Over the coming days, I am discussing some of the higher profile upcoming arbitration cases. I rely partly on my arbitration model developed exclusively for MLB Trade Rumors, but will also break out some interesting comparables and determine where the model might be wrong. 2020 projections are available right here.
Trevor Bauer’s arbitration cases have gone to a hearing two years in a row, and he has emerged victorious both times. However, his 2019 performance was weaker in several ways, and it remains to be seen how big a raise he can get over his $13MM salary from 2019 in his last year before reaching free agency.
My model does see him getting a sizable $5.6MM raise, mainly due to his career-high 213 innings and 253 strikeouts. After putting up a 2.21 ERA in 2018, Bauer regressed back to a 4.48 ERA in 2019 and actually had a losing record of 11-13 for the first time in four years. This was not merely bad luck either. His FIP worsened by nearly two runs as well, going from 2.44 to 4.34. Of course, with a very low HR/FB in 2018, his FIP benefited. But SIERA adjusts for this and still saw nearly a one-run deterioration from 3.21 to 4.14 for Bauer. Bauer walked a career high 82 hitters while allowing 34 home runs. Despite his higher strikeout total, his K/9 fell slightly from 11.3 to 10.7 in 2019.
Arbitration panels do not use sabermetric stats like FIP or SIERA very frequently, so Bauer’s case will largely come down to his robust 213 innings versus his 4.48 ERA. Finding similar comparables is tricky, but several potential pitchers do emerge.
If we focus on pitchers with at least 180 innings pitched but ERA’s over 4.0 who were entering arbitration for the third or fourth time, we get four pitchers in recent years that seem comparable. Each got raises between $3.0 and $3.55MM, obviously less than Bauer’s $5.6 million projection. Of course, none struck out hitters at anywhere near the clip that Bauer did. Patrick Corbin in 2018 had the highest total strikeouts of the bunch with 178 in 189.2 innings and a 4.03 ERA to go along with a 14-13 record. He got a $3.55MM raise. With fewer innings and way fewer strikeouts, Corbin’s case is clearly weaker. Tanner Roark’s 9-15, 4.34 performance in 180.1 innings earned him a similar raise last year ($3.53MM), while Andrew Cashner’s 184.2 innings and 6-16, 4.34 performance only got him $3.1MM back in 2016. Hector Santiago got a $3.0MM boost in 2017 after going 13-10 with a 4.70 ERA in 182 innings. Each of these four pitchers had a weaker case than Bauer, so his floor is probably in the mid-3’s.
If we flip things to look for pitchers with similar strikeout totals, only three guys with similar service time had 225 strikeouts going into their third of fourth year of arbitration during the last five years. David Price got a $5.75MM raise five years ago after a 15-12, 3.26 campaign, in which he threw 248.1 innings and struck out 271 batters. That case is probably somewhat stale though, even if Price clearly had a better case than Bauer does now. More recently, Gerrit Cole got a $6.75MM raise last year and Jacob deGrom had a $9.6MM raise. The 1.70 ERA that deGrom posted en route to a Cy Young Award clearly makes him a poor comparable for Bauer. Even Cole’s 2.88 ERA is a run and a half better than Bauer’s 4.48. Cole went 15-5 in 200.1 innings and struck out 276. Cole’s $6.75MM raise is obviously a ceiling.
It seems unlikely that Bauer will fall below Patrick Corbin’s $3.55MM raise or best Cole’s $6.75MM raise, and should land somewhere in between. To get the $5.6MM the model projects, he may need to argue that Price’s $5.75MM raise from 2015 is too stale to be relevant, which puts him somewhere in the vague range between Corbin and Cole. I suspect Bauer may not get quite up to that point, although if he does take his case to a panel again, he could quite easily get there if the Reds aim too low. Bauer will certainly be an interesting reference point for pitchers with significant innings and strikeout totals who put up mediocre traditional statistics in future years, since it is obvious that few such cases currently exist.
It’s pathetic that in 2020 player salaries are determined by dinosaurs using meaningless stats like pitchers win/loss records.
While it is not a definitive stat it is a stat that does hold some weight.
A pitching giving up 5 runs in 3 innings or whatever clearly weighed their team down and the L holds more weight than it would if a pitcher went 7 and gave up 1 or 2 runs.
I’m sure that goes into consideration when looking at the L’s and W’s, least I hope so.
That’s why you look at ERA, FIP, WHIP, etc. A guy might give up 5 runs in 3 innings, but if he has a line up like the Yankees, Dodgers, etc backing him up, there’s a pretty good chance he is either bailed out of the loss, or could even be put in a position where he could get the win for the game. But if he has an Orioles or Tigers offense backing him, he’ll more than likely be given the loss.
A win is a win. You give up 6 and your team scores 7, that’s a W. Conversely you give up 1 and your team gets shut out it is an L.
That stat should hold little to no weight. I get it, a guy who gives up 6 set his team up to fail. But one who does that consistently will see his more meaningful numbers suffer as we.ll.
It’s not fair that Dakota Hudson went 16-7 with a 3.36 ERA, 4.92 FIP, and 1.408 WHIP last season, but Jacob DeGrom only has 21 wins in the past 2 seasons, and his ERA is more than a full run lower, and over half less the FIP than Hudson’s in 2019.
The ultimate datapoint to support your argument is Bob Welch’s 1990 season. Look it up on Baseball Reference. He even got a Cy Young with a FIP of 4.19 that was a run and a quarter above his ERA.
Sadly, I am old enough to remember that season.
