Many different types of free agents end up receiving relatively expensive, one-year deals. Some are looking for the right opportunity to earn a nice single-season paycheck while (hopefully) building up to a multi-year deal in the ensuing winter. Others settle for a solo campaign after trying and failing to find more. Some are younger players who have enough upside to draw a significant offer despite a rough platform campaign. Others are steady veterans that are being paid more for their floor than their ceiling. All such players necessarily receive only a limited commitment from their new teams; those that end up with non-contenders must be prepared for a mid-season scramble for new lodging in the event of a swap.
With about a quarter of the season in the books, we’re looking at how things are shaping up for the highest-paid rental free agents. We already performed this exercise for position players. Now, we’ll take a look at the ten most expensive one-year starters (and, later, relievers):
Matt Harvey, Angels, $11MM: The priciest arm on this list, Harvey hasn’t come through as the Halos hoped. He’s averaging just five frames per outing in nine starts and has limped to a 6.35 ERA. Though his velocity is fine, Harvey isn’t getting many swings and misses (9.7% swinging-strike rate) and has given up a lot of loud contact (40.6% hard contact vs. only a 9.8% soft contact rate). He’s likely performing better than his results, but Harvey is showing no signs of returning to anything approaching his former performance levels at thirty years of age.
Trevor Cahill, Angels, $9MM: I’ll be honest, I thought this deal would turn out well for the team. Cahill has been good when healthy and seemed to be an interesting risk. Unfortunately, he has managed only 44 innings of 6.95 ERA pitching over nine starts. Like several other struggling hurlers on this, he has been ravaged by the long ball, allowing nearly one every three innings.
CC Sabathia, Yankees, $8MM: An offseason heart procedure seemed ominous, but the outcomes have been sparkling since since Sabatahia returned to the hill. He’s now through 36 1/3 innings of sub-3.00 ERA pitching to open the year. Unfortunately, it may only be a matter of time before opposing hitters expose his act. Sabathia carries only 6.7 K/9 go with 3.7 BB/9 and has been torched for 2.23 home runs per regulation game. His FIP number is over twice his ERA.
Derek Holland, Giants, $7MM: Another hurler that settled for a single season despite having a case for multiple years, Holland ended up being knocked to the bullpen after seven starts. That move sparked a clubhouse flare-up reflective of the club’s rough opening stretch to the season. Holland has improved his strikeout rate but otherwise added walks and dingers, leading to an unsightly 7.17 ERA in 37 2/3 innings. While the Giants never expected world-beating results from Holland, the overall run of events is about the opposite of what they hoped for.
Tyson Ross, Tigers, $5.75MM: Elbow nerve issues have put Ross on the shelf. Perhaps they also help explain the rough start he had authored. Through 35 1/3 innings in seven starts, the veteran hurler carries a 6.11 ERA with 6.4 K/9 and 4.6 BB/9. While he has moved back toward his former strengths with a sturdy 51.3% groundball rate, he’s also permitting home runs at a 22.6% HR/FB clip.
Wade Miley, Astros, $4.5MM: Many were surprised to see the Houston organization settle for Miley, but it made sense to go with a short-term hurler of this sort with so much upper-level talent in the system. Plus, Miley had an odd but legitimately interesting 2018 showing. He hasn’t maintained quite the home run-suppression rates he did last year, but is still getting a good number of grounders and turning in quality results despite underwhelming K/BB numbers (15.9% K rate vs. 5.6% BB rate).
Marco Estrada, Athletics, $4MM: The Oakland org was well aware of Estrada’s back issues when it signed him. Unfortunately, the risk hasn’t paid off, as he has made only five starts and struggled through 23 2/3 innings. Worryingly, ERA estimators (including FIP, xFIP, and SIERA) take even dimmer views of Estrada’s showing to date than his 6.85 ERA suggests. He managed only an 11:8 K/BB ratio and 7.6% swinging-strike rate (his lowest since his brief 2008 debut) before hitting the IL.
Martin Perez, Twins, $3.5MM: This signing looks like the best one on the list to this point. It seems the Minnesota org had good reason to believe it could unlock something from Perez, who is throwing harder (at or above 95 mph with both fastballs) and exhibiting much more swing and miss (11.4% swinging-strike rate) than ever before. He has used a newfound cutter to devastating effect. Best of all for the Twins, the deal includes a club option for 2020.
