This winter’s free agent class was once full of starting pitching. The offseason began with starting pitchers representing 10 of the top 20 free agents overall, and 21 of FanGraphs’ Top 50 Free Agents. After Dallas Keuchel signed with Chicago White Sox, Hyun-Jin Ryu, 40-year-old Rich Hill, and Homer Bailey were the only ranked starters remaining, and only Ryu represented a good bet for production next season. With many teams still in need of reinforcements for their rotations, competition for the lefty’s services was likely strong. Among potential contenders, the Twins and Angels presented the greatest need for a starter, but it was the Blue Jays who surprised and reached agreement on a four-year deal worth $80 million, per Jeff Passan.

Ryu will turn 33 years old in March, so the end of this contract will take him through his age-36 season. He’s got a complicated injury history (he hit the injured list again for a short time last season), but a strong 2019 combined with his status as the last man standing on the free agent market allowed him to far exceed the $48 million crowdsource median ($59 million average), as well as Kiley McDaniel’s $32 million estimate. In Ryu’s free agent capsule, Jay Jaffe noted the factors working in the left-hander’s favor, as well as those working against him, as he headed into free agency:

After being limited to 15 starts in 2018 due to a severe groin strain, the portly port-sider pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title for the first time since his 2013 rookie campaign. He didn’t just qualify, he led the NL with a 2.32 mark despite fading late. Through July, he posted a 1.53 ERA and 2.85 FIP, but that ballooned to 4.60 and 3.83 over the final two months, with a 10-day IL stint for neck soreness thrown in. Ryu’s success isn’t quite as enigmatic or unorthodox as his process, which includes rarely throwing bullpens between starts. Via a five-pitch arsenal, with his changeup the real star, he’s exceptional at limiting hard contact; his average exit velocity of 85.3 mph ranked in the 96th percentile, his .282 xwOBA in the 81st. His strikeout rate was a modest 22.5%, but he walked an NL-low 3.3%, so his 19.2% K-BB% ranked 12th, and his 3.10 FIP fourth. After accepting a qualifying offer last fall, he’s well-positioned for a multi-year deal despite the questions about his durability.

Read the rest of this entry »

After the last couple of winters in which seemingly fine candidates for substantial multi-year deals were forced to settle for one-year contracts, this offseason has seen those same players finally land the kind of commitments they always seemed deserving of. Mike Moustakas signed a four-year, $64-million deal with the Reds after signing back-to-back one-year deals in Kansas City and Milwaukee. Yasmani Grandal signed a four-year, $73-million contract with the White Sox after taking just a one-year deal with the Brewers the previous season. And after health concerns limited Josh Donaldson to a one-year deal a year ago, he seems poised to collect a hefty payday as the best remaining bat available on the market this winter.

On Saturday, another player previously abandoned by the market finally landed his own multi-year deal. The White Sox signed former Braves and Astros left-hander Dallas Keuchel, as first reported by ESPN’s Jeff Passan. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman was first to report the terms of the deal:

Keuchel to White Sox. 3/$55.5 with a vesting 4th year that could take to 4/$74.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 22, 2019

Keuchel, 31, was one of the longest hold-outs in free agency last year, as he and formidable closer Craig Kimbrel each waited until June 7 — two days after the conclusion of the amateur draft, when draft pick compensation was no longer attached to them — to sign a contract. While Kimbrel received three years and $43 million in his deal with the Cubs, Keuchel signed just a one-year, $13-million deal with the Braves. In Atlanta, he was part of a starting rotation that finished sixth in the National League in WAR while guiding the team to a second-straight NL East title before bowing out to the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS. Read the rest of this entry »

Since 2016, only one other team has lost more players to the Injured List than the Los Angeles Angels. They’ve cumulatively lost over 5,600 days to various injuries during the last four seasons, the second highest total in the majors behind the Padres. And a significant number of those injuries have decimated their pitching staff.

The pitchers listed above account for over 2,200 days lost to injury over the last four years, nearly 40% of the team’s cumulative total. And that doesn’t even take into account the relievers and other less established starters who also lost time to injuries, or Tyler Skaggs’ tragic passing earlier this year (the days listed above include his 2019 IL stint, not the season days following his death). The Angels’ trouble keeping their pitching staff healthy has been one of the major reasons they haven’t come close to sniffing the postseason since 2014 despite employing the best player in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Royals agreed to sign third baseman Maikel Franco to a one-year, $2.95 million contract with up to $1.05 million in incentives, according to reports on Thursday afternoon. Franco is expected to be the Royals’ everyday third baseman in 2020 and could remain in Kansas City through 2021, as he has a year of arbitration eligibility remaining.

