Reds Go Big With Mike Moustakas
The Reds signaled their intentions to compete in 2019 by trading for Tanner Roark, Sonny Gray, and Yasiel Puig, among others. They did compete with a BaseRuns record above .500 that with neutral luck would have put them in contention until the end of the season. They were 4 1/2 games off the division lead at the All-Star break, but a crowded division and a lack of talent relative to their competitors left them with 75 wins at the end of the year.
Cincinnati also announced their intentions to compete in 2020 by acquiring Trevor Bauer at the trade deadline. Bauer is now a part of what should be one of the better rotations in baseball along with Luis Castillo, Gray, Anthony DeSclafani, and Tyler Mahle. Even with a good rotation, the present roster wasn’t going to be enough in 2020, so the Reds struck a big deal with Mike Moustakas for four years and $64 million, as first reported by Jon Heyman and Jeff Passan.
For Moustakas, this deal was a long time coming. Two seasons ago, Dave Cameron and the crowd here at FanGraphs expected Moustakas would get five years and somewhere between $85-95 million. At the time, the Royals third baseman was coming off a 38-homer, 113-wRC+ season, but there were some questions about his defense due to knee problems in addition to the stigma of a qualifying offer. Moustakas ended up settling for one year and a $6.5 million guarantee in returning to Kansas City. He improved his defense in his time with the Royals and Brewers in 2018, but he hit 10 fewer home runs and was just a bit above average on offense. Behind Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson in the third base pecking order, Moustakas again found his market lacking and signed with the Brewers for $10 million.
With Milwaukee last season, Moustakas played some second base and repeated his 2018 campaign on offense to end up at about three wins above replacement. After two straight year-to-year deals, he finally received the contract over $80 million that he was expecting two seasons ago. This deal still comes as a little bit of a surprise, both in terms of the amount as well as his fit with the Reds. Both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd predicted Moustakas would receive a contract totaling about half the amount he is set to receive from the Reds. It’s not hard to see the logic in those predictions given what happened to Moustakas the last two winters, and as Rachael McDaniel noted, he wasn’t great in the latter half of this past season:
After declining the $10 million mutual option on his contract with the Milwaukee Brewers, Moustakas hits the free agent market for the third straight offseason in the best position yet to secure a favorable contract. Despite falling off as a hitter in the second half of the season — a 124 wRC+ in the first half turned to a 95 wRC+ after the All-Star break, possibly due to a lingering wrist injury — he finished the year grading out positively both at the plate and in the field, and remains one of the best third-base options available.
If we take away the baggage we associate with Moustakas’ last two offseasons, he’s been a 2.8-WAR player on average in his last four full seasons, he’s coming off a 2.8 WAR season, and he’s projected for the same next season. For a Reds team that received below replacement-level production from the non-tendered José Peraza and Scooter Gennett, the improvement should be a big one. Moustakas will play next season at 31 years old. By projection, age, and positional importance, that’s not entirely different from A.J. Pollock’s profile heading into free agency last year, and he received a similar deal to Moustakas. He is likely to be above average next season, probably closer to average in 2021 and 2022, and closer to a solid bench option in 2023. This isn’t likely to be a great deal value-wise at the end of the contract, but this offer wasn’t made for 2023. It was made for next season.
With Eugenio Suarez at third base for the Reds, Moustakas’ ability to handle second base last year opened the possibility to put both on the roster for the next few years. The Reds are one of the more aggressive teams when it comes to shifting against left-handed batters, and that’s likely to help some deficiencies in Moustakas’ range. He has graded out roughly average at third base over the last few years, with Suarez pretty close but slightly below. While Suarez does have more experience in the middle of the infield, it likely doesn’t make much difference between the two, so keeping Suarez comfortable at third with less of a learning curve for Moustakas at second base makes some sense.
