As Steve Cohen completes his purchase of the Mets and begins his first offseason, there is going to be considerable speculation that Cohen will use his vast resources to make a splash and try to make the Mets contenders next season. He absolutely should do that, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a plan other than drop cash out of the sky and see which players take it. There are hundreds of free agents, tons of trade options, and many internal decisions on players. While unlimited funds sounds great, Cohen and the Mets will need to target their resources to make the biggest impact for this season and beyond. With that in mind, here’s how I would plan an ideal offseason for the Mets.

Don’t Trade Away Talented Players

When Brodie Van Wagenen got the Mets job, he had an admittedly difficult task to make the Mets into more of a contender without significantly increasing payroll. That meant taking on a bad contract in Robinson Canó’s deal, but also requiring cash to cover some of the costs and sending over players with near-term bad contracts in Jay Bruce and Anthony Swarzak to offset current contracts. Then, top prospect Jarred Kelenic was added all so the Mets could get an elite reliever in Edwin Díaz. In short, the Mets took on huge future salary commitments and gave up future talent for immediate salary relief and a reliever. The Mets shouldn’t have to make those types of moves to acquire talented players. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s November, which means it’s time for an offseason tradition: asking whether some player who had a great season is now better than Mike Trout. Is it a reasonable tradition? Not particularly! But whether it’s Bryce Harper or Mookie Betts, Fernando Tatis Jr. or (in the mind of some wildly optimistic scout) Luis Robert, the tenor of the story is the same: this one guy is a good hitter now, and so maybe he’s a better hitter than Trout, the old best hitter.

One way you could handle this pointless speculation is to ignore it. You’d be totally justified in doing so. Trout is great! He had his worst year this year, and he was still great. Thanks for raising this silly question, enjoy the offseason, see you in February.

As you might have guessed based on the fact that this is an article, however, I’m going to do a little more than that. I’m not going to get into the hot-take-ness of it all, but there are ways to examine this question with a little bit of intellectual rigor. Also, while I’ve got you here, I might as well steal whole cloth from an old Tom Tango idea and make some simplistic projections, all the better to understand our site’s more complicated projections with.

The Marcel projection system is named after a monkey, and it also doesn’t exist anymore. But the concept still makes a ton of sense. Take a player’s actual performance in the last three years, do a little weighting, do a little mean reverting, and call it a projection. That probably sounds too simple, but that’s really how Marcel works. It’s not supposed to be the best projection system in the world, merely the minimum sufficient projection system.
Read the rest of this entry »

Between the end of the World Series on October 27 and the arrival of the Qualifying Offer deadline on November 1, players and teams finalized a whole bunch of decisions on whose options to pick up and whose to decline. As we’ve noted in a few places throughout this site — Craig Edwards’ FanGraphs Audio discussion with Meg Rowley about Kolten Wong, Ben Clemens’ piece on Charlie Morton, and my own roundup of the Qualifying Offers — the set of decisions points to a bleak winter for players, as the loss of revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic is causing cutbacks in payroll and other areas. That said, a whole bunch of players lost their jobs because they underperformed drastically in a short season ahead of an unforgiving market.

Via the data provided by Jason Martinez, who runs our RosterResource section, 34 out of the 40 players with at least six years of service time and either a club option or a mutual option had those options declined by their respective teams this past week. That count excludes both players who were released in-season and thus had their options automatically declined (such as Jake McGee and Bryan Shaw), as well as players who still have arbitration eligibility remaining (such as Domingo Santana). Of the six players whose options were picked up, only three were for salaries of more than $5.5 million, namely the Marlins’ Starling Marte ($12.5 million), the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo ($14.5 million), and the Yankees’ Zack Britton ($14 million, but for 2022 in a mechanism that effectively turned his ’21 salary of $13 million into a mutual option as well). Eighteen of the declined options were for 2021 salaries of $10 million or more, and another seven were for at least $5 million. In other words, this subset of players with club or mutual options of $5 million or greater went 4-for-28 in having those options picked up, if we’re counting Britton.

