In his first five seasons in baseball, Craig Kimbrel was turning the best hitters in the world into pretzels -- the greatest reliever baseball had ever seen.
The undersized Brave mowed down 476 batters in his first 289 innings and allowed just a 1.43 ERA. He relinquished a total of 12 home runs -- in five years! -- and finished off 186 saves, the most in the NL in four of those five seasons. Despite the size of his workload, he earned top 10 Cy Young votes for all but his rookie season.
Then Kimbrel became arbitration-eligible, and the Braves inked him to a deal that hiked his salary 11-fold to $7 million in just its first year. In deep rebuilding mode and at the urging of this blog, the Braves suckered A.J. Preller into taking Kimbrel and B.J. Upton's death-contract to San Diego for players, prospects and massive salary relief.
But I haven't heard much about him lately...
Imagine the setup: the Incredible Hulk of closers moving to the most demoralizing park for hitters the game has conjured. Petco Park saps 14% from hitters' production, a gilding of the lily that Kimbrel hardly needed.
But a funny thing happened on the way to immortality: Kimbrel lost some of his mojo. Batters began timing his fastball -- just a bit -- and squared him up for homers twice as often. His ERA ballooned from otherworldly to excellent (2.68) and his save numbers dropped by 20%.
Quickly pivoting, Preller sent Kimbrel to Boston for pennies on the dollar, but Kimbrel again took a step back in 2016. Battling injuries for the first time, his walk rate spiked, sending his ERA to 3.40. His saves plummeted again and his value, once reliably more than three wins a year, stood at 0.9 wins last season. The projections suggest that this is the new Craig Kimbrel -- a flame-throwing reliever whose high heat is losing its novelty.
All of this is commentary on Mariano Rivera. Wha?
In his best year, Rivera was a pale shadow of Craig Kimbrel 1.0. He never fanned batters at such a rate. He never dominated hitters so thoroughly. He merely converted his split-finger into relentless awesomeness -- year after year after year.
In Rivera's worst year, his ERA jumped to 3.15. But advanced metrics suggested he was mostly unlucky and the following season -- at age 38 -- he allowed 49 baserunners in 71 innings and dropped his ERA to 1.40.
Mariano in his 40s
In his 40s, Rivera saved 126 games, sported a 1.95 ERA and allowed a WHIP under one. Included in that period was a year missed due to knee surgery and his comeback (and final) season.
In other words, any notion we might have had that Rivera was turning into the game's second best reliever of all time have evaporated, just like that. While Kimbrel's inaugural five campaigns rank up there with the best ever, his two seasons since would rank as Rivera's worst. Kimbrel would have had to maintain his pace for 15 years to match Mariano -- and he has begun to wear down after five.
The name of the greatest reliever of all time will not be changing anytime soon, and by soon we mean at least two decades. Craig Kimbrel's "struggles" remind us how unbelievably great Mariano Rivera was.
I'm going to go out on a limb and opine that Dellin Betances is awesome. The gigantic, Brooklyn-raised Yankee reliever sports a career ERA of 2.16, a WHIP of one, and 400 strikeouts in 254 innings. Those numbers put him in the company of the two best relievers in baseball -- Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen.
What makes Betances especially valuable is what you might call Andrew Miller Syndrome: Betances is Joe Girardi's Swiss Army Knife, heading to the hill whenever he's needed. In three years, he's made 217 appearances -- mostly in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings. He's entered games with no days' rest about as often as he's pitched with days off. And half his pitches are thrown in high-leverage situations.
A mere 22 saves belie his prodigious value to the Bronx Bombers.
The Betances Arbitration Debacle
You might have heard that Betances took the team to salary arbitration, requesting a tenfold raise to $5 million, citing projections that put his financial worth at about $15 million to the team. The Yankees countered with $3 million, citing precedent. No other non-closer has ever won more than $2 million in his first year of arbitration.
The Yankees' case is based on a flaw in the arbitration rules, which were constructed on an old paradigm that over-values closers and saves. Without the saves to make his case, Betances was forced into the untenable position of having to argue that he is a closer, which he patently isn't, although patently false arguments seem to be the strategy du jour in America.
Needless to say, the Yankees won the arbitration case and Betances will simply double his career earnings this season.