As for why the Reds opted to be aggressive with Moustakas rather than wait out the market for any number of available second basemen, they likely looked at potential areas of improvement on the free agent market and didn’t see a lot of of options. Yasmani Grandal certainly made sense, but he’s now signed with White Sox. Didi Gregorius still makes sense as an upgrade over Freddy Galvis, but if the team were to miss out on Gregorius, where might they go? With Nick Senzel, Jesse Winker, and Aristides Aquino in the outfield, the team could upgrade there if it is concerned about Aquino’s dreadful September, but it isn’t unreasonable to give him a chance to try and recapture his amazing August. With all other positions spoken for and the rotation already in good shape, only Anthony Rendon, Donaldson, and Marcell Ozuna have higher projected win totals next season among free agent position players.
On paper, the addition of Moustakas puts the Reds pretty close to even with the Brewers and Cardinals in the NL Central, but about five games behind the Cubs. That makes them contenders for a playoff spot, but not close to favorites. The team needs to do a little bit more and all indications are that they will.
And they're not done, either. The Reds have plenty more money to spend this winter and they see the National League Central as ripe for the taking. Remember, too, their rotation, with Trevor Bauer, Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray and Anthony DeSclafani, is already very good. https://t.co/Ell2Ir7Hhr
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 2, 2019
Their payroll after signing Moustakas is still about $10 million under last year’s $130 million figure. The team opted not to offer contracts to Peraza, a surprise in 2018 who was below replacement last season, as well as Kevin Gausman, who they took a flyer on after he pitched his way out of Atlanta’s rotation. The Reds should have enough money for another Moustakas-like signing and still barely go above last year’s payroll. Plus, around $25 million of 2020 payroll comes off the books at the end of the season with Bauer and DeSclafani becoming free agents. Those commitments provide flexibility for the future and urgency for next season.
After attendance dipped from 2.5 million the last year they made the playoffs in 2013 to 1.6 million in 2018, the club’s moves last winter earned the team a small increase up to 1.8 million. Moustakas alone isn’t going to boost those numbers, but an active offseason likely will. Winning would have the greatest affect on attendance, but trying to win should be enough to help to put more fans in the seats for a more entertaining team than Cincinnati’s seen in half a dozen years.
Craig Edwards can be found on twitter @craigjedwards.
Moustakas is definitely an upgrade for the Reds but it begs the question – if he is worth 4/64 out of position how is Grandal only worth 4/73 as an elite offensive and defensive player?
Maybe I’m missing something and Grandal refused to play in Cincinnati, but I’d rather have Grandal at 4/80 – a guy
with no platoon worries, who can hit at the top of the order, and will likely age better than Moustakas.
I’m not convinced he’s going to age better than Moustakas because catchers have a bad habit of suddenly falling apart in their 30s, but both the more specific and more general point stands. There are likely several ways the Reds could have filled second base for a lot cheaper and gotten a bigger upgrade somewhere else for not much more money.
As do players with Moustakas’ build.
Grandal has the better injury history and has been worth about twice as much as Moustakas the last 3 seasons. Even if Grandal doesn’t age as well, there is such a significant gap in value that short of missing time to injury, he should still be more valuable.
I’m pretty sure an FG writer (Jeff Z maybe?) recently disproved the idea that catchers have a steeper aging curve than other position players, which gets thrown around a lot. This only strengthens your point though which I already agree with.
EDIT: Not sure what I was thinking of, but Dave C showed in 2013 that catchers suffer no additional batting runs decline compared to other players, and if anything actually decline LESS steeply.
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/catcher-aging-is-a-curve-not-a-cliff/
Interesting. The one caveat here is that the 1982-2012 timeframe includes a period where all aging curves are unreliable. Well, there’s also the caveat that there is survivorship bias, where catchers just disappear out of the sample at a much more rapid rate than non-catchers but I don’t know what the effect of that would be off the top of my head (survivorship bias is kind of complicated).
It doesn’t beg the question. It raises the question.
This is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.
And if anyone needs an example that actually BEGS the question: Everyone loves McDonald’s because it is so popular.
Glad I checked before posting this exact thing.
I had the same thought about Grandal only being worth $9M more as probably the 2nd best catcher in baseball. However, I think it’s just an overpay for Moose. The Reds must have really wanted him and were willing to pay a slight premium to bring him in.
