Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens continue a cherished podcast tradition by conducting the 11th annual Effectively Wild Minor League Free Agent Draft, in which they select 10 minor league free agents each and compete to see whose roster will accumulate the most combined MLB playing time in 2024.
Last Sunday’s column included my opining that Joey Votto should retire rather than sign with a team other than the Cincinnati Reds, thus making him a one-franchise player. My friend Sam — a bona fide baseball nerd — read the column and proceeded to share an interesting thought when I ran into him at the coffee shop we both frequent. Being of the belief that players sticking with one team is a good thing — I think most fans would concur — Sam wonders if tweaking the Competitive Balance Tax in a manner that would incentivize teams’ ability to re-sign their free agents might be possible. For instance, if player X were to sign a one-year $20M contract with a new team, the entire amount would factor into the team’s payroll. Conversely, if Player X re-signed with his old team, a lesser amount ($10M?) would count toward it.
Sam didn’t mention Mookie Betts, but he may well have had him in mind. With their superstar outfielder one year away from free agency, and the CBT an acknowledged factor, the Red Sox traded Betts, along with David Price, to the Dodgers, thereby slashing over $40M from their forthcoming 2020 payroll. The deal put them a reported $18M below the threshold. Whether or not Betts would have opted to re-sign with Boston is another question, but the CBT clearly played a role in his departure.
Ben Clemens brought up basketball’s “Bird Rights” as a parallel when I asked for his thoughts on Sam’s idea. As my colleague pointed out, NBA teams get to exempt hometown stars from the salary cap in some situations. Of course, MLB doesn’t have a ceiling. Nor does it have a floor, which further complicates the issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Ben Lindbergh and Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief Craig Goldstein discuss all the fallout from the Dodgers’ record-breaking signing of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, including how it affects fan perceptions of the Dodgers, whether it’s good for MLB to have a heel, whether there’s a more virtuous way to win, the terms of the contract and their expectations for Yamamoto, whether the Dodgers will make even more moves, the impact on the teams that missed out on Yamamoto, and much more.
Late Thursday night, while Shohei Ohtani was awkwardly smiling on the jumbotron at the Rams game in Los Angeles, the Dodgers were wrapping up the details on a massive, 12-year contract for 25-year-old Japanese righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the amount of $325 million. The Dodgers will also pay roughly $50 million in posting fees to Yamamoto’s former NPB team, the Orix Buffaloes, making the Dodgers’ total commitment a whopping $375 million, with $50 million of the deal to be paid via signing bonus. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that the contract also has two opt-outs, but we don’t yet know when in the deal they occur.
This is a huge deal in several manners of speaking. First, it is literally a huge deal, the largest-ever contract for a pitcher, eking past Gerrit Cole’s $324 million pact from 2019. Between the $700 million guaranteed to Ohtani and the $325 million heading to Yamamoto, the Dodgers have committed well over $1 billion dollars to free agents (spread out over the next decade-plus) already this offseason. For context, in 2019, the Royals sold for $1 billion. The Dodgers’ estimated payroll for 2024 now stands at $285 million, $50 million more than their 2023 mark.
Here are Dan’s ZiPS projections for Yamamoto. He passed along that the projection system would recommend a 12-year, $320 million deal for him.
ZiPS Projection – Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Year
W
L
ERA
G
GS
IP
H
ER
HR
BB
SO
ERA+
WAR
2024
14
7
3.52
26
26
171.3
130
67
22
35
167
118
3.8
2025
14
7
3.54
26
26
170.3
132
67
23
34
166
117
3.8
2026
14
7
3.54
26
26
173.0
135
68
23
33
168
117
3.8
2027
14
7
3.59
27
27
170.7
137
68
24
32
165
116
3.6
2028
14
7
3.69
27
27
170.7
140
70
25
32
163
113
3.4
2029
13
8
3.77
26
26
164.7
139
69
24
32
154
110
3.1
2030
12
8
3.78
24
24
157.3
134
66
23
31
145
110
3.0
2031
12
7
3.83
23
23
150.3
129
64
22
30
137
108
2.8
2032
11
7
3.88
22
22
141.3
123
61
21
29
126
107
2.5
2033
10
7
3.97
21
21
131.3
116
58
20
28
115
105
2.2
2034
9
6
4.15
19
19
121.3
109
56
19
27
104
100
1.8
2035
8
6
4.27
17
17
109.7
101
52
18
26
91
97
1.5
Projections systems like ZiPS tend to flatten and smooth the peaks and valleys of everyone’s performance, so think of this as a projected annual average for Yamamoto’s production. His peak years, which should begin immediately, are likely to be better than the front end of these projections. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t think J.T. Realmuto ever got enough credit for his remarkable season in 2022. It was easily the finest performance of his career. With 22 home runs, 21 stolen bases, and a 128 wRC+, in addition to his typical Gold Glove defense and trademark durability, he produced a personal-best 6.5 WAR, claimed All-MLB First Team honors for the second time and finished seventh in a stacked NL MVP race.
