If you consider his performance over the past few seasons as a whole, it’s clear why the Nationals gave reliever Brandon Kintzler at least $10 million over the next two years to pitch in Washington. Isolating just his 2017 campaign, however, there’s reason to think there’s some risk attached to the deal despite the modest price tag.

Since the beginning of 2016, Kintzler has used his sinker to induce ground ball after ground ball. Indeed, only 13 qualified relievers have recorded better ground-ball rates over those two years. Only 31 sinkers, meanwhile, have allowed a lower launch angle (minimum 150 balls in play). It’s largely that pitch which has allowed Kintzler to suppress homers despite having exhibited little capacity to miss bats.

In a world where Anthony Swarzak and his lack of a track record is getting two years and $14 million, this deal makes absolute sense. If a club’s player-value metric says the reliever class of player is consistently overpaid, there are only two choices: either (a) never pay a free-agent reliever or (b) try to get value from one of the cheaper ones. In that regard, the Nationals did well.

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Position: Boston Red Sox David Ortiz Fellowship

Location: Boston
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Late last night, the Angels turned an 18-year-old whom they’d originally signed for $125,000 and their eighth-rounder from 2016 into second baseman Ian Kinsler. Below are brief scouting reports on new Tigers prospects Wilkel Hernandez and Troy Montgomery.

Hernandez is an 18-year-old Venezuelan righty who spent most of the year at the team’s Tempe complex, first in extended spring training and then in the Arizona Rookie League. He was one of several young, projectable pitching prospects who helped compose the burgeoning underbelly of Anaheim’s farm system. One of the others, RHP Elvin Rodriguez, was also acquired by Detroit as the player to be named later in the Justin Upton trade.

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The Marlins are having another firesale. Their most recent now-for-future trade sent Marcell Ozuna to St. Louis in return for four players, with hard-thrower Sandy Alcantara and fast-runner Magneuris Sierra as the primary pieces coming back. Eric likes both enough to give them 50 FV grades, as their carrying tools make it likely they’ll be MLB players in some form, and if they make any kind of strides, they could become impact players in Miami.

Up front, I will say that I’m not a huge fan of these kinds of bets. Alcantara is arm strength without performance, which is the basic profile of every guy who got taken in the Rule 5 draft this morning. Sierra is extremely fast but isn’t yet clearly an elite defender, so the questions about his bat are problematic. And while I understand that he was 21 last year, began the year in A-ball, and probably shouldn’t have faced MLB competition at that point in his development, I would like to present some very-small-sample Statcast numbers that are kind of scary.

500 players put at least 40 tracked balls in play last year. 497 of them hit their fly balls and line drives harder than Magneuris Sierra. The two that didn’t were pitchers, and not just any pitchers; two of the worst-hitting pitchers alive. Dickey has a career wRC+ of -4. Gonzalez has a career wRC+ of -36. These are the guys who hit the ball in the air like Magneuris Sierra just hit the ball in the air.

Jeff often talks about how looking at what a player does even once can show that the ability is there, if not the consistency. By looking at max distance, perhaps we can see something about what a hitter is currently capable of offensively, even in limited samples. Magneuris Sierra hit a ball no further than 331 feet. Six of the seven guys below that total were pitchers; the other one is basically out of baseball.

And if you’re wondering if this arbitrary cutoff just excludes a bunch of other big league hitters in the mid-330s, well, nope. After Sierra is Gio Gonzalez again (333 feet), then Marco Hernandez (341), then Kenta Maeda (348), then Travis Jankowski (351). Sierra was 20 feet short of the mark put up by an elite speed/defense guy who couldn’t hit well enough to stay in the big leagues.

Same idea as the max distance, but EV would give him credit for hitting it hard even if he hit it on the ground. Some guys just need launch angle changes, after all, so if he was hitting hard ground balls, that’s worth knowing. But, again, nope.

It’s five pitchers and Ronald Torreyes in Sierra’s territory. Torreyes is a utility infielder who is hanging around because he makes a lot of contact. Sierra doesn’t even really do that.

So, yeah. Magneuris Sierra is 21. These samples are tiny. Guys develop. He’s fast and might turn into an elite defender. There are lots of caveats here.

But if it’s me, and I’m trading a guy like Marcell Ozuna, I want some real stuff in return. Given what he just did in the Majors, I think it’s fair to wonder if he just falls outside the barrier of Major League offensive quality. Running is great, but Terrance Gore isn’t really a big leaguer. And if I’m the Marlins, I’d be pretty worried that I just traded for the next Terrance Gore.

