Hey everyone. I’m glad to have you all here, both to talk about free agency and to just keep chatting about baseball. Let’s dive right in. I’m going to try to give longer answers on each player who we talk about, so if I don’t answer your question, it’s probably because someone else has asked about that player or it feels like it overlaps with another one I’m going to answer. I’ll try to get to everything, of course.
will there be a managerial report card for Pat Murphy on the site? I know winning the WS it’s hard to be anything other than an “A” or whatever but this Brewers fan would love to revisit the harder decision points of the playoffs just a little longer!
Definitely. I did not do either WS report card this year because I was working on this list, but Jon Becker and Dan Szymborski have the AL and NL, respectively.
I can’t believe you left Player X off the list! Why are you so biased against Player X? What did Player X do to you/your family/pets? J/K, of course, thanks for the tremendous effort to put this novella together!
Player X? Hate that guy. So overrated. And player Y? You’re way too low on him.
Ben, where do you think you’re most out on a limb, both high and low? Ie, the guy you’re valuing at the 90th percentile (vs the market) and the 10th percentile?
High? Definitely Kris Bubic. I am fairly certain that even my contract estimate is higher than he’s going to get. I just couldn’t make myself project him lower. I would REALLY want to end up with him this free agency based on what information I have (so no health stuff, is what I’m saying)
low? Hm, it might be Arozarena, who I just don’t think is a marquee free agent even though I see him in the top 5 in basically everyone else’s list.
You Aren’t a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren’t yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren’t logged in). We aren’t mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won’t bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you’ll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we’ve also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
In case you didn’t read all that, here’s the short version. Membership includes:
✓Ad-free browsing
✓Unlimited FanGraphs & RotoGraphs articles
✓Historical & platoon projections
✓Leaderboard & player-page stat heatmaps
✓One-click data exports
✓Customizable player-page dashboards
✓Dark & Classic site modes
✓Weekly Members-only mailbag
✓FanGraphs Walk-Off, your year in review
✓Optional homepage photo removal
✓Gift articles to non-Members
✓Full postseason coverage
Alternately, some of the lower-down pitchers? Matt Boyd, Brandon Woodruff, Kevin Gausman to various degrees
I’m pretty light on contract length in general. that was the big decision I had to make in a macro sense this year, so I think that I’m out on a limb for short contracts this year more so than any particular player
Who did you have the most difficulty with placing and why was it Jazz Chisholm?
I think it’s either Taira, Sato, or Jeffers.
I did have a tough time figuring out my prediction for Jazz’s contract, but I had him in the top 10 the whole time, so placement-wise, I kind of knew I wanted him after Suzuki but before Arozarena
Taira is tough because his role is unclear and his style has not really been duplicated. I wanted to be even higher on him b/c of his age and his fastball. Sato is tough because I was way too high on last year’s NPB class but a lot of the same markers that I liked in Murakami are present in Sato, and also everyone saw the Murakami deal turn out well. So that was really tough. ZiPS has Sato as the second-best player in this class, for what it’s worth.
Obviously huge error bars on that kind of projection.
What’s driving the gap between what you think Sato will get and what Murakami and Okamoto got? Sato’s profile looks definitively less appealing than either.
I think I’d disagree with you on that from a projection standpoint. I can only compare Steamer and ZiPS projections but I think they’re both going to be very bullish Sato. And just so we’re clear, I thought Murakami got extremely underpaid, projected him for more than he got, and think that the league is adjusting to that view a little after he was quite good in Chicago.
But basically, I think he’s a good player who has some extra defensive utility and, teams can dream, a little bit more contact in there? But also it’s a super tough projection and who knows.
How does your model account for the probability of top free agents signing short-term deals? Contract length has become so much more bimodal over the last few years for the top few tiers of players.
Super tough question. And I mean, that’s definitely the weakest part. It’s pretty vibes based, I basically try to price a bunch of differing-length contracts and look at what makes sense to me in the broad scheme of things
70 degrees in CT in November but I quit after 9 holes to be here. My question is do you think that the same pattern as last year with the best players, but not among the best in the game, Tucker and Bichette stand out, getting ridiculous contracts simply because there is money to spend and no other better players available?
I think that if that happens, it’ll more likely be short-term deals with big AAV’s, exactly like Bichette and Tucker. But I don’t think it’s that likely because of the lack of depth at the top of the class. Like, this isn’t even the same as last year’s group, it’s four or five exciting free agents light. I do think the middle section of hte list will do brisk business because teams like to do some spending before a lockout.
