The combination of a Cy Young award, a strong postseason track record, a relatively low total of innings thrown, and a history free of major arm injuries was supposed to carry Jake Arrieta to a nine-figure free-agent deal this winter. Agent Scott Boras was said to eye Justin Verlander‘s $180 million extension and Max Scherzer’s $210 million free-agent contract as ballpark figures for and templates for Arrieta. But in a winter during which the hot stove’s pilot light went out, the 32-year-old righty didn’t come anywhere close to landing such a megadeal. Instead, he settled for a three-year, $75 million contract with the Phillies, albeit one with some bells and whistles that could make it considerably more lucrative.

Via FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman, Arrieta will make $30 million in 2018 and $25 million in 2019, before having a chance to opt out. If he doesn’t opt out, he’ll make $20 million in 2020. If he does opt out, the team has the option to override that by triggering a two-year extension at a minimum of $20 million per year, with incentives (whose exact parameters are unknown at this writing) based on 2018-19 games started that could take those years to $25 million, and further incentives based on Cy Young finishes that could take them to $30 million. The maximum deal becomes five years and $135 million.

Nobody is going to weep for Arrieta, but based upon the guaranteed money, it does appear that Boras overplayed his hand. In early January, USA Today’s Bob Nightengale reported that the Cubs, for whom Arrieta pitched from mid-2013 through 2017, were willing to bring Arrieta back via a four-year deal “for about $110 million,” which represents a higher average annual value ($27.5 million) than he ultimately got, unless one simply assumes he’ll opt out without the Phillies overriding. A month ago, just before they closed a six-year, $126 million deal with Yu Darvish, the Cubs reportedly circled back to Arrieta with a similar offer. As he had done when the team tried to secure him via long-term extensions in 2016 and 2017, Arrieta declined.

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In a maneuver already utilized too often by clubs this offseason, the Phillies have selected a weekend night — a time when right-thinking people everywhere have already filled their glasses with some of the unmixed Falernian — to announce a deal of some note. In this particular case, what Philadelphia has done is to sign free-agent right-hander Jake Arrieta.

Bob Nightengale was among the first with the terms of the deal:

Jay Jaffe will address the agreement in greater detail soon. For the moment, however, it makes sense to consider the implications of this transaction on two fronts — in the context both of (a) the Phillies’ rotation and (b) this winter’s very strange free-agent market.

First, the Phillies. Here, we recognize one of the great benefits of acquiring a frontline starter — namely, that he replaces not another frontline starter, but whichever pitcher has been designated to occupy the very last spot in the rotation. Our depth-chart projections call for Arrieta to produce something just shy of three wins in 2018. How does that compare to whomever he’s displacing?

By way of reference, here were our projections for the Philadelphia rotation before the addition of Arrieta:

The rotation spots of Eickhoff, Nola, Pivetta, and Velasquez are all probably safe. In this case, Arrieta is probably replacing some combination of Leiter and Lively. The immediate benefit to the Phils, in that context, appears to be about two wins for 2018. The secondary benefit is that, if and when a Phillies starter is unable to make an appearance, his spot will be assigned to Mark Leiter and not someone residing even closer to replacement level.

So that’s the signing from Philadelphia’s side. What about Arrieta’s?

At the end of February, Craig Edwards made a noteworthy observation — namely, that free agents who receive the largest projected contracts in our annual crowdsourcing exercise are actually the most likely to exceed their crowdsourced estimates.

Consider this table from Edwards’ piece:

Players who have been projected to receive $80 million or more have actually signed worth about 8% more than the crowd anticipated. Players forecast for lower amounts have actually received less. Edwards points out that, despite this strange offseason, the top free agents were still doing quite well.

Consider the free-agent signings of $80 million or more at the time of his piece:

While neither Darvish nor Martinez hit quite the 8% mark, both basically nailed their crowdsourced projections. And overall, including the Hosmer deal, the top free agents were actually outperforming previous seasons.

Since Edwards’ post, however, both Mike Moustakas and (now) Jake Arrieta have signed. The results for the $80-plus million demographic are a bit less impressive:

Arrieta was forecast for $110 million but came up $35 million short of that. As Jon Heyman notes, there’s actually a strange clause in the deal that could allow the Phillies to extend the deal to five years and $135 million, but it’s based on a couple unlikely contingencies. So, for the moment, we’ll treat it as $75 million. Unlike top free agents in years past, Arrieta has signed for considerably less than the crowd anticipated. It seems possible, as a result, that even more than baseball’s middle class is embattled.

Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Ichiro Suzuki’s return to Seattle, Neil Walker’s perplexing unemployment, the unreliability of bullpens, Anthony Gose’s extremely rough start to spring training, and Kyle Jensen’s extremely hot start to spring training, then preview the 2018 Angels (20:44) with The Athletic Los Angeles’s Pedro Moura, and the 2018 Phillies (51:19) with The Athletic Philadelphia’s Meghan Montemurro.

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The Phillies don’t look like a very good team this season. They haven’t looked like a very good team in some time, really. That said, they aren’t all that far from contention in a muddled NL Wild Card race. After enduring 96 losses in 2017, the club enters the upcoming campaign with an improved roster, having replaced Freddy Galvis with J.P. Crawford and Tommy Joseph with Carlos Santana. They’re poised to receive a full season from Rhys Hoskins. They’ve also added Tommy Hunter to the bullpen.

The result of those additions to last year’s returnees is a projection for 74 wins. Improving by eight games in a single offseason is pretty impressive. The Phillies aren’t really expected to do that, though. By BaseRuns, which removes sequencing from a team’s run-scoring and -prevention, Philadelphia was actually a 70-win team last year. So the gain this offseason is more like four wins. Still, it’s something.

It’s also something that has come at little expense. Yes, the team added free-agent Carlos Santana this winter for an average of $20 million per season. Given the team’s financial wherewithal and the potential to compete now, however, it’s fair to wonder why the Phillies haven’t done more.

In recent weeks, Philadelphia has been connected both with Jake Arrieta and Lance Lynn but appear reluctant to continue moving forward this offseason. While a 74-win team will get nowhere near the playoffs, the current state of the club’s rotation means that the Phillies could easily spend their way to something closer to contention this season without greatly impacting their ability to contend in future years. In November, Travis Sawchik wondered when the Phillies would spend. With pitching still available in the free-agent market and a relatively mediocre set of Wild Card candidates, the time for the Phillies to spend at least a little bit of their reserves should be now.

Before getting to the Phillies’ present finances, let’s take a brief step back and remember where the club has been. Here are Opening Day payrolls for Philadelphia since they moved into Citizens Bank Park in 2004.

From 2010 to 2014, the Phillies’ payroll placed among the top four in the majors. It went down a bit in 2015, followed by a huge dip in 2016, and then another big drop this year. For some perspective, consider the Houston Astros’ tank-job, for which that club has been criticized. From 2009 to 2011, Astros payrolls averaged $91 million. Then, while tanking between 2012 and -14, the average payroll dropped 57% to $39 million. By comparison, the Phillies’ average payroll from 2013 to 2015 was $161 million, a figure which dropped 48% to $84 million in 2016-18. Philadelphia’s drop in payroll has been nearly as severe as the Astros’ own decline earlier this decade.

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On Tuesday, in Grapefruit League play, those in Clearwater, Fla., witnessed what might possibly represent the future of defensive alignment. They at least saw how aggressive and creative first-year Phillies manager Gabe Kapler is prepared to be.

As Matt Gelb reported for The Athletic, non-roster invite outfielder Collin Cowgill and Tommy Joseph (who is playing some outfield this spring) were told before the game that, if Tigers switch-hitting prospect Victor Reyes batted left-handed, they would swap corner-outfield positions. Reyes did bat left-handed, and when he did, Cowgill and Joseph swapped their positions mid-inning.

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Last Wednesday, a commenter named Boofer (thanks, Boofer!) asked me to look into a book by former Mets and Phillies Outfielder Lenny Dykstra called House of Nails. In said book, Dykstra claims to have hired a team of private investigators for $500,000 to look into the backgrounds of umpires and discover their dirty secrets. This is a family site, so I won’t go into any great detail about what most of those secrets are. Suffice to say, however, that they concern certain details about the umpires’ private lives, such as sex and gambling, that the umpires ostensibly wouldn’t have wanted to be made public. Dykstra says that he collected those secrets as leverage to get a better strike zone from umpires.

According to Dykstra, it worked. Consider this, from a 2015 appearance on The Herd:

For those who’d prefer not to watch the video, it’s more or less Dykstra pantomiming an at-bat during which he asks an umpire if the latter “covered the spread” on a bet the previous night and then suggesting to Colin Cowherd that he received favorable calls after having successfully conveyed his meaning to said umpire.

