Yasmani Grandal Gets His Multi-Year Deal
The White Sox announced Thursday that they agreed with free agent catcher Yasmani Grandal on a four-year contract worth $73 million.
Grandal was an easily recommendable hire by virtue of being almost certainly the best catcher available in free agency, with an argument for either Jason Castro or Travis d’Arnaud a rather tough one to make in this writer’s opinion. On our list of the Top 50 Free Agents for 2020, Grandal was ranked sixth overall. As J.D. Martinez decided not to opt-out from his deal with the Red Sox, Grandal is the first top 10 free agent to sign this winter.
I remain ambivalent about the White Sox as contenders in 2020 based on the state of the pitchers currently on their roster, but Grandal is both an immediate and long-term upgrade behind the plate. James McCann was a significant contributor in 2019, hitting .273/.328/.460 for 2.3 WAR, but he’s hardly established that level of play as his baseline expectation.
And while I’m skeptical that there has been any actual collusion in free agency the last two winters, if I were searching for a contract that smacked of that kind of behavior, it would be hard to not pick Grandal’s deal with the Brewers. Coming off a .241/.349/.466, 4.7 WAR season in 2018, his fourth consecutive four-win season, it seems ludicrous that he only landed a one-year, $16 million contract with a mutual option and a buyout. There were reports that Grandal turned down multi-year contracts, but those inevitably would have been for even less money per year.
Grandal’s not young (he turned 31 a couple of weeks ago), but he also doesn’t have an obscene number of innings behind the plate. Even adding in his minor league record, Grandal knee-odometer has fewer than 900 professional catching starts on them. (Contrast that with players like Buster Posey at nearly 1,100 at the same age and Yadier Molina around 1,300.)
Don’t fall into the trap described in Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense. Grandal doesn’t have a rocket arm, but he’s a capable defensive catcher, and while we’re still getting our heads around the predictive value of framing statistics, Grandal’s numbers have been consistently excellent across three organizations. And if something happens to move him from behind the plate in the third or fourth years of the contract, he’s a good enough hitter that he’ll have value elsewhere.
| Year | BA | OBP | SLG | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | SB | OPS+ | DR | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | .236 | .364 | .445 | 445 | 62 | 105 | 19 | 1 | 24 | 66 | 88 | 142 | 3 | 118 | 12 | 4.9 |
| 2021 | .234 | .357 | .439 | 428 | 58 | 100 | 20 | 1 | 22 | 61 | 81 | 133 | 3 | 115 | 11 | 4.4 |
| 2022 | .232 | .351 | .420 | 410 | 52 | 95 | 18 | 1 | 19 | 55 | 74 | 123 | 3 | 108 | 10 | 3.8 |
| 2023 | .229 | .344 | .398 | 389 | 47 | 89 | 16 | 1 | 16 | 48 | 67 | 111 | 2 | 101 | 9 | 3.1 |
I wouldn’t worry about the fourth year of the contract. Why? Because I’d sign Grandal to a three-year, $73 million contract. There are only a few players with an All-Star baseline available to sign every year.
This is exactly the type of move the White Sox should be making. They’re not close enough that they have to furiously attempt to fill every last hole with expensive veteran role players, but teams in their position should sign players they aren’t likely to create themselves. Even the hardest-core Zack Collins fan would be hard-pressed to suggest that there’s a high probability of him sticking at catcher and being as valuable overall as Grandal’s projections.
We’ll have more on analysis on Grandal’s deal a little later, but for now I’ll close by saying that while the White Sox have more work to do, this is an excellent start to the offseason.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
as a white sox fan who has been quite critical of the front office for their approach to free agents last year, i am in a rather giddy state of shock. this $73M deal is now the largest in team history and they might break that again this offseason
As a fellow White Sox fan the narrative that they are cheap has always bothered me. They were top 5 in payroll as recently as 2011 and they were 4th, 5th, 5th, 12th, 7th, and 5th in the 2006-2011 era.
Fault Kenny Williams for spending/drafting poorly rather than Jerry for not spending enough in my opinion. Exciting times.
That’s all fair, but I think there’s a lot to be frustrated about from a fan’s perspective:
– 2011 was 8 seasons ago.
– $73M being the largest contract in team history is sad, especially for a big-market team.
