Over the past week and a half, we’ve published our annual preview of the upcoming season, ranking each position based on a blend of our projections (a 50/50 split between ZiPS and Steamer) and our manually maintained playing time estimates. The result was a document nearly the length of Infinite Jest (I am only somewhat kidding), so if you missed any of the posts, or would like to refresh your memory of what all it is that we’ve said, you can use the handy navigation widget above.

Today I’m going to summarize the results of the rankings. Before I get started, a brief note. I will throughout this post make reference to our Team WAR Totals. We maintain a total of projected future value by position, which updates regularly throughout the season. As such, the totals you see there may vary slightly from what you see on the positional power rankings, mostly because they are aware of injuries and transactions that have altered playing time estimates since the power rankings went live. I’ll provide a snapshot of those totals at the end of the post, but when you see that they are a little different here and there, don’t be surprised. Now you know why, and will be prepared. Now on to some trends.

First, we’ll take a look at where each team stacked up across positions. This table is sortable, so feel free to poke around.

Eight different teams check in with at least one first-place finish (the Angels, Astros, Braves, Brewers, Indians, Nationals, Red Sox, and Yankees). Only Cleveland (three) and Boston (two) can boast more than one such finish, though they present interesting and opposing case studies in how best to construct a roster. The Red Sox are one of eight teams (more on the others in a moment) that has six or more categories in which they rank in the top 10. The Red Sox are tops at both designated hitter and right field (J.D. Martinez and Mookie Betts: pretty good at baseball!) but are also sixth at shortstop, second in left field, fifth in center field, and fifth in their starting rotation. They have an incredibly deep, well-rounded team, though I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their bullpen, which came in at 27.

The only team among the eight I referenced above with a worse positional ranking was the Athletics, whose catching corps of Josh Phegley, Nick Hundley, Chris Herrmann, and Beau Taylor are projected to combine for a solitary win. Meanwhile, if you toggle over to the Team WAR Total projection for baseball’s remaining free agents, you’ll see that Craig Kimbrel accounts for 2.0 WAR of the All-Unemployed Team’s 2.2 relief WAR. He has the same projection as Edwin Diaz. The two of them only trail Aroldis Chapman and his 2.2 projected WAR. Those things are all facts that are being stated near to facts about the Boston Red Sox. Just some bullpen facts for your enjoyment.

Cleveland, on the other hand, has concentrated its wins rather sharply. Having Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindor on the roster means the Indians are ranked first at third base and shortstop; Corey Kluber and Co. mean that their rotation is projected to be the best in baseball. But things fall of sharply from there. As I noted in my right field preview, Cleveland’s outfield is a mess, projected to be better than just the Tigers, Orioles, Royals, Giants, and Marlins in terms of its production across all three spots. They enjoy a weak division, but they also have a surprising thin margin for error given their advantage over bad competition, and it looks like their strategy will be tested early, with Ramirez dinged up while Lindor’s timeline for return is uncertain after he sustained an acute ankle sprain on Tuesday. Cleveland will almost certainly still find its way to October baseball (going into today, they had an 86.8% chance of winning their division according to our playoff odds), but its fate upon arriving there is far less assured.

I want to spend some time on the teams at the top and bottom of these rankings. The Yankees and Dodgers tally nine (nine!) positions a piece in those positions’ respective top 10s. The Astros can count seven. We’ve already talked about the Red Sox. That is impressive (there are five teams that don’t have a single top 10 finish), but it doesn’t necessarily give you a complete picture. The Cardinals are projected to win 86 games, tied for fifth-most in the NL with the Phillies, and they only have four top 10 finishes, as do the Giants, who we expect to win just 75 games. Ordinal rankings can make small differences appear larger than they are or obscure large gaps. But even with that proviso in mind, the Yankees and Dodgers impress. The Dodgers have four positions not just in the top 10, but the top five! They’re third at catcher, fourth at third base, second at shortstop, and fifth in right field. They don’t play with a designated hitter, being famously a National League team, but their projected 1.3 wins at DH in our Team WAR Totals page, which uses the expected value from pinch hitters to arrive at its NL DH forecast, is better than the Tigers’ 0.2 wins at the position, and the Tigers’ lineup is almost entirely composed of designated hitters playing out of position.