I understand it’s tough to bet on him repeating it, but Paul Blackburn was fourth in RA9-WAR among relievers this season. Why isn’t he top 50 for you?
Because Emilio Pagan opted out yesterday and we had to boot somebody from 50th.
Not really more complicated than that, honestly. There are like 20 dudes with give or take the same projections as relievers. I get a big ZiPS projection run that I use in my forecasting. And I was swinging these guys back and forth a lot, without a lot separating them, throughout the process. I think that Blackburn doesn’t have the WHY as clearly for me as for some of the guys who succeeded, but I did have him on there for most of the process, just at the very bottom.
Am I so wrong to consider Luis Arraez and Gleyber Torres basically equivalent players for 2027 purposes, just with the former coming off of a good year and the latter a bad one? I don’t buy that Arraez is suddenly good defensively one bit, they have very comparable OBP projections, and Torres will likely post a higher ISO.
I mean, clearly I do not think that, or I’d have them ranked more similarly. But on the other hand, I have Arraez getting 2/38 and Gleyber getting 2/28, those aren’t THAT different. Also why do you think Gleyber is a good bet to out-slug Arraez? From 24-26, Glebyer has 1700 PA and a .378 slug. Arraez has 2000 PA and a .400 slug
How weird is it to make contract projections with the new CBA looming? Seems like we have no idea how these things will look next year.
Yeah. I do not feel very good about these projections in general, to say the least.
The combination of a particularly divisive CBA and a class that is the weakest in my time as a baseball writer was really tough.
First class I’ve projected to get LESS money than the previous class since doing this. Although actually slightly more in terms of $/WAR, which is another tricky thing to balance.
In any case, I’m not confident about these projections, I’ve never been less confident in a list than this one. And that’s despite putting a lot of work in. The macro picture is just really confusing at the moment.
Woodruff, if he pitches again and has anything good left in the tank, surely just stays in Milwaukee right? To the extent that they matter, I have to think that comfort and familiarity have to be valuable to a guy in his situation. I don’t really have a great reason for this feeling but my gut tells me that it’s either the Brewers or riding off into the sunset
I was talking about this with Meg yesterday and I largely agree with you, with one good caveat she mentioned: if the lockout takes out April baseball, and things start dragging, he’s probably just going to hang it up
is there anything public about Pivetta and the Padres declining his option? Looking at his production, 2/$32M seems like a no-brainer for a 2/3 starter, is it just the medicals? He looked fine at the end of the season
There is not. We did a lot of talking about his situation internally, and we settled on it being a spot where if the Padres decline the option, the health picture must be so scary that it wouldn’t make sense to put him on here.
But yes, he was a player that we thought about at great length when constructing the list.
Taira’s blurb was interesting. Is there any undervalued profile here or is he really à la Altuve? Could you imagine facing Noah Schultz first two times than going against Taira?
I really have no idea. That’s what is so exciting about him. I like outlier arm angles and release points a lot if pitchers have good ability to repeat their mechanics…. and we’ll see! Definitely going to be a fun guy to watch, in a similar way to how Murakami was fascinating this year. Will this style work? We’ll have to see, but seeing is gonna be quite a ride.
To paraphrase an oldie but goodie, I am a strong believer in “it is what you do and it ain’t how you do it” and Sonny Gray just keeps doing it despite being hammered for not throwing 95+. I watched a master all summer and with that said what do you see for him?
Yeah, I had a pretty tough time with Gray from a contract length perspective. I would not feel bad giving him 25 mil a year, even more than that really, for one season. But I’d rather be on a pay as you go plan, if that makes sense? Like, big chunks of money every year, I think I have him down as tied for second-highest pitching AAV.
I think this probably works for everyone, to be honest. I don’t get the sense that Sonny Gray is a guy who would want to stick out a long contract after he’s not pitching well anymore.
But yeah, he can really pitch. He should draw a big salary to start for your playoff contending team. And you should want him to pitch for them. He might turn into a pumpkin, but well, he hasn’t yet.
You didn’t predict anyone to go the QO acceptance route. Do you find it difficult to predict anyone particular for that, or do you think the uncertain CBA will scare teams away from offering the QO for borderline candidates, not knowing if they will even get the benefit of the draft compensation with the new CBA?
