Jean Segura To Hit .305 in the 305

Jean Segura is headed south; the two-time All-Star infielder, late of the Phillies, inked a two-year deal with the Marlins in the days after Christmas. Segura, who will turn 33 two weeks before Opening Day, hit .277/.336/.387 last year and .281/.337/.418 over four seasons in Philadelphia, where he played mostly second base. His contract will pay $6.5 million in 2023 and $8.5 million in ’24, with a $10 million club option for ’25 that comes with a $2 million buyout. That comes to some $17 million in guaranteed money, on what will probably be the last big free-agent contract of Segura’s career.

This is the sixth big league stop Segura has made after being part of four multi-player trades, the first of which came just three days after he made his big league debut. For those of you who view Guy Remembering as a holy sacrament, here is a partial list of players who have either been traded for or with Segura in the past 10 seasons: Zack Greinke, Isan Díaz, Aaron Hill, Mitch Haniger, Taijuan Walker, Ketel Marte, J.P. Crawford, and Carlos Santana. Consider how numerous and how significant those players’ other trades have been (Díaz for Christian Yelich, Greinke for most of the 2014–15 Royals, just to name two), and we could get quite a bit of editorial mileage out of Jean Segura’s Web of Trades.

For better or worse, that is not this post.

Right up front, I feel compelled to disclose that I absolutely love Segura’s game. I’m a Segura Sicko, through and through. Minutes after news of the signing broke, our managing editor Meg Rowley hopped on Slack and said something to the effect of “I assume you want to write about Segura,” which came as a bit of a surprise, because while I know I can get obnoxious about my favorite players, up until that point, I didn’t realize Segura had risen to the level of Jake Cronenworth or Lance Lynn on the list of players I just won’t shut up about. That’s the worst kind of problem: the problem your friends know you have but that you’re still in denial about. So filter whatever is to come through that lens.

It raises the question of what, exactly, I like so much about Segura. His one season of star-level production came in 2016, his only year in Arizona, when he hit .319/.368/.499 with 20 home runs, 33 stolen bases, and excellent defense at second base. That was the only time he got MVP votes, and his only season of 4.0 WAR or more.

Segura doesn’t walk much. He doesn’t hit for much power (2016 is the only campaign in which he managed even 15 home runs), which is a bit confounding. Back when he was at his peak, stocky middle infielders with plus-or-better hit tools were the backbone of the swing plane revolution. But Segura himself never got his axis tilted; he was then, and is now, quite a ground ball-happy hitter. He was once a 40-steal threat, but that part of his game has faded as he’s aged.

So what does he do well, then? Well, he hits. Not spectacularly, in terms of velocity or distance, but he hits everything. Fastballs, change-ups, breaking pitches. Up, down, inside, outside. Fat ones, skinny ones, short ones, tall ones. Look at Segura’s heat map for contact rate for 2022, supposedly the decline phase of his career.

The color pink has spread so far across this diagram, Dean Acheson just sat up in his grave and said, “I told you so!”

Excepting the shortened 2020 season, which was odd for Segura for many reasons (career highs by far in walk rate and average launch angle foremost among them), he’s posted a strikeout rate of 15% or less every year dating back to 2016. When he does put the ball in play, he’s capable of hitting it hard, but mostly he sprays line drives all across the field. (Apart from the competitive advantages of having no identifiable pull bias, this is an archetype I tend to like for purely aesthetic reasons.)

Every year of the Statcast era, Segura has hit at least 40% of batted balls up the middle. In six seasons since he left Arizona, he’s hit more balls the other way than to pull three times. He is consistently among the league leaders in contact rate. And as he showed in the playoffs, he can make magic out of any pitch. In this past postseason, he saw 34 pitches down and out of the strike zone; he swung at eight, put four in play, and generated multi-RBI singles out of two of them. One of those brought home the tying and winning runs in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series against St. Louis — the fourth-most impactful hit of the 2022 playoffs, by WPA.

Segura is capable of hitting the ball hard when he reads it early and really gets it on the screws, but most of his contact comes from exceptional bat-to-ball ability that allows him to spray pitches wherever he likes. That doesn’t lead to a ton of walks or power, but it’s made him a consistent high-OBP, low-strikeout player. His power stroke, such as it is, took a step back in 2022, which could be an alarming omen for a team that’s signing a player in his mid-30s. But it’s worth noting that Segura missed the middle third of the season with a broken finger, and his SLG and ISO after his return were roughly 40 points lower than they were before the injury.

For $6.5 million in real money (let’s be real, the Marlins aren’t going anywhere near the luxury tax), a reliable high-contact hitter is an enticing proposition. Miami wasn’t the only team that thought so, which led to a positively harrowing MLB Trade Rumors headline: “Tigers Pursued Jean Segura Prior to Marlins Deal.” Segura escaped Detroit, to everyone’s relief, and now that he’s bound for Miami, he’s slated to play third base. Jazz Chisholm Jr., who’s the closest thing the Marlins have to a star position player right now, has second base locked down. Shortstop is probably out of Segura’s reach at this point in his career, but even if it weren’t, there are better options. Miguel Rojas is a defensive wizard, not just because he was one of the top fielding shortstops in the league last year, but also because his .236/.283/.323 batting line boosted opposing defenses as well. If the Marlins want to move on from Rojas or relegate him to a bench role, Joey Wendle is in the fold and more than capable of playing there.

If Segura plays third base, as expected, he ought to be quite good there. His strong, accurate throwing arm was one of the best among second basemen the past couple years, even if that’s a little like being the ship with the best wheels. And even if he’s losing a little foot speed, that will matter less at the hot corner. Barring some late-career renaissance, he won’t have ideal power for a third baseman, but he has other attributes to make up for it.

Overall, this deal adds to what was already sort of the platonic ideal of a Marlins team: big on pitching, short on offensive depth, will probably lose 85 or 90 games but do so in an entertaining fashion. The Marlins aren’t a contender as such, certainly not in a division with the Mets, Braves, and Phillies. But Segura is the type of add that puts them in a position to capitalize if everything breaks their way. And if nothing else, they’ll be more watchable than the Nationals.

Given Segura’s track record of reliability, it’s a bit curious at first glance that a better team didn’t have use for him. At $8.5 million against the tax, even a team like Milwaukee could’ve afforded to take a shot on him. And a quick glance around the league reveals a handful of likely worse second base or third base incumbents, including in Philadelphia, where Bryson Stott has earned a long look alongside Trea Turner but was nowhere near as good as Segura last year.

But the trouble with being a known quantity is that GMs will usually prefer to dream on a prospect rather than lock in an average veteran for more money, which is probably the right decision from the team’s perspective. And maybe, if a few of those youngsters struggle, a contender could come calling for Segura at the deadline or the offseason. In the meantime, Miami has a reliable, high-quality starting third baseman on the cheap. It’s a nice piece of business, even recognizing my own bias.