The LeMahieu deal always made sense as a comp to me (similar WARs leading up to FA). Though even at the time it felt like DJ had more potential upside than Moose. What a deal that has turned out to be for the Yankees…
If you desperately want to get better next season and don’t care about the long-term consequences, and you have an option to give $80M to Yasmani Grandal or $64M to play Mike Moustakas out of position, I think it’s pretty clear which one you should do. Okay, so you can say the same thing about eight other teams as well with respect to Grandal, and you can talk yourself into Moustakas working out if (a) the scratch defense at 2B last year in a small sample holds and (b) they shift him properly and (c) he keeps his offensive production. But this is a ton of money for a guy who, if the defense doesn’t work out, is going to be taking over for their two other highest-paid players. It’s a ton of money even if the team plans to play him at third base.
(There’s also a weird part of this too–the team’s top prospect (India) is a third baseman who they want to try at second base and will probably be ready soon. They’ve already shifted Senzel away from his natural position at third base to second base, and now to center field. So there are actually two players who got switched to second base from third base and are probably better fits there, although I think it’s not worth worrying over blocking a FV50 prospect and while Senzel would probably be better at 2nd base there aren’t a lot of center fielders available so I understand the experiment).
I have a theory about how this worked out, which could be totally wrong. The Reds also non-tendered Peraza yesterday. For whatever reason, I think the Reds didn’t want to let Peraza go if they didn’t have a replacement ready at second base (that doesn’t make much sense, but they have really liked Peraza for reasons I can’t understand). So they overpaid to land Moustakas because they were on a self-imposed deadline, and their general organizational philosophy that third basemen can play second (and second basemen can play shortstop, etc) led them to not worry so much about whether he could sustain being a scratch defender at second base. Frankly, if they want to put a former Brewer with questions about second base defense (which they sort of already did with Scooter Gennett, too) I would have preferred them being a little more aggressive for Jonathan Villar, especially since the aging curve on Moustakas might knock him off of second base entirely in a couple years anyway.
idk how I forgot about India, that is actually very strange. Maybe they just don’t feel comfortable with him? Or maybe they think he can be another OF bat and Winker’s regression last year worried them?
I find the angle on India to be both the most curious and also most understandable part of this whole situation. Teams have a habit of overrating their prospects, and if you want to win now, India won’t be ready to go next year anyway. But here’s a fun idea for you to ponder: The Reds have shown a tendency to move everyone up a slot on the defensive spectrum for a quite a while. Third basemen play second base, second basemen play shortstop, right fielders play center field, etc. What’s stopping them from moving India to shortstop? I know, you’re thinking it is a bad idea, and I agree with you, but this would fit pretty well with the organization’s philosophy. I don’t think that will stop them.
Is there any precedent for a 55 grade 3b to move to SS? Has anyone ever tried this madness? Positioning is changing everything, so maybe it’s doable, but this isn’t a Nolan Arenado/Matt Chapman type glove we’re talking. And I don’t even know if I’d love them at SS because, idk, just seems weird. But if guys like Seager doing great things, they probably could too. India, probably not
Paul DeJong was primarily a minor league 3B who shifted to SS upon reaching the Majors due to the Cardinals’ positional needs, and now he’s a top tier defensive SS who will likely win at least one Gold Glove at some point.
Maybe Grandal wouldn’t take $80m to go to Cincinnati. Who wants to eat skyline chili? Szymbo back me up here!
How did we go back to the future this year in free agency? Dec 3 and already what 6 of the top 20 fa’s off the board? All for above market numbers?
I guess the Reds looked at the White Sox’s 3/$51M for Abreu and said, “Hey, RBI’s are coming back. Let’s make sure we pay for dingers before the White Sox do.” LOL. And the most Craig can manage to say is “This isn’t likely to be a great deal value-wise at the end of the contract, but this offer wasn’t made for 2023. It was made for next season.” And then compares this deal to AJ Pollock’s last year, as if that’s a positive.