Now 27, Franco was once one of the Phillies’ top prospects and among the top 100 prospects in baseball — Baseball America ranked him third in the system and 56th overall after the 2014 season. But he never reached his lofty potential in Philadelphia. He hit well out of the gate, posting a 129 wRC+ in 335 PA in 2015, but has been unable to repeat those results in the years since. He hit relatively well in 2018, producing both a 105 wRC+ and one of the best bat flips of the year:

Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers have reached a one-year deal with first baseman Justin Smoak, according to multiple reports Thursday morning. The former Blue Jay will receive $4 million for the 2020 season with a club option worth $5.5 million. The option comes with a $1 million buyout, guaranteeing Smoak will at least $5 million from his new deal.

Milwaukee opened the 2019 season with an infield of Jesús Aguilar, Mike Moustakas, Travis Shaw, and Orlando Arcia. Of that quartet, three are no longer in the organization. The fourth, Arcia, now seems ticketed for a utility role after failing, for the second straight season, to show any progress from his 2017 campaign. Milwaukee’s new middle infield of Keston Hiura (called up midseason) and Luis Urías (acquired from the Padres) are expected to anchor the key defensive positions for a decade, but the Brewers do not have equivalent talent ready to take over at first or third. Brice Turang and possibly Lucas Erceg may shake up the infield in coming seasons, but neither will help in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last week or so, several players who had been playing pro ball in Korea or Japan (some originally from those countries, others former big leaguers kicking back to the States) have signed contracts with major league clubs. I had notes on several of them in our Top 50 Free Agents post, but wanted to talk about them at greater length now that we know their employers and the details of their contracts.

LF Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, Tampa Bay Rays
(Two years, $12 million, $2.4 million posting fee)

Tsutsugo’s deal came in a bit beneath what Kiley predicted on the Top 50 Free Agents post (Kiley had two years at $8 million per), where we ranked him No. 42 in the class, but multiple public reports have confirmed that Tsutsugo had more lucrative offers from other teams and chose to sign with Tampa Bay because of comfort with the org.

In addition to regular DH duty, Tsutsugo seems like an obvious platoon partner for Hunter Renfroe in one of the two corner outfield spots. The Rays have indicated he’ll see some time at third and first base, positions he hasn’t played regularly since 2014, and the notes I have from pro/international scouts and executives indicate he’s not athletically capable of playing there, though there’s no harm in seeing whether or not that’s true during spring training. Yandy Díaz isn’t good at the hot corner (he used to be, but he’s just too big and stiff now), but still played third situationally, so perhaps Tsutsugo can be hidden there, even if it’s for a few innings at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time Eric Sogard was on the Brewers, he was bad. Not just run of the mill bad, but really bad! He hit .134/.241/.165 in 113 plate appearances for them in 2018, good for a 14 wRC+. That was all the team needed to see to send him to Triple-A Colorado Springs — where he hit .225/.297/.270 at altitude. So it was hardly surprising when they parted ways, with Milwaukee opening up playing time for their packed infield and Sogard seeking an easier path to the majors in Toronto.

What a difference a year makes. Sogard was excellent in 2019 over 442 plate appearances with the Blue Jays and the Rays. He hit 13 home runs, more than he’d previously hit in his 1800 career plate appearances. He slashed his strikeout rate, put a few more balls in the air, and was handsomely rewarded; not only were the homers a career high, but he hit 23 doubles and two triples as well, leading to easily his best single-season production. A .316 BABIP didn’t hurt, either — in all, he produced a 115 wRC+ on the year.

There were reasons to be skeptical, of course. Those home runs were largely of the “hey, that got out?” variety. The average home run in baseball last year was hit at 103.5 mph. Sogard’s baker’s dozen dingers averaged 96.7 mph. If you’re more of an xwOBA person, combining angle and speed, his home runs had an expected wOBA of .701. The league average was a robust 1.359, and among players with five or more home runs, only Sandy León had worse expected results on homers.

