Homer Bailey and His Peers
Extension season continued today, with the Reds announcing the six year, $105 million contract for Homer Bailey that’s been rumored for the better part of the last week or so. Jeff already wrote up Bailey’s 2013 improvements, and there’s no question he was a significantly better pitcher last year than he had been previously. If those improvements are real and sustainable, Bailey won’t have any problem justifying this extension, and he certainly would have landed a much larger deal as a free agent next winter. There’s certainly upside here if he continues to pitch as he did last year.
That said, it’s also a pretty big bet on what amounts to one year’s performance at this level, and we can’t ignore what Bailey was before 2013 in projecting what he’ll do going forward. Using forecasts that account for multiple years of performance, Steamer projects Bailey as a +2.5 WAR pitcher in 2014, while ZIPS is a little more optimistic, coming in at +3.5 WAR. The always optimistic FANS projections are agree more with ZIPS, but they’ve generally been 15-20% too high across on the board — rose colored glasses and all that — and if you adjust all the FANS projections down to a more reasonable baseline, Bailey would come out at +2.9 WAR. I think it’s fair to say that Bailey is roughly a +3 WAR pitcher at the moment.
But this winter, we’ve seen a bunch of +3 WAR starters hit the free agent market, and none of them got anywhere close to $105 million over six years. One could certainly make the case that Bailey is more attractive than pitchers like Matt Garza (health concerns), Ubaldo Jimenez (lack of consistency), Ervin Santana (ditto), and Ricky Nolasco (ERA/FIP differentials), each of whom have signed — or in Santana’s case, are likely to sign — for roughly 4/$50M. The Reds essentially bought five of Bailey’s free agent years for an AAV of $19 million per season, while similar-if-not-quite-as-attractive actual free agents were only able to command $12 or $13 million per year with one fewer guaranteed year. Even if you prefer Bailey to these free agents — I do too, for the record — I’m not sure how to justify the gap at $6-$7 million per season, plus an extra guaranteed year, especially considering Bailey wasn’t actually a free agent yet.
This contract basically says that Bailey is a full win per season better than these guys going forward, and that the extra leverage that the Reds had of forcing him to wait an additional year to hit the open market had little or no value. Even if you think Bailey’s a +3.5 WAR guy going forward, you have to be fairly down on all of the Garza/Santana/Nolasco/Jimenez group to make that case. Which isn’t totally crazy, as they each have their own issues, but of course, it’s not like Bailey has been a dependable model of excellence either. Just as the Reds are betting on Bailey’s upside, the Orioles on bidding on Jimenez’s upside, and both have established similar top-end performances over the last few years. Maybe Bailey comes with less downside, but I don’t know that it’s significantly less, and the Orioles bet is less than half of the guaranteed money that the Reds just gave Bailey.
Clearly, Walt Jocketty knows more about the trade value of trying to sell teams on acquiring Bailey on a one year, $10 million contract, especially since trading him now would essentially have been an admission that the Reds didn’t think Bailey was worth the price he was asking for. It’s tough to ask an opposing GM to give up a bunch of talent in return for a single year rental of a player that you yourself won’t extend at the price he’s asking. So maybe the Reds wouldn’t have gotten much for Bailey’s walk year.
But given the other options available for $10M in salary — that’s Dan Haren/Bartolo Colon/Josh Johnson territory, essentially — it’s hard for me to imagine that the Reds couldn’t have extracted some real value in return, especially since the acquiring team would know that they could at least use a qualifying offer next winter to regain some future value even if they weren’t going to extend him themselves. Could the Reds really not have talked the Yankees into doing some version of the Bailey for Brett Gardner rumor that kicked around all winter? Or what about sending him to Seattle for displaced 2B prospect Nick Franklin, giving themselves an in-house replacement for when they eventually give Brandon Phillips away?
Maybe there wasn’t that kind of interest in Bailey from other GMs. Maybe the Reds really were best off keeping him at $19 million per year rather than spending $12 or $13 million on an inferior pitcher, even if the gap isn’t that huge. Free agents who change teams regularly underperform their projections, so maybe the available hurlers are more likely to be +2 WAR pitchers than +3 WAR pitchers going forward, and the Reds will be better off with a younger, better hurler than the free agent alternatives. There are plenty of scenarios where this deal works out just fine, and even if the Reds decide in a year that $19 million per year might not be such a bargain after all, it’s not such an egregious overpay that he wouldn’t still be movable if need be.
