Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 775: The Happ/Zimmermann Contract Conundrums

Episode Date: November 30, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss the perplexities of the J.A. Happ and Jordan Zimmermann signings.

Oh, when I see another man in your life Guessing you're old enough to know you can't live life Yes, and so I'm telling you just exactly what to do Cause you can't have to pay the price Pay the price Good morning and welcome to episode 775 of Effectively Wild, a daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the playing decks at baseballreference.com.

I'm Sam Miller, along with Ben Lindberg of FiveThirtyEight. Hi, Ben. Hello. How you doing? All right. Good. Anything to talk about? Not really.

We'll see. What you want to talk about? What do you want to talk about? A lot of times when you say not really you have something. It depends. Okay, wait, wait. Alright, first let me ask you. What is the fourth letter of the thing that you might have to

talk about? A vowel or a consonant? Last name or first name? Last. Last name. Consonant. Is it a consonant that comes before or after L in the alphabet? It comes directly after. Okay, so you want to talk about Jordan Zimmerman?

Yeah. Okay, we're going to talk about Jordan Zimmerman. Good. I think we'll just talk about Zimmerman. We'll talk about Happ. For the people who don't know who either of those people are, welcome to the baseball show. Jay Happ signed a three-year, 36 million dollar contract to play baseball for the toronto blue jays jordan zimmerman signed a five-year deal what 110 yep 110 million dollars

which is a significant number uh which we'll get to in a second but five years 110 million dollars to play baseball for the detroit tigers um and it significant because, just to get this out of the way, you had Jordan Zimmerman in your free agent offseason movers. Yeah, that's the primary reason. You thought that Jim, we were saying Bowden and someone emailed Furious that it's Bowden. Yes. I still don't know. Jim Bowden in a sock puppet account emailed us.

Yes. I still don't know. Jim Bowden in a sock puppet account emailed us. Who said that he said $120 million. You took the over on that. I did. Did he say five years or six? Do you remember? He said six and 120, I believe.

Yes, he did. And so you thought that he would get six but a higher AAV. Yeah. I wasn't going for a huge gain on that one, but I thought it was a safe pick. It turned out not to be. I thought he might get 130 or something. I thought he wouldn't get below 120. A listener named Daniel actually emailed us last week to point out that the five-year deal is sort of a donut hole that pitchers don't really fall into. He noted that since 2006, the only pitcher to get a five-year

deal and be less than 35 years old was Anibal Sanchez in 2012. Could have seen like 144. I could have seen a nice 144 there, but instead, well, yeah, no, he didn't. So you take a little hit there. Anyway, he's going to be playing baseball next year. Jay Happ will be playing baseball next year. Both of them will be. And I guess if you wanted to create a theme or something for this episode, they're two in some ways extremely opposite free agent cases. Jay Happ was a pretty bad pitcher who then suddenly became like Rich Hill, for goodness sakes, in the final 11 starts of the season once he joined Pittsburgh. And Jordan Zimmerman was one of baseball's most consistent pitchers for years. And then just as he was hitting his walk year, just as he was hitting his walk year, hit some, had a little bit of an off year, although some have argued, maybe we will argue that in fact, within that off year, there was that same

consistency. So there are two different cases and of course, two different types of pitchers. So which should we start with? Start with Hap. All right. So Hap gets three years, $36 million. Rich Hill gets one year, $6 million. I understand completely that I need to get over Rich Hill. I know. The whole family at Thanksgiving made this point to me. It was awkward. But why do I love Rich Hill but I don't love J-Hap?

Because J-Hap really for 11 starts was about as good. Like he struck out 10 per nine. He walked fewer than two per nine. He had an ERA under two. It was a genuine, it was a Medlin-esque run. And yet, while you quite rightfully have lots of doubts about Rich Hill because of his pass, I feel like I am very ungenerous toward Jay Happ. What do you suppose it is that makes him, I don't know, that makes me, Ben, tell me why I don't like this deal. Is it that we've seen more of Happ not being this kind of pitcher?

Yes, I think it is. He was not this kind of pitcher as recently as last season when we saw him pitching in the major leagues for a while. It seemed like he was not this kind of pitcher. And there's a long track record of Jay Happ just being kind of okay or not even okay whereas rich hill just sort of disappeared into the phone booth and came out wearing a new costume and he was suddenly an ace and then the season ended before we could see anything different so our whole recent memory of rich hill is ace rich hill i knew a couple of kids when I was in about third, fourth grade whose family was missionaries. They would go down to South America.

