If you remember the old Statis Pro Baseball tabletop simulation game from the 1970s and 1980s, you are probably of a certain age. The game hasn't been officially produced for more than a quarter of a century, though there is a fantastic, modernized version of the game made by a smart person out there somewhere and distributed online.
Anyway, one of the great things about Statis Pro Baseball for a youth nursing a growing interest in baseball statistics was that the methods for making player cards were included in the game's instruction manual. With a little observational acuity and a copy of The Sporting News, you could rate players yourself. Baserunning ability (labeled as "OBR" by the game makers) was determined by a grading of players with a letter, ranging from A to E, with the latter being the worst score.
To my dying day, I will always remember the description of a baserunner with an OBR rating of E: "Very slow. Painfully slow. Almost never gets there." The copywriter responsible for that instructional manual had a wry sense of humor.
At present, that description can be turned into an apropos observation about the lagging hot stove season. Very slow. Painfully slow. The transactional version of a baserunner with an OBR of E, like a current-day Albert Pujols trying to leg out a triple.
The top-ranked free agents from colleague Kiley McDaniel's rankings to resolve their respective limbos didn't actually reach free agency. No. 7 Marcus Stroman and No. 8 Kevin Gausman both accepted the qualifying offers issued by their teams, the Mets and Giants, respectively. The top free agent to actually venture out into the marketplace and return with a contract is No. 18 Charlie Morton, who signed with the Braves. And No. 31 Mike Minor (6,889) joined the Royals on a two-year deal Sunday night. We've also seen the No. 38 free agent, Drew Smyly, reach an accord with the Braves and No. 43 Robbie Ray re-up with the Blue Jays.
And that is it. From Kiley's top 100, five starting pitchers have signed new contracts, three of whom returned to the same team with the other two going to Atlanta. All five signed one-year deals. The other 95 ranked free agents remain in limbo and will soon be joined by a new flood of marketplace competitors once teams non-tender players this week ahead of the looming deadline for offering arbitration.
To try to help fill the news void, I'm going to repeat an exercise I began last season, which is to look at the free-agent market not through the prism of rankings, but through the prism of unique skill sets.
Because of the sheer number of free agents, perhaps teams this offseason will be able to better target specific skill shortcomings on their rosters with a plethora of options from a very long list of players with established track records. The top-of-the-market players work for pretty much any team that can afford them. Players in the niche bin work better for some teams than others and, in theory, can be had at a relative bargain.
All metrics noted below were taken from either TruMedia or baseball-savant.com (unless otherwise noted) and are based on three-year data running from 2018 through 2020. Only players rated outside of Kiley's top 20 are considered.
Skill: Putting the bat on the ball
Key metric: Contact-per-swing percentage
Best available: Eric Sogard (88.9%), Joe Panik (88.3%), Michael Brantley (88.0%), Nick Markakis (87.2%), Tommy La Stella (87.0%), Andrelton Simmons (85.9%)
While these six hitters have a high contact rate in common, they have varying skill sets and bottom-line productive abilities. The fit kind of depends on what each team needs and how big of a role it wants its new lineup-balancing contact hitter to play. With this group, it's also essential that teams put 2020 performance into its proper context, because taken at face value, some of the results from these players are trending downward. Then again, that's precisely why they might be a bargain. Brantley, Kiley's No. 25 free agent, and Simmons (No. 37) jump off this list because of their name recognition.
Brantley's standard numbers were decent for a 33-year-old, though he didn't do much damage against lefties. Brantley's expected averages from Statcast took a downturn, and the fact that he turns 34 early next season is a major consideration. There is also the problem of his limited defensive value, so-so arm and slowness afoot. Teams might be able to stash Brantley in left field some days, but most of the time, he's going to need to DH. This narrowing of Brantley's skill set limits the number of teams for which he's a fit. Still, his extant capacity to combine contact with pop will land him a job somewhere.
As one of the best defenders of his generation, Simmons seems to possess an attractive combination of attributes: elite defense at a premium position, and the ability to hit for average and contact. The problem is that Simmons' 2020 season was just so bad. He struggled with ankle trouble and ended up opting out of the season out of concern about COVID with a few games left on the Angels' schedule. According to Statcast, Simmons' outs above average tumbled from plus-16 in 2019 to minus-1 last year. At the plate, there are all sorts of ways to describe how bad Simmons was, but here's perhaps the most stark: Out of 102 batted balls, he had zero barrels.
Well, there isn't going to be a single player featured in this piece who doesn't carry risk. It's kind of the point. With Simmons, teams will have to decide whether his 2020 performance was the kind of fluke season that was probably rampant across baseball -- we'll know that for sure only after next season -- or if he has hit a career wall.
As for good teams that need to improve their contact rates, there are several. The Marlins, Braves, Cubs, White Sox, Rays and Brewers all made the postseason in 2020 while carrying a team contact-per-swing percentage that ranked in the bottom 10 of the majors. It's debatable whether any of those clubs needs to gamble on Simmons at shortstop. All of them could probably accommodate Brantley, assuming the National League adopts the DH rule on a permanent basis.
