The ability to handle late-inning pressure still has value to teams. But the accumulation of saves, standing alone, isn’t generally the driver of open-market bullpen salaries that it once was. For arbitration, however, saves tallies pay big, opening the door to significant earning opportunities for relievers.
So, which players have put themselves in position to command nice salary boosts this fall owing to their saves tallies? Here’s a list of the baker’s dozen hurlers who’ll be eligible for arbitration next year and have already accrued double-digit saves in 2019:
- Kirby Yates, Padres ($3.062MM current salary; entering final season of eligibility): Currently pacing all of baseball with 33 saves, Yates is lining up quite a fruitful final trip through arbitration. He’s not working off of the biggest platform, but he’s likely to get the biggest raise of this group with his saves totals and general brilliance (1.13 ERA, 77 strikeouts) … unless he and the Friars strike an extension.
- Roberto Osuna, Astros ($6.5MM current salary; entering 2nd to last season of eligibility): Osuna has been effective, but not exceptionally dominant. Having blown five saves, and not been ridden particularly hard by the Houston org, he has accumulated somewhat fewer saves (26) than might have been anticipated for one of the league’s winningest teams. Osuna is still on pace to out-earn every other pitcher on this list in total arbitration earnings, owing to his massive Super Two starting salary.
- Edwin Diaz, Mets ($607K current salary; entering 1st of 3 seasons of eligibility): Though he is still racking up strikeouts, Diaz is also proving exceptionally homer-prone in New York. His 5.56 ERA is an unquestionable disappointment. Still, having already picked up 25 saves and with more yet to come, he is going to command a big first-time arb salary. It just won’t be nearly as much as it would have been had his platform year looked more like his 2018 effort.
- Alex Colome, White Sox ($7.325MM current salary; entering final season of eligibility): The 30-year-old has the saves total (23) and ERA (2.30) of an ace reliever, with the peripherals (7.7 K/9 vs. 3.6 BB/9; 4.53 SIERA, 4.59 xFIP) of a passable middle reliever. There’s an argument to be made that he shouldn’t be tendered, since it’s going to cost a pretty penny, though that seems rather unlikely given that the South Siders decided against trading him when they had the chance this summer.
- Shane Greene, Braves ($4MM current salary; entering final season of eligibility): Unfortunately, Greene blew his shot — his first one, anyway; we’ll see how things progress in Atlanta — at building up his saves tally after being dealt to the Braves. He has already accumulated 22, so he’ll be in line for a nice raise regardless. In his last arb experience, Greene earned a raise of just over $2MM by closing out 32 wins in 2018.
- Hector Neris, Phillies ($1.8MM current salary; entering 2nd to last season of eligibility): The Philadelphia closer is still building on his 21-save figure. He has also already accumulated 68 strikeouts this season.
- Taylor Rogers, Twins ($1.525MM current salary; entering 2nd of 4 seasons of eligibility): The extra year of arbitration afforded by Super Two status sure can pay off. Rogers has 18 saves, 68 strikeouts, and a 2.68 ERA through 53 2/3 innings. A big raise this year will further raise his base for two additional arb trips.
- Luke Jackson, Braves ($585K current salary; entering 1st of 3 seasons of eligibility): Few expected Jackson to remain on the Atlanta roster all year, let alone to accumulate 18 saves and 73 strikeouts to this point. He isn’t especially likely to pad his total down the stretch, having surrendered the job to a still-unsettled cast of incoming relievers, but Jackson ha set the stage regardless for a much-better-than-expected offseason payday.
- Ken Giles, Blue Jays ($6.3MM current salary; entering final season of eligibility): The Toronto organization was never going to win a ton of games, so Giles was never likely to accumulate a huge number of saves. But he’s stuck on 16 owing to an unfortunate elbow issue that arose in the midst of an outstanding season (1.89 ERA, 62 strikeouts in 38 innings). If he had remained healthy and taken over the 9th for a contender, he’d have had much greater earning capacity. Fortunately for Giles, he has a high starting point to build from.
- Hansel Robles, Angels ($1.4MM current salary; entering 2nd to last season of eligibility): Another unexpected save tallier, Robles has picked up 16 with more to come. He has established himself as a key cog in the Halos pen, though it remains to be seen whether he’ll hang onto the closer’s role for 2020.
- Blake Treinen, Athletics ($6.4MM current salary; entering 2nd to last season of eligibility): Treinen enjoyed a record-setting arb run last year but has regressed on the mound, working to a 4.74 ERA with just 8.4 K/9 against 5.7 BB/9 along with an uncharacteristically low 42.9% groundball rate. With 16 saves already logged, Treinen is going to command a not-unsubstantial raise on top of his already hefty salary. It’d be awfully tough to give up on a pitcher with his upside, particularly since he’s still pumping upper-nineties heat, but the tab seems steep for the A’s. If he’s not a non-tender candidate, Treinen will likely be batted around in offseason trade talks.
