Donnelly’s Confusing Addition
After adding Ryan Church on a contract for 1.5 million dollars plus incentives, the Pirates turned around this weekend and gave a very similar deal to veteran reliever Brendan Donnelly. The deal pays 1.5 million in base salary and can reach up to 3 million if all incentives are reached.
Brendan Donnelly is coming off one of his best seasons since his years with the Angels in the early part of the last decade. He still didn’t amass many innings, but he was excellent with the opportunities he received last season with the Marlins. His strikeout and walk rates were reminiscent of his first three years with Anaheim, in which he compiled 4.8 wins above replacement. He also did a fantastic job of keeping the ball in the yard, only allowing one home run in 25.1 IP.
There’s the problem, though – Donnelly only compiled 25.1 IP, and that was his highest IP total since 2006. He was almost certainly due for some regression, as his 3.7% HR/FB ratio is quite low compared to 6.8% overall. His xFIP of 3.76 was nearly a full run higher than his FIP. His 8.88 K/9 marked the first time his strikeout rate was above 8.00 since 2004. Simply put, Donnelly hasn’t been relevant since 2004.
Most importantly, though, Donnelly will turn 39 years old in July of 2010. Relievers at the age of 29 are very fungible, not to mention relievers nearing 40. At age 39, it’s hard to either project Donnelly to maintain his performance from last year or to complete an entire season without injury. It’s for that reason that Donnelly is projected for only 2 runs above replacement by CHONE. That projection values Donnelly at roughly .7-.8 million dollars on a one-year deal.
Even if the Pirates weren’t overpaying, adding Donnelly to their roster in any form just doesn’t make any sense. The Pirates have 11 relievers projected to produce between 0 and 3 runs above replacement. To commit any sort of money to Donnelly would be committing money to, at best, a marginal improvement and somebody who could just as easily be either below replacement level or injured for most of the year. Not only that, but given the Pirates low spot on the marginal win curve, one or two extra runs simply won’t make a difference in the team’s short term future.
Much like Ryan Church, the best way for Donnelly to provide value is for the Pirates to flip him for some prospects at the trading deadline. However, unlike Church, it’s very unlikely that Donnelly provides the Pirates with enough value before the trading deadline for any teams to have significant interest. The most likely scenario here is that the Pirates will be out 1.5 million dollars or more with almost no return on investment, and that’s 1.5 million dollars that can’t be used to sign the international prospects, draft picks, or freely available talent that will be needed to rebuild this franchise.
Jack Moore's work can be seen at VICE Sports and anywhere else you're willing to pay him to write. Buy his e-book.
I think Hundington is trying to build a bullpen by adding depth. However, I also get the feeling alot of these short term deals might be an attempt to stave off the “payroll floor” that recently got the Marlins in trouble. Although the money is better spent acquiring amateur talent, you might see alot more of these types of move being made by the smaller market teams. As most of their bullpen arms are at least a half a year away, its a relatively low risk move that doesn’t sacrifice player developement.
I don’t know enough about the innings Elias requires to count as a “season”…. but could he possible end up being a Type B free agent?
That’s my guess on signing Donnelly. If they can’t flip him for something decent at the deadline.
This piece is flawed, I think. You mention that the team has 11 relievers in the small positive runs range. Kevin Hart will either be in the Pitt rotation or most likely develop as a starter in AAA, Ascaino had labrum surgery a few months ago so who knows how he’ll return, Yates simply stinks despite his projection, Cotts is coming off an injury and will probably miss at lest the first couple of months, and Romulo Sanchez is in another organization. If you take away those names, we have a lot fewer options on hand for 2010.
So we paid $1.5 million for about 3 or 4 runs with high risk, as you said, but also high reward given his past performance. He could be worth 0 or 8 runs just the same. Last year, Fangraphs says his .6 wins was worth $2.6 million. So they maybe overpaid by a run or two. It doesn’t seem that “confusing”, though.
Also, the team has said that the draft/international and MLB budgets are separate entities.
Hart, Ascanio, Cotts. Is Pittsburgh trying to build a bullpen of former Cubs castoffs? I really hope not for their sake.
Hart and Ascanio came over in a trade together with a minor leaguer for John Grabow and Tom Gorzelanny last year, by the way. I’m just being picky, but generally when I think of “building a team with former Team X players,” I think of how they were collected in separate trades/signings.
