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Maybe that's unjustifiably unkind. The league isn't totally inert. Last Friday, the Astros signed Josh Hader to a five-year deal worth $95 million, and the Angels locked up Robert Stephenson on a three-year deal worth upward of $30 million shortly thereafter. It's just hard to figure out what anyone--including the Astros and Angels--is doing.
How Many Closers Do You Need?
For the Astros, the baffling thing is that Hader is a nigh-historic addition to a bullpen that simply didn't need him very much. Shortly before signing him, they did announce that they'd lost setup man Kendall Graveman to shoulder surgery, and that Graveman will miss the whole of 2024. In truth, though, Graveman himself was a luxury item. As the Twins remember only too well, the Astros' recent playoff success has been fueled in no small part by Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly.
Since the start of 2022, Pressly has 139 strikeouts against 29 walks in 113 2/3 regular-season innings, plus 23 strikeouts and five walks in 17 scoreless frames in the postseason. Abreu, if possible, has been even better, with a sub-2.00 ERA in each of the last two seasons. He's punched out 188 batters in 132 1/3 frames in the regular season over that span, and has 33 strikeouts in 19 2/3 playoff innings, too.
The Astros are already committed to middle reliever Rafael Montero, too, and their development system churns out hurlers capable of joining the corps of those arms. Hader makes them better, but it all has a whiff of gilding the lily. To be sure, they're an even tougher out in the playoffs, now, but they might not be materially closer to getting there than they were four days ago. It's an irrational marketplace.
How Many Closers Do You Need?
The question of why the Angels signed the second-best reliever on the market is very different, even though you can say it in pretty much exactly the same words. The Angels are going to be terrible this year. Their best player now plays for their obnoxious big brother. Their second-best player is hurt all the time and turns 33 this summer. Their third-best player isn't even their third-best player anymore, and he's hurt all the time, and he turns 34 this summer, and he also hates baseball. Signing a reliever to an eight-figure deal is more like gilding a dandelion, in this case.
Again, though, we're seeing the irrationality of the market, and thus, why the Twins aren't yet being hurt much by the limitations resulting from the uncertainty about the future of their broadcast rights. They weren't going to be in on guys like Shohei Ohtani or Yoshinobu Yamamoto at the prices the Dodgers paid, even if the Pohlads had sold off some other arm of their empire and shoved all the cash into Derek Falvey's hands. It's not in line with the way the Falvey-led front office likes to do things. For the same reason, they were never going to be in on Hader or Stephenson.
Only now, with some of those big deals (and, realistically, overpays) off the board, is the phase of the offseason in which Falvey was ever going to be interested in participating beginning. The time it has taken for that to happen is to the Twins' advantage, not only because a bit more clarity about their TV money now seems to be on the horizon, but because they can start to use the calendar as a cudgel.
Joe All Day, Joe Every Day, Joe Today, Joe Tomorrow, Joe Forever
If you're sick of Joe Mauer Hall of Fame talk... tough. The Hall will announce its 2024 class tomorrow evening, and Joe Mauer is overwhelmingly likely to be part of it. We're going to have heavy coverage of the event, and further, we're going to spend considerable time over the next few days remembering and reexamining Mauer's career from a variety of angles. This is a special moment. If you do feel that urge to be too cool for it, or to linger in resentment about what he wasn't able to accomplish for the team, I want to plead with you: interrogate that urge, digest it, and then banish it. If you hold this particular moment at arm's length, you'll regret it later. When life offers you an opportunity to share in massive, uncomplicated celebration with people, never pass it up. We should do more of that, rather than less. We should be a little less cool, sometimes, in order to be a little more happy.
Which free agents and trade targets are you still feeling hopeful about? What will you remember most clearly about Mauer's career? Give yourself a break this morning and wade into some baseball talk.
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