Former major league outfielder Brad Hawpe was a more-than-respectable offensive player during his peak with the Rockies. While Hawpe had difficulty early on from his debut in 2004 through the next season, he combined to slash .288/.384/.518 (124 wRC+) with 99 home runs in 2,338 plate appearances from 2006-09. The last of those four years, an All-Star campaign for Hawpe, went down as his final truly effective effort as a hitter. After Hawpe got off a .255/.343/.432 start (94 wRC+) with only seven homers in 2010, the team released him late that August.
Hawpe, then 31 years old, drew a vast amount of interest when he reached free agency amid a pennant race. He ultimately signed a minor league contract with the Rays, who at the time were in a hotly contested fight for AL East supremacy with the Yankees and Red Sox. The Rays did end up with 96 victories and a division crown that season before falling in the ALDS, but their regular-season sucess wasn’t Hawpe’s doing. He debuted with Tampa Bay on Sept. 1 and went on to hit .179/.304/.333 with two homers in 39 at-bats in its uniform.
Hawpe didn’t participate in the Rays’ postseason series, and shortly after its conclusion, he rejected their arbitration offer in order to revisit the open market. Because he was a Type B free agent under MLB’s old system, the Rays were entitled to a compensatory draft pick for losing Hawpe. And they did watch him exit when he took San Diego’s $2MM guarantee in January 2011. Hawpe didn’t produce as a Padre or as a member of the Angels, with whom his career concluded in 2013, but the Rays have benefited immensely from his short-term run with them and stand to continue gaining from it over the long haul.
In essence, the Rays traded one month of Hawpe – who cost them very little money – for the 52nd selection in the draft. The Rays used that choice on a then-Washington state high school left-hander named Blake Snell. The year Tampa Bay drafted him, Baseball America wrote in his scouting report, “Because of his signability, his velocity and how well he has performed in front of crosscheckers, Snell could get popped as high as the supplemental first round, though on pure talent he would probably go a few rounds later.”
The gamble has worked out for the Rays, with whom Snell has been elite at times dating back to his first season in 2016. He spun 89 innings of 3.54 ERA ball then, and though Snell struggled enough the next season to earn a short-term demotion to the minors, he returned to MLB to finish with a decent 4.04 ERA in 129 1/3 frames. But it was 2018 when Snell truly took off; owing in part to a jump in velocity, he pitched to a 1.89 ERA with 11.01 K/9 and 3.19 BB/9 across 180 2/3 innings en route to AL Cy Young honors.
With injuries troubling him, Snell was unable to reign atop the AL again last year, when his ERA ballooned to 4.29 in 107 innings. However, that’s not to say he totally fell off the map. You’d be hard-pressed to find a team that wouldn’t sign up for the 3.32 FIP and 12.36 K/9 against 3.36 BB/9 he posted last season.
The Rays already extended Snell on a five-year, $50MM guarantee deal before the prior campaign, keeping a high-end starter under control through 2023. To think, it all started with the minor addition of Hawpe a decade ago. Not bad.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
proof that the current competitive balance system is biased unfairly towards small market teams
It’s supposed to be. Hence the competitive balance.
I think I may have misread your post. Apologies.
the entire economic system is biased against small market teams.
This was under the old system. I’m not sure if you read that or not because an inconsequential loss of a guy like Brad Hawpe would not give the Rays the 52nd pick in the draft today
Blake “Show Me The Money” Snell
Blake “Not a billionaire’s bootlicker like Manfredsajoke” Snell
tampa bay “we’re broke, but no, you can’t see our books” rays
Geez.
Looks like certain people prefer the same ‘ol same ‘ol in the playoffs or world series?
Seems like a lot of players last MLB stop is with the Angels. Enjoying their last season with sun and the beach
The type A/B system was flawed. Losing Brad Hawpe certainly shouldn’t have awarded a draft pick. Another example was the Dodgers trading Octavio Dotel for cash in August 2010 to the Rockies. Rockies got a comp pick for a 37 year old relief pitcher leaving in free agency. That pick turned into Trevor Story.
Anyone know why the Rays offered Hawpe arbitration? Has he accepted, they would likely been forced to overpay for a guy who ended up signing for only $2 million. Maybe he promised not to accept or just didn’t want to live in Florida under any scenario. Did the Padres lose a pick as a result of the signing?
funny thing is, rays wouldn’t have overpaid him, sorta.
he accepts. arbitration deals don’t become guaranteed til opening day (unless both parties agree to it, and never in the case of a deal that gets decided by an arbitrator).
he made 7.5 million in 2010, rays can’t over anything less than 6 million (80 percent of his 2010 salary)..
he probably asks for the same 7.5 million. it goes to a judge, rays simply release him after the verdict (since until day 15 of spring training, those deals only pay out 1/ 6th of the money, jumping to 1/4th from that point on til end of spring training, where after that they become 100 percent).
rays figured worse case, he says okay, pay me. they pay him about 1 million to go away (which while it stinks for them, doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things).
The Rays could have argued that he had just been released, had performed poorly, and worked off the minor amount they had signed him for. Hawpe didn’t think he would be overpaid that way, and neither did the Rays.
There are a lot of stories like that. Most aren’t that spectacular but it is good to get something when you lose a free agent. Now, it only happens after a QO, but when Darryl Strawberry left the Mets in free agency for the Dodgers, the Mets got a pick that turned into Bobby Jones. He wasn’t a superstar, but he was a solid rotation piece for years. They used to play “Mr. Jones” by The Counting Crows when he took the mound.
I liked that system better than the current one. Teams should get compensation if they lose players. The best thing about it is that with the type B picks no one LOST a pick. They basically just added a pick to the draft in exchange for losing a free agent. So the signing team was not punished for signing a less than superstar level veteran and the team that lost a player got a free lotto ticket. The only thing that changed was that everyone’s pick from the 2nd round on just moved down one slot. And players were not weighed down with a qualifying offer that limited their market. To this day, I don’t see how the next system or the current one is better for anyone involved.
Brad Hawp played 15 terrible games for the Rays. There are so many players like that who teams had no business being compensated for leaving. That system was a joke. Qualified offer is much better. If you want compensation, you have to make a somewhat big offer. If the player is worth the pick you should have no problem issuing a big 1 year deal.
Yeah, really. How anyone can argue that that system was really working well is beyond me. Getting the 52nd pick in the draft for losing a guy like Brad Hawpe is ridiculous. He had 39 largely bad at bats in a Rays uniform and signed for 2 million bucks. What a joke.
Everyone else had an opportunity to sign him and the Rays took advantage of his status. His status was tied to his All Star year before. The reason that the status was tied to the year before was to compensate for injuries or just bad years that happen.
Plus, the old system allowed for more trades AND allowed for better compensation for the teams trading away these guys. Teams could choose to trade for moderate free agents because they knew they were going to get a compensatory pick. And teams were willing to part with these FA because they could get known quantities instead of a draft pick. It enabled the teams that were going to the postseason to add players and enabled the rebuilding clubs to get players closer to the majors to expedite the rebuilding process.
This. The current system is designed to penalize teams for signing free agents.
Oops I completely misread that post. My point still stands though that the current system is worse, though the old system did cause teams to lose something significant for signing a free agent.
Love these Cliff Claven “little known fact” type articles…keep it up please
I give MLBTR a lot of credit. The original content lately about transactions is way better than the attempts at Fangraphs-style statistical analyses they were doing for a year or so until recently. This type of article is unique and a reason I read MLBTR. Not another statistical analysis of Franmil Reyes which I can find several other places.