- Roenis Elias, Nationals ($910K current salary; entering 2nd to last season of eligibility): There’s no real chance that Elias will add to his sum of 14 saves, all accrued with the Mariners before he was dealt to D.C., but that’s still a nice feather in his cap. Elias can also hope to add some holds down the stretch, though he’ll have to work back from the injured list first.
- Liam Hendriks, Athletics ($2.15MM current salary; entering final season of eligibility): Since taking the reigns from Treinen, the breakout Aussie hurler has picked up 13 saves with more to come. While he’s not going to drive a huge raise with the save numbers alone, Hendriks is also pacing this list with a hefty 63 1/3 inning workload and has already recorded 88 strikeouts.
Crazy to think Treinen goes from a reliever that the A’s could’ve gotten a serious haul for the prior offseason to a serious non tender candidate. He’s never been this bad in his big league career. I’m sure he’ll be highly sought after as a bounce back candidate if he’s non tendered though. Someone’s going to try to fix him.
I strongly disagree. This is natural regression for Blake back to what he was with the Nats.
Completely false. He was a groundballs machine in Washington and was never as bad as he currently is. If he were still generating groundballs, I wouldn’t be as concerned about the poor results. However he’s not. And he can’t throw strikes. He never had an issue getting ball on the ground in Washington and he never had a strike throwing problem to this level.
Hi Jeff, great stuff as usual! Just wanted to mention you’re stuck in 2018 listing Osuna as a member of the Blue Jays 🙂
Goodness. It was too late in the evening to be finishing off this post!
Shouldn’t Edwin Diaz be on the list? To what degree will this seasons 5.5+ ERA cut into the massive raise his 2 year save total of 81 & counting would otherwise command?
I don’t think Diaz is arb eligible until after 2020.
He’s arb eligible in the off-season
He is and after this horrific year it will help minimize his raise.
I … don’t know how I lost track of Diaz. But he is definitely eligible and should definitely be on here. I’ll add a blurb.
Colome, peripherals of a passable middle reliever? Yes, because he’s certainly pitched like a passable middle reliever so far this year. He was going to regress as the season went on, and he’s even showing it the last couple of weeks. But a passable middle reliever? Come on. This is why I can’t take a lot of these new sabermetric stats that seriously.
Yes. They fail to mention the most important stat for any closer which is SV%. Alex Colome number is 96% thus far in 2019 as the White Sox closer, the best mark of his career. He has been clutch when it most matters.
Additionally, many of the runs he has allowed have come in non-save situations when the White Sox were giving him some innings during stretches when saves just weren’t available. Those situations should be more common next season when the White Sox figure to become relevant as they begin their transition from rebuilders to contenders.
Any suggestion that the White Sox will consider non-tendering Colome this offseason is ludicrous short of a melt-down or injury during the final 6 weeks of this season.
@Aaron Sapoznik
Amen! Yes, anyone who thinks the Sox could non-tender Colome is a fool. As I mentioned in my long post below, too many fans aren’t able to read between the lines in the tried and true stats and use peripherals as a security blanket for arguing for or against a player. Peripherals can be useful tools if used the right way, but not to the extent they’re currently being used.
I mentioned this in one of my posts the other day, the whole point of the game is to score runs (or prevent runs). Yet basic stats like the RBI keeps getting swept to the side. To me, the RBI is one of the most important stats. Sure, there are ways to get RBI’s that aren’t deserved. But when a player exceeds 100 RBI’s, how many of those RBI’s are undeserved? Maybe a handful.
RBIS don’t tell you much of anything. If If I was up with RISP 300 times and I drove in 100; I’m somehow a better “run producer” than a guy who came up w RISP 150x and drove in 80?
That was obviously a simplified example but that’s literally the flaw right there. Even RISP aren’t created equal. If player X came up to the plate w a guy on 3rd w 1 or fewer outs 50x and player Y came up with a guy on 3rd 50x but there were two outs, does that in anyway sound comparable to you? RBIS are great for a lazy stat to compare guys. That’s about it. We can literally look up better numbers. We all have computers here. It’ll take more time and that might not be appealing to your average guy so I get it. But don’t tell me how great the RBI is.
@jbigz12
Good points. I’ll definitely give you that. RBI’s are definitely a stat of opportunity. Obviously Ruth had more opportunities for RBI’s in the Murderer’s Row years than, say, Trout.
Sorry, lost track of time. It’s a shame I have to go, because I’d really like to keep going with this. I love these discussions/arguments. Even though I have my opinions, I see it from your end and respect your well thought out opinions. We need battles like this on these sites so more people can see it from both sides.
I don’t have issues w RBIS as a stat. They look good; they’re easy for your average fan to see. Baseball isn’t solely analytical by any means. Being able to get the man home from 3rd base instead of striking out or walking has value. That’s not going to be calculated in any metric. I fully understand that; I just don’t see how RBIS are the appropriate way to measure that value.
The playing field isn’t even for a RBI. It’s not necessarily perfectly even for a HR or a walk/strikeout (not everyone gets the same PA’s v the same pitchers/teams) but it’s a hell of a lot less reliant on others. You take the walk,HR, or K; regardless of what the guys in front of you did.
