Last week, as part of a three-team trade, the Indians sent Edwin Encarnacion to the Mariners, and the Mariners sent Carlos Santana to the Indians. Now, that part of the trade was at least partially motivated by money, but both Encarnacion and Santana remain players who could and should have roles on competitive ballclubs. Encarnacion is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 115 wRC+. Santana is a 1B/DH in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 109 wRC+. They were above-average hitters, if also diminished from their peaks.

On Tuesday, the Cubs signed veteran utility guy Daniel Descalso for two years and $5 million. Descalso is a versatile sort in his 30s, and he’s coming off a 111 wRC+. And as a matter of fact, it should be even higher, since Descalso played for the Diamondbacks, and our park factors haven’t yet accounted for their newly-installed humidor that turned Chase Field into a more neutral hitting environment. You’re probably not used to having to think about Daniel Descalso, but he’s quietly breathed new life into his career.

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Last year, in all of baseball, the lowest team strikeout rate was 18.7%, and it belonged to the Indians. This is considering only non-pitchers, so as to put the National League on the same level as the American League. Projections, as you know, are by their very nature conservative. And now the 2019 Astros project for a team strikeout rate of 18.4%.

Last year, in all of baseball, the highest team wRC+ was 118, and it belonged to the Dodgers. The second-highest team wRC+ was 111, and it belonged to three different ballclubs. This is considering only non-pitchers, so as to put the NL on the same level as the AL. Projections, as you know, are by their very nature conservative. And now the 2019 Astros project for a team wRC+ of 115.

This is where the Astros stand after having come to a two-year agreement with free-agent Michael Brantley, worth $32 million. It’s not yet official-official, and I guess there’s some chance it all blows up, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. Brantley is good, and he’ll be the Astros’ newest regular.

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The Pirates have made official a move that first popped up last week. I’d wanted to write something about their low-cost pickup of free-agent Jordan Lyles, but it was a low priority, and it got lost in the chaos of being in attendance at the winter meetings. This post, then, is a little delayed, but something that’s happened in the meanwhile is that the Dodgers signed Joe Kelly for three years and $25 million. The Pirates signed Lyles for one year and $2.05 million. This seems like a good job by the Pirates.

Based on some early indications, the free-agent market hasn’t cratered, and it might even be a bit healthier than it was a year ago. Kelly got paid over three years. Jeurys Familia got paid over three years. Andrew McCutchen got paid over three years. Lance Lynn got paid over three years. There’s money out there, and there’s interest in pitchers, and that’s the context in which the Pirates made this Lyles acquisition. I know that Lyles isn’t likely to win the Cy Young, and I know the Pirates aren’t likely to win the World Series, but I’d at least like to dedicate a few paragraphs to Lyles’ quiet emergence in 2018. This is a guy who’s still only 28 years old.

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Earlier this month, Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen made the first big splash of his tenure with a blockbuster trade geared towards contending in 2019, bringing Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz from Seattle in exchange for two former first-round picks and some expensive ballast. After considering a variety of trade scenarios involving Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto, Van Wagenen went a more conservative route to fill one of the team’s glaring needs, signing free agent Wilson Ramos to a two-year, $19 million deal with a club option for 2021. It’s an appropriate bit of restraint that nonetheless provides a solid upgrade.

The 31-year-old Ramos split his 2018 season between the Rays (78 games) and Phillies (33 games), hitting .306/.358/.487 with 15 homers. His 131 wRC+ was tops among catchers, and his 2.4 WAR fifth. He earned All-Star honors for the second time in three seasons but missed the game itself due to a left hamstring strain that sidelined him for a month. During his time on the disabled list, he was traded to Philadelphia for a player to be named later or cash on July 31.