Meanwhile, the Yankees have a staggering six positions in that position’s top five. Their bullpen is first; their starting pitching is second. Right field comes in second; center field is in third. They’re fourth at DH and fifth at catcher. The Dodgers are projected for 93 wins and, despite an increasingly tough division, have an 85.9% chance of repeating as NL West champs. The Yankees have the best projected win total in baseball (97), and even with the Red Sox and Rays nipping at their heels, have a 62.2% chance of winning the division, not to mention the best odds to win the World Series. Contending teams can be balanced and pretty good at a lot of things, or they can be really good at a few things and cross their fingers about the rest. But the question the Yankees and Dodgers, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Astros and Red Sox, pose is: what if you were just really, really good at everything? Very good teams have faltered before, but at least on paper, this is the creme de la creme.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the Orioles and the Marlins. The Orioles’ average power rankings position was 26.09; the Marlins’ was 25.90. If we were to pretend that Baltimore had suddenly transferred to the National League and thus lost the DH (at 14, it was their only position ranked in the teens or better), that average drops to 27.3. We don’t have to belabor the point; Orioles and Marlins fans have suffered enough. But jeez are they bad.

As we’ve discussed, the rankings by themselves are helpful, but not totally helpful. We need some additional context to see how close and far apart these are to get a better sense of relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see how the last week of activity and injury affects things (poor Steven Souza Jr.). Remember, the NL DH values reflect expected value from pinch-hitters.

The Yankees are good. The Dodgers are good. The Astros, Red Sox, and Nationals are good. The Indians play in the AL Central. The Cubs and Cardinals are going to beat up on each other all season long; ditto the Phillies and Mets. The bad teams are very, very bad, and the middle is thin. It’s baseball in 2019. Tomorrow, real baseball with real stakes will be played in US time zones. We’ll look back and feel silly about some of these projections and haughty about others. We hope you’ve enjoyed this year’s installment of the positional power rankings and that the format provided you with something useful. We hope it helped to pass the time. We can’t wait to watch baseball along with all of you this season. It’s almost here.

We’ve written multiple times in these digital pages about the longstanding battle over minor league wages. More recently, it looked like the battle might be on the verge of ending with the passage by Congress of the Save America’s Pastime Act, a statute that had the dual effect of capping minor league players’ pay and threatening the existence of Independent Leagues. Then MLB moved on to state-level lobbying, working in Arizona to cap minor league wages there. In short, MLB seemed to be winning the right to pay minor leaguers far below minimum wage on a broad scale.

The issue of minor league pay is one that baseball writers have been raising in earnest for almost twenty years. Local newspapers detailed how the low wages impact minor leaguers in their towns. Dirk Hayhurst wrote multiple books about it. Russell Carleton has covered the issue extensively, including discussing how low minor league wages can impact minor leaguers’ health and nutrition for their entire lives.

When the body is malnourished (or tired), the brain begins playing a game of triage with cognitive functions. The first ones to go are the higher neurological functions, like attention, pattern recognition, and planning/decision-making centers, followed by fine motor control… things that might be helpful in playing baseball.

These are the hidden cognitive effects of poor nutrition. They’re hard to observe because a player will still show signs of development and will still perform, and it’s hard to make the argument that “well, he could be a little better.” It’s the slow creep of what might have been, but didn’t happen that’s the hardest to guard against. Over a day, it won’t be apparent. Over a few years…

Chris Mitchell talked about low wages disincentivizing baseball careers. ESPN and baseball blogs have weighed in. National news publications called minor league pay “poverty-level wages.” In the legal community, lawyers have been discussing  the issue even longer, with one 1996 law review article calling for unionization of minor leaguers and drily noting that “life in the minor leagues leaves much to be desired.”  And major leaguers have begun calling for increased wages too.

Most recently, Emily Waldon wrote a piece for The Athletic that explained that even discussing the low compensation in the minors is enough to end minor leaguers’ careers.

“You talk about this, you’re canned,” an AL West High-A player told The Athletic. “Nobody wants to have you in your organization anymore. You can’t talk about it.

“If you come up in arms about fair wage or just being able to put food on the table for yourself, you’ll get released,” he continued. “I know 100 guys that would wanna talk to you about this, but they won’t.”

“We can’t say anything,” one Class-A player shared. “Like, I don’t want that to be me. I just got picked, I want to see if I can make it.”

Years of work and diligent reporting from across baseball seem to have finally had some impact. Last week, the Toronto Blue Jays announced that they were voluntarily introducing a 50% increase in their average compensation for minor league players. The Jays’ decision was lauded by many, and prompted praise from the MLB Players’ Association.

