The Rockies have officially agreed to bring back free agent lefty Jake McGee with a three-year deal that guarantees $27MM. McGee is represented by Wasserman.
McGee’s guarantee comes in the form of consecutive salaries of $7MM, $8.5MM, and $9.5MM. He’s then promised a $2MM buyout on a 2021 vesting/club option that’s priced at $9MM. The extra year vests if McGee appears in sixty games in 2020, finishes forty games in that year, or makes 110 total appearances over the 2019-20 campaigns. There’s also a health requirement for the option to vest, though details remain unclear. It seems the contract also contemplates incentives of up to $4MM annually; while the milestones aren’t known, that leaves some earning upside in McGee’s pocket.
It’s not surprising to see a multi-year deal with a strong guarantee based both on McGee’s quality efforts in 2017 and an aggressive market for relievers thus far. McGee will become the latest in a line of high-quality relievers to come off the board and joins right-hander Bryan Shaw at the back of the Colorado bullpen nw that their deals are finalized.
The 31-year-old McGee struggled in his initial season with the Rockies (2016) after coming over from the Rays in the Corey Dickerson swap, but he largely righted the ship with a solid 2017 season. In 57 1/3 innings, the hard-throwing McGee posted a respectable 3.61 ERA with 9.1 K/9 against 2.5 BB/9 and a 40.5 percent ground-ball rate.
McGee’s 37 percent hard-contact rate is certainly higher than one would like to see, though it’s worth pointing out that much of that hard contact came on grounders; Statcast indicates that McGee’s average exit velocity on balls in the air was among the lowest in baseball (as is borne out in his 0.63 HR/9 rate), but he ranked considerably higher in terms of exit velocity on grounders.
It’s been an up-and-down ride for McGee both in terms of health and bottom-line results since he established himself as a big league regular back in 2012. But the overall body of work is impressive, as he’s logged a combined 3.06 ERA with 10.4 K/9 against 2.4 BB/9 in 329 2/3 innings over that six-year span.
At present, it’s not clear how the Rockies view the back of their bullpen taking shape. McGee has served as a closer in the past and could be asked to take the ball in the ninth inning most often for the Rox in 2018 and beyond. Shaw, who also has agreed to a three-year deal, is no stranger to high-leverage innings himself, having served as an eighth-inning setup man in Cleveland for several years.
Colorado GM Jeff Bridich and his staff may not yet be done adding to the bullpen, either. The Rockies have been linked to Zach Britton, Wade Davis and Greg Holland over the past few weeks, and while they’ve certainly spent aggressively to bring McGee and Shaw into the fold, they’re still somewhere in the vicinity of the payroll mark at which they opened the 2017 campaign. If ownership is willing to spend a bit more with a playoff berth in the rear-view mirror, the Rox could yet make further additions to the ‘pen or elsewhere on the roster.
Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported the signing (via Twitter). Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic had tweeted that rivals anticipated the move. SB Nation’s Chris Cotillo (Twitter links) and Jon Heyman of Fan Rag (links to Twitter) had contract details.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Awesome!
I was doing my physics homework, but then I saw this and threw my pen – well I guess I wanted him to sign with Oakland. Other guys like Abad or Duensing don’t look so satisfying.
Deunsing is surprisingly satisfying, if he signs with the A’s you’ll be happy.
Duensing for 1 year at about $4.5 million with a vesting option for 2019 sounds reasonable to me, but he could probably do better than that in this market. Any team that can afford to sit out this offseason is very fortunate.
Rockies are True Ace Away from being one of favorites in West right now being Dark Horse (agreements could be made for them to be 4th best team in NL right now)
They lost Chatwood. Also its impossible for them to land an ace in free agency. There aren’t many aces on the trading block at the moment either.
Cole Archer Arrieta are all available
Those guys would not pitch like an ace at Coors field
That’s not point if Rockies traded for Archer and Colome I think they could be Arguably NL front runners
Clayton Kershaw doesn’t even pitch like an ace there. With the offense, all they need is league average of “Colorado Ace”….been done. Ubaldo Jimenez was a Cy Young candidate.
Who would? Even Kershaw looks like a middle of the road starter at Coors.
Archer is not necessarily available
Nor Cole!
I am happy with Jon Gray as the ace of the staff. I don’t think they necessarily need an ace quality, but I do think they need a solid veteran starter as an on field leader for the young rotation. CC Sabathia would be my #1 hope, but I doubt that happens. Perhaps they could get a Jason Vargas or Edinson Volquez though.
The Rockies don’t need a veteran starter like that. That’s just a disaster waiting to happen. The young group they’ve assembled is going to be more than passable. With a consistent offense last year they could’ve won 100 games, finding a reliable hitter not named Blackmon, Arenado, or LeMahieu is way more important than finding starting pitching.
I disagree. The Cubs didn’t take the next step forward until they signed Jon Lester. The Astros would not have won last year without Verlander. The Rox need someone on the staff that can be part player, part confidant, part coach. Someone they can talk to and learn from without fearing losing their spot.
Although I do agree that they need another hitter as well. I am still holding out hope for Lucroy, but who knows. A very important help would be a rebound season from Story and/or Desmond. Story could be written off as a sophomore slump and Desmond missed ST and the first month of the season so he never really had a chance to get going.
How about the Rockies trading for Verlander? He’s pitched 1 game at Coor’s over the past 3 years and he went 6 IP, struck out 9, and gave up 1 run. Obviously I’m not saying he’ll replicate that but it’s nice to know his pitches didn’t automatically turn into beach balls at a higher altitude.
Maybe this is the season where David Nied finally steps up!
Or they get some value out of Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle.
The Rockies are a consistent offense away. Their pitching was just fine in 2017 and in need of a tweak, not an overhaul.
But outside of Arenado and Blackmon, the offense is WAY below average, and barely average when you add those two in.
Hopefully with all these relief arms coming off the board the os can trade Britton and hopefully brach or Oday
Wow, big get for the Rox. Lots of teams in on McGee.
The Red Sox better go after Tony Watson, the last upper echelon LH reliever available.
Zach Duke is left.
Hell to the YES! Let’s go Rox!
Did I just read the deal could total up to $50M over 4 years? Holy overpay..
Thats with performance bonuses that he has to meet and if he does it would not be an overpay
Astros lost out on him. Was hoping he would be the lefty specialist.