In fact, if you want to be skeptical, you could say that Sogard didn’t even have a particularly impressive 2019 despite the surface numbers. His overall wOBA of .346 was excellent, but it vastly outstripped his xwOBA of .307, driven largely by his home run luck. None of this is surprising or hard to tease out from watching him play; he simply doesn’t hit the ball that hard, and even though lots of players ran into some extra home runs in 2019, Sogard really ran into some extra home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Just a few years ago, Wade Miley was a free agent without many teams interested in his services. He had struggled through two seasons in Seattle and Baltimore, compiling an ugly 5.48 ERA and a 4.85 FIP across more than 300 innings in 2016 and 2017. He eventually signed a minor-league contract with Milwaukee in February of 2018 and completely reinvented himself under the tutelage of Derek Johnson, the Brewers pitching coach at the time. Across 16 starts, he cut his ERA in half and dropped his FIP to 3.59. After a season in Houston, Miley will reunite with Johnson, now the pitching coach for the Reds. It’s a two-year, $15 million pact with a $10 million club option for 2022 and a few performance bonuses. Miley ranked 32nd on our Top 50 Free Agents list, with Kiley McDaniel expecting a one-year, $9 million deal; the crowd came much closer to his actual contract, projecting two years and $16 million.

The biggest change Miley made with the Brewers was scraping his slow, looping slider for a hard cutter. He actually made the change at the nadir of his season in Baltimore back in 2017, but Johnson helped him hone the pitch and encouraged him to make it a major part of his repertoire. In a 2018 interview with Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Miley described the moment he decided to make the change to his repertoire:

“Just made it up in the middle of the game [on July 25, 2017]. Swear to God. I was getting crushed a little bit. Welington Castillo was catching and I just said, ‘Hey, look, when (Evan) Longoria comes back up to bat, I’m throwing all cutters.’ He just kind of looked at me and laughed. So we did, struck him out and then he grounded out his next at-bat. So I kind of ran with it.”

Read the rest of this entry »

If one organization is repeatedly making headlines during the months of October, November, and December, it’s generally a safe assumption that there is a positive reason for that. Those are the months in which teams are either winning titles, adding major talent, or both. The reasons the Houston Astros have stayed in the news, however, have been consistently terrible. Their assistant GM belittled female reporters. The players cheated. Their world-beating ace left to join the their ALCS opponent. And they’ve considered trading their franchise shortstop in an effort to — stop me if you’ve heard this before — gain payroll flexibility. Since the offseason began, there’s been a lot to talk about when it comes to the Astros, but most of it had nothing to do with actual roster moves that usually get a team attention in the winter.

On Monday, Houston finally changed that. The Astros signed 35-year-old right-hander Joe Smith to a two-year, $8-million contract, giving him a little more than half of the deal they gave him this time two years ago. It’s just the second contract handed out by the team this winter, the other being a six-figure commitment to backup catcher Dustin Garneau. Smith, a 13-year veteran, has pitched for Houston since signing that two-year, $15-million contract with them before the 2018 season. He’s one of four relievers to reach free agency after finishing 2019 with the Astros, along with Will Harris, Collin McHugh, and Hector Rondon. Read the rest of this entry »

The Minnesota Twins have re-signed soon-to-be 37-year-old reliever Sergio Romo to a one-year deal worth $5 million, as first reported by Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com. His contract includes an option for 2021, and allows him to earn up to $10 million total. You may feel like you’ve read this a hundred times this winter, but Romo is the latest free agent to sign for more money than our crowdsourcing forecast projected ($3 million in this case).

The right-hander pitched well for the Twins last year after a midseason trade brought him to Minneapolis. In 27 games, he threw 22.2 innings, posting a 3.18 ERA (146 ERA+) and a 3.35 FIP, along with tidy strikeout and walk totals. He took over as the eighth-inning guy pretty much as soon as he reached town, and earned a couple of saves as well.

A 12-year veteran, Romo is one of the greybeards now. Among active relievers, his 709 games played are the fifth most in baseball (Francisco Rodriguez, who played in 948, is listed as active on Baseball Reference, though he hasn’t appeared in the majors since 2017) and only Tyler Clippard and Fernando Rodney were called upon more often in the 2010s. As you’d expect, he’s been consistently durable throughout his 12-year career, pitching in 60-plus games in eight of the last 10 years. He hasn’t had a serious injury since 2009. Read the rest of this entry »