As reported widely, the Giants signed Blake Snell to a two-year contract for $62M, with an opt out. They also split each season's contract roughly in half, with half paid one season, the rest paid as bonus two years later, spreading the cash flow over the next four years, essentially.
ogc thoughts
I did not expect this to happen so soon after I posted my post on how the Giants will survive 2024 without another quality starting pitcher. And now they have another one.
Nothing much really to analyze as to the why, the Giants are adding the reigning NL Cy Young winner in Snell, and the 2021 AL CY Young winner Ronnie Ray will be joining late in the season. It will cost a 3rd round pick (something like 2% odds of finding a good player with that pick) and some international money (not a big deal, assuming they didn't have a big prospect targeted). Small cost to get such a good pitcher on a 1-2 year deal.
Only a 1 or 2 year deal, not a 5-7 years deal, is a huge win, and he's earned the $62M with what he has achieved, and the Giants can afford it, moreover. And if he leaves after a year, there will likely be 5-10 candidates to fill the innings pitched, and while not as good, will likely still be better than the average NL SP 3.56 ERA. And you never know, maybe he loves being here, and sign long term, but on the Giants terms.
Not sure how they will handle who goes 1-2, but clearly it will be Snell and Webb, 1-2, whichever order they happen to decide is best. Harrison will be #3 now, Hicks #4, and likely Winn will be #5, whenever that spot is needed in the season. More on that later.
40-Man Decisions
Something I didn't address before is what happens in the 40-man roster to enable the Giants to field their 26-man roster on Opening Day. Likely OD roster is now:
- SP: Snell, Webb, Harrison, Hicks, Winn
- RP: Doval, Tyler Rogers, Taylor Rogers, Jackson, Walker
- C: Bailey, Murphy
- IF: Wade, Flores, Estrada, Ahmed, Chapman, Fitzgerald
- OF: Conforto, Lee, Yastrzemski, Slater,
- DH: Soler
This leaves 3 open spots, which are likely relievers because Snell, Harrison, Hicks and maybe even Winn, might not go more than 5 IP. Also, Snell needs a 40-man spot, which right now there is an open spot on it for him.
Now, for the bullpen spots, both Jefferies and Howard have done well enough to perhaps earn a spot, and Black was going to get that last starting rotation spot, but now Snell has it, and all of them would require a 40-man spot. Cooper Hummel looks likely to be one of the cuts, if any are needed. Joey Bart is another, since he no longer has any options.
But I don't see the Giants throwing out any other prospects. Maybe Randy Rodriguez? I don't really see any other position player other than Hummel who looks vulnerable, except for Bart, and I'll discuss him in a little bit, because I've seen the Giants pull this off before.
As Zaidi said early on, he wants to get the roster to a state where it will hurt to DFA a player, and he seems to be at that point now. So I don't see the Giants DFAing anyone unless one of the NRI players like Jefferies or Howard, is not willing to go to AAA if they don't win a roster spot, and they are not really established players, so that's not likely.
And given that they will need a lot of innings, guys who are on the 40-man already will likely be prioritized. I think they will chose among these guys that won't require someone to be DFAed:
- Erik Miller
- Ethan Small (and he is currently injured and may miss OD)
- Kai-Wei Teng (and I think he has some injury recovery as well, so it may be Miller)
Joey Bart Retention Postulate
Of course, the Giants do not want to lose Bart. He's a decent to good defensive catcher with raw power that he's trying to figure out. And he's not likely to float through waivers if they DFA him before Opening Day. But there is a way to improve their chances of keeping him.
Teams often don't need their 5th starter until mid to late April. The Giants could decide to go with a four man rotation initially, and use Winn in one of the bullpen spots for long relief. Then they can hold onto Bart until later in April, and when they DFA him to bring up Winn to be the 5th starter, teams are more reluctant to mess up their roster and team chemistry by stealing Bart away. If every team passes, the Giants can then retain Bart and sent him to AAA for the 2024 season.
I saw them do this to Ishikawa one season. They kept him on the roster, and it was a head scratcher for me, but when they DFAed him later in April, no team wanted him and they kept him in AAA. Then my light bulb went on: ahhh!
And I would bet that Winn isn't going to end up in AAA. For one thing, teams usually carry their 5th starter on their OD roster as a long reliever, but in this day and age, the role is now bulk reliever. So it would be my thought that Winn gets one of the 26-man spots as bulk reliever initially (and two of the above gets the last spots, likely Miller and Small), working as a tandem starter with one of them. And Hicks and Harrison are possible cases of needing bulk relief, heck, even Snell, he didn't reach 6 innings in 12 of his 32 starts, nearly 40% of his starts.
Thoughts on Snell
Looking at his game log, it's the most unusual game log I've ever seen: in 30 of his 32 starts, he was taken out between innings. Which usually only happens when the pitcher is so dominant late in the game that the manager had no need to take him out for a reliever with runners on base and threatening. It could also mean the manager didn't trust his bullpen, as well, but it was his last 30 starts, two in-inning relief to start the season, then 30 starts of dominance.
One misconception that I've seen Giants fans have is that Zaidi hates walks to the point of not liking Snell. While it's true that the Giants espouse a strike zone focus, they are sabers to heart, and it's well known in sabermetric circles that walks are okay as long as the pitcher is extremely dominant, that is, strikes out even more, and keeping their K/BB ratio on the high side.