Matt Shoemaker, Blue Jays, $3.5MM: It seemed that Shoemaker was authoring a nice bounceback tale in Toronto. Through five starts, he worked to a 1.57 ERA with 7.5 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, and a 51.4% groundball rate. There was some regression in store, to be sure, but generally it seemed as if he had finally turned the corner after some injury-riddled campaigns in Los Angeles. While arm health wasn’t an issue, a freak knee injury left the 32-year-old with a torn ACL and back on the IL for the remainder of the year.
Clay Buchholz, Blue Jays, $3MM: This one isn’t working out for the Jays either. After opening the year on the injured list, Buchholz made it through only five starts before he was diagnosed with a grade 2 shoulder strain. And he hasn’t been good when on the hill, either, with a 6.57 ERA in 24 2/3 frames.
Most of them are injury prone pitchers. I bet the Angels wish they could have combined the money for their 2 injured pitchers for the last remaining starter on the market.
While it’s true they certainly wished they could have gotten better than they did, they couldn’t actually sign anyone other than the guys they did either as the guaranteed 24 million in raises to just 3 guys for next year limited them to additions willing to accept 1 year deals.
The ridiculous salary commitment to Trout, Upton and Pujols dictates all roster decisions at this point for the club (those 3 will make 90 million the next two seasons, which is more than half the roughly 165 amount the team will commit for opening day payroll)
It was reported that the Angels made competitive offers to Eovaldi and Happ, although not enough to ultimately sign them. It was also reported that the Angels were “in” on Corbin, but I have no idea what that actually means, as I can’t believe they could have offered him anything close to what he signed for. Having failed to land those players, I don’t think there was anyone else the Angels valued enough to sign to a multi-year deal, so they went the one-year route on a couple of higher risk guys.
Yes we heard that, and I don’t believe the Angels were ever seriously considering signing any of those pitchers to multiple year contracts
Moreno has a history of randomly showing up during adding periods saying he’s willing to go big on additional guys (says it to keep fans happy and optimistic,) but has also explicitly said the yearly opening 155-165 payroll is already above the budget, and has adhered to that the last 6 seasons.
Right now they sit with 116 million committed to 5 guys for 2020, leaving just around 50 million for the other 20 spots. Had they signed one of those other pitchers it would have blown the possibility of staying in his already “overspent budget” (according to him; they’re his words) – hence my not believing those rumors were truly serious at all
I agree. The Yankees and Phillies were the two serious bidders for Happ, and the Red Sox were seemingly it on Eovalidi. Happ said that he would accept if there was a 3- year deal, and they did not give it to him
Never reached free agency but Ryu on the qualified offer has been amazing. So many people said it was a mistake to QO him.
Dodgers should sign Ryu to three year deal and fourth year option now before season is over.
I’m guessing the people at Boras Corp are planning on trying to get him a little more than that on the FA market.
He’s 32 years old. I think that deal might be the limit unless the 4th year was a team option. But I’ve underestimated the amounts teams pay to players many times in the past.
Estrada will never throw a pitch for the A’s again
And he won’t need to. Our current rotation isn’t great, but it’s performed well. I like Mengden, but he’s no longer a long term piece on this team. Bassitt and Montas definitely help us now, and Montas could be in the team’s plans long term with how he’s performed so far with the added splitter, but ultimately we’re waiting on the gluttony of starting pitchers returning from arm surgery.
James Kaprielian threw his first 2 innings in 2 years in Stockton before it got rained out, Jharel Cotton threw 3 innings in his first start since TJS last year in Stockton, Daulton Jefferies is currently getting back into it in Midland, AJ Puk isn’t far behind Cotton and Kaprielian and Sean Manaea has thrown 3 bullpen sessions now without any setbacks after having shoulder surgery last year. On top of that Parker Dunshee is getting his first look in Vegas and Brian Howard should be joining him relatively soon with how terrible our starting pitching in Vegas is.
Puk’s about to head to Stockton, he’s already hitting 95, he’s literally right behind Cotton right now…I would much rather take the roller coaster ride that is Mengden over Estrada any day
Who sees action first: Puk or Manaea?
I’m going to say Puk because he’s further along…I think Manaea is about to start extended spring training
Manaea probably
I would say Manaea because he has a major league track record. Puk has barely throwm in Triple A.
He actually hasn’t thrown in AAA yet but there was an interview with Beane and how the A’s are over wasting pitching bullets in the minors, which is why he would have made the team out of ST last year….this is apparent with the aggressive promotions that they’re giving to Dunshee and to a lesser extent Howard (who apparently has an even more deceptive motion than Chris Young had).
