Dan Szymborski has already laid out why Ozzie Albies’ recent extension with the Atlanta Braves is surprising, and a bargain for the team. He detailed the hundreds of millions of dollars Albies is potentially giving up by signing this contract. This post deals less with Albies’ future and more with his past. We can speculate on what Albies might do in his career and what he might be worth, but we don’t need to speculate about what he’s already done and what other players in similar situations have received in contract extensions.

Since 2014, nine players have signed contract extensions after accruing at least one year of service time and less than two. These were all players needing five full seasons to reach free agency, and each signed away at least one year of free agency based on a search of MLB Trade Rumors. Here’s the career WAR of each of those players when they signed that contract.

Albies compares favorably to the two best players on this list, Christian Yelich and Andrelton Simmons.

Now, here’s how each of these players did on their guarantees.

Yelich and Simmons got over $50 million each, but their guarantees were about 50% higher than the one Albies just got.

Generally, teams pay extra for free agent years. Here’s how many free agent seasons the above guarantees bought out. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves locked up another one of their key foundational pieces on Thursday, signing Ozzie Albies to a seven-year contract extension worth $35 million. Also included, since the Atlanta Braves felt like they didn’t get quite enough value in this deal somehow, are two team options at $7 million a year with a $4 million buyout, taking the total possible contract term up to nine years and $45 million.

The Evan Longoria long-term contract was probably the gold standard in team value when it came to these sorts of deals, but this one eclipses it. For those who don’t remember, Longoria signed an extension early in his rookie season for six years and $17.6 million, with three team option years. While the guaranteed dollars are a little lower, the team options were more generous at $7.5 million, $11 million, and $11.5 million. Here, the Braves buy out as many as four of Albies’ free agent years for less money than he’d likely be paid in a single year of free agency. In addition, Longoria had yet to succeed in the majors while Albies already had a full star-level season under his belt.

Quite frankly, this is a bit shocking. There’s risk aversion for a player, and then there’s risk aversion. Obviously, Albies wouldn’t get a contract equivalent to what he would get in free agency under any circumstances with a year of service time, but when I think of a risk-benefit tradeoff that isn’t horrific for a player, I think Blake Snell’s contract is a better representation of a team-friendly deal that doesn’t cross the line into, let’s be honest, exploitation. For those who didn’t read my piece on the Snell signing because you wanted to make me sad, ZiPS estimated that year-to-year, Snell was giving up $23 million on average to have a guaranteed $50 million in his pocket.

So, umm…yeah.

ZiPS is a fan of Ozzie Albies’ future, a weird quirk of the system in that it finds young, phenomenally talented infielders with a star season in the books to be totally awesome. All told, among the game’s hitters, ZiPS projects Albies with the fourth-most WAR remaining in his career, behind only Mike Trout, Juan Soto, and Francisco Lindor. If you’re wondering where Ronald Acuña is, he’s all the way down at…fifth.

ZiPS expects that, going year-by-year, Albies could be expected to make $282 million through the theoretical ninth and final season of his contract extension. In other words, ZiPS is estimating that Albies, in return for this contract, is giving up more than $200 million on average. But let’s say that ZiPS is being way too kind on Albies and is overrating him by two WAR a year. That knocks a shocking 18 WAR off his projections for the next nine years, in which case, ZiPS projects him to make a mere $153 million going year-to-year. So even in the case that ZiPS is horribly overrating Albies, he’s still likely to be underpaid by at least $100 million for his contributions to the Braves. And remember, this is relative to what he would expect to get under the current collective bargaining agreement, not some fanciful world in which he could otherwise just become a free agent right now.

(One side note since somebody will notice, reducing his projected WAR by 18 doesn’t have the exact same linear value as WAR in his real projection does because the better a player is, the lower a percentage of their expected free agent value they get in arbitration).

If I made a deal like this when I was a kid, and had offered my friend Alan a candy bar for his Super Nintendo (he had one a few months before I did, the jerk), you can bet my mom would have marched right down to Alan’s house and made me undo that particular transaction.