Given what we know about Bailey and about what the free agent market just said about good-not-great hurlers with some inconsistencies in their track records, this feels like a pretty steep price to pay, however. Maybe it was the best path forward for the Reds, but I wonder if in a year’s time, they don’t look back and wonder why they paid $100 million for their above average starter when everyone else was paying $50 million for theirs.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
“Clearly, Walt Jocketty knows more about the trade value of trying to sell teams on acquiring Bailey on a one year, $10 million contract, especially since trading him now would essentially have been an admission that the Reds didn’t think he was worth the price he was asking for.”
This sentence is a fucking train wreck.
lol one of those things that doesn’t translate so easily from the brain to the paper
Considering the sheer quantity & speed of the material available on this site – not to mention the price they ask you to pay to read it – how big of a prick do you have to be to post such a comment?
Why would anyone care enough to comment on the construction of a sentence?
Because internet, that’s why.
Seconded. Editing will never be their strong point but the FG staff outweigh these small errors w/ content and analysis in spades. GTFO
Why wouldn’t a writer want feedback on his writing? Seems absurd to justify whatever dogshit is thrown out via “It is free GFY”
@Garrett
It’s not dogshit just because of a run on sentence. It was a great article despite a grammar error that I totally get. I followed the sentence easily and I suspect most everyone did even though it wasn’t proper grammar, because that’s how people talk.
We’re reading this site for statistical analysis, not proper grammar.
And, Garrett and Jeff (especially), I think constructive feedback is totally welcome. There’s a way to deliver it in a way that is helpful, and there’s a way to be a complete and total asshat.
Jeff went with the latter. And when someone is a total asshat, no one wants to hear whatever they have to say, even if there is a glimmer of truth therein.
@ Garrett,
It’s not about providing constructive feedback. It’s about being a complete prick when doing it.
You’re right. Anyone who criticizes anything on Fangraphs is by definition an asshole.
Yeah, that’s what he said
But, but, but, Nick. Jeff *is* obviously an asshole. He couldn’t wait to register his complaint (1st comment!) in the most arrogant, caustic tone imaginable.
Maybe one day his life will be better, he will be less angry at the world and himself, and will offer up a suggestion in a helpful tone. Which the authors around here would likely welcome, and maybe even make changes to the article in question, or use to inform their writing style going forward.
Maybe.
If that sentence is a train wreck I hope your on it.
Cameron spends an entire article showing & conceding Bailey is better than the $50M slop like Nolasco, then concludes in the final line they’re all the same.
Also, it was Phillips for Gardner, not Bailey. In what universe would anybody trade Bailey for Brett Gardner?
In a world where Brett Gardner has just as much team control left as Homer Bailey, and has been worth much more than Bailey in the last 3, 4, and 5 seasons even though Gardner basically missed all of 2012?
I think you are vastly overrating Bailey and underrating Gardner if you think Bailey is that much better.
He concedes that Bailey is better, but throughout the article, the theme is that he’s not *that* much better than the 4/50’s.
A lot of commenters here don’t read articles before commenting on them.
Re: Bailey vs Gardner, I think an important facet to consider is that Bailey would likely garner a QO while Gardner may not.
Better, but not better enough to justify the difference in pay. How can you read the article and not understand this.
I don’t really understand this article. You have no idea how plausible any of these hypotheticals are. It reads not like analysis, but as message board fodder. Also, Bailey is a LOT better (and younger) than anyone in this offseason’s free agent class. It’s very easy to justify a $7M gap and extra year. The other pitchers don’t really have much to do with him.
The bottom line is that Bailey is worth this extension, which is backed up by any projection system out there.
Bailey has had exactly one 3 win season (war) in his career and only two with 2 or more war. He’s fortunately starting to put things together as his free agency approaches but let’s not act like he’s so obviously a $20M per yr pitcher.