We didn’t have the QO list because of the vagaries of schedule releases. If the WS were a sweep, we would, I believe. And it was very tough this year because I don’t have a good sense of who will get a QO, whereas last year I had a pretty good idea. I think that if we knew who was getting the QOs I would have projected at least one person to accept it, but without knowing who will even get them, I thought it was a bit weird to hvae that in there.
Re: projecting this class to get less money than the previous class: to what extent do you look at aggregate variables as a sanity check when doing this exercise? Like, if you’d projected all the players individually and found that you were projecting them to get more total money than last year, would you have knocked 5% off everyone’s projected contract $$$?
Maybe not quite like that, but yes. I make all of my projections at the micro level. But then I also have some aggregate statistics for the group as a whole, and I am more confident in my ability to predict the aggregate than my ability to predict idiosyncratic contract details, so I put a good amount of stock into trying to say things like ‘oh well pitchers are in general going to get paid at this kind of level’ rather than trying to outthink everyone on each individual player.
But yeah, this one has been the one where that method has been challenged the most, because I think that the big picture is so clouded by CBA uncertainty.
I knew nothing about Taira’s physique and after reading that he is 5’8″ and 220 I cannot wait to see him pitch. Do you see him as a clone of Bartolo Colon or is he even more unique?
More unique in that he’s a high-velo, super low release point four-seam guy. So maybe young Bartolo has some parallels, but young Bartolo isn’t really what we’re all picturing in our heads for him. I actually get tiny Miz vibes, which is a funny comparison given that Miz is enormous. But like, amazing fastball that ties the whole approach together, some secondaries that work pretty well b/c of the plane and angle he produces on teh fastball, and you hope his command improves a bit
Eric likes Taira’s splitter and I trust him on this kind of stuff, but the fastball is going to be the calling card, that’s for sure.
IF you had to pick someone (non-Skubal) who’s going to parlay this weak FA class into an unexpectedly rich contract, who’s gonna be?
I think Arozarena has the inside track here, because if you want a Proven Slugger and miss out on Suzuki, there just aren’t a lot of options.
I do not think that it will happen. But I had a tough time with his projection because you do have to care about scarcity, and that’s really tough to model. I can intuit it, but not quantitatively, if that makes sense.
Are there any fits between player and team that you’re particularly rooting for? I’m thinking about how fun Arraez would be on a contact-heavy team, for example, or maybe a Canadian like Michael Soroka finally getting to play for the Blue Jays.
Soroka on the Jays is a good one. I think Emilio Pagan in Coors would be incredible but maybe not in a good way. I liked the Cespedes BBQ suggestion of Alec Bohm in Coors too (complimentary, this time). I think that Taira to the Brewers would be incredible even though it almost certainly won’t happen
Will there be manager report cards for non post season managers?
No. Partially because I don’t really know how we’d do them, but also because I think that most of the value in what managers do during the regular season is invisible to my analysis. It’s keeping players ready, keeping everyone pulling the same way, managing depth charts and pitching staffs, that kinda stuff.
Do you have any quick highlights of Ben’s likes/dislikes from the playoffs?
Oh sure. Loved: Brewers and Rays games in general. I especially loved the Brewers run b/c my wife is from Milwaukee and her mom has season tickets. I didn’t go to the series, but they both did, which is really cool
individual performance wise, Michael King coming back on zero days rest, what a champion. Nick Martinez in the WS, similar deal.
The Bauers/Frelick/Passan bromance was pretty fun. Pat Murphy negging Cooper Pratt was pretty fun
Oh, Patrick Bailey pinch hitting for Austin Hedges, just an A+ moment for me.
What’s for lunch?
nothing too exciting today. a lunch kit from factor (we hop around meal prep kits based on deals and based on how busy we are, been pretty busy of late and factor had a good deal)
Lunch will pick up in excitement in the offseason because (fingers crossed) I’ll have more free time.
Is this the most mediocre free agent class you’ve rated? (Maybe that’s an article suggestion if you want to do an analytical dive on it)
no need for an article, it is. By a fair margin. Basically a lot of the top end guys signed extensions, more so than normal. The belly of the list is kinda similar to previous ones, but the projections are the lightest for any group I’ve done this exercise for
The meal prep kit companies don’t make it a pain to cancel after you take them up on the intro deal?
they do, but we are alright at dealing with it.
