After days of speculation that his free-agent decision would come down to the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Mets, Trevor Bauer chose to join the reigning world champions on Friday afternoon. Bauer and the Dodgers agreed on a three-year, $102 million deal that has opt-outs after Years 1 and 2, sources told ESPN's Jeff Passan, and will pay the 2020 NL Cy Young winner an MLB-record $40 million in 2021.
What would Bauer have to accomplish on the mound in 2021 to be worth that kind of money? What should the Mets do next after missing out on the winter's top free-agent pitcher? Is Bauer even the most likely member of the Dodgers' staff to win a Cy Young next season? We asked ESPN MLB experts Bradford Doolittle and David Schoenfield to weigh in on those questions and much more in the aftermath of Bauer's record-setting contract.
What would Trevor Bauer have to do to be worth $40 million in 2021?
Schoenfield: Bauer becomes just the second reigning Cy Young winner to join the defending World Series champion, matching Roger Clemens' jump from the Blue Jays to the Yankees in 1999. The Yankees managed to repeat, although Clemens' ERA rose nearly two runs per game from 2.65 to 4.60. The Dodgers would certainly be disappointed if Bauer's ERA climbs two runs from the 1.73 mark he posted in 2020, but it also wouldn't be shocking if that happens given his 4.48 ERA in 2019.
The Dodgers are paying him to be one of the best starters in the majors -- they didn't need to add him to be the favorite to win the World Series so, yes, the expectation is that he will be more like the pitcher we saw in 2020 and 2018, not 2019. Beyond that, they're paying him to provide innings. Despite missing time in 2018 with a stress fracture in his right tibia after being struck by a line drive, he ranks sixth in the majors in innings pitched over the past three seasons. Walker Buehler's career high in innings is 182, Clayton Kershaw hasn't made 30 starts in a season since 2015, Julio Urias has never topped 80 innings in a major league season and David Price didn't pitch at all in 2020, so having a 200-inning workhorse at the top of the rotation will allow the Dodgers to play it safe with that group, while still having Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin around for ridiculous rotation depth.
Oh, yeah ... and he better pitch well in the postseason.
More: Fantasy impact of Bauer's move (ESPN+)
Doolittle: Even after all these years of dealing with the surreal economic scale of 21st century professional sports, my immediate reaction to questions like this is still, "No athlete is worth $40 million." I throw that out there just as a reality check-in, because we're talking about an absurd amount of money.
One thing that jumps out to me is that Bauer's career has vacillated between good and great over the past few years. His ERA+ numbers since 2016 read 106, 109, 196, 106 and 276. If he's a 196 or 276 pitcher, which would mark him as a Cy Young front-runner, in 2021 that's worth $40 million in baseball. It's worth more than that really. But what about if he's the 106 guy?
Well, I'd argue that if Bauer throws up a 110 ERA+ but with 190-plus innings and positions himself as a no-brainer top-three starter for the Dodgers in October, he's worth it. Especially because it's the Dodgers and the money does not have any particular trickle-down impact on what they can do with the rest of the roster. That's true because the Dodgers have rivers of revenue that flow in during a normal season, but also because the rest of the roster simply doesn't need much work.
I almost hate to bring this up because I don't think it's a real problem, but some might say that because Bauer is a divisive personality or at least is often perceived that way because of his online persona -- that he's a clubhouse risk. But the Dodgers have that covered, too. I see no reason he'd be a problem, but even if he were, this is the team above all others in baseball that is not going to be impacted by one player's behavior.
What should the Mets do next after missing out on Bauer?
Schoenfield: They have a few options here. They can take all the money they would have spent on Bauer and split it up -- say, some of it to Jake Odorizzi, regarded as the top starter left in free agency, and some of it to Jackie Bradley Jr. to give them a better defender in center field. Odorizzi made just four starts in 2020, missing time with non-arm injuries, but averaged 165 innings with a 3.88 ERA from 2014 to 2019 (lower than Bauer's career ERA of 3.90, by the way). If they want to gamble on more upside, they could roll the dice on James Paxton. But a rotation with Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco, Marcus Stroman, Odorizzi and Noah Syndergaard is still one that can win a World Series -- with Bradley making the Mets a little better and improving the team's depth.
Doolittle: There is no reason to be rash. Signing Bauer would have vaulted the Mets into a big three in the National League that includes the Dodgers and Padres, with the Braves a half-tier down from them depending on what Atlanta does with the rest of its offseason. Now the Mets are still in a toe-to-toe battle with the Braves in the NL East race, and that's fine. There is a long way to go from here to October.
That's the thing that any disappointed Mets fan has to keep in mind. Division titles and World Series crowns aren't won during the hot stove season, but teams do position themselves for those accolades this time of the year. The Mets have already done that. Landing Bauer would have been great, but it didn't work out. Even without him, the Mets are in a good spot.
New York does need to add rotation depth, but there is no reason to take whatever budget hit the Mets were willing to take for Bauer and redirect it at two other next-tier starters. There is a caveat to that: If they look at James Paxton or Jake Odorizzi or Rich Hill and their scouts and analysts really love them, fine. Go for it. Barring that, New York is better off making two or three low-cost, buy-low signings to bolster rotation depth. If it's still a sore area, there is always the trade deadline. The worst thing the Mets could do now is to blow money that might inhibit their flexibility later.