They had a mission in South America. And they would disappear for three years and then come back for two months. And nobody seemed cooler to me than those kids when they came back for those first couple days and in retrospect i don't think they were that cool but like they had they hadn't shown me the day in day out mediocrity that we all show yeah and like they'd show up with new toys and none of the baggage that comes from like sitting in class with them for six hours a day and having them ask you what time it is because they never learned how to read a clock yeah it's like imagine if we only did one show a week how good would that one show be you're

on to something uh so uh yeah so that is probably it and so so Hap, though, is partly a Ray Searidge success story, right? As people have noted, he went to Pittsburgh with everybody's favorite pitching coach for the moment and immediately became a superstar. It is also, I think Ben pointed out, though, that it is not merely a Searidge thing. Matt Trueblood wrote about how the changes that Hap has made were actually a gradual process that a number of pitching coaches over the last couple of years can claim credit for various parts of them. And you could see a sort of a steady growth toward this breakout, which I guess would make the breakout seem a little realer.

Pakoda thinks not real. Pakoda thinks that he's a replacement-level pitcher, which is, I mean, he's almost as old as Rich Hill, for goodness sake. He's going to be 33. He's got 1,000 career innings. He's never been anything more than basically a below-average pitcher. And then suddenly for 11 starts, he's an ace. So I don't know.

Well, what's the three years and 36 is not as big as it sounds maybe? It's not that big. Three years is a long time to commit to a guy who's been good for 11 starts i guess you could say what's the downside what well i mean he is at least he does offer something that rich hill doesn't offer which is that he's in the majors every year uh and can at least you know be an arm and who knows? Maybe he fails and you make him a reliever and he becomes Trevor Cahill or something, whereas if Rich Hill fails, he's rehabbing in the AZL League.

So I guess that all goes in his favor. And he isn't, I don't know. I mean, I think of J-Hap as like a finesse guy, as a junk baller, right? Don't you think of J-Hap as a guy who, he's a soft tosser, he, I mean, the big thing, the first thing I think of when I hear J-Hap is that guy who five years ago, some scout told some reporter that he's a Cliff Lee type, remember that? And I've been, well, for one thing, that was hysterical. But for another, Cliff Lee comps are one of those comps that are instant death, if you really think about it.

Like, what was it? Somebody, I've been trying to remember where I read this, but some team has outlawed Dallas Keuchel comps in their scouting department because it's just a way of saying this is a bad pitcher, but phrasing it in a way that makes it seem like he's a good pitcher. And there have been a few guys like that in history. Kevin Goldstein introduced me to this concept, introduced all of us to this concept, when I think he said that Jamie Moyer comps are,

you can't use Jamie Moyer comps because it's basically the same thing. You're trying to say something nice about the guy. It sounds like you're saying something nice about the guy, but there are a million Jamie Moyer types and one Jamie Moyer. And so really it's a terrible thing to say about a player. And so when you say he's a Cliff Lee type, you're kind of saying the same thing. Cliff Lee was like a freak of nature. And nobody, you know, could have seen that really coming. So anyway, that is all to say that when I think Jay Hab, I think, you know, 90, 91, movement, location, breaking stuff.

And he actually averaged 93 with his fastball by the end of last year. He is almost entirely a fastball pitcher at this point. He was throwing 90% fastballs by the end of the year, almost 90% fastballs by the end of the year, which is, I guess, all interesting in that, in fact, maybe I just don't know that much about jhap yeah right like i have an old idea about jhap uh and uh and i'm so i resist that happens we all have like uh we all have cached versions of players sort of in our head you know yeah you need a version of a

website where you need to do a hard refresh to see the new thing. It's like the, like the way back machine takes a snapshot of a website on a certain day and you can see what it looked like that day. And we all have snapshots of players from a certain day when we watch that player or we read about that player. We looked at that player stats and you can't have an up-to-date

snapshot on every player. So sometimes you are a little bit out of date. And maybe if that player does a bunch of different stuff all of a sudden, then you have a really out-of-date snapshot about that player. But I don't know, Jeff Sullivan wrote about him, of course, and pointed out that it was a transition from better opponents to worse opponents going to the National League. And now he's going back to the American League. And he's a guy who had a lot of called strikeouts, which are somewhat less sustainable than the swinging kind. And, of course, he was throwing to an excellent framer. I guess he'll still be throwing to a pretty good framer So, you know, he's obviously not second half hap