Ozzie Albies is, of course, an adult and I highly value the right of two consenting adults entering into freely negotiated contracts with each other. But I can sure as sugar express that I think he got an absolutely rotten deal here!

For the Atlanta Braves, the value of this trade is obvious. They get a star player for the entire length of his twenties for next to nothing, at least in baseball terms. Already having signed Ronald Acuña to a team-friendly deal — but at least, not as team-friendly a deal — the team has no excuse now to not open their pocketbooks for big free agents in coming seasons, something they really should have done beyond Josh Donaldson this winter.

This is not a contract that players should forget at the bargaining table. With higher minimum salaries for young players and earlier arbitration, players would have more leverage in negotiations and we’d likely see fairer terms for players in their prime as a result. If nothing else, it’s a sign that to keep salaries growing in baseball, players will need to fight for the Ozzie Albieses of the league, and advocate for a system that doesn’t require salary growth to be tied to teams signing 34-year-olds to crazy contracts like it’s 1986.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Yerry Rodriguez, RHP, Texas Rangers
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 14   FV: 40+
Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 6 K

Notes
If you’ve watched Padres righty Chris Paddack at all this spring, you’ve probably seen how he gets after hitters with his fastball at angles and in locations where they struggle to do anything with it, even in the strike zone. Though Rodriguez’s delivery doesn’t look anything like Paddack’s, the same concept applies, and Rodriguez is able to compete for swings and misses in the strike zone in a notable way. Lots of pitchers’ fastballs perform better than you’d expect given their velocity, but Rodriguez also throws hard. His changeup is good, and while I’ve taken umbrage with his breaking ball quality during in-person looks, he does have strong raw spin and his arm slot helps his breaker play up. I think there are a lot of strong components here and consider Rodriguez a dark horse top 100 candidate for next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amid winters that were rather underwhelming relative to the excitement of their respective 2018 seasons, the Braves and Dodgers brought back a pair of familiar, if grizzled, faces, namely 35-year-old Brian McCann and 36-year-old Russell Martin. Now several years removed from their last All-Star appearances, neither figures to do the bulk of the catching duty for their respective teams in 2019. Our new pitch framing metrics underscore what they bring to the table at this stage of their careers, as well as just how valuable they’ve been over the years — valuable to the point of amplifying their cases for Cooperstown.

McCann, a Georgia native who was drafted by the Braves in 2002 and spent 2005-13 with the team, making seven All-Star appearances while playing a part on four postseason-bound squads, signed a one-year, $2 million deal to return to Atlanta in late November, the five-year, $85 million deal he signed with the Yankees in December 2013 having expired (McCann spent 2017-18 in Houston, following a 2016 trade). The plan is for him to share time with Tyler Flowers, who started 70 games behind the plate for the NL East-winning Braves last year; Kurt Suzuki, who started 83 games, signed a two-year, $10 million deal with the Nationals.

McCann is coming off the weakest year of his career, having hit just .212/.301/.339 (79 wRC+) in 216 PA over 63 games with the Astros. He spent over 10 weeks on the disabled list with a torn meniscus in his right knee, which required surgery in early July. That knee, which also sent him to the disabled list in August 2017, may have been a factor in his atypically rough season behind the plate as well. Via Fox Sports South’s Cory McCartney, the knee “became so unbearable that it left the left-hander unable to push off his plant leg at the plate and it became difficult to squat as moving around on it led to a fluid buildup. ‘Every time I would land, my knee would collapse,’ McCann said. ‘I should have gotten the surgery done after the (2017) World Series — but thought I could get through it, I just couldn’t.’”

Read the rest of this entry »

It isn’t hard to justify a player’s reasoning for signing a long-term extension. It isn’t hard to justify Ronald Acuña Jr. wanting to secure his future. In 2014, the Braves phenom received a signing bonus of $100,000 and then spent the next three and a half years making almost nothing. Last season, he made a bit more than half a million dollars. He was set to do the same this season and next before finally cashing in to the tune of somewhere between four and eight million dollars, unless he manages to win an MVP award, in which case it would bump him up closer to $10 million. Earning just over $1 million for his six years after signing as a professional baseball player isn’t nothing, but it’s also not $100 million, and per Jeff Passan, Ronald Acuña Jr. appears set to sign a contract for a guaranteed $100 million over potentially the next 10 years of his professional baseball life. It’s a lot of money, but it also might be the biggest bargain of a contract since Mike Trout’s six-year, $149.5-million contract signed in 2014 or Albert Pujols‘ eight-year, $100-million contract signed in 2004.

