Today’s trivia: Matt Olson is the 4th MLB player from Lilburn’s Parkview HS. He’ll be the 3rd to play for the Braves, following Jeff Francoeur and Clint Sammons. What college star, who played for 7 MLB teams from 2004-2013, is the only one who did not?
Signed Matt Olson to an 8 year, $168M extension
2022: $15,000,000
2023: $21,000,000
2024: $22,000,000
2025: $22,000,000
2026: $22,000,000
2027: $22,000,000
2028: $22,000,000
2029: $22,000,000
2030: $20,000,000 team option | No buyout
A day after trading four prospects to the Oakland Athletics for star 1B Matt Olson, Atlanta further secured its cold corner for the foreseeable future on Tuesday by signing Olson to a contract extension. I had planned to take a stab at what that would look like, but GM Alex Anthopoulos didn’t even give me a chance. Less than 24 hours after pulling the trigger on the team’s biggest trade in years, he inked Olson to the largest contract in franchise history, an 8 year, $168M extension.
Before delving into the contract that was signed, I thought I’d carry out my initially planned exercise in projecting a contract extension for Olson. Hopefully, from there we can get a good idea of how the real deal compares to what could’ve been expected. First, I am not going to pretend to have a better model for arbitration than MLB Trade Rumors or Ben Clemens, so I’ll look at both. MLBTR projected Olson for $12,000,000 in arb for 2022. Clemens’ model, suggesting $2.13M per WAR over league minimum, would have Olson closer to $10M. Olson is a player whose HR and RBI totals would likely boost his salary beyond a WAR based model, so I’m inclined to agree with MLBTR here. The same issues will probably persist for 2023 estimates, but Clemens’ model sees the final year paying about 168% of the year before, so I think there’s a chance Olson could have gotten $20M and change in 2023 arbitration. That’s a $32M estimate for his 2022-23 salary.
From there, it’s all about guessing his value on the FA market. This offseason, I’ve been using $8.5M/WAR as a rough estimate for contracts. It has worked far better on the lower end - it nailed Jon Gray’s contract, for example - but I use it on the bigger contracts too (Semien deal, it worked; Seager, not so much). We start with an estimate of how good we expect Olson to be this year and subsequent years going forward.
In 2022, most projection systems have Olson around 4.5 WAR. ZiPs is riding high at 4.8, and while I don’t want to go with the highest estimate, PECOTA’s 4.6 projection seems plenty fine to me. Olson will be 28 this year. Ten or fifteen years ago, the thought was players were coming into their prime around this age. Modern aging curves show players peaking younger and entering a slow decline. So, it’s not that the departing Freddie Freeman will decline while Olson gets better. While that’s certainly possible, the way to model this is that Olson will just decline much more slowly. You can use whatever aging pattern you want. If you think Olson will be immune to time for a while, you can re-do the math at home. It’s pretty easy.
I’ll project a loss of 0.1 WAR annually through age 30, then move to -0.5 WAR annually through age 34. Then, I’d probably move to a more accelerated decline, meaning a -0.6 drop at 35, -0.7 at 36, and so on. From there, I see how long it takes to get somewhere below 2 WAR. And that’s, more or less, how I’d model a contract. Here’s how I did it for Semien, whose age 31 season is this year, and Steamer projected for 4.6 WAR:
Semien signed for 7 years, $175M. In reality, I don’t think I would have projected a 7 year deal for Semien. I would’ve stopped at 6 years, $167M. But players do seem to be getting longer than expected contracts this offseason, and maybe that’s why the $8.5M/war is a bit lower than some $/war estimates you’ll see. Also, there’s a very real chance Texas had to pay a slight premium because they lost 102 games last season. If you ask Semien to suffer through a fruitless summer or two while he’s very good, it stands to reason he might want a similar guarantee in return.
This approach doesn’t work perfectly in every situation, but this was an example of how it can work, so that’s something. Let’s try it on Olson:
My model suggests that if Olson were 30 and available on the open market (and projected at around 4.4 WAR), he’d get a 6 year, $159,800,000 deal. Add in the $32M we established above, and you get that total you see in the bottom right-hand corner.
Before you react and think the real-life $168,000,000 deal is a huge win for the Braves, you have to remember one thing: Olson wasn’t on the open market. There was no competition. If Olson wanted to reach the open market, he would have to risk injury or decline over the next two seasons. He’s a good bet to collect that $32M, but what happens if he turns into Chris Davis at the plate or finds himself unable to regularly step to it? When players sign extensions in their pre-FA years, they give up some value for some cost certainty. The first $100M a player makes completely changes the lives of him and his family for a long time. The next $100M makes a nice life nicer. One is going to be much more important to a player, so Olson, like most players, sacrificed some of that future earning potential to lock in a huge, life-changing payday.
