Mets Add Todd Frazier at Bargain Price
As ESPN’s Christina Kahrl noted last week on Twitter, perhaps it is spending that is the new market inefficiency.
After all, who anticipated that Brewers would be responsible for the greatest free-agent deal to date? And tonight, another team in something of a no-man’s land has made its second splash of the New Year, perhaps sensing opportunity.
#Mets in agreement with free-agent 3B Todd Frazier on two-year, $17M contract, sources tell The Athletic. Pending a physical.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) February 6, 2018
The Mets entered Monday forecast to finish 80-82. They’ve passed the offseason firmly entrenched in that space between the Haves and Have Nots, a space fewer teams seem interested in inhabiting. But with the addition of Todd Frazier, they appear to have paid relatively little for a player who can help at third or first base, positions at which Asdrubal Cabrera and Dominic Smith, respectively, sat atop the club’s depth chart entering the day.
The deadly accurate FanGraphs crowdsource projections and former FanGraphs manager editor Dave Cameron each forecast Frazier to earn a three-year, $42-million deal. Frazier ranked as Dave’s No. 13 overall free agent, one spot ahead of the Mets’ other notable free-agent signing, Jay Bruce. Frazier, whom FanGraphs dot com projects to be a perfectly competent major-league player (.234/.321/.444, 2.3 WAR), settles for significantly less money and one fewer year than Bruce, at a reported two years and $17 million.
While Bruce received precisely what the crowd predicted (three years, $39 million), the contract nevertheless seemed like a pretty good one for Bruce given the nature of this winter’s free-agent market.
The Frazier deal, meanwhile, might be evidence of the New Year’s discount effect, a phenomenon we’ve cited several times here at FanGraphs during the offseason.
Max Rieper of Royals Review found that, from 2013 to -17, free agents who signed before Jan. 1 received guaranteed dollars 4.0% above FanGraphs’ crowdsourced estimates. Free agents who signed after Jan. 1, meanwhile, received 25.3% less than FanGraphs’ estimates. This makes sense: anxiety theoretically increases for players, and demand drops, as spring training nears.
Frazier signed for 40.4% fewer dollars than the crowd’s forecast. He appears to have lowered his demands in order to ensure employment in 2018 and 2019. Frazier’s contract should be sobering for those free agents still holding out hope that their initial contract demands will be met less than two weeks before the beginning of spring games.
Frazier’s contract might be a sign of the discounts we can expect during what remains of the winter. There might also have been something else working against him, too, beyond the strength of the third base position and the lack of obvious fits/needs outside of New York.
Frazier can hit the ball out of the park. We know that. We’ve seen the majestic home runs in games and in the Home Run Derby setting. But at a moment in the game when seemingly everyone is able to hit home runs, perhaps Frazier’s carrying tool had less appeal in the current market. With clubs devaluing free agency, holding back spending power for next offseason, and determined to remain under the luxury-tax threshold, players are already facing an uphill battle.
What’s interesting about Frazier is he that he showed significant secondary skill growth in his age-31 campaign last season. This might be an even greater value signing for the Mets than the forecasts suggest.
After having never once produced a double-digit walk rate in his career, Frazier posted a 14.4% mark last season while also cutting his strikeout rate by three percentage points (21.7%). It was the sixth-best walk rate in the game amongst qualified hitters.
Frazier cut his out-of-zone swing rate by a whopping eight percentage points to a career-low 24.5% in 2017, and his swing rate fell to a career-low 58.6%, down from 72.6% in 2015. His swinging-strike rate fell to 9.3%, another career low.
The discipline gains at age 31 are pretty interesting.
Like Bruce, Frazier has been an extreme fly-ball hitter for a while. Frazier’s fly-ball rate (47.5%) ranked eighth in the sport. Bruce ranked 11th.
We’ll have to see if this is the beginning of a wave of discount signings for clubs, but the Mets are the type of team that is wise to take advantage of such a market. If enough things break right, if we squint, we could see New York playing meaningful baseball late into the summer. Frazier can help make that happen and at a bargain of a price.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Good signing, especially at this price, I’d say. In addition to the January discount we could speculate about the likelihood this was a hometown discount for New Jersey kid Frazier.
If the Mets have an observable organizational philosophy at this point it sure seems to be that batting average doesn’t matter to them almost at all compared to OBP and power.
Great signing for the Mets, but agree that it’s odd that the hometown discount factor went unmentioned.
In fact this is the first time since he arrived in New York that I’ve heard Frazier’s name without hearing “Tom’s River” within the the next 30 seconds.