As someone who has a very special place in his fandom for Japanese relief pitchers, Tazawa, Okajima and the incomparable Uehara, do you think Taira will be used as a starter or in relief?
Great question, and I don’t know for sure. I am thikning of him as a probable reliever, but I imagine that there’s a correlation thing here where the team that offers him the most money is probably the most bullish on him as a starter. I think the right way to think about it is that whoever signs him will kick the tires on starting but with a decent idea that it’s probably not going to work. He didn’t start THAT frequently in NPB, I like that they gave him a shot this year and I think it’ll give him a chance to try it here at least for a while. I just long-term think that this style is best suited to relief. But again, like everything about Taira, huge error bars.
How much did Mize cost himself with his performance on the Padres? I mean, SSS and all, but wow
A lot, I think. I make one of these lists in early September without looking at projections or diving too deeply into the stats, and another with looking at projections during the plyaoffs. I like doing this so that I can compare the two and see where my biases and whatnot are.
I had Mize a lot higher in the vibes based one
I was basically indexing too much on the first half of the year. and like, trajectory good, you can toss out some of the old struggles if he’s suddenly locked in with first overall pick pedigree and good stuff
I think I’d argue that SSS is true, but his good performance was SSS too, and it doesn’t feel like that when he’s currently dealing
Finishing off the Kyle Harrison discussion from about a month ago- Milwaukee DID put him on the roster all 3 series, but, as I suspected, he never did pitch, which is why I initially thought he shouldn’t be on the roster. Obviously, it didn’t hurt them (& I am happy as heck for them & their fans- 100% deserved after years of being close), but I felt a little “vindicated” since he didn’t pitch.
Haha yeah, they picked an interesting middle wya. I think that the Brewers did try to kick the tires on him at the end of the regular season and he was not looking good, but I think they still wanted the upside there in case of dire straits. But since they just kept winning and blowing people out, they just didn’t need to change. It is really funny that they rostered him the whole time and didn’t use him once.
While it may be more in the $150m range than the $171m MLB has proposed for a Cap Floor, it seems that a cap and floor are going to happen. Considering the Brewers will need to add $25-35 to payroll, does this make it likelier Bauers returns or do you see it as a non-factor, in that they could also just extend Contreras, Ashby, Turang, Miz, Henderson, etc to reach the threshold.
I think I reject the phrasing that a cap and floor are going to happen. They might, some kind of hybrid system might happen, and anyone who says they have a good idea about what numbers those might settle at already is just wishcasting. But generally speaking, I think that any type of major change in economics (whether it’s the league’s cap floor, the plyaer’s soft floor plus tv revenue redistribution, etc.) will have a phase in period. And that puts less pressure on this year’s deals for everyone. I think it’s basically unworkable to have no phase-in period if you’re going to ask the Nats and Marlins to essentially double payroll, and the Dodgers to cut theirs by 2/3.
Re: Arozarena getting overpaid as a Proven Slugger, by god that’s Dave Dombrowski’s music
Certainly if you made me project a destination for Randy, Philly would be high on the list. He’s kind of a next gen Castellanos in some ways.
will the mariners give out one (1) MLB deal this offseason
Hi Michael! And yeah. But maybe not that many. If I were them I’d be in the market for bats, but like…. bad year for that. How many of these guys are better than the M’s options?
Funny- I was the guy mid-season that said Mize wasn’ that far below Skubal (similar reason to what you just posted) & thought some team may get a steal since he was going to cost so much less… yeah, that take DID NOT age well. What the heck happened ther? SSS or did his stuff backtrack, too?
It’s not just Mize’s performance on the Padres, it’s that he looked very hurt on the Padres
Yeah, stuff backtracked, looked worse, command backtracked, and also he was just on some kind of heater in the first half. Like with no change in stuff, really, he suddenly had the highest swinging strike rate of his career.
tough one for sure. I’m sure that the team who ends up as the high bidder here will think they have a good idea about what he was doing right in Det in early 2026t and wrong in SD
Hi Ben – what do you think the odds are that the Pirates bring back Brandon Lowe?
I don’t think I’m better than local writers and handicapping specific destinations like this. I defer to their opinions in general, I’m a very good generalist (in my not so humble opinion) but this is not my specific area of expertise. That said, I think that I would be interested in doing so if I were them. THere are gonig to be a lot of holes on this team, Lowe feels like a good culture fit there, the price won’t kill you, and I thought he and Griffin were a solid double play pairing, which feels like something to invest in with your young megastar.