The big knock on Ramos is that he’s had a hard time staying healthy during his nine-year major league career. The 2015 and 2016 seasons are the only ones in the past seven years in which he’s avoided the DL. He’s had three surgeries (two in 2012, one in 2017) to repair the meniscus and ACL in his right knee, served three stints for hamstring strains (2013 and 2014 being the others), and suffered a foul tip-induced fractured hamate that required surgery in his left wrist in 2014. He’s averaged just 92 games a year since arriving for good in the majors in 2011.

The hamate fracture was a fluke injury, but the lower-body woes are of a concern for a catcher who lists at 245 pounds. In our Top 50 Free Agents rankings, Ramos was 17th, nine spots lower than fellow free agent catcher Yasmani Grandal, in part due to his size and durability issues. While he’s been the slightly better hitter of the pair over the past three seasons, with a 120 wRC+ to Grandal’s 116, he’s made 296 fewer plate appearances in that span, including 102 fewer in 2018. He’s also 15 months older, and nowhere near Grandal’s class as a defender. Baseball Prospectus’ pitch framing-inclusive metrics have Ramos 6.1 runs above average over the past three seasons but slightly in the red in both 2017 and 2018. By comparison, Grandal was 79 runs above average in that three-year span, including an MLB-best 15.7 above average in the framing department in 2018; by DRS, the three-year, framing-inclusive tally is -11 runs for Ramos, 39 for Grandal.

Thus you can understand why teams might prefer Grandal, though his postseason pitch-blocking woes might hurt the perception of him. Also working against Grandal is his attachment to a rejected qualifying offer for the Dodgers. Had the Mets signed him, they would have forfeited their second 2019 draft pick and $500,000 of international pool money.

The surprise is in Ramos’ price tag. The New York Times‘ James Wagner reported that Ramos will make $8.25 million in 2019 and $9.25 million in 2020. He’s got a $10 million club option for 2021, with a $1.5 million buyout for a total guarantee of $19 million. The salary is just over half of the $36 million (spread over three years) that both Kiley McDaniel and our crowdsource project estimated he would receive when we made up our free agent list. By comparison, the estimates for Grandal range from $39 million to $45 million for three years.

As for Realmuto, the Mets were reportedly very interested in him, but balked at the possibility of including major league talent such as Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, and/or Amed Rosario in exchange — to say nothing of a rumored three-way trade involving the Yankees that would also have required dealing Noah Syndergaard.

Now that they have Ramos, the key for the Mets is finding another catcher with whom to pair him. Between Kevin Plawecki, Devin Mesoraco, Tomas Nido, Jose Lobaton and Travis d’Arnaud, the team got just an 82 wRC+ offensive showing (.208/.297/.355) from its catchers in 2018, and a total of 0.7 WAR by our measures (0.8 via Baseball-Reference, and 1.5 WARP via Baseball Prospectus). Mesoraco and Lobaton are both free agents, while the going-on-30-year-old d’Arnaud, the best defender of the bunch (41.8 FRAA career, 11.4 FRAA in 2017) is coming off April 2018 Tommy John surgery and has a track record for health that would make Ramos blanch.

All told, our Depth Charts projections suggest that the signing of Ramos eyeballs as about a one-win upgrade over a Plawecki/d’Arnaud pairing. Given that the Mets now project as an 86-win team, this is exactly the type of move they should be making, one that significantly increases their odds of securing a playoff spot without compromising their longer-term resources. When was the last time anybody could say that about a move that the Mets made?

The Padres have been connected to big names like J.T. Realmuto, Noah Syndergaard, Nathan Eovaldi and even Bryce Harper, all of which suggests that after three straight seasons of 90-some losses and eight straight with records below .500, they’re ready to get out of the business of losing. So far, no dice on the marquee additions, and last winter’s big Eric Hosmer contract isn’t sitting so well, but on Friday, they did score something of a bargain, signing second baseman Ian Kinsler to two-year deal worth $8 million, with a club option of unspecified value also included, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. The implication is that Kinsler’s days as an everyday player are numbered, and that he’s ready instead for that sage veteran mentor/utility role, à la Chase Utley with the Dodgers.