Union head Tony Clark lauded the Toronto Blue Jays on Monday for giving minor league players a 50 percent raise, and he hopes other clubs do the same.

Representatives from the players’ association visited the Blue Jays’ spring training camp a day after The Athletic reported the team planned to boost pay for all minor leaguers, with some making as little as $1,100 a month in recent seasons. The Cubs, too, are already discussing following suit.

At first, Major League Baseball was evidently “not thrilled with the Blue Jays’ decision,” and Maury Brown wrote that “the Commissioner’s Office has no plans to seek the pay increase across all 30 clubs.” But within days, the league had changed its tune, at least publicly, and revealed that it had raised the idea of minor league wage increases with the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which operates and manages the minor leagues.

The decision represents the culmination of what ESPN’s Jeff Passan called “years of weathering criticism and lawsuits regarding minor league pay[.]” Major League Baseball, it seems, is no longer willing to consider the storm of negative press arising out of the poverty wages minor leaguers receive as part of the cost of doing business. And some industry observers have speculated that Kyler Murray chose football over baseball, at least in part, due to minor league pay and working conditions.

Ordinarily, paying minor leaguers more would be an unqualified good thing. That said, there are a couple of catches here. For one thing, the Jays’ decision itself didn’t really make that big of a practical difference for the players who stand to benefit. Fifty percent sounds like a big number, but the increase doesn’t even make Toronto’s farmhands the highest-paid in the minor leagues and the new average salary will still be under $12,000 annually. (It will be interesting to see if their decision prompts other clubs to raise their salaries, and thus, raises the average salary across the board, though given teams’ past resistance to increasing minor league compensation, we would be forgiven for being skeptical that such a trend will emerge.) Second, MLB’s proposal to pay minor leaguers more requires those salaries to be paid, at least in part, by the minor league teams themselves, instead of (as is the current setup) by their far wealthier major league parent teams.

The complexity of such fundamental changes to the system could complicate bargaining, particularly with regard to the cost and how much each side is responsible for. MLB’s position on progressive policy for minor leaguers has strong support among major league owners, an owner familiar with the discussions told ESPN, but the expectation is that minor league affiliates would pick up at least some of the burden of the various improvements. Minor league teams, which lack the resources of a major league team, may well be unable or unwilling to shoulder those additional costs. And MLB likely knows this, which means that their proposal may be nothing more than an attempt to seek good public relations and shift the blame for low salaries elsewhere. After all, major league teams could afford to address the issue now, and on their own, if they were motivated to do so.

At the same time, the mere discussion of increasing minor league salaries is a significant step forward that cannot be understated. And MLB isn’t saying that minor league affiliates must pay all of the salary increases, which means that the league may well be open to funding pay raises on some level. This isn’t going to solve the minor league salary problem and lift minor leaguers out of poverty. But the league and some teams participating in the discussion about why these raises are needed is, in and of itself, a substantial shift in the public conversation about the issue.

It’s been exactly one year since I moved to Mexico City from my crumbling Caracas, and I have to confess that it has swept me off my feet.

The food is great, the weather is awesome, it’s inexpensive. The people are kind, and every weekend it seems that you have something different to do. Not that I’ve accepted every offer, but there is still something pleasing about turning down opportunities just to get cozy on your couch.

However, this past weekend, Mexico City had an offer too good to pass up.

For the past couple of years, the citizens of this very religious place had been expecting the grand opening of a new cathedral, not for Catholics, but for the church of baseball we are so devoted to in this corner of the web. And on Saturday, that wait finally came to an end.

Located in the eastern part of the city and very near the airport at Puebla metro station, Alfredo Harp Helu Stadium opened its doors and officially became the new home of the Diablos Rojos del Mexico, arguably the most successful team in Mexican League history.

From above, the structure honors the team it was built for by mimicking a massive pitchfork, the weapon of choice of a respected “Diablo.” The name honors the man responsible for all of this: the owner of the Diablos, Guerreros de Oaxaca, and partial owner of the San Diego Padres, Mr. Alfredo Harp Helú. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In the past few years, we’ve seen instances of hitters improving their production and changing their fortunes by learning new swing mechanics that were once deemed unconventional but that are now fueling change. If you have followed this trend, you may have heard of Doug Latta, a hitting instructor who works out of his facility, “The Ballyard,” in the Los Angeles area. FanGraphs has written about Latta’s work in the past (as have many other publications), and how he defines efficient swing movements (setup, balanced move to the pitch, longer swing path in the zone) and their desired results (increased exit velocity, better launch angle).

