Cross another top starting pitcher off the list, as the Mariners agreed on Monday to a five-year deal with the reigning AL Cy Young winner, Robbie Ray, formerly of the Blue Jays. The contract, worth $115 million, also includes a no-trade clause for the first two seasons and an opt-out that Ray can exercise after the 2024 season.

Reigning AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray and the Seattle Mariners are finalizing a five-year, $115 million contract with an opt-out after the third season, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 29, 2021

It’s quite the reversal of fortunate for the lefty, who was coming off an unforgettable 2020 campaign; anybody would have a hard time wiping their memory of a season in which they walked eight batters per nine innings. The Jays will be sad to lose him, but in signing him last year for all of $8 million, they scored one of the top starters in baseball plus earned an extra draft pick as a chaser — and Ray’s replacement, Kevin Gausman, who was signed over the weekend, is a pretty good pitcher himself.

It’s hard to say that Ray emerging once more as a solid contributor in 2021 was a complete shock — ZiPS projected an ERA of 4.15, and I believe Steamer was in the same neighborhood — but few saw him returning to the pitcher he was in 2017. And while some regression toward the mean is likely, given the simple fact that his FIP was a run worse than his ERA, there are few danger signs lurking in the shadows. His fastball was as hard velocity-wise as it’s ever been, and it’s rare for a large improvement in walk rate to be a mirage. He was as hard to make contact as he usually is, but this time, batters couldn’t simply wait for him to throw a couple fastballs in the dirt.

Like most of the big signings, the contractual terms seem to align with the reasonable expectations and the risk. Just like the Rangers aren’t paying Marcus Semien as if he’ll finish in third place in the AL MVP race again, Seattle isn’t paying Ray as if the baseline expectation is a Cy Young repeat. At $7.3 million per ZiPS WAR and 3% yearly salary growth, which I’ve been going with this over this offseason (though this is obviously a guessing game), ZiPS projects a five-year offer at $109 million, just under what he actually got. It’s a good price, and I think given where the Mariners are in the AL West right now, they could have justified spending quite a bit more if they had to in order to land him.
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For all of the sound and fury coming from Steve Cohen last week upon being spurned by Noah Syndergaard and Steven Matz, the Mets’ owner has put his money where his mouth is since then. After signing a trio of midmarket position players — outfielders Starling Marte and Mark Canha, plus infielder Eduardo Escobar — over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, New York landed a marquee hurler on Monday, agreeing to terms with Max Scherzer on a three-year, $130 million deal.

The contract will pay Scherzer $43.33 million annually for his age 37–39 seasons, marking this as quite a high-risk move. The deal, which includes an opt-out after 2023 as well as a full no-trade clause, is a record-setter, with an average annual value 20% higher than the $36 million per year won by the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, the previous standard-bearer. And — in a bit that’s sure to be schadenfreude-licious for a certain segment of the Mets’ fan base — while Scherzer is pulling down that massive salary, he’ll also be receiving the first three of seven $15 million deferred payments from the Nationals during the span of his contract with the Mets.

The move comes as something of a surprise given that Scherzer refused to consider waiving his 10-and-5 rights for a potential deal to the Mets in July. On top of that, the Dodgers, to whom he was ultimately dealt, were presumed to have the inside track on retaining the 37-year-old righty given their status as contenders, their seemingly limitless resources, and a sense of unfinished business after coming up short in their quest to defend their 2020 title. But whether it was because Los Angeles wouldn’t go beyond two years or because Scherzer, who purchased a mansion in Jupiter, Florida in 2020, preferred a return to the East Coast, New York was able to close a deal ahead of the December 1 expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and the lockout that’s likely to follow.

In the final year of his seven-year, $210 million contract with the Nationals — perhaps the most fully realized free-agent mega-deal to date, featuring two Cy Young awards, two no-hitters, a championship, 39.7 WAR, and probably a curly W on the cap of his Hall of Fame plaque — Scherzer pitched like a man in search of more hardware. In his first nine starts after being dealt to the Dodgers, he posted astounding numbers (0.78 ERA, 1.36 FIP, 36.6% strikeout rate), and on September 12, during that run, he became the 19th pitcher in history to collect 3,000 career strikeouts, doing so while taking a perfect game into the eighth inning. Even after a couple of bumpy starts at the end of the regular season, he finished second in the NL in ERA (2.46), strikeouts (236), strikeout rate (34.1%) and K-BB% (28.8%), third in WAR (5.4), and fourth in FIP (2.96) in 179.1 innings. In the year’s Cy Young voting, he placed third behind Corbin Burnes and Zack Wheeler, receiving six first-place votes.