By comparison, using the same parameters, 33 out of 43 club or mutual options were declined by teams last year, a count that doesn’t include the two mutual options declined by players who went on to sign four-year deals elsewhere (Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas). Of the 10 club options picked up, seven of them were by players with salaries of at least $9 million: Rizzo ($14.5 million), Marte ($11.5 million, picked up when he was still a Pirate), the Indians’ Corey Kluber ($17.5 million), the Twins’ Nelson Cruz ($12 million), the Cubs’ Jose Quintana ($10.5 million), the Nationals’ Adam Eaton ($9.5 million), and the Pirates’ Chris Archer ($9 million); three other players with salaries in the $5.5-9 million range had their options picked up as well. Such was the structure of these contracts that all of those players except Cruz and Quintana had club options after both the 2019 and ’20 seasons, with Marte and Rizzo the only two who had both picked up; Quintana had a similar structure following the 2018 and ’19 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday afternoon, Kevin Gausman became one of six players to be offered a qualifying offer. With tons of uncertainty about the health of the free agent market heading into the offseason, Gausman’s offer was a bit of a surprise to see. To his credit, he put together a phenomenal year for the Giants, posting the lowest FIP of his career in 2020. But he’s also only a year removed from being designated for assignment by the Braves in August of 2019.

On Monday, Jay Jaffe reviewed all six of the QOs offered this year. He concluded that Gausman and Marcus Stroman were the two players who faced a particularly difficult decision about whether or not to accept the offer and return to their previous teams. Stroman’s decision is a little more complicated since he opted out of the 2020 season and last took the mound in 2019. Gausman made 10 starts and two relief appearances in 2020 and made a compelling case that he’s one of the top starting pitching options on the market this offseason. Craig Edwards ranked him the fifth-best starting pitching among this year’s free agent crop.

Gausman’s big year was a welcome development after struggling to put everything together in Baltimore for much of his career. The former first-round draft pick was a hair better than league average by park- and league-adjusted ERA and FIP during his time with the Orioles. But he never really lived up to his pedigree, and he was traded to the Braves at the 2018 trade deadline. He was excellent in Atlanta for the remainder of that season season but really struggled in early 2019, leading to his DFA in August. He was picked up by the Reds and moved to the bullpen, where his stuff played up in short outings. Read the rest of this entry »

As a long, likely-bleak offseason began late last week, many teams opted out of the final year of players’ contracts, often with the seeming goal of beginning this winter with as little committed money on the books as possible. Tampa Bay will not bring back Charlie Morton, one of baseball’s best starting pitchers. Cleveland will not bring back Brad Hand, one of baseball’s best relievers. Some teams will use the money saved on these unexercised club options to pursue other free agents they feel will provide more value; many are likely to simply pocket the savings as a means of recouping what they say the COVID-19 pandemic cost them. The bar for players hoping to land any kind of guaranteed money this offseason appears to be quite high; in the eyes of the Houston Astros, left-handed reliever Brooks Raley cleared it.

Raley’s $2 million club option (he’ll make just a $250,000 salary in the minors) for the 2021 season isn’t close to the double-digit price tag that Morton or Hand’s would have cost their clubs, but the specific figure in play here doesn’t feel as important as the fact that Houston was willing to pay Raley in the first place. His numbers this season — a 4.95 ERA and 3.94 FIP in 20 innings — aren’t anything special. Other relievers with similarly-priced club options and perfectly good 2020 production, such as Javy Guerra and Darren O’Day, were turned loose by their respective clubs. In a depressed spending environment, the prices for high-leverage relievers this winter could turn out to be low. For Houston to commit to Raley before free agency even begins shows the team must see something valuable in him.

The Astros were already demonstrating their belief in Raley when they used him rather aggressively during this year’s surprisingly deep playoff run. In the ALCS alone, Raley pitched in four games, holding the Rays without a run across three innings while striking out six and walking two. That usage — particularly in close games — was reflective of just how thin the Astros had become at the back of their bullpen, but it also showed how fond Houston had grown of Raley in his short time with the team.