What made his 2022 season so impressive were the demographics of it all. We’re not talking about a center fielder in his 20s; Realmuto’s 6.5 WAR was the highest for a regular catcher age 31 or older since Javy Lopez in 2003. As a matter of fact, only four catchers have ever put up more WAR in a single season after their 31st birthday: Lopez, Gary Carter, Roy Campanella, and Josh Gibson.
Welcome back to college baseball conference realignment. For those of you who missed the first class, here’s a quick summary: The people who run college football are drunk with power, and are tearing up decades of geographical and cultural alignment in order to chase the biggest TV deals they can get. Good for them. Unfortunately the rest of college sports — perhaps the whole of American higher education, less those Ivy League dorks whose personal grievances become national news — is merely a vestigial appendage of the Football Bowl Subdivision.
The realignment of 2023-24 leaves two important questions to be answered, one urgent, the other existentially important. The urgent question: What happens to Oregon State and Washington State, the two schools left without a chair by Pac-12 collapse? This question is arguably more important for baseball than it is any other sport, as Oregon State is a national powerhouse. The important question: Can the ACC hold it together, or is it too bound for a Pac-12-type implosion?
We got some clarity on both of those questions this week, as Oregon State and Washington State found a new partnership with the WCC (though not for baseball), while Florida State is taking its first step toward leaving the ACC. Read the rest of this entry »
For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Los Angeles Angels.
Batters
Let’s get the good news out of the way first: The 2023 Angels, at 73–89, finished with far fewer wins than you would expect from the available talent. This year, they ought to get a full slate of games from Zach Neto, whom ZiPS likes very much and sees significant growth from, and Nolan Schanuel, whom both ZiPS and Steamer like going forward. It’s also likely that Logan O’Hoppe, recovered from a torn labrum that required surgery, beats his 51 games played last season. Even Anthony Rendon has a chance to be significantly healthier in 2024. Mike Trout only managed 82 games last season, and while we should no longer be bullish about his health, he certainly has a fighter’s chance at playing more often. ZiPS thinks Michael Stefanic would be a good stopgap option at second — kind of the Angels’ version of peak Joey Wendle, if they let him play 120 games and see what happens. I’d be tempted to go with Stefanic at second, Luis Rengifo at third, and then Rendon as the primary DH until he shows that he can actually remain healthy, leaving Brandon Drury in a kind of supersub role.
But now we have the bad news: The 2023 Angels may have played under their abilities, but that team also had Shohei Ohtani, so the loss of that production will cancel out a good chunk of the bounceback. The depth chart doesn’t look so bad, but it’s also paper-thin, with ZiPS having little faith in most of the emergency fill-ins. O’Hoppe’s contributions get held back by Matt Thaiss, and the numbers at first take a hit from the projected playing time for Drury and Evan White.
Also, help isn’t on the way with one noticeable exception: Kyren Paris, one of only seven hitters in the entire organization that projects to at least five WAR over the next five years (and all of them have already been mentioned). ZiPS agrees with my colleague Eric Longenhagen, who has the Angels with baseball’s worst farm system. That’s a big issue for a disappointing team that has to replace a generational talent. Read the rest of this entry »
For the past decade, the joke around Mets pitchers has been that they spend more time injured than active. There’s no shortage of examples; Jacob deGrom and Noah Syndergaard spring to my mind first, but Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander dealt with injuries in their time in Queens, too. Edwin Díaz just missed the 2023 season. Zack Wheeler never quite lived up to his potential when he was there, and injuries were a key reason why. Matt Harvey, Seth Lugo, Steven Matz — heck, here’s a story from 2017 about the Mets’ injury woes, which were already a trope before their recent woes.
In that sense, Coleman Crow is the platonic ideal of a Mets pitcher. He joined the organization in June, part of the package the Angels sent to New York in exchange for Eduardo Escobar. At the time, he hadn’t pitched since late April thanks to an elbow injury. His first notable decision as a Met was to get Tommy John surgery for that elbow; he’s now tracking for a return at the very end of next year, or potentially in 2025. He’s been a Met for roughly six months and thrown exactly zero pitches for them in that time.
Or maybe I should have said: he was a Met for roughly six months. On Wednesday, the Mets traded him to the Brewers in exchange for Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor, ending his tenure with the team. You think Harvey was often injured? Crow dialed it up to an entirely different level, albeit in the minors. It’s the kind of performance we might not see again for a while. Read the rest of this entry »
Pity the accounting department for the Braves. They’ve had a terrifically busy offseason, which thus far has amounted to not a whole lot of change in terms of roster composition. Since the end of the postseason, they have signed one major league free agent and made no fewer than eight trades involving at least one major league player. They have also already traded or released not one but five players acquired by trade this offseason.
Champdo: So how many bats do you think Colt Keith gets for the Tigers next season?
12:03
Dan Szymborski: I’m with Jason here, I think 300-400 PA is reasonable. Unless he flops, I think the Tigers will figure out how to play them, even if the position right now is uncertain
12:04
Houzer: Could Willy Adames be an option for the Tigers at 3B in a trade? Maybe like a Sawyer Gipson-Long for Adames deal?
12:05
Dan Szymborski: Adames would be fun. I don’t think Gipson-Long by himself gets it done th ough.
12:05
Dan Szymborski: And it may be dependent on where the Brewers are.
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Dan Szymborski