(Or maybe he just wants to knock back some quality craft beers and fish tacos. San Diego is great for that, but perhaps I’m just projecting.)

The 36-year-old Kinsler was last seen making a mess of things in the World Series, going 1-for-10 for the Red Sox and most notably committing base running and fielding gaffes in the epic, 18-inning Game 3. As pinch-runner for J.D. Martinez, he was thrown out at home plate on the back end of an inning-ending double play in the 10th, and then, after the Red Sox had taken the lead in the top of the 13th, he threw away a Yasiel Puig grounder that allowed the tying run to score. Not great. The Red Sox lost that game, and while they won the Series, Kinsler didn’t make another appearance.

Aside from winning that elusive championship ring, it really wasn’t a season to write home about for Kinsler. After being traded from the Tigers to the Angels last December 13 (for minor leaguers Wilkel Hernandez and Troy Montgomery), he scuffled, and once the Angels fell out of contention, he was dealt again on July 30, this time to Boston, in exchange for relievers Ty Buttrey and Williams Jerez. He had started the year so slowly that in June I explored whether he was cooked, though his bat perked up long enough for him to be of interest to a Dustin Pedroia-less Boston team that featured Eduardo Nunez and Brock Holt scraping by with replacement-level production. It must have been contagious, because Kinsler went from hitting .239/.304/.406 (97 wRC+) with 2.2 WAR in 391 PA with the Halos to .242/.294/.311 (62 wRC+) with 0.0 WAR in 143 PA with the Sox. The saving grace of his season was his defense; he was 9.4 runs above average according to UZR, 10 above average via DRS, and over the past two years, he’s been +17.5 and +16 by those two metrics while batting just .238/.308/.397 for a 90 wRC+ but 4.9 WAR. That’s still an above-average player, if not a terribly sexy one.

The bat is worrisome, though. According to Baseball Savant, Kinsler’s 85.3 mph average exit velocity ranked in the bottom 8% of the league, and his xwOBACON (expected wOBA on contact) plummeted from .350 in 2017 to .303 in 2018. As I noted in June, his downturn owes largely to two major problems: first, he’s struggled against four-seam fastballs, particularly ones 95 mph or higher; and second, he’s stopped hitting lefties. Despite a career 135 wRC+ against heaters as a group, he’s been at 88 and 94 over the past two seasons, and as for the high-velo stuff, here’s an updated version of a table I made for the previous article:

The trend isn’t uniform, but it isn’t good. Neither is hitting .191/.236/.250 for a 33 wRC+ in 144 PA against lefties, especially when you’re a righty. That aspect of his performance may well have been a fluke, the flip side of his .278/.357/.539 (135 wRC+) line against southpaws in 129 PA in 2017. For his career, he has a fairly typical split (127 wRC+ against RHP, 101 against LHP), but over the two-year period, his 81 wRC+ against lefties is in the 24th percentile among righty swingers, which is worrisome.

Here’s the thing, though: the Padres got less than nothing out of their second basemen in 2018. Jose Pirela, Carlos Asuaje, Cory Spangenberg and three other guys combined for a 78 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR at the spot. Spangenberg was released in November, and Asuaje was just claimed off waivers by the Rangers, so they’re out of the picture. Luis Urias, who hit .208/.264/.354 in 53 PA for the Pad squad, is the future, a 55 FV prospect who is currently number three on the Padres list (behind shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr and lefty MacKenzie Gore) and number 21 overall. He’s just 21 years old, though, and while MLB.com’s A.J. Cassavell recently reported that he’s expected to open the season at the keystone, it would surprise nobody if he were to start the year back in Triple-A. Since Tatis is just 19 and hasn’t played above Double-A (and has just 102 games there overall), there’s talk that Urias could even start the year at shortstop, a position he’s continued to spot-start at as he’s moved up the ladder.

