Royals Retain Holland While Angels, Mariners Add to Bullpen

The offseason remains slow, but the reliever market saw some moves this week, with a trio of free agents scoring new contracts. Greg Holland signed a one-year, $2.75 million deal to come back to the Royals, who continue to act aggressively this winter. Former Brewers lefty Alex Claudio signed a one-year, $1.25 million commitment to join the Angels, who recently traded for closer Raisel Iglesias. And speaking of the Angels, Keynan Middleton signed a one-year contract with the Mariners, who also added Rafael Montero via a trade with Texas this week.

Now 35 years old, Holland is well past the days when he was arguably the best reliever in baseball. From 2012 to ’14, he racked up 7.6 WAR with a 1.88 ERA and 1.83 FIP over 196.1 innings. His less-stellar 2015 campaign was followed by Tommy John surgery, though, and while he’s looked solid post-injury, he’s been nothing like his formerly elite self. Pitching for four different teams from 2017 to ’19, Holland has held a 4.20 ERA and 4.02 FIP and been worth 1.3 WAR in 139.1 innings.

But after reuniting with the Royals for the 2020 season, lo and behold, Holland looked brilliant again. In 28.1 innings, he had a 1.91 ERA and 2.52 FIP and was worth 0.7 WAR. He didn’t strike batters out the way he used to — his 27.7% strikeout rate is good, though there was a time that number eclipsed 40% — but he also kept walks to a career low 6.3% and became better than ever at getting ground balls.

Holland doesn’t throw the way he used to. Before he blew out his elbow, his average fastball velocity rested comfortably above 96 mph. That dipped to 94.1 mph when he got hurt and continued to drop each year afterward, reaching a low point of 91.4 in 2019. He managed to add a tick to that fastball last year, but there’s still no confusing him with the pitcher he was in his prime.

Fortunately, Holland doesn’t lean on the fastball the way he used to. Coming off surgery, the right-hander responded to the decline in velocity by becoming more slider-happy and also by paying more attention to his curve. Last season, he trusted his breaking pitches more than ever, throwing a fastball on fewer than 40% of his pitches.

Just how confident was Holland in his slider and curveball? For the first time in his career, he threw his breaking stuff in the strike zone more often than his fastball.

The result was a career-low whiff rate with his breaking stuff, but it may have kept hitters off his fastball. Holland’s four-seamer produced its lowest wOBA since 2014, its highest whiff rate since ’13, and its highest ground-ball rate ever. (As for his breaking stuff: It still got results, with wOBA and xwOBA figures and ground-ball rates that were all improvements over the previous two seasons.)

If Holland’s velocity doesn’t see another tumble and his breaking stuff keeps its teeth, he should be a worthwhile closer for the Royals, and at the low cost of $3 million. Not that the role will come to him easily; he actually has some decent competition for it. Jesse Hahn and Kyle Zimmer both had excellent seasons, as did Josh Staumont, who happens to own one of baseball’s fastest heaters. The Royals’ bullpen actually finished with baseball’s eight-best ERA last year. If the team aims to outdo expectations in 2021, keeping that group together seems like the right move to make.

Even more interesting to me than Holland, though, is Claudio. At 28, he’s already been in the majors for parts of seven seasons, the first four with Texas, where he showed a lot of promise with a 2.66 ERA and 3.31 FIP in 162.1 innings. But in 2018, his ERA jumped into the 4s, where it’s been stuck ever since.

So what makes him interesting? At an average of 86.3 mph, Claudio has one of baseball’s slowest fastballs and one of baseball’s lowest fastball spin rates. According to Statcast, he ranks in the first percentile in both categories. Despite this, Claudio was one of baseball’s best pitchers in terms of achieving poor contact last year.

This is nothing new. Since 2016, Claudio has never fallen below the 90th percentile in barrel rate allowed and has allowed an average exit velocity below 86 mph in three of the last four seasons. He’s been a soft-tosser throughout his career, but he’s consistently avoided hard contact thanks in large part to his changeup and, lately, a burgeoning slider.

The way Claudio gets by has evolved over the years. During his time with the Rangers, he leaned hard on a mid-80s sinker to get lots of ground balls. That worked: He owned a 63.5% ground-ball rate from 2016 to ’18. But a couple of years later, that no longer seems to be his goal. That ground-ball rate sunk to 46.6% in 2020, while his fly-ball rate jumped to 34.5%, more than double where it sat two years ago. And if you’re a pitcher who can somehow maintain minuscule exit velocities while allowing more fly balls, that’s a change worth making. On balls that left the bat at less than 95 mph — which nearly 75% of batted balls against Claudio did in 2020 —  batters leaguewide hit .109 on fly balls in play, as opposed to .176 on grounders.

One reason for Claudio’s shrinking ground-ball rate could be the fact that, like Holland, he’s backed off his fastball in recent years.

Claudio is the latest reinforcement for an Angels bullpen that could use the help. The unit ranked 12th in the majors in FIP last season but 21st in ERA, and while it had reasonable enough depth — five pitchers threw at least 10 innings and had an ERA under 4.00 — it lacked legitimate late-inning weapons outside of Mike Mayers. The move to swipe Iglesias from the Reds gave the team a plug-and-play closer, while Claudio seems well-equipped to be a valuable seventh-inning arm with the potential for more as a pitcher still in his 20s who’s figuring out how to accomplish a lot with a little.

As for the former Angels reliever, Middleton’s contract with the Mariners is reportedly worth $800,000, but the fact that he got a major league deal at all is a bit of a surprise. The righty has just 37.1 innings to his name over the last three seasons: Tommy John surgery wiped out most of his 2018 and ’19, and he threw 12 innings in 2020 with a 5.25 ERA and a 5.02 FIP before Los Angeles sent him to its alternate site, where he stayed for the entire month of September.

Because we’ve seen so little of Middleton, it’s difficult to say just how much he brings to the table. In his one full season, he held a 3.86 ERA and 4.37 FIP in 58.1 innings. He lost a couple of ticks of velocity after returning from surgery, but that bounced back in 2020, with his average fastball sitting at a career-high 97.1 mph. He also finished in the 92nd percentile in fastball spin last year, giving him some interesting raw tools that could make him an effective reliever again.

As Jake Mailhot wrote on Wednesday about Seattle adding Montero, the Mariners won’t be picky in trying to improve their bullpen. They used 24 pitchers in relief last year and 36 the year before, and by league-adjusted FIP, their 2020 ‘pen was the worst baseball has seen in decades. There’s a long list of young arms that they would like to see contributing to the big league squad, but that group has yet to coalesce into a competitive relief staff. Middleton isn’t an obvious upgrade, but at a salary just above league minimum, he’s an inexpensive gamble with potential.

Now more than a month into free agency, the top of the market remains pretty frozen. That’s true even for relievers, where none of the top available arms have found homes aside from Trevor May. Only a handful of teams are making additions at the moment, and when they are, they’ve typically been the low-cost variety. There’s no area more rich in cheap upgrades than the relief market, which means signings like these will likely be the most common move we see in the coming weeks.