Kiley had Gregorius at 3/$48M. Why didn’t the Reds sign him? Or Jonathan Villar at $10M? Why pay more than 2/$32M for Moustakas? Who else was bidding for him? Gregorius and Villar should be as good “for next season” as Moustakas and will be far better beyond since they aren’t tieing up so much money.
This rivals Abreu’s deal this year and Hosmer’s a couple years ago as prima facie stupid.
agreed they could have taken villar and used the money saved to get more pen help. moose has basically been the same player the last few seasons and was consistently rewarded with 1 year deals at below market wages
This ignores the role Moose had in ending up with those crappy one year deals.
Villar was claimed by marlins correct ? This means the reds never had a chance to claim Villar
I agree. I’d rather have both Gregorius AND Villar for the same price.
Yes, but neither of the Abreu/Hosmer deals are in the same ballpark as some of the terrible deals handed out a few offseason deals ago. In 2016, Ian Kennedy and Chris Davis got extremely generous deals. In 2017, Ian Desmond got a huge deal to play first base. In 2015, the Mets gave up a draft pick (15th overall) to sign Michael Cuddyer, which was truly inexplicable.
I actually think this is better than the Abreu deal in the abstract. If a team were to play Moustakas at third base, it’s a serious overpay but he at least has a high probability of being a useful player. What makes this so weird is that if Moustakas loses a step he’s going to have to displace either Joey Votto or Eugenio Suarez.
I agree that the Abreu deal isn’t as bad as some of those others, but I’d put the Hosmer deal when it was signed as looking just about as bad as any other recent contract.
Comparing to the Chris Davis contract, for example, Hosmer at 8/$144 million (front-loaded and with a player opt-out, no less) was in the same realm of dollar commitment as Davis at 7 / $161 million. And, in both cases, it felt at the time of signing like the respective teams that signed were most likely bidding against themselves and topping the 2nd-best offer by about 30% to 50%.
When you put it like that, the Hosmer contract either looks worse or the Davis contract looks better. Similar money over similar lengths of time (Davis’s was more money but lots of deferred money, Hosmer over 8 years instead of 7) for wildly inconsistent first basemen. The big difference with the Hosmer contract was that he was three years younger at the time, but also, it’s fair to remember that Chris Davis was also a better player, which is wild to think that Chris Davis was ever a better player than anyone given what we saw the last couple years from him.
You’re forgetting the probability of the DH coming to the NL in the next CBA. Moose will probably move to 1B and Votto DH most games
Is this what counts as going big now ? He’s earning less than the QO rate. He does get some security but is this really a big stretch amount ? It’s a good add. Grandal would have been even better.
Do they make a play for Strasburg or Cole ? That would be going big.
Depends on the player, of course, but I can see how 4/$64 would be more valuable than 1/$18 to a big bodied 31 year old infielder, even thinking about inflation and potential changes in the free agent system in the next CBA. That kind of guy can be one bad year away from looking for invites to spring training on a minor league deal, so the 3 extra years and (especially) $46M guaranteed are pretty attractive.
Certainly if he took a 1/$18M contract and had a bad year, his prospects to get 3/$46M next year would be pretty poor.
Basically any player/agent would prefer 4 / $64 million to 1 / $18 million, and I don’t see that decision as particularly close.
I mean from the club perspective – it doesn’t feel like the type of deal that most would consider big. I guess maybe the reds don’t play much in free agency so it’s surprising but not big
It depends on context I guess. It’s 4 years at double the AAV he got on single year deals over the last 2 years. It’s a big investment in Moustakas compared to the last 2 years.
Alright FanGraphs lovers, can you humor me in a thought experiment?
Moustakas in 2019 (M19) offseason earns 10x what Moustakas in 2017 offseason (M17) got. That is astounding. That means that either his value has gone up tremendously or that the market (supply vs demand) has shifted tremendously.
Hypothesis 1: M19 value >> M17 Value
– M19 has now shown 2 more years of reliably above average contributions, however he has also crossed the 30 year old mark. The draft pick compensation has been removed, which is non-negligible. So perhaps M19 has slightly higher value? But nowhere close to the $57M delta between M19 and M17. I think this hypothesis is false.
