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The White Sox signed Yasmani Grandal to a contract of four years and $73 million today. The combination of team and timing sounds suspicious, like an auto-generated headline from a video game. But it’s very real. In fact, I’m struggling to decide which of the player, team, and timing merits the most explanation. So let’s cover all three!

Yasmani Grandal might be the best catcher in baseball. I don’t mean this in some hyperbolic way, like when people say “James Paxton might be the best pitcher in baseball when he’s on” or “Lance Lynn might be the best pitcher in baseball as long as you mainly care about sweat.” I mean that Yasmani Grandal might be the best catcher in baseball. He finished second behind J.T. Realmuto in WAR last year, on the back of his typical great defense and on-base skills.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year on 40-Man Decision Day, there are a few typically minor trades as teams with crowded situations seek to move viable big league depth for which they lack roster space. Teams have foresight when it comes to this because they don’t want to end up losing players via DFA or the Rule 5 Draft that they might otherwise be able to trade for something, like an international bonus slot or a prospect. Teams have increasingly addressed this proactively during the trade deadline portion of the summer, consolidating 40-man space by packaging prospects in bigger deals for contributors. Others seek to flip their fringe 40-man candidates for younger players who won’t have to be put on the 40-man for a while, a transaction we call a “40-man churn.” Does your contending team with an aging pitching staff need a spot-starter for next season, just in case you suffer a rash of injuries? Trade me that interesting rookie-level player who’s going to take a few years to develop. This day is about roster equilibrium.

This is one of those unsexy areas where a team’s scouts and analysts get to shine, looking for a developmental project who has some ceiling or someone who has a sneaky ability to play a minor big-league role next year. If you’d like to see analysis of more deals as a way of better understand various club motivations, check out last year’s piece. Here are yesterday’s trades:
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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.

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From 2014 to 2017, relief pitcher Andrew Miller was one of the most dominant arms to come out of a bullpen. Miller averaged 2.4 WAR during those four seasons, and in three of those four, he posted a sub-2.00 FIP. In fact, in 2016, Miller struck out nearly 50% of hitters he faced while walking just over 3%.

As we know, decline is inevitable for baseball players. Whether it’s due to playing over your head, the impact of aging, or just loss of ability, the equalizer comes for everyone at some point. By the time Miller landed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2019, he was a little bit older and a shell of his former self. His walk rate rose to over 11%, his FIP ballooned over 5.00, and his home run rate became, to date, the highest it had ever been. Be it age or an impending decline, Miller doesn’t necessarily have to succumb to either just yet. Yes, he’ll turn 35 next May, but he might have something left in the tank.

Despite 2019 being one of the worst seasons in his career, Miller showed some flashes of returning to his mid-2010s form. During the month of July as well as the Cardinals’ October playoff run, Miller made a subtle but important adjustment to the pitch that made his career, the slider. It’s unclear if this slider adjustment was intentional, but it made a big difference in its effectiveness. If Miller can keep this particular change more consistent in 2020, the Cardinals could have one of the most dominant relievers in baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

12:03

Dan Szymborski: And away we go!

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Not even thinking about it until my two big year-end/winter projects (the elegies and the ZiPS are done).

12:04

Dan Szymborski: I had process writing.

12:04

Dan Szymborski: Depends who you ask. Based on ZiPS projections, I still get the best predictor of salaries players get in the mid 7s.

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Yesterday was the deadline for teams to protect players from the Rule 5 draft by adding them to the 40-man roster. But with those additions come removals. Oft-injured Jacoby Ellsbury was the most prominent roster casualty as he was let go by the Yankees. In a much quieter move, the Cardinals designated Dominic Leone for assignment. Leone was eligible for arbitration and the move wasn’t a complete shock as Leone struggled last season, but in a very important side note, Leone’s release ends the Kent Bottenfield trade chain, which began two decades ago and includes some of the most memorable moments and moves in Cardinals history.

For those unfamiliar with the Kent Bottenfield trade chain, or Kent Bottenfield himself, the big righty played for five teams from 1992 to 1997 bouncing between the rotation and in 364 innings accumulated 0.1 WAR. As a free agent after the 1997, the Cardinals signed him to a one-year deal with a team option. After putting up decent numbers between the bullpen and the rotation, the team moved Bottenfield to a starting role full-time in 1999 and he had his best season, putting up 2.3 WAR in 190.1 innings. Fortunately for the Cardinals and his trade value, Bottenfield’s average 4.75 FIP wasn’t known back then, and his 3.97 ERA and 18-7 win-loss record made him look great. Which led to… Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research, and was expanded for inclusion in The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

A three-time batting champion, five-time All-Star, and seven-time Gold Glove winner — not to mention an excellent base runner — Larry Walker could do it all on the diamond. Had he done it for longer, there’s little question that he’d already have a plaque in the Hall of Fame, but his 17 seasons in the majors were marred by numerous injuries as well as the 1994–95 players’ strike, all of which cut into his career totals.

