Author: Connor Loughlin (Medill ’20)

We’ve hit late January, only a couple of weeks until pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in Arizona and Florida, and the top three starting pitchers in this year’s free agency class, Jake Arrieta, Yu Darvish and Alex Cobb, remain unsigned.  This has been one of the more unusually slow free agency periods in recent memory.  Whereas in past years we’ve seen big market teams enter bidding wars to drive up the price on front-end starting pitching, this winter’s first big domino in the pitching market has yet to fall.  Though many might see this winter as an anomaly, it may actually be the start of a much smarter and more cautious approach by evolving front offices throughout the game.  Past winters may have seen Arrieta, Darvish and Cobb off the market weeks ago, and yet they are still without a home.  Are teams saving up for next year’s unbelievably loaded free agent class?  Maybe so.  But they are also looking at recent history and finding that for every Max Scherzer signed to a long term deal, there are several overvalued arms who fall more closely aligned with James Shields, Edwin Jackson and Jordan Zimmerman.  Front offices are getting smarter, and in turn driving down the price of Arrieta, Darvish and Cobb, ages 31, 31 and 30 respectively.

The Cubs, for example, seemed content with signing Tyler Chatwood at a team friendly deal early in the offseason and even seem willing to settle for Mike Montgomery, who has floated between starter and long reliever in the past, as their number five starter in 2018 if they are not comfortable shelling out the money required to land one of the three premier starters.  While that may confuse many, consider that Montgomery was worth 1.3 fWAR in 130.2 IP last season, while Arrieta was worth 2.4 fWAR in 168.1 IP, who will come at a much more expensive price tag than Montgomery’s $500k 2018 salary.

I’ve collected data on the three starting pitchers who were given the largest contracts each offseason from 2012 to 2016 to see how these in demand arms typically fare after these large contracts are signed (with the exception of 2016, in which I charted five pitchers due to the large amount of money allocated to several starting pitchers that offseason).  Though some pitchers go on to have great success during their thirties after putting ink to paper for the biggest paydays of their lives, teams should resign to the fact that they are more likely to sign a Matt Garza than a Zack Grienke, or better yet, a Jon Lester, who is still a very productive pitcher into his mid-thirties but not the same guy he was before his new deal.

The charts below show each pitcher’s fWAR (Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement) and FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) by year, from the year before their contract was signed to the end of their deal, retirement or the present day.  Unless your team signed a pitcher by the name of Max Scherzer, expecting production at or above the level previous to the new deal is lofty to say the least.

Many pitchers in this sample did have similar or greater success in their first and even second years of their new deals compared to their years before their contracts, such as Matt Garza and Johnny Cueto.  But these pitchers inevitably fall off more quickly than expected and the general trend is clear: as pitchers enter their mid-thirties and the latter halves of their large contracts, their fWAR typically goes down, and their FIP goes up.

This data should not come as a surprise.  For those unfamiliar, FIP is basically a measurement of a pitcher’s ERA taking into account only their strikeouts, walks and homeruns allowed.  Ignoring the balls put in play allows us to put each and every pitcher on an even playing field, disregarding the quality of the defense behind each pitcher.  As pitchers get older, the velocity and spin rate for each pitch in their arsenal typically sees a dip (let’s ignore pitchers in the steroid era for this argument).  A decrease in velocity and spin rate is generally going to register less strikeouts, and more walks, balls put in play or balls sent out of the yard entirely.  Why?  Changing spin rates can cause command issues for pitchers who before may have been untouchable, and the dipping velocity simply makes pitches much easier to hit in many cases.

Jake Arrieta has experienced this problem since the conclusion of his dominant Cy Young campaign in 2015.  With a 7.3 fWAR and 2.35 FIP, many considered him the best in the game at the time.  But since then, his velocity has dipped dramatically and his command has been missing.  The velocity on each one of his pitches has dropped roughly 2 to 3 MPH from 2015 to 2017, making him much more hittable and prone to fly balls and home runs.

Despite this, Jake Arrieta is still a very good pitcher, and he will still get the large deal he and Scott Boras are asking for.  Yu Darvish and Alex Cobb are going to get paid a lot of money as well.  But the hesitancy with which front offices have pursued these high-end arms signals a shift in the way the league is approaching starting pitching.  The standoff we are seeing now between free agents and front offices may not be the anomaly everyone is making it out to be.

Email: ConnorLoughlin2020@u.northwestern.edu