Hypothesis 2: The demand/supply ratio for M19 >> M17 demand/supply
– 3B on FG’s Top 50 (2017*): 0 above M17, 2 below M17
– 3B on FG’s Top 50 (2019): 2 above M19, 6 below M19 **
– Again, you could argue that perhaps more teams are in need of a 3B (or 2B, as M19 has added some defensive flexibility) but there are clearly a much larger number of options this offseason than 2 years ago. The ratio could not have shifted that drastically, so I think this hypothesis is false.
Okay… so what other hypotheses are there? I’m seriously at a loss and am strongly leaning towards league-wide collusion by the teams. I can’t logically explain this series of events for Moustakas? Any team could have offered him a deal half as much as his current one in the previous two off-seasons and yet he had to settle for single-year deals?
*FG numbers them differently. You need to add 1 year since Dave wrote it for the future season, so this years’ Top50 is entitled ‘2020’.
**Not sure I want EE or some of the others listed playing 3B, but whatever.
Crazy theory: Moustakas is a Boras client. Reds overpay Moustakas so they have an edge on another Boras client (Strasburg, Cole, Rendon, Castellanos).
I don’t buy it. Even if the player were to just completely let Boras run the show (which some of them, like Rendon, clearly do not do) Boras is just going to go negotiate the single biggest contract he can find.
my theory on Boras is that he’s getting guys like Moustakas, Wheeler(who could be gone real soon) and Ryu off the board so all that is left are the big guys.
Boras represents Ryu and Moustakas but not Wheeler, but this is such a clear overpay that it looks like there was no need to wait. Also, this is what Boras should be doing with his mid-level clients instead of waiting until March.
what is funny is like I said, it helps his top clients even more. Rendon’s market IMO explodes now that Moustakas is off the board.
Like how the white sox signed machado’s brother in law and buddy to get an edge with him? Nahhhhh
See that actually sort of made sense, because it would appeal to the player, not the agent. It didn’t work because Alonso and Jay just talked about how great San Diego was and because they got outbid by a lot of money, but in theory it had some merit.
Look at the supply/demand question from the Reds’ side: They already have a 3B. They didn’t need another one, so one supposes they plan to play him at 2B. At 2B he has more power and, one could argue, durability than any other 2B available at that price.
It’s not the direction I’d go, but then I wouldn’t have traded for Bauer, either, so it seems the FO is comfortable taking riskes. In that light I can see angles from which it makes sense to the Cincy FO. And they might know something about Suarez that we don’t.
They could also be looking at him as a fallback for 1B if Votto’s 2019 is his new normal.
Disaster insurance. He might end up at 1B, 3B, maybe even LF if something goes wrong.
The signing seems like “we want his bat, we’ll find him a spot later.
I don’t know that the market should have been quite this high in 2019, but I do think it makes sense that it’s higher now.
2017 was his first year back from a torn ACL. It was also the first year his defense graded negatively. And the Royals chose to DH him for night-day sequences. So it wasn’t 100% clear that he was making a full recovery. A pudgy third baseman with questionable health was walking into the free agent market right in the offseason right after Boston had cut bait on the disastrous Sandoval signing. That’s a recipe for a nervous market. (There were also whispers Moose didn’t work hard enough, but I think that’s nonsense and it was a more acceptable sounding stand-in for “we don’t like that he’s heavy”.)
In 2019 he’s been healthy for two straight years, playing two defensive positions well (3B) or apparently adequately (2B). His bat is good for both positions, and the fact that he’s flexible has value all on its own. So if he’s playing regularly and still fit enough to defend well, that should allay the initial fears.
2017 was a mistake. (If I were signing former Royals position players that offseason I’d have ranked Moustakas and Cain pretty evenly, and both miles ahead of Hosmer. The market did the opposite.) His positives haven’t gone anywhere, and the biggest risk from back then is largely gone. That’s enough to add a lot of value.
Counter point, he’s now 2 years older. No doubt he was under appreciated in 2017, but this is a huge overpay no matter how you try to justify it. Who were they bidding against? For two consecutive off seasons the entire league decided he was worth only a 1yr deal on a lower AAV than this. And he’s been good, not great the past few years.