Do you ever enter the mlb trade rumors free agent prediction contest?
No, haha. I don’t really see the point. I do publish retrospectives on the various expert prediction efforts, although this year’s will be weird thanks to the lockout splitting it down the middle.
do you think stank kroenke will be looking to make a big splash and get one of the big fish? or will he prioritize more long term changes?
Oh, fun question. I think that he’s going to prioritize long-term changes, but if there were two big fish on the market, I could see a 2022 Rangers kinda deal here. I just don’t think this market is amenable to it, and I also get the sense that Skubal wants to set a pitcher salary record but might not want to play for a bad team to do it. Who knows, of course… I’m just spitballing here. But this doesn’t feel like the winter for that kind of move.
Are you a believer in Aaron Ashby as a starter? Would seem to be a move dictated by his contract as the Brewers don’t typically pay that much for relievers, as valuable as a reliever as he is.
I didn’t like him as a starter when he came up, but he’s a pretty different pitcher now than he was then. I think it’d be reasonable to try, but I do not think it’d be reasonable to count on him, as in I’d want to have this as a bonus option while still making a plan for full rotation security if Ashby remains in the ‘pen. The Brewers have been good at these overlapping pitching plans where htey have plenty of regular-season starting depth even if they have to transition someone to the ‘pen or deal with injuries, so I think that they’re the right team to be trying this.
But you have to try, right? If he’s throwing like this for six innings at a time every sixth day, that’s pretty great.
The San Francisco Baseball Giants have a big roster hole with left-handed pitching and dudes who throw hard in general. Should it be an organizational focus in free agency/trade talks, and if so who would you target?
Nah, for me, it should be a drafting and development focus. Left-handed pitching seems fine, like you can just lean towards lefties where all else is equal, but it’s not like the one issue facing the Giants this year was balance of platoon arms and everything else was gravy.
dudes who throw hard in general, this feels like something that you need to get from the org as much as from free agency. The reason that you see these ridiculous bullpens in the playoffs is a little bit free agency and a lot of bit dudes from the farm who throw super hard.
Since you’re until predictive modeling, have you been watching midterm polling? A community about to have a world series of their own, so to speak
*into predictive modeling
Why do you think we put this list out today, before QO decisions? We knew no one would read it tomorrow.
Yeah, I’m interested broadly, but I made a point of not getting too into the numbers. It’s a really hard thing to model and I don’t want to try to get good at political forecasting.
rooting for my squad, but I treat politics more like fandom and less like data work, if that makes sense
What’s your go-to response when you meet a fan who thinks baseball needs a salary cap?
I have a standard thing that I make sure to say regardless of whether we’re talking about a cap, or parity, or ticket prices, or anything. That is:
The players and owners disagree on many things, but one thing they do not disagree on is extracting as much money as possible from the fans in the long run. They’re quibbling about how to split it. I’m not sure whether a cap would be good for the game. I suspect that it wouldn’t be. But neither side has YOUR interests at heart. Both sides would love to charge you more for tickets and sell more ads to Novig and Polymarket. The commissioner of baseball is an agent of the owners, the head of the MLBPA is an agent of the players, and they’re fighting over how to split a pot of money, but none of them want to make the pot smaller.
So just try to be aware of that when you listen to what people are saying about the lockout and the CBA. What’s the salary cap for? I don’t think anyone has made a very coherent argument for it vs. some other method of revenue redistribution.
The salary cap is the preferred option of owners b/c it looks like it’d make franchise values go up. Doesn’t have to be any deeper than that.
similarly, the soft cap/soft floor with TV revenue redistribution model the union is suggesting fits how I’d design the structure from scratch better, but just so we’re clear, I don’t think it’s some panacea for small-market teams or is necessary for the survival of the soul of the game.
How much does the postseason run by Contreras change the projected value of his next contract/extension? Seems WS MVP is a resume booster but it also seems his value is pretty well known, intangibles and all, and he is pretty much locked into a range unless someone who needs to reach a salary floor goes nuts.
Super curious on this one. Catcher contracts have consistently come in lower than you’d expect, whether extensions or free agency deals, which absolutely matters here. Will Smith, Cal Raleigh, Alejandro Kirk – good catchers on deals that make you go ‘wait they signed that when they were already good?’
