Early Offseason Marginal Pitching Transactions, Part 1

Free agency has been ongoing for two weeks now, but for the most part, the big dominoes are yet to fall. While teams certainly have their sights set on the likes of Shohei Ohtani and Cody Bellinger, the early offseason has been defined by smaller moves and signings made around the non-tender and Rule 5 protection deadlines.

The players being exchanged aren’t the most notable members of their respective rosters, yet they’ll still impact the quality of their teams in the upcoming season. We’ll be knocking out many of the more intriguing pitchers who have changed hands in this two-part series.

Royals acquire Nick Anderson from Braves for cash

Few players better embody the volatility that comes with a reliever’s career than Anderson. For a two-year stretch on the Rays from 2019 to ’20, he had the second-highest strikeout rate of any big league pitcher and was one of the game’s premier closers. His brilliance at his best has inspired my colleague Ben Clemens to write about him four times, which has to be a record for relief pitchers and certainly for ones with only one true full season. But since then, he’s missed all but about half a season with UCL surgery and is now being traded for scraps despite coming off a season with a 3.06 ERA and 3.09 FIP.

Anderson has always been a two-pitch guy, pairing a mid-90s fastball with a breaking ball of indeterminate classification. The heater was once an absolute monster, topping out at 98 mph with plus vertical carry. But he clearly hasn’t been the same since recovering from elbow surgery, seeing lowered velocity, less movement, and a higher release point — pure disaster from a stuff perspective. Before being shut down for the season with a shoulder strain, his ability to get whiffs with his fastball was diminished, along with his strikeout rate.

Without the ability to blow hitters away with fastballs, Anderson threw sliders at a career-high rate with Atlanta, using them about half the time. While many pitches with low spin efficiency rely on the power of seam-shifted wake to maximize horizontal movement — think frisbee sinkers and sweepers — Anderson’s breaking ball gets an extreme axis shift downward, turning a pitch that spins out the hand like a traditional slider into a power curveball with drop. It’s an offering that doesn’t fit nicely into our conceptions of what different pitch types look like, and as such, it’s hard to say what makes it good or bad. Ben looked into this particular pitch a few years ago and found that Anderson’s pitches with more slider-like horizontal movement got better results; he has added about an inch of movement since his dominant 2019 season. The slider allowed just a .201 wOBA, limiting overall damage despite allowing more balls in play.

You could look at Anderson as someone with a career strikeout rate north of 35% and an ERA below three. It would also be fair to say he’s a 34-year old who has struggled to stay healthy and seen a large stuff dropoff since his surgery. If you’re the Atlanta front office, it’s easier to take the latter perspective given the already-existing options in the bullpen. Why take a gamble on the health and effectiveness of Anderson when the likes of Aaron Bummer, Joe Jiménez, and Pierce Johnson are competing just to be the seventh-inning guy?

Should the Royals be successful in their bet on Anderson’s performance, their reward will come in the form of prospects who can be acquired via the trade market when contending teams come calling for arms. They’ve already seen similar moves pay off, claiming six years of breakout star Cole Ragans for eventual World Series champion Aroldis Chapman. Should his arm allow him, Anderson will continue his journey to new teams as the quintessential modern reliever.

Braves claim Penn Murfee on waivers from Mets, non-tender him

Murfee was a breakout relief star for the Mariners in 2022, appearing on our prospect lists for the first time at the age of 28 and tossing 70 innings with a sub-three ERA. Despite a fastball clocking in at just 89 mph, his strikeout rate sat well above average thanks to his sweeper and low release point. As a rookie, he led Seattle’s bullpen in innings pitched, consistently setting the table for relief aces Andrés Muñoz and Paul Sewald. But he appeared in just 16 games in 2023, as he experienced elbow inflammation that resulted in season-ending UCL surgery.

At season’s end, Murfee was waived by the Mariners to free up a 40-man roster spot and claimed by the Mets, who would themselves send him packing to Atlanta not a month later. At the non-tender deadline, the Braves decided to keep their offseason options open even after already clearing up substantial 40-man space, sending him to the open market.

Murfee’s trip between three teams and now free agency won’t alter the league like a significant trade or signing, but it’s particularly illustrative of the attitudes of teams towards replaceable relievers in the era of advanced pitch design. This isn’t to say his career is over; he’ll likely sign with a team before the end of the winter who can stash him on the 60-day IL. But it is telling that all 30 clubs value the upside of a possible Rule 5 pick or small signing over a reliever with an 84 FIP-. A few relievers are consistent enough to earn eight-figure deals, but most are one injury or bad stretch away from being replaced by one of the arms that the farm system can churn out like candy from a vending machine.

The shift towards nameless and faceless relievers is nothing new and has been discussed before in its impacts on the enjoyment of the game and potential ramifications on salaries if the trend continues to impact starters as well. But from a transaction evaluation perspective, this move speaks to the risks teams are willing to take for the chance of acquiring top-end options. What’s the point of holding onto an injured lower-leverage reliever when anyone signed off the street can fill that role? Rather, their limited roster spots are better used chasing options who can be elite, even if only for the briefest of times.

Padres claim Jeremiah Estrada on waivers from Cubs

The Cubs drafted Estrada out of high school in 2017, but thanks to a combination of Tommy John surgery and hospitalization from COVID-19, he never pitched a full professional season before 2022. Fully healthy for the first time, he laid waste to his competition as he advanced all the way from High-A to the majors. Across 54 innings in four levels, he struck out 86 batters and allowed just nine earned runs, earning himself a September callup.

Estrada’s main weapon is a four-seam fastball that, in a vacuum, has some of the best characteristics of any heater in the pitch tracking era. Among pitchers to average at least 20 inches of induced vertical break, he is the only one who doesn’t use an over-the-top arm angle to maximize backspin, throwing from a more ordinary release height at around 96 mph. It’s a pitch that has no neighbors in the universe of fastball shape, a Frankenstein-esque offering that combines various traits of other elite fastballs: Félix Bautista levels of movement, Josh Hader velocity, and Cristian Javier’s arm slot. He also throws a slider that had a 26% swinging-strike rate in Triple-A, but he’s hardly used it in his brief major league stints.

From what I’ve described thus far, it’s hard to imagine why the Cubs would give Estrada away for free. But his control, especially with his fastball, fell apart in 2023, as he walked a batter an inning in both the minors and majors. He also allowed a dozen homers in under 40 total innings, the result of grooved pitches in hitter-friendly counts. Estrada’s command has never been anything even resembling average, but his previous walk rates were certainly acceptable when accounting for all his strikeouts. When they reached a previously unseen worst, the Cubs decided to move on in spite of his overpowering raw stuff.

If you’re a pitcher looking for opportunities to crack a big league roster, San Diego might be the place for you. With a whole squad of arms hitting free agency and with the team’s reported desire to shed payroll, plenty of innings will be going to unproven hurlers already in the organization. Our RosterResource page for the Padres currently projects three pitchers making the rotation with fewer than ten major league starts each, along with similarly inexperienced and unheralded names populating the bullpen. This could give Estrada the opportunity to get a longer look in the majors and a chance to get his walk rate down to a manageable level.