It has been a good week to be a second baseman. On the heels of Ian Kinsler’s big extension with the Rangers, Brandon Phillips received a roughly similar six-year, $72.5 million deal from the Cincinnati Reds. Unlike Kinsler’s five-year contract, which begins after this season, Phillips’ new contract begins this year. Does this make sense for the team given the Reds current situation?
It’s been 27 months since the Reds signed Aroldis Chapman to that six-year, $30.25 million contract, but he still has yet to make a start for them. That’s not entirely his fault however, as the club decided to use him out of the bullpen last season. Despite a strong showing in Spring Training — 2.12 ERA with an 18/2 K/BB ratio in 17 IP — Chapman is once again headed back to the bullpen to start this season.
Now that Joey Votto is signed with Cincinnati through his age 39 season, there’s a lot of talk about how long he can be expected to remain productive. The Reds are basically accepting that this deal will be an albatross at the end of the contract in order to secure premium years at reasonable prices in the first half of the deal. The discussion of the contract should not be whether Votto will be worth the money in 2021, 2022, or 2023 – he won’t be, in almost any scenario you can come up with – but by how much surplus value he’ll be able to create through 2020.
I have more thoughts on long term pricing valuations that I’ll share in the next day or two, but for now, I wanted to look at how productive other similar first baseman to Votto were in their age 28-39 seasons. To do this, I pulled every first baseman in history who had at least 2,000 plate appearances and a wRC+ between 142 to 161 from ages 24-27. Those are the ages that Votto has been a big leaguer for, and gives us a nice four year window leading up a player’s prime. Since Votto has a wRC+ of 152 and a WAR of 22.9 and all the players in the sample have a weighted average wRC+ of 150 and a WAR of 22.0, this group is almost identical in terms of recent performance to Votto at this point in his career.
Here’s the list of comparables, and their 24-27 performance:
Well, I think we’ve just seen the first piece of fallout from the stunning $2.15 billion purchase of the Dodgers on Wednesday. With money flowing into MLB at a breakneck pace, the Cincinnati Reds decided to make star first baseman Joey Votto an offer he couldn’t refuse. Actually, they made him an offer that no player in baseball could refuse, signing him (per Bob Nightengale of USA Today) to the longest contract in the history of the game — a staggering 12-year, $251.5 million commitment (or, phrased differently, a 10-year extension on top of the 2/26 he had already agreed to) that will keep Votto in Cincinnati through the 2023 season.
For as much as the Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder contracts helped shape the off-season, this is the deal that could have long lasting effects going forward. First baseman have been getting monster contracts in free agency for years, and in both cases, there were some special circumstances that set their particular case apart; Pujols is one of the great players in the history of the game, while Fielder certainly benefited from Victor Martinez’s torn ACL, which didn’t occur until after most other options were already off the table. Free agents trying to use these deals as yardsticks for future negotiations would not stack up to Pujols resume, nor would they likely reap the rewards of a high-payroll team suddenly needing their services just weeks before spring training begins.
This contract for Votto, though, doesn’t come with any of those caveats, and it didn’t come through an intense bidding war in free agency. This is the third-largest contract in baseball history being given to a player who was two years away from free agency. This deal just blows up the expected compensation level for premium players negotiating with only their own franchise.
According to MLBTradeRumors, Joey Votto is nearing an agreement with the Reds on a long term contract. Votto is currently under team control through 2013, and he’s due $26 million over the next two years as part of the deal he signed last winter.
It will be interesting to see what kind of deal Votto ended up getting. Ryan Zimmerman, another quality player with the same level of service time, signed a six year, $100 million extension a little over a month ago, but Zimmerman is coming off a down year and has a lot of value tied up in his defense, which doesn’t generally pay as well as just hitting the ball really hard. Matt Kemp got $160 million over eight years, but he was also only under team control for one more season, so he had more leverage in negotiations than Votto did. Kemp is also coming off a monster season and plays an up-the-middle position, so you’d think his deal would be some kind of ceiling for Votto.
However, with the timing of the report coming so close to the massive sale price of the Dodgers, you have to wonder if the Reds got inspired to kick things into high gear after they saw what the new owners were willing to invest in Los Angeles. Votto almost certainly would have been a target acquisition for LA’s group, and Reds may have decided to get something done now before they have to deal with competition from rich new owners out west.
Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80 (50 representing league average) with extra weight given to 2012 and Revenue rankings.
2012 Organizational Rankings
#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago AL
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York NL
#19 – Los Angeles
#18 – Colorado
#17 – Miami
#16 — Arizona
Cincinnati’s 2011 Ranking: #9
2012 Outlook: 57 (t-9th)
Coming off a disappointing 79-83 finish, Walt Jocketty decided to bring in some reinforcements in order to make sure his team could regain their status as legitimate contenders in the National League. It cost him a good chunk of his farm system, but he was able to bring in two dynamic arms in Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, both of whom will be critical to the Reds success this year. The team ended up skimping on upgrades for position players, though, and settled on an unorthodox right-right platoon of Ryan Ludwick and Chris Heisey in left field, and are vulnerable to injuries – they don’t have any real in-house alternatives if a guy like Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips, or Jay Bruce get hurt. They exchanged depth for pitching improvements, which was a wise choice, but has also left them thin behind their core starters.