Now armed with Shohei Ohtani, things have changed for the Angels. It was clear coming into the offseason that the team could use some help at second base. But with Ohtani in the fold, there’s been some extra urgency, as it’s become much easier to see the Angels making a charge for the playoffs. Earlier on Wednesday, according to our projections and depth charts, the Angels’ second-base situation was tied for the worst in the game. To address that, they’ve traded with the team that was ranked in eighth. The move:

Angels get:

• Ian Kinsler

Tigers get:

• Wilkel Hernandez
• Troy Montgomery

Hernandez is 18; he’s a lottery ticket. Montgomery is 23; he’s also a lottery ticket. Neither is a premium prospect, by any stretch of the word. The Tigers were never going to extract a high price for a guy in his mid-30s entering his walk year. Kinsler did just see his WAR drop by more than three wins. That, though, probably overstates the reality of what happened. And Kinsler seems like a solid upgrade for a team attempting to get a firm grip on one of the wild cards.

Over the past three seasons, Kinsler has seen his wOBA go from .335 to .356 to .313. When you see something like that for a 35-year-old, you get worried that maybe the wheels are coming off. And yet, by expected wOBA, Kinsler has gone from .314 to .328 to .326. There’s no difference at all between 2016 and 2017, and he looks the same by his contact rate. Kinsler didn’t lose his bat-to-ball skills. He didn’t lose any exit velocity. Kinsler, surely, isn’t at his peak, but it doesn’t seem like he’s coming off a major decline. He’s something like a league-average hitter. He does a little bit of everything across the board.

And then, in the field, over the past three seasons, Kinsler has rated as the best defensive second baseman by DRS. He ranks as the fourth-best defensive second baseman by UZR. He was strong again in 2017, and while I’ll concede that the defensive metrics can miss something with defensive alignments no longer so traditional, Kinsler would appear to be a plus in the field. He’ll even still steal the occasional base. Kinsler hasn’t been a sub-2 WAR player since debuting in 2006.

Kinsler isn’t going to last forever, and he’ll never be mistaken for a Jose Altuve, but for a modest cost, the Angels probably just got better by a couple of wins. And they should have the flexibility to do something at third base or in the bullpen, if they can’t address both. Only a month or two ago, the Angels seemed like they were trapped in between. Now they look like the fourth- or fifth-best team in the American League, with an expanding gap between the haves and the have-nots. Sure, it might not have worked without Ohtani. But Ohtani has landed. He’s on the Angels, and he’s made the picture all the more rosy. Thanks in part to Ohtani, a move like adding Kinsler could push the club into a playoff spot. Billy Eppler is rather enjoying this holiday season.

After being rejected by Giancarlo Stanton, the Cardinals continued down the list of items available in what is becoming a Marlins’ firesale and have reportedly come to an agreement on a deal to acquire Marcell Ozuna.

Ozuna to Cardinals is done

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) December 13, 2017

While the return has not been confirmed, it’s thought that the Cardinals are going to surrender two of their better pitching prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

The run on relievers is officially underway. The latest one to sign is Anthony Swarzak, who’s getting $14 million and two years from the Mets. Like, say, Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, Swarzak wasn’t that highly thought of a year ago. Then he was great. There’s no other way around it, and, while every front-office executive would tell you they want to find the next Anthony Swarzak, or Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, you can’t very well not sign a guy who just did what Swarzak did for the White Sox and the Brewers.

Swarzak is 32 years old, and through 2016, his career WAR was 1.2, over nearly 500 innings. Last year alone, Swarzak was worth 2.2 WAR, which ranked him eighth among all relievers, between Andrew Miller and Mike Minor. Part of that was a matter of increased effectiveness, and the rest was a matter of increased trust, which saw Swarzak throwing high-leverage innings for the first time. Swarzak’s average leverage index last season was 1.49. His previous high was 0.95, when he was a rookie starter. Swarzak’s personal stock skyrocketed.

A few images here can tell the story. More recently in Swarzak’s career, he’s started getting strikeouts, which is linked to a sharp uptick in his usage of his slider.

Beginning in 2016 and carrying over into last year, Swarzak has thrown his slider slightly more often than his fastball. He’s not the only reliever to do that, but things just truly came together, as Swarzak got as many missed swings as Brad Hand. Swarzak’s contact rate this past season plummeted.

And to really cap it off, Swarzak’s velocity has increased as he’s gotten older. It’s not the way this usually goes, and I’m not sure how Swarzak has pulled this off, but the trend is undeniable. Swarzak had problems with his rotator cuff in 2012 and 2016. In 2017, he was healthy, and he was blowing his fastball at 95.