It’s only meaningful from a statistical facts standpoint. If a pitcher plays for a bad team with poor defense and run support, he shouldn’t be penalized in arbitration for those team deficiencies which is out of his control. Inversely, a pitcher with 20+ Wins and a high innings count exhibiting poor peripherals shouldn’t be rewarded with a huge raise. The arb system is antiquated and needs to be rehauled.
i think its possible to use wins as a useable measuring stick for starters, but its just so circuitous. youd have to use other stats to see how much the pitcher earned those wins, and at that point it just use those other stats alone.
I think it’s even more simplistic than that. Just make it to arbitration – regardless of stats – and you’re getting a raise. Teams know this which is why so many useful players are non-tendered.
Figure the owners will want to include advanced stats in the next CBA for arbitration. And the union will fight like hell not to.
Using advanced stats J.T. Realmuto would be getting paid $20 million plus this year and would have got around that last year.
Realmuto has only been paid ten million for his entire career.
if You are a starter, losses are a pretty important stat. You put your team behind by giving up runs. If you go deep into games wins are a somewhat important stat. Schilling won 22 games the year the DBacks won the WS.
Yet a quality start allows a pitcher to give up 3 earned runs, so your argument doesn’t make much sense. Easy to lose games by giving up only 3 runs or less.
Even in the days of inflated offensive numbers I still have an extremely difficult time accepting that 3 runs over 6 innings (minimum) is considered a “quality start.” Besides a non-contender, what team would feel good about a starter’s ERA sitting at 4.50? Set the bar at 3 runs over 7 IP or 2 runs over 6 IP and I can buy into the stat.
I agree with you, but we werent discussing the merits of the quality start as a stat.
Yes I agree MisterB!
When it’s normal for Ozzie Albies to go 405 feet the other way that is a quality start.
BAN the SUPER BALL
But the point is different. You could pitch 8 innings and give up 1 run and still lose if your team doesn’t score. That Loss goes to the pitcher which is why the W/L stat can be false.
So, Kevin Millwood was better in 2004 than 2005 because less losses?
Wins and losses are more about run support than what the pitcher does.
Unlike the others, I understood what you meant Oxford. I read “somewhat important” and the others overlooked the word somewhat.
Pitchers need run support and a bullpen to hold leads to secure victories. Less pitchers are going deep in games these days which explains, partly, why starting pitchers aren’t racking up wins. Going deep in games and securing wins gives the bullpen some rest which is beneficial long term. As for losses, sure. Putting your team in a hole sucks. However, 1987 Nolan Ryan would give some compelling reasons for losing 16 games while winning the ERA title.
one-year wonder
Arbitration breakdown
It’s always the same
It’s part of the owner’s shakedown
Drive me insane!
Gets worse for Mr. Bauer.
Mr. Bauer wants to go year-to-year but the Reds are going to hang the draft pick penalty around his neck. That’s death for a guy going for a one year deal.
Yeah, he’s usually pretty intelligent with how he approaches pitching and even handling arbitration, but I don’t think he thought through the ramifications of insisting on one-year contracts. Especially if his skills decline, like 2019 appeared to show.
Bauer needs to ask his fellow players why they’re so afraid of a strike that they’ll agree to anything to avoid one.
You have ex-players working in the broadcast booth – lots of them – who can’t relay any stories about what it’s like to be on strike because they never went through one. They just gave back everything won by those who preceded them.
I still can’t believe the Reds gave up the #1 prospect in the organization and Puig as a bonus. That’s too much for one year of this overrated flake. He’s a fly ball pitcher who will implode in GABP. I was hoping the plan was to flip him in the off-season but that obviously didn’t happen. I really hope I’m wrong about this guy, but GABP is not a good place for a fly ball pitcher, not to mention he was terrible after the trade. You would think the fact that Cleveland wanted no part of him in a playoff race would open the Reds eyes. Nope!
Trammell wasn’t doing well in Double-A, and Puig was a free agent at the end of the year. The Reds were clearly out of it, and keeping Puig around was just wasting him. Instead of saying that if the Indians didn’t want Bauer on their team for a playoff run, maybe you should see it as the Reds didn’t see Trammell as an integral part of their future.
Like I said, I really hope I’m wrong. My biggest question is him pitching in GABP. It takes a different psyche to pitch there. I’ve watched it every year since the park opened. You have no idea how much I want to be wrong on this!
I think Bauer will have a bounce back year, he wasn’t happy in Cleveland &and with; a spring training and a full season with Reds + DJ as his tutor he’ll turn things around like Grey, we had a crowded outfield like now and needed the pitching
He wasn’t happy in Cleveland? That’s news to me. He even hung around for two more days after he was traded and made podcasts of him attending a game there as a fan.
He was just bummed that the Indians called his bluff on insisting on one-year contracts and dealt him at his peak value.
Maybe we need to institute another category, expected win (or loss) determined by a SP going at least 5 and exiting the game with his team leading (or losing if behind) regardless of the final score
I don’t think adding a new, equally arbitrary stat would help. The issue is not that no one knows better ways to value a pitcher, the problem is the system remains archaic in the valuation methods. Clearly, FIP or xFIP, IP, and SO/BB ratio are the better tools, but this doesn’t change the fact that a shift to these would equally mess with the system. Though, you don’t fix a broken system simply by staying with it. I do think a mixture of the more advanced valuation methods can be implemented by looking back at recent cases where these stats were still available and make the analogies based on those comparisons.
“Trevor Bauer has won 2-straight arbitration hearings. How much might he seek to earn in 2020?”
He should seek to give a refund instead.
Nah. Based on the deals third-tier FA pitchers have been getting this year, $5.6MM for Trevor Bauer is more than reasonable.
Pitchers on good teams have an advantage if wins and losses matter. Doesn’t seem very fair