Regarding Dykstra’s claims, I think two questions fall within the purview of this site. First: is there any objective evidence that Dykstra benefited from a smaller strike zone than his peers? And second: if Dykstra’s claims are true, are they also illegal?

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Mike Shawaryn hadn’t put much thought into it. Finger pressure is instrumental in his success, both as a pitcher and as a musician, but how the two intertwine isn’t a subject he’d addressed. Not until I broached the subject this winter.

A 22-year-old right-hander out of the University of Maryland, Shawaryn is one of the top prospects in the Red Sox system (Baseball America has him No. 8; Eric Longenagen expects to rank him similarly when he puts together his forthcoming Red Sox list). Displaying a power arsenal, he fanned 169 batters in 134-and-two-thirds innings last year between low-A Greenville and high-A Salem.

When he’s not blowing away hitters, Shawaryn is playing the piano and the saxophone — and he’s a neophyte with neither. Boston’s pick in the fifth round of the 2016 draft has been tickling the ivories and blowing on a sax ever since his elementary school days in South Jersey.

Both instruments require dexterous fingers. Ditto pitching, where you’re gripping and releasing an object whose movement is influenced by the placement of digits on seams. Is there a direct correlation?

“I’ve never really thought about it like that, but the feel of the ball in your hand is obviously important,” Shawaryn said after first contemplating the idea. “Now, kind of connecting the dots, I’d say it’s the piano more so than the saxophone. The pressure you put on the keys determines the sound of it, the shape of the music. That’s probably helped me develop a type of feel in my fingers for the seams on the ball — what fingers I need to put pressure on to influence the shape of a pitch.”

And then there are rhythm and tempo. Pitchers change speeds within an at bat, and musicians change speeds within a song. Read the rest of this entry »

The Phillies are currently hiring Video Coaching Representatives and TrackMan Operators across multiple affiliate locations.

Position: Video Coaching Representative

Position Overview
Oversee the daily Video Coaching operations at assigned minor league affiliate. Duties will include, but not be limited to, filming and logging home and road games and assisting in daily instructional film sessions with coaches, players, and staff. Representative will also be asked to take part in daily IT assistance within the Video Coaching department and may have the opportunity to contribute in other operational areas including sports science, advance scouting, and analytics as needed.

Essential Duties

• Open and oversee operations of Video Coaching room on a daily basis
• Be able to operate, troubleshoot, and support IP cameras, computer networks, and hard drives Film and accurately log all home and road games using BATS video system
• Upload all logged games to the Phillies Video FTP server in Philadelphia
• Assist with daily video viewing sessions between Phillies coaching staff and players
• Film bullpens, batting practices, and workouts based on requests by Phillies coaches and staff Provide regular status reports to Video Coaching staff in Philadelphia and Clearwater
• Assist with sports science, advance scouting, and analytics initiatives as needed

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or currently enrolled college student
• Must be technology savvy and possess strong knowledge of computers, computer networking, and storage
• Previous experience working with BATS video system is preferred
• Previous experience working in a baseball clubhouse is preferred
• Must possess strong knowledge of the game of baseball
• Must be detail-oriented and well-organized
• Must be able to interact professionally with players, coaches, front office personnel and medical/training staff
• Must be able to work flexible hours, including nights, weekends and holidays
• Must possess strong work ethic
• Must be a team player with strong oral and written communication skills
• Must be active, quick-thinking, and a good technology troubleshooter

Physical Demands and Working Conditions
Must be able to stand and walk in hot conditions for long periods of time.

Position: TrackMan Operator

Position Overview
Log all home games at assigned minor league affiliate using the TrackMan Baseball Analysis software. Operator may have the opportunity to contribute in other operational areas as needed, including sports science equipment maintenance and management.

Essential Duties

• Accurately log all home games of assigned affiliate using TrackMan Baseball Analysis software
• Operate and troubleshoot computer networks
• Upload all logged games to the Phillies TrackMan server in Philadelphia
• Assist with daily analysis between Phillies coaching staff and players
• Assist with special requests from Phillies Minor League Video Coordinator/Phillies Baseball Operations Offices
• Provide regular status reports to Minor League Video Coordinator in Clearwater

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or currently enrolled college student
• Must be technology savvy and possess strong knowledge of computers, computer networking, and storage
• Previous experience working with TrackMan software is preferred
• Previous experience working in a baseball clubhouse is preferred
• Must possess strong knowledge of the game of baseball
• Must be detail-oriented and well-organized
• Must be able to interact professionally with players, coaches, front office personnel, and medical/training staff
• Must be able to work flexible hours including nights, weekends and holidays
• Must possess strong work ethic
• Must be a team player with strong oral and written communication skills