All of which is to say that Kinsler, a 13-year veteran with 47.7 WAR, four All-Star appearances, and a pair of Gold Gloves to his name, could be Urias’ double play partner, or his placeholder, or his backup/mentor, depending upon how things unfold. He might even get a chance to play third base in a utility role, if and when both Tatis and Urias are in the bigs. Maybe he’ll become such a natural in this capacity that the Padres will view him as a surrogate dad, as some of the Dodgers did with Utley. The Padres’ padre? Why not?

Considering that Kinsler was projected to produce 1.8 WAR in 490 PA — though now, it would be a surprise if he got that much playing time — and that in our free agent preview the estimates for his salary ran for $6-8 million for a single season, two years and $8 million seems quite reasonable for San Diego. His presence probably won’t change the course of the Padres’ 2019 season, but if he helps Urias adapt to the majors and fulfill his potential, it’s a small price to pay.

Last season, the relief market was the only aspect of free agency that moved quickly. Of the first 14 free agents to sign last winter among the Top 50 players available, eight were relief pitchers (nine if we count Mike Minor). All eight received similar contracts for two, sometimes three, seasons, and around $7 million to $10 million per year. In “deals that were announced at 2 AM the night before everyone at FanGraphs left the Winter Meetings and spent most of Thursday on airplanes,” we have two free agent reliever signings that meet the qualifications for that standard reliever contract.

Let’s address both Jeurys Familia and Joe Kelly’s new deals in turn. Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors swirled on Wednesday morning that the New York Yankees had reached an agreement to re-sign J.A. Happ, but that deal was walked back as the two teams couldn’t quite come together. As the parties kept getting closer, alternatives continued to come off the board, with Charlie Morton signing with the Rays and Lance Lynn headed to Texas. All of this was set against the backdrop of a warmer-than-expected market for starting pitching, which had already seen Patrick Corbin get a sixth year on his deal with the Nationals and Nate Eovaldi receive a guarantee of $68 million from the Red Sox. The cause of the holdup between Happ and the Yankees was likely the years of the contract, as Happ wanted three and the Yankees wanted to pay for two. The result the two sides seem to have come to is a two-year, $34 million contract with a $17 million option vesting for Happ if he reaches 27 starts or 165 innings in 2020, providing the Yankees with significant protection against potentially paying an ineffective 38-year-old. The deal has yet to be officially announced.

Happ returning to the Bronx wasn’t a foregone conclusion, as there appears to have been significant interest in the lefty, and for good reason. Over the last four years, Happ has been a consistently above-average pitcher, grabbing about three wins and 170 innings every year. In our free agent rankings, Eric Longenhagen discussed how Happ has been able to perform well through his mid-30s.

Greater use of a sinker to complement his changeup has facilitated his ascent from 1.0 WAR back-end starter to 3.0 WAR mid-rotation innings-eater. Happ’s size and length create discomfort for opposing lefties, and he has been able to dominate them (left-handed opponents slashed .171/.239/.248 against Happ last year) without a good breaking ball. Instead, Happ makes unusually frequent use of his fastball (throwing 73% of the time, roughly 20 points higher than the league-average mark for starters), which is firmer now than it was in his mid-20s.

Every team could use the three wins and 30 starts the Yankees can expect from Happ in 2019. The potential issue, though, isn’t so much next season as it is the ones that come after it. The Yankees didn’t want to guarantee that third year and that reticence is justified. The lefty turned 36 years old in October. A three-year contract would take him through his age-38 season. Over the last decade, only six pitchers have produced even four wins and 400 innings in their age-36 to age-38 seasons, with CC Sabathia likely to join that group in 2019. Here is how those pitchers, along with Happ, fared in their age-32 to age-35 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

As reported by Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan, the Angels have agreed to a one-year contract with free agent first baseman Justin Bour, pending the usual physical. Financial terms have not yet been disclosed.

