Today’s trivia: Prior to Freddie Freeman, only one player to win MVP with the Braves left the team via free agency. What team did he sign with?
Signed OF Eddie Rosario to a 2 year, $18M contract
2022: $9,000,000
2023: $9,000,000
2024: $9,000,000 club option | No buyout
It can be easy to fall into a trap of guaranteeing future money based on some fun memories, and it’d be easy to blame the Braves of that here. Rosario, a mid-season pickup freely available to any team willing to spend even a little on him, had a postseason to dream of, particularly an NLCS where he went 14/25 with 3 HR and 9 RBI. Rarely do midseason pickups work out quite as well as they did for the 2021 Braves. Midseason pickups, however, tend to be temporary. They’re mercenaries. They collect their ring and move on.
In Rosario’s case, moreso than his fellow midseason outfield acquisitions, it made sense to add some permanence to his Atlanta tenure. Here’s a look at the OF options prior to today’s signings. In the second column, that’s PECOTA’s projection for Deserved Runs Created Plus, an all-encompassing offensive stat where 100 is league average (you can use Acuna and Heredia to figure out exactly what the scale is, I think). In the other columns, 2 year Outs Above Average (Statcast’s metric) per defensive attempt broken down by each position:
With no obvious DH coming from the infield, it’s easy to see where a problem might arise. Acuna can play any OF spot once he’s healthy, which hopefully will be the case sometime during the first half. What you see above is Ozuna’s defensive ceiling, but it’s more likely, as he gets older, he’ll become more statuesque. He can hit enough to DH, and you have to imagine that’d be the team’s ideal spot for him, since he thrived in the role in 2020. Adam Duvall can play any OF spot admirably and mash a lot of homers, but his offensive production is dragged down by an inability to reach base even 30% of the time. He’s fine to pencil in regularly, but it’s not ideal to have him as your 2nd best offensive OF. And from there the options get particularly unpalatable. Travis Demeritte had a pretty wild defensive debut with Detroit in 2019, and he’s never hit consistently enough to justify a lineup spot with a serious team. Guillermo Heredia is a defensive ace, but we saw what happened last year when he was pressed into the lineup too much. Beyond that, it’d be calling on rookies, none of which have exactly mastered the upper minors. The Braves needed something in the OF. Enter Eddie Rosario to the same board:
Rosario isn’t a defensive wizard out there, but he can generally hold his own tucked away in a corner. He also gives the Braves another near league-average bat, projected slightly better than Duvall. That’s not a star player you’re looking at, but the Braves probably didn’t have the budget space for such a player. Rosario helps, because he puts Guillermo Heredia back into his ideal spot as a defensive replacement/official team swashbuckler, and he removes Travis Demeritte and all the prospects from the immediate equation.
Rosario also brings a different kind of skillset to this lineup. I’m personally a big fan of lineup diversity; if a pitcher excels against a particular type of hitter, you don’t want to have too many of that type of hitter serving as cannon fodder. Let’s stick with the OF examples. With Adam Duvall, the Braves have a player who is hunting for big swings. He’s no more aggressive inside the zone than the average MLB hitter, but he aggressively chases pitches. He also misses on many of those swings. He’s trading some contact for exit velocity; Duvall struck out in 31.4% of his plate appearances, but his average exit velo when he did make contact was nearly 114 mph, which ranked in the 91st percentile. For a guy who doesn’t make a lot of contact, Adam Duvall does a decent job at making that contact count.
Eddie Rosario has a few things in common with Duvall, notably that he swings at everything. The average MLB hitter and Adam Duvall both swing at about 67% of pitches thrown in the zone. Rosario swings at 75%. Rosario also loves chasing pitches outside the zone, just like Duvall. But where they differ is that Rosario isn’t doing it because he’s selling out for the big swing. He does it because he can make enough contact, even on pitches few major leaguers should swing at, where it’s not all that much of a problem. This makes him rather annoying for big league pitchers, who want a modicum of predictability when pitching. If they throw a slider in the dirt, it should be a swing and a miss or a ball. But with Rosario, it’s going to occasionally be a single or a line drive homer or a foul ball. Imagine Vlad Guerrero (the HOF Expo) without the power and bat speed. You’d have a guy who swings at garbage but still doesn’t strike out. You’d have this on your Statcast percentiles:
Again, you don’t want a lineup full of Rosarios. Unlike Duvall, he doesn’t strike out a ton, but also unlike Duvall, Rosario has never hit a ball at even 109 mph off the bat. It works with this lineup because he diversifies what the Braves can do against pitchers.