Even so, those bumpy starts turned out to be an ominous portent of things to come. Scherzer failed to complete five innings in two of his three postseason starts, including the NL Wild Card Game. After closing out the Giants in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the Division Series, he admitted that he was battling arm fatigue, and was able to make only one NLCS start; he could only watch as a similarly gassed Walker Buehler struggled on three days of rest in Game 6 against the Braves. Still, Scherzer’s problem was believed to be nothing more than arm fatigue — understandable given his 128.2-inning workload increase relative to 2020.
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Like many Americans last weekend, the Mets took out their credit cards once the Thanksgiving turkey was digested, coming to terms with three free agents on multi-year contracts. Starling Marte, coming off the best season of his career, received the most lucrative package, a four-year deal worth $78 million. New York also clarified its third base situation considerably with the addition of Eduardo Escobar on a two-year, $20 million contract. And the team’s revamped outfield may have been completed with the final of the three signings, a two-year, $26.5 million pact with former Athletic Mark Canha. Neither Marte nor Escobar was eligible for a qualifying offer, and Canha did not receive one from Oakland, so the Mets have clear sailing in terms of draft pick compensation.

The Mets were busy, but then again, they kind of needed to be, given their losses in free agency. Coming off a disappointing 2021 season, a collective 11 WAR-worth of players walked off into the sunset of the open market, resulting in a lot of needs to address this winter. All three of these signings fill holes on the roster, and along with the obvious interest in Steven Matz given some very angry words, they indicate that the Mets are focused on adding as many pieces as they can (with Max Scherzer set to join the rotation as well; more on that to come).

A centerfielder entering his age-33 season isn’t typically the most likely candidate for a long-term contract, but like Lorenzo Cain when he signed with the Brewers, Marte starts from a high enough perch to give him plenty of room to decline before he’s a drag on the team. He never had that crazy breakout year that seemed possible in his early days with the Pirates, but he’s also never truly had a bad season; he was only below 2 WAR in 2017 due to a suspension stemming from a positive test for Nandrolone, and he was well above a two-win pace in the shortened 2020 season. His power has faded from his peak, but he’s compensated with improvements as a more selective hitter making more contact. Most veteran players aren’t quick enough to “unwind” launch angle gains and reap a benefit from hitting more high-BABIP grounders, but Marte is still very quick, finishing just out of the 80th percentile in sprint speed and above the 90th-percentile cutoff for speed to first base. Before he and Whit Merrifield did it in 2021, the last player 32 or older to steal 40 bases in a season was Alex Rios back in 2013.

ZiPS projects decline from Marte, but the contract’s terms reflect that of a player in decline. At $7.3 million per win with 3% annual growth (which I’m assuming for other contracts in this article as well), ZiPS projects a $77.7 million deal over four years, basically indistinguishable from what he got. Brandon Nimmo had surprisingly good defensive stats in center for a change in 2021, but even if you think he’s now underrated defensively there, he’ll be excellent in right, and hopefully less injury-prone at a lower-impact position.
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The following article is part of a series concerning the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering managers and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon on December 5. For an introduction to the ballot, see here, and for an introduction to JAWS, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Bill Dahlen

The lone holdover from the 2016 Pre-Integration Era Committee ballot, Bill Dahlen was one of the best players of the late-19th and early-20th century. A shortstop for four teams from 1891-1911, he was renowned for his fielding, his ferocious temper — he earned the nickname “Bad Bill,” and was ejected from a total of 70 games as a player and manager — and his carousing, though he was also a very good hitter for his position, especially in his 20s. His 42-game hitting streak from 1894 still stands as the fourth-longest in major league history, and thanks to his prowess on both sides of the ball he ranks 11th in JAWS among shortstops. Dahlen helped the Brooklyn Superbas and New York Giants to two pennants apiece during a six-year span from 1899-1905, but he’s somehow slipped through the cracks historically, to the point that he was SABR’s 2012 Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend. Read the rest of this entry »