The particulars of the deal are likely the least important part of the signing. While certain teams would no doubt accept the dare, it’s very difficult to fumble too badly on any one-year contract that doesn’t have enough absurdity to fill…uh…some kind of scientific vial or flask that can hold abstract ideas? Back to the drawing board with that one. In most situations, the money isn’t enough to matter in the big picture, and if it doesn’t work out, you don’t have to cancel it before next year like it’s some health magazine you subscribed to as part of a New Year’s resolution because you thought you were actually going to go to the gym.

Bour has seen his value plummet at a rate usually associated with a position player nearing 40 or a pitcher who has surgery for a mystery shoulder ailment. A year ago, he was coming off of a .289/.366/.536, 25 home run, 143 OPS+ season. Now that wasn’t over a full season’s play (an oblique injury cost him about a month of the season), but it was still enough for 2.4 WAR over 108 games for the Marlins. An average player has real value and Bour came with the feature most prized by baseball executives: he was cost-controlled.

After receiving $3.4 million (instead of the Marlins’ preferred $3.0 million) in arbitration, Bour looked to have at least some trade value, given that he could not become a free agent until after the 2020 season. First baseman, especially middling ones, are at a historical low point in terms of their value, but the Marlins would have likely received something for Bour had they traded him along with the entire outfield after the 2017 season.

2018 ended up being a more-or-less healthy season for Bour, but also one of many steps backwards. While he was more selective at the plate – swinging at fewer pitches, which resulted in a career-high 73 walks – he saw worse results when actually hitting the ball. Walks are nice and all, but one of the key benefits of plate discipline is to that on average you’re hitting more advantageous balls and, at least theoretically, doing more with those pitches. Bour’s exit velocity was the worst of his career; Statcast’s xSLG measure thought his profile should have only resulted in a .419 SLG, rather than his anemic .404. Nor does ZiPS provide any solace, seeing his hit profile as only deserving of a .281 BABIP versus his .270 actual (down from a .310 zBABIP in 2017 vs. his .322 actual).

Further complicating Bour’s value is the fact he has fairly steep platoon splits and only has a .220/.303/.335 slash in the majors against left-handed pitching. Philosophically, one would prefer an average player to have exploitable platoon splits in this matter, but in practice, it’s generally difficult to pull off a true first baseman platoon in an age of 13-man pitching staffs and in this case, the first baseman not having any positional flexibility otherwise.

But strangely enough, the Angels may be the best fit for Bour, assuming they could not land a better option. Albert Pujols is now a year past 600 homers (and unlikely to reach 700) and collected his 3000th hit. Now, the celebratory reasons for continuing to play him full-time are as weak as the performance-based ones. After number 3000, the Angels showed no real inclination to begin reducing Pujols’ playing time; he played in 117 of the team’s 133 games (all starts) by the time bone spurs ended his season.

With a new manager in Brad Ausmus, this could finally change. Even though I think the team should be at the point of simply releasing the future Hall of Famer, I’m not sure the team is actually there yet, and a time share in which Bour is the primary first baseman and Pujols plays against occasional tough lefties — even with me being far from convinced that this version of Pujols is any more valuable against southpaws — is better than simply letting Pujols have the job for yet another year. There’s a non-zero chance that Bour is just there to be a pinch-hitter for Pujols or Ohtani, but I can’t imagine he would sign this early in the offseason – at a time in his career where he still has a good shot at re-establishing some value – if he believed he would just be used as a pinch-hitter.

This Bouring little move won’t get the Angels to the playoffs, but it can cheaply shore up one of their weak spots in the lineup, and hopefully also demonstrate a real change in an organization that hasn’t always been as merciless at dealing with their weaknesses as they should have been. The Angels still have the cash after this move to get a difference-maker.

A year ago, Lance Lynn was coming off a 2017 during which he made 33 starts, pitched 186.1 innings, and put up a 3.43 ERA. He ended up taking a one-year, $12 million contract with the Twins. Coming into this winter, Lynn just finished making 29 starts, with 156.2 innings en route to a 4.77 ERA. In response, the Texas Rangers have agreed to a three year, $30 million deal with the right hander. TR Sullivan reported the sides were close and Mark Feinsand came through with the contract terms.