There could be other contending teams in the market for a shortstop, even if their need for a high-contact type isn't as acute. The Athletics (if Marcus Semien signs elsewhere), Reds and Phillies all fit that description.
The White Sox-Brantley fit would be both interesting and complicated. Chicago's weak spots in terms of production in 2020 were at DH and right field. Brantley would help with the DH situation, and perhaps that is a great fit. Brantley is the right kind of veteran to add to that club at the plate and in the clubhouse, and he could still take the occasional start in left field, giving Eloy Jimenez a partial day off on occasion. Tony La Russa could sit Brantley against certain lefties, moving Jimenez to DH and starting Adam Engel in the outfield.
There are two problems there: Brantley doesn't address Chicago's need for a right fielder who at the very least can play every day against righties. Also, as good as Luis Robert is in center, Jimenez's lack of range in left means you can't stick a defensive cipher in right, so you're not going to gamble on Brantley there. Also, if Chicago clogs up its DH rotation, it might limit the upside of the roster with prospect Andrew Vaughn knocking at the door and former first-round pick Jake Burger perhaps not that far behind him.
So where could Chicago turn to address its right-field slot? Markakis might be an on-paper fit, but his indicators were down in 2020 as well and it would be somewhat surprising to see him play for someone other than the Braves. The White Sox could play at the top of the market and target George Springer, which would thrill the fan base. If Jerry Reinsdorf is game, then it's a great outcome.
Beyond that, another option for Chicago is former White Sox outfielder Adam Eaton. He wouldn't cost much, has a three-year contact rate of 82.3% and has at least passable defensive tools. On the latter front, it's worth remembering that Eaton's best defensive season came while he was mostly patrolling right field at Guaranteed Rate Field in 2016.
Skill: Getting a run home
Key metric: Baserunners-driven-in percentage (from baseball-reference.com)
Best available: Matt Kemp (20.1%); Daniel Murphy (18.8%); Didi Gregorius (18.3%); Asdrubal Cabrera (18.0%); Yoenis Cespedes (17.9%); Ryan Braun (17.4%); Nick Markakis (17.3%)
The recent trends in baseball have been written about so often that it's redundant to remind you of the rise of strikeouts, the decline of balls in play and the heightened reliance on homers to score runs. (Though I guess I just reminded you about those things.) An offshoot of that has been the proliferation of the kind of hitter who has always driven me batty: the all-or-nothing slugger. The telltale categories for a player of this type have always been homers and RBIs, as in quite a few of the former and an oddly small number of the latter.
For the purposes of illustrating this proliferation, let's set our benchmarks in those categories as 30 or more homers in a season accompanied by fewer than 80 RBIs. According to baseball-reference.com, no player posted such a season in all of big league history from 1871 to 1957, then in 1958, two players did it: Eddie Mathews and Gus Triandos. Mickey Mantle followed suit in 1959, but it remained a rare feat. It happened three times in the 1960s, two times in the 1970s, three times in the 1980s and four times in the 1990s.
Through the end of the 2015 season, there had been 33 instances in which a player hit at least 30 homers but drove in fewer than 80 runs. Since then, despite no one pulling off the "feat" in 2020 because of the shortened season, it has happened 27 times -- accounting for nearly half of all such occurrences in big league history.
Twenty-one of those instances occurred in 2018 and 2019 alone, with the 12 players who did it in 2019 setting a new benchmark. It took from 1871 to 1989 to accumulate 12 of these "all or nothing" seasons; then it happened 12 times in 2019 alone.
Now, it should be noted that Hall of Fame players are part of this club. Besides Mathews and Mantle, Hank Aaron and Ryne Sandberg are on the list. Mike Trout is on there twice. This speaks to two paths to such a season that don't include an all-or-nothing approach: Being so good that teams don't pitch to you in RBI situations, or batting leadoff.
A number of slugging leadoff hitters account for names on the list, including Rick Monday (1976), Brad Wilkerson (2004), Alfonso Soriano (2007), Curtis Granderson (2009), Ian Kinsler (2011), Francisco Lindor (2019) and Joc Pederson (2019). Also, Felix Mantilla (1964) and Chris Young (2007) hit more than half their dingers as leadoff hitters without reaching 80 RBIs. Still, these explanations don't account for the spread of this pernicious beast in recent seasons.
Assuming this type of hitter continues to become entrenched, having run producers in the middle of the order who can unclog the bases could prove to be increasingly difficult. The leaders by my "RBI guy" metric are similar in profile as mostly aging veterans with bat-first skill sets. The numbers are based on three-year windows, if you recall, and most of Kemp's leading figure here is based on his 2018 campaign with the Dodgers. He hasn't played much the past two years and doesn't figure to hold down a regular role anywhere in 2021.
As a middle infielder, Gregorius should see a few of the same suitors as mentioned for Simmons in the previous category.
Among contending teams that lagged in this metric in 2020: Athletics, Twins, Cubs, Brewers, Indians and Reds.