Yates simply stinks despite his projection
And, like Cotts, he had Tommy John surgery in July, so he’s out for the first couple of months too. (I’m assuming that, as the team says, his arrest is a non-issue.)
Good catch. I wouldn’t want his lack of control even if he was healthy, though.
Jack Moore didn’t really do any research for this piece, to see that you can basically cross off half of those names from being available at least for the beginning of the season in the Pirates pen.
Huntington tried the “don’t pay for relief” strategy for two years, it didn’t work, so he’s changing gears and he’s making basically microscopic overpayments at worst for quality relief pitchers. Again, it’s hard to see the big deal here.
Agreed with Jake, there has to be a reason KC signed Kendall, PIT Donnelly etc among other “odd” additions this off-season…
I think we all see KC signed Pitt because Dayton Moore and the process aren’t very good…
However Pitt, even though their firesale has been critically received by fans and local media have sort of showed they may know what they’re doing. The bulk of their trades have been pretty decent, at least showing they have a plan. This does not fit in with that plan at all, and I believe that’s part of the point Jack is trying to make here. That said, I agree Jake may be on to something, but why not spend on something more than a 40-year old reliever?
what would you suggest they spend the money on? I could see that an extra $1.5m to make an over-slot addition in the draft (especially after they went below slot with the #4 pick this year, although luckily Sanchez has proven to be a genuine top prospect), but I heard somewhere that the Pirates consider their major league and farm budgets to be two separate entities (like many MLB organisations, although I suppose you can take that suggestion with a pinch of salt).
I’d imagine adding, say, Eric Hinske (who is a potential impact bat who might’ve added a win or so as a platoon piece, but who would be joining a team who, in any case, seem a bit heavy on left-handed hitters) might’ve been worth it, but this is a team that has a 1-WAR player at more or less every position. About the only other options I could see would be adding a defence-first middle infielder of the Everett variety, or finding someone to take the 5th spot in the rotation (maybe, I dunno, Livan Hernandez or something), but in both cases they probably have younger options that would provide similar production.
We’ve seen enough of Eric Hinske’s “impact bat” last year to not want another tour of duty from him…
Hinske sure as heck wouldn’t want another tour with the PIrates, either.
I think Felonius is basically right — shortstop is the only place to spend the money without blocking someone the Pirates want to have a look at. (Even at no. 5 starter they probably want to give D. McCutchen and Hart a look.) Maybe it’d have made sense to add another million to an offer for Everett to pry him away from the Tigers, but it doesn’t seem like such a no-brainer.
You don’t get 17 consecutive losing years by outsmarting everyone else. Despite a spectacularly gorgeous ballpark, this team is destined for quite a bit more rough road before things improve there. Is there any room for optimism? I don’t know really anything about their farm system, but they seem hopelessly far from .500, let alone contention.
Using their CHONE projections, I have them at about 77 wins right now. A .500 season isn’t totally out of the question.
77 wins sounds ludicrously optimistic. How are you applying the CHONE projections? Did you realise (stupid question perhaps) that CHONE doesn’t share the innings and PAs out for a team (i.e. it will have the Pirates’ pitching staff throwing far more innings than is actually possible, thus inflating their gross runs-above-replacement value)?
If everybody stays healthy, I can see that your rotation and lineup is quite full of guys in the 1-3WAR range, but a fully healthy season for everyone is very unlikely and there isn’t a lot of depth there.
I don’t buy that projection even as a Bucs fan. I think if the same methods were used on the rest of the league, most of the teams with the exceptions of the Astros and Nationals would still have higher win totals.
Actually, Felonius, CHONE is very conservative projecting innings pitched.
“Is there any room for optimism? I don’t know really anything about their farm system”
Well then, SteveM, it appears that you seem almost uniquely qualified to answer this question! Do tell!
Yeah, I adjusted the PA and IP so that everything fit. I agree that potential injuries could be an issue, but much of that is built into the projections. The highest position player projection is 551 PA, the highest starter IP is 191, seven starting pitchers receive at least 40 innings, Doumit only is projected at 371 PA, etc. I would say the playing time projections are fairly conservative.
