Free agent spending on pitchers is highly irresponsible.
Every offseason, teams who hope to contend will offer mid-level contracts to starting pitchers. These teams rightly buy into the notion that you can never have enough starting pitching. However, they’re going about it the wrong way.
As this tweet from Chris Black (absolute must-follow on Twitter if you don’t already) suggests, teams are incredibly hard pressed to sign a pitcher to a good contract when they do it in free agency…
By my count, 9 starters signed for between $10-16m avg this off-season, here’s how they’re doing.
Alternate text: Be wary of treading into this part of the free agent market.
Also shoutout to the rubes who were hating on me for saying passing on Matz was a good move. pic.twitter.com/dSThnFJds0
— Chris Black (@DownToBlack) June 30, 2022
NOTE: This post was written before Kikuchi’s start on Thursday.
In this offseason ALONE, teams spent a grand total of about $317 million on pitchers who got mid-level AAVs this offseason, and they’ve gotten a 5.11 ERA return on that investment.
By comparison, all rookie arms have posted a combined 5.15 ERA in games they’ve started thus far this season. Think about that for a second. 82 rookies have started at least one game this season, the vast majority of which are making the league minimum of $700K. Assuming all of them are making league minimum (which isn’t true, plenty are on minor league contracts, but for argument’s sake), that means that the rookies are getting paid a combined $57M in 2022. So, rookies are making about 5.5 times less than the above pitchers, while posting equivalent results. Who are these rookies?
One is Connor Overton, who spent a majority of his 2021 in the Blue Jays organization, and has put up a solid 1.82 …
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Author: Tate Kispech / Blue Jays Nation