Skill combo: Speed and defense
Key metric: S&D score (explanation below)
Best available: Billy Hamilton (142.4 [64.7]); Jarrod Dyson (138.4 [70.8]); Kolten Wong (135.4 [102.8]); Brett Gardner (134.9 [105.3]); Kevin Pillar (127.5 [87.1]); Jonathan Villar (124.4 [95.9]); Mallex Smith (122.6 [90.8]); Jackie Bradley Jr. (122.1 [94.3]); Andrelton Simmons (120.1 [96.8])
Here's how I created a quick ad-hoc speed and defense score: Using three-year data from FanGraphs, I calculated standard scores for each player based on his baserunning and fielding run values, two categories that are part of FanGraphs' version of WAR. Then I simply averaged the two standard scores, then cleaned up the expression of them by multiplying the results by 10 and adding 100. That makes 100 the average score.
For the above leaderboard, the top free agents are listed by this S&D score, but next to those figures, I've also listed their scores for hitting. Thus you can see how Hamilton and Dyson are at this point pure speed-and-defense guys who don't hit enough to merit more of a roster-filler type of role. But on some teams, that might be a missing ingredient. Pillar and Smith -- who is more of a project at this point than a veteran with a declining skill set -- are mostly S&D players at the moment.
Wong is really the player who stands out here, as a Gold Glove second baseman who adds value on the bases. He also has been around average at the plate in the aggregate, though he has had plenty of year-to-year instability.
Contenders who currently lag in projections at second base, per FanGraphs: Yankees, Phillies, Indians, Nationals and Athletics. None of these teams necessarily has to target a keystone regular -- they have others who can be shifted to the spot if better options are found elsewhere. But Wong feels like an underappreciated commodity in this market, as an everyday, productive glue player who can help a team on the cusp get over the top.
Skill: Funky arm angle
Key metric: Funk score (explanation below)
Best available: Donnie Hart (LHP 113.7); Aaron Loup (LHP 110.4); Josh D. Smith (LHP 104.7); Tony Watson (LHP 104.1); Steve Cishek (RHP 102.9); Tyler Olson (LHP 102.5); Tommy Milone (LHP 101.1); Darren O'Day (RHP 100.4)
Funk score is based on the average vertical and horizontal release points for every pitcher according to Statcast data, which I obtained through TruMedia. I scored each pitcher for both the vertical and horizontal measurement, calculating how far away he was from average. A score of 100 is average funk.
This category was inspired by that graphic of all the arm angles featured on the Rays' pitching staff that kept cropping up during October. There was something mesmerizing about it, as if the Tampa Bay roster had been designed by some ancient wizard. But it also speaks to a crucial element in the makeup of today's pitching staffs, which is to be able to offer as many different looks to opposing batters over the course of a series as possible.
Years ago, I was commiserating with a general manager about the complexities of putting together a bullpen when he told me how he thinks of his relievers as parts of a hand. Every finger is different, but all are essential, and you need all of them to have a healthy hand. That analogy holds up today if you change the definition of a hand to 12 fingers, at least.
In general, free agency is not a great way to build a bullpen, though there are exceptions. This year, Kiley's rankings include two relievers in his top 20: Liam Hendriks and Trevor Rosenthal. There will be good values from a long list of other available free agents, and teams will target those players based on anticipated performance more so than funk. After all, any one of us could show up and throw the ball toward home plate from some weird angle. That doesn't mean we'd get anybody out.
When team architects go about filling their bullpen sundial, they'll look for pitchers who complement each other. The pitchers with the highest funk scores -- listed here -- are the most extreme types, marking them somewhat harder to find. That alone might give them perhaps a little extra cachet in the marketplace.
As for contenders who could use bullpen help ... they all can use bullpen help. That's the reality of 2020 pitching.
Skill: Eating innings
Key metric: Pitches thrown
Best available: Jon Lester (7,172), Rick Porcello (7,039), J.A. Happ (6,534), Mike Fiers (6,498). Note: Mike Minor (6,889) ranked No. 3 on this list before signing with the Royals on Sunday night.
Yeah, we're really getting technical with this category. The thing is, pure innings-eaters -- those end-of-the-rotation starters with below-average ERAs and loads of durability -- are out of vogue. Rather than throwing those types into the lion's den over and over, teams have taken to filling innings gaps over the course of a season by crowdsourcing the solution to the problem with a parade of fungible relievers.
However, teams now scramble for marginal relievers much as they used to do for rotation filler. After the 2020 season, when most pitchers were never able to build up to full workloads and many more never saw real games at all, 2021 might turn out to be a dizzying innings puzzle for most teams.
Thus passable, durable veteran starters ought to be in strong demand. And as you can see from the leaderboard, there are some good names on the market, even if some of them are on the downside of excellent careers.
The Yankees, Cardinals, Cubs, Reds and Twins are among contending clubs who look as if they might get the biggest boost from a pitcher who can at the very least serve as a dependable source of innings. Really, though, it's a trait that no pitching staff can have too much of.