The Phillies made the first major splash of the offseason by signing Jonathan Papelbon to a borderline absurd four-year, $50 million contract. The market was clearly flush with closers, or relievers capable of closing, and the Phillies paid a max type of contract for a 65-inning pitcher. Financial wiggle room was a concern before the move and the opportunity costs both realized and hypothetical — bidding farewell to homegrown talent Ryan Madson and perhaps prohibiting themselves from making more important moves elsewhere, respectively — suggested it was a poor move.

However, even without the Phillies context, signing any closer for that much money, over that many guaranteed years, is foolish. Relief pitchers are statistically fickle and don’t really offer a decreased level of injury risk. Over such a small sample of innings, it’s easy to temporarily mask true talent levels, especially when considering the general difficulty in evaluating relievers. By signing Papelbon to such a large deal that early in the offseason, the Phillies explicitly acknowledged their view that he was, by far, the best available option, and one worth spending big bucks on.

In this particular offseason, with so many viable closing options available, nobody is worth spending much money on since the differences between the closers are mostly nominal. The fact that so few closers were signed early in the offseason — besides Papelbon, both Joe Nathan and Jonathan Broxton signed lower-risk deals — indicates that teams are growing wary of doling out big bucks to pitchers occupying an overstated role. In the context of the current offseason, many teams are waiting to sign a closer, allowing the market to settle in order to ink one to a team-friendly deal.

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Justin Verlander won the Cy Young and the MVP award after a tremendous 2011 season. Roy Halladay — who posted similar numbers — went home with nothing. Whether or not you agreed with Verlander’s selection as the MVP, he was considered a strong candidate for the award. Halladay couldn’t even beat out Clayton Kershaw for the NL Cy Young, making his chances to win the NL MVP miniscule at best. A glance at the award results might lead one to conclude that Verlander was a vastly superior pitcher last season. The truth is, Halladay was just as good — if not better.

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Obviously it is the horse talking.

News broke Monday night that the Texas Rangers signed once-great, maybe even possibly still-great, reliever Joe Nathan to a 2-year contract for $7M a year, plus a $9M option.

FUN FACT: Over the last two years, Joe Nathan and I have the exact same WAR — we both have been worth precisely 0.0 wins! Which makes us ask: Why did the Rangers choose Nathan?

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Clayton Kershaw received 27 of the 32 first place votes in the 2011 NL Cy Young Award balloting en route to his first major league award. He beat out all three of the Phillies horses — Roy Halladay finished second, with Cliff Lee third and Cole Hamels fifth — and Ian Kennedy to officially go down in the book as the best the National League had to offer this past season. But that isn’t necessarily true, and his case isn’t as shut and dry as all those first place votes make it seem.

It’s plausible to suggest that Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee were, at worst, Kershaw’s equals, and more likely than that his superiors. His winning the award is in no way a mockery, like it was when Bartolo Colon beat Johan in 2005, but it does feel like somewhat of a step back in the voting process. After Felix Hernandez won his award it sure seemed the voting body grasped that team context is important when evaluating players.

His wins total wasn’t up to par with traditional candidates, but voters understood that the Mariners offense was out of Felix’s control. He wasn’t penalized for perceived poor performance in a common performance indicator.

In the case of Kershaw v. Halladay v. Lee, a similar understanding wasn’t extended to strength of schedule and park effects. Kershaw deserves hearty congratulations, but his Cy Young Award win again illustrates the importance and utility of normalizing numbers. When adjusted numbers enter the fray, Lee emerges as a very viable candidate. Halladay steps forward as the best pitcher in the league, and by a long-shot. In our staff awards ballot, I did vote for Kershaw, but my stance has since changed. No matter how one chooses to slice it — unless they like slicing “it” incorrectly — Halladay was the best pitcher in the senior circuit this past season.