Acuña isn’t on the level of Trout or Pujols, and odds are he never will be, but he is already a very good player. Our Depth Chart projections have Acuña as a four-win player today at 21 years old, sitting right next to J.D. Martinez, Javier Baez, Joey Votto, and Matt Carpenter. Dan Szymborski ran the ZiPS projections for Acuña’s next eight seasons; he averaged about four and a half wins per season, putting him right in line with expectations for Freddie Freeman and Anthony Rendon this year. Acuña is already one of the game’s better players, and his age should keep him at that level for the next decade before he declines, so he gave away potentially four free agent seasons and arguably his entire prime for a fraction of what he might have earned otherwise.

There are two paths to walk down when it comes to putting this contract in perspective. The first is to compare the deal to the one just signed by Eloy Jimenez. The White Sox prospect was guaranteed $43 million over the next six seasons despite never playing a day in the majors. If things break well for him and the White Sox, he will make $77 million over the next eight years and give up one free agent season. Acuña, who has already played a season in the majors and performed really well, will make just $90 million over the next eight seasons if things break right and will have given up two free agent seasons. Then it gets worse for Acuña, because $10 million of that $100 million guarantee is a buyout of a $17 million option for a ninth season followed by another option for $17 million. Those option prices are incredibly small when free agents or free-agents-to-be like Manny Machado and Nolan Arenado are making twice that today, not to mention what salaries might be like eight years from now. According to Passan, the most Acuña could make over the next 10 seasons is $124 million. Read the rest of this entry »

Chuck Cottier made his MLB debut in a star-studded environment. Playing second base, he was in the Milwaukee Braves lineup alongside the likes of Hank Aaron, Del Crandall and Eddie Mathews. The first ground ball he fielded on that April 1959 afternoon came off the bat of Roberto Clemente, on a pitch thrown by Warren Spahn. Harvey Haddix, who a month later would take a a perfect game into the 13th inning against the Braves, was on the mound for Pittsburgh.

Cottier’s first professional game was also memorable. Just 18 years old at the time — he’d signed at 17 out of a Grand Junction, Colorado high school — Cottier was playing for the Americus-Cordele Orioles in the Georgia-Florida League. It was 1954, and the minor league landscape was different than it is today.

“The lowest league was class D,” explained Cottier, who is now 83 years old and a special assistant to the general manager with the Washington Nationals. “From there it went to C, B, A, Double-A, Triple-A, and many of the organizations had two teams in each classification. We had three Triple-A teams at one time.”

Displaying a sharp-as-a-tack memory, the venerable baseball lifer told me that his first-ever game was played in Fitzgerald, Georgia, in a ballpark with a skinned infield. One play in particular stood out. Cottier remembers a “big left-handed hitter named Thompson” smashing a one-hop line drive that hit him just above the wrist, caromed over his shoulder, and rolled all the way to the fence.

Several hours later, his ride stopped rolling. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about the return of Brett Lawrie and two-way draftee Kyler Murray’s decision to pursue playing football over baseball, then preview the 2019 Atlanta Braves (8:45) with From the Diamond host Grant McAuley, and the 2019 Arizona Diamondbacks (43:23) with the Arizona Republic’s Diamondbacks beat writer, Nick Piecoro.