“Bailey is a LOT better than anyone in this offseason’s free agent class.”
Nope!
Have you actually looked at any projections? He is probably worth less actually.
actually hes probably worth just a drop more, but theres probably not going to be much of a difference between them, your point is correct, im just being pedantic
So if you don’t pretend that you know everything and anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, that is message board fodder? I thought it was the other way around?
These players are not peers of Bailey. Bailey is younger than all (only Ubaldo is within 2 years), and Bailey was a top top prospect. I remember Garza ranking fairly well as a prospect but I doubt he was ever as high as Bailey.
So, let’s see. You’re comparing 4 pitchers who just happened to be free agents this season to Bailey. For Santana and Nolasco we know their deals. There’s little to no chance they break out to be much better than they have been. Garza has been solid, but also seems to lack breakout potential. Ubaldo has shown flashes of brilliance and is probably the only player of the 4 at least comparable to Bailey in terms of talent. But he’s been up and down the last few years.
In Bailey, we have a pitcher in his prime, who has improved the last few years and now looks like he is making good on his top prospect status. It is not unreasonable to expect a little more upside based on his pedigree and progression.
IMO, Bailey has all the makings of a ace/workhorse that any team would want to build their staff around. That might be worth paying a little extra for.
Right, exactly what Dave said. Because what you said agrees completely with him:
“It is not unreasonable to expect a little more upside based on his pedigree and progression.”
“That might be worth paying a little extra for.”
Why the comparison to his “peers” who aren’t peers at all?
Performance peers. 3 WAR starters. Read the article.
Good contracts aren’t based on past performance but projected future performance. I don’t think most GM’s would project them to be peers.
Projected future performance is based in large part on past performance. This is very obvious to those GM’s you’re speculating about.
Those GM’s, based on contracts signed, don’t project them to be peers either. And Dave himself wrote that Bailey would get 6 years for $150 million in free agency with a good year this year. So clearly he doesn’t project them to be peers going forward either.
“And Dave himself wrote that Bailey would get 6 years for $150 million in free agency with a good year this year.”
Yes, adding another year of consistency to your very small track record when you’ve been mediocre for years will definitely put you into a different peer group.
“So clearly he doesn’t project them to be peers going forward either.”
Sigh. Yes, if he changes his projection by being good for more than one year, he changes his peer group. A fucking revelation
You’re kind of an idiot.
WTF are YOU saying u fuckin wannabe smartass. so many pseudo nerds trying flex their brain cocks.
“It is not unreasonable to expect a little more upside based on his pedigree and progression.”
Yes, it really is.
I read it. It falls flat. Not all 3 WAR pitchers are alike. Every team in baseball would prefer Bailey to that group of pitchers, and I bet it’s not particularly close.
Quoting the article does nothing for your counter argument.
yes, but the question is would every team in baseball choose Bailey over one of those pitchers and 55 million dollars.
Tanaka projects to 3.5 WAR. How much was his contract again?
The article explicitly concedes what you just said. What is wrong with you?
You aren’t engaging with the argument at all. You’re just saying things.
So the article concedes that not all 3 WAR pitchers are alike, and every team in baseball would rather have Bailey and it isn’t close.
This you apparently agree with. But you have a problem with “it’s not unreasonable to expect more upside based on his pedigree and progression.”
So your only disagreement was you don’t think the fact that he is significantly younger than the ‘peers’ and has shown improvement means he has higher upside than they do? Because I really think it does.
What Ryan said. It’s not Bailey vs. Garza, or Bailey vs. Ubaldo. It’s Bailey vs. (FA pitcher + lotsa extra cash money which could be put to other purposes)
I’m with you theojd, I love the content on this site and appreciate the work/analysis. With that said I question the comparison made here. All the “comparable” 4/50 mil pitchers come with glaring flaws.
Josh Johnson for instance might have a similar ceiling but the injury history creates a great deal of risk.
Be strong and stand up for your ideas. Nothing you said seems disrespectful and counter viewpoints should be welcomed.
The Reds may have overpaid by a few million per year, buts that better than letting him walk as a FA after this year. Good move by the REds.
Why are those the only 2 options?