If this year’s postseason was the first you’d ever heard of Raley, you probably aren’t alone. And if you got curious and looked him up, you may have been surprised to learn just how long he’s been around. The 32-year-old lefty was a sixth-round pick of the Chicago Cubs in 2009; he pitched sparingly for them in 2012-13 before being placed on waivers. His run on the waiver wire saw him shuttled to the Twins and then the Angels, but neither found a home for Raley on their big league roster. Lacking interest from MLB squads, Raley answered a call from the Korean Baseball Organization’s Lotte Giants, who offered him a rotation spot he never relinquished. From 2015-19, Raley started 151 games with the Giants, proving to be a durable, if not necessarily dominant, starter. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since we updated the OOTP Brewers, my experiment with crowd-managing a team in an online Out Of The Park Baseball league. We did just okay; our 83-79 record was good for second in the NL Central, but didn’t come close to yielding a Wild Card slot — too bad we didn’t have this year’s expanded playoffs system.

What lessons can we learn from the season? First, our pitching depth was severely tested, in a way that suggests we should focus more heavily on cultivating Triple-A talent in the future. Corbin Burnes, Brett Anderson, Jeff Samardzija (a mid-season acquisition), Alex Claudio, Tim Hill, and Devin Williams all ended the season on the 60-day disabled list, and Josh Lindblom missed three months early on. We withstood the storm somewhat by acquiring Kevin Gausman, but he’s headed into free agency this offseason — more pitching depth feels like an absolute necessity.

Additionally, this season showcased one of the Brewers roster’s biggest weaknesses: a lack of secondary difference-makers behind Christian Yelich. Keston Hiura and Brock Holt hit decently well, but Hiura also missed time, and Lorenzo Cain was alternately injured and ineffective before finally missing the last two months of the season. When Yelich went down for eight weeks, the offense simply had no driving force.

Unlike the starting pitching, that’s not an easy contingency to plan for. When a team with Milwaukee’s payroll signs a star to a long-term deal, they don’t have a lot of recourse in case of injury or ineffectiveness. We did sign Hiura to an extension this year, but that can only go so far. As Yelich goes, so will go the Brewers, and that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.

With that in mind, I have two priorities for the offseason: acquire a major-league starting pitcher and hunt the waiver wire and Rule 5 draft for pitchers who can start the season as relievers but double as back-of-rotation depth in the event of injury. The Brewers roster simply didn’t have enough pitching to withstand this year’s injury bug, and I’d like to avoid that going forward.

Of course, the entire season wasn’t about the Brewers. Ten teams made the playoffs in this league, and it was a pretty wild field. The NL had its fair share of chalk — you’ll hardly be surprised to know that the Dodgers won their division — but it also featured one notable upstart. The Pirates finished second in the NL and won the Central, paced by a devastating pitching staff (first in the NL in starting pitching ERA, fourth in overall pitching WAR) and an offense bolstered by a midseason addition of Marcus Semien. Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Hall had a long and remarkable career, and at 90 years young, his memory remains strong. There’s a lot for him to reminisce about. Originally an infielder/outfielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates — he debuted in 1952 — Hall converted to the mound in 1955 and went on to pitch for 16 big-league seasons.

A right-hander who both started and relieved, Hall had his best years with the Baltimore Orioles, with whom he had 65 wins, 60 saves, and a 2.89 ERA over two stints and nine seasons. His career culminated with three consecutive Fall Classics, the middle of which saw Baltimore beat the Cincinnati Reds in the 1970 World Series. All told, Hall pitched eight-and-two-thirds postseason innings without allowing an earned run.

Hall discussed his career shortly before becoming a nonagenarian in late September.

———

David Laurila: You pitched for a long time, but only after starting your career as a position player. How did that come about?

Dick Hall: “Well, there was no draft when I signed with the Pirates in the fall of 1951. I then started playing in their minor league system in 1952, and after my
second season — after the 1953 season — they sent me down to Mazatlán, Mexico
to get further experience. I was a second baseman/outfielder in those days. Mazatlán almost sent me home, but then I changed the grip on my bat and started hitting home runs. Mazatlán calls Pittsburgh and said, ‘We’ll keep him after all.’

