Arizona's Cautionary Tale

I'm actually not understanding this article.  A cautionary tale that the Twins should not follow the path of the Diamondbacks?  Isn't that what the Twins have done?  Like the Diamondbacks, the Twins have expensive pitching contracts that did not work out.  The problems for both teams, as they stand today, are the same problems:  starting pitching.

In spite of Greinke's stellar 2015 numbers, the dude is 32 years old.  No respectable GM would have given him the contract he was given unless his specialty is a knuckle or curve, which isn't the case here.  No sensible team gives Zack Greinke, at his age, a 6-year contract.  Other offers on the table were probably all for three years.  

So you have the Diamondbacks who gave one guy who was about to start his decline a huge contract.  You have the Twins who gave four guys with questionable track records market-to-above market contracts.  As for which was worse, I would call it a tie.  Both teams spent a lot of money on garbage.  At least the Diamondbacks didn't block better pitchers from coming in by filling the staff with, well, filler, like the Twins did.

if you won't give Grienke that contract....you won't give any 32 YO FA that contract. I think you are not in line with the current market, frankly. That is the market.

It's not.  How often does a 31/32 year old get a 6-year contract, at any position?  Contracts like that happen for people on pace for the hall of fame, sure.  Is that Zack Greinke?

The $/yr makes sense.  The length does not.  6/8 year contracts are for players entering their peak years, not players exiting them.  

If we could go back in time and trade Hughes, Nolasco, Pelfrey and Milone for Miller and Greinke before the 2016 season, would we be better off right now, and going into 2017?  Aren't the Twins the cautionary tale here?

Players "entering their peak years" barely exist in free agency.

yep, almost never.

You realize the vast difference between the two sides of the trade you're proposing right? It's not like that it's a straight swap. You'd have to add Buxton, 100+ million at least over the next few years, and several other prospects (like Berrios or Gonsalves and more) before that swap would be equivalent.

 

So....I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

Good point. I'm just frustrated by the mentality that the Twins should only ever build their team through the farm system and not spend any money. Obviously, the Miller trade was a steep price. But I would be much happier about this team right now if we had signed Greinke.

David Price - 6 / $217 million signed at age 31
Max Scherzer - 7 / $210 million signed at age 31
Steven Stasburg - 6 / $175 million signed at age 28
CC Sabathia - 6 / $161 million signed at age 28 in 2008

Justin Verlander - 6 / $180 million signed at age 30
Felix Hernandez - 6 / $175 million signed at age 27

5-7 years has been the going rate for upper echelon pitchers for a long time now.  

Many of those examples are entering their peak years (27/28), so those make sense.

Scherzer is a bit of a late bloomer so his signing I can understand (though I would not have done it).  David Price is the one true exception on your list who I also would have chased after.

Look, there is always going to be a team dumb enough to give an older pitcher a long contract based on a guy performing very well in his contract year.  This doesn't mean it's smart to do.  It doesn't even really mean it's the market rate.  Very likely other teams were offering, as I said, something close to 3 years considering his age, which is why he ended up on a small market team and not a team expected to compete.  Just because there are a couple of teams willing to extend contracts to get the guy they really want doesn't change what I said.  

They overpaid badly for two pitchers. They sent too many prospects to Atlanta for Shelby Miller and signed Greinke to a contract that was far too big for a 32-year-old pitcher.

Worse, the team could have traded Miller for prospects at the deadline and didn't to save face, and could have traded Greinke back to the Dodgers. They didn't. 

Not saying they deserve this. But they sort of deserve this.

There were 8 pitchers in FA alone last year that received 5 or more years for a contract. The youngest was Mike Leake at age 28. Everyone else (Price, Grienke, Cueto, Zimmerman, Shark, Wei-Yen Chen) were 30 and older... 

2015 we saw Lester and Scherzer receive 6+ year deals... And a few 4 year deals for pitchers who were 33 and older. 

You could go back year after year and see countless examples of pitchers well beyond their peak years receiving multi-year deals. 

This is one aspect I would agree with "the Twins way."  That's too many contracted years for that age.  Let the other teams do that.

However, the Twins would have been smart to grab the top tier 28 year olds for the same price.  

'Between 1988 and 2013 there were a total of 537 seasons pitched by pitchers who were 22, and the total fWAR was 327.9. In this time span pitchers join major league rosters around age 23-24, peak around 26 with a sustained decrease in numbers from 27 on that gradually flattens out a bit around age 35.'

