The theory goes that some players can turn it on in the final years of their existing contracts on their way to free agency. The data say otherwise, as both writers and teams, have discovered. In 2013, we witnessed two contrasting examples of walk years from Ubaldo Jimenez and Phil Hughes. Jimenez seemingly flipped a switch in June, pitched like his old self and exercised an out clause in his deal with Cleveland to jump feet-first into a cash-rich free-agent crop. Then there was Hughes, a pitcher who statistically regressed in his walk year. As Buster Olney tweeted yesterday:

Refrain of numerous evaluators this winter about Phil Hughes: Given everything he had at stake in his free agent year, why did he struggle?

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 25, 2013

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Just two days ago, Bradley Woodrum reviewed the remaining catchers on the free agent market along with the teams looking to sign a catcher. He concluded that there were four starting catchers available for seven jobs. Now it’s three catchers for six jobs after the New York Yankees signed Brian McCann to a five-year contract yesterday. And Kudos to Woodrum for predicting this signing in his article.

This is what we know of the deal thus far. It is a five-year contract worth $85 million that contains a no trade clause and some kind of vesting option for a sixth season. Details on the option year are still unclear. If reached, the option will bring the total value of the deal north of $100 million.

In many ways, this move is a match made in heaven. McCann is one of the best defensive catchers in the league, he combines a good feel for the basics of the position with excellent pitch framing skills. Per Woodrum’s article, McCann’s saved 65 runs over the last three seasons via pitch framing. In addition to his defensive reputation, McCann carries a loud bat that is typically 20 percent above league average. That’s not catcher average, it’s league average.

Steamer projects McCann to compile 3.6 WAR over 402 plate appearances. With the designated hitter role now available to him, McCann may see as many as 600 plate appearances (barring injury). If we’re being thoroughly pessimistic, we can call that 600 plate appearance projection about 3.5 WAR. Add another 1.5 WAR for catching contributions not currently included, like framing, and McCann projects as a roughly five WAR player in 2014.

If we assume that the cost of a win will be around $6 million, then the Yankees are paying for 14 wins over the guaranteed portion of the contract. While catchers do tend to age more rapidly than other position players, McCann is entering his age 30 season, so he’s relatively young. At this point in his career and given that we project him to about five wins in 2014, he may be able to earn the entirety of the contract over the first three seasons.

There is also the consideration of home stadium. McCann is a pull hitter and drives most of his home runs out to right field. Per Fangraphs’ own park factors, McCann is moving from a stadium that is league average for left-handed home runs (100 park factor) to one that inflates home runs by 14 percent (114 park factor). Below is an overlay of the two stadiums.

And here is McCann’s spray chart from 2013, so you can visualize how many warning track shots might have found their way over the wall.

This information is not accounted for in the earlier projection that we discussed. Since McCann’s offense game is particularly well tailored to his new home park, it should mean that the Yankees will get an even greater return on their investment.

From the Yankees perspective, this deal may indicate a lesson learned. Last offseason, the Yankees were attempting to cut costs and refused to offer Russell Martin a reasonable, two-year contract. He eventually signed with the Pirates and helped them reach the postseason for the first time since the height of the Roman Empire 1992.

Meanwhile, the Yankees received almost no offense from the four catchers they employed and missed the postseason. It’s worth noting that they missed the postseason by more than just one good catcher, but that was one of the black holes on the roster. Third base, shortstop, first base, right field, and designated hitter were also varying degrees of terrible. Really, it’s amazing that they won 88 games, but I digress…

With McCann off the market, other clubs looking for starting catchers will have to choose between Jarrod Saltalamacchia, A.J. Pierzynski, Dioner Navarro, and a variety of backup quality options. Reds catcher Ryan Hanigan also remains available on the trade market. The Red Sox are the most tangibly in need of a catcher at this point.

There is some speculation that the signing could affect negotiations with top free agent Robinson Cano, but that strikes me as unlikely. With the paucity of reliable catchers on the market, the Yankees needed to strike quickly to plug that void. I have little doubt that they would have acquired McCann with or without Cano.

It feels as though this match was inevitable. The Yankees had every reason to value McCann more highly than any other team. They have a hungry fan base that supplies massive revenue, a dearth of quality internal options at the position, and a home stadium that maximizes McCann’s offensive potential. Of teams interested in catchers, only the Rockies can match the Yankees on that latter point, but they can’t come close on the revenue side. All told, this deal smells like a winner for both team and player.

The Phillies re-signed Carlos Ruiz to a 3-year, $26 million deal. Also: Brayan Pena and Geovany Soto have locked down their 2014 teams (the Royals Reds and Rangers respectively). And now it appears Jose Molina is in the final stages of returning to St. Pete for another two years of expertly framed and eh, who cares about blocking? pitches.

So where does that leave the catching market? As far as I have seen, the Yankees, Red Sox, Rockies, Angels, Rangers (still), Blue Jays and Twins have all been connected with free agent catchers on MLBTR. Using their handy free agents leaderboards (with a few additions), we can examine the remaining free agent catchers and try our hand at predicting the right fits for each.
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The 2013 season was a banner season for players going on the disabled list. The DL was utilized 2,538 times, which was 17 more than the previous 2008 high. In all, players spent 29,504 days on the DL which is 363 days more than in 2007. Today, I take a quick look at the 2013 DL data and how it compares to previous seasons.