I agree with Six Ten’s points.
I also question Scoreboard’s analysis of 2019 3B supply/demand vs. 2017 3B supply/demand, as well as some of Scoreboard’s implicit assumptions about the “efficiency” of the free agent market.
First, the framework isn’t as simple as counting the number of 3B amongst the top 50 free agents. Those free agents sometimes create openings for likely FA signings if they’re leaving contenders. For example, Rendon fits that dynamic with the Nationals. Sometimes they don’t create such openings if they’re leaving non-contenders – or teams with a highly-rated prospect at that position – but the analysis is a more complicated look at positions likely available with teams who consider themselves contenders, number of free agents, teams’ evaluation of the player in question (which of course can vary by team), team payroll budgets, and players available in trade.
To all those points, it was pretty easy to see at the time that the market for Moustakas as a FA 3B looked shallow after 2017. Lots of contenders were set at the position with players including Bryant, Rendon, Turner, Arenado, Bregman, etc.
Then let’s look at some of what happened in the offseason after 2017.
(1) The Giants traded for Longoria. (Importantly, with the Rays operating as they do, that essentially reduced demand for a FA 3B by 1 team, because the Rays weren’t at all likely to fill that position through free agency).
(2) The Angels signed Cozart to play 3B – moving him from SS – for 3 / $38 million. There are reports – admittedly disputed – that the Angels offered Moustakas 3 / $45 million early in that offseason before signing Cozart.
(3) There were trade rumors surrounding Machado and Donaldson that offseason, both of whom were due to hit free agency after the 2018 season. That had two possible negative consequences for Moustakas’ value. First, teams could reasonably have thought that a much better near-term upgrade than Moustakas was available in trade (including during the season). Second, committing to a Moustakas contract for 3 years to 5 years wasn’t an attractive idea for teams planning to pursue one of those players in free agency after 2018.
Scoreboard seems to have an implicit view that, for every free agent, there’s a depth of demand to sign the player at something like 10% to 20% less in total value than the actual deal that he accepted. I think that’s often not true. In this case, I think that the Reds for whatever reason(s) – a more optimistic outlook for Moustakas than most other teams, misreading the market, a desire to address this position early in the offseason – came in with a “spike bid” offer that was well beyond the total guaranteed dollars that Moustakas would have eventually gotten elsewhere.
As for Moustakas’ situation after 2017, I’m not all that surprised that total values of his offers fell very quickly after some of the obvious landing spots (Giants, Angels) made other plans for 3B. As Six Ten notes, there were reasons that other teams could have had questions about his future performance. (I would add to those concerns that teams may have had doubts about how the value of his modest OBP, high slugging percentage profile would hold up as he aged.) He also was a poor candidate for a shorter-term pillow contract with a non-contender or fringe contender because he had a QO attached. By 2017, the CBA had also changed so that a player could only receive 1 QO during his career, which makes a pillow contract for a QO’d player particularly unattractive (because the team can’t recover some draft value by QO’ing him again).
Well, if Moose received offers for 2/$32 over the last two offseasons, he probably turned them down thinking he could do much better. Then those offers were eventually withdrawn, and he had to settle for what he could still get
I was very impressed to see Moustakas go from third to second, and I’m interested to see how the Reds will perform in 2020. They’ve been making good choices recently, with signing Iglesias and giving Lorenzen his shot in the outfield, and now bringing in a quality slugger to play the keystone. Man, even when its not your team, you gotta love good baseball.
I think the fact that there are so much fewer ground balls now vs before makes the defensive part a lot different now.
Oh for sure defense in baseball has changed. But with an uptake in homers, speed may become less of a strategy, making defenders more usable. Either way, good players are good players.
This is rather over blown. The league wide GB% in 2017 was 44.2%. In 2019 it was 42.9%. Should ground balls only being hit to him 43% of the time instead of 44% of time really even be a factor at all?
