It has been a good year to be a left-handed reliever on the free-agent market — even if your name isn’t Aroldis Chapman and you don’t work routinely in the triple digits with your fastball. Brett Cecil and the Cardinals kicked things off with a four-year, $30.5MM pact that even includes no-trade protection. Power southpaw Mike Dunn scored three years and $19MM from the Rockies. And even true LOOGY Marc Rzepczynski scored $11MM over two seasons in his contract with the Mariners.
Those big deals suggest that there was plenty of competition in the market, which perhaps bodes well for the best remaining southpaw arms. Two, in particular stand out: Boone Logan, who played most recently with the Rockies, and Jerry Blevins, formerly of the Mets. You could throw Travis Wood into this mix, too, but he may have a somewhat different (if perhaps overlapping) market, since he’s capable of working as a starter. J.P. Howell has also been a quality reliever in recent years, but the soft-tossing southpaw declined last year in run prevention, velocity, and swinging-strike rate, so we’ll leave him out of the mix for this particular look at the relief market.
Focusing on Logan and Blevins, a variety of organizations could still be willing to cough up significant guarantees. In the A.L. East, the Orioles are deeper in the right-handed department (other than closer Zach Britton); the Yankees’ top southpaw after Chapman, Tommy Layne, isn’t exactly a late-inning monster; the Blue Jays are thin with Cecil departing (they project to feature Aaron Loup); and even the Red Sox could conceivably enter the picture (though they may feel set with Robbie Ross and Fernando Abad). The West, too, has conceivable suitors: the Astros entered the winter looking for a southpaw to pair with Tony Sipp, the Angels’ top southpaw is the solid but somewhat unexciting Jose Alvarez, and the A’s have made surprising pen investments in the past and would carry Daniel Coulombe as their LOOGY if Sean Doolittle is utilized as a closer (or is traded).
Over in the National League, the N.L. East-rival Nationals and Mets could both stand to add late-inning lefties, and the Marlins could as well. Miami has already spent heavily on its pen, and seemingly feels it’s complete, but doesn’t have a high-end lefty after losing Dunn. And the Cubs could stand to buttress their mix after adding swingman Brian Duensing on a modest contract — assuming, at least, that Mike Montgomery isn’t bumped from the rotation by some trade.
Apart from the fairly robust remaining need, there’s every reason to believe that both Logan (32) and Blevins (33) have set themselves up for nice contracts. Indeed, they turned in rather similar, rather productive seasons in 2016. Logan finally converted his steadily excellent swinging-strike rate into results, as he posted a 3.69 ERA (while spending half his time at Coors Field) on the back of 11.1 K/9 and 3.9 BB/9 along with a 49.5% groundball rate. And Blevins allowed just 2.79 earned per nine. He also posted 11.1 K/9 while allowing 3.2 free passes per nine innings and generating grounders on 45.8% of the balls put in play against him.
Logan worked with an average 93.0 mph fastball but utilized his slider on over half of his deliveries to the plate. That mix enabled him post a personal-best 16.4% swinging-strike rate, which tied him with Andrew Miller for the third-highest mark among southpaws who threw at least thirty innings (trailing only Chapman and Britton).
Though he’s less of a power pitcher, and doesn’t get quite as many swings and misses, Blevins’ actually squeezed out a few more strikeouts than did Logan in their most recent seasons. Blevins continued to rely heavily on a cut fastball, his usage of which jumped when he went to the Mets in 2015, and that may have helped him limit the damage when pitching without the platoon advantage.
Indeed, Blevins holds the advantage over Logan when facing right-handed hitters. Though his strikeout, walk, and home run numbers weren’t nearly as good as when he did have the platoon advantage, Blevins limited righties to a .172/.266/.345 batting line last year. And he has generally been at least serviceable against them over his career. Logan, on the other hand, shows much more pronounced splits. Opposing righties have posted a big .288/.376/.478 slash against him in 847 total opportunities across his 11 MLB campaigns.
Looking at the bigger picture, neither pitcher really stands out. Logan missed some time in 2014 after undergoing surgery for bone chips following the 2013 season, but has generally been reasonably healthy. And Blevins did miss much of 2015 after consecutive forearm fractures, though both were freak instances. Each pitcher has had up years and down years, but their overall arcs aren’t altogether dissimilar. Over their careers, some metrics prefer one to the other (Blevins’s 3.58 FIP tops Logan’s 4.03 mark; Logan’s 3.78 xFIP is better than Blevins’s 3.92 rate).
So, it seems like a close call. If you were looking to add a useful southpaw arm to your bullpen, which of these two free agents would you prefer?
While I’m happy for the data, I have to admit I never would have thought that a Free Agent Face-off between Jerry Blevins and Boone Logan would ever generate so much excitement. Click-bait?
Seems a disproportionate amount of effort dedicated to two forgettable players.
Virtual ink is limitless.
If you have ideas on something worth writing about, I’m all ears.
I’m glad you wrote this article. Been a slow day on the site and I’m grateful for something to read.
Agreed. As a baseball junkie anything is better to read than nothing. Outside of the Sale trade and the EE drama it’s been a pretty boring offseason.
