Okay, people know who Greg Maddux is, so I can’t just make stuff up on this one. As you probably are aware by now, the Padres have signed Maddux to a 1-year deal worth $10 million that includes a player option for 2008 which will be worth $6-10 million depending on 2007 performance.
With the horrible contracts being handed out to mediocre pitchers this winter (Adam Eaton, 3 years, $24.5 million; Vicente Padilla, 3 years, $34 million), I shudder to imagine what the likes of Jason Schmidt and Barry Zito will end up landing. In that context, now is a great time to invest short term in someone who can provide immediate help and who won’t tie up a lot of resources well into the future.
How do you do that? Simple, find an old guy.
Seven starting pitchers age 37 or older filed for free agency this winter. All but two of them (Roger Clemens, 44; David Wells, 43) have signed. Recognizing that Maddux’s career took a serious downward turn in 2003, here is how the five old starting pitchers (not an elegant description, but accurate) have fared since then:
| Pitcher | Age | Dollars | IP | ERA+ | H/9 | BB/9 | SO/9 | HR/9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tom Glavine | 41 | 10.5 | 200.1 | 110 | 9.32 | 2.86 | 4.77 | 0.84 |
| Orlando Hernandez | 38/42 | 12.0 | 94 | 98 | 8.75 | 3.52 | 8.13 | 1.17 |
| Greg Maddux | 41 | 10.0 | 214.2 | 106 | 9.35 | 1.45 | 5.48 | 1.12 |
| Mike Mussina | 39 | 23.0 | 189 | 112 | 8.96 | 1.93 | 7.63 | 1.05 |
| Woody Williams | 41 | 12.5 | 179 | 99 | 9.30 | 2.50 | 5.81 | 1.07 |
| Notes: Age is age at end of contract. Dollars is dollars (million) guaranteed throughout duration of contract. IP is average number of innings pitched during seasons 2003-2006. Stats courtesy of David Pinto’s Day by Day Database, Baseball-Reference, and ESPN’s Free Agent Tracker. | ||||||||
In terms of performance and money commitment, Glavine probably is the best investment. Hernandez easily is the worst. If I had to rank these signings, I’d do it as follows:
- Glavine
- Maddux
- Mussina
- Williams
- Hernandez
Mussina is the hardest to figure, because you have to do the conversion rates for Yankees money. His $23 million probably comes out to around $13-15 million for most other clubs, and that’s a pretty good deal. You could make a strong case for putting him ahead of Maddux, and I wouldn’t argue the point.
Either way, Maddux is a solid investment in the current market. He’s old, but he’s durable, reliable, and reasonably effective — certainly effective enough to be someone’s #3 or #4 starter, which is all the Padres are asking. Maddux really takes over the role held by Wells in 2004 and Williams in 2005-2006. He’s pricier than either of those two guys were, but today’s market is significantly more insane than the one that existed when they signed.
In Maddux, the Padres get a solid innings eater into the back of the rotation without tying up long-term resources. They also get a guy who doesn’t cost any draft picks. The Dodgers, fearful that he might accept, didn’t offer Maddux arbitration.
The only potential downside to this deal is that, at his age, Maddux could fall off the proverbial cliff any moment. But you have to like 19 consecutive seasons of 199+ innings pitched and 100+ ERA+.
An added benefit to having Maddux on the club, as Jake Peavy notes, is that other pitchers on the staff will have the opportunity to “sit on the bench and talk baseball with him.” There was some discussion in yesterday’s comments about the extent to which this might be true and, if so, how much value it would provide, but apparently Peavy and Maddux are friends, so at least one pitcher will have a chance to pick the professor’s brain. Obviously, you bring a guy in for what he can give you on the field, but something like this seems like a nice little bonus to me.
Another benefit is that, with Todd Walker and the Padres apparently headed to arbitration (and with Walker likely to cost around $3 million), there should be plenty of room in the budget for a power-hitting left fielder. Off the top of my head, I believe the Pads have spent about half of the $30 million or so they had available coming into the off-season. That should be enough to land a replacement for Dave Roberts in left — if not in the market as it stands right now, then perhaps closer to spring training or even after the season starts.
(It’s important to remember that payroll flexibility benefits a team even after winter has passed. If it turns out that there isn’t a good fit for the Padres right now, I expect the doors will remain open to finding a legitimate left fielder.)
Time to wrap up what has become a rambling post. Signing Maddux is a solid short-term move that should help the Padres stay competitive in 2007. It doesn’t hurt them long term, in terms of money or draft picks, and there is the potential side benefit of kids like Peavy, Chris Young, and Clay Hensley getting to watch and/or talk to Maddux about his craft.
I don’t believe the Padres are done yet (in addition to finding a left fielder and a platoon partner for Walker at second, there’s talk of re-signing Wells). The front office still has work to do if they want to bring a third straight division title to San Diego, but adding Maddux to the staff certainly is a nice start.
Here’s another name to throw out there for the OF. According to Jon Heyman on SI.com the Devil Rays are looking at unloading Rocco Baldelli for pitching. Not sure if Linebrink is enough to get him but it’s worth a shot.
I think everyone is underrating Clay Hensley. If his 2nd half numbers are for real (2.66 ERA, 7.0 K/9) than he’s going to be the Padres 2nd best starter. The ideal starter is one that gets groundball and strikeouts. Hensley has a GB/FB ratio of 2.1 and increased his K/9 a bunch in the 2nd half (although his control got worse). And to think that we got him for Matt Herges, who was also traded at one point in his career for Chris Young too.
I think that this market has shown that it’s absolutely imperative for the Padres to lock up their young players. Young, Hensley, and maybe Gonzalez have to be signed now. The Padres just can’t afford to let anyone get to the free agent market because their salaries will be ridiculous. If Adam Eaton is worth $24m than what would Young get? $15m or more?
51: The walks are a little less of a concern with a groundball pitcher.
49: I’ll be prepared to argue that Jason Schmidt, with his near-50 VORP last year, who has averaged a 6.3 WARP the last 4 years even though he was hurt a little in 2005, is a helluva lot better investment than Maddux, with his 30 VORP last year, with an ~ 5 WARP for the same period.
Everybody’s looking at the 47 million side of the contract. That buys Schmidt for 3 full years. And 3 years isn’t long-term.
47: Schmidt was a better pitcher than any Padre starter last year. He was better than Maddux. How does adding a better pitcher not make us a better team?
54: You’d really want Schmidt roughly a quarter of the payroll for the next 3 years?
54: Schmidt project to be one (maybe two) win(s) better than Maddux next year. That’s not worth $7M.
55: Absolutely.
1, if he’s healthy, he’s tradeable at any point.
2, he’s a very good pitcher. Am I crazy or do very good pitchers tend to help teams win?
We’ve got Maddux at 1