The good news is that he has been mostly pretty good with K/BB, but the bad news is twice in the last three seasons, while his K/9 has stayed high, his K/BB had dropped to slightly below the 2.5 that one would like to see from their pitchers. Hopefully the Giants Spin Doctors will analyze his pitches and help him out with a new mix that maximizes his repertoire, which is what I believe is the reason he chose to join the Giants, their expertise in pitching.
Bailey The Pitcher Magnet
Also, Bailey can steal strikes for him. He led the majors in Framing Runs with 16 runs (roughly 1.5 wins), while playing roughly 3/4 of the season, so that's closer to a 20 runs seasonal rate. Meanwhile, I counted up the Padres three catchers and came up with -3 runs. That should give Snell's stats a nice boost, upping strikeouts while reducing walks.
FYI, Bart's seasonal rate would have been roughly 3-4 times his playing time, putting him squarely in the Top 10 in Framing Runs, had he played the whole season, so he definitely has value, and thus more likely some team will grab him whenever he is DFAed, unfortunately. He might be some other team's Sabol Experience, holding onto him all season and seeing what they can do with him.
Heck, Bailey might have been as much of a selling point as the Giants pitching department. I thought I would check the catchers for Snell during his career, and it looks like he's been stuck with bad framing catchers with both the Rays and Padres. And teams interested in him, like the Astros and Dodgers, also didn't have good Framing Runs last season, Bailey was 2-3 wins above these teams, unadjusted for playing time. This is the first time Snell has actually had a good catcher behind the plate for him.
Snell-Like Giants Pitching
Snell is projected to be around 3.50 ERA and 3 wins. Mason Black, who he replaces in the rotation, was projected at 4.35 ERA and 1.2 wins, as a full time starter (by ZiPS). Snell should help ensure that the Giants 3rd place pitching staff ERA of 4.02 and 4th place starting rotation ERA of 4.12 is maintained or likely improved.
It is also improved because the Giants removed the starting pitchers who brought up their average: DeSclafani, Wood, Stripling, and Manaea. Altogether, these four pitchers accounted for 404.0 IP and a collective 4.72 ERA, which was worse than the average NL SP ERA of 4.56.
While adding pitchers like Snell, Hicks, Harrison, Ray, who should easily beat what those four provided as starting pitchers. Taking their Fangraphs Depth Chart projections, for these four, we have a collective 466 IP for a collective ERA of 3.84. That's along with Webb's projected 202 IP at 3.41 ERA, which altogether account for 668 IP and 3.71 ERA. Plus Winn's 82 IP at 4.15 ERA puts them at 3.76 ERA. The 2023 Giants SP collectively had a 4.12 ERA in 2023, so that's a 36 point drop, while covering a total of 749 IP. That is a significant improvement in the rotation for 2024 over 2023.
Defensive Upgrades by Subtraction
And while the ERA should improve RA as well, the defense should be much improved as well. The average NL team added 0.28 unearned runs to their ERA, whereas the Giants added 0.42 unearned runs. That's why, even though they rank highly in ERA, they were only 6th in RA. It should be greatly improved in 2024.
Many defensive improvements have happened in the offseason. Most of all, the bad DRS players of Crawford, Pederson, Matos, Davis and Sabol are no longer on the team, and including all the negative players no longer on the team, that's -52 DRS. The team was -15 DRS altogether, so subtracting all these players put the Giants at +37 DRS. Thus, just removing their negative DRS moved the Giants from very bad to pretty good, worth almost 4 extra wins on defense, and 5 wins better than last year.
Adding Lee in CF, Chapman at 3B, and Ahmed at SS, should also add to their defense, as well as shifting Yaz to RF, where he's a defensive gold glover level there. All of these moves should move their defense, including Bailey getting more starts, since he'll be playing a full season, even more firmly into the positive DRS range, and flip them from giving up some of the most unearned runs, to giving up less than average, down into the low .020's, or maybe even better.
RA Leaders Rule Getting Into the Playoffs
And as I've been noting, my research of the playoffs found that it is RA Leader teams (Top 5 in RA for each season) that make the playoffs a lot more often then RS Leader teams, and especially so when comparing RA Only Leaders vs RS Only Leaders, they are over twice as likely to make the playoffs. And this leads to the fact that around 75% of all playoff teams are RA Leaders, whether they are Dual Leaders (RA and RS Leaders; almost 100% make the playoffs) or RA Only Leaders.
The Giants are built to be an RA Leader now. They were sixth in RA but third in ERA, and greatly improved their defense. Meanwhile, they also improved on their SP ERA by removing all the ones who were not that good, and replacing them with better pitchers overall. This should altogether raise their RA rank at least into the Top 5 RA, and greatly improve their chances to make the playoffs.
Snell-Like Success
Snell makes the Giants that much more likely to be a RA Leader, and especially with the expanded Wild Card playoff system. He also saves the Giants from having to bring up young pitchers who, while projected to do well, we don't know how many starts we will need to give up to find the one who meets or beats their projection. This also frees the Giants to pursue trades mid-season with their large inventory of pitching prospects, depending on who among them take the leap (the upper half of projections).
Given his problems with walks (which apparently is related to how he pitches like Rueter once runners are on base, he nibbles on the corners to avoid homers and crooked numbers), having Bailey as his catcher will help greatly. And the Giants pitching analysts hopefully can help him with his pitching mix so that he can avoid more walks as well, since he's a better pitcher than his walk rate would suggest.
Moreover, if they can help Gausman, Cobb, and other pitchers figure out a better mix, they should be able to do the same with him. And I think that was probably a deciding factor for Snell as to who to sign with, once Boras figured out what type of short-term contract he wanted for Snell, as I can't imagine that other teams wouldn't have agreed to similar terms.
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