A Great Set-up Man > A Lousy Closer
The larger issue is that the arbitration system makes no sense. Had Betances simply pitched at the same level of production all ninth innings, instead of seventh and eighth innings, he would have cited Aroldis Chapman's $5 million arbitration salary from three years ago and probably exceeded that. The irony there is that Betances pitches in more high leverage situations as a fireman than he would as a closer, who is often asked to protect two- and three-run leads.
Compare Betances with Phillies closer Jeanmar Gomez, a replacement-level pitcher who is Betances' inferior by every measure except saves, 37 of which Gomez fell into last season despite a 4.85 ERA. And by salary: those 37 saves earned Gomez a $4.2 million contract for 2017.
Take a look at the difference between these two pitchers over the last three years:
Betances: 217 games, 245 innings, 5.3 hits/9, 3.4 BB/9, 14.3 K/9, 1.93 ERA, 8.5 WAR
Gomez: 179 games, 205 innings, 10 hits/9, 2.7 BB/9, 6.4 K/9, 3.68 ERA, 1.5 WAR\
One More Thing, Randy Levine...
There is one more point to make, and that is that Yankees president Randy Levine must have been channeling his inner Jim Dolan in the aftermath of the arbitrator's decision, and now he owes Betances an apology. Levine's denigrating public rant about Betances and his arbitration strategy was mean-spirited and gratuitous. He is going to have to live with the consequences if Betances leaves town as a free agent when he's eligible because the boss treated him poorly in public.
You might remember Randy Velarde, a longtime backup middle infielder for the Yankees in the late 80s-early 90s who bolted to the Angels just as the Yankee steamroller got into gear, and played into the new millennium.
Generally speaking, Velarde could hit for average and get on base, offered middling pop, ran well and had a fine glove, all in spot duty. He played 120 games just four times in his 16-year career but when he played, he could be asked to cover second, short, third or the outfield.
What's so amazing about that? 1999.
That season, toiling for the woebegone Angels, and traded after 95 games to the second-place A's, Velarde set career marks for games, at bats, hits, runs, home runs, RBI, steals, OBP, baserunning value, and offensive and defensive WAR.
Not just by a little. He scored 105 runs. His next best was 82.
He knocked in 76 runs. His next best was 54.
He stole 24 bases. His next best was nine.
He earned six wins against replacement for those two teams, batting .317/.390/.455. His next best WAR in a season was three. (These are all Fangraphs estimates. Baseball Reference credited him with seven wins in '99.)
Indeed, Velarde earned more WAR in 1999 than in his nine worst seasons combined.
Now, I know where your mind is going: steroids. Velarde admitted buying PEDs from Barry Bonds' personal trainer and benefiting from them. But that started in 2001, two years after his career year.
For his career, Velarde added 22 wins to his employers over 16 years, a pretty hefty number. More than a quarter of that came in that one great campaign.
But wait, you haven't heard the amazing part: Velarde accomplished that -- by far his best season in the Majors -- at age 36.
No one does that. By age 36, Derek Jeter was hitting .270 without power. Cal Ripken was playing third base. Miguel Tejada was a replacement-level backup. Nomar was no more.
Randy Velarde never made an All-Star team, never garnered an MVP vote, never led the league in anything except for that year (most singles). Eighty second-basemen's careers are rated ahead of his. Yet he is one of only two second basemen since 1946 to earn 5+ WAR after age 35. The other fella is a guy called Joe Morgan, perhaps the greatest keystoner in baseball history.
Self-knowledge is a wonderful thing. The Chicago White Sox came to the realization last season, the fourth sub-.500 year in a row, that their vector did not point up.
Others might not have reached that conclusion. After all, one of the best pitchers on the planet, Chris Sale, hurled for the White Sox between fashion contretemps. So did promising lefties Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon. David Robertson has saved 110 games the last three seasons. Jose Abreu and Todd Frazier have banged 200 home runs between them over the last three years. And all-around star Adam Eaton (pictured right) has hit and run to 15 wins during that same period.
Shouldn't They Be Great?
That, plus some other assets, are a great core. You could win with a true ace, two more solid starters, two big boppers and a solid outfield as the anchors of an otherwise solid team. Alas, that last part was not the White Sox.
