Central Concerns: Most of division misses out on free-agent frenzy

ANAHEIM, CA - MAY 23: Los Angeles Angels starting pitcher Dylan Bundy (37) makes the walk to the dugout after a short outing for the Angels during the game between the Oakland Athletics and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on May 23, 2021 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, CA. (Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire)

Behind the ESPN paywall, Jeff Passan has a story about the flurry of megadeals that teams struck with key free agents in the last days before the looming lockout. Passan calls it “the wildest 24 hours in the history of baseball free agency,” and he opens with the case of Marcus Semien.

Semien was a popular target among White Sox fans, but Passan says the same things that supposedly might make him more affordable — being 31 years old, playing more second than shortstop as of late — were the same elements that made him immensely appealing to the rest of baseball, giving Scott Boras the leverage to stage a feeding frenzy.

On the first night of the GM meetings, the Detroit Tigers told Boras that they were in. The next day, the Texas Rangers came to [Omni La Costa Resort and Spa Suite] 6048 to say the same. The Toronto Blue Jays wanted to re-sign him. The San Francisco Giants loved him. So did the Seattle Mariners. The interested parties figured the bidding for Semien would wind up somewhere in the neighborhood of what the Blue Jays had given George Springer — another 31-year-old, up-the-middle, big-power, good-makeup player — a year earlier: six years, $150 million. If a team added a year or bumped the average annual value, perhaps that would compel Semien to jump the lockout. […]

After a few days off for Thanksgiving, Semien’s market started to percolate, spurred by the Rangers, Blue Jays and Tigers. Determined to seal the deal, on the morning of Nov. 28, Texas played its trump card: a seventh year. The Rangers offered $175 million. At about 5 p.m., Semien accepted. It was the biggest deal handed out by the Rangers since Alex Rodriguez’s historic 10-year, $252 million contract more than two decades earlier.

Passan then lines up the other free agent signings in quicker succession — Kevin Gausman with Toronto, which led to Max Scherzer in New York, which led to Robbie Ray in Seattle, circling back to Corey Seager in Texas, all the way to Javier Báez with Detroit at six years and $140 million.

In the wee hours of the morning, on calls across four time zones, Javier Baez found a new team. Baez wasn’t supposed to sign. His cutoff had been Friday, Saturday at the latest. But then the Detroit Tigers, who had been on Semien and Story and were monitoring Correa, came calling, and now they were getting their shortstop of the future. Baez was in Puerto Rico, Tigers GM Al Avila in Detroit, Tigers manager AJ Hinch in Houston and Nick Chanock, Baez’s agent, in Los Angeles, where it was technically still Monday, not even half a day separated from the wild 24.

The disappointing news is that the White Sox weren’t part of it, with Kendall Graveman the only thing to show for their pre-lockout work. The solace is that Detroit, with Báez and Eduardo Rodriguez, is the only AL Central team that stepped up.

* * * * * * * * *

As for the four other Central squads, the Twins made the biggest symbolic gesture by extending Byron Buxton for seven years and $100 million, when Buxton’s enigmatic combination of elite performance and gruesome durability made trading him away a reasonable outcome. Yet that only maintains a relationship with a player who was already in the fold for 2022.

When it comes to additions, the Twins only have Dylan Bundy and his 6.06 ERA in 2021 to show for it. He came to Minnesota for one year and $5 million, and the Twins lost the benefit of the doubt with journeymen pitchers after the high-profile flameouts of Matt Shoemaker and J.A. Happ last season.

With 13 of the 15 top free agent pitchers already under contract (Carlos Rodón and Clayton Kershaw are the others), the Twins’ inactivity has The Athletic’s Aaron Gleeman shaking his head.

It’s the Twins’ failure to sign any front-line starting pitchers from a strong and deep free-agent class that comes as much more of a surprise given their obvious need for significant rotation help. As currently constructed, the Twins’ rotation consists of Bundy and the inexperienced duo of Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan, who have 119 career big-league innings between them. And then two blank spaces.

They desperately need veteran rotation help, and with a projected 2022 payroll of around $90 million, the Twins would have to spend another $45 million just to equal their recent payrolls that fell near the MLB average. That seemingly made it safe to assume they’d try to add at least one free-agent starter to sit atop the rotation while the young arms like Ober, Ryan and various prospects developed further.

Yet here they are, with the entire sport at a standstill for what could be months, having watched other teams spend nearly $2 billion on free agents in the sprint to get deals done before the lockout, all but empty-handed and with a rotation still in very obvious need of reinforcements above the Bundy level. Except now, instead of having more than a dozen good starters available, the pool is drained.

Over in Cleveland, the team opened the Guardians era by watching their team store sign fall off the façade, and that’s still the most action of the winter at Ontario and Carnegie.

Dan Szymborski posted the ZiPS projections for the 2022 Guardians at FanGraphs, and while Shane Bieber and José Ramírez continue being the real deals — combining for 11 WAR between them — it’s a roster that’s very well positioned for a key free agent of any kind. There are a lot of ways to mix and match the playing time at various positions, so any kind of addition could be accommodated.

But if you figure they aren’t going to do that, you’re left with a lot of finger-crossing for 70th-percentile outcomes.

As disappointing as the White Sox’s meager appetite for big moves may be, there still isn’t a reason to panic about the pre-lockout activity. The White Sox still should project comfortably ahead, and if Detroit was going to go after a big name at shortstop, I’d rather it be Báez than the other four, even if he represents a big upgrade in his own right. Basically, the White Sox have finally reached a position where they don’t have to work that hard to stay ahead, so I guess you could say they’re indulging that luxury.

