Cubs Bring Back Jason Hammel
When the Cubs traded Jason Hammel to the A’s, Hammel made it clear that he’d enjoyed his time in Chicago and would be open to returning. He wasn’t kidding, apparently, he’s reportedly reached a deal to return to Chicago. According to Chris Cotillo, the deal is in the range of $18 million over two years with a likely team option.
That price would put him a little under what the average-ish veteran starter got last winter. Tim Hudson, Bronson Arroyo, Bartolo Colon all landed deals in excess of 2/$20M, while Scott Feldman got 3/$30M from the Astros. The crowdsourcing project and and I both expected Hammel to get something close to Feldman’s deal, but he ended up settling for a little less than the older pitchers got a year ago.
At 32, Hammel doesn’t have a ton of upside, but he’s essentially the definition of a league average starter. If he can give the Cubs 350-400 average-ish innings over the next two years, he’ll easily be worth the $18 million. There’s value in having solid arms at the back of your rotation, especially when they come at a bit of a discount.
As everyone assumes that the Cubs will add a front-line starter this offseason as well, this move could push Travis Wood out of the rotation, or potentially make him a chip to be used in a trade. If they add Jon Lester to the fold, a rotation of Lester, Jake Arrieta, Hammel, Kyle Hendricks, and either Edwin Jackson or Tsuyoshi Wada would be pretty interesting.
The signing of Hammel won’t draw big headlines, but it’s a nice depth signing for the Cubs, and pushes them closer towards contending in 2015. For the price he apparently gave them, it’s hard to argue with this deal from the Cubs perspective.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Hendricks as the 4 would be rough, to say nothing of Jackson/Wada at the end. Obviously they don’t have to go from six to midnight in one year here, but if they’re going to live up to increasingly high expectations I’d need to see Hendricks et al in the mix for 5 with another genuine arm in the rotation.
Do you think a team with Hammel at number 3 could contend for a wildcard? Your answer would be “Well, depends on how the offense looks.” Cubs could definitely do it.
I do agree though: it’s hard to reconcile “legitimate World Series contender” and “Jason Hammel, Number 3 Starter”. If the expectations are that high inside the organisation, you’d have to imagine another arm would have to be a priority for the FO.
Sure, why not? The teams that just won the wild card this year didn’t exactly have awesome starting pitching staffs (no slight intended to the Royals, and I’m not sure the Giants even had a pitching staff during the regular season, by WAR anyway).
Of course, the Giants just won the World Series with Ryan Vogelsong as their #3, so it’s obviously not a prerequisite to have a quality #3 to win the World Series. You just need wins, and they can come from anywhere on the field. If all the young position players were to hit their 90th percentile projections, the starting rotation wouldn’t need to be all that great.
They also have Dallas Beeler, Jacob Turner, Felix Doubront, Erik Josich – just a ton of rotation depth there now, even without a top-line SP signing/trade yet.
Beeler, Turner, Doubront, Jokisch, Wada, Straily, Hendricks, E. Jackson — a killer lineup of maybes and AAAA talent. If that bunch is more than long relief, AAA depth, and battling it out for their fifth spot, Cubs fans had better hope their position player kids have some magic major league adjustment juice.
Definitely a group of maybe’s…but you could have said the same thing about Arrieta last year. All it takes is one guy to make a modest leap, and the Cubs have a #3-#4 starter at around the league minimum (Edwin Jackson excluded). The rest will probably wash out, but premium pitchers aren’t hanging out on the waiver wire.
This is a really good signing by the Cubs. He must have really enjoyed being a Cub because I would think he would be able to get that guaranteed 3rd year.
Interestingly, they have more than enough trade chips to snag a stud starter via trade as well. This seems like another indication that they are transitioning into “go for it” mode. This probably a bit of a pipe dream, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they cashed in some of their prospect and young fringe-starters for a Cole Hamels-type, in addition to signing Lester or Scherzer. That pushes Hammel down to 4, and whoever proves themselves of Doubront/Jackson/Wada/Turner could take the 5 spot.
Anything short of that and they are pseudo-contenders at best…but then again that’s probably where they should be until they figure out who sticks out of Bryant/Soler/Alcantara/Baez and Russell/Schwarber in a year or two. It’s a good time to be a Cubs fan!
You know you’re a Cubs fan when: signing a lower-mid-tier SP to a 2/$18 contract signals “going for it.”
20 mil for a guy projected at 1.6 WAR (about 2.7 over 2 years)?
The team option is nice, but this deal is kind of “meh” if you don’t do the “what if he’s perfectly health for 2 years and average” projection and use an actual projection.
Not a bad deal, but for a 1.5 win pitcher can you find better value than 9-10mil per?
7.5M/win * 1.5 WAR = 11.25 per annum
Given predictions of price of a win this offseason, seems to be a fine value. I guess we’ll see when more of the mid tier market for SP moves, however.
7.5mil?
The player pages still use 5.3-5.5 mil for a 2014 win (despite nearly every writer here saying 6mil)
I get the narrative is inflation (as it has been the last 5-6 years during the first month of every offseason); but if you plot the $/WAR over the last 5-6 years, 7.5 mil would be a major breakpoint from the trend.
Dave predicted 7.5M in a chat recently; 7M was FA price last offseason, a .5M increase; etc. etc.
From Fangraphs.com (approx – just lazily looking up 1 WAR player valuations on the value tab, there’s some rounding issues buried in these #’s)
2008: ~4.6mil
2009: ~4.4mil
2010: ~4.0mil
2011: ~4.5mil
2012: ~4.5mil
2013: ~4.8mil
2014: 5.3-5.5mil
2015: 7.5mil?
The 7mil I think you are referring to is a Dave C analysis where he only looked at deals over 50mil (which tend to be the overpays). Even the ~6 mil figure is based only on the top 50 or so contracts and excludes a variety of deals (relievers, part timer, possibly platoon players?) and uses several NPV values which can swing the $/WAR a fair amount (5% vs 10%, etc)