I would 100% expect him to say something similar if you were in the situation we’re in. Our position player core beat our pitching core to the majors be a pretty considerable margin. You don’t want to waste the talents of elite pitching prospects when you’ve got elite defense and solid offensive production behind them.
The A’s expected to have guys like Matt Chapman, Matt Olson, Sean Murphy, Ramon Laureano, Sean Manaea, AJ Puk, Jesus Luzardo and James Kaprielian all in the majors at the same time, but Chapman and Olson will end up being in their third years by the time our high level pitching prospects see their first full year in the majors, and they’ll be expensive to hold onto into free agency if our pitching is also hitting arbitration by the time they’re FA’s. A’s want to make sure it’s worth that investment going into a new ballpark, because that’s not a small amount of money being spent on a guy like Chapman.
This is why the A’s did not go big with free agent starting pitching. With all the great young pitching coming back from injury and developing in the minors, it would have been a mistake going big on starting pitching. People who criticized the A’s for that annoy me. Especially strike four who constantly suggest the A’s are dumb for not going after Keuchel and Kimbrel. Why sacrifice a boat load of so few money the A’s have on pitching with all of these guys they already have?
They expected a win now mentality because of the season we had last year, but we were never going to repeat that success without the young pitching we were expecting to get this year.
You don’t just block that level of talent with multiyear deals on what was a considerably weak pitching market.
Im surprised Montas was not receiving much love before the season started and before spring training. He throws gas and has been pitching like a champ. He was viewed as the next big thing when he was a prospect with the White Sox, but some people thought he would be a potential cut from the opening day rotation this year. What a mistake that would have been.
I have no idea why teams don’t want to sign older FAs anymore. Must be collusion.
FAs that aren’t expecting a huge contract because of injuries or poor performance are the new market inefficiency. The “older FAs” that teams would actually want on their teams are priced out of many teams’ ranges.
Intelligence doesn’t equate to collusion.
Decades of being bitten by signing old FAs has finally led to teams smarting up
Nate Karns got a $800K major league contract and has taken a huge dump just like everyone figured he would. While the dollar amount wasn’t huge, he has sucked in major ways.
Did anyone on the planet other than the Angels front office think that Harvey deal was a good idea?
Every other team’s front office because they weren’t the ones who signed him.
Harvey has only ever been a FA once, and the Angels are the only team to sign him off the FA market.
So, no, and makes for a very odd comment
Mrs. Harvey
LOL!
I think taking a flyer on him wasn’t a bad idea. Who knows, one pitching coach get him back to his prime. Signing him for 11 million dollars to be your best pitcher though? That’s where it gets ugly.
I think the Reds actually wanted to keep in pretty badly.
Not for that amount of money.
Many Angels fans were praising the decision, coming up with plenty of what-if fantasies featuring Harvey and Cahill resulting in the playoffs.
Never understand it myself
Should have gambled and signed never injured Chris Volstad for a good deal less money. Career xFIP of 4.30 ERA shows he’s had a lot of tough luck playing on consistently lousy teams.
I like the idea, but he doesn’t get enough strikeouts.
Guessing this is a joke, right? He never shown anything resembling a good pitcher.
For every over priced over used FA there are two pitchers at AAA who can fill the slot and give you 5 innings per outing for a lot less money. Run them out every five or six days, ask for 80 good pitches and the turn it over to the pen. Money all in reverse for the mound.
Where does Jordan Lyles rank on this list? Just to cheap to be top 10. Is he in the #11 to #15. Either way it looks pretty decent so far even if he is averaging less than six per start.
He received $2.7M I believe.
NH was right on this one.Like Perez,though,he should have got an option for 2020,even if it was 2-3 times the money.
Lyles has a chance to be the bargain of the year.
Look at that….. The Angels have the 1 and 2 spot. Have to give them credit, they are always looking to build a solid 3rd place team.
Said it back then and I’ll say it again; Angels severely outbid everyone for two pitchers. Harvey shouldn’t have received anything close to 11-mil and Cahill shouldn’t have received 9-mil. Angels being the Angels. Nobody should be surprised at this.
They would have been better off keeping Shoemaker, who’s injury only happened because Eric Sogard’s little league coach forgot to teach him where to go on a rundown.
Clay Buchholz doesn’t know what not being injured feels like anymore.