Five Lessons From the Wild Non-Tender Deadline
The non-tender deadline isn’t a date everyone circles on the calendar expecting big moves and excitement, but it does force teams into decisions on a handful of players and causes some movement as well as a handful of new free agents. Last night’s non-tender deadline was more active than most. As Jeff Passan noted, there were 40 non-tenders after a combined 46 over the previous two years. It was busy, and a few productive players were not offered contracts despite expectations for fairly reasonable salaries. There are some big conclusions to reach about the state of the game as well as some small ones based on last night. Here’s what we learned.
Teams Aren’t Paying for a Return to Form
Among the biggest non-tenders in terms of past production and expected salary were players who struggled for various reasons in 2019. Formerly injured pitchers in the process of returning from injury or needing time to return from injury like Taijuan Walker, Jimmy Nelson, and Aaron Sanchez were all non-tendered despite expected salaries in the $4 million to $6 million range. Previous successful players with rough years like Kevin Gausman, Blake Treinen, and Travis Shaw were all let go despite prior track records of success. In the cases of Gausman and Treinen, an expected salary of close to $10 million likely played a role, though it isn’t necessarily clear that the decisions wouldn’t have been the same even if a few million dollars had been shaved off the cost. Steven Souza Jr. has decent projections for next season, but he did poorly in 2018 and didn’t play at all last season. For the most part, teams weren’t willing to roll the dice on bounce-back campaigns.
Anybody Can Play Second Base
While this year’s free agent market wasn’t flush with good second base options, it is deep in role players. Not including Mike Moustakas, who will try to show with the Reds that anybody can play second base, there were eight free agent second basemen projected for between one and two wins next season. We saw the entire American League pass up a similar player in Jonathan Villar before he was claimed by the Marlins and eventually a trade was worked out.
Likewise Cesar Hernandez, with an $11 million price tag, was let go by the contending Phillies. Hernandez jumps to the top of available second baseman along with free agent Brian Dozier, but Asdrubal Cabrera, Howie Kendrick, and Eric Sogard are all coming off seasons as good or better than the former Phillies second baseman while Jason Kipnis, Starlin Castro, Wilmer Flores, and last year’s non-tender Jonathan Schoop not all that far behind.
In addition to those players, middle infielders José Peraza, who put up 2.6 WAR in 2018, Tim Beckham, who was good in 2017 and put up an average hitting line last year, and Addison Russell, who was good enough that the Cubs were willing to overlook his domestic violence suspension and even gave him a contract to make up for money lost during that suspension, were all non-tendered as well. It’s not a good time to be a second baseman looking for a job, though it also isn’t a good time to be looking for a second baseman who is expected to provide better than average production.
Many Players Are Going to Find Themselves in Better Situations
While players losing some guaranteed salaries isn’t necessarily a good thing for them, keep in mind that tendering a contract at this stage only guarantees one-sixth of their salary if they are cut early in spring training or one-quarter of their salary if cut by the end of it. If a player without a guaranteed contract wasn’t going to make the team, making him a free agent is a far better situation, as it allows them to choose a destination with the greatest odds of sticking on a major league roster. Jesus Aguilar, claimed by the Marlins, is going to have many more opportunities to earn a higher future salary with Miami than he was going to have with the Rays. Shaw is going to end up in a situation that is likely better for him, and Maikel Franco is going to to get a fresh start.
Of all the players non-tendered, only four (Hernandez, Kevin Pillar, Gausman, and Russell) put up at least 0.5 WAR in 2019 and are projected to do so again next year. A vast majority of the players non-tendered are your proverbial replacement-level players. They aren’t being non-tendered because their salary is too high, they are being non-tendered because their team doesn’t believe in them. For Hernandez, Pillar, Gausman, and Treinen, they are essentially hitting free agency a year early.
We shouldn’t bemoan players waiting too long to hit free agency and then get upset when it happens earlier. The total expected arbitration salaries for the top-30 players non-tendered is around $117 million, and the same players might end up recouping half of that in free agency. This amounts to maybe 1% of total MLB salaries. There might be a lot of problems with current Collective Bargaining Agreement and the arbitration process, but the non-tender process isn’t one of them.