Chicago's South Siders were the ultimate stars and scrubs outfit. They played a .205 hitter with four home runs in center field. Their best bench bat was 35-year-old Justin Morneau, who can't play the field and posted a .303 OBP. This strategy, if indeed it was one, has proven itself flawed. Teams are measured not by their best players, but by their sixth starter, their utility infielder and the depth of their 40-man roster.
The gentlemen named above carried the team, accounting for 71% of their WAR. Because nine guys have to bat, and your top three starters can only pitch 60% of your games, that's a problem. Well, it's a problem if you're trying to win. But if you want to rebuild, it's an asset.
The Advantage of Tradeable Stars
A sell-off of decent players returns middling prospects, but Chris Sale and Adam Eaton brought a haul of developing talent. The White Sox plucked two big pitching prospects from the nation's capital for Eaton. Sale delivered New England's two prized farmhands.
Frazier, 31, (pictured left) and Melky Cabrera, 33 in the last year of their contracts; and Robertson, 32, who has two years left; might move before the trade deadline if they continue to play up to expectation. Robertson has already been the subject of trade talks with the closer-deficient Nats.
Assets begat assets, if the front office is adept. Turning Frazier, Cabrera and Robertson into future value, combined with the retrenchment that started with the Eaton and Sale sales, will allow the White Sox to start over, this time with a more balanced approach.
If you wanted your old jalopy to look and run like new, would you swap out the engine for a '75 Malibu's? Would you attach the rusted doors from a '92 Nova? Even if you could get them cheap?
The rebuilding Braves, they of the 68-93 record, have inked deals with two-thirds of a nursing home. 40+ hurlers Bartolo Colon and R.A. Dickey were just the beginning. Atlanta has since picked up 30-year-old Jaime Garcia, 36-year-old Brandon Phillips, 33-year-old Kurt Suzuki and 32-year-old Sean Rodriguez.
It's not like these players were found in the bargain bin. Phillips and Garcia will cost $26 million between them. Dickey's knuckler and Colon's many folds chew up another $20 million. Rodriguez signed a two-year, $11.5 million contract. It's a parade of post-prime players on the books for a team clawing back from the abyss.
And that's added to a last place team already starting two MLB graybeards, Nick Markakis, 33 and Matt Kemp, 32.
Are They Any Better?
None of these players is currently a star, though Colon was a Cy Young candidate back when rookie phenom Dansby Swanson was in diapers and Matt Kemp came within a Ryan Braun drug test of earning an MVP back in the Bush Administration. All of them together aren't propelling the Braves into contention. So what does it mean?
It means Atlanta's brass knows Atlanta's kids aren't ready, particularly on the mound. Rather than rush the prospects to the Majors, the team is bringing in elderly placeholders on one-year deals. If any of them takes his Geritol and lights it up in the first half, GM John Copolella will flip them at the trade deadline for more young assets.
“We’re looking for guys who can suck up innings," he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Beyond that, Copolella recognizes that it's a bad look, particularly as they open Sun Trust Park, if the Braves suck. There might actually be some value to not finishing last in the NL East. So if they want to catch an ascendant Philadelphia team, they'd better get some quality on the field. Middling 29-year-olds aren't generally settling for one-year deals, so they recruited the guys they could.
It's an innovative strategy that might catch on among rebuilding clubs that calculate they are still a couple of years away.
So Year One in the new digs in Marietta won't involve a pennant chase. It won't even involve a .500 chase, most likely. But it increases the odds that a contender gets to Sun Trust Park before its novelty wears off.
We're in Dead-Horse Beating territory here, but it seems as if Major League Baseball has taken a Lilliputian step forward with its decree that from now on intentional walks may simply be signaled by the pitcher, rather than throwing four pitches high and away.
I understand the argument that something unexpected can happen during a purposeful free pass, like a batted ball or a wild pitch, but the larger issue is that baseball is an entertainment business and an intentional walk is as entertaining watching a cat cough up a hairball. (Believe me.)
The time saved on one intentional walk every other game is smaller than the president's credibility, or, if that's not possible, than whatever else you can imagine that would be infinitesimal and undetectable.
Two Simple Solutions
First steps are helpful as long as they're not last steps. Baby steps are fine when followed by giant steps. It's time for MLB to take the two big steps that would really increase the pace of games.
