The Phillies have agreed to a one-year deal to avoid arbitration with lefty Cesar Jimenez, the club announced. Terms were not made available, though MLBTR’s Matt Swartz projected Jimenez to earn just over league minimum, $600K, through the arbitration process.
In concert with the team’s recent one-year extensions — really, pre-market free agent deals — with Grady Sizemore and Jerome Williams, it appears that Philadelphia is pursuing a strategy of locking in cost certainty early on with several veterans.
Jimenez, 29, had his best season as a pro in 2014. After largely struggling in limited MLB action, he tossed 16 innings of 1.69 ERA ball. But his peripherals were less promising, as he struck out 4.5 and walked 3.9 batters per nine while generating a 40.8% groundball rate. And ERA estimators provided cause to expect regression, as Jimenez put up a 4.26 FIP, 5.22 xFIP, and 5.02 SIERA.
Well, there goes the suspense.
I have to say, I’m a fan of the little moves the phillies had been making. Bringing back decently succesful players on super cheap deals? Sounds good to me
Not going to make the playoffs with these moves though.
True. But they weren’t going to make the playoffs unless they found a way to trade Howard and Lee while getting back Stanton and Trout.
If that’s true I’d think they better starting somewhere else. Trade your valuable players. This guy and Sizemore don’t really have a ton of upside.
You sign guys like these in order to have warm bodies with MLB experience if you do trade your valuable players (pretty much just Byrd and Hamels – maybe Utley and Rollins if you can convince them to waive 10&5 – unless Lee comes back healthy and dominant through ST and a couple of months of the 2015 season, but it’s not an off-season move).
If you don’t, then they serve as options in the event that someone gets injured (or stinks, a la Brown), and you’ve got a chance to flip them for something-that’s-not-totally-worthless. Which is exactly what they did with Roberto Hernandez and Erik Kratz this year.
They spent $5.1 M on 3 guys who were worth (for them) 2.3 rWAR last year. I can get on board with that.
Well, 2.3 rWAR from a single player is worth a heck of a lot more than from 3… But they all appear to have been good decisions from an efficiency standpoint.
There’s only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of guys like this, of course, regardless of salary implications… But it’s better than paying more for players that are about the same (or worse).
Absolutely true it’s better to get 2.3 WAR from 1 player instead of 3. But I don’t see the Phillies being able to get 2 WAR from 1 guy, for $4 M, and 0.3 WAR from another 2 at league minimum.
As far as this move (specifically) goes, I think this sets up an Antonio B trade. With Diekman and Hollands as a decent pair of lefties in the pen, Jimenez for (slightly above) league minimum would seem unnecessary if they were counting on Antonio being here in April.
If ever there were a case in point to prove how relatively weak a stat ERA is to judge pitchers, i give you Mr Cesar Jimenez…
Eh, not really. I’d say he’s more instructive as to the fallacies of small sample sizes. He succeeded for fewer than 20 innings, and as a result his ERA was low.
If he’d thrown 50+, odds are good he would have regressed noticeably. If not, however, then it’s just evidence that reliever sample sizes aren’t instructive.
Oh i agree totally, but id say its a case which shows both, ERA and small sample sizes should be taken with a large pinch of salt.