I had started to assume it was part of his contract as paid promo spot from the tourism board: Major League Baseball playoffs brought to you by pharmaceuticals for septuagenarians – and Todd Frazier, brought to you by the Tom’s River Little League team!
I wonder how much of this is home town discount. Come July, Frazier is going to be a pretty decent asset. If you assume at that point he’ll be 1.5 YRS / 13M, I think there’s a lot of teams that would stomach that if they had a season long injury to, i dunno, Travis Shaw, even if they knew Shaw would be back in 2019. Whether it’s performance or injury, I’m sure someone’s going to be less than happy with their 3B situation.
I guess we’ll find out when we see whether he has a no-trade.
As reported by Metsmerizedonline.com, Frazier gets a $500K bonus if traded. That would make it a 1.5 YRS/13.5 million, which is still pretty reasonable.
I think the Mets are going to want to keep Frazier even if they’re out of it at the deadline this year (which I see no reason to assume at this point, dependent on pitching health as that is). Asdrubal Cabrera is the most obvious deadline trade candidate.
I agree this is a really good deal for the Mets. It’s not the big move that we were clamoring for, but they needed another infielder and Frazier is a pretty good one at a good price.
If this really was the best offer out there, other teams should have tried to top it. Which makes me think that the location played a pretty big role. So I’m also not convinced that this is as good an example of the “January discount” as the author seems to think.
More generally, the “January discount” is likely spurious…the more fundamental supply and demand for free agent labor likely produces both a late signing and lower salaries. As a result, the “January discount” is more a statement about the underlying market forces than the date of calendar, or a less-than-convincing argument from people who think that free agent spending will rise unconstrained by quality of the free agents.
Fastest transaction analysis east of the Mississippi!
Seems like a great fit for the Mets, and Frazier may not have had much choice if he wanted two years with a clear path to a full time role.
For Frazier I think it will be humbling to look over at the Mets dugout during a game and see the other 3B – who is making making $3 million more than your entire contract in 2018 – getting a back massage.
Not sure what your point is – professional baseball players would generally rather play baseball than not play baseball and deal with painful injuries all the time.
And frankly, baseball might be the least of Wright’s concerns.
Just a wee joke but upon reflection I do regret it’s nature. I love D. Wright and think Frazier will be ample manning 3rd in his absence.
Did you ever have back problems? Ever been so out of whack that you couldn’t get out of a chair without help, or straightened a foot, or supported your weight upright? Just curious.
Don Rickles (spelling?) is apparently not allowed in the room anymore. ?
3B might be the deepest position in the MLB right now, Frazier is a good player, but how many 3B holes are out there that are wiling to put up any money for him right now? Just another factor this late in the off season.
Great point. Of all the 3rd basemen with 400+ PA, 21 were worth 2.0+ WAR, with two more on pace for it if they’d played more (Headley and Forsythe).
And 12 were on a 3+ WAR/160 pace.
Looks like Moustakas might have trouble finding a home too. Best options left look like Yankees 3B (probably not or 1 yr deal) and Mariners 1B? I guess the Padres and Royals have indicated some willingness to pay Hosmer for 1B, so he might be an option for them too.
I love this deal for the Mets; at the same time, it does not seem like that much of an overpay. Teams very reasonably don’t trust the out-years of a contract to provide any value anymore. I think the market for free agents is correcting; perhaps if we want to be fairer we should grant free agency earlier.
Wow, Mike Moustakas is screwed. Frazier just took the last obvious 3B opening and at half the expected money. Not going to be easy for Boras.
NYY – Seems to be Andujar’s job and trying stay under CBT. Hard to argue if Cashman believes in him as much as Kiley and Eric do.
Cle – Some sort of time share between Diaz/Ramirez and maybe even Mejia should be just fine. Likely don’t have much money to spend anyway.
SD/Pit/Atl – Not ready to spend and all have good/close prospects (Tatis/Moran/Riley)
TB/Mia – no money
ChiW – not ready to spend
Only real hope is to convince Philly to cut bait on Franco (who Steamer very strangely loves) or pray that KC will throw a lifeline.
Yes, whatever the other factors (calendar, Frazier’s geographic preference) it was IMO an oversight on Travis’ part not to mention the apparent supply/demand imbalance in the 3B market. So many teams with aspirations to contend have 3B options that range somewhere between average starter and very good player.