It’s just too flawed to have any real merit as a player comparison tool.
If that’s how you see it, you’re a fan of the right team. The Sox don’t know what peripherals mean either.
@pplama
I know what peripherals mean. There’s too many sheep who think these new shiny stats are the best thing to ever happen to baseball and its fans because the MLB media has told them so. I’m not saying these stats don’t have any purpose, but too many fans manipulate these stats to make their argument work, and they don’t understand these stats they’re using in their arguments.
Examples: I had someone argue with me that because Madrigal’s ISO was around .100, his skills might not translate to the MLB level. Never mind he’s not a power hitter, but that was his silly argument. I saw another genius ripping McCann behind the plate because his pitch-framing was weak, like pitch-framing is the standard to use for a catcher’s defense. If MLB actually went away with the home plate ump, pitch-framing would cease to exist. I could go on and on. It’s things like this where people aren’t using common sense in their arguments. They’re using meaningless stats as the basis for their arguments.
Now my favorite stat to pick apart, WAR. WAR is a good concept, but should never have seen the light of day. Trout is the best player in the game today, but couldn’t hold a candle to Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, etc. I would take the first full 7 seasons of Frank Thomas over Trout’s first full 7 seasons in a heartbeat, without even having to think about it. Yet, Trout is already passing HOFers in career WAR in his 8th full season, even though he just got his 2nd 40-HR season, his career high BA is .326, and his career high RBI is 111 (for now). No way should this happen. There are 3 different methods of calculating WAR. These experts couldn’t come up with a universal method of calculating WAR? I know WAR is the standard now, but WAR is a joke.
I’ve seen enough games and box scores in my time to read between the lines. I know I can speak for many others. I don’t have to be spoon fed stats/peripherals to know what’s going on. I just use my head.
WAR told you FRank Thomas was elite over those 7 years. Your opinion that he was better than Mike Trout over those years is nothing but an opinion. Not a reason why WAR sucks. Trout routinely hits 70% above league average and plays GG defense in Center Field. That’s just a crap argument. WAR breaks it down to offensive WAR and dWAR also. WAR told you FRank Thomas was the better offensive player over that period. You want to tell me Mike Trout didn’t provide better/borderline elite defense at a much more important position?
If you look at anything in a vacuum you’re an absolute idiot but trying to discredit metrics is silly.
I’m not saying peripherals/metrics don’t have a purpose, they do. They just need to be used the right way. From what I can see from the WAR stat, it puts way too much emphasis on defense. First, WAR needs to be a universal stat, not 3 different methods of the stat. Second, the calculation needs adjusted. I still don’t know how they calculate it, at least not in a way that I could plug in numbers and come up with a figure. That being said, too much emphasis is put on defense. How do I know this. Engel should be nothing more than a defense replacement in the eyes of WAR, a negative value, yet his WAR was positive last year and is this year.
As for Trout, he’s the best player in the game, I have no beef whatsoever with him personally. To me, he’s the best player (or at least OF) defensively. It’s the media I have a beef with, making him out to already be one of the greatest players in MLB history, which he’s not even close to. I’d love to have Trout’s D, but if I were drafting a team and Thomas and Trout were in the pool after each of their 7 full seasons, I would pick Thomas with no hesitation.
As I said, WAR is a good concept, but the way it’s currently calculated, it should never have seen the light of day. I would rather they just keep the offensive WAR and defensive WAR separate, don’t combine it into an overall WAR.
Actually, I probably wouldn’t have that much of a problem with overall WAR if they didn’t have a career WAR for players. If Trout has a WAR of 10 this year, for example, leave it at that. Don’t tally it up where he already has 70+ WAR already in his career and is passing HOFers already in only his 8th full season. That sounds so silly. His stats are great, but they’re not that good. That’s something I could see from Ruth, but not Trout. Ruth’s numbers dwarf Trout’s.
TL;DR
Nothing I wrote implied any judgment. I just said what is obviously true of his peripherals.
Beyond that, the argument that Colome hasn’t been as good as his results is really not even a matter of citing fancy sabermetric stats. K/BB ain’t new. And as for the other measures that point toward serious regression — Statcast readings, for instance — it’s really just sheer common sense that is now more measurable.
@Jeff Todd
I could see regression taking place for him also this year. He was pitching way over his head. But for the peripherals to say he’s a passable middle reliever with how he’s pitched this year, I have to question that. No offense to you personally.
Ah, I thought you were displeased with my characterization.
Regardless, I do think the measures that broadly constitute “peripherals” are intended precisely to take a full picture of how he has pitched this year, as you put it. In most cases, there is an alignment between good results and good underlying measures. When the two don’t match, it’s worth highlighting. Sometimes, there may be unusual factors that suggest you should believe the results. But the underlying measures are generally telling us something valuable.
If the team would have had more games to save, the “nightmare” would probably be on this list, too. Of course another team could pick him up and offer him more than the pirates are paying him.
really? whose saves tallies? really. how much time does one spend making a title that just sounds so bad. you could have just wrote: whose save tallies. it means the same thing