Lynn’s change in fortune may come as something of a surprise, but there were a number of factors working in his favor this winter that moved him toward a bigger deal. First, he was stuck with a qualifying offer last offseason, which still seems to limit potential suitors even as the penalty for teams signing has been reduced. Second, the free agent market a season ago, particularly for pitchers, was incredibly cold, with nearly all of the big pitchers not signing until February or later. This year, Patrick Corbin got the big money rolling; Nate Eovaldi soon followed. Charlie Morton also came off the board today, and there are rumors that JA Happ and the Yankees are close. There was decent depth in the starting market, but teams appear to be scooping up the decent pitchers early, making more of a market for Lynn.

The final factor in Lynn’s favor was his performance in 2018, which was better than the season before. As Dan Szymborksi noted in our assessment of the Top 50 Free Agents,

Unsurprisingly, Lance Lynn’s 4.77 ERA this past season more closely matched 2017’s 4.82 FIP than the 3.43 ERA he recorded that same year, amassed in large part due to the .244 BABIP that he, luck, and the Cardinal defense conspired to produce in 2017. But in one of those poetic twists of fate, his peripherals were actually considerably better in 2018, Lynn’s strikeout rate cresting the batter-per-inning mark for the first time in years and matched by a similar bump in velocity. I think that if a team lands him for Kiley’s two-year, $18 million estimate, they’ll actually be quite happy with the results.

The crowd was a little more generous than McDaniel, predicting a $27 million guarantee that still undershot Lynn’s deal. It’s possible Lynn’s lack of a spring training contributed to his slow start; after the first month of the season, he put up a very good 3.34 FIP and a solid 4.13 ERA. He was even better with the Yankees after the deadline trade, striking out 26% of batters while walking only 6%. With the exception of the 2016 season, which he missed due to Tommy John surgery, and his first season back in 2017, Lynn has been a consistent 3-plus win player and an innings eater. His offerings aren’t complicated, throwing a wide range of fastballs, but he’s been successful with that for most of his career.

Lynn is a fly ball pitcher, which could cause him some trouble with the Rangers, but if he’s anywhere close to the player he was with the Cardinals, $30 million over three seasons is going to be a bargain. If Lynn had signed a four-year deal for $42 million a year ago, that might have been a little under expectations, but fairly reasonable given the year he had. It took him two offseasons to get that guarantee, but taking a one-year deal last winter rather than a slightly higher guarantee for two seasons looks to have worked out for the righty. For a rebuilding Rangers team, Lynn might be a workhorse who lasts long enough to see their next window of contention, or he might be a trade chip over the next few years if he pitches like he did down the stretch last season.

Around this time last December, the Phillies reached a three-year agreement with free agent Carlos Santana. The contract included a fourth-year club option, and it was worth a total of $60 million. Santana was headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29 and 31, he’d been worth 8.2 WAR, with a wRC+ of 117. Because of the qualifying offer Santana had attached, the Phillies lost their second-round draft pick, along with half a million dollars in international bonus-pool money. The Phillies thought it was a great deal at the time. Santana turned into a salary dump.

Now, this time this December, the Phillies have reached a three-year agreement with free agent Andrew McCutchen. The contract includes a fourth-year club option, and it’s worth a total of $50 million. McCutchen is headed into his age-32 season, and between the ages of 29-31, he’s been worth 7.4 WAR, with a wRC+ of 116. There is no qualifying-offer penalty to consider here, as McCutchen was traded last summer. The Phillies presumably think this is a great deal at the time.

The parallels are spelled out right there. If you feel like being negative, you could accuse the Phillies of making the same mistake two years in a row. Yet for a variety of little reasons, McCutchen seems like a more suitable get. This isn’t a bargain — McCutchen’s getting paid real money. But how this can work out is more clear, as McCutchen returns to Pennsylvania.

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