Audio intro: The Swell Season, "When Your Mind’s Made Up"
Audio interstitial 1: Chip Taylor, "Hello Atlanta"
Audio interstitial 2: Clem Snide, "Collapse"
Audio outro: The Rock*A*Teens, "Tuesday’s Just As Bad"

Link to Grant’s website
Link to preorder The MVP Machine

 iTunes Feed (Please rate and review us!)
 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Facebook Group
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Everything here is always handled on a case-by-case basis, but there are certain free-agent contracts that get signed that just don’t rise to the threshold where we feel like it’s worthy of a post. Martin Perez recently signed one of those contracts with the Twins. Wilmer Flores recently signed one of those contracts with the Diamondbacks. Jordy Mercer signed one of those contracts with the Tigers. Matt Adams signed one of those contracts with the Nationals. Editorially, some moves have it, and some moves don’t. You sort of know them when you see them.

Interestingly enough, Nick Markakis has now signed one of those contracts with the Braves. Or, you’d think so, based on the terms — Markakis will make $4 million in 2019, and then there’s a $6-million club option for 2020, with a $2-million buyout. This is in that money range where we frequently ignore the transaction. But Markakis is again going to be a regular player. And he’s also coming off a year in which he made the All-Star Game for the first time in his 13-season career. It’s almost impossible to suggest the Braves aren’t getting a team-friendly deal. Markakis was evidently willing to take a discount. This just isn’t the impact move Braves fans have been looking for. It’s re-signing a 35-year-old Nick Markakis.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

At last, we’ve reached the final installment of my round-up of the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold, with most of them being shut out entirely. It’s no tragedy that they’ll miss out on plaques in Cooperstown, but their triumphs and travails are worth remembering just the same.

Jon Garland

Known mainly for his durability, Garland was the perfect embodiment of a League Average Innings Muncher (LAIM), a term coined by blogger Travis Nelson in late 2003, generally describing dogged but unspectacular sorts such as Dave Burba, Jeff Suppan, and Steve Trachsel who rarely deviated from average run prevention by more than 10%. Over a nine-year span from 2002-2010, the heavy sinker-reliant Garland never made fewer than 32 starts or threw fewer than 191.2 innings, only once finishing with an ERA+ outside of the 91-to-111 range. In 2005, he put it all together, making his lone All-Star team and helping the White Sox to their first championship in 88 years.

Born September 27, 1979 in Valencia, California, Garland grew to 6-foot-5 1/2 and 200 pounds by the time he was a senior in high school (1997), able to throw 90 mph when that was a big deal. That year, he made a variety of pre- and postseason All-America teams, and planned to go to the University of Southern California, but when he was chosen with the 10th pick of the amateur draft by the Cubs, he signed for a $1.325 million bonus and was on his way. Less than 14 months later, he was traded to the White Sox straight up for reliever Matt Karchner in a rare crosstown deal; the Cubs got all of 60.2 innings of 0.1 WAR relief work in exchange for their top pick from the previous season.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Yet another installment of our quick look at the 14 players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot who are certain to fall below the 5% threshold — with most of them being shut out entirely — but are worth remembering just the same.

Kevin Youkilis

At the major league level, Youkilis’ reputation — “Euclis: the Greek god of walks,” as nicknamed by Michael Lewis in the 2003 bestseller, Moneyball — preceded his arrival by over a year. First a source of friction between the A’s analytically-minded front office and their scouts ahead of the 2001 draft, and later a player they coveted as a potential acquisition, Youkilis was Billy Beane’s white whale, forever eluding Oakland’s general manager. Though he lasted just 10 years in the majors, he hit .281/.382/.478 (123 OPS+) while making three All-Star teams, and winning a Gold Glove and two championship rings, one as the Red Sox’s starting first baseman.

Born in Cincinnati on March 15, 1979, Youkilis did not have any actual Greek ancestry. Via Sports Illustrated’s Mark Bechtel in 2007:

Youk’s family history reads like a Michael Chabon novel: Back in the 19th century in Romania, males were conscripted at the age of 16. The Cossacks in the region weren’t known for their tolerance, so many Jews tried to avoid enlisting in the army. Youk’s great-great-great-grandfather—no one is sure what his first name was, but the family name was Weiner (it’s actually pronounced WINE-er)—moved to Greece, where the family had friends. After a year or two he got homesick and returned to Romania, but he assumed a Greek name so he could avoid the army and jail. And with that, the Youkilis family was born.

Read the rest of this entry »