Latta’s name first surfaced on the professional baseball mainstream’s radar back in 2013. Beginning in July of the 2012 season, Latta worked with outfielder Marlon Byrd on revamping his swing while Byrd was serving a 50-game suspension for testing positive for Tamoxifen. Byrd was coming off a season in which he had posted a paltry 26 wRC+ in 48 games with the Chicago Cubs and Boston Red Sox. After working with Latta, he burst back onto the scene with a .291/.336/.511 line, 25 home runs, and a 137 wRC+ in 147 games in 2013. (His performance after declined, and following another PED suspension for 162 games in June of 2016, Byrd retired.) Not long after Byrd’s swing started to see success, Latta helped engineered another notable career breakout in Justin Turner.

This part of the story is well-documented. Turner, originally a 2006 seventh-round pick by the Reds out of Cal State Fullerton, made it to the major leagues with the Baltimore Orioles in 2009. But after a .111/.226/.111 slash line in 17 games for Baltimore, he was designated for assignment in 2010. He was then claimed off of waivers by the Mets. He would spend the next three seasons in Queens, hitting .265/.326/.370 with only eight home runs in 301 games. Following the 2013 season, he was non-tendered by the Mets, making him a free agent. During that offseason, Byrd, who was teammates with Turner in 2013, shared how the swing overhaul from Latta was doing wonders for his career. The pair worked together at the Ballyard that winter, and the result showed right away.

In February 2014, Turner signed a minor league deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers and earned a spot for the Opening Day roster by hitting .389/.477/.528 in 19 Cactus League games. He proved the performance was no fluke, hitting .340/.404/.493 with 7 home runs (158 wRC+) in 107 games. And Turner has continued to hit. As a Dodger, he has posted a .305/.383/.505 line with 85 home runs in 619 contests. He also earned a four-year, $64-million contract after the 2016 season and was named an All-Star in 2017, a stark and positive contrast to his position just a few years prior.

Turner and Latta still keep in close contact and work together, Latta says. “We talk or text often, and we’ll hit together as needed at my facility or at Dodger stadium.” Read the rest of this entry »

The outbreak of extension fever might now be classified as a pandemic. Tuesday brought news not only of Jacob deGrom’s four-year, $120.5 million deal for 2020-23 (bringing his total take over the next five seasons to $137.5 million) but also of that of Kyle Hendricks. The 29-year-old righty has agreed to a four-year, $55.5 million extension with the Cubs for that same four-year period, buying out his final year of arbitration eligibility and what would have been his first three years of free agency at a rather club-friendly price.

Hendricks has been a reliable mid-rotation presence since joining the Cubs in July 2014; the former eighth-round pick out of Dartmouth had been acquired from the Rangers at the July 31 deadline just two years earlier in exchange for Ryan Dempster. He provided his share of magic in Chicago’s epic 2016 season, leading the NL in ERA (2.13), ranking fourth in FIP (3.20), and seventh in WAR (4.1), then placing third in the NL Cy Young voting behind Max Scherzer and teammate Jon Lester. That October, Hendricks posted a 1.42 ERA in five postseason starts, though only twice was he allowed to go even five full innings; his best outing was a 7.1-inning shutout of the Dodgers in the NLCS clincher. In 2018 he threw a career-high 199 innings and delivered a 3.44 ERA, 3.78 FIP, and 3.5 WAR, numbers that respectively ranked 13th, 12th, and 11th in the league. For the 2015-18 period, his 3.14 ERA ranked 14th in the majors, his 13.3 WAR 19th, his 3.54 FIP 28th.

Hendricks has done this not by overpowering hitters but by limiting hard contact, generating a steady stream of groundballs, and rarely walking hitters. Via Pitch Info, his average fastball velocity — whether we’re talking about his four-seamer, which in 2018 averaged 87.7 mph and was thrown 17.5% of the time, or his sinker, which averaged 87.1 mph and was thrown 44.3% of the time — was the majors’ lowest among qualified starters, about two clicks slower than runner-up Mike Leake for either offering. He accompanies those pitches with an excellent changeup, which in 2018 generated a 19.8% swinging strike rate and just a 36 wRC+ (.180/.201/.288) on plate appearances ending with the pitch. According to Statcast, the 85.2 mph average exit velocity he yielded ranked in the 92nd percentile, and his hard hit rate of 30.6% in the 83rd percentile.