Here’s a link to my original post. This was before the Church and bullpen signings. I have also made a few minor adjustments to the methodology since then. I have them at 77 wins now.
Just wanted to point out that Donnelly only pitched 25.1 innings last year because he was in Triple-A for half the season. Including minor league numbers, he pitched 52 innings.
I feel that $1.5m is a slight overpay for Donnelly, but, at such tiny sums, it’s probably a figure that isn’t going to hurt you in the long term.
I also feel that WAR does a particularly poor job of valuing someone like Donnelly – he’s a guy who is mediocre at best against lefties, but absolutely murders right-handed batters, like, say Russ Springer (who’s been very valuable himself in the last 3 years). If his appearances are leveraged effectively in the latter innings I can see his projection of just one or two runs above replacement being somewhat unrepresentative of his value to the Pirates.
He’s also a potential high-reward guy; whilst CHONE does a fine job of projecting performance, I’m a bit more hazy on its ability to project innings pitched/PA, and if the Pirates and their medical staff have concluded that Donnelly has a very good chance of making 50+ appearances in 2010, that may carry more weight than a projection system which merely takes into account a weighted average of his recent seasons. If the Pirates have concluded that he is both far better at getting tough righties out than the Evan Meeks and Chris Bootchecks of this world, and that he’s got a good chance of staying on the field (or at least better than a simple projection would indicate), even taking regression and normalisation of his HR/FB into account, I think you can argue that it’s a reasonable signing.
The gamble may pay off if they can spin him for a B-level prospect at the deadline. If not, it’s only $1.5m, and if that’s all they had left to spend this year, it’s hard to see them upgrading their lineup or rotation, both of which are full of reasonable but uninspiring players with few replacement-level holes.
Well I would assume that Huntington is building a good bullpen for two related reasons.
The first is that a good bullpen can help teams outperform their expected performance if only for a year. Pittsburgh is waiting for any increase in wins to justify Huntington’s reign as GM. By boosting wins it is possible that the Pirates could end up with larger gate attendance and slightly more season-ticket holders.
The second related is that there is nothing more crushing than knowing that your team is going to lose its late-inning lead. Think of the Nats last year before they improved and picked up McDougal (think about that sentence for a little bit. The trash can is over there) Think of the Devil Rays before 2007. It destroys player morale so that the organization does not have a winning culture (overrated I know but still important) and it drives fans far far away. Now the winning culture bit can be overturned fairly quickly with some improvements but what it does do is make free agents less willing to join your organization. If they do join they are frequently being overpaid
Finally if one’s closer and set-up men are really good you can usually trade one or two for prospects. This occurs less frequently since the gagne trade butit does happen. This is probably the primary thought in Huntington’s mind
After the 2009 deadline trades, the Pirates were ahead in the 6th inning or later in the majority of games. The dismal performance of the bullpen after Grabow was traded, Meek went down with injury, and Jesse Chavez lost his magic meant the Pirates post-trade record was a lot uglier than it should have been. The Pirates were at or near the top in wasted quality starts for the year.
Last year, Huntington said that squeezing out a few marginal wins to get the team to 67 wins instead of 62 was probably not worth the expense, but when he felt like it was going to make a difference, then he would start to spend where he felt it would help get those wins.
Huntington apparently feels he likes the team on paper. There are likely to be 4 rookies, including the Pirates top 3 prospects, that will make their debuts in 2010, and if just 1 or 2 of them perform out of the box as both Jones and McCutchen did last year, the Pirates could surprise some people.
One thing that can be seen from Huntington’s moves and contract offers so far is that the Pirates’ internal evaluation of players (aided by Dan Fox’s statistical models) very closely aligns to that of fangraphs.
Huntington is also paying $3M per WAR no matter where that person plays. His offers to Freddy Sanchez, Jack Wilson and Matt Capps, as well as the contract with Church, Donnelly, Carrasco and the rumored Dotel numbers all align perfectly with paying $3M per win at the fangraphs valuation.
In Donnelly’s case, last year he was worth .6 WAR in the half year he pitched in MLB. Huntington apparently is banking on him being worth .5 to 1 WAR in 2010, and has structured the contract to pay between $1.5M and $3M.
So, given the state of the team and that the bullpen is one of the areas where it’s possible to pay $3M per win and get that value, Donnelly’s deal does indeed make sense.