– Just look at what we’ve had to put up with the last 3 years so that Jerry could have an excuse to cut payroll.
so 3 of the top 50 off the board due to FA signings, 2 guys took QO, and JD Martinez declinded to opt out…
seems like a much quicker start to free agency this year vs last year.
and all 3 FA signings well above the crowdsource!!! (gasp) a return to normalcy… or just two teams misreading the market?
and just above Kiley….
it does feel like somewhat a return to normalcy.
To be fair, with the exception of Boras clients (who often sign late no matter what), we’d expect the ones above the crowdsource to sign early . It’s the ones below the crowdsource that are going to sign late because they don’t have the robust market for their services.
a lot of talk though that this year’s market seems to be going faster though. Been 3 years since a signing like this one(multiyear in November).
also what is different about this is a guy like Grandal in the recent past has been the exact type of guy that would be expected to be signing below the crowdsource quite frankly…. I don’t see how anyone could look at this signing and not think that free agency may be closer to normal this winter….
The Braves deal for Will Smith was $4 million above expectations and some of that is mitigated by the team option. That’s basically a rounding error.
“Yes, many grand dollars.”
For how many one-year deals have you been sitting on that pun?
Gotta think they’ll add a pitcher or two as well. If they’re really serious, they’ll get into the Wheeler bidding and add another lesser arm
Between Catching and DH, Grandal and Collins will have more walks than the entire 2019 White Sox.
sad, but true. Hopefully he will help the entire lineup in that regard. How nice it will be to see a guy take quality AB’s and get on base like he does.
I’m also hopeful he will help the young pitchers. After all the catching garbage we’ve seen, a quality framer will be a welcome addition.
Yasmani is in his house right now, talking to his family about his deal, and saying “Yes, many grand dollars!”
Dan, you pun-dit!!
One thing I haven’t wrapped my brain around: Why is it that half of the of notable players on the White Sox (or soon to be on the White Sox) is Cuban? Grandal, Abreu, Moncada, Robert…before this, I just chalked the whole thing up to randomness. And now I’m not so sure.
I don’t think it is random. I think they are developing a culture of inclusiveness for Latino players. That was one of the reasons they like Abreu as a mentor for Moncada and Robert.
Latino =/= Cuban
This is one thing white non-Latino Americans overestimate for sure. There may be pan-ethnic Latino identity among those who have been in the US for a while, but not among people who just got here. If Moncada’s and Robert’s kids grow up here, they may have a Latino identity, but Moncada and Robert almost certainly just see themselves as Cuban.
one of the reasons they’ve kept Abreu as long as they have. they want him to mentor the young, Latin players
A lot of talented newcomers are Latin American, and some ideas says that players perform better when they have chemistry with people who are similar in culture to them, so they might be trying to make their squad more appealing to young prospects
look at what happened with the Nats this year with Parra and Anibal Sanchez….
They both had better seasons last year when they weren’t teammates, so I don’t know what you’re getting at.
They helped mentor guys like Juan Soto and Victor Robles…. Go back into your cave….
The Southside has been a Cuban destination ever since Minnie Minoso broke the afro-latino color barrier. Cubans value the White Sox (Jose Contreras, El Duque, Alexi Ramirez, Abreu and more). The reality is many Latin ballplayers view Minnie as the Latino Jackie Robinson.
This is something I legitimately didn’t know and I am really glad you told me. Makes a lot of things that seemed unrelated make more sense (this one included).
The Sox have always cultivated Latin players, going back to Minnie, Aparicio, etc. They’ve put in lots of infrastructure to rebuild after the scandal, hiring Paddy and improving facilities, etc. Had Ozzie as manager, now Renteria.
They also have a great ACE program that supports Chicago inner-city youth baseball that perennially sends players to a variety of colleges on scholarships.. It’s really cool and they should get more recognition for it.
But how about mainly because they are good players?
There’s also been a lot of Spanish-language White Sox billboards around Chicago over the years. I’ve always thought that was pretty cool. I certainly have never seen that for the Cubs.
Jeffwave, you got it. I gotta call this out a little further. Ozzie Guillen is Venezuelan. Rick Renteria is Mexican-American. Luis Aparacio was Venezuelan.
Every single MLB organization has had and currently has dozens of Latino players from many countries. So first things first, the existence of Latino players on the roster is not really evidence of anything other than there are many good Latino players.
