After being rejected by Giancarlo Stanton, the Cardinals continued down the list of items available in what is becoming a Marlins’ firesale and have reportedly come to an agreement on a deal to acquire Marcell Ozuna.

Ozuna to Cardinals is done

— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) December 13, 2017

While the return has not been confirmed, it’s thought that the Cardinals are going to surrender two of their better pitching prospects. Read the rest of this entry »

The run on relievers is officially underway. The latest one to sign is Anthony Swarzak, who’s getting $14 million and two years from the Mets. Like, say, Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, Swarzak wasn’t that highly thought of a year ago. Then he was great. There’s no other way around it, and, while every front-office executive would tell you they want to find the next Anthony Swarzak, or Tommy Hunter, or Brandon Morrow, you can’t very well not sign a guy who just did what Swarzak did for the White Sox and the Brewers.

Swarzak is 32 years old, and through 2016, his career WAR was 1.2, over nearly 500 innings. Last year alone, Swarzak was worth 2.2 WAR, which ranked him eighth among all relievers, between Andrew Miller and Mike Minor. Part of that was a matter of increased effectiveness, and the rest was a matter of increased trust, which saw Swarzak throwing high-leverage innings for the first time. Swarzak’s average leverage index last season was 1.49. His previous high was 0.95, when he was a rookie starter. Swarzak’s personal stock skyrocketed.

A few images here can tell the story. More recently in Swarzak’s career, he’s started getting strikeouts, which is linked to a sharp uptick in his usage of his slider.

Beginning in 2016 and carrying over into last year, Swarzak has thrown his slider slightly more often than his fastball. He’s not the only reliever to do that, but things just truly came together, as Swarzak got as many missed swings as Brad Hand. Swarzak’s contact rate this past season plummeted.

And to really cap it off, Swarzak’s velocity has increased as he’s gotten older. It’s not the way this usually goes, and I’m not sure how Swarzak has pulled this off, but the trend is undeniable. Swarzak had problems with his rotator cuff in 2012 and 2016. In 2017, he was healthy, and he was blowing his fastball at 95.

Swarzak’s is a forgettable name, because, for most of his career, he was a forgettable pitcher. Even last season, as he was terrific, he was both terrific and out of the spotlight, so for Mets fans he’s not a familiar acquisition. But this does seem like a big bullpen add, for a Mets team that isn’t as far out of the race as it seems. A healthy Noah Syndergaard should make a whale of a difference, and the Marlins, Phillies, and Braves could and should all struggle to reach 70-75 wins. The Mets still aren’t the Nationals, but they’re the only threat in the division, and that very division gives them a better shot at the wild card. There’s something here, and Swarzak ought to help.

Investing in free-agent relievers can be an uncomfortable exercise. Relievers are constantly appearing and disappearing, with Swarzak being a case in point. So many relievers seem to suddenly emerge that it’s tempting to try to find the next pop-up guy before he pops. With a guy like Swarzak, though, you don’t have to squint or project. The Mets can comfortably assume he won’t forget what he just put together. He appears to be good now, and while that’s a little bit weird, there’s no reason those points can’t both be true.

I get it — many relievers aren’t that exciting. There’s the highest tier, and then there’s all the rest, and it can be hard to tell which among the rest are really and truly good. This time of year, seemingly dozens of adequate relievers find new teams, and they always have their various upsides. They all seem okay, which means few of them stand out. No one pays close attention to the winter meetings to see who’ll get a new option for the seventh or eighth inning.

But, look. According to reports, Tommy Hunter is signing a two-year contract with the Phillies. Now, one notable thing is that the Phillies are not good. They’re not good, and yet they’re signing Hunter, to go with their signing of Pat Neshek. Might as well do something. Nobody wants a terrible bullpen. Hunter isn’t in the Kenley Jansen tier, and he’s not thought of as being close to Wade Davis. It’s very possible you didn’t even realize Hunter just appeared in 61 major-league games with the Rays. It was quiet. But Hunter brought his game up to a new level. As a reliever in 2017, Tommy Hunter was legitimately great.

This gets to the core of what I mean. Behold Hunter’s career year-by-year walk and strikeout rates.