Location Information
The Phillies intend to hire one Video Coaching Representative and one TrackMan Operator for each of the following locations, with the exception of the GCL teams in Clearwater, where they will hire two Video Coaching Representatives (one for each GCL team):

• Allentown, PA (AAA)
• Reading, PA (AA)
• Clearwater, FL (Class A Advanced)
• Lakewood, NJ (Class A)
• Williamsport, PA (Short Season)
• Clearwater, FL (Rookie)

All positions run from mid-March through the end of their respective minor league season, with the exception of Williamsport, which will begin in mid-June, and the Clearwater TrackMan position, which begins in late February.

To Apply
To apply, candidates should send their resume and cover letter to JLipman@Phillies.com with either “Video Coaching Representative” or “TrackMan Operator” in the subject line, along with their affiliate preference if they have one. The team will begin reviewing applications immediately.

The Phillies is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

In this slowest of markets, one of the players who might be most adversely affected is Mike Moustakas.

Some thought it was possible, as the offseason began, that Moustakas might receive a $100-million deal this winter. Not only was he a third baseman who’d just authored a 38-homer season, but he was also still on the right side of 30. Of course, that sort of deal hasn’t emerged. It seems increasingly unlikely to emerge with each day.

Dave predicted a five-year, $95-million pact for Moustakas. The crowd predicted a five-year deal, as well, for $10 million fewer overall. Neither option seems probable at the moment: no free agent to date has secured more than a three-year contract, and there hasn’t been much reported interested in Moustakas.

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I noticed an underlying theme in both pieces I’ve written since coming back, along with many others written this offseason at FanGraphs. If you are a fan of a small- or medium-market team that will never spend to the luxury-tax line and thus always be at a disadvantage, do you want your team to try to always be .500 or better, or do you want them push all the chips in the middle for a smaller competitive window? In my stats vs. scouting article I referenced a progressive vs. traditional divide, which was broadly defined by design, but there are often noticeable differences in team-building strategies from the two overarching philosophies, which I will again illustrate broadly to show the two contrasting viewpoints.

The traditional clubs tend favor prospects with pedigree (bonus or draft position, mostly), with big tools/upside and the process of team-building is often to not push the chips into the middle (spending in free agency, trading prospects) until the core talents (best prospects and young MLB assets) have arrived in the big leagues and have established themselves. When that window opens, you do whatever you can afford to do within reason to make those 3-5 years the best you can and, in practice, it’s usually 2-3 years of a peak, often followed directly by a tear-down rebuild. The Royals appear to have just passed the peak stage of this plan, the Braves hope their core is established in 2019 and the Padres may be just behind the Braves (you could also argue the old-school Marlins have done this multiple times and are about to try again now).

On the progressive side, you have a more conservative, corporate approach where the club’s goal is to almost always have a 78-92 win team entering Spring Training, with a chance to make the playoffs every year, never with a bottom-ten ranked farm system, so they are flexible and can go where the breaks lead them. The valuation techniques emphasize the analytic more often, which can sometimes seem superior and sometimes seem foolish, depending on the execution. When a rare group of talent and a potential World Series contender emerges, the progressive team will push some chips in depending on how big the payroll is. The Rays have a bottom-five payroll and can only cash in some chips without mortgaging multiple future years, whereas the Indians and Astros are higher up the food chain and can do a little more when the time comes, and have done just that.

What we just saw in Pittsburgh (and may see soon in Tampa Bay) is what happens when a very low-payroll team sees a dip coming (controllable talent becoming uncontrolled soon) and doesn’t think there’s a World Series contender core, so they slide down toward the bottom end of that win range so that in a couple years they can have a sustainable core with a chance to slide near the top of it, rather than just tread water. Ideally, you can slash payroll in the down years, then reinvest it in the competing years (the Rays has done this in the past) to match the competitive cycle and not waste free-agent money on veterans in years when they are less needed. You could argue many teams are in this bucket, with varying payroll/margin for error: the D’Backs, Brewers, Phillies, A’s and Twins, along with the aforementioned Rays, Pirates, Indians and Astros.

Eleven clubs were over $175 million in payroll for the 2017 season (Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Giants, Nationals, Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Angels), so let’s toss those teams out and ask fans of the other 19 clubs: if forced to pick one or the other, which of these overarching philosophies would you prefer to root for?