This signing isn’t the first such data point that we’ve see. Cozart also signed for what looked like a team-friendly amount by $/WAR math. Last off-season, Justin Turner looked like a team-friendly deal for the Dodgers (even before he had a great 2018). At the time, there was a lot of speculation that Turner didn’t maximize value because he wanted to stay in L.A., but with a robust market his agent arguably should have (and maybe would have) used the presence of other logical bidders to get Turner signed with the Dodgers for more money than 4 / $64 million.
David Freese – 3M/1yr in 2016, 11M/2yr+option in 2017.
Yeah, the strength of third base throughout the game — and lack of obvious needs — played a big role. You could argue the NY teams, PHI had a need there
You couldn’t have been surprised by the oversight given how hard and singularly the narrative is being pushed.
Cameron literally wrote about 3B being a “buyer’s market” in November – https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/third-base-looks-like-a-buyers-market/
And that was BEFORE Longoria was traded and Cozart signed as a 3B.
I like Todd Frazier as a relatively short-term 3B stopgap, and a better deal than Moose (Moose has a QO attached too).
But Frazier is also a guy that Blengino called (in 2016) the “king of pop ups” – he’s projected for a league-average bat at 3B and has classic old player offensive skills (trying to yank anything he can for power), and those skills can go over a cliff at any time.
Would I want Frazier more than Nunez or Chase Headley (who can be had in a salary dump from SD on a one-year deal)? Yeah, for sure, especially for 2018. Would I want to pay a decent-sized premium for Frazier over those guys to sign him to a multi-year deal? Uh, no.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see Moustakas as a cheaper option competition for Hosmer at 1B at this point. Padres/Royals have indicated a willingness to spend there, and maybe the Mariners as an option as well?
He will be fine. My guess is 40 jacks in the Bronx making 8 figures…not bad
Ramirez is supposedly shifting back to third base full time this year, with Kipnis slated to be back at second base.
I don’t know if I love that plan, and I’m not convinced Kipnis will stay healthy. If Kipnis is going to miss a month in a row, Ramirez will probably slide over to second. But what if it’s just a week or two? What do they do in that case?
If Moustakas goes to the Yankees (who probably have the best odds of signing him at the moment) do they challenge the team HR record?
Maybe this entire slow off-season is more based around giving the middle finger to Boras.
I really do like this deal for the Mets. Frazier will man 3B and can spell Smith at 1B against tough LHP in the short term (and potentially long term if he doesn’t progress). Even if Wright somehow rises from the dead and everything else works out I won’t feel bad about kicking the Toddfather to the curb if needed. It also means that I don’t have to be concerned about Reyes being an everyday player going forward.
This is the sort of versatility (in position and contract) the Mets need to have a chance at being competitive. I realize that’s a weird statement for a NY team but…. it’s the Mets.
You lost me at Smith
I don’t think Rosario manages to stay the whole year at SS in the majors. So I think you probably will see Reyes starting a lot of games, unfortunately.
Not sure why Reyes is so bad. He’s at least a passable mlb player
That really depends on how you view his defense. At first site, he looks perfectly adequate. Since coming back to the Mets in 2016, he’s put up 3.3 WAR in 205 games (about 2.4/150 games). As a cheap backup that can play multiple positions, that’s valuable.
However, if you look at the advanced fielding part of his player page, you’ll see a huge disparity between UZR and DRS. FG WAR looks at UZR (from what I recall). In ’16/’17, UZR has him as a -5.4 defender and DRS has him at -34! That’s a huge disparity. If you trust DRS, that puts him essentially as a replacement-level player.
Moustakas is a better sign. Let’s see how it pans out, but my guess is that Frazier doesn’t play 100 games this year and bat over .220
And your guess at games played is < 100 based on what? Frazier has played at least 147 each of the last 5 years.
Nothing in particular, other than his age, the price point, and that Cashman passed on him.
Frazier has been extremely durable over his career and Moose has not, so this is a pretty ill-informed comment.
I didn’t say Moose was more durable, did I ? Just a better sign. Of course Moose played more games last year and is 3 years younger, but that’s not where I was going.
I don’t know who will play more games honestly, I just think Moose will be a better sign. I imagine he will end up in the AL and DH some, which will hurt his Def rating, but I’ll predict a 20 pt gap in wRC+
I love it when the geniuses of the comment board pound me.
Come on geniuses, let’s get this one to -50.
32 year old hitting .210 with 27 HRS in the greatest HR year ever.
I like this for the Mets, but there’s a red flag in Frazier’s improved discipline last year. He simply became more passive overall, which can show that a player knows his bat has slowed. A lot of players have spikes in walk rate just before collapsing.