I think that’s why we didn’t see the Braves pursue World Series MVP Jorge Soler, a defender on par or worse than Ozuna and a similar hitter to Duvall. Joc Pederson is another Duvall-type except with poor defense.
Now that we see what Rosario brings to this lineup, it’s also important to again point out that he doesn’t bring everything. He could stand to have a little protection against LHP, against whom he carries a career .702 OPS. That’s not unplayable, but it is below average (.735). His defense is still going to be a tad subpar, but again, not to an unplayable extent.
Are the dollars fair? Let’s see what my model says.
From there you can see that this doesn’t look like a huge win for either side of the negotiation. The Braves got the OF they wanted, and they paid a fair market price for him. If anything, the tacked on free 2024 option probably pushes this a tad to Atlanta’s side, although I think the odds of them exercising it are pretty low. Here’s why:
This is why Atlanta probably didn’t want to guarantee that 3rd year. If Rosario had pushed for a 3rd guaranteed year, it’s very possible Atlanta’s total offer would’ve been in the same range as the one he signed for, maybe as high as $21M. A player not even 3 seasons removed from a .276/.300/.500, 32 HR season will probably bet on himself to some degree, so the higher AAV, fewer guaranteed years makes sense on his end. And there’s also a decent chance Atlanta comes out ahead, because a shift ban in 2023 could boost Rosario’s value a bit. He was shifted 75.2% of the time last year, and he had a wOBA of .310 while shifted compared to .336 when not.
All in all, I’m not over the moon for this signing, but I do think some signing of this nature was necessary, and I think the Braves are better for making it. It strikes me as a fair deal, and Rosario brings some clarity to the muddied OF situation. Once Acuna is healthy enough for OF duty, I expect Rosario to be the every day LF, with occasional days off against lefties here and there. Rosario also brings some diversification to the lineup, which is nice. It’s a good move.
Signed OF Alex Dickerson to a non-guaranteed, 1 year, $1,000,000 deal
2022: $1,000,000
Alex Dickerson has a career .799 OPS. Over his last 672 plate appearances, he has slashed .262/.329/.479 with 33 doubles, 6 triples, 29 homers, and 93 RBI.
So why is he signing this contract?
Well, you know those 672 plate appearances? It’s taken him three MLB seasons to accumulate those. If it’s a body part with a name, Dickerson’s has caused him to miss games. He had a concussion during the 2013 MiLB season. In 2014 spring training, he sprained his ankle stepping on a sprinkler head. Doctors then found a bone cyst in the ankle. In 2017, his season was ended by back surgery to fix a bulging disc. The following spring training, he tore his UCL and required Tommy John surgery. Dickerson missed time in 2019 with a sprained wrist. He also missed time in 2019 with a strained oblique. Last year, he hit the IL with shoulder impingement. And again with an upper back strain. And again with a strained hamstring.
Wikipedia says Dickerson’s nickname is Grandpa, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s a hip replacement away from a full BINGO card, but if it was, would you really be that surprised? This inability to stay on the field and penchant for spring training calamities is likely why Dickerson’s contract isn’t guaranteed.
When Dickerson is healthy, however, he’s an honest-to-god asset for any team. Let’s plug him into that outfield chart from earlier:
Dickerson can force his bat into lineups when he’s healthy. Glovewise, it’s not going to be pleasant, but the bat is good enough to more than make up for what he costs you defensively. Or, if you feel comfortable with Ozuna in RF, Dickerson could DH. His platoon split isn’t drastic (.810 OPS vs righties, .725 vs lefties), so you could get away with playing him on any day.
Approach-wise, Dickerson is similar to Duvall, but not as extreme. He’s more aggressive than most hitters, both inside the zone and out. He’s worse at making contact than most hitters, both inside the zone and out. And when he does make contact, it tends to be very hard. He’s another lefty who should benefit from Truist Park’s dimensions.