Arbitration Still Doesn’t Track With Actual On-Field Value
C.J. Cron, Franco, and Domingo Santana might have decent power, but issues between them with walks, strikeouts, and defense make them replacement-level players. Despite those deficiencies, the trio was set to receive around $6 million each in arbitration. It’s not unreasonable for their own teams to see them as replacement-level in 2020, though some other club might see something more like a one-win player and pay them closer to their expected arbitration salary. Similarly, Treinen had a bad year in 2019, but he recorded 16 saves, and his previous 38-save season meant a high salary in arbitration regardless of his actual great performance in 2018 and poor performance in 2019.
Teams Trying Not to Win is Still an Issue
While Villar and Pillar certainly have flaws, they would have made the Orioles and Giants better in 2020 had their teams held on to them. Although their expected salaries were in the eight-figure range, that’s not an unreasonable cost, even for the Marlins on Villar and likely some other team with Pillar. The Giants and Orioles just made themselves worse in order to pocket $10 million. Having the two players might not change their spot in the standings at year’s end, but those two players aren’t blocking anyone, and they might have netted prospects at the trade deadline.
Tanking isn’t about draft position, it’s about saving money. Tanking or rebuilding or whatever you might call it isn’t necessarily the root of baseball’s issues, but non-competitive baseball is a big problem, and two teams just made themselves worse solely to save some money.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
I agree with the part about Treinen, Pillar, Gausman, and Hernandez essentially hitting free agency a year early, and that teams should want them. But I would also add that in addition to teams not wanting to pay for homers in arbitration, teams don’t want to pay for steal-driven arbitration numbers, which is what happened to Villar. Honestly I think it’s borderline crazy that Villar got past Cleveland, or that the Reds didn’t try to work out a deal instead of paying Mike Moustakas to play out of position, but beyond that I understand that teams are freaked out about a guy who has periods where he’s unplayable because of errors and where his offensive value is variable. Even though I disagree with it, I understand what happened there. And as far as Pillar goes, I don’t think we credibly accuse the Giants of not trying to win, given that they took on his salary last year.
Teams shouldn’t be freaked out by Villar. Maybe he’s error prone and has some offensive ups and downs, but the salary is a pittance compared to the value he’s put up in three of the last four seasons.
You’re dead on about Cleveland and Cincinnati passing him being a head scratcher. Also with the Yanks/Red Sox/White Sox too as they have issues at second (thinking the Yanks play him at second and shift Torres to short in this scenario). Frankly, he’d help many teams in the AL looking to contend.
What issues do the Yankees have at second? Lemahieu was only playing 1b at the end because Voit was a lesser option than Encarnacion or Urshela. They let Didi walk because they had too many guys. DJL at 2b and Gleyber at SS is pretty nice
D’oh completely forgot about DJ!
The Red Sox and Cubs are obvious choices except that they are suddenly trying to cut costs, which make no sense to me but that’s where we’re at. The D-Backs also kind of fit that description as well, where they should be interested but they weren’t. The White Sox have Nick Madrigal waiting in the wings, so I understand that one at least.
I think Villar is a good bridge for Madrigal since he’s not quite ready yet; effective, cheap, not long-term.
I don’t know if he’s ready or not, but he’ll probably be up as soon as he passes some service milestone. He was in AAA for over 100 PAs last year and while he wasn’t great he was an above average hitter there.
He might be up then, sure. But adding a good player like Villar eases the urge to call up Madrigal when he hits said milestone. They could spread themselves thin and get a cheap and crappy placeholder, and call Madrigal up. But that assumes lots of risks: will Madrigal prove at AAA that he’s ready? Will he hit and contribute when he gets the call? What if he gets hurt?
Getting Villar negates a lot of those risks and adds a good regular in the bargain. Trying to thread the needle and time everything perfectly with prospects getting called up and contributing immediately is a fool’s errand. Get good players, let it play out, and then adjust.
Personally, I wanted them to try Cesar Hernandez. If he could get his BB% closer to his career average, he’d be a great addition.
The salaries are obviously part of it, but I think that the roster spot is also a significant consideration for teams like the Giants and Orioles.
In one sense, any player with only a year of team control on the rosters of those teams is “blocking someone” because they can instead look for upside in players with long-term control through avenues like the Rule 5 Draft. Particularly given the success that the Dodgers had in finding players such as Max Muncy and Chris Taylor while Zaidi was there, I see the logic in him trying to find players like that rather than hoping that some interesting prospect return is available for Pillar at the trade deadline.