“I set the league home run record, so they welcomed me back the next year. I told the manager, ‘Look, I pitched all the time in high school, college, and semi-pro,’ so if he wanted, I could pitch. One Sunday we were up in Hermosillo, which is a few hours from Arizona, and we played a four-game series which included a doubleheader on Sunday. We carried four pitchers. We had a Cuban pitcher, a Mexican pitcher, and two from the United States. Anyway, on Sunday they scored a couple runs early. Our starting pitcher ran into huge trouble, so the manager called me in from center field. I ended up pitching six-and-a-third innings and gave up one single. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley remind their audience to vote, then banter about this year’s selection of qualifying offers and what the Rays declining Charlie Morton’s option for 2021 signifies for the free-agent market (if anything) before answering listener emails about front-office parity and what teams can do to differentiate themselves from each other, and what pitchers could do to diminish the times-through-the-order effect. Then (45:15) Ben talks to former major leaguer Clay Bellinger about getting the call to the big leagues at age 30, winning three World Series rings in his four years in the majors, watching his son Cody Bellinger win a World Series, the similarities between the dynasty Yankees and the kinda-dynasty Dodgers, when he knew Cody was a special player, becoming a firefighter, and more.

Audio intro: Paul McCartney, "Do it Now"
Audio interstitial: Gillian Welch, "Red Clay Halo"
Audio outro: The Psychedelic Furs, "President Gas"

Link to Vote.org
Link to Ben on the concerning offseason
Link to FanGraphs’ free agent rankings
Link to Jay Jaffe on qualifying offers
Link to Ben Clemens on Morton
Link to research on pitch types and the TTO penalty
Link to Ben on bullpenning and the TTO penalty
Link to Ben’s autographed Bellinger ball
Link to Bellinger’s catch in the 2000 World Series
Link to article on Clay watching Cody’s catch

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In the latest sign that this offseason could be a difficult one for free agents due to the industry-wide loss of revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, just six players received qualifying offers from their 2020 teams prior to Sunday’s 5 PM Eastern deadline. That’s the lowest total since the system was put in place in 2012, not that anyone should fret the loss of something that makes player movement more difficult. The six — Trevor Bauer, Kevin Gausman, DJ LeMahieu, J.T. Realmuto, George Springer, and Marcus Stroman — have until November 11 to accept or decline the one-year, $18.9 million offers. While historically, the odds strongly suggest that most of those players will decline them and move on, Gausman and Stroman stand out as two players who could accept them and return to their respective teams.

I’ll get to the players and the decisions themselves, but before that, there’s a lot to unpack. To review, the qualifying offer system was introduced for the 2012-16 Collective Bargaining Agreement and then revised for the 2017-21 CBA. It’s the latest mechanism in a battle that’s as old as free agency itself, for not only does it compensate the team who lost a major free agent by awarding them a draft pick, it penalizes the team that signs him by costing them a draft pick, and acts as a drag on player salaries because at a certain point, the cost of the lost draft pick(s) is substantial relative to the expected value of the player. That the updated rules make a player who has previously received a QO ineligible to receive another one is a clear acknowledgement of that fact.

The value of the one-year qualifying offer is based upon the mean of the top 125 player salaries (full-season salaries, not prorated ones). A player issued a QO can accept and return to the team for whom he played in 2020 at that price, or he can decline it and sign with any team (including the one from whom they rejected the offer), with his old team receiving a draft pick whose placement is based upon the size of the subsequent contract. If a qualified player signs a deal for at least $50 million, his old team gets a draft pick between the first round and Competitive Balance Round A. There were no such picks in the 2020 draft, but in ’19, those picks were numbers 33 and 34, while in ’18, they covered picks 31-35, meaning that they yielded around $9-10 million in future value. If a qualified player signs a deal for less than $50 million, the compensatory draft pick follows Competitive Balance Round B, which takes place after the second round, and which in 2019 covered just pick number 78, and in ’18 fell in the 75-78 range, worth somewhere around $3-3.5 million.

Meanwhile, the quality of the pick lost by the signing team depends upon whether it exceeded the Competitive Balance Tax in the previous season, and whether it receives revenue sharing money. A team that pays the tax will lose its second- and fifth-highest picks, which might amount to around $8 million in future value, while a team that receives revenue sharing will lose its fourth-highest pick, which might be worth closer to $3 million. These are ballpark estimates; you can read the fine print here. Read the rest of this entry »