With all the shifts it also limits the ground a guy has to cover. Also in 2015 it was 45.3%. so a downtick of almost 2.5% is pretty big when you think about it in just the last 4 years.
Is that on balls in play? My sense is that the bigger issue is that there are just a lot fewer PAs that aren’t strikeouts/walks (and to a lesser extent, home runs).
That’s true- would think it’s just on balls in play(I’d guess to include homers). the GB% would not include the 23% of pa’s that end up in k’s- From 21.6% just 2 years ago and 20.4% just 4 years ago- or 8.5% that end in bb’s- tied 2 years ago but up from 7.7% just 4 years ago. So this year walks plus K’s equaled 31.5% of pa’s to only 28.1% just 4 years ago. That’s a pretty huge difference.
I think the Reds almost have to believe he’s a 2B. Over the last 5 years he was the 19th best hitting 3B, but he would have been tied for 7th best at 2B. If he can stick at 2B with occasional utility starts at 3B and 1B this deal might work out. Otherwise it would seem like a huge overpay.
Considering the Reds already have their 3B for the next few years, my guess is that they’re hoping his glove at 2B will be good enough with the amount of shifts they employ. We’ll see if they’re right soon enough I reckon.
I’d put him a second too. Nick Senzel plays all around so I’d stick him at third. Moustakas really has surprised me defensively over the last couple of years.
So Didi really does make a ton of sense here, if the signing of Moose puts them about equal to the Cards/Brewers. All I’m hearing around STL is that the Cardinals don’t seem like they’ll be buyers, so with a solid SS adding and pushing Galvis to a utility role, the Reds would pick up even more space.
We’re in this bizzare reality where analysts, who have been following the FA stagnation, are praising teams for signing middling players to bad contracts.
Can we just call this what it is? This contract was simply not a good business move. Great for Moose, no doubt. Just seems like money spent poorly.
I wonder if this is somewhat a market correction to the Nationals winning the World Series with a lot of older players?????
As I’m a fan of baseball and not prudent financial management, I’m glad I’ll get to see Moustakas a lot next year. The profits of billion-dollar businesses is not entertaining to me.
right but if i was a reds fan, i dont know how thrilled i am about the move. sure, its nice to see ownership committed to spending yet at the same time, you want them to be smart about it. this comments section is full of people proposing legitimate alternatives compared to giving 16 million AAV to Moose.
Lumbering fat man who can’t field and only hits home runs. Riveting.
While I totally respect this position, signings like this can directly effect team performance/future flexibility. It’s always give and take — look no further than Boston or Chicago. I think we’re all looking for *sustainable success*.
As a Reds fan if this move leads to a championship, like Boston or Chicago, I’ll deal with 2025 when it comes and enjoy 2020 in 2020.
Narrator: It did not.
Well, I’m just happy to see Moose get paid, and playing in that launching pad might be kind of fun to watch.
Well, towards the end of the deal Moustakas could play 1B frequently if Votto can’t rebound towards previous levels or declines even further. And he can be used at 2nd and 3rd to spell Suarez occasionally and whoever they have at 2nd base if he’s not playing there regularly.
Moustakas’ bat is nowhere near 1B level. He’s a career 99 wRC+ and 101 OPS+ hitter with a peak of 123 wRC+ and 119 OPS+ back in 2019. Moustakas’ 110 wRC+ over his last 4 years would have had him tied for 26th among first basemen with Wilmer Flores and CJ Cron (who was just non-tendered with an approximate arbitration of $7.7M).
Production relative to position doesn’t really matter much as long as the guy can still post a positive WAR (with some allowances for DH and C, where the WAR positional penalty is stupid for the former, and the Defensive WAR for the latter isn’t even close to being properly understood at this point), is clearly your best option at the position, and (for contending teams) you can make up the difference elsewhere in the lineup.
It absolutely matters, 1B with an OPS+ or wRC+ of around 110 can be found on waivers or being non-tendered every single season. Paying $16M for that performance is an enormous overpay.
A LeMahieu signining. A 2B, 3B, 1B mix.
Other moves might be coming.
Or, longshot, what if the universal DH is coming? Say for 21.
