Offseason Notebook - November 4th
Thoughts and analysis on some of the weekends contract news
I bought a mechanical keyboard on Saturday, so I’ve been very excited to get to my desk today and do some pecking on this bad boy. This is the first time I’ve owned a mechanical keyboard, and I am feeling very good about it right now. I described my excitement to my wife and in-laws, and they could not relate. My wife was very confused about why a keyboard might cost more than $100. Women just don’t understand, especially not those women who do actual important work all day like watching and raising three children.
Typing is quickly becoming a lost art. Plenty of my friends don’t even own a laptop or a desktop computer, they just do everything on a cell phone or an iPad or something. Terrible. Do they even teach qwerty typing in school these days?
More and more sources of information are going to audio or video format. I may soon be one of the few people out there still writing fantasy baseball stuff. And my next several million keystrokes will be on this sweet new keyboard.
So, while you’re reading, just think about that. Try to make your brain put a “click click clickity click clickclickclclckckclckc” sound in the background.
A lot of stuff happened this weekend as teams and players exercised or chose not to exercise their options. Due to that, we have a few new big-name free agents. The ones I see as most interesting and fantasy-relevant:
Blake Snell
Sean Manaea
Ha-Seong Kim
We saw Cody Bellinger opt into his contract, so he’ll be back with the Cubs and very much overpaid.
The big news from Saturday was that Gerrit Cole opted out of his massive contract. That won’t prove to be big news, as the Yankees then have the option to add one year and $36 million to it, and then he will have to honor the rest of that contract (poor guy…).
I was originally shook by that, thinking that Cole might want out. Maybe he got sick of the baby face and just needed to grow a beard again. But then it became pretty clear that he must be convinced the Yankees would give him that extra year and money. I don’t think he’d have risked free agency as a 34-year-old, so this was just an easy way to snatch an extra $36 million bucks.
Worst case scenario, he still bags a strong 3-5 year contract, but it’s hard to believe the Yankees would not happily keep him. If they were to let him walk, they’d be in super-desperate need of an ace, and they’d be looking for someone clearly worse than the Cole option. I believe the Yankees have to decide by today, so we’ll be hearing about that very soon and Cole will be back in pinstripes next year. How many ace-seasons does he have left? I have some doubts. The K%:
2021: 33.5%
2022: 32.4%
2023: 27.0%
2024: 25.4%
The K-BB%:
2021: 27.8%
2022: 26.1%
2023: 21.2%
2024: 17.9%
We have to consider the injury in 2024. I would suspect/projected/predict a 26-28% K% next year with a point or two drop in that walk rate, so we’re likely looking at another 20-21% K-BB%, but the age is a real concern - and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him turn into more of an SP2 or SP3 as soon as next year.
Joey Gallo will be a free agent for the third straight year after the Nationals told him they didn’t like him anymore. Gallo has that nice combination of an insanely high K% with a declining barrel rate, a very appealing target for the Pittsburgh Pirates, or Colorado Rockies, or the Savannah Bananas!
Joey Gallo K%, BB%, and Brl% by Year
2021: 35% K%, 18% BB%, 19% Brl%
2022: 40% K%, 14% BB%, 18% Brl%
2023: 43% K%, 15% BB%, 19% Brl%
2024: 39% K%, 12% BB%, 13% Brl%
Anthony Rizzo is also available now after the Yankees told him to kick rocks. He’s 35 now and hit a career-worst .637 OPS in 2024. I think we’re long past the days of Rizzo being a 20-homer threat, and he hasn’t hit for anything resembling a decent batting average since 2019. I’m not sure why any competitive team would have any interest. I’m guessing he’ll sign on to a cheap one-year deal with a non-competitive team (maybe a younger squad that can benefit from the veteran leadership), and that team will hope they can squeeze enough production out of him to be able to trade him for a prospect.
I have his Savant page pulled up, and I see his spray chart here. It’s pretty funny:
He did not drive a single ball over a left or center fielder’s head last year, but he still had enough juice to pull some big flies.
I am really fighting the desire to begin releasing the team previews, but I’m committed to holding out. I’m very proud of what I’ve written so far and the process I have set up. I described it all last time, so you can check that out if you missed it. A few of you became paid subs after that, which was encouraging. People are excited about it, and so am I. But I find it best to keep waiting and get into at least mid-December before we start releasing. That way I’ll have some projections, and we’ll have a lot better of an idea about which free agents land where.
In the meantime, you’ll get these types of posts from me, along with those deeper analysis pieces that the team previews inspire as I write. Speaking of that, I’m going to wrap this up and get back into that Angels preview.