Now to the deal, which is fully dependent on how much he plays:
That’s a 250 PA projection. If he plays half a season, it’s probably a substantial bargain. If Grandpa suffers a torn meniscus dodging an errant squirrel on the basepaths, the value will be considerably lessened. But given the nature of the deal, it’s hard to see this as anything but a no-brainer for Atlanta. There’s almost no way this comes back to hurt the team in any way, and it potentially has substantial dividends, as league-average hitters are not typically easy to find. I don’t see a natural path to the lineup when Ozuna will be angling for DH duty, but it’s nice to have players like this on hand. Dickerson has one option remaining. He has enough service time where he can’t be optioned against his will, so time in Gwinnett likely boils down to whether or not he discussed the possibility with the Braves before signing the contract. Either way, I love this move.
Signed RHP Tyler Thornburg to a non-guaranteed 1 year, $900,000 deal
2022: $900,000
Another Atlanta native comes home. Ok, Sandy Springs to be exact.
Thornburg had Tommy John surgery in September of 2020, so this will be his first action in over a year. You never know exactly what a pitcher will look like immediately upon his return, so let’s just take a look at what Thornburg looked like in his last full season, 2019.
Against righties, he uses a 93 mph four seamer (55%) that generates a ton of spin (94th percentile), creating a rising effect that generates a lot of weak fly balls. He complements it with a 78 mph sharp curve (26%) that also creates weak contact and an 86 mph change (19%) that tends to be feast (41.7% whiff rate!) or famine (they hit .444 against it!). That usage pattern was essentially unchanged against lefties, oddly enough.
Due to some pretty good natural stuff, the 33 year old Thornburg has been occasionally useful. In 2016, he picked up 13 saves with a 2.15 ERA for the Brewers. His command and control have worsened over the years, however, and those pitches that generate flyballs? The ones that aren’t weakly hit tend to fly out of the ballpark. As command and control are usually the last tools to return to the toolbox after TJS, it’s hard to expect too much from Thornburg this year. I’ll plug it in the model anyway.
This is most likely a chance for the Braves just to see what he looks like. If he’s the type of pitcher PECOTA (on which this model is based) expects him to be, he won’t see the mound enough to tally -0.4 WAR. He probably won’t see the mound at all.
This is, like the Dickerson signing, a no-risk contract. The difference is that it’s unlikely to be a significantly rewarding one. Then again, I would’ve said the same thing about Tyler Matzek when he returned from the doldrums several seasons ago. If you’re just throwing things at the wall to see if the occasional one sticks, you want to have as many things to throw as possible. That’s all Thornburg is likely to be, but the Braves get to take as long a look as this abbreviated spring training will allow.
Placed RHP Kirby Yates on the 60-day IL
Yates will be out until at least mid-season recovering from his own elbow reconstruction, so this was bound to happen at some point this spring. You can only move a player to the 60 if you have a full 40-man roster and will be replacing him with someone. With a full 40, signing Thornburg to a MLB contract, even a non-guaranteed one, allowed Yates to be moved.
Odds and Ends
Freddie Freeman signed while I worked on this, and as I try to keep these to about 10-15 minutes of reading time, I don’t think I’ll jump in on that deal just yet. It’s not immediately relevant to the Braves, so it can wait a bit. The takes are going to be red-hot, and I sometimes prefer to let things simmer. My initial reaction is that it’s probably a pretty team-friendly deal for LA, but probably not quite to the extent that I think Matt Olson’s 8-year deal is friendly to the Braves. I’ll have to explore that math a bit, though.
Self-promotion, and a hint toward the trivia question:
Trivia answer: After the conclusion of the 1994 strike, Terry Pendleton signed a 1 year, $1,500,000 deal with the Florida Marlins. The deal included a one year club option for 1996, which the Marlins exercised, allowing them to eventually trade Pendleton back to Atlanta that August for minor league outfielder Roosevelt Brown. Pendleton hit a respectable .273/.321/.403 with the Marlins, leading the 1995 squad in hits (149) and doubles (32).
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