The Dodgers have had one insanely busy day. They have a new middle infield, for one, but along the way to acquiring Howie Kendrick, the team shipped off Dan Haren, opening up a spot in their rotation. That spot was open for about five hours before Ken Rosenthal reported this.

Sources: #Dodgers close to four-year deal with free-agent RHP Brandon McCarthy.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 11, 2014

The deal will reportedly pay McCarthy $48 million over those four seasons, which gives him a slight premium over what Francisco Liriano got from the Pirates earlier this week. As a fellow talented-but-regularly-injured starter, Liriano and McCarthy seemed destined to sign similar-ish contracts — I guessed 3/$42M for McCarthy and 3/$39M for Liriano — and ended up fairly close in AAV, with McCarthy leveraging his strong finish to the year into a fourth year with the Dodgers.

Not surprisingly, the four teams rumored to have pursued McCarthy the hardest were the Red Sox, Yankees, Pirates, and Dodgers; all four organizations put significant value on statistical analysis, and the nerdy stats make him look far more attractive than his traditional numbers. Specifically, that glowing 2.87 xFIP that ranked 9th best in baseball last year. If you can get past ERA as an evaluator of pitching talent, McCarthy’s 2014 performance is extremely encouraging.

Especially because it’s supported by an increase in velocity. McCarthy’s average fastball jumped to 93 mph last year, far beyond anything he’d ever done before. The improvement in stuff helps explain the significant rise in strikeouts, and if McCarthy can continue to post a league average strikeout rate while never walking anyone and getting his fair share of groundballs, he’ll likely perform at a level well beyond his $12 million per year salary.

Health is going to be the primary factor in whether this contract works out for the Dodgers, though. McCarthy threw 200 innings last year, making 32 starts and avoiding the disabled list entirely, but he’d made only 40 starts in the two years prior, and his career high was 25. The Dodgers probably shouldn’t assume McCarthy will ever throw 200 innings in a season again, and they’ll have to assume that they’ll need a fill-in at some point if his shoulder acts up again.

So, the question is can McCarthy perform well enough when he is on the mound to justify the stretches of time when he is not, especially under a contract that covers his age-31 to age-34 seasons? Jeff Sullivan will have the full write up on that in a bit.