The Hot Stove got stoked to a white hot intensity level today as there was a major trade, a major FA signing and the announcement of the biggest contract in the history of not just baseball, but all of professional sports! Let's start with the trade:
The Atlanta Braves traded OF Jason Heyward and RHP Jordan Walden to the Cardinals for RHP's Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins, a prospect who is a former first round draft pick, but who has also struggled with injuries and has yet to pitch above A ball. We all know who Jason Heyward is. He is the OF who was drafted in the first round the same year, 2007, that Madison Bumgarner was drafted by the Giants. A lot of Giants fans, me included, desperately wanted the Giants to draft a hitter that year and Heyward was high on my list and a lot of others too, so there is always going to be that comparison.
Heyward is coming off a down offensive season, but he is a true 5 tool athlete who runs well and played excellent defense so his fWAR as an impressive 5.2 despite the relatively disappointing offensive stats. Heyward will provide a big upgrade on RF for the Cardinals for at least 1 season. He is scheduled to become a FA at the end of the 2015 season and appears to be intent on testing the open market.
Granted, Heyward's offensive output in 2014 may well be his floor, but it has declined for 2 consecutive seasons. Just for fun, let's compare Jason Heyward's 2014 numbers with an unnamed player we will call Player A:
Jason Heyward: .271/.351/.384, .329 wOBA, 110 wRC+, 5.2 fWAR, 649 PA.
Player A: .260/.333/.374, .317 wOBA, 107 wRC+, 2.0 fWAR, 444 PA.
The wOBA's ranked #42 and 54 among MLB OF's while the wRC+'s ranked #41 and #48. Since fWAR is a counting stat, if Player A is normalized to 649 PA's the fWAR comes up to nearly 3.0. The remainder of the difference is mainly due to a much higher UZR on defense for Heyward. It turns out that Player A is Gregor Blanco who probably is closer to Heyward on defense than their UZR's would indicate. So, from that perspective, the Cardinals gave up Shelby Miller and a prospect for one year's service from a player who was slightly better than Gregor Blanco last year. On the other hand, as I said before, even at worst, Heyward is a significant upgrade on RF for the Cards.
The other piece coming to the Cardinals is Jordan Walden a hard throwing reliever who was once considered an elite prospect. He should fit right in with the other flame throwers in the Cardinals bullpen. I will just mention that Walden has a very unorthodox windup and delivery where he takes a skip step with his back foot that I do not understand why it is not an illegal pitch.
Shelby Miller is a solid young RHP who has at least 3 years of team control on his contract. He will bolster a Braves rotation that has been decimated by injuries in the past 2 seasons. Evan Gattis will move to LF with Justin Upton moving to RF if he is not also traded. Christian Betancourt will presumably take over catching duties.
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Russell Martin, a native of Canada signed a 5 year/$85 M contract with the Toronto Blue Jays. Martin has always been an excellent defensive catcher with some power, but had a spike in his BA to .290 in 2014. This seems to me to be an example of an undervalued skill, pitch framing, becoming so sought after, it may have become overvalued! That and the shiny spike in BA from last year would seem to be the drivers of this large, long contract. I will predict that this quickly becomes a bad contract for the Blue Jays.
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On the other hand, it just might be true that there is no longer such a thing as a bad contract in baseball with the way owners seem to be able to sign mind-bogglingly enormous contracts any time the urge hits them. That was certainly the case today as news emerged of a 13 year/$325 M contract between the Marlins and Giancarlo Stanton. Stanton is the premier young power hitter in baseball and power is becoming an increasingly rare and valuable commodity. Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs wrote a nice piece showing that Stanton will likely come close to producing to the value of his contract over it's duration, and may well even surpass it! I would caution that Stanton has already been banged up a bit in his career and is already a negative defender in the OF, so those could be factors that drag down the value of his production. In addition, the history of very large contracts is that they have never produced championships for the teams that sign them. Perhaps the best thing to come out of the Stanton contract its that we will no longer be plagued by wildly implausible trade proposals for him on baseball oriented websites!