I think that the Brewers are just going to accept that they can’t be economic maximizers about everything and find a way to keep Contreras in the fold. It’d be different if they hadn’t won a WS yet, but now they have some extra revenue presuambly flowing in from that, and he’s the freaking world series MVP. This feels like a situation where non-baseball factors point strongly to retaining him, and I think that Milwaukee will respond to those incentives. I guess that means I expect an extension that looks low but not egregiously low, because all catcher contracts look low to me.
Who is the player/players the Mets are most likely to sign in your opinion
I was thinking about this a little and I kinda like Emilio Pagan for them. Benge and Ewing tearing aroudn the outfield, big park…. Juan Soto shhhhh we don’t talk about his defense….
but yeah, don’t mind that. don’t mind them trying to get some pitching depth, but I also wouldn’t mind them just sitting this winter out for the most part. This doesn’t feel to me like a market where you should go out of your way to get involved and there aren’t a lot of obvious great fits for them.
Not exactly free agency, but how do you see cap/floor uncertainty impacting the trade market given the potential shifts to the value of team control years/payroll certainty?
I think that there will be very nearly no trades until a new CBA is decided.
40 man crunch stuff fine, but not a lot of impactful trades, for exactly the reason you said. Potential shifts to the value of team control make BOTH teams less likely to want to deal.
Like the way I’m thinking about it is that I am willing to make a trade in front of uncertainty. A financial equivalent from my trading days would be making a bet before a data release.
But you should require a higher expected return to take that bet in front of uncertainty, rather than after uncertainty.
and if both sides need higher returns, it makes it harder to find a clearing-price trade that suits both sides.
I am wondering whether a catcher’s ability to maximize ABS is going to be seen as a factor in his value. The way it can affect the outcome of games is tremendous.
I think that teams will care a little, but probably not TOO much, because we can do an okay job of measuring this one and the effects aren’t enormous. Like, relative to not challenging at all, they’d be big, but that’s no longer the counterfactual.
I assume this is at least largely related to Contreras, who was the most frequent challenger this season by a mile and was right at an impressive 57% clip.
But only seventh in Statcast’s measure of ‘runs above average’ from challenges, with 1.9 runs
Here’s a fun comparison; Jonah Heim challenged 100 times and flipped 26 calls into strikeouts, plus 9 away from walks (you can get credit for both on 3-2)
Contreras challenged 185 times and flipped 25 calls into strikeouts, plus 9 away from walks
Henry Davis was a pretty indifferent challenger,…. 103 challenges, 21 strikeouts, 5 walks.
Basically it’s a valuable skill to have. But it appears that many catchers possess it. And the difference between the best and the worst is just not THAT large.
I feel like a theme of this year’s FA class is just “hard”. I think Randy, King, Jazz, Bauers, etc all deserve term, and I also think they could all absolutely get a GM fired
I agree with that I thikn, but they could also all make their GM look very smart.
Like, you can imagine a world where a team signs Jazz and Bauers, they’re both good, and we’re like ‘wait they can get that kind of production for 45 million a year combined? why did everyone skip out on this?’
I think that the fact htat everyone KNOWS it’s a bad market means that if you overpay someone and they suck, it looks very bad for you as a GM. But the prices will likely be low overall, which means that it’s easier to have a smash hit.
Ben! I forgot this was happening and don’t have a question ready, but thanks for all the hard work (that I haven’t had a chance to read yet)!
You’re welcome! And thank you for my favorite reader-interaction moment of the playoffs, you explaining your Cubs/Guards dual fandom and getting many other people talking about it.
How do you think the potentially Ketel Marte trade affects the market? Even after a down year, he’s pretty clearly more valuable than any free agent but Skubal.
Oh good question. I think that it definitely will have something to say about hte market for Arraez and Lowe. But based on the reporting I’ve read, that trade situation would be really weird and fraught if it happened, because it sounds like the off-field aspect is going to get hashed out at great length before he goes anywhere. I think that a lot of teams are just not in the market for that, and so they won’t consider him and will just look to free agency instead.
I say this most years, but I haven’t yet this year, so I might as well throw it in here. Markets for contracts depend on the top few bidders, not on having 15 bidders
I don’t really think the same teams are trying to shore up 2b with a superstar and with a guy like Arraez/Lowe/Gleyber who’s more of a solid contributor. So my guess is that you’ll hear a lot of back and forth about how this could all matter, but that the markets are sufficiently different that they’ll both still go just about as expectexd.