Is this actually true? Could you link a study, I’m curious.
Without doing the work, this doesn’t seem true. 20 players increased their walk rate by 3.5% or more from 2015 to 2016 (minimum 300 PAs in both seasons). The list includes Arenado, Donaldson, Altuve, and Trout…
It’s kind of crazy that he made 12 million in his last year of arbitration, for which he then produced 3 WAR, and now is taking a pay cut in his first, short FA contract. Even if one gets pretty conservative with his age curve and goes 2/1.5 WAR for these two years, that’s what… 5 mil. per win?
That union is a joke. As soon as they signed that nearly hard-cap, they were doomed to this.
Clearly the market values Frazier significantly less than his 2018 WAR projection. By that measure the deal is a steal.
As a Yankees fan I have to say I’m happy they let Todd walk. I’m biased in how annoying it was to constantly hear Tom’s River, Little League World Series hero and Jersey boy. So good luck to Mets fans for that. Also don’t know if I buy the walk rate. If that’s legit there’s almost no way this signing doesn’t work out. But I think the floor with Frazier is low at the plate.
I’m not sure if it’s his swing or what but sometimes he looks like he’s 35 at the plate. I think he may have led the league in pop outs and if his power regresses from 27 homers to say 20 at Citi, he could be a low AVG low OBP guy with a little pop and good defense. Those pop ups and K’s will become more frustrating if the power regresses. I never really bought what I was seeing with Frazier (can you tell?) and just don’t think he’ll age gracefully. With that said a two year deal at 17 million can only be seen as a good move for the Mets who didn’t have an Andujar or other type prospect in waiting.
Oh I almost forgot about thumbs down! There’s no way they’ll try to make that into a thing again right? Right?
I think there is a realistic chance that Frazier could crater, but even if he does, the Mets would owe him less money than they owe Bobby Bonilla, and they do have passable options to fill the gap.
Solid signing by Mets at very reasonable cost–it’s actually a better deal than the Jay Bruce one. Don’t be surprised if he’s flipped at the deadline if Mets are out of contention. Mets don’t like paying people if they can help it.
Really hope the Rays can get a bargain on a pillow contract with someone. I’m not psyched about Brad Miller @ 1b, but the rest of the team looks solid. Sure the Yankees and Boston are beasts, but stranger things have happened and the rays have a lot of depth.
Yankees should have offered that much. Oh well.
Seems like a good deal anyway, and I had no idea about the BB raise/K lowering. This doesn’t make the Mets competitors though, I’m guessing?
Could this be the start of some players finally accepting the reality of this year’s FA market and signing for less than was predicted? Will the comparable mid-level FA’s now sign for less than anticipated before the few bigger names bring down their demands?
Interesting that those discussing Frazier getting some time at 1B discuss Dominic Smith (Steamer projn of 255 ABs, 726 OPS) but no one has mentioned Adrian Gonzalez (projn 163 ABs, 753 OPS). It would seem that Smith and Gonzalez would both need to be injured or terrible to force Frazier from one side of the diamond to the other.
That’s a platoon issue, too, though. But people do seem kind of mixed-up about the Mets’ infield mix. Smith I think is almost certain to start the year in the minors. To me the playing-time share shakes out approx like this to start the season: Gonzalez and Flores will see time at first, Cabrera and Flores and Reyes at second, Rosario and Cabrera and Reyes at short, and Frazier and Flores and Cabrera at third.
The team will probably continue to play Cabrera a little too much and Flores a little too little, but there’s room for everyone with this much positional flexibility. The main player being shorted by this is Reyes, who’s now primarily a bench bat (thank goodness).
Typical Travis article, quoting an ESPN talking point and encouraging more FA spending.
The site was much better before this Travis/Craig/Nathaniel barrage of Boras talking points.
It’s been an offseason centered around Boras-linked talking points because Boras has been doing a lot of talking, so I don’t really get the criticism here (?). It’s hard to ignore a perfect storm of offseason baseball, unprecedentedly low free agent spending, Boras quotes, and collusion rumors.
Wow, didn’t know one website could be ruined so easily! Guess they shouldn’t analyze the words of a critical baseball figure, who also happens to be extremely pertinent considering this offseason. What do you want from them?
I get the criticism in that they repeat his words frequently, but your take is still very aggressive.
This post makes me think that there ought to be a projections page for downvotes on comments.
how much of a hometown discount this was will become easier to gauge after Moustakas signs.
should he ink for 2 or 3 years for around $10M per, we’ll have an answer