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Clayton Kershaw has been one of the most hyped up young pitchers in the league since he made his debut as a 20-year-old in 2008. In 2011, he made that next step toward becoming one of the league’s true aces. With 21 victories, 248 strikeouts, a stellar 62 ERA-, a 2.47 FIP, 6.8 WAR — whichever way you slice it, Kershaw was an elite pitcher in 2011 and truly deserving of recognition, regardless of age. The fact that he has accomplished so much by age 23 is phenomenal.

At age 23, Roy Halladay was setting the MLB record for the highest ERA in a season, posting a 10.64 ERA in 67.2 innings with the Toronto Blue Jays. So much has changed since then, of course, with Halladay bringing in two Cy Young Awards over the past 10 years. This season marks Halladay’s second runner-up finish. If not for Kershaw taking home the pitching Triple Crown (leading in wins, strikeouts, and ERA), one could have imagined a closer vote.

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Only a few days ago, it seemed as though the Phillies would be going into the 2012 season with the bullpen set just as in 2011: with Ryan Madson as closer. The rumored four-year, $44 million dollar deal between Madson and the Phillies blew up nearly as soon as it was “confirmed.” Less than a week later, the Phillies have reached an agreement with a new closer. According to Jim Salisbury of Comcast Sports Philadelphia, Jonathan Papelbon will be the Phillies new closer after inking a four-year, $50 million contract on Friday. The deal also includes a $10 million vesting option for a fifth year.

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Jayson Stark reported Thursday that the Phillies are kicking the tires on Grady Sizemore. The team also has interest in former Twins outfielder Jason Kubel. The news came on the heels of the Ryan Madson–Jonathan Papelbon hoopla and the Phillies’ meeting with another former Twins player, Michael Cuddyer.

The list of Philadelphia’s targets changes daily, but Kubel and Sizemore pique interest for various reasons. Sizemore is notable from a risk-versus-reward standpoint, since the Phillies’ current left fielder is John Mayberry — who works better as the right-handed half of a platoon; the team has clearly stated it prefers that Dom Brown remains in Triple A for the season. Kubel will be an interesting case study in terms of how teams value his breakout/outlying 2009 performance. Will he get paid handsomely, despite consecutive mediocre seasons?

Obviously, both players are risky for different reasons.

Sizemore, though, represents a good risk, since the potential reward is substantial. With Kubel, the likeliest scenario has a team paying $6 million to $7 million per year for a .335 wOBA, poor defense and below-average base-running.

In both cases, a heck of a lot has to work out to justify a team’s investment.

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“The game speeds up on Madson sometimes. He doesn’t get to the same comfort level. There’s a little anxiety in there. The ninth inning is a little different than the eighth. There’s been a lot of solid eighth-inning guys who just haven’t been able to pitch the ninth, then one day they learn how to do it. Ryan Madson is Ryan Madson. What did he do, take a crash course in how to close or something?” – Phillies Pitching Coach Rich Dubee

Lost in the yearly hubub about whether relievers are overpaid, there’s the story of this reliever and his remarkable turnaround in the past year. Ryan Madson, specifically, has seen his stature in Philadelphia change radically, quickly. Perhaps there’s no easier way of pointing this out then providing a date for the above quote: March 29, 2011.

Over the course of this year he changed some minds, but it’s not as simple as a few successful saves in a row. There’s also been some actual underlying change in his game. Exploring the last few years might help us understand Madson better. How did he finally catch his penguin — the coveted ‘Proven Closer’ mantel?

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News broke late Tuesday that the Philadelphia Phillies were on the verge of signing Ryan Madson to a 4-year year/$44 million deal. By Wednesday, there was news that the deal was “waiting approval” by Phillies ownership or “only a deal in principle” or “falling apart.”

However this plays out, the idea of a 4-year/$44 million deal for a top-line closer is likely to set the standard against which other closer deals are negotiated this winter. We’re looking at you, Jonathan Papelbon.

What should we make of a possible 4-year/$44 million deal for a pitcher like Ryan Madson?  Several things.

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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