On Monday, one of the more anticipated transactions of the past two off-seasons finally came to pass: Nelson Cruz finally signed with the Mariners. Seattle’s interest in him dates back to at least last winter, but for various reasons, he ended up settling for a one year, $8 million deal with the Orioles for 2014 in order to re-establish his value. 40 home runs later, and Cruz is finally cashing in, landing a $58 million deal that will carry him through his age-37 season.
Now, however, his movable force will meet the irresistible object that is Safeco Field, the most pitcher-friendly park — especially for right-handed hitters — in the game. How might his new home treat him over the duration of his contract? Read the rest of this entry »
Episode 508
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses all or some of the most relevant baseball transactions from the past week.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
Nothing’s ever really settled in Oakland. They can’t afford to settle, not if they want to be able to keep up despite their budget constraints. The A’s always have to be trying to think one step ahead, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but Billy Beane, if nothing else, is doubtlessly bold. And he made a bold move the other day, exchanging a very excellent Josh Donaldson for a package of less excellent players. It remains to be seen how Oakland will build out the rest of its roster, but it’s obviously a team in transition. Beane stated as much in saying he wanted to stay away from having a roster in decline.
In terms of just looking at the depth chart, the A’s are shifting gears by bringing in new personnel. But there might also be something else going on, underneath. It’s nothing we can know, and it’s probably nothing we can ask Beane about while he’s still trying to work, but the recent A’s had a particularly distinctive characteristic, and one wonders whether Beane might be moving away from the philosophy. We can observe what might be interpreted as points within a pattern.
Recently, in the wake of Oakland’s deal with Billy Butler for three years and $30 million, Dave Cameron wrote about right-handed power and — as that Butler deal, along with Michael Cuddyer’s before it, appeared to illustrate — the lengths to which teams are prepared to go this offseason towards acquiring it.
The winner’s curse can often be used to describe the free-agent market. Generally speaking, a free agent will sign with the team that offers the most, and the team that offers the most will generally be the team that most overrates the given free agent. After Pablo Sandoval signed with the Red Sox, I found myself wondering whether the winner’s curse would apply, since according to reports, the Giants and Padres more or less made the same offer. Sandoval didn’t necessarily go to the high bidder. Nelson Cruz? Nelson Cruz went to the high bidder.
That high bidder being the Seattle Mariners, who are giving Cruz four years and $57 million. The Orioles wanted Cruz back, but they weren’t willing to match the Mariners’ aggressiveness. The Orioles didn’t want to go from three to four years, and the Orioles are reportedly interested in giving four years to Nick Markakis. It’s the Mariners who most highly valued Cruz, making for a pretty significant immediate overpay. It’s never really fun to analyze contract terms, but that’s the natural starting point, as Cruz has landed the contract he’s wanted for more than a year.
Late this season, Padres righty Andrew Cashner came back from a shoulder injury with a new twist on his repertoire — again. This time, he featured a few more high fastballs and big curves than he had in the past. You’d think those two pitches are often linked across baseball, but the numbers aren’t as clear.
The last time Cashner came back from injury, he focused on throwing more two-seamers to get quicker outs, altered his changeup grip, and changed his grip on his breaking pitch. These changes were made with his health in mind, but they also served to make him a more complete pitcher.
This year, when he came back from shoulder inflammation that sidelined him for two months, Cashner again came back from a wrinkle. “I started throwing the four-seamer more in order to establish the high strike,” Cashner said before a game against the Giants in late September. Of course the pitcher knows best about his approach, but it’s worth noticing that he only threw an average of three more four-seam fastballs per game when he returned compared to the same time frame before his injury. And that his heat maps before and after his injury aren’t conclusive on the subject of high four-seamers.
He pointed out that he threw more curveballs when he came back, too. He’d thrown nine in his first fourteen starts before he got hurt. He threw 18 curves in the seven starts that came after his stint on the DL. This September was the month in which Cashner showed the best whiff rate on his curve ball in his career.
The second part of the plan was paired with the first, he admitted. That high fastball is “on the same plane” as the curveball. That makes all sorts of intuitive sense, considering the way the the idea of a high 94 mph high fastball coming the same general area as a big, dropping slow curve. It’s the kind of thing that seems to work for other pitchers.