Also, I mentioned this on the Hernandez article, but I think that Santana is the sort of guy that a lot of teams should be targeting. He’s only 27 and his big problem is that he needs to stay in one place in the outfield or else he gets confused. He’s athletic and has a 3-win season in his rear view mirror, with great exit velocities. He’s worth a buy-low for a lot of teams, including the Mariners at a potentially lower price.
Agree with all of this, and particularly the bizarre Villar situation. What’s really going on is that the arbitration market is being reset, a process that will continue. Teams will be looking both on a WAR/Dollar basis and an absolute cost basis. Decent to good quality players will be cut loose…and, that’s also going to put downward pricing pressure on “true” free agents. Which is what many owners want–find ways that depress salaries, even at the cost of competitiveness. It seems more and more owners are going to binary choices–they either decide they want to field a watchable team with a chance to make the playoffs, or at least one building towards it, or they want to maximize profits. Fewer seem to just want to get better, if better costs cash.
Better to phrase that second choice as something other than maximize profits. A competitive team makes pretty good money, after all. And a non-competitive team uninterested in paying real MLB salaries can choose to invest in player development (Houston 7 years ago) or just sit on their asses until the stars magically align (Miami)
In the past I’ve defended Peter Angelos against the narrative that he’s cheap, noting that the Orioles have been above the league median in payroll for eighteen of the twenty six seasons that he has owned the franchise, but this Villar move clearly prioritized cutting costs over the strength of the organization. I understand not wanting to pay $10 million for a player on a team that is and will remain among the league’s worst, but surely the Orioles could have emulated what the Braves did in 2015 when they assumed the $10 million owed Bronson Arroyo to acquire Touki Toussaint from Arizona, especially since Villar has actual on-field value, unlike Arroyo. Baltimore’s farm system has improved recently but it’s still far from strong in my opinion, as I’m not particularly optimistic about anyone except Rutschman and Rodriguez, so adding a 45 (by eating half of Villar’s contract) or maybe a 50 FV (by eating almost all of it) prospect would have been meaningful. It’s not the absence of Villar that bothers me as an Orioles fan, it’s why he’s gone and what that may mean about the years to come.
I don’t understand the downvotes on this. The Touki deal wasn’t likely to repeat itself, but I think fans have a right to get annoyed when their rebuilding teams decide they’d rather cut a guy with value rather than pay down his contract and get something in return.
He got traded for virtually nothing. You’re not getting an FV45 for throwing in $5M or an FV50 for throwing in $10M. This is delusional. He’s viewed like Avisail Garcia, a 1.5-win player who spiked to 4-wins one year. Maybe a bit better than that. And you can’t collect prospects for taking on some other team’s bad contract. That happened once.
This is also why the Surplus Value Trade for Prospects formulation needs to be retired or used only to see how much cash is necessary to even out a deal. If 2.5 years of a 3.5-win pitcher goes for 2 FV50’s, let’s say, then it doesn’t matter that Greinke makes $83M over that period. The trading team will just throw in that cash necessary to make the deal. In other words, Prospect returns are geared toward the quality and control in years of the player. Cash is thrown in to bring the contract in-line with what a 3.5 win pitcher could get on the FA market for those 2.5 years, but it has no impact on the prospect return. Maybe the Mariners took a hit on Edwin Diaz to dump Cano’s contract, but typically you don’t see contract liabilities affecting prospect returns.
And no Angelos isn’t cheap. He had a $145M payroll in 2018 that racked up over 100 losses. Great job, Pete!
But to be fair, the Padres just traded an FV45, but one of the 40-man (Austin Allen) to the A’s for a comparable player making $5M less. Jurickson Profar is more relevant than Touki Touissant here, and instructive on what they could bring back–an FV40 prospect not on the 40-man roster or an FV45 on it. If I’m an Orioles fan I would much rather they do that than cut Villar.
Fair enough. I just read Longenhagen’s article on the Profar trade in which he says Austin Allen is a Evan-Gattis-type entering his age-26 season. There are only 3 teams — Rays, Padres, and Braves (maybe a 4th in the DBacks) — who have so many prospects that they have to give away players like Allen & Solak by the Rays back in July.
I like Villar more than Profar, so I wonder why the Padres couldn’t make the Allen-for-Villar deal. Preller drafted Profar for TEX so maybe he just likes the guy.
It’s annoying that you call my statement delusional when I provided a real world example specifically to show people like you that it has occurred. Touki Toussaint was a 50 FV prospect at the time of that trade, and the Braves acquired him from Arizona simply for taking the $10 million left on Bronson Arroyo’s contract.
