Mr. Niche Guy: The best free-agent fits for very specific needs

We're past Thanksgiving now, or at least the main event, though lots of you surely have fridges full of leftovers to dispatch. Football takes center stage during this particular holiday, which pains me to admit, but what can you do? It's not like baseball is riding a tidal wave of happy PR at the moment.

In our sport, there has been some movement on the free-agent market. The White Sox made a splash last week by signing the best available catcher in Yasmani Grandal. The Braves jumped into the leftover backstop market to nab Travis d'Arnaud to assume co-catching duties with Tyler Flowers, a spot opened up by Brian McCann's retirement. The Braves also grabbed the top available reliever in all-purpose lefty Will Smith.

Not bad, considering the glacial pace of recent hot stove seasons. Those three players are the best free agents to change teams. Other solid veterans have re-upped with their old teams, a group that includes Flowers, Nick Markakis, Chris Martin and Darren O'Day -- all with the proactive Braves -- along with Jose Abreu (White Sox) and Adam Wainwright (Cardinals). Jake Odorizzi accepted the qualifying offer proffered by the Twins, and J.D. Martinez declined to option out of his Red Sox contract.

That's pretty much your free-agent update. Of Keith Law's Top 50 free agents, 43 remain unaccounted for, including the top seven. Opportunity abounds!

We tend to look at free agency through the prism of rankings, such as Keith's list. If our team needs a pitcher, we go to the rankings, skim down to the best available guy and decide that's who our hardworking local GM must sign. It's a reasonable attitude.

However, it's not the only way to look at things. While top-line evaluations of available talent are the best guides to free agency, there is also the question of fit. What are the categories in which a team's prospective roster is deficient? And which players are most apt to shore up those specific categories? Players often fit better on some teams than others in a way not reflected in ordinal rankings.

Looking at the free-agent pool through the fit lens adds nuance to tracking the offseason. It becomes more than a matter of crossing names off the ranking list and shines a light on some names that aren't dominating the rumor mill. The best part from the team perspective is that signing most of these players won't break your bank.

Let's wade into the remaining free-agent pool with this in mind by asking, and answering, a few strategic game-situation and roster-building questions.

(Note: All stat references will refer to performance over the past three seasons in aggregate. All data was taken from TruMedia.)

Question: Who can get the bat on the ball in a key situation?

In an environment of perennially rising strikeout rates, the ability to simply make contact with the ball is a skill of increasing scarcity -- and value. Having a couple of those guys to keep the baserunners moving helps to balance a lineup, a key edge during an era in which the game has become unbalanced.

The lowest three-year strikeout rates among the current free agents belong to second baseman Joe Panik (9%), right fielder Melky Cabrera (11.4%) and infielder Wilmer Flores (11.8%). None ranks among Law's top 50 free agents, so signing any of this trio amounts to bargain shopping. Of these three, Flores has the highest overall OPS (.786). It should be noted that Law's No. 1 free agent -- Anthony Rendon -- ranks ninth in contact rank. He's good at everything, but, obviously, it'll cost you to sign him.

Another way to narrow the field in this area is to look at strikeout rate in run-scoring situations, i.e., with runners in scoring position. The list remains similar: Flores moves to the top with a strikeout rate of 8.4%, followed by Panik (9.1%) and catcher Jonathan Lucroy (10.4%). So if a team has a problem with too many strikeouts in run-scoring situations, Flores might be a good addition. He can't run or field, but he can get the bat on the ball when you need him to.

This isn't the same thing as saying Flores is a great RBI man. He's not. His RBI percentage, as compiled in the Bill James Handbook, was about league average in 2019. Flores seems to sacrifice a good bit of his middling power with runners in scoring position in favor of making contact. Plus, he's more of a lefty masher than an all-around hitter. These are the qualities that make Flores a niche player.

Question: Fine, but I don't care about sheer contact ability. After all, it's 2019. What about pure RBI men?

Here are the top three free agents by RBIs per 600 plate appearances with runners in scoring position: Rendon (268), first baseman Matt Adams (254) and second baseman Scooter Gennett (249). Right behind Gennett is shortstop Didi Gregorius (244).

Adams has always been better with runners on base, with 62 of 116 homers coming with men aboard during his career. He has an .854 OPS with runners in scoring position against .726 with the bases empty. Last season, he was even more extreme: .953 with runners in scoring position versus .689 with the bases empty. Adams can't hit lefties and is a big, lumbering player, but as a pinch-hitting threat or a DH against righties behind some high-OBP hitters, he can make an impact.

Question: Thanks to rules evolution, the other manager now has to leave his unbalanced lefty in for at least three hitters. Who can make him pay for such lackluster roster construction?

The best part of baseball's new roster rules is that with a still-to-be-determined cap on the number of pitchers a team can carry (it will probably be 13), the possibilities for keeping position-player specialists around grow exponentially. Thus if a player is really good at mashing lefties, but little else, perhaps he can hold down a bench role in 2020. Given the expansion of pitching staffs over the years, gone are the days when pinch-hitting specialists such as Manny Mota would grace big league rosters. We probably won't get back to that level of specialization, but we should see a smattering of players who wouldn't have made a 2019 roster.

Adding to this is the intrigue created by the new rule requiring managers to leave a reliever in to face three batters, unless he reaches the end of an inning. The LOOGY was already a disappearing species, but under these guidelines, he might go extinct altogether. Still, there will be lefties brought into key situations to face, say, Bryce Harper. And that lefty might then have to get out a righty or two, and he might not be as good against the opposite-siders.

Who among free agents can scare this hypothetical lefty? Top three free agents against lefties over the past three seasons: first baseman Ryan Zimmerman (1.055 OPS), Rendon (1.032) and outfielder Nicholas Castellanos (1.017). Right behind that trio is utility player Howie Kendrick (.924).