Hendricks is already signed for 2019 at a salary of $7.405 million. Under the terms of the new deal, he’s guaranteed $12 million in 2020, and then $14 million annually from 2021-23. If he finishes second or third in the Cy Young balloting, his base salaries for each season thereafter increase by $1 million; if he wins the award, they increase by $2 million. He has a $16 million vesting option for 2024 based upon a top-three finish in the Cy Young voting in 2020 and being deemed healthy for the 2021 season; if it doesn’t vest, it becomes a club option. Per the Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, the deal can max out at $78.9 million.

(I’m not quite sure how he arrived at that figure, both with respect to the decimal and the slim possibility of multiple Cy Young results that as I understand it, would push his value even higher. Imagine him winning the 2020 Cy Young award — go on, I’ll wait — thereby making each of the next three years worth $16 million and vesting the $16 million option for 2024; that’s $12 million plus four times $16 million, or $76 million all told. If he wins again in 2021, he’s banked $28 million, and then his salary should escalate again, to $18 million for at least the next two seasons, which pushes his total to $80 million even if the vesting option remains unchanged.)

Escalators aside, Hendricks’ four-year, $55.5 million guarantee looks rather light when compared to the four-year, $68 million free agent deal that Nathan Eovaldi, who’s also 29, inked with the Red Sox in December and the four-year, $68 million extension Miles Mikolas, who’s 30, signed earlier this month; the latter covers 2020-23 as well and buys out just one year of free agency. Mikolas was the most valuable of the three in 2018, producing 4.3 WAR in 200.2 innings, but in 91.1 previous major league innings before going to Japan, he was below replacement level (-0.2 WAR). Eovaldi produced 2.2 WAR in 111 innings last year for the Rays and Red Sox, but over the 2015-18 period produced just 6.1 WAR because he missed all of 2017 and time on either side of that due to his second Tommy John surgery. Expand the window back to 2014, when Eovaldi set a career high with 3.3 WAR and Hendricks had 1.6 in a 13-start rookie showing, and the gap closes, but it still favors Hendricks, 15.0 to 9.4.

What’s done is done; the question is what the three players will do going forward. Towards that end, Dan Szymborski provided ZiPS projections for the trio:

Even while excluding the upcoming seasons of Hendricks and Mikolas, which project to be the most valuable, to focus on the four-year deals, both project better than Eovaldi due in part to the latter’s injury history; ZiPS projects him for a maximum of 110.2 innings (2019) and a four-year total of 411, compared to 602.2 for Hendricks and 587 for Mikolas. Hendricks projects as the most valuable over the four covered years, yet he’s being paid the least, and the one year of arbitration eligibility doesn’t explain the difference , particularly given that Mikolas’ deal covers three years of arb-eligibility.

(As multiple readers have reminded me, Mikolas’ initial contract included language that made him a free agent following the 2019 season, not subject to the arbitration system.)

Even if I place all three on an equal footing by prorating their projections to a flat 180 innings per year — a level Hendriks has reached three times in the majors, Eovaldi and Mikolas just once (twice if you count his 2017 season in Japan) — the Cubs’ righty gets the performance edge, which only underscores the discrepancy in pay:

Even tossing that optimistic scenario aside, reminding ourselves again about Hendricks’ arb-eligible year, and foregoing any assumptions about inflation, we can understand that his contract comes out to about $5 million per win, at a time when we’re debating whether $8 million or $9 million per win is the right assumption. That’s a very club-friendly deal, to say the least.

Hendricks’ deal guarantees that at least one member of this year’s Cubs rotation (which ranks 10th in our depth charts) will be around in 2021, barring a trade. Cole Hamels will be a free agent after this season, and Yu Darvish, whose first year of a six-year, $126-million deal was an injury-shortened mess, can be if he chooses to opt out after the season, which seems like a long shot. Jose Quintana has a very affordable $10.5 million option for 2020, while Lester is signed through 2020 with a $25 million mutual option that can vest if he throws 200 innings in 2020 or 400 innings in 2019-20. Tyler Chatwood is signed through 2020 as well, but he was so bad last year that he doesn’t even project to be part of this year’s starting five, so who knows what happens down the road.