The Reds could’ve bought Bailey’s next 6 seasons at a reasonable price and not allowed him to walk also. Or, for those prices, maybe it was better to let him walk and put their money into Latos and Cueto.
The thing with Bailey is he a bit of a one trick pony. He has a REALLY good fastball. But his breaking and off-speed stuff is very average. Because of this, if the fastball velocity isn’t there, he is substantially more hittable.
I don’t think you know much about Homer Bailey. He has one of the best sliders in baseball among starting pitchers. He has a pretty good split finger. His curveball is solid.
Fangraphs’ pitch values have the slider as very good in 2011, top 15 in baseball in 2012 and pretty pedestrian last year. Not that it’s a perfect metric, but just for context; if you go strictly off pitch values, GilaMonster’s summary is very true to Bailey’s 2013.
Right. It may not be GilaMonster who doesn’t know much about Homer Bailey.
His slider is something like 60th best in baseball in Whiff/Swing,
I would attribute his 2013 success to using the two seamer more.
His wSL/C ranked 30th last year, still above-average using the non-PFX categories.
But limiting something to just one season is pretty small of a sample size. Jump to two years and he jumps to 14th. Jump to three years and he jumps up to 8th on the list.
And no, even if we go off of just 2013, his summary is not very true. Very average would mean his pitches would be right around 0.00 in value. But they aren’t. His slider is well above that.
I didn’t limit my search to 2013. I used 2011,2012,2013 data for my results.
Look at his Brooks Baseball page and BP’s Pitch F/X leaderboard, I don’t see any major difference other than the tick up in velocity. In fact as his two seamer usage fell towards the end of the season, he got substantially worse.
I think there is a general misunderstanding about linear weights as applied to specific types of pitches.
Let’s say Homer Bailey anticipates that the hitter he is facing will take the first pitch no matter what. So he throws a get-me-over fastball. As predicted, the hitter takes the pitch for strike one. The quality of this particular fastball wasn’t good: its velocity and movement were less than optimal, and it caught more of home plate than ideal. Nevertheless, because the hitter took it for strike one, Fangraphs assigns a positive value to Bailey’s fastball.
On the next pitch, Bailey throws another fastball. This time, the pitch has more on it, both in velocity and movement, but it’s still about thigh high and down the middle of the plate. Nevertheless, the hitter’s timing is just a bit off due to the slight increase in velocity and movement, so he swings and fouls it back. Now the count is 0-2, which gives Bailey a huge advantage. Thus, Fangraphs assigns an even higher value to this fastball, which again wasn’t a great pitch because of its location.
On the third pitch, Bailey throws his slider. And he throws it exactly where he wants to, down and away and off the plate. He is trying to get the hitter to swing and miss. Since he is ahead 0-2, Bailey doesn’t care if the hitter takes the pitch for a ball. He still has the advantage. Although Bailey throws a nasty slider exactly where he wants to, the hitter is able to lay off and check his swing for a ball. Fangraphs assigns a negative value to this slider because it resulted in a ball. A 1-2 count is slightly more advantageous to a hitter than an 0-2 count.
On the fourth pitch, Bailey decides to go back to his fastball. Having just thrown a breaking pitch down and away, Bailey intends to throw his fastball up and in. Bailey is trying to get the batter to swing and miss, but if the batter makes contact, Bailey hopes that he will get the pitch in on his hands so the hitter can’t hit the ball hard. As it turns out, Bailey’s fastball is up and on the inner half of the plate, but it catches more of the plate than Bailey intended. The hitter swings and makes contact, but his timing is just a bit off. The batter’s timing is just a bit off because of the velocity and location of the previous slider, down and away and about seven or eight miles an hour less than Bailey’s fastball. So instead of turning on a hittable fastball up and over the inner half of the plate, the ball gets in just a bit on the hitter’s hands, and he ends up popping up to the infield for an easy out. Fangraphs assigns this fastball with a great value because it resulted in an infield fly out.