I’ve added the real contract onto the right side of the previous table:
There is also a team option for 2030 at $20,000,000, but as there’s no buyout attached, I didn’t bother including it here. It’s just more upside for Atlanta, a no-risk decision down the road.
I will note that in the Est. Salary column, those are just estimates for his value. Real contract structures don’t typically work that way - it’s just a method for estimating the overall contract length.
How much of a discount did Olson give the Braves for locking in that payday? It comes out to around $7.2M/WAR, and I would’ve guessed something around 7.5, a $0.5M/WAR discount for each of the years of team control he’s still under.
I am not going to claim my methodology here is scientifically derived or perfectly calibrated. But I do think it’s reasonable, and it provides a framework for how I view contract decisions.
If I had had the benefit of guessing what Olson would make before the news broke, this model would’ve estimated around 8 years, $173,000,000. I don’t know if I would’ve guessed he’d sign away so much of his FA years, but it does make some sense when you think about it. He’d have nearly been 30 years old when he hit FA, so the odds of him hitting a megadeal was pretty unlikely. As we’ve seen with Freeman, teams are hesitant to guarantee a player in his early 30s a deal into his late 30s. Call it the Pujols effect if you will, but I don’t know if Olson really loses more than $20M or so by signing now.
The Braves come in a tad under that estimate. Olson’s a proven star and a player who has dreamed of playing for Atlanta since he was young. It seems like a pretty fair deal, one perhaps a tad friendly to the Braves, but not shockingly so. Another solid day’s work by Alex Anthopoulos. Now, let’s just check and see if anything happened while I wrote this…
Braves sign RHP Collin McHugh to a 2 year, $10,000,000 deal
2022: $4,000,000
2023: $5,000,000
2024: $6,000,000 team option | $1,000,000 buyout
Oh, hello. After first base was taken care of, I thought the Braves had one glaring need and a couple of secondary needs. The glaring need - another OF bat - still exists, but McHugh takes care of one, and possibly even both secondary needs. The Braves could benefit from someone to eat some innings towards the back of the rotation, and the Braves needed another RHP in the bullpen. McHugh could conceivably do either, though I’d imagine he’ll be focused on shoring up the ‘pen.
Like Matt Olson, McHugh hails from the Gwinnett town of Lilburn, so this marks the second homecoming acquisition of the week. Let’s cover the boring contract and value side first. McHugh is 34, and projected by PECOTA to be worth 0.6 WAR in 61.7 innings this year. I' figure McHugh to regress by 0.1 WAR or so each year from here on out. While I regressed Olson more aggressively up above, that’s because he’s an everyday player and WAR is a counting stat. For relievers, the decline will be more subtle, because they don’t play as much. Because this has an option, there are two forms this deal could take, and I’ll post both. First, if the option is declined:
As you can see, these totals make sense. The Braves are slightly overpaying, but there are benefits beyond the numbers that make it a really nice one for the Braves. We’ll get to that. Now, if the option is picked up:
Again, this would be somewhat reasonable if 2024 were guaranteed. But for a decision that won’t be made until after 2023, it’s even better. WAR from your relievers sometimes costs a bit more, so it’s really hard to quibble at all with the financials. It seems like a very fair signing.
What does McHugh bring to the roster?
Versatility.
Conceptually, Josh Tomlin made a lot of sense for the Braves bullpen over the last few years. It’s nice to have someone capable of going multiple innings, particularly if you need to save the bullpen’s best arms the trouble of getting you through an 8-1 loss. However, when Jesse Chavez arrived last season to displace the too-terrible-for-mopup Tomlin, Brian Snitker realized the potential for more from your multi-inning type:
Chavez wasn’t deployed in multi-inning roles quite to the extent that Tomlin was, but he was also used in higher leverage roles. That column on the right shows the % of appearances in which they faced an average leverage index higher than 1. 1 is set to league average. On the season, Tomlin’s aLi was 0.407 - Snitker almost exclusively used him in situations unlikely to impact the outcome of the game. Will Smith’s, for example, was over 2, typical for a closer who only appears in tied or close 9th innings. As you can see, when given a reliever capable of going multiple innings who brought some quality to the mound, Snit trusted him with not only long relief appearances, but important ones.
