely compensated for his defensive shortcomings. In 129 plate appearances in 2020, Suzuki hit .270/.349/.396, a respectable triple-slash but also amounting to his lowest wRC+ since 2016, his final season with the Twins.

As I showed through projections last week, the Angels look like they’re in that zone where each additional win or loss has a larger-than-average effect on a team’s playoff destiny. Add in the general desire for a team with a $180 million luxury tax number — more than half from just four players — not to have that payroll go to waste, and you have a formula for being aggressive in adding plausible Plans B to the roster. And really, $1.5 million is just about peanuts, no matter how MLB will suggest otherwise.

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