What does it say about MLB right now that Trevor Bauer's $40 million 2021 salary is nearly equal to the current total payroll of the Pirates (an estimated $43 million) and not far behind Cleveland's estimated $50 million total?
Schoenfield: And this is different from any other time in baseball history? Look, is it "fair"? No. But we haven't had a repeat World Series champ since those 1998-2000 Yankees, low-payroll teams like Tampa Bay and Cleveland both reached the World Series in recent seasons, Kansas City won one, and even Pittsburgh had a nice little run there a few years ago. Yes, it's a challenge for the Pittsburghs and Clevelands of the world, but good luck on finding a better system that satisfies the rich teams, the "poor" teams AND the players.
Doolittle: I think there should be more revenue sharing in baseball. I also would favor a salary cap that guarantees players a certain percentage of revenue and some kind of salary floor. These are contentious subjects and many would disagree. But Dave is right: This is how baseball has always been.
When we pick the Pirates and Indians as our examples, we're also pointing at different things. The Pirates are tanking. Full stop. Like the Orioles, they see no reason to spend money when they have no real hope to contend in the short term -- even if they plan to eventually ramp the payroll back up when they are ready to win. (A big if when we talk about some organizations.)
There needs to be some kind of incentive structure that convinces rebuilding teams to make some kind of minimal competitive effort. As for teams like Cleveland, Oakland and Tampa Bay, there is a lot you can say about the frugality of ownership and such. But it also reflects an underlying reality: You can win with a low payroll if you invest in the right players and have systems in place that can take advantage of the larger-than-ever pool of global baseball talent.
Basically, what this kind of strange dynamic of one player earning nearly as much as a whole team says is that baseball does not have a great deal of short-term, top-to-bottom parity. But it does have parity on the longer timeline, as Dave points out, and maybe that's good enough.
Which Dodgers pitcher is most likely to win the 2021 NL Cy Young: Bauer, Kershaw or Buehler?
Schoenfield: Let's cross off Kershaw, as good as he was last year with a 2.16 ERA. I just don't see him pitching enough innings to contend for a Cy Young Award and the Dodgers' primary goal will be to have him healthy and strong entering October. Few starters -- any? -- can match Buehler's repertoire of five above-average pitches and we've seen him dominate in the postseason, where he has posted a 2.35 ERA over 11 starts, but he has yet to demonstrate consistent dominance in the regular season and I think the Dodgers will ease him into 2021. So that leaves Bauer, who has been great two of the past three years, will come out of the gate aiming for 30-something starts, and will also have the best defense of his career behind him.
Doolittle: Buehler. The 2020 season was a weird one for everyone and it certainly was that for Buehler. But by the time we got to late October, there was no one the Dodgers would rather have had on the hill. This is the year I think he puts it all together, and if it is, then he has the potential for huge, award-winning numbers. Or ... maybe the Dodgers do the right thing, let Bauer make 40 starts, and then we can revisit this question later. Kind of joking there, but in a sense I'm mildly disappointed that he picked the Dodgers because they really don't need an every-fourth-day starter or any real reason to conduct that kind of experiment. They just have too many good pitchers.
How many games will the Dodgers win in 2021 now that they've added Bauer?
Schoenfield: The Dodgers played at a 116-win pace over 60 games in 2020 -- and, well, I guess that would be a fun goal to have as it would tie the record for wins in a season. The Dodgers were on that pace in 2017 before that monumental slump (settling for 104 wins) and they also won 106 games in 2019.
Bauer projects to about a 6-WAR pitcher, but it's not like the Dodgers had replacement-level pitchers before signing him, so Bauer might actually be worth only an additional two or three wins over, say, some combination of Gonsolin and May. But imagine better seasons from Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy and Gavin Lux having a breakout year and, yes, predicting even 110 wins is an absurd prediction. So I'll say 109.
Doolittle: Projections, including mine, tend to see Bauer as something between the good and great pitcher that he has been during alternating seasons. It's the way systems hedge their bets. But because that's the generally accepted presence, the irony is that his addition is only a marginal upgrade for the Dodgers. It adds to their level of certainty about their pitching staff, but he's going to take innings from other good pitchers, like Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May and perhaps even Julio Urias.
But one thing I want to say about that: If the Dodgers didn't see Bauer as being more of the 276 ERA-plus guy than the 109 ERA-plus guy, they wouldn't have given him this kind of average annual value, plus a deal that allows him to bail after the season. They clearly think Bauer is going to be a Cy Young-level pitcher. This, I think, represents an evolution in how we think of pitchers in the Statcast era. The track records that might have informed traditional projection systems matter less than what the tracking data says about how Bauer throws the ball right now.
In my run of simulations after the Bauer signing, the Dodgers won an average of 103 games, up from 100 yesterday. Their edge over the Padres grew from roughly three games to about six. And because of that, the Dodgers overtook the Yankees as favorites to win the World Series. The Dodgers projected as baseball's best team even without Bauer, but because the gap between them and the Padres wasn't that large, the Yankees actually won more titles in the sims because of a clearer path in the American League. But now the Dodgers have reasserted themselves as baseball's best team on paper -- the favorite to hoist another World Series trophy come October.