Build Your Rotation

[Snodgrass'Muff]

I’m interested in getting a read on SoSH’s concept of value with regard to starting pitchers in today’s game. There has been a lot of discussion the last few offseasons about the kinds of contracts that are being given out and what moves the Sox should have, could have and would have made under various circumstances. Since we will never find a consensus on any one move, or even any one collection of starting pitchers, I compiled a list of every starting pitcher who will have at least four years left on their contract at the start of the 2016 season, including team, mutual or vesting options. Go ahead and build your rotation from the list with the following caveats. You can only pick one ace. You can only pick one pre-arb or arbitration eligible pitcher.

I picked four years because it seems unlikely that we’re going to see too many starters who aren’t back end guys or pitchers coming off an injury year sign for less than 4 years. Plus, it includes five year contracts signed before last season which is still fairly relevant to the current market. So here are the groups. Grab your five guys and make your case for why they are the best five options.

The line between ace and not ace is arbitrary, as all such lines are, but what I used was anyone with the contract limitations above who was also in the list of top 30 qualified starters by xfip- over the last three years combined. No list of aces will ever be perfect, but this drew a fairly intuitive looking line, IMO.

Your team budget is 189 million (the luxury tax threshold), so considering how much you are spending relative to your total budget is a factor. A couple of the guys from the dot com helped me build some parameters for the rest of this hypothetical team. We took the top five payroll rosters and combined them with the middle five (13-17 to be precise) and then looked to see what percentage of their payroll was spent collectively on their top 5 starters, then applied that percentages to the 189 million. So you have $58,810,135.00 to spend on your top 5 starters for the upcoming season.

Aces: Pick One.

Corey Kluber: Remaining contract - 4 years, 35.5 million, club options for 14 million in 2020 and 2021 with 1 million dollar buy outs.

Chris Archer: Remaining contract - 4 years, 21.25 million, club option for 9 million in 2020 (1.75 M buyout) and 11 million in 2021 (0.25 M buy out)

David Price: Remaining contract - 7 years, 217 million, opt out after 2018.

Felix Hernandez: Remaining contract - 4 years, 104 million, conditional club option for 1 million in 2020 for elbow injury.

Chris Sale: Remaining contract - 2 years, 21.15 million, club options for 12.5 million in 2018 and 13.5 million in 2019 with 1 million dollar buyouts.

Carlos Carrasco: Remaining contract - 3 years, 19 million, club options for 9 million in 2019 and 9.5 million in 2020 with 0.6625 million dollar buyouts.

Cole Hamels: Remaining contract - 3 years, 67.5 million, club option for 20 million in 2019 with a 6 million dollar buyout.

Jon Lester: Remaining contract - 5 years, 98 million, mutual option for 25 million in 2021 with a 10 million dollar buy out.

Max Scherzer: Remaining contract - 6 years, 150 million, 7 years of deferred payments of 15 million from 2022-2028.

Clayton Kerhsaw: Remaining contract - 5 years, 163 million, opt out after 2018.

Madison Bumgarner: Remaining contract - 2 years, 21.25 million, club options for 12 million in 2018 and 2019. 1.5 million dollar buy out in 2018.

Zack Greinke: Remaining contract - 6 years, 206 million.



The rest:

Jose Quintana: Remaining contract - 3 years, 19.15 million, club options for 10.5 million in 2019 and 2020 with 1 million dollar buy outs.

Justin Verlander: Remaining contract - 4 years, 112 million, vesting option in 2020 for 22 million.

Jordan Zimmermann: Remaining contract - 5 years, 110 million.

Yordano Ventura: Remaining contract - 4 years, 22.25 million, club options for 12 million in 2020 and 2021.

Masahiro Tanaka: Remaining contract - 5 years, 111 million.

Ervin Santana: Remaining contract - 3 years, 40.5 million, club option for 14 million in 2019.

Phil Hughes: Remaining contract - 4 years, 48.8 million.

Rick Porcello: Remaining contract - 4 years, 82 million.

Matt Moore: Remaining contract - 1 year, 5 million, club options for 7, 9 and 10 million in 2017-2019 with buyouts of 2.5, 1 and 0.75 million.

Homer Bailey: Remaining contract - 4 years, 81 million, mutual option for 25 million in 2020 with a 6 million dollar buy out.

Julio Teheran: Remaining contract - 4 years, 28.6 million, club option for 12 million with a 1 million dollar buy out.

James Shields: Remaining contract - 3 years, 63 million, club option for 16 million with a 2 million dollar buy out.



Pre-arb/Arb: Pick One - Go find the pre-arb or arbitration eligible guy of your choice. The only limitation here is that they can’t have signed a free agent contract.


Yes, there are some interesting options that are being left out by these criteria. Again, no set of criteria is ever going to be perfect. These are the rules. Have at it.

Edit: Added Greinke to the Aces list.