And he wasn't paid like second half hap He was paid like something between first and second half hap Yeah, it is something between And it is probably a lot closer to first half hap than second half I mean, if anybody had actually bought second half hap At second half hap prices Then we're talking about $180 million free agent. And so, you know, I don't think anybody, obviously, I don't think anybody even expects that as his upside, but you are getting a discount at a guy who, you know, you're sort of hoping can still be a good number two, which brings up

the question of Toronto's rotation. Is there anything particularly different about what Toronto has done building their rotation than what the Red Sox did last year and that everybody paid a ton of attention to the no aces model? I guess with the Blue Jays, they have their, they're sort of fortunate to have Marcus Stroman who might, who might perhaps be or become an ace. But it is a lot of number three slash four guys with maybe some upside. Is there anything about what the Blue Jays are doing that doesn't merit comparisons to what the Red Sox did? And is that actually bad, or am I only thinking that because the Red Sox season turned out so bad? Yeah, I mean, there's probably some universe where the Red Sox plan would have worked out okay,

and maybe it's the universe where Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval aren't the worst players in baseball. Or where their five starters didn't collectively all suck. Yeah, right. Well, are the Blue Jays, are we confident that they're done that this is their opening day rotation i don't know well they've got six on hand and i mean i don't know i'm not i guess i'm not super confident but i'm kind of confident sure yeah well they seem to think strowman was better than david price in the playoffs for a while there. So maybe they think that. They did just trade for David Price, so it's not like they don't do the ace thing. But maybe they think Stroman is one.

Yeah, or maybe they figure that, I don't know, maybe they figure they can get the ace in July if it looks like they need the ace. I guess you can maybe, hmm, hmm, Ben, hmm. Is it conceivable that it's worth tremendously overpaying for aces at July, for three months of the ace at July, instead of committing seven, six years to them right now when you don't even know if you're going to be playing in the postseason that year or any year?

I mean, I don't know. It does sort of seem like when you put it that way, when you think about what the Blue Jays gave up to get the ace in July, relative to a $180 million commitment, it's awfully low. So maybe they just figure, yeah, we can always trade another top 30 prospect and put together a package and get that guy if it feels like we need him. But people

lose their jobs if they sign the wrong seven-year guy. Yeah, that's true. Maybe that was the Red Sox plan. Less risky plan. Yeah, maybe the Red Sox would have traded for the ace if they hadn't started terribly. And maybe the fact that the Red Sox didn't traded for the ace if they hadn't started terribly. And maybe the fact that the Red Sox didn't end up meeting the ace and wouldn't have, even if they, like, you know, if the Red Sox had signed, who was last offseason's ace?

Oh, Lester and Scherzer. Right. So maybe if they had signed Scherzer, they still would have sucked. They still wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the playoffs. And now they've got a contract that has the potential to blow up on them. So maybe, in fact, in a way of looking at it, maybe the Red Sox validated their choice. No one will remember it that way, but maybe they did.

Maybe you have a point. All right. Last question about Jay Happap What would he have gotten Was he a free agent last year J-Hap doesn't seem like the kind of guy who has a lot of multi-year deals But he might not have hit free agency yet J-Hap last year He was traded last winter

Last winter he was traded for Michael Saunders And then he was traded again At the deadline For Adrian Sampson Who who is a baseball player, AAA, 23-year-old pitcher. To the extent of my knowledge about Adrian Sampson. So we got two valuations of J-Hap in the last year all right so if j-hap had been let's say j-hap uh had uh uh what's a injury that absolutely does not in any way possibly linger or suggest bad things sprained his ankle is that a good one sure broke his toe broke his toe okay let's say j-hap broke his toe

on july 30th 2015 and hit free agency what contract is just broken toe jay have get well uh he gets less than rich hill well yeah like like one and gets what is adrian sampson worth that's what he was worth at that point so adrian would you know well not only that but that's only for two months right of jay have that's not even for a full year true of jay that, but that's only for two months of J-Hap. That's not even for a full year of J-Hap. Of course, that's also them shedding the salary that they owed him. And I think he was making seven last year. So, you know, they also shed $3 million, $2 million or so.

I would guess, oh, geez, J-Hap. two million or so i would guess oh geez j-hap it's interesting too that the blue jays signed in because the blue jays uh spent the most time with bad hap of any team in baseball that's true like no team has committed more innings and money to bad j-hap bad version j-hap than toronto yeah it's almost like your girlfriend who like it's like if your girlfriend was the girl and she's all that before freddie prince jr put the glass took the glasses off right like you would like her more than like obviously the whole school's into her because she's dancing and everything like that but yeah you would probably be especially in there maybe it's like yeah they already know they like his personality, maybe.