First, of course, enforce the existing rules about getting pitches to the plate when no one is on base. A batter gets in the box and stays there. A pitcher has 20 seconds (or whatever it is) to deliver. Shampoo, rinse, repeat, because human rain delays aren't fun. They make flowers grow, but so does chicken poop.
Second, limit pitching changes during innings. There are a number of ways to do it and it almost doesn't matter which one you choose. Pitching changes are the baseball equivalent of corporate board meetings. They provide all the entertainment value of uranium decaying.
It's not about how long games take; it's about how much action they pack. These two simple changes, one of which isn't even a change, would go a long way towards tilting the ratio of excitement to boredom into positive territory, particularly for the casual fans who will make or break our sport.
Former New York City mayor Ed Koch was renowned for asking Gotham residents, "How'm I doin'?"
Let's see how I'm doing. Last year, in this post, I reviewed 2015 performances that seemed ripe for surpassing before the Summer Solstice. Let's review:
Jackie Bradley Jr.
-- had amassed just five hits, one homer, no steals, and three runs and RBI into August. In April alone he knocked 22 hits, a home run, 11 runs scored, a base swipe and 13 RBIs. He popped his second homer on May 5. Mission Accomplished.
Tanner Roark
-- I predicted he could top his 2015 win total of 4 right quick. It did take him until June 5, but then he heated up and finished 16-10, 2.83.
Nick Markakis
-- after mashing just three home runs in 686 plate
appearances in 2015, it seemed inconceivable that a guy with 144 lifetime jacks wouldn't bounce back in 2016. We were starting to conceive in 2016 when Markakis totaled just three in the first half of the season. He picked up the pop a bit as the weather warmed and ended the season with 13.
Anthony Rendon
-- Injuries limited Rendon to five dingers and 25 runs batted in during the 2015 campaign. He repeated the pattern in April, but got uncorked by mid-May and collected 7 homers and 29 RBIs by the end of June. He finished with a more characteristic 20 and 85.
Jake Arrieta
-- allowed just seven runs in August and September of 2015 en route to a Cy Young. Still a CY candidate in 2016, Arrieta allowed seven runs in five innings of one game against Pittsburgh. It cost him 25 points of ERA on the season.
Dee Gordon and A.J. Pierzynski
-- world-beaters in 2015, both flopped predictably in 2016. The former, the batting leader in 2015, served a first half suspension and then needed all but the last two weeks to notch his 78th hit, his total by Memorial day the previous year. Pierzynski, coming back for his age 39 season, couldn't match his April 2015 home run total (three) and topped the April 2015 RBI total (15) by just nine all year.
Andrew Cashner
-- Cashner appeared due for a bounce after absorbing four losses in April 2015 despite a 2.61 ERA. That was not a problem at all in 2016: Cashner pitched just 53 innings for the Marlins, going 1-4, 5.98. Bust!
Shelby Miller
-- After a 6-17, 3.02 season in Atlanta, there was no way his record and ERA could be so divergent in Arizona, right? Right! In 2016, his 3-12 record was validated by a 6.02 ERA. Didn't see that coming!
Jon Jay -- As San Diego's anointed CF, it seemed likely he'd top his 2015 production of
six doubles and a stolen base, early last season. He bopped his seventh double May 5 and stole his second bag May 13. It was his last steal, but Jay did leg out 26 doubles for the season.
Corey Seager
-- I knew I was cheating on this one, but oh my. Seager, in an impressive cup of coffee with the Dodgers in 2015 presaged great things, so it's no surprise that by May 15 he'd topped his 2015 numbers with six homers, 20 RBIs, 23 runs and, well, everything else. Seager enjoyed a rookie season for the ages, winning ROY and earning third place in the MVP balloting with a .308/.365/.512 line and 6 WAR.
Hunter Pence
-- What injuries did to limit him to 9 HR and 30 RBI in 2015 they also did to him in 2016. However, he managed twice as many games and delivered 13 homers and 57 RBI. Pence would be a perennial 4-win player if he could just stay on the field.
So there you go, 10 for 12. Of course, considering this was a self-selected sample, it doesn't exactly make me Nostradamus. It just shows that good players tend to bounce back from bad years and no one is as good as his best year.