To get the DL data, I used MLB’s Transaction data. After wasting too many hours going through the data by hand, I have the completed dataset available for public consumption.  Enjoy it, along with the DL data from previous seasons. Finally, please let me know of any discrepancies so I can make any corrections.

With the data, it is time to create some graphs. As stated previously, the 2013 season set all-time marks in days lost and stints. Graphically, here is how the data has trended since 2002:

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Everyone understands that not all bunts are a bad idea, right? The auto-sacrifice has (I think) mostly fallen out of favor with fans and teams, but as a nice illustration of sabermetrics’ infinite task, the analysis of bunts continues to evolve. The bunt as a piece of traditional baseball strategy was (and in some circles, continues to be) a target for early sabermetric analyses. But as the field grew more sophisticated, the analysis grew more subtle: a bunt may or may not be a good idea depending on the base/out/game situation, the skill of the bunter, and the position of the fielders.

A more sophisticated analyzing which bunts represent the best process (as opposed to results) would take, well, days of searching through game logs. Analyzing which bunts were the best executed would be an even more onerous burden. For this particular annual tradition, I have chosen the much simpler task of which bunts of the 2013 regular had the best result as measured by Win Probability Added.

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The posting system — the agreement that governs player movement between the teams of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan and Major League Baseball in America — looks like it’ll be changing this winter. We tackled the reasons why this might happen during the first round of rumors, but it’s worth revisiting now that more particulars are coming to light.

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Robinson Cano just turned 31, and the FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign an eight year contract this winter that will take him through 2021, his age-38 season. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he lands a nine or ten year deal, as Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols did a couple of years ago, and ends up getting signed through age-40. And it’s not a controversial statement to say that Robinson Cano is unlikely to still be a highly productive player at that point in his career.

Any team that signs Cano this winter is going to be be guaranteeing him in the range of $25 million per year for years in which Cano should reasonably be projected as a below average player, and maybe even a guy who shouldn’t be starting for a big league team. The negotiations for his services are essentially going to center around how many years a team is willing to guarantee Cano a significant paycheck while expecting almost nothing in return. The team that eventually gets to sign him will be the team that gives him the most “dead money” years.

This is what free agency for elite players has evolved into. Instead of negotiating on annual salary, the market has evolved to negotiate on years. Let’s look at some data, so you don’t have to take my word for it.

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Worth noting: Joel Sherman of the New York Post suggests that pretty much everything written below is wrong.

It is certainly possible that I’ve interpreted the luxury tax calculations incorrect. The post will be updated once I have clarification.

Derek Jeter is going to stay with the Yankees, surprising absolutely no one. This was never really in doubt, especially because Jeter had the right to ensure he played 2014 in New York, thanks to a player option that was added to the end of his three-year, $51 million option on the deal he signed in 2010. He could have exercised his right to become a free agent, but heading into his age-40 season and coming off the worst year of his career, interest probably wouldn’t have been overwhelming. And it’s unlikely he wanted to end his career in any other uniform, so this was always the expected outcome.

However, the actual announcement sheds some fun light on the details of how the CBA works and how the luxury tax is calculated. The Yankees could have just let Jeter exercise his player option — listed as $8 million, but reported by Jon Heyman to actually be worth $9.5 million — but instead, they signed him to a new contract that will pay him $12 million next year instead. Why the $2.5 million to $4 million raise over what his own player option called for?

Three words: the luxury tax. The Yankees have been desperately trying to get under the $189 million threshold, and by paying Jeter more, their tax calculation is actually going to go down.

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Andy Pettitte is going to announce his (second) retirement this afternoon. Much will be written (again) about Pettitte’s career and, of course, his Hall of Fame prospects. Others are better at the history and biography stuff, and, well, at pretty much all of the other stuff, too. Personally, I am not interested in predicting whether a player will get into the Hall of Fame. Analyzing players is one thing. Sociological and psychological evaluations of the Hall of Fame’s voters is another (that is not a commentary on the voters, just on my interests). When it comes to stuff like this, I prefer to focus on a player’s worthiness, that is, whether he should get into the Hall of Fame.

Much will be written regarding Pettitte’s Hall of Fame contributions now and in the off-season, just as much was written about his post-2010 retirement. I am not going to cover every angle or offer a final verdict. Rather, I want to to discuss two or three tough angles for the sabermetric evaluation of Pettitte’s case that make it an intriguing topic.

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Platoon splits are real, and they matter. The trouble comes in when people put too much emphasis on individual platoon performance over a short period of time. It is understandable, of course, and as fans, we have a right to overreact to things. But when it comes to getting to the truth of things, it gets a bit more complicated. One can read about the general principles of thinking about observed platoon performance versus true talent elsewhere. What can be instructive is looking at some concrete cases of unusual or standout performances of certain players. For today, let’s take a look at the platoon histories of a couple of left-handed hitters: Alex Gordon and Robinson Cano.

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