Shapiro and Atkins laying out there offseason plan and doing nothing so far to address there goals. Toronto Blue Jays: Rebuild vrs trying to compete in 2017
How about an article on how to better evaluate potential trades? Prospects, veterans, years of control, contract obligations, etc.
Sounds hard! But I like the concept … something like, “how to construct reasonable trade proposals for comments and chat questions.”
You have no idea how helpful this would be to some of the commenters who have no idea how to put together a trade.
I think I made the first comment, so maybe I need to come up with a suggestion. How about a round up series–top 3 remaining needs for each team and possible matches? You can break that into NL and AL, or by division.
That’s a good idea! Thanks. Ha, I had been thinking of something like that … maybe this is the impetus I need to do it.
BTW, I was serious with my question. There’s very little in the way of info bouncing around right now.
Ask and ye shall receive!
To quote my kids (on other matters) Awesome!
I knew you were. And I believe it that there’s not a lot of hard info flying around. The produce has all been touched already, and if I were a GM thinking about something, I’d rather think quietly, then move, because even a moderate increase in price from other “interest’ might make the investment not worthwhile.
Thinking of ideas.
1. Better educate the commenter about the importance of key stats for pitchers and hitters. Say you discuss ops+ or something. Help people understand differences and similarities to other hitter measurements
2. What about taking an early look at next years draft for the 1st round. A lot of sites do mocks I cannot say ive seen mocks here. Introduce people to the prospects sooner- justify why you think so and so will be drafted by such team.
3. Maybe do a farm system update for each division- maybe pick a bonafide player who you think will be the next big thing for the club and a dark horse nobody talks about that you see contributing for the club in the near future.
4. What about letting commenters do submit a trade theyd like to see and you pick a couple to discuss the possibility and how might the trade be tweaked to make sense for both teams.
5. If i am not mistaken a lot of players have done that sacrifice x percent of future earnings for guaranteed money. Maybe do an update about how that is going for the players who have made the deal?
6. Maybe do a look at current injured players for each division and look at where they are in their rehab and estimated time to return.
The stats for dummies series, in a KISS format, is a great idea for a lot of readers, plus you can recycle it regularly. At this point you have plenty of readers that understand the importance of non traditional stats, even starting at OPS, but just don’t know what they mean in very basic terms. Next is why each is important. Finally, and hardest, is what is a good number for each. For example most have their concept of what a good batting average is (albeit irrelevant), but even after grasping the concept of even a simpler stat like OPS it typically takes awhile for a casual fan starting to embrace new stats to establish a concept of what is good for each. A new convert may easily understand what OPS means, but have no clue whether .750 is good or not. Obviously stats that benchmark against the league are easier…
I enjoyed the article Jeff.
What seemingly crazy move will the rockies make next!?
Not much else to write about this time of year…
I like Blevins a but kire bc he can face a righty in a pinch.
I can’t understand any of what you just said, but Blevins was affective to righties. He isn’t much a LOOGY but just a solid reliever
Agreed
Logan, I guess? Um.
Headless?????? Um why
Probably how the image showed up on the app.
I don’t know. They are really close. This free agent showdown I thought was kind of cool.
Jerry Blevins beats a headless Boone Logan every time!
But Blevins has no torso. Perhaps we can affix Blevins head to Logan’s body?
Eureka! We have created Barry Blogins!
I want one of these guys, we can use the money we get from dumping Jay Bruce!
Hang in there MLBTR-guys! There will be stuff to write about soon.
No JP Howell?
Who ends up with the Cubs? Blevins, Logan, Howell, Doolittle, Xavier Cedeno, Brad Hand?
Make your pick!
I should’ve at least mentioned him … will add.
Blevins is more effective pitched well when facing lefties
Howell solid bounceback canidate
Boone Logan has a cooler name, so he wins.
Counterpoint: Jerry Blevins is awesome on Twitter.
But is he awesome enough to make up for his rather boring Jerry Blevins-ness?
I think he’s a very interesting guy, even if his name could’ve been given to a “Fargo” character!
Logan has spent the last 5 years in Coors and Yankee Stadium and hasn’t hiccuped.
I’d be very interested to see him in a pitcher’s park.
How about an article on the Jays first real post-season under the Shapiro-Atkins “Indians Way” philosophy. Last post season, Atkins came on and let Tony LaCava run the show until he was acclimated to the Jays. LaCava signed Happ and Estrada early as Atkins first came on and made most of the decisions until Atkins was up and running and knowledgeable of the team. Many people credit Atkins for that signing, but, it was really LaCava and the old Anthopoulis crew that made the decisions last off season. Atkins started bringing in a lot of outside staff and replacing existing staff in January and February after most of the post season was finished. Atkins said early in this post season that getting younger, more athletic and more left handed was his primary goals for this offseason. So far, that hasn’t happened. However, there is still time for things to change.
Saying Atkins wasn’t the one behind the Estrada/happ signings might be true, but it’s not on lacava anyways. We all know it’s Shapiro running the show, so he was the real one pulling those strings
And they’ve done a fine job anyways.
I actually love posts like this. On my OOTP game I frequently draft the entire league into new teams all by hand myself and end up faced with questions like this! Harder than it seems!
Come someone remind me what the “LOOGY” acronym means?