Swarzak’s is a forgettable name, because, for most of his career, he was a forgettable pitcher. Even last season, as he was terrific, he was both terrific and out of the spotlight, so for Mets fans he’s not a familiar acquisition. But this does seem like a big bullpen add, for a Mets team that isn’t as far out of the race as it seems. A healthy Noah Syndergaard should make a whale of a difference, and the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves could and should all struggle to reach 70-75 wins. The Mets still aren’t the Nationals, but they’re the only threat in the division, and that very division gives them a better shot at the wild card. There’s something here, and Swarzak ought to help.

Investing in free-agent relievers can be an uncomfortable exercise. Relievers are constantly appearing and disappearing, with Swarzak being a case in point. So many relievers seem to suddenly emerge that it’s tempting to try to find the next pop-up guy before he pops. With a guy like Swarzak, though, you don’t have to squint or project. The Mets can comfortably assume he won’t forget what he just put together. He appears to be good now, and while that’s a little bit weird, there’s no reason those points can’t both be true.

I get it — many relievers aren’t that exciting. There’s the highest tier, and then there’s all the rest, and it can be hard to tell which among the rest are really and truly good. This time of year, seemingly dozens of adequate relievers find new teams, and they always have their various upsides. They all seem okay, which means few of them stand out. No one pays close attention to the winter meetings to see who’ll get a new option for the seventh or eighth inning.

But, look. According to reports, Tommy Hunter is signing a two-year contract with the Phillies. Now, one notable thing is that the Phillies are not good. They’re not good, and yet they’re signing Hunter, to go with their signing of Pat Neshek. Might as well do something. Nobody wants a terrible bullpen. Hunter isn’t in the Kenley Jansen tier, and he’s not thought of as being close to Wade Davis. It’s very possible you didn’t even realize Hunter just appeared in 61 major-league games with the Rays. It was quiet. But Hunter brought his game up to a new level. As a reliever in 2017, Tommy Hunter was legitimately great.

This gets to the core of what I mean. Behold Hunter’s career year-by-year walk and strikeout rates.

Hunter has always thrown hard. His fastball rides in around 96, and, if you can believe it, he throws something resembling a cutter that averages 94. Hunter has never before been on the major-league disabled list with an arm injury. His arm has always been good, and this past season, Hunter best put it to use. Among relievers, he ranked in the 89th percentile in wOBA allowed, by names like Brad Hand and Raisel Iglesias. Even better, by Baseball Savant’s expected wOBA allowed, he ranked in the 97th percentile. Behind Roberto Osuna, and in front of Mike Minor. Hunter, you could say, broke out, and from the sounds of things, he went and got Raysed.

One thing the Rays did was have Hunter throw fewer and fewer four-seam fastballs.

Hunter leaned more often on his cutter, especially against lefties, and partially as a consequence, you can see a distinct change in Hunter’s overall pitch pattern. Below, on the left, you see where Hunter threw his pitches from 2014 through 2016. On the right, you have 2017.

Hunter stayed away against righties, and he stayed in against lefties. Armed with good command, Hunter was able to use his curveball off of that arm-side cutter, and lefties slugged just .261. Righties didn’t fare a whole lot better, so, when you combine everything, Hunter was a hard-throwing strikeout reliever who could retire opponents on both sides of the plate.

What Brandon Morrow had going for him, Hunter basically had, too, and Hunter is younger, with a better record of health. It’s a little strange, therefore, to see Hunter sign with a team unlikely to feature in the race, but then, every team wants late-inning stability, and obviously there’s the trade consideration down the road. It’s possible Hunter was met with some industry skepticism; teams might not have known whether Hunter could stay so successful as part of another, non-Rays organization. Now the Phillies will give him some dozens of innings, if everything goes well, and then if Hunter looks more or less the same, he’ll be in great July demand. Power pitchers who throw strikes in big situations are limited in number, and every team at the deadline wants a deeper bullpen.

There’s nothing unique here about the Phillies’ approach. Bad teams have long looked to flip relievers midseason. Hunter is the real story, looking like a potential shutdown setup guy a year after settling for a minor-league contract. All he needed was a handful of pointers from his handlers in Tampa Bay. The rest of it was all up to him.

The task of assembling a pitching staff is as much about quantity as quality. With injury rates over 50% for most pitchers in the age of the ten-day DL, you need more than the ten starters you used to need, in order to withstand the assault that is a full season of throwing baseballs hard. So, even though Drew Smyly won’t suit up for the Cubs until late next season at best, it makes sense to put him on the roster, slot him in the Disabled List, and hope he can contribute. Especially since the cost is low.