Jazz just put up 3.5 WAR in the worst offensive year of his career. Do you think he’s being underrated because of personality stuff or do you think last years offense will be his new baseline? Part of me sees a guy who put up 3.5 war at his lowest which is crazy, and part of me sees the whiffs getting worse as he ages and becoming a glove only 2b.
Well you kinda tried to bamboozle me there with your phrasing – worst offensive year but best defensive year, you know? I surely hope that I’m not underrating Jazz because of personality stuff. I do not think that I am. I think that his market is tricky, though. Is he a star? Is he a role player? Are you confident that a career 108 wRC+ hitter who strikes out a ton is going to tick up there? Or on the other hand, are you so weak-minded that you dont’ think a guy who had a great and sustainable-looking 2025 could just pick that form back up in 2027?
I was talking about a lot of the 2b’s who wouldn’t be overly impacted by Marte, but I think Jazz might be. His ticket to a big contract is convincing a team that he’s a potential cornerstone piece.
For what it’s worth his projections are not that good, at least the ZiPS ones. I actually overrode my simple projection-based model upwards in his case. It wanted to pencil him in for about 15% less than I did.
With respect to your answer about regarding the Mets, does Skubal make sense for them? Or do you think they are not competitive enough for Stearns to choose now to finally make a SP splash.
I think that’s a big strategy question and that without knowing what they want to do and how they plan to handle everything, either yes or no could make sense in a vacuum. Like, signing Skubal has to be part of an overall strategy, and from the outside, my sense is that the best thing for the Mets to do would be sit on their hands and try to take advantage of any fallout from the CBA if that’s available. I would be worried about signing a big long-term deal pre-CBA if I didn’t have good plans for how I’d think about the team in a world where there’s either a harder cap, or a truly hard cap. And since I think Skubal’s gonna sign before the lockout, that puts them in a bind.
but maybe they have good plans. I dunno. They are way down in luxury tax projection for 2027, there’s at least feasibly room there.
I guess what I”m saying is mostly a bunch of waffling and not taking a strong position, but that’s because I don’t have a strong view here. I think a lot of teams could use Skubal, surely the Mets could. If I were running them, I wouldn’t be pursuing that particular strategy. But that does not make it wrong.
Alright, this has been a wonderful and long chat, and I greatly appreciate everyone’s thorough and interesting questions.
I hope you had a wonderful time reading me ramble about this long process. I hope my projections are good. But also I hope your crowdsourced projections are good. You, me, and the MLBTR team have been VERY good in the last three years. We’ll see how that goes in this weird winter.
One quick lightning round of players who we haven’t talked about today, then I’m going to call it so that I can get ready for an Effectively Wild appearance in, hm, 25 minutes. That’s soon! Need to make more coffee.
How much overlap in market do you predict between Morejon/Newcombe/Vesia/Romero/Burke? In other words, do you think the teams who miss out on Morejon pivet to the next best lefty, and/or do you think the teams that need a lefty self-select out of Morejon for price reasons?
more the latter. I think that Morejon is a ‘best reliever’ and the others are ‘good lefty relievers.’ I’d be happy signing Morejon plus one of those guys, I guess, is what I’m saying.
Could the pandemic be a reason for the weakness of this FA class somehow? A lot of this year’s first-time FAs were 2020 debuts.
I could see it, don’t quite know how to handicap it without doing a lot of work that candidly, I don’t feel like doing.
Where would Nico Hoerner have landed if he made it to Free agency?
I dunno. 2b markets are weird! But I think the Cubs really want a great 2b defender so maybe he’d just re-up there after more fanfare.
Since I know you’re a first base defense appreciater, thoughts on Bauers’s game saving play(s) in Game 5? He missed the scoop in Game 4 (tough short hop), more than made up for it saving errant throws, diving all around in Game 5
Great defense in the WS, I wasn’t massively impressed by his defense during the year but I am surprsied he graded out so poorly. In any case I wouldn’t consider him a sieve or anything, and I’m sure he’s not mad that he made some nice grabs when he was scuffling offensively with the whole world watching.
Alright, on that note, I’m out of here. Have a wonderful week, enjoy election day, and let’s do this again next Monday.