They may think they know.
a universal DH wouldn’t be in until the very earliest 22 after the CBA is done.
I appreciate the ‘small market’ Reds shaming other teams in equal or larger cities (ex: Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Tampa) by actually being willing to spend, while they cry poor and play in the free agent kiddie pools year after year. No greater proof that spending is more about ownership than the size of the market.
Too bad they don’t win like the Twins or Rays. Focus on WINS, not on payroll spend. And increased payroll doesn’t cause WINS, though they seem to be correlated.
Nah man, I think oddball has the right idea here. It would have been easy for the Reds to say “oh well, the cubs and cardinals are still good and the brewers have hit a hot streak. We’re eating votto’s contract and Trevor Bauer is a free agent soon, so let’s just sell off Suarez for a strong package and Bauer/iglesias/Gray for what they’re worth and we’ll reevaluate in 3 years.”
I love that they’re going for it even if they’re not a clear favorite. Good baseball is “f yeah, we’re trying to win” baseball
And the focus on “wins” thing is just weird. The reds are clearly a better team today with Moose
The point is to spend $64M wisely so to extend the Reds’ budget so that they can buy the most WINS over the next few years. So you know, acquire Gregorious AND Villar instead of Moustakas.
You do seem representative of quite a lot here who seem obsessed more with a team’s payroll than how many wins it accumulates and how many playoffs it makes. What matters to me is maximizing WINS in one or more years of a team’s playoff window and extending that window as long as possible. This means teams have to keep budgets in mind.
They never had a chance at Villar when the Marlins claimed him.
So they couldn’t have offered Baltimore more than the non-prospect the Marlins gave him before Baltimore DFA’d him? Huh. I would think every team in baseball could do that.
Whoa easy there, can’t talk sh!t about Tampa on Fangraphs. It’s somewhere in the site code of conduct.
Ooh, so edgy. Beyond their inability to sign FA contracts above $50M, what criticism could be leveled at the Rays? They’re the best-run organization in MLB. A team with an <$80M payroll that competes with +$200M payrolls in NYY and BOS.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see Moose spell Votto a lot, even in 2020. Moose can play 1B and Votto’s performance last year indicates that his decline phase is well under way.
16M a year for 4 years is a huge overpay for a 1B who topped out at 123 wRC+ and has a career 99 wRC+. Votto’s worst season before this year was better than the best year Moustakas has ever head as a hitter, and his 2019 season he was basically hitting at the mean Moustakas level. If Moustakas spends significant time at 1B this is a terrible deal for the Reds.
Moose is a nice start, but the Reds still don’t have the offense to hang with the big boys in the NL Central. Their catching tandem isn’t that good, Votto’s power is in steep decline, Galvis is a significantly below average hitter, Senzel has yet to prove he has a Major League bat, and it remains to be seen if Aquino can repeat his good rookie production over the course of a full season as a starter.
I don’t think they have enough money to improve to the point where they’ll finish any higher than 3rd place next season.
It is a pretty odd signing.
My understanding is the general consensus among scouts is while Senzel can “fake it” in CF, He’d be much better off at either 2B or 3B. The stats agree thus far with a -1.2 UZR and 0 OAA in CF…in a very limited sample mind you.
As mentioned above, the presence of India makes it even more unusual. I’m sure the glove would be quite fine in a corner outfield spot, but I am not sure the bat plays there.
I think it is pretty safe to assume Suarez or Votto aren’t moving fo entirely opposite reasons. However, I think both Senzel and India could be interesting trade bait. I mean Senzel was REALLY high on the trade-value list. I’m sure his star has dimmed quite a bit due to injury/meh performance in the majors, but that simply moves him from “untouchable” to being a very big trade chip. I mean Senzel could be a primary piece for say a Lindor(or Story/Semien to a lesser extent). He could be the entire return for Betts(with the Red Sox likely having to eat some $$$). India could at least lead a package for those players.
I very interested to see if the Reds make a major trade now.
I expected the Reds to sign a CF and move Senzel back to second. Moose is a surprise that doesn’t quite seem like a good idea.