Not sure why that took so long, but as the deadline for Johnny Cueto to opt out of the remaining 4 years and $84 M of his contract approached, Giants GM Bobby Evans announced that Cueto would remain a Giant, apparently on the same terms as the original contract, which is 4 more guaranteed seasons with a Giants option on a 5'th season. This was the decision that was widely expected after Cueto scuffled through an injury plagued 2017 season and was as responsible as anyone on the team for the Giants tying for worst record in MLB.
Cueto may never be as good as he was in 2016 again, but I think there is a decent chance he is a lot better than last year, at least in 2018. The final year or two could get ugly though as he will be 36 years old in the final guaranteed season.
The decision makes it tough for the Giants to be big spenders this offseason unless they are willing to go significantly over the Competitive Balance Tax threshold, which they have never been in the past.
Interestingly, the 3 major MLB players with opt out clauses this season, Justin Upton, Mashiro Tanaka and Cueto, all chose to not exercise them. The Angels guaranteed the option year of Upton's contract to get him to stay, but Tanaka and Cueto opted in without any adjustments.
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They can spend if they can trade Belt, Pence and Span for prospects and clear some books.
ReplyDeleteBelt is untradeable until he proves he's recovered from his concussion. No team is going to trade prospects for Pence or Span. They might be able to unload Span in a salary dump trade, but probably not.
DeleteYes, I agree that he should be able to produce enough to justify the contract. Even in this down season, and missing all the time that he did, 7 starts which works out to about a month and 1-2 weeks, he still had 1.7 bWAR. At $21M per season, that's going to be roughly 2.0 WAR production each year. Even if he only gets back half the way to his 2016 production of 5.6 bWAR, that's 3.6 bWAR, which would still be good production, especially so for his contract.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's the rub, will he? While there is a decent chance he produces, the problem he had was with the new ball, and who's to say the blisters won't continue in 2018? So that's the risk the other teams would be taking, and his agent must have been getting some hints from other teams, even if they can't discuss money, he can ask general questions regarding other free agents and get a feel for the market. And not everyone can or would want to spend that much money.
And yeah, the last two years could get ugly. I was always hoping that it won't, because he's not dependent on velocity to deceive hitters, he used deception with this motion, while still be able to throw mid-90's when he needed to. But we've seen it happen to a lot of pitchers, and here this season happen to him.
Open market value of 1 WAR is about $8 M, so Cueto needs to average about 2.6 WAR for the duration. He still has a bit of a cushion from 2016 to fall back on, to justify the overall contract, but that does not help in the next 4 seasons.
DeleteAnd there are no guarantees of return on investment in baseball unless you are willing to field a team of only minimum wage players. You have to play your odds and hope you come out on the winning side of the ledger more often than not. I put Cueto's odds of performing up to the remainder of his contract right about 50/50 and about 60/40 for the full 6 seasons since he already has a cushion from 2016.
DeleteSorry, here's the reason I estimated 2 WAR per season. General inflation is about 10% per year, so I was estimating the effects of inflation on the WAR during the contract. In my head, $8M is the rate for 2017, so then it's $9M in 2018, $10 in 2019, $11M in 2020, and $12M in 2021, roughly. That's roughly $10.5M average, or 2 WAR per season for $21M.
DeleteI agree that there is no guarantees of ROI, and I would throw minimum wage players into the mix, and further add that this holds for businesses and investments in general. Everything has risks, even government guaranteed bonds, which has the risk of inflation and the generally low chance of government default (which seems to get higher with each election cycle, unfortunately, as congress people seem to want to play Chicken with our debt regularly).
Yes, those odds look pretty good for Cueto performing for his contract. I would also add that those are actually pretty good odds, most contracts don't look that good generally. I would also add that there is a significant chance that he greatly outperforms his contract.
WAR inflation has not been historically linear.
DeleteI'm glad he's staying a Giant. He's a quality pitcher. The Front office said that they preferred the trade market over Free agency anyway. It frustrated me a little that I had both Cueto and Aaron Sanchez on my fantasy team at one time and both dealt with blister issues all season. My 1st season in fantasy baseball was interesting getting to follow more players from different teams!
ReplyDeleteLG
I've always felt like I could find pitching in fantasy baseball until this past season when I couldn't find it to save my life, or my team. Interesting how real life MLB trends impact fantasy strategy. I got caught flatfooted just like Bobby Evans!
DeleteI'm glad he's staying. But I hope we get the old Cueto out of it. Between the blisters and forearm strain, he never really got it together last year.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy "Cueto ... was as responsible as anyone on the team for the Giants second worst record in MLB" unless you're blaming him for his injury, and in that case - if a player is blamed for his injuries -- Bumgarner, Belt, Pence, Panik, Span, Smith, Melancon, and even Parker (and maybe Cain) had worse seasons than Cueto.
ReplyDeletePosey had a good year and never catches blame but was 50 points better at home (Giants were terrible on the road) and 120 points better in wins -- should he have done more?
A little less bit by injuries, Crawford regressed as much as anyone from year to year -- perhaps he's as much to blame and maybe more than Cueto.
Early, when the Giants were 5-7 and still "in it" Cueto was 3-0, and the Giants had lost all of Bumgarner's and Samardzija's starts (Moore and Cain won the other 2).
Bumgarner didn't win a game until July 25th when the Giants were 32.5 games behind, isn't he the guy to blame and his injury was self inflicted!
(Not to be nit-picking, but the Giants' record was not the second worst, it was the worst, tied with the Tigers after they had given up.)
Health and good luck are the keys especially without depth.
"not to be nit-picking." Yes you are nitpicking and yes injuries are part of the game and I didn't say the blame was all on Cueto or that most of the blame was on Cueto. Maybe "blame" was a poor choice of words, but plenty of "blame" to go around including all of the names you mentioned.
DeleteThere, I fixed it. Are you happier now?
DeleteI'm always happy with you, Doc.
DeleteYou're the best.
And you have the best Giants blog -- I never miss it, even when out of the country.
I start my day with DrB
Thanks Anon.
DeleteCueto was as responsible for the Giants bad record, I have no problems with DrB saying that. Yes, the ball is also responsible, for causing him to have blisters, but the Giants were 23-9 in his starts in 2016, a still very good 14-11 in his 2017 starts, and the loss of his 2016 performance was responsible for the Giants decline in 2017 (didn't help that his DL meant that Cain got more starts, if I recall right), as that's 9 less wins, each less win means probably a loss (since, again, Cain took his starts, I believe).
DeleteHe was responsible, his performance is responsible, it is pretty much interchangeable, I understood what DrB was saying without nitpicking. And he has noted all those other injuries, and never said that Cueto was solely responsible, but that's a 9 win/18 game turnaround in our record. The Giants were 34 games under .500 in 2017, and his 18 game swing accounted for over half that (assuming Cain lost those starts that Cueto gave up during his DL; at minimum, I'm pretty sure Cain didn't go 3-4 in those 7 starts, even 2-5 would mean 14 game swing, which is pretty much half).
This is part of the reason I think the Giants can turn things around relatively easily in 2018, because I believe Cueto can return to his 2016 self, or close enough that whatever additions Evans cooks up, will make up the difference (also, there's the difference of having Dyson and Smith in 2019 for full season vs. 2017-18).