Also, Luis Aparicio played his last game in 1973. At that time, Bill Veeck owned the team and he sold it in 1979. So even assuming that having Minnie Minoso (who effectively retired in ’64) and Luis Aparacio were brought into the organization as part of an inclusive strategy toward Latino players, I don’t think you can impute the previous ownership’s organizational philosophy from 40 years ago to the current ownership’s philosophy.
This is, I think, the part that makes this so weird. Having Latin American players is just how things are done. What’s weird is that there aren’t that many Cuban players in MLB (due to the fact that it’s been really hard for them to come here) and yet the White Sox wound up with four of their most interesting players being Cuban.
I don’t think that having a strong Dominican and Venezuelan presence in your organization makes you terribly unique. But having a strong Cuban presence is noticeable to me.
The White Sox have a terrible foreign scouting/recruiting operation, with the notable exception of Tatis Jr. Thus, they have to go after the obvious best player who requires no scouting, just a good amount of money. The fanbase doesn’t give Hahn much credit for spending money here, but if you can’t scout, then just throw money at the best guy every 3 years or so. With the rules changes, they’ll actually have to learn to scout Latin America.
It seems semi-random to me. I mean, clearly they invested in Abreu and Robert without any US track record and so, to that extent it seems like they have some confidence in their ability to scout Cuban players who haven’t played in the US yet.
On the other hand, Moncada was a super-elite prospect that they received in the trade for Sale. I’m not sure there was anything more to that than he was the best prospect return available at the time. Likewise, even though Grandal was born in Cuba, he spent much of his childhood in the US, went to the University of Miami, and then played 7 years in the majors before they signed him as a free agent. I’m not sure all four of these players are tied together in any way that suggests the White Sox have a thing for Cuban players.
The White Sox have had a close association with Cuban players going back to Minnie Miñoso, the first Afro-Latino player in the MLB (and the first black White Sox player to boot). This sums it up decently https://www.mlb.com/news/the-white-sox-deep-cuban-connection
Thanks for this. I’m looking forward to reading this.
Well everyone, this was super interesting and I’m glad I sucked it up and asked the question because I now know a lot more than I did before. I had no idea that the White Sox had such a long relationship with Cuban ballplayers.
Always fun to see someone successfully bet on themselves, though I imagine the decision was made easier by how bad the market was last year. The Mets’ offer was 4/60mm and he turned that into 5/91mm with another 4-win season. Not too shabby.
Great signing for the White Sox, but to me the most interesting thing is the $4.5 MM/WAR that the projections here imply. I understand that traditionally $/WAR is calculated off of results and not projections, but why is there never any discussion about a projected $/WAR figure? I would argue it’s a more interesting datapoint to think about, as most of the thinking on this website, and in front offices, is about projection not past results.
I didn’t project any contract dollars, so there’s no implied $/WAR here! I just said I’d be very happy to sign him for three years, $73 million, which I’d totally be.
Didn’t mean to imply you were saying that, so hopefully no offense taken. I was just saying that, taking a trusted publicly available projection such as the one listed above, 16.2 WAR over the 4 years at $73MM is ~$4.5mm/win. Obviously that’s a bit simplistic, but I find it interesting that the White Sox (and the greater league by proxy) seem to be projecting a win at around $5MM in this case, and not a number more in the $8-9MM range as gets casually thrown around.
The $8M/WAR and the surplus-value calculations in trades (especially for prospects) are only rules-of-thumb. Fans have to stop emphasizing these crude metrics and look back at comparisons of deals for similar players on the FA market & in the trade market. I know it takes more effort to look up past deals and FA signings, but you get a much better forecast. (I don’t think BaseballTradeValues.com is very good at this either. At least not yet.)
That said, Grandal appears to be a bargain for two reasons — his age and the fact that about 30% of his WAR comes from pitch framing and teams must see that as less sustainable akin to how teams value the same WAR more from a younger Big-K pitcher like Eovaldi than from an older groundball-pitcher like Keuchel.
I totally agree, which is why I brought it up, I think we’d be better off either not thinking about that rule of thumb, or figuring out what the better number to use would be. FWIW I think looking back at last offseason makes a lot more sense if your baseline is ~$6/war not $8, but I can’t say I’ve looked at every deal in detail.