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/2/25/5437902/pitching-aging-curves

'Between 1988 and 2013 there were a total of 537 seasons pitched by pitchers who were 22, and the total fWAR was 327.9. In this time span pitchers join major league rosters around age 23-24, peak around 26 with a sustained decrease in numbers from 27 on that gradually flattens out a bit around age 35.'

 

 

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/2/25/5437902/pitching-aging-curves

Yep.  Don't give 6 year contracts to 31/32 year olds.  I would have worded that a bit differently, instead of a "sustained decrease in numbers" I would have said that, by age 32, a player's WAR would expected to be around half of their peak WAR ... and it gets worse from there.

There is a flaw in the data but I don't fault the person who compiled it.  He should have excluded pitchers who are out of the league early.  A big reason the age 26-28 pitching WAR is so high is because there are more pitchers in the league at those ages.  We are only concerned with top tier pitchers who have long careers.  Having the shorter career guys in the mix skews the younger years higher.  Still, it's a nice effort.  

Unfortunately it's difficult to give long contracts to pitchers under 28/29, as that's the age they tend to first hit free agency.  Scherzer, the noted late bloomer, is an exception.  (His contract is exceptional anyway as much of his salary is deferred until he is in his upper 40s).  It's a reasonable risk to give a long contract to a 28 year old and expect a decent return.  

It's all about perception, right? Since Greinke struggled a bit in his first season with the Diamondbacks it appears to be a bad contract. Meanwhile, Max Scherzer has been Cy Young caliber since arriving in Washington at $30 million a season. For players like Greinke, I'm willing to bet he bounces back to top of the rotation stats next season. 

I agree Greinke probably comes back. But I don't like either his or Scherzer's contract. Those are $200 million deals for 30-something pitchers. No way those deals are worth it at the end ...

Of course not. But most free agent contracts aren't worth it at the end... We'll see that shortly with Erv Santana if they don't get out of that contract soon. 

Agree, which is why big free agent deals should be reserved for when you KNOW you'll be in contention. But there's a big difference between the $55 million Santana got and the $200 million for those guys. 

I would like to see more FA spending when appropriate.  I'd like the next time we're contending to pull that Cliff Lee type of trade from years ago.  So I'm with you, but the timing and the context are important.  I don't think the Twins are in a spot where making moves like that would be prudent.  They need to be aggressive adding pitching this offseason, but that price is likely going to have to be paid via trade rather than cash.  At least this year.

I understand your point.  However, I think they should have gone after free agents when they were available, and now that they are not, I doubt they'll be able to get much value from trades either.  We'll probably have to wait to improve the pitching staff until 2018.

Agree, which is why big free agent deals should be reserved for when you KNOW you'll be in contention. But there's a big difference between the $55 million Santana got and the $200 million for those guys. 

I disagree.  I think you go after top free agents when they are available, and you assume that you can put together a contending team around them.  Again, the D-Backs went out and got the Big Unit, and then put together a contending team.  There are no great free agent pitchers available this offseason, so we don't have to worry about this part of the discussion for another year or two.  I guess the Twins will try to trade for pitching.  But with no free agents on the market, I'm not sure who is going to be trading away the quality of pitchers we would want.

Interestingly, the Dodgers likely bid more for Johnson, but he chose Arizona instead:

 

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/03/free-agent-retrospective-randy-johnson.html

 

As compared to Greinke, where it sounds like Arizona had to over-bid to get him.

 

Also, looking back, the Diamondbacks got Schilling pretty cheaply in trade (I don't recall his contract situation, though).  Travis Lee was busting, Omar Daal had a 7.22 ERA at the time, and Nelson Figueroa was a journeyman in the making.  Vicente Padilla turned out to be an OK rotation piece for a few seasons but was hardly anything worth losing sleep over.

 

Nothing like the Shelby Miller deal, really.  (Additionally, although Schilling was older, he had a much better track record than Miller.  Johnson was older but better than Greinke too.)

Johnson was among the highest paid players with the D-Backs, for six years, starting at 35-yrs-old.  That was a risk.  Schilling had been good for a few years, had a wasteland for a few years, and then was good again for a few years.  Nobody could have anticipated how well he did for the D-Backs.  He was paid $6.5 million 2001, then $10 million the next two years.  Schill was 34 when they signed him.  Both were big risks and huge rewards.