 

[4 6 3 DP]

Kluber
Ventura
Quintana
Teheran
Gray

Kluber could be Sale - I went with the guy I like a little more.

Ventura, Quintana, and Teheran are all young and already pretty good - to me there's still a growth story here. Sonny Gray won out over Keuchel for me if only because again I just see huge upside.

 

[ehaz]

Archer
Tanaka
Quintana
Ventura
DeGrom

I picked Archer because of the insane contract value, AL East, and I think he will improve even more over the next 6 years.

The rest of my list was similar but I went Tanaka over Teheran because if Masahiro is healthy he's another ace. While Teheran is cheaper/healthier you can afford the risk when Archer/Quintana/Ventura are making absolute peanuts.

 

[Brand Name]

I like this exercise, but isn't the underlying concept a bit flawed? Given the quality of starting pitchers, why would you ever pick anybody on a massively more expensive deal? Not to mention the change in dollars unlikely to justify such a cost and difference, not to mention what it means for your team elsewhere in terms of bats. As such:

Kluber
Ventura
Quintana
Teheran
Gray

I like 4 6 3's reasoning and totally agree with his picks by pure coincidence, but I take Kluber over Sale not because I like him better (I do, but still), but because of team control, given the natures of the option's extend beyond Sale's, and what they project as, relative to market cost, come 2020 and 2021.

Even if Kluber is a greatly reduced pitcher by that point, those numbers are comparable to what is being thrown around for a Mike Leake this winter. It will be even less of an asset cost, relatively speaking, based upon the time value of money. Same rationale as 4 6 3 on Gray, with the added note that he also comes with a year more of control as well; Cot's puts his service time at 2.061 to Keuchel's 3.089. I'm at $29.971M for all but Gray, who isn't even arb eligible yet, so that's very unlikely to go over a million, so let's give a liberal estimate of $31M for my rotation. This leaves me at $150M for 20 other players, or $7.5M per. Yes, it's exactly $158M, but I'm accounting for injuries, and the potential need to make a deadline move where need be. From there, I load up on young (one of many market inefficiencies today) arb-eligible players, like AJ Pollock, Josh Donaldson, and likely the best non-pitching contract in baseball, Paul Goldschmidt at 3 years/$25.5M, with a $14.5M 2019 club option ($2M buyout), to name a few.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Archer

Gray, but I'm a little confused. Would I have been able to take any arb pitcher or am I constrained by the one ace rule? I'd take DeGrom if I could.

For this exercise, aces are just the one's I listed under that first category. There's also an argument to be made that Gray isn't really an ace when you look a little deeper, so I don't think there's a conflict there. I expect a lot of people will select him as their arb/pre-arb pitcher, though I can think of a few I'd pick ahead of him.

 

[Darnell's Son]

And you can look a little deeper into Gray here.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

I'm a little confused about what salary figure we're supposed to be using. AAV for the whole contract? AAV for the remaining portion? 2016 salary? It makes a big difference for some guys.

Also, are we picking these guys specifically for the Red Sox/Fenway, or for some abstract team without a home park?

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

I'm finding the bottom four guys pretty easy:

Quintana
Ventura
Tanaka
Syndegaard

Verlander and Porcello are too expensive for what they'll likely provide; Zimmermann is suspect after his velocity drop; Bailey and Moore are not far enough past surgery yet; Santana, Hughes, Teheran and Shields are coming off down years that I don't feel comfortable dismissing as fluky. In that context Ventura and Quintana were no-brainers; Tanaka was a little harder to pick over Zimmermann, but only a little.

Syndegaard seems to have the highest ceiling (and the longest cost-controlled window) out of several good young choices, including the Mets' other two guys, Keuchel and Gray.

The choice of the ace will depend on the answer to the previous question.

 

[Snodgrass'Muff]

I'm a little confused about what salary figure we're supposed to be using. AAV for the whole contract? AAV for the remaining portion? 2016 salary? It makes a big difference for some guys.

Also, are we picking these guys specifically for the Red Sox/Fenway, or for some abstract team without a home park?

Neutral park. Payroll constraints are exactly as described. Your budget is for next season. The pitchers have the contracts listed.

 

[Savin Hillbilly]

Neutral park. Payroll constraints are exactly as described. Your budget is for next season. The pitchers have the contracts listed.

Yes, the pitchers have the contracts listed (or, more precisely, they have contracts of which the amounts listed are all that remain). But if the budget is just for next season, and the constraint is an actual payroll constraint and not a luxury tax constraint, then one might assume that the amount we should be counting is the actual salary for next season, rather than the AAV of the remaining amount on the contract. But I'm going to guess you mean the latter.

In that case:

Sale
Quintana
Ventura
Tanaka
Syndegaard

 

[PapaSox]

Bumgarner
Keuchel
Moore
Teheran
Tanaka

Total: $58.05