Yes, exactly. They've already lived with him, and now they're attracted to him, too. Exactly. Like, you never would have, I mean, it was really the glasses were all that were between you and her in the first place. Right. So Ray Searidge took off his glasses, and now they want him back. So J-Hap, previous three seasons, E era plus is 86 90 90 it was 82 in seattle the worst of his career although uh with a somewhat better fib no fib under four in that time and a max of 100 and

never qualified for an era title since 2009 before last year So you're talking about a guy who does not necessarily pitch regularly, does not pitch at even a league average rate or even particularly close and does not have a good trajectory. But maybe you'd say, oh, but I saw these adjustments that he's been making. So like one year, four four and a half does that seem too high no that seems about right all right one year four so that dude made 11 starts and got 32 more million dollars yeah and and i'm fine i mean i'm it's not that i'm not fine with that but rich hill yeah ray searidge should start getting a percentage on the contracts. Yeah. Ray Searidge as a player agent slash...

He should. I mean, if Mark Anthony can start an agency, then Ray Searidge can. Mark Anthony the singer? Yes. What kind of agent? Baseball. Oh, Mark Anthony's a baseball agent. Yeah. No kidding. Who are his clients?

Aroldis Chapman. Really? Yeah. He took some actual established agents with him, sort of in the way that Jay-Z did. So he has, looks like they were specializing in Hispanic players. No kidding. I did not know that. And I do not any longer care.

Okay. All right. Next, we go to Jordan Zimmerman. Zimmerman, I think that the best angle on Zimmerman, the thing most worth talking about is what RJ spent most of his time talking about in the transaction analysis, which is how much we care about a decline in velocity. Zimmerman's velocity dropped about a mile per hour last year. And, of course, we know that most pitchers have a hard time holding on to their velocity the older they get. And so when we see this right before free agency, of course, we extrapolate and say, well, he's losing his stuff. He's getting old. And the fact that it coincided with a below average year for him looks even worse. Is this the wrong way to analyze pitchers, or is this the best way to analyze pitchers?

Well, it's not surprising that that happened to him in that he's, you know, about to turn 30 and pitchers lose velocity, and it would be stranger if he hadn't lost any velocity, maybe. But I think, yeah, you should take it into account, as he mentioned and linked to you saying, everyone loses velocity and therefore maybe we should pay more attention to the adjustments you make to losing that velocity. And I don't know whether his adjustments were encouraging or not. You know, he struck out fewer guys and he gave up a bunch of homers,

way more homers than he's ever given up before. And he was still pretty good. I mean, he still threw 200 innings and was an above-average pitcher. So you could look at that as a positive or a negative. I mean, if he had just lost velocity and pitched exactly the same, I think he'd probably make more money, or we wouldn't worry about it as much. But he lost velocity, and he also pitched worse. So that seems like a bad thing.

There's also the fact that he's at the point, roughly, where pitchers who have one Tommy John surgery tend to have a second. It's about four and a half years on average. So he's getting closer to that. So you believe the mainly what you're saying he pitched worse is that you believe that some element of the BABIP is true and some element of the home run per fly ball is true, even though those are two of the three legs of the bad luck stool. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, his bad bip wasn't crazy. It was exactly the same as his 2014 bad bip, actually. So his home runs, he was a guy who always suppressed home runs, and then he stopped doing that, and he struck out fewer batters. Still has excellent control, obviously. So he struck out fewer batters still has excellent control obviously so he struck out a few i mean he struck out fewer batters than than in one year but he struck out his career average of batters yeah yeah you're right basically yeah so i uh so it's really just the home runs and and as we know home runs can fluctuate that can be a partially a luck thing too so i you know i wasn't that down on him that's

why i took the over on on boden's prediction so and and the babbitt by the way the babbitt was more or less what it was in 2014 but it was a a career high for a full season from him and it is 10 points higher than his career average yeah um so are. So are you surprised that it's the Tigers? Another, by the way, I guess in prefacing that, another great Matt Trueblood piece that was written this offseason looked at the AL Central and how going into this offseason, the five AL Central teams, you really couldn't necessarily predict what any of them was going to do you really couldn't necessarily predict what any of them was going

to do because you couldn't really predict which would see themselves as buyers and which would see themselves as sellers. All of them had cases to be made for buying and all of them have either cases to be made for selling or severe limitations, restrictions on what they can do. And the Tigers were one of those teams where you can either talk yourself into this being the really the last, last gasp of the window that we thought last year might have been the last crack at, or you could look at it as a team that's in a lot of ways in a fairly bad state long term and that might be looking to rebuild. Al Avila said that he wanted to win in 2016, that that was his plan. And he has made three moves for 2016. So clearly,

he sees the Tigers as buyers. And this is kind of the offseason that you would have expected the Tigers to have had four years ago, or three years ago, ago or two years ago or one year ago. It's the classic Tigers offseason. But the Tigers are also in a very, very different place than they were those years. They are no longer the clear favorite in the AL Central. They are not the team that has, it seems like, a 15-game head start on the rest of their opponents. They might be 15 games behind some of their opponents and putting an awful lot of long-term investment or I guess long-term liabilities into this team. So are the Tigers setting themselves up for something that could be really ugly for a long time?