For years, 2022 has loomed large in the Minnesota Twins’ long-term planning. Their two franchise cornerstones, Byron Buxton and José Berríos, were both due to hit free agency after the 2022 season, which meant the team constructed many of its long-term plans with that year as a pivot point. Even when they traded Berríos for prospects at the 2021 deadline, next year still looked like a potential last hurrah with the current core before turning the team over to new blood.

Forget that idea. On Sunday, the Twins and Buxton agreed to a seven-year, $100 million contract extension that will keep him in Minnesota through the 2028 season; it also includes a full no-trade clause. The gem of Minnesota’s last rebuild will now be the face of the franchise throughout the peak of his career.

2021 was a microcosm of Buxton’s career to date. He was electric when he played, batting .306/.358/.647 with 19 home runs in only 254 plate appearances. He clubbed 19 doubles, stole nine bases (against just a single time getting caught), and channeled his aggression on pitches in the zone without flailing wildly. In the field, he was as good as ever, which is pretty darn good. Buxton is perennially one of the best center fielders in baseball, and this year was no exception. Every defensive metric agreed he was one of the best per-game defenders in the majors. Combine that with his offense, and he was worth 4.2 WAR in only 61 games. Read the rest of this entry »

After trading away Blake Snell and declining Charlie Morton’s club option last offseason, the Rays made a flurry of smaller moves to bolster their rotation depth, bringing in Michael Wacha, Rich Hill, and Chris Archer on one-year deals. But Archer ended up spending the majority of the season on the Injured List, Hill was traded away in July, and while Wacha pitched better than his 5.05 ERA might lead you to believe, it was still a 5.05 ERA. Those three combined for 48 appearances for Tampa Bay and just 1.9 WAR, and all three won’t be returning in 2022.

With Tyler Glasnow projected to be sidelined for the entire season after Tommy John surgery, the Rays’ rotation once again looked rather pyramid-shaped heading into this offseason: lots of depth and plenty of options in the middle, but thin at the top. Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, Ryan Yarbrough, Luis Patiño, and Shane Baz are lined up to take on the bulk of the starter innings in 2022, but while that group was solid last season, putting up a cumulative 5.9 WAR in 112 combined games, no one present has all that much major league experience.

To that young group, the Rays have added a veteran who can also address their need for a frontline starter, signing Corey Kluber to a one-year, $8 million contract on Sunday. The deal includes incentives based on games started that could push the total up to $13 million — a safeguard given his recent and long injury history. He missed the majority of the 2019 season in Cleveland after a line drive fractured his throwing arm and made just one start in Texas the year after, leaving his only appearance with a shoulder injury after a single inning. He signed a one-year deal with the Yankees in January and started the season looking good, making nine starts through April and May, but left his tenth with another shoulder injury that kept him off the mound for two months; he returned at the end of August and made six more starts down the stretch.
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In an accord between familiar and frenetic trading partners, the San Diego Padres sent Adam Frazier to the Seattle Mariners on Saturday in exchange for prospects Ray Kerr and Corey Rosier. It’s a bit of an odd move. The Padres, nominally in win-now mode, just shipped off a 3.5-win player for prospects. Meanwhile, the Mariners beefed up their thin infield, but at the risk of incurring a considerable opportunity cost in a free agent market that seemed tailor made for their needs.

Let’s touch on San Diego’s side first, since it’s the more perplexing one at a glance. Frazier is the big name in the deal. The National League’s starting second baseman in last summer’s All-Star Game, the 29-year-old hit .305/.368/.411 last season while accruing the aforementioned 3.5 WAR, though his production dipped following the trade. Always a good contact hitter, Frazier joined the game’s elite in 2021 with a 10.8% strikeout rate — only Michael Brantley, David Fletcher, and Kevin Newman whiffed less often. While 2021 may well have been his peak, Frazier’s been a pretty good player for a long time: Since debuting in 2016, he’s notched a 103 wRC+ and has averaged 2.4 WAR per 162 games. Contending teams looking to gain ground don’t usually trade away this kind of production, particularly from a player they just acquired last July.