It’s not hard to understand why the Cubs want to keep Hendricks around, particularly given the glowing words team president Theo Epstein used in discussing the extension (“a wonderful representative of the whole Cubs organization… someone who is incredibly dependable, trustworthy, hardworking, thoughtful”). And it’s not hard to understand why Hendricks wants to stick around, given how strong the team has been during his tenure. Still, in light of the prices being paid elsewhere for players foregoing free agency, it’s not hard to think he could have done better, either.

This morning, Dan Szymborski took us through the back end of the bullpen rankings. Now, we conclude the player rankings (a summary will run tomorrow) with the best bullpens in baseball.

“Relievers are volatile” is something that people say all the time. I happen to believe it is true, and here are two illustrations of how. First, Craig Kimbrel is not in these rankings because he has yet to sign. Below you will find the 15 best-projected bullpens. If Kimbrel were to sign with all but the Marlins or Royals on the list of the 15 worst-projected bullpens, they would appear on this list. Further, he would take any team covered below and put them in second place except for the Yankees, who would still be in first.

The second illustration has to do with the narrow band of reliever performances given the small sample they work under. If we were to consider a good but not great position player projected for three wins, and that player finished anywhere between two and four wins, we might not even notice. At any rate, we’d see that player as having come close to his projected result. If we were to take a good reliever, projected for one win, and that player finished between zero and two wins, that reliever was either really bad or one of the best relievers in the game. It makes breakouts a bit easier, but also takes presumably valuable relievers and makes them a lightning rod for fans. What I’m saying is, don’t get too worked up over these rankings. Look for the potential two-win relievers and dream on them. Bullpens already cause enough stress to fret too much over rankings.

As the Brewers lined up to open their division-winning 2018 season, right-hander Chase Anderson took the hill. By shutting out the Padres over six innings, allowing just one hit and striking out six, Anderson pitched the Brewers to the Opening Day victory, helping them win their first of 96 games.

Now, almost exactly one year later, Brewers manager Craig Counsell has announced that Anderson will be moving to the bullpen, opting to roll with a rotation of Jhoulys Chacin, Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Zach Davies to begin the season instead.

This move is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it is true that Anderson has pitched poorly this spring, posting a 6.19 ERA across 16 innings. He’s allowed 11 runs, four homers, struck out 13 and walked four. But, for what it’s worth, Davies (7.17 ERA) and Burnes (5.79 ERA) haven’t looked much better, and each of them comes with fewer years of starting experience than Anderson.

The Brewers also have injuries in their bullpen and may need more depth there, something Anderson can provide. Both Jeremy Jeffress (dealing with a sore right shoulder) and Corey Knebel (out indefinitely with a partial tear of his UCL) are expected to begin the season on the Injured List. Still, it’s probably a bit unreasonable to expect Anderson to make this quick of a transition from being a starter to a reliever who can replace either Jeffress or Knebel, both very good backend arms. But maybe this move could be good for him and his performance. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

In last season’s awards voting, there were 24 players who finished in the top-six of MVP and Cy Young in their leagues, with Jacob deGrom the only one to finish in the top-six in both categories. Of those 24 players, 10 have signed contract extensions this winter to push free agency further down the road. Ten of the best players in baseball have reached an agreement with their teams on contracts worth roughly $1.2 billion. Five of those players (Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, Miles Mikolas, Chris Sale, and Justin Verlander) were set to become free agents after this season. Mike Trout became the first player this offseason to sign a major extension two years from free agency, and now Jacob deGrom has become the second, as first reported by Andy Martino.

The contract is set to pay deGrom a total of $137.5 million over the next five years, but it includes an opt-out after 2022 and a team option for 2024. The deal is further complicated by deGrom’s arbitration status. His 2019 salary was already set at $17 million, and he receives the same amount of money this season but $10 million now comes in the form of a signing bonus, per Joel Sherman’s breakdown, which looks like this.

In one sense, it looks like there is $120.5 million in new money being guaranteed to deGrom, but that $23 million in 2020 is roughly what deGrom would have received in his final year of arbitration. In terms of free agent seasons, the Mets guarantee the equivalent of a $23 million team-option in 2020 and $97.5 million over the following three seasons. Comparing this deal to the one Chris Sale just signed presents some interesting similarities and differences. One interesting similarity is that both deGrom and Sale receive $90 million beginning in 2020 over a three-year period before an opt-out can be triggered. However, Sale has $55 million coming to him after the opt-out compared to deGrom’s $30.5 million, which is a function of two big differences. Read the rest of this entry »