I’ll stay with my theory of Huntington plans on trading these bullpen pieces off at the deadline when their value is inflated by the pennant race.
Yeah, its not cost effective but its essentially a second draft for them and the money used is from revenue sharing anyway.
There may be a very simple explanation for the signing of Donnelly. Rotowire reported that Joel Hanrahan has experienced “elbow tightness” during the Pirates mini camp. He was supposed to be a pitcher seriously considered for the 9th inning. To me, Donnelly is an insurance policy for the Pirates.
Even teams going nowhere have to have pitchers start and relieve games. You can complain about WAR, you can complain about dollars, but there is no way you can, or should avoid signing pitchers if you need pitchers.
Sign and trade guys, sign and trade.
I’m afraid I have to agree with Adam Reynolds in saying that this article is not very well researched or argued. As AR points out, of the eleven Pirate relievers projected by CHONE to be between 0 and 3 runs above replacement, three are seriously injured and will miss a substantial portion of the season, one is more valuable as an emergency sixth starter pitching in AAA, and one is with another organization.
Furthermore, letting us know that the Pirates have six relievers projected to be between 0 and 3 runs above replacement is misleading, because they have no relievers projected to be better than +3 runs. If you’ve got a couple .5-1 win relievers, you can get by with a bunch of +2-3 run relievers filling out the bullpen, but if all you’ve got is 0-3 run relievers, you need a lot of depth. (And also, I don’t fault you for not mentioning this, but it’s worth pointing out that both Bill James and ZIPS think more highly of Donnelly than CHONE does.)
Furthermore, Donnelly’s projected to be +2 runs in only 33 innings of work, compared to the higher projected IP totals for all of those other 11 relievers. He’s projected to be better than anyone the Pirates have when he’s on the mound. Which leads to the fact that you’re being misleading about Donnelly’s injury risk. Obviously, any older pitcher carries some injury risk, but his missed time in 2007-2008 is because of Tommy John surgery, which he’s successfully recovered from. He does not have a history of nagging injuries, and there’s nothing to suggest he’ll miss significant time this year.
If you want to suggest that he’s a good bet to spend a couple stints on the fifteen-day DL and that we should project 55 innings from him instead of 70, that’s fine, but saying that he’s unlikely to pitch a full season is misleading. Using CHONE’s projection of value in 33 IP and comparing it to the value of Cotts in 39 IP and Ascanio in 54 IP and Yates in 44 IP is doubly misleading, because it overestimates the latter three and underestimates the former.
Finally, as Felonius Monk pointed out, the Pirates have separate payroll and draft/scouting budgets, so they wouldn’t have used the money they could have saved on Donnelly for anything else.
On top of all that, after being unfair and misleading about every point possible, you’re criticizing what you perceive to be a 7-800K overpay, which on a one-year contract for a team <$50M payroll is very forgivable, especially if it means adding a player who will immediately be the best pitcher in your bullpen. It's certainly within the margin of error that could be explained by, for instance, scouting that has led the Pirates to believe that Donnelly can again be healthy and effective. It is definitely within the margin of error that should be given to a GM like Huntington, who thus far has done nothing to suggest that he's not very smart.
Finally, saying that one or two extra runs won't make a difference in the team's short-term future is also misleading. You could say the same about any team, but the fact is that every run is meaningful to every team. Runs are slightly more valuable to some teams than others, sure, but even the best and worst teams don't and shouldn't value marginal wins (or even runs) as worthless. My suspicion is that you are undervaluing how much extra runs matter to the Pirates. My evaluations of the roster concur with Matt Bandi's, posted upthread: according to CHONE the Pirates look like a 77-win team or so. Maybe that's optimistic, but that's what the projections suggest. Solidifying the bullpen in an effort to realize that win total, and thus possibly avoiding a last place finish or even, with a lot of luck, breaking their losing-season streak, is absolutely worthwhile, as it will go a long way toward justifying the rebuilding and re-establishing the fans' trust in the administration, which should lead to better fan support and higher revenues.
All in all, when you fairly and accurately assess the situation, this signing is not confusing at all. It is possibly a slight overpay, but justifiable in terms of solidifying a very weak bullpen, limiting the risk to one year – in which there's excess money to work with – and being within the margin of error that good scouting by a smart front office can account for.