The hits just keep on coming. Per Ken Rosenthal, Ryan Madson is the latest pitcher to need Tommy John surgery, and will be lost for the 2012 season. The falling dominos will push Sean Marshall into the closer’s role with the Reds, and Aroldis Chapman will move back to the bullpen to replace Marshall in the vacated lefty setup role.
Obviously, this is lousy news for both Madson and the Reds, and you can’t help but wonder how this might have changed the face of the National League race had things turned out differently this winter. Depending on who you believe, the Phillies were either considering or had already agreed to a four year, $44 million deal with Madson, but ended up going after Jonathan Papelbon instead. Had the Phillies finalized that deal with Madson instead of Papelbon, we might be talking about the Marlins or Braves as frontrunners for the NL East today.
Instead, this deals a significant blow to the Reds chances of taking the NL Central, and perhaps evens out yesterday’s news that the Cardinals have lost Chris Carpenter “indefinitely”. The Reds have enough talent to contend this year, but without Madson, their bullpen takes a significant hit. Cincinnati desperately needs Chapman to get back to his dominating 2010 form, rather than the inconsistent hurler he was last year.
I also wonder how this news will affect players willingness to bet on themselves by taking Scott Boras’ advice and going for a one year “pillow contract”. Madson took a one year deal to attempt to cash in big next winter, but this news is going to crush his potential for future earnings, and in reality, he may have missed his only chance to land a long term contract. It will be interesting to see whether players begin to decide that they’re better off taking the security of a multi-year deal when they have the chance, rather than deciding that they can do better in 12 months and betting on a one year deal.
With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.
League Trends
To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.
Sean Marshall is not going to be a rental for the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds, who own Marshall’s last arbitration year at $3.1 million for 2012, pulled the trigger on a three-year extension that will pay the 29-year-old left-hander $16.5 million over the next three seasons.
As unpredictable as relievers can be, Sean Marshall has been one of baseball’s best bets over the last two seasons. Over the past two seasons with the Cubs, Marshall has thrown 150.2 innings with a 60 ERA- and 169 strikeouts to just 42 walks. He might be under the radar because he isn’t racking up the saves, but make no mistakes: Marshall has been in the elite as the Cubs setup man. Check out his ranks over the past two seasons among relievers with at least 100 IP:
2.45 ERA: 20th
60 ERA-: 15th
2.07 FIP: 1st
51 FIP-: 1st
4.02 K/BB: 15th
0.24 HR/9: 3rd
5.0 WAR: 1st
Marshall had success keeping runners off the bases and runs off the board despite the poor defenses routinely set behind him in Chicago. His fielding independent numbers speak for themselves, but the question remains, particularly with a move to Cincinnati: can he continue to keep the ball in the yard? Prior to 2010, Marshall had never posted a HR/9 below 1.0; since, he has allowed all of four home runs in 150 innings.
Not every pitcher is equally affected by the transition from starter to reliever (or vice-versa). In the case of Marshall, it may have saved his career. Marshall allowed 45 home runs in 311 innings as the Cubs first tried him as a starter. Even as Chicago continued to experiment with him in both roles, Marshall emerged as a far superior relief pitcher. Although he struggled in 2008, allowing four home runs in 26.2 innings, he would calm down in 2009, allowing just three in 39 frames (0.69 HR/9) before bursting onto the scene as a full-time reliever in 2010 and posting the 0.24 HR/9 over two seasons as noted above.
Particularly as a left-handed pitcher in front of Great American Ballpark’s incredibly short porch (having sat in the front row in left field, it’s even shorter than it appears on TV), it is likely too much to expect that he allows just one or two home runs per season as a Red. As such, he won’t be the single best relief pitcher in the league with Cincinnati, but that’s not what the Reds are paying for. He has the ability to be a very effective setup man who can move into the closing role should Ryan Madson depart after the season, and at a cost of just $5 million per season, the Reds are getting a fine deal on that skill set.
I was prepared to write all sorts of glowing comments about the state of Cincinnati’s minor league system… but then a funny thing happened. The organization acquired one of the top arms in the National League at the cost of three key young prospects. Even with the trade dust now settled, though, the farm system still boasts some high ceiling prospects, as well as a plethora of interesting sleeper prospects.
1. Devin Mesoraco, C
BORN: June 19, 1988
EXPERIENCE: 5 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2007 1st round, Pennsylvania HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 2nd
Mesoraco was a late-blooming prep star who stepped up his game at the right time and was selected in the first round of the 2007 draft. He had a slow start to his pro career, which began to extinguish his prospect flame but he threw some lighter fluid on the fire in ’10 and hasn’t stopped hitting since that time. The Pennsylvania native offers plus power and he may also hit for a decent batting average. Mesoraco isn’t just an offensive-minded catcher. He has a well-rounded game which includes solid throwing and excellent leadership. His receiving skills still need a little polishing. With his development the Reds’ front office was able to send fellow catching prospect Yasmani Grandal to the Padres in the Mat Latos deal, which nabbed the organization an outstanding young arm. Mesoraco should catch Latos in 2012 as he becomes the big league club’s starting catcher with Ryan Hanigan backing him up.
