The Jose Abreu era came to an end on the South Side of Chicago as Jose Abreu 1B/DH signed a 3 yr/$58.5 M contract to play for the World Series Champion Astros. Abreu is coming off his age 35 season in which his HR's dropped from 30 to 15 but his BA increased by .043 and his doubles increased from 30 to 40. Fangraphs credits him with an fWAR of 3.9 despite negative defensive metrics at 1B. This move has several ripple effects for both teams.
The Yuli Gurriel era is apparently over for the Astros and the Andrew Vaughn era is about to begin for the White Sox. This move considerably strengthens the defending champs as Abreu's 3.9 fWAR replaces Gurriel's -0.9. Vaughn is coming off a decent year at the plate, .271/.321/.429, 17 HR but his defensive metrics are way worse than even Abreu's which dragged his fWAR down to -0.4 so he will need to continue his upward offensive trajectory and get better in the field.
The Chisox rebuild, which a couple of seasons ago looked like they were building a championship contender, seems to have plateaued. It's a bit unclear what direction they are headed now.
Giants arbitration projections from MLBTR:
ReplyDeleteJarlin Garcia (5.114): $2.4MM
Scott Alexander (5.080): $1.1MM
John Brebbia (5.078): $1.9MM
Jakob Junis (5.002): $3.3MM
Austin Slater (4.147): $2.7MM
J.D. Davis (4.137): $3.8MM
Jharel Cotton (3.162): $1.1MM
Mike Yastrzemski (3.128): $5.7MM
Zack Littell (3.067): $900K
Logan Webb (3.044): $4.8MM
LaMonte Wade Jr. (3.035): $1.4MM
Tyler Rogers (3.034): $1.8MM
Thairo Estrada (2.169): $2.4MM
FWIW, 13 players for 2023 add to $33.3MM, less than Judge will get for each of the next 8 years.
True, but Webb is the only one out of those 13 who is definitely not a fungible asset. If you had to dump all 12 of the rest to sign Judge and replace them with randos who fall out of The Churn, you'd still prefer to sign Judge.
DeleteYes, thank you.
DeleteThe purpose was to point out how much $40MM is. And it goes on.
A few in addition to Webb would be kept (Davis, Estrada) and some are already gone.
Yes, Davis and Estrada are probably better than fungible at this point although FZ picked up both essentially for free(still haven't figured out what the Mets GM was smoking when he not only gave up J.D. Davis for what was left of Darin Ruf but threw in 3 decent pitching prospects to boot).
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