Fangraphs now sums up the pitches in the at bat: The three fastballs Bailey threw resulted in two strikes and an infield fly out. Therefore, Bailey’s fastball was given an outstanding value, even though none of the fastballs Bailey threw were of a good quality. The slider Bailey threw resulted in a ball, and thus Fangraphs assigned it with a negative value, even though the slider was thrown exactly where Bailey intended to throw it. But in the context of that at bat, which pitch was the most effective pitch? The pitch that resulted in the out, or the pitch that preceded it that caused the hitter’s timing to be off?
This example illustrates the fallacy of using linear weights to individual pitches in an at bat, and then taking a sum of those pitches at the end of the at bat and assigning values. Often the critical pitch is the one that is thrown before the pitch that results in an out. For example, a pitch with two strikes that the hitter fouls off receives no value, because the count remains unchanged. It’s as if the pitch never happened. But in reality, that pitch may set up the next pitch that gets the hitter out.
The sequence of pitches matters. And this is particularly important to a starting pitcher, because he has to plan to face the order at least three times. Therefore, his sequence of pitches matters not only in an individual at bat, but through the entire context of a game. What worked against a hitter in the first inning may not work in the sixth or seventh inning.
This is not to say that pitch values are a meaningless metric. But one cannot conclude that Homer Bailey was a “one-trick pony” simply because his fastball in 2013 had very high values and his secondary pitches did not. About 40% of Bailey’s pitches in 2013 were something other than a fastball. Even if those pitches were not consistently missing hitter’s bats, being called for strikes, or resulting in outs doesn’t mean they weren’t good pitches that helped make Bailey’s fastball very effective. Another way to put it: if Major League hitters in 2013 knew that Bailey could not get them out with anything other than his fastball, then there is no way Bailey’s fastball would have received such great values in 2013. His fastball would have become a very predictable, and thus hittable, pitch. And that would have been reflected in the pitch values of his fastball.
Pitch FX has his slider below average last year. In my book, that counts. I don’t understand why you don’t want to count it other than the fact that it disputes the narrative you’re trying to create.
Matt Cain signed 127M/6yrs in the winter of 2012, at age 29, with 3.9, 4.6, 3.6 WAR in the previous three seasons.
Homer Bailey, 28, with 1.3, 2.5, 3.7 WAR in the previous three seasons.
105M/6 looks pretty fair to me. With similar expectations, the extra 20M justifies Cain’s consistency.
When Matt Cain signed his extension his WORST season (other than his 7 start rookie year) was 3.2 WAR while Homer Bailey’s BEST season was 3.7 WAR.
At the time of the extension Matt Cain was a massively superior player than Homer Bailey is today.
yep. let’s just say that the Tigers got a massive steal getting Anibal Sanchez at 5 yrs and $80M.
Not to mention Cain’s demonstrated ability to post an ERA better than his FIP
>is 2014
>still uses fWAR to evaluate matt cain
Do not mix 4chan and Fangraphs. Please please please don’t.
what is RA9 WAR and why is it convenient that you ignored it
So, a few weeks ago, Dave predicts that Homer would get 6/150 if he has a “good year” next season, then writes an article that says the Reds overpaid Bailey at 6/105 a few weeks later.
Makes sense.
There are a couple of things. First this extension is covering one arbitration season which lets say would have been 10MM. That makes the FA portion of the contract 5/95 (or 6/120 if the mutual option is picked up).
Secondly just because Dave predicted that he would get 6/150 does not mean that he thought he deserved 6/150. I imagine we would have seen a similar article had he eventually signed for 6/150 after a good season.
I also think that Dave’s prediction was for 6/120, not 6/150.
“Free agents who change teams regularly underperform their projections”
I’d love to see an article on this. Has one been published here and I missed it?
Maybe they put a lot of value on hanging on to a home grown player.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/homer-baileys-peers/
Two slightly different lists of peers, eh?
That is pretty much awesome.
There are no narratives here only objective statistical analysis. Please move along.
It sort of makes you wonder if the last 100 innings last year, where he was worth less than 1 WAR, have any meaning. I’d say they do.
Has anybody else heard about Justin Masterson asking for a similar amount to what Bailey just got. If that is the case, I don’t see it making much sense for the Indians to extend him at that price.
Homer Bailey peers down a voluptuous woman’s shirt.