Are We Slightly Overpaying O’Flaherty? (and other arb agreements thoughts)
January 18, 2012 at 12:02 am by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves
So in the last 24 hours the Braves reached agreements with the last of their arb eligible players; Eric O’Flaherty, Jair Jurrjens and Michael Bourn. Ben gave the relevant details in a brief posting earlier today here.
Bourn’s agreement is completely uninteresting and pretty much exactly what was expected. Sure, it’s a discount, but in the same way almost all great defensive players have their value discounted in arbitration.
Jurrjens’ figure was about what was to be expected as well. However, it is interesting that his agreement included IP bonuses. I’m sure this has happened before, but I honestly can’t recall another arbitration eligible player getting IP bonuses. This indicates that the Braves are concerned with Jurrjens’ durability coming off his knee injury. You have to believe that Boras was asking for more than the $5.5 Mill base that the Braves ended up giving him, and talked him into a discounted base rate with the bonuses to cover the difference, provided Jurrjens is healthy. However, I wouldn’t read too much into it one way or the other, and I would say it has little to no bearing on whether or not Jurrjens will be traded.
On the surface O’Flaherty’s raise, though substantial, seems relatively ordinary as well. Sure, it was a big jump (last year he made $895K), but EOF did put up insanely good numbers last year. Though that 389 ERA+ that Baseball Reference has him down for can’t actually be correct, can it? So in some sense, sure, he deserves his raise.
However, you don’t pay for past performance and deserves ain’t got nothing to do with it, you pay for current performance. And I’m not 100% sold that EOF will be worth the $2.49 Mill he’ll receive this year. This worry is based on 4 prongs:
First, I think it’s undeniable that O’Flaherty got lucky last year. He did put up excellent peripherals, but a 3.19 K/BB rate with a .2 HR/9 rate, while outstanding, don’t often equate to a 0.98 ERA. Such numbers, even for a groundball pitcher, will usually equate to somewhere around a 2.40 ERA. In my opinion, if O’Flaherty pitches exactly like he did last year, a 2.40 ERA is about the number we should expect.
Secondly, I don’t know that we can or should expect O’Flaherty to pitch as well as he did last year. In the point above, I was saying that given how he pitched O’Flaherty had better results than could rightly be expected. Here I’m saying that we shouldn’t expect him to pitch the same way. O’Flaherty lowered his batting average allowed, lowered his slugging percentage allowed, lowered his walk rate, raised his K rate and lowered his homeruns allowed rate. Basically everything a pitcher can do on his own to improve, O’Flaherty did last year. Not all of that can be sustainable. Sure, he probably made some real, sustainable improvements, but it’s also likely that he never ran into a rough stretch and managed to pitch as well as he possibly could, for virtually the entire year. That can’t be expected from relievers on a year to year basis. There is just too much volatility when you pitch 1 inning at a time. So, I expect EOF’s peripherals to also regress, not just his results.
Thirdly, our infield defense projects to be worse this year. The only change is from Alex Gonzalez to Pastornicky. Now, I’ve seen the kid play, and he’s a good defensive shortstop, defensively he’s certainly at a ML level. But he’s no Alex Gonzalez, few are. Even if Pastornicky keeps his head about him and plays as well as he possibly can defensively, we will take a step back at the most important infield defensive position. Furthermore, Chipper and Uggla will continue to lose range. Our 2nd base and 3rd base defense will almost certainly be, combined, the worst in MLB. So, we’ve gotten worse at 3 of the 4 infield positions. Two because of aging, one because of personnel change. Freeman should be the same slightly below average guy he was last year. Decent enough hands, but poor range. Best case scenario, the Braves are average at SS, well below average at 3rd, way below average at 2nd and below average at 1st. This doesn’t bode well for O’Flaherty, who isn’t a huge K guy and depends on a lot of double plays.
Finally, the presence of Venters and Kimbrel limit the amount of high leverage situations that O’Flaherty can appear in. While this certainly isn’t O’Flaherty’s fault, it does lower his value to the Braves. If O’Flaherty was the 8th inning guy or even the closer, he’d face higher leverage situations, making his performance worth even more. However, he’s not and the whole reason relievers are valuable is because late inning high leverage situations are worth more than earlier inning lower leverage situations. Otherwise they’d just be dudes who don’t pitch much. O’Flaherty, in a well managed bullpen, would be third in the pecking order for high leverage late inning situations. This fact limits how much he can be worth to the Braves.
Now, that all being said, I’m not sure that O’Flaherty still won’t be worth what he gets this year. 2.5 mill isn’t a huge deal, and there are worse things in the world to spend your money on than a reliever coming off the year O’Flaherty just had. I’m certainly glad he’s on the team. I just don’t think it’s an absurdly team friendly deal, like some had been saying earlier today. When you consider the four factors I outlined above, it’s at least possible that we may be slightly overpaying for a 7th inning guy who just had an anomalously good year last season.
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@49, 50:
I did a double take, as well as a few minutes of google scavenging to make sure I was just getting my legs pulled. Although he is a clutch pinch fall-on-his-facer, I just don’t think he has a spot on the 2012 roster.
haha was a joke that I forgot to follow up on. slow news day.
@52 /vivabeta
That’s an incredibly disturbing sense of humor you have. :)
This is an interesting situation. I’m in Nashville and have seen how over paying for past performance is a negative (Chris Johnson of the Titans for only about 50 million). So while EOF had a stellar year, with the depth of our bullpen and prospects that are all but ready for the show, I have to say that we are over paying EOF. But, with that being said, I’m glad to know we can depend on him on a nightly basis and have one of the best set up men in the business.
Any possibility of a “missed opportunities” article? We’ve seen 3 instances of players we could really have used (Lowrie, Scutaro, Ross) all going for practically nothing. I have to think Wren is just completely out of money, but Lowrie was acquired for peanuts, Scutaro was a salary dump, and Ross signed for only $3MM base on a one year deal.
@55
interesting idea. Though I dont want to jump on Wren too awfully much at this point. If/When it become apparent that we are going into ST with inferior options to those you stated above, yeah, I think we will be all over that. For the most part, patience has been a virtue of Wren’s. As much as I want something to happen, to have something of substance to write about, I’d much rather have patient Wren than a GM who just makes a trade or signs a player to do something.
Though, yeah, we could just be completely out of money.
Another thought is that Wren may be waiting to see how Pastornicky plays out, and doesn’t want to use all of his flexibility in the case that we have to take on a decent sized SS contract in a trade. Hard to say at this point.
@56
I’m certainly not ready to put the blame all on Wren. He’s shown himself to be an effective GM, even with a few stumbles (one rhymes with “Nescobar” and the other with “Doctor”). I just think that Ross for $3MM and especially Lowrie for nearly nothing are unfortunate misses.
We don’t have the full story (maybe Ross’ incentives are PA-based and he will get more in Boston than Atlanta), but the asking price for these players has all been far less than expected. It’s disappointing to see $5MM being spent on Wilson/Diaz/Moylan.
Perhaps you’re right that Wren is saving his financial flexibility for mid-season when our needs become more apparent. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.