In Grandal’s case, he looks like a bargain even with a much lower win valuation, which to me implies that teams don’t value framing as much as certain public data values framing. Whether that’s because they think robot umps are coming, its not sustainable, or they just have different data that doesn’t value it as much, that’s an open question. But, it seems hard to believe that teams value Grandal as an ~5 win player next year.
So he is obviously the primary catcher. I think the plan for Collins was always to DH him and have him catch maybe once a week – a lot of teams will be carrying a guy like him who can catch but probably shouldn’t when the rosters expand to 26 next year. Interesting to see what they do with McCann. Spotrac estimates he will get $4.9M in arbitration which they could easily carry, but his breakout season was fueled by a big first half. His wRC+ of 83 in the second half was right in line with his career numbers. I doubt he brings back much in trade, but if somebody offers them something they would probably be content with Seby Zavala or Yesmin Mercedes, especially if Collins hits and can play some catcher occasionally.
The 40 man roster now stands at 40 (and the Daniel Palka era is over as he was DFA’d to make room for Grandal) with Robert and Madrigal likely to be on it soon after the season starts. That is not a problem because Lambert, Burr and Rodon will be back on the 60 day IL at the start of the season and won’t count. Even if they sign 2 starters and a RF, there are still a few guys currently on the 40 man who they wouldn’t miss.
ZIPS projects him for 16 WAR over the contract. If he manages just half of that, the deal is (just) OK. Otherwise this looks like a steal.
Any idea on the disconnect from Grandal being a 4.5-5 WAR player and the market paying him like he’s 2.5-3 WAR?
Fangraphs/ZIPS WAR is quite a bit higher than Baseball Prospectus’ which I think comes down to catcher framing. Grandal rates as an elite catcher framer but there’s reasonable debate about how much that is worth.
The market doesn’t like paying Catchers. Grandal is the 3rd highest paid catcher (by AAV) in the league right now, behind Yadi and Russel Martin.
True, but the flipside to that is that there aren’t that many good catchers to begin with, and most of the best catchers in the league are still in pre-FA arb years.
Isn’t Buster Posey just ahead of him (9/167 or 18.55 per year to 18.25 for Grandal)?
wonder what JT realmuto thinks of this. i know the phillies have apparently been chatting about locking him up
There’s two possible disconnects, right? Either the market doesn’t value framing the way fWAR does, or the market values a win much lower than we might expect. Answer could be somewhere in the middle of course, but those seem like the two ends of the spectrum. This is a very interesting contract to think about, because of that disconnect.
It’ll be interesting to see if during the Grandal contract the Robo umps come into play- taking all of that pitch framing out of the equation. Think it is really possible- especially after the crap that was World Series home plate umpiring.
There’s a lot of disagreement, publicly and in the game, about how to properly value catcher framing. FG, I believe, recently included catcher framing in fWAR, so the numbers you’re seeing here may be significantly higher than some teams’ internal valuations.
It seems like a fine deal, though without knowing what the market was it is hard to say whether this was a bargain or not. I’m happy the Sox are trying to add quality guys. I hope they aren’t finished. Given the injuries their pitchers have had it is hard to be too optimistic. But, they could at least be competitive next year.
and now the White Sox resign Abreu 3/50…. 4th free agent signing and all 4 over FG projections(this one way above it).
Ben Clemens summed up the framing issue nicely in his article which, to be fair to Dan, I think came out after this one. To wit:
“But Grandal’s defensive value is a complicated issue. That prowess I’m referring to is due to his peerless framing skills. He’s one of the best, year in and year out, at presenting pitches to umpires and making sure those in the zone are called as such while expanding the edges to flip counts in his team’s favor.
Turning balls into strikes is tremendously valuable. It’s also hard to measure precisely, and it’s becoming less and less stable over time. The top 10 catchers in framing runs above average per pitch in 2017 lost 37% of their value above average in 2018. The top 10 catchers in 2018 lost 60% of their value above average in 2019. Being great at framing one year says less than you’d think about next year.”
That last sentence says it all. The variability around framing seems to be large enough to warrant a discount in any contract. Combine that with Grandal being a 31-year old catcher, and you have two discount arguments to make.
As to the Cuban player thing, if the White Sox next sign Puig, then I think we’ll have a trend!