Or is this a team that's actually pretty close and that can withstand to have a couple contracts like Zimmerman's anyway yeah I mean it does cost them a draft pick because Zimmerman was a qualifying offer guy but only a second round pick because their first round pick is protected so that sets them back a little bit I don't think the terms of the deal I mean we're all sort of surprised by the terms Of the deal so it's not a Albatross the way that The Verlander and Cabrera extensions seem to be And they're already locked into those

And they're not getting out of those So there's the thought that they Should just you know try to Patch things together for as long As those guys are good and productive And Justin Verlander was good and productive and justin verlander was good and productive again very good and very productive again so maybe they figure just as the last gasp of those guys they want to do something because if they rebuild now then

they'll still be stuck with those guys by the time the team is, you know, good again, but those guys won't be good. So there's enough there that you can kind of see them building around the bones of what's left. I mean, they were pretty terrible after trading Price and Cespedes. So it's kind of hard to envision, but at the same time, I mean, I don't know. Are we going to go into next year thinking that the Royals are overwhelming favorites again? And it's kind of hard to envision, but at the same time, I mean, I don't know. Are we going to go into next year thinking that the Royals are overwhelming favorites again? Probably not. And I am pretty high on the Indians this year. I think this year might be the year that we see the Indians people thought we would see in 2014.

So it's not like a pushover division the way it was a couple years ago It seems like there might be a few good teams in this division And of course the Twins almost made the playoffs last year And that took everyone by surprise But this year they'll have a full season of Miguel Sano and the guys they brought up So it's not a weak division where you can just sign a good free agent And waltz to the title the way that the tigers did for several years in a row but i can kind of see why they don't i mean you know there's always the ownership question because they have an old owner do they are they less

willing to go in for the long-term teardown? And maybe that was a condition of when he hired up. He didn't want someone to do that. So we don't know what's going on beyond the scenes. But, I mean, they have the closer. They have a good number two starter. So you can kind of squint and see this team being better. They have Cameron Mabin now. There's enough left in the lineup.

There is an actual heart of the order if Victor Martinez is healthy this year. So I guess, I guess they're close enough to try this. Yeah, I think, I definitely think that they're close enough to try this. They, I mean, this is not a team that i have to stretch too hard to see winning uh 89 games if some things break right or even more than that it's a you know it's got the potential uh i think to to be a decent team uh even a good team potentially it's i guess the the question is whether their 2017, 2018, et cetera, outlooks, because it could get really ugly. Like Cabrera is still good, and Verlander is arguably still good,

and Victor Martinez arguably has the chance to be good. It wasn't that long ago that he was. But like 2017, 2018, the chances of those things get even worse. The costs for those guys get even higher and the prospects that they have coming are not existent, although slightly better thanks to the trades. And so the question is whether having a really bad outlook in 2018 makes it more necessary to try for 2016 or more necessary to not take a long shot in 2016 or whether it's totally irrelevant because 2018 is so far away and our forecasting abilities are so bad. are so bad and who knows what we'll prioritize in our lives then anyway, that you should just ignore 2018 and look at this team the way you would look at any other team that has something like a 78 to 82 win projection for next year and the potential to move up with a move or two.

So who do you pick in the AL Central right now? And I don't mean with the rosters right now, but you have to now, say you have to bet on this, you have to guess what everybody's going to do in this offseason. And you've sort of seen where each team is positioning

itself a little bit, based on the rumors and the moves that they have or haven't made. Who wins the AL Central next year and who finishes second? I think the Indians will win and second, I guess, the Royals. Okay. It'll be very interesting to see what happens to the Tigers if Mike Illich ever stops being the living owner. Yeah. Because it's really like almost every year it's easy to fit their moves into the narrative that got established six or seven years ago that he's an old dude who really wants to win a World Series and just doesn't care about the things that we care about when we're analyzing.

Yeah. And it will be interesting to see whether that's at all true. It will. All right. So those are two signings that happened. They sure did. All right. So you can send us emails at podcast at baseball prospectus dot com. By the way, if you're hearing this on Monday before midnight Pacific, you can buy our book for 30% less than you'll be able to tomorrow if you go to Amazon and enter the coupon code HOLIDAY30, which expires at midnight Pacific. The book costs, I think, $15.93 if you use that coupon code. So you could put a preorder in. The book, by the way, is called The Only Rule Is It Has To Work.

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