Last Thursday, the Diamondbacks signed Cuban outfielder Yasmany Tomas to a six year, $68 million contract that included an opt-out after the fourth year. While scouting reports suggest that Tomas appears to be a somewhat one-dimensional slugger, the power is apparently near the top of the scale, and one dimensional sluggers who can hit the ball 450 feet with regularity can still be quite valuable. And teams are certainly paying for right-handed power this winter.
This morning, the Mariners reportedly agreed to signNelson Cruz to a four year, $57 million contract. Like Tomas, Cruz is something of a one-dimensional slugger, offering significant power from the right side but doing little else to help a team win. Unlike Tomas, though, Cruz has a pretty solid MLB track record of success, including hitting 40 home runs in Baltimore last year; he hasn’t hit fewer than 24 homers in a season since 2008, when he played in just 31 games.
Tomas is 24, so the Diamondbacks signed him for his prime years. Cruz is 34, so the Mariners signed him for his decline years. Tomas is a bit of a lottery ticket, though, and could end up being nothing more than Dayan Viciedo, while Cruz seems to have a significantly lower chance of being completely worthless in 2015. Tomas probably has a bit more upside, given his age, but there’s significantly more variance in his expected production than there is with a guy like Cruz.
Over the next four years, the Mariners will pay Cruz $57 million. Over the same time period, the Diamondbacks will likely pay Tomas $35-$45 million, depending on how heavily they backloaded the contract, and then Tomas will have the option to become a free agent again. We should assume that he’ll exercise that option unless he’s either badly injured or kind of terrible, so from the Diamondbacks perspective, their deal with Tomas is only for four years if he turns out to be as good as they hope.
Based on these facts, I’m curious which player and which contract you might prefer. To that end, a couple of polls.
The Mariners have made no secret out of their desire to trade for a right-handed slugger, so perhaps this report from the Dominican newspaper El Caribe should not surprise us too much:
You don’t have to be a Spanish expert to deduce that the report suggests that the Mariners are close to signing Nelson Cruz to a four year, $57 million contract. Ken Rosenthal has confirmed that the team is in “serious talks”, so it seems like a deal is probably going to get done.
The crowd and I both projected Cruz to sign for $45 million over three years, so it appears the Mariners won the bidding by adding a fourth year at an additional $12 million to the pile. Realistically, though, Cruz shouldn’t be expected to produce any value in his age-37 season, so while the team is spreading the $57 million out over four years, he’s going to have to justify the entirety of that figure over the next 2-3 seasons before he declines into nothing more than a bench player.
The forecasts are not optimistic. Steamer has Nelson Cruz projected for +1.5 WAR in 637 plate appearances in 2015, based on a 119 wRC+ and minimal defensive value. ZIPS sees the same level of offensive output, but because Dan gives a bigger boost to designated hitters to account for the DH penalty, he has the same production worth +2 WAR. The forecasts both think Cruz will return to something very close to his career performance, though, and that his career year at 2014 was an outlier and not a sustainable improvement.
If Cruz follows a traditional aging curve, he’d be expected to produce something like +3 to +5 WAR, depending on how you heavily you penalize a player for spending time at DH. At $57 million, even the high side of this looks like $11 million per win, while the low side of the projection would have him pushing $20 million per win. Oh, and the Mariners gave up the 21st pick in the draft to sign Cruz as well.
We’ll do a full write-up on Cruz to the Mariners in a bit, but this is an early contender for the worst signing of the off-season.
As you by now are well aware, Josh Donaldson was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays over the weekend in a blockbuster deal that sent Brett Lawrie back to Oakland. The Blue Jays gave up Lawrie and a few prospects to immediately get better, because Josh Donaldson is a guy that immediately makes any team better. Over the last two years, only Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen have a higher WAR than Donaldson, and Donaldson’s been three wins better than the next-best third baseman. Donaldson can hit, he runs pretty well for a third baseman, and he’s good with the glove. Add those up and you’ve got a hell of a player.
But there’s something to that last point — that he’s good with the glove — that’s been on my mind for awhile. It’s something I was going to write about when the Gold Glove winners were announced, but then Donaldson didn’t win, so I saved it for another day. Now that Donaldson is back in the news, today is that day. Read the rest of this entry »