Hunter has always thrown hard. His fastball rides in around 96, and, if you can believe it, he throws something resembling a cutter that averages 94. Hunter has never before been on the major-league disabled list with an arm injury. His arm has always been good, and this past season, Hunter best put it to use. Among relievers, he ranked in the 89th percentile in wOBA allowed, by names like Brad Hand and Raisel Iglesias. Even better, by Baseball Savant’s expected wOBA allowed, he ranked in the 97th percentile. Behind Roberto Osuna, and in front of Mike Minor. Hunter, you could say, broke out, and from the sounds of things, he went and got Raysed.

One thing the Rays did was have Hunter throw fewer and fewer four-seam fastballs.

Hunter leaned more often on his cutter, especially against lefties, and partially as a consequence, you can see a distinct change in Hunter’s overall pitch pattern. Below, on the left, you see where Hunter threw his pitches from 2014 through 2016. On the right, you have 2017.

Hunter stayed away against righties, and he stayed in against lefties. Armed with good command, Hunter was able to use his curveball off of that arm-side cutter, and lefties slugged just .261. Righties didn’t fare a whole lot better, so, when you combine everything, Hunter was a hard-throwing strikeout reliever who could retire opponents on both sides of the plate.

What Brandon Morrow had going for him, Hunter basically had, too, and Hunter is younger, with a better record of health. It’s a little strange, therefore, to see Hunter sign with a team unlikely to feature in the race, but then, every team wants late-inning stability, and obviously there’s the trade consideration down the road. It’s possible Hunter was met with some industry skepticism; teams might not have known whether Hunter could stay so successful as part of another, non-Rays organization. Now the Phillies will give him some dozens of innings, if everything goes well, and then if Hunter looks more or less the same, he’ll be in great July demand. Power pitchers who throw strikes in big situations are limited in number, and every team at the deadline wants a deeper bullpen.

There’s nothing unique here about the Phillies’ approach. Bad teams have long looked to flip relievers midseason. Hunter is the real story, looking like a potential shutdown setup guy a year after settling for a minor-league contract. All he needed was a handful of pointers from his handlers in Tampa Bay. The rest of it was all up to him.

The task of assembling a pitching staff is as much about quantity as quality. With injury rates over 50% for most pitchers in the age of the ten-day DL, you need more than the ten starters you used to need, in order to withstand the assault that is a full season of throwing baseballs hard. So, even though Drew Smyly won’t suit up for the Cubs until late next season at best, it makes sense to put him on the roster, slot him in the Disabled List, and hope he can contribute. Especially since the cost is low.

The Cubs will be on the hook only a little bit more than the Mariners would have owed Smyly had they retained his services through his last year of arbitration. The left-hander, despite being in the midst of rehab for Tommy John surgery, would have gotten around $7m in arbitration. Chicago is giving him a base salary of $10 million, with the potential for more.

Smyly deal with #Cubs is two years, $10M plus the potential to earn more than $7M in performance bonuses, source tells The Athletic. Pitched with #Rays for Maddon and Hickey.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 13, 2017

Return rates on Tommy John surgery are good enough that this could easily be a good contract for the Cubs. Perhaps Smyly wanted to lock in two years after his extended arm issue took from the World Baseball Classic until June last season to really nail down. Perhaps he understood that, after only topping 150 innings twice in his career, and being pegged as one of the biggest injury risks in baseball in a 2016 study by Bradley Woodrum, he needed to have a healthy 2019 before he would get a longer-term deal anyway.

This way, the lefty with the intriguing stuff — almost nothing he throws cuts towards his glove side, and his extreme over-the-top release point means that everything seems to fade away from righties — gets to take his rehab slowly. A 12-to-15 month timeline has him back mid season at best, though it does seem worth pointing out that pitchers that take longer to come back from Tommy John have better outcomes. Any longer, and he might miss most of the 2018 season.

When he does come back, the Cubs could use him as a lefty out of the pen, since Mike Montgomery is their second lefty behind Justin Wilson, and Montgomery may be headed to the rotation as it stands right now.

Or they can slot him into their 2019 rotation, at a low cost of a $3 million base salary. Sounds like a good way to maybe help the staff now and almost definitely help later on.