Enter Collin McHugh. Let’s take McHugh’s usage with the Rays last season and add him to that same table:
Now that’s what I’m talking about. McHugh is a multi-inning guy capable of doing it all. He can mop up a disaster game like Tomlin was occasionally asked to do. He can get you through middle innings after you’ve used an opener. He can handle anything you throw at him, because he’s very good - over 130 appearances since the start of 2018, he has a 2.82 ERA across 211 innings, with 250 Ks and 63 BBs. McHugh may not be the most dominant relief arm available, but he is a relief arm that transforms the bullpen.
And, if need be, he might transform the rotation. Alex Anthopoulos loves rotating back of the rotation starters on the shuttle back and forth from Gwinnett. But with the new CBA limiting the times a player can be optioned in one season to 5, he might look to change his approach to roster movement. One option would be to add more players to the shuttle, which could happen with guys like Bryce Elder and Jasseel de la Cruz joining the fray. Unfortunately, that can strain the 40-man roster. You can only have so many players do this.
McHugh potentially makes this easier as well. He has 15 starts over his last 2 full seasons. He isn’t going to be a starter in a traditional sense, but he’s more than just a one inning opener. In his 7 starts for TB last year, McHugh went 12 innings, striking out 12, walking 1, and allowing nary a single run. If the Braves want to space out those starter options a tad, McHugh, who pitched 3 innings in 5 appearances last season, can potentially help bridge those gaps.
So far, I’ve focused on McHugh’s versatility without delving into what he does well on the mound. Josh Tomlin was versatile, but what good was the versatility when he reached the point of being mostly ineffective? Have a gander at McHugh’s statcast percentiles, which make a beautiful picture:
A major reason McHugh can routinely go multiple innings is that he’s platoon-proof. During his career, righties have slashed .249/.301/.404 against him. Lefties have slashed .248/.312/.396. He gets everybody out.
McHugh attacks righties with his big, sweeping 79 mph slider (60%). They can’t do much with it, hitting .198 off it last year with a 31% whiff rate. Enjoy:
He complements it with an 88 mph cutter (26%) he’ll throw higher in the zone, mimicking the slider path, leading to more fly balls. He’ll also keep a 91 mph four seamer handy (13%) just to keep batters honest. Despite its low velocity, its surprise nature generates a 31% whiff rate.
Against lefties, the cutter (45%) takes center stage, with the slider (42%) sharing the spotlight. He has a curve and a change, but they’re thrown sporadically at best to either type of hitter. McHugh uses movement and location to not only generate strikeouts (10.4 K/9 last year) but weak contact as well.
Brian Snitker has options with his bullpen usage he didn’t have yesterday. McHugh provides an added dimension and versatility that few MLB pitchers can offer. He’s an excellent pitcher when healthy. That is where the risk comes in. McHugh has 8 career trips to the Injured List with maladies that include a fingernail avulsion, elbow discomfort, a lower back strain, and, most recently, just plain old arm fatigue. Perhaps that was related to missing all of 2020 with an elbow that was “not responding as he had hoped” after surgery. If 2021 was just his year to build the strength back, this shouldn’t be a big concern going forward. But more likely, McHugh’s health is something Snitker and the Braves will have to monitor closely. He’s great when he’s out there. You just have to keep him out there.
Even with the injury risk (which is baked into those projections from earlier), McHugh is an excellent addition to the pen at the cost the Braves are paying. He transforms the decision-making process, providing versatility the Braves simply didn’t have before. That’s more than worth the risk.
Odds and Ends
Trivia answer: The 4th Parkview alum is former University of Georgia standout Jeff Keppinger, one of baseball’s last true contact hitters; in 9 big league seasons, he never had a K% higher than 9.6%.
- Person familiar with #Braves plan said they probably have about $15M more to spend this spring after signing Olson, who'll get $15M this year.
With McHugh now on the books, that brings the total down to around $11M, which should be enough to procure an outfielder. I plan to explore those options in a future post, but let’s be honest, at their current pace the Braves will have that wrapped up and announced by the time you’re reading this.
I wasn’t sure where the Braves would stand on RAJ’s return, but if this is the case, Atlanta’s options in the OF become a lot more reasonable. The CF shelves at the market right now look like the weatherman called for snow. Corner outfielders can be had, however.
I’d love to hear from you, so let me know if you’re enjoying Brave Moves! (unless you’re not, in which case you should enjoy having a new secret to keep)