* * * * * * * * *

We’ll need the remainder of the offseason to understand whether the White Sox hamstrung themselves due to the early inactivity, but it’s also fair to say that the Graveman signing isn’t enough to keep a Sox fan warm over the winter.

For alternative fuel, I might first suggest a handsome Sox Machine knit cap, now available for purchase on the Sox Machine store.

Beyond apparel, I’ll point to this post about Luis Robert’s post-injury improvements by Luke Hooper at FanGraphs. Robert started opening his stance in April, and kinda like continental plates, his feet slowly but surely drifted further apart. Because Robert kept enjoying sensational results, the league didn’t present a reason to stop.

From here, the question is whether Robert will eventually pay a price for his extreme aggression. He improved his contract rate on pitches inside the zone, but he’s still swinging at a lot of pitches that aren’t strikes, making him an outlier when it comes to discipline versus production.

Robert hit .338/.378/.567 over 68 games last year and finished the season strong, which makes it hard to call his plate approach bad. That might be results-over-process thinking, but that’s less of a shortcoming when the results are among the best imaginable.

(Photo by Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire)

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asinwreck

enigmatic combination of elite performance and gruesome durability

Great quote from Branch Rickey’s scouting report of Frankenstein’s monster.

dwjm3

I’m still chuckling at that Nightengale tweet. There is no evidence that we made a play for Ray or Semien. If we assume for a second that Bob was choosing his words carefully and he meant use the word “like” in his tweet there still isn’t any evidence of them going after similar high end free agents either.

Somebody in the organization was trying to window dress again. Of course they always go to Bob for a reason.

Augusto Barojas

Nightengale and Reinsdorf should be used car salesmen.

Otter

One curious development in FA thus far is none of the 10 playoff teams have been aggressive. The largest contract given out is the Cardinals* handing Matz 4/$44m (and St. Louis needed to go on an insane winning streak to make playoffs and then were one and done at that). The next largest is the Sox giving Graveman 3/$24m. While it’s not what anyone would want to see, it’s also not like the Sox are an outlier?

Now we hit pause for a few months and it will be interesting to see how the Sox approach both right field and second. Not to rehash, but Castellanos and Bryant especially make sense, but they’re also right handed bats. Same goes for Story. And that’s the list and it’s unclear if the Sox want to make the commitment necessary for any of those three.

*The Giants have handed out a bunch of money to resign their own guys tbf, but looking only at adding UFAs, it’s the Cards then Sox hilariously.

Trooper Galactus

My concern is that there is still a discernible gap between the White Sox and other playoff teams that hasn’t been closed, and other teams haven’t been sitting on their hands. As always, it’s the opportunity cost, and as options to improve the team fall by the wayside we more and more have to consider which part of the future Hahn is going to trade to get what he needs.

Augusto Barojas

I think far more likely Hahn will not get what they need at all. Trades are sideways movements anyways. This team is not going to get to the next level because of a greedy owner, simple as that.

Trooper Galactus

Hahn’s trades (or, at least ones intended to provide near-term improvement) usually are backwards movements.

burning-phoneix

Conforto makes more sense than Castellanos for the Sox.

soxtalker999

I appreciate the discussion and comparison with other Central teams. However, based on the proposals that the owners and players union publicized, it seems that there might be a significant chance of re-alignment. Even without a major change in structure, changes to the playoff system could have a significant impact on how teams jockey for position. Some of that may become apparent only after the season unfolds and impact mid-season moves. But I wonder if the possibilities of such changes might affect the moves teams consider now.

soxfan

That’s along the lines of what I thought when reading the piece. It’s all well and good to win the Central, but if we’re not positioned for playoff success then meh. I don’t think we were as bad as we looked in the playoffs last year, but if you want to be competitive you either need to have a higher upside (more stars) or lower downside (greater depth). We don’t seem to be pursuing either right now.

Kelly Wunsch N' Munch

Agreed. The Central is important sure. But that isn’t the barometer. Being the best team in the American League is. The way things sit as of today, I don’t think any of us think that’s the case.

Augusto Barojas

I hope there is some realignment. One I read had Toronto being in the Sox division. That would be cool, and at least prevent the Sox from winning a creampuff division with an inflated and misleading record. They were only a couple games ahead of the Jays even with the easiest schedule in MLB. The Jays would make it tough for them at the very least.

metasox

I haven’t followed this closely. Would realignment hinge on adding additional teams? If so, that isn’t immediate. If not, wouldn’t it at least hold off until ’23 when the league produces new schedules?

Last edited 2 years ago by metasox
soxtalker999

I think that it was the players’ association proposal released just before the lockout that had a fairly radical realignment. However, even without a full-blown realignment, they could make changes that could have similar impacts. For example, we now play a very large number of games against teams in our own division. If they changed that in a way that would cause us to play more games against teams in the other divisions, we’d be pushed to be more competitive. It seems very likely that they will change the playoff formula (to get more playoff teams and games), and it could be done so as to make winning a weak division less appealing.

roke1960

My biggest concern is that the Twins will sign Rodon. They certainly won’t get Kershaw, so I would assume they will be all in on Rodon. That would be scary to face a healthy Rodon 6 times each year.

soxfan

Given his injury history and workload management constraints, he’d be lucky to face the Sox three times.

Willardmarshall

What exactly is Rodon arm? And is there a cure, surgical or otherwise?

dwjm3

Why would anyone assume a healthy Rodon?

Augusto Barojas

I would not bet a lot of money that Rodon will ever pitch more than 100 innings again.