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Martin's contract is interesting. His offensive numbers this year have to be seen as an abbertion, given his production 2009-2013. He's a very good, though not elite defender. He'll be 32-36 years old for the conract. So it comes to intangibles (handling staff, pitch framing, intensity, etc.) that seem to be driving this. Yet, without his good (outlier) offensive year, he doesn't sign for anywhere near this.
ReplyDeleteThis may be the new (evolving) economics in baseball. But, wow.
Anyway, Toronto's decision. This, along with the Giancarlo signing gotta be pushing Pablo's price up.
I agree, and if it is, the Giants should not get sucked into it.
DeleteDoc,
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean with point about large contracts not winning championships, but I can think of one super-large contract that had 2 rings attached to it.
Barry Zito!!! LOL!
DeleteThe crazy thing about the Zito contract is that the Giants almost certainly would not have won the 2012 WS without him. I am also quite sure that a lot of teams would happily sign a contract like that if they knew that it would win them 1 WS but would stink for the other 7 seasons.
DeleteI always laughed when people complained about the "Zito and Rowand" era, and how they were glad it was over. I would respond that I LOVED the era. It usually took them a few moments before they realized what I meant.
DeleteThe Russell Martin contract is a head scratcher for me. Toronto is notorious for making poor decisions though so not a shocker. The Stanton deal seems totally unnecessary for so many reasons. This guy has missed games every year because of injury and ended last season with a fastball to the chops that nobody knows if he is going to fully recover from (physically he is fine but how many curbeballs does he bail on now in fear of taking another shot to the mouth). Hayward at one point had the highest WAR of any player last season which is another head scratcher. One more reason I don't put too much stock in WAR.
ReplyDeleteAgain, silver lining here is Giants move up a slot!dAnd after Ring #3!!
ReplyDeleteYet another hat tip to the Graybeards!
NWGiantsFan
DtF!!!
It appears that comparing Blanco to Heyward has some moving parts-- do you think that Blanco's 2014 was more his floor or his ceiling, or more an average? I suppose we might here this more on the LF depth chart when that gets posted, but it appears to me that most don't think that Blanco is a long-term LF/CF starter for the Giants.
ReplyDeleteBlanco has been producing at very roughly the same rate each of the three years he has been a Giant, that is, by fWAR per plate appearance. His offensive production has kept inching up, while his defensive WAR has varied enough to make one wonder about the stats used to measure it, since he hasn't been injured. We know what we are getting with him, since an fWAR of 2+ is the floor for a starter in the Fangraphs system.
DeleteI believe that the doubts about Blanco are first, that he doesn't hit with enough power for a corner outfielder, and second, that he has underperformed as a leadoff man. The latter makes little difference when Pagan is healthy, but Pagan often isn't. The desire for power comes from an idea of what the Giants' offensive profile might best be, given that LF is one of the easiest defensive positions to field and therefore a place in which teams often look to play power hitters who are merely competent in the field.
I should have said explicitly that each year B has has an fWAR of 2 or better, and much better than 2 when normalized for 600 PAs.
DeleteI think Campanari sums it up quite well. If you look at Blanco's 2012-2104, you might reasonably conclude that 2014 is his floor. The bigger question is what he Heyward's ceiling. I think we would all agree that if he were to hit 27 HR's again, as he did in 2012, then he would be an elite player that Blanco could not come close to so yeah, Heyward's ceiling is much higher than Blanco's their actual production that last 2 seasons has been quite close.
Deletethe stanton contract is heavily backended....he is getting 6.5 mil in 2015
ReplyDeleteme thinks loria is gonna try and pull an arod
that man should not be a part of the mlb
the a's signed butler to a 3 year gig
maybe his bat will be there during the season for the a's
bacci
BREAKING NEWS
ReplyDeletereports have giants offering pablo, 5 years 90 mil....not sure if there are any fat clauses
bacci
From what I' remember, you can't put 'make weight' clauses in contracts under the current collective bargaining agreement.
DeleteYou can offer incentives to make a certain weight, but you cannot penalize a player for not making the weight.
DeleteFor instance, they could put in the contract that he will weigh in, say, 3 times per season and if he is at or under a certain weight, he gets a bonus of $200 K or $500 K or $1 M, whatever they want to set it at.
They cannot suspend his contract or void it if he does not make the weight.