The Toussaint trade was made 4+ years ago when Dave Stewart was the Diamondbacks’ GM.
Stewart was an outlier GM at the time who made many moves that perplexed analytics-focused writers (including the ones as this site). The Toussaint trade was one such move that was widely criticized, particularly because Stewart subsequently was quoted suggesting that Toussaint’s value was equal to the slot-constrained signing bonus that he’d been paid when drafted.
Stewart was also, of course, fired in late 2016 and replaced by Mike Hazen. Hazen fits the mold of the modern, analytics-focused GM. There aren’t really any Dave Stewart types left among current MLB GM’s.
Or, looking at another Dave Stewart trade, every MLB team should eagerly jump on the opportunity for the equivalent of trading Shelby Miller (with 3 years of team control) for Ender Inciarte (with 5 years of team control) and a prospect valued as highly as Dansby Swanson was at the time. It’s completely unrealistic, however, to think that the Braves side of that trade is a template for what’s available in the trade market.
Oakland traded Jharel Cotton to the Cubs for cash ten days ago. Teams regularly make deals that exchange talent for payroll relief.
Cotton is 27 years old and posted a 7.71 ERA / 6.31 FIP in AAA in 2019 in his comeback from Tommy John surgery. The A’s designated him for assignment and then flipped him to the Cubs for cash considerations of $100k. The Cubs are paying him $645k in 2019. Cotton agreed to little more than the league minimum rather than go to an arbitration hearing.
This situation is wildly different than something like the Toussaint trade just based on player quality. My read of the situation is that “salary relief” probably wasn’t even the motivating factor for the A’s: they wanted to clear up a 40-man roster spot so they DFA’d Cotton. It looks to me like the Cubs simply “jumped the line” on waiver order by offering $100k in cash considerations. I think that in large part because I don’t understand why the Cubs would have otherwise offered that amount. The waiver claim fee is $50k, but the Cubs didn’t simply claim him off waivers.
In any case, it’s very telling that the apparent max any team was willing to pay to have Cotton take up a spot on its 40-man roster in 2020 was a total of $745k ($100k cash considerations plus a $645k salary). At this point he’s not at all viewed as “talent” with the same value as a legit prospect.
You’re completely missing the point. Cotton is just one of numerous deals made to shift money from one team for talent from another team, and it’s well known that in trade negotiations teams will offer a better prospect if the other team pays down part of the departing veteran’s salary. Toussaint is not some isolated example that isn’t relevant, he’s simply the most extreme example of something that happens regularly in Major League Baseball. I don’t get why you’re pretending otherwise.
O/U 10 days before Russell signs with the Astros?
Tick Tock Tick Tock.
Theoretically he’s a fit on several teams but the baggage train…
Even the Astros would think it over but given their injury record around 2B they can talk themselves into it.
LMAO Kevin Pillar received an MVP vote this year
Another example of declining wages for the middle tier player. At what point do we see one of these players sign with the NPB or KBO?
It’ll never happen with the KBO. The KBO has a maximum salary of approximately $1MM for any foreign player.
its already happening.
@Guru – please provide examples to back that up.
I can’t say it’s never happened, but my strong impression is that the U.S. players going to play in Japan or Korea max out at players who have some MLB experience but can’t stick on an MLB roster just based on perceived talent level. That’s either AAA shuttle players who don’t perform well enough to keep a spot in the majors or players whose performance in MLB dropped off after some short period of success. It’s not players who are being non-tendered because teams don’t want to pay them $6 million in arbitration but who can find a landing spot on a 1-year deal for $2 million to $3 million.
“We shouldn’t bemoan players waiting too long to hit free agency and then get upset when it happens earlier.”
This is a very, very false equivalence. Almost all the guys hitting free agency early are ones who the team has decided are not very good. The teams are still retaining almost all the power. Whatever gets spent on Addison Russell will be more than offset by what the Cubs save on Kris Bryant, even if his grievance is successful. Combined, these guys might make a few extra million by hitting free agency early and getting into a better situation, but the clubs will literally save hundreds of millions on better players they want more.
where does this stop? sad what the mlb has become. have to fix this asap. shouldn’t be allowed to be able to be worse, just to save money and put more in the owners pockets. every team should be doing everything they can to win, not lose.
huge huge problem in mlb. teams are terrible. fans leaving. cutting minor league teams. owners being greedy and on cusp of a strike due to not 50/50 relationship. sad