Goodbye to the Midwest style – part two

Translated by José M. Hernández Lagunes

Here you can consult the first part of this article, which was published on Monday, October 28, 2024.

Michael WachaLD, Kansas City Royals
He can opt to leave the team with one year and $16 million remaining on his contract.

Last winter, Wacha hit the market having pitched as many as 150 innings in any MLB season since 2017. A two-year deal with this kind of flexibility seemed like a great player-friendly proposition; That is why he signed it on December 15. But now he’s probably crazy eager to activate the get-out clause.

Of course, he only had a DRA- of 99 and a cFIP of 100, but nothing else in 166 innings. Without further ado, it’s inconceivable that you wouldn’t go on the market and immediately find the same deal, just with better, scalable bonuses. He received only $50,000 each for a series of innings-based bonuses last year, totaling $450,000, and that’s the most he could earn if he stays healthy in 2025, too. At just 33 years old, Wacha is now a legitimate candidate to earn the qualifying offer once he opts out. In fact, unless the Royals are unduly spooked by uncertainty over television revenue for the next few years, it should be an easy decision to extend him.

This is an excellent case study of what appears to be a little-discussed disadvantage of these agreements. Although there is always talk of multi-year agreements with termination clauses, in reality they are shorter contracts with options for the player. The player left something on the table to secure this flexibility, and could get $5 million for it if he declines his option but accepts the qualifying offer. Meanwhile, the Royals (a team that signed him thinking about how to get back into the competition, not expecting to go from 106 losses to 89 wins and have to survive the Plexiglas) put a fairly low ceiling on their own potential profit from the deal by signing him to a contract that will end up controlling him for only one season.

Everyone loves optionality these days, but how much more would it have cost the Royals to tie down Wacha for two years, free and clear? If it had been the full $5 million that Wacha now stands to earn in the qualifying offer, the resulting contract would have looked awfully rich, but since the chances of things getting to this point were relatively low, it probably would have only been around $2 million. Instead of one year and $16 million with a player option that will end up costing them either an extra $5 million in the second year, additional years beyond that, or the player himself, could the Royals have tied up Wacha with a two-year, $34 million deal and not be sweating at all right now? I think they could have, and should have, and while this worked wonderfully for Wacha, the various alternate universes in which his season was much more like the later ones seem real enough to me that I think he could have been more as well. rational to accept more money and less flexibility. If he turns down both his option and a qualifying offer in search of a long-term contract that pays him something like $50 million over three or four years, I think the situation could become painfully, unfairly, and non-negotiably smooth for him. It is a little more limited than we might assume at first glance.

In any case, he leaves. What happens next will be, as they say all over the Midwest when they can’t believe the mess you’ve made, “interesting.”

Nick Martinez, LD, Reds
You can opt for one remaining year and $12 million

This is even more obvious than the Wacha decision, and to me, it would also be an even easier decision to require the qualifying offer, but this is a stranger case. Martínez was a true Swiss Army knife as a starting pitcher and reliever like few the League has seen in a long time, racking up 142 innings while splitting his team very evenly between starting and the bullpen. Neither the DRA- nor the cFIP give credence to his 3.10 ERA, especially since it is fueled by a 3.2% walk rate that seems unsustainable. On the other hand, Martínez has just come into his own. Yes, it’s 34 years old, but late bloomers are no less beautiful when their colors peak. He’s improved his command of the changeup that powers his arsenal, perfected a new bullet slider this year that also commanded his cutter, and was a very good strike thrower, anyway.

Realistically, the Reds aren’t going to spend $21 million on Martinez, so when he opts out, he’ll have the opportunity to pursue one last multi-year payday as he enters his mid-30s. He bet on himself with this deal, and he won handsomely, although the League will likely have a hard time determining the value of his perpetually middle-of-the-road role and under-fanned skill set.

Rhys Hoskins1B/BD, Brewers
He can opt for one remaining year and $18 million.

This is one of those times when a player probably wanted something better, but is happy to have the golden parachute of the option year–and when the club probably doesn’t care that much, even though they would have rejected the option if they had had it. Hoskins had a dismal year in his return from one completely lost to a knee explosion. He wasn’t much of an athlete (by the sport’s cruelly high standards) before that, and he looked downright lousy on the field most of the year. He got off to a bit of a cold start at the plate, but was warming up when he strained his hamstring in May and missed another few weeks. After that return, he never recovered, and because of his age and his body and the shape of his courage, it quickly becomes easy to imagine him sliding towards obsolescence, where the slide is a brief slip before plummeting down a steep cliff, and obsolescence is a nice word for -2 WARP.

Actually, I suspect there’s still something left in Hoskins’ bat. His approach has to be well-calibrated to unlock his hitting and on-base talent, and I think the long layoff and abrupt stop a third of the way into the season combined to deny him the necessary calibration time. His batted ball data degraded to only small fragments, and he was a little unlucky. If he returns to good health in 2025, I think he could hit 30 home runs again and reach base at a rate of .350. If you don’t, the usefulness of your career will be much greater. If you don’t, the usefulness will be limited, but Pat Murphy He also realized Hoskins’ vulnerability and limited his hitting during his difficult campaign, often batting sixth or seventh. If he doesn’t hit much next year, he won’t play much either, and then he could just be cut. The Brewers are good at personnel management and good at cutting their losses. On the other hand, if Hoskins hits enough to play regularly and runs into some balls in the bottom half of the order, his value as a leader and teammate will outweigh his production and make both sides very happy to be there. that has stayed.

***

There are plenty of other early decisions looming for these teams, but they are more geared toward tough officiating decisions and how to best handle frozen payrolls. The big winter for the Tigers was last year, with the departure of Eduardo Rodríguez and the permanence of Javier Báez. However, the four players mentioned will be making big decisions right after the Dodgers and Yankees finish having fun, and the avalanche of decisions they and their employers will have to make could define which of these teams will have a chance to topple the titans. from New York or Los Angeles next October.