There's a lot of recent World Series heroism on that list. Like Rendon, though to a much lesser extent, Castellanos is beyond niche-player status at this stage of his career, and teams will have to pay accordingly. In other words, his success against lefties is a notable trait, but for what you'd have to pay, you need him to do more than mash southpaws. Zimmerman, who nearly made our RBI guy list as well, might as well be disregarded, as pretty much everyone thinks he'll return to the Nationals.

That leaves Kendrick, whose foul-pole clanker in Game 7 of the World Series will go down as one of the great moments in Washington baseball history. He of course could return to the Nats, but he also fits perfectly onto just about any AL roster, with the White Sox jumping out as a fit.

Question: Sure, guys like Kendrick are why lopsided lefties don't have a place on my roster anymore. With Smith off the free-agent board, what other southpaws can exploit a hitter who can't hit lefties but also won't kill me against righties?

There are three free-agent relievers who, over the past three seasons, have excelled at getting out lefties and righties, with holding opposing hitters to a sub-.600 OPS serving as the benchmark for that claim. As it happens, they all are righty hurlers and all have large enough questions surrounding their recent profile to keep their price tag down. The trio: Carl Edwards Jr., Dellin Betances and Brandon Morrow.

Those are three pretty big names, but they have more than that in common. At their best, all have flashed plus fastball velocity. All have featured devastating secondary offerings that have made them effective against opposite-side hitters. And, whether due to injury, performance or both, all three had platform seasons to forget in 2019. That makes them buy-low propositions.

Question: Everybody is throwing high fastballs. Is there anyone who can get me a double play?

The good, hard sinker has gone out of fashion, though there are some holdouts such as Dakota Hudson (Cardinals) and Steven Matz (Mets) plying the trade. Together, that duo induced 7.5 double plays per 300 batters faced in 2019. The big league average was 5.6, so it's a solid gain. Alas, neither of those guys is a free agent -- they've just been trotted out for context. Anyway, that's what niche shopping is all about.

Among actual free-agent hurlers, there are three relievers who have induced 10 double plays per 300 batters faced over the past three seasons: Jared Hughes (11.9), Dan Otero (11.6) and Brandon Kintzler (10.4). All three rely on sinkers, though Otero's numbers on that pitch haven't been too good overall. Still, while these guys aren't the flame-throwing strikeout types who dominate bullpens these days, all offer a different look and situational utility for teams looking to put together a multifaceted relief staff.

Question: I've got a base-clogger out there, and I really need a run. Who can get me a bag, whether it's a steal or an extra base on a gapper?

Expanded benches or not, we're not going to see any pinch-running specialists, even in September, when the rosters will now be limited to 28. But baserunning is still a crucial ingredient to a well-rounded roster. So if a player can hit a little and provide playable defense at multiple positions, his ability on the basepaths can make him a difference-maker on a team's bench.

There are nine free agents who have stolen at least 30 bases over the past three seasons. Not all of them have been adept at the dish overall, however. Let's narrow this down to base thieves with an OPS of at least .700. There are five of them. Now let's look for defense -- three of the remaining five have posted plus results by defensive runs saved over the past three seasons.

The three players left on our list are all outfielders: Yasiel Puig, Brett Gardner and Cameron Maybin. If you don't like all of that filtering for value-added traits and just want a pure baserunner, then there are two premier talents to fill that specific niche: Billy Hamilton and Jarrod Dyson.

Extra innings

1. Besides the usual PED suspects, the hottest name on the Hall of Fame ballot this year seems to be Larry Walker, who is entering his 10th and final year of eligibility in the voting by the BBWAA. The central topic: How heavily should the Coors Field effect be weighed when assessing Walker's career numbers?

Well, of course you can't ignore the venue altogether. Park effects are a real thing. Since 2009, the aggregate MLB figure for OPS has been .730. At Coors Field, that number has been .830. We kind of have to take that kind of thing into account.

Walker clearly benefited from the run-scoring environment at Coors Field during his time with the Rockies. In 2,501 plate appearances there, he hit .381/.462/.710 with 42 homers and 141 RBIs per 162 games. Overall, he hit .313/.400/.565 with 31 homers and 107 RBIs per 162 games. He hit .278/.370/.495 overall on the road.

None of these numbers necessarily offer a genuine reading of Walker's true quality. We know we have to adjust for ballparks, but I'm not sure we've ever fixed on a truly accurate way to account for a historic outlier like Coors Field and its predecessor, Mile High Stadium. For one thing, if we knew how to contextualize Coors Field accurately, we'd be better able to project players who move to and away from the Rockies. But we still struggle with it in general.

A perfect example is DJ LeMahieu. After the 2018 season, the free-agent-to-be had career splits of an .835 OPS at home (mostly with the Rockies, though there's a little in there from his time with the Cubs) and .673 on the road. His OPS during his first season with the Yankees was .893. No matter what projection system you favor, the more you adjusted based on that Coors-related split, the further away you ended up from what happened.

In other words, just as the Rockies have long struggled with figuring out their home park, so have we struggled in figuring out just how to put performance there in an accurate context. We do adjust for it in the form of ballpark factors, but to claim those tweaks truly solve the problem is hubris. And those factors impact Walker in bottom-line value metrics like WAR.

Even so, Walker ranks 10th all time in Jay Jaffe's JAWS system among right fielders and well above the standards at the position for Hall worthiness. For all the air that ballpark factors take out of his .381/.462/.710 Coors Field line, he still glows by advanced metrics. If you consider even for a moment that those adjustments are too extreme, that opens up the possibility he should rank even higher. If that's the case, he enters no-brainer territory.

Are the ballpark adjustments accurate for Walker? That's a dive deeper than we'll take today, but my initial reading has always been that they are not.