The Cubs will be on the hook only a little bit more than the Mariners would have owed Smyly had they retained his services through his last year of arbitration. The left-hander, despite being in the midst of rehab for Tommy John surgery, would have gotten around $7m in arbitration. Chicago is giving him a base salary of $10 million, with the potential for more.

Smyly deal with #Cubs is two years, $10M plus the potential to earn more than $7M in performance bonuses, source tells The Athletic. Pitched with #Rays for Maddon and Hickey.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 13, 2017

Return rates on Tommy John surgery are good enough that this could easily be a good contract for the Cubs. Perhaps Smyly wanted to lock in two years after his extended arm issue took from the World Baseball Classic until June last season to really nail down. Perhaps he understood that, after only topping 150 innings twice in his career, and being pegged as one of the biggest injury risks in baseball in a 2016 study by Bradley Woodrum, he needed to have a healthy 2019 before he would get a longer-term deal anyway.

This way, the lefty with the intriguing stuff — almost nothing he throws cuts towards his glove side, and his extreme over-the-top release point means that everything seems to fade away from righties — gets to take his rehab slowly. A 12-to-15 month timeline has him back mid season at best, though it does seem worth pointing out that pitchers that take longer to come back from Tommy John have better outcomes. Any longer, and he might miss most of the 2018 season.

When he does come back, the Cubs could use him as a lefty out of the pen, since Mike Montgomery is their second lefty behind Justin Wilson, and Montgomery may be headed to the rotation as it stands right now.

Or they can slot him into their 2019 rotation, at a low cost of a $3 million base salary. Sounds like a good way to maybe help the staff now and almost definitely help later on.

Just yesterday, the Rangers signed Chris Martin for two years and $4 million. Martin is a righty reliever who will turn 32 next June, and his major-league ERA is 6.19. If you try to Google him to examine his background, you have to be selective with your queries, because otherwise you just learn an awful lot about popular music. The Martin signing is a fairly easy one to ignore, all things considered.

I can’t make any promises. I don’t know what Martin might be capable of. But I feel almost obligated to try to talk him up. This seems like a forgettable deal, but Martin appears to have major upside. And the key to this is that, since Martin last pitched in the major leagues, he spent a couple of years in Japan.

Martin has been a teammate of Shohei Ohtani, with Hokkaido. Two years ago, he picked up 21 saves, reflecting the kind of trust he quickly earned. Because of an ankle injury, Martin has thrown just 88.1 innings over two seasons, but his performance was almost immaculate. I’ll tell you what I mean! Between 2016 – 2017, 190 different pitchers in the NPB threw at least 50 innings. Martin ranked first out of all of them in runs per nine, at 1.32. He ranked sixth in walk rate and seventh in strikeout rate, and he ranked second in K-BB%. The only pitcher ahead of him, in that final stat: Dennis Sarfate, who is outstanding. Martin hasn’t been quite on Sarfate’s level, but Sarfate seems like one of the best relievers in the world. Martin, meanwhile, seems just plain good.

If you’re curious about the stuff — when Martin last pitched in the majors, his fastball was 95, and he had a cutter at 90 and a slider at 83. This past season in Japan, Martin threw his fastball at 95, with a cutter at 91 and a slider at 84. He also started to show a splitter, at 87. This is all coming from a righty who stands 6’8. Martin just threw one of the better fastballs in Japan, and while the average fastball in the majors, of course, is harder, the stuff is good enough to play. Martin qualifies as a power reliever, with three or four pitches at his disposal. The numbers leave little reason for doubt.

The uncertainty is always the same. NPB isn’t the same as MLB, and so you can’t bring the same hitters over. Martin is going to face tougher competition, and the Rangers are hoping his overall command improvements are real. But, at the very least, Martin deserves this second shot. If a pitcher were this effective in Triple-A, you’d want to see him in a big-league bullpen, and Japanese baseball is better than that. The Rangers in 2016 got a good relief season out of Tony Barnette, who had also just pitched in Japan, and I’m sure that only encouraged them. In a market where everyone wants bullpen help, Martin is a potential bargain. Players from Japan have their prices driven down, perhaps unfairly. Finding inefficiencies is always the goal.

I don’t know if Martin will be good against the world’s best hitters. He was extremely good against the world’s second-best hitters. He’s going to cost a relative pittance. While this probably won’t win the Rangers a World Series, I could never look down on a move like this.