Yet another great outfielder developed by the late, lamented Montreal Expos — Hall of Famers Andre Dawson, Vladimir Guerrero, and Tim Raines being the most notable — Walker was the only one of that group actually born and raised in Canada, though he spent less time playing for the Montreal faithful than any of them. He starred on the Expos’ memorable 1994 team that compiled the best record in baseball before the strike hit, curtailing their championship dreams, then took up residence with the Rockies, putting up eye-popping numbers at high altitude — numbers that hold up well even once they’re brought back to earth.

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If re-signing Darren O’Day (on November 8) and then signing Will Smith (on November 15) wasn’t enough to persuade you that the Atlanta Braves are determined to ensure that a middling bullpen doesn’t hold them back in next year’s NL East competition, yesterday’s agreement with 33-year-old Chris Martin should be enough evidence to convince you that Alex Anthopoulos is taking 2020 seriously.

In one sense, it’s not a great sign for Atlanta that Anthopoulos feels he has to spend this heavily on his bullpen, rather than taking a run at a front-line starting pitcher to pair with Mike Soroka, or another big bat to help put an already-strong offense over the top (their .332 wOBA last year was third-best in the National League but behind both Los Angeles and, perhaps more importantly, Washington).

Signing Martin for two years and $14 million, as the Braves have just done, puts the 2020 Atlanta payroll at an estimated $119 million, which despite ranking solidly in the bottom third of National League clubs, is right around the upper limit of what ownership has been comfortable spending in recent years. Ideally, at least from a payroll perspective, a few more of the Braves’ recently-vaunted young pitchers would have transformed into quality bullpen arms (and not in the Sean Newcomb way), thereby freeing up dollars for other parts of the roster. Read the rest of this entry »

This post is part of a series concerning the 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballot, covering executives and long-retired players whose candidacies will be voted upon at the Winter Meetings in San Diego on December 8. For an introduction to JAWS, see here. Several profiles in this series are adapted from work previously published at SI.com, Baseball Prospectus, and Futility Infielder. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

He didn’t swing a bat, throw a pitch or write out a lineup card, but Marvin Miller had a greater impact on major league baseball than just about any man who ever lived. In 1992, former Dodgers announcer Red Barber numbered him among the three most important figures in the game’s history, along with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. As executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1966 to ’82, Miller revolutionized the game, overseeing its biggest change since integration through the dismantling of the reserve clause and the dawn of free agency, thus shifting a century-old balance of power from the owners to the players. Miller helped the union secure a whole host of other important rights as well, from collective bargaining to salary arbitration to the use of agents in negotiations. During his tenure, the average salary of a major league player rose from $19,000 to over $240,000, and the MLBPA became the strongest labor union in the country. Yet both in his lifetime and since his death at the age of 95 in 2012, petty politics has prevented him from receiving proper recognition via enshrinement in the Hall of Fame — so much so that Miller, still feisty well into his 90s, took the unprecedented step of asking voters not to consider him.

Miller’s omission is particularly glaring in light of the extent to which the 21st century small-committee processes have honored nonplayers — executives, managers, and umpires — to a much greater degree than players. To some degree that’s understandable, given that the former group has have no other route into Cooperstown, unlike the post-1936 players under the purview of the BBWAA. Nonetheless, the contrast stands out; setting aside the 2006 Special Committee on the Negro Leagues, the count since 2001 is 15 execs, managers, and umps to seven players (four in the past two years). None of those people, from commissioners Bowie Kuhn and Bud Selig and owner Walter O’Malley on down, put their stamp on baseball to a greater degree than Miller. Somewhere within this mess is the galling reality that even the Hall of Fame players who benefited from the changes he wrought, who make up the largest portion of the committee process — and particularly who formed the vast majority of the electorate via the enlarged Veterans Committees from 2003-09 — have utterly failed in their capacity to honor him. Reggie Jackson, one of the earliest beneficiaries of free agency, never struck out in more embarrassing fashion than when he told reporters in 2003, “I looked at those ballots, and there was no one to put in.” Read the rest of this entry »