Despite that, you can understand why the Padres considered him surplus to requirements. With no path to a starting job in the infield, and Ha-Seong Kim around to fill a multi-positional utility role, Frazier was a bit of a square peg on a roster of round holes. Yes, the Friars could have used him in the outfield — as they sometimes did last summer — but it’s not the best use of his skills. In theory, exchanging him for players who could offer the Pads more stick in the outfield or depth in the bullpen makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have made their first free-agent signing of the offseason, bringing in Michael Wacha on a one-year, $7 million deal, as the Boston Globe’s Alex Speier reported. The 2022 season will see Wacha donning his fourth uniform in the last four years after he spent ’21 with the Rays, ’20 with the Mets, and everything up to that point with the Cardinals. That recent bouncing around comes as his performance has fallen on hard times, with three straight seasons with an ERA over 4.50. But while the 30-year-old righty may not be a splashy signing, teams have found ace-level performance in this price range in previous years, like the Giants signing Kevin Gausman to a $9 million deal in 2019, or the Blue Jays signing Robbie Ray for $8 million last offseason. And in Wacha’s case, there were some interesting things happening with him late in the year that make this deal worth diving into.

When Wacha is off, as has often been the case since 2019, he has a hard time keeping the ball in the yard. His HR/FB rate has nearly doubled from his prime years with the Cardinals and is the fourth worst in the majors since 2019. And that’s despite his velocity — 93.8 mph on his four-seamer on average last year — being nearly the same as it was when he was in St. Louis. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two narratives to consider with Steven Matz, who signed with the Cardinals last Wednesday. There’s the straight-up baseball story of a solid pitcher joining the rotation of a good team. Then there’s the seemingly never-ending soap opera that is the Mets, whom he spurned in the final moments of his free agency for St. Louis.

Let’s start with the baseball side of things. Matz immediately fills a rotation spot for a Cardinals team that will likely be in the thick of things in the NL Central in 2022. At four years and $11 million per, with the chance to earn an additional $4 million over the life of the contract via performance bonuses, he topped the length and total value, though not AAV, predicted by Ben Clemens in our top 50 free agents list, on which he ranked no. 31, and beat the crowd-sourced numbers in each category.

The lefty will slot somewhere in the middle of the St. Louis starter group, certainly following Adam Wainwright and Jack Flaherty, and if there’s anyone on the market who fits the definition of middle-rotation starter, it’s Matz. As 2020 gets further away in our collective rear-view mirrors, we’ve learned how much data from that season is an outlier, and an extreme one at times, as was the case with him; he was northing short of miserable in his nine appearances that season. And while he had his share of health issues in his earlier years, if you take his three most recent full seasons, he’s been the roughly the same player in terms of both consistent performance and availability.

He doesn’t have the kind of high-spin, bat-missing stuff that teams tend to look for in the modern game, but Matz keeps the ball on the ground at roughly a 50% rate and should benefit greatly from a Cardinals defense that represents a significant upgrade from what was behind him in Toronto. He leans primarily on his 93–96-mph sinker and throws a pair of breaking balls roughly a quarter of the time, preferring his curve over his slider, and for good reason, considering the quality of the pitch. Changeups are rare but shouldn’t be, as he’s added a few inches of drop on the pitch over the past few years, leading to an offering that performs quite well.

During those previously mentioned three full seasons, Matz averaged 30 starts and 155 innings per, so he’s been taking the bump every five days, but going deep into games is not something he brings to the table, as he got more than 18 outs just three times in 2021. He can throw a strike when he has to but needs to play around the edges in order to succeed with his arsenal, leading to deeper counts, more than 100 pitches per six innings, and the need for multiple relievers to finish the job.
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Please note, this posting contains eight positions.

Position: Diversity Fellowship

Department: Baseball Operations
Reports To: Minor League Athletic Training Coordinator
Status: Exempt

Primary Objective: Responsible for assisting Mariners High Performance Medical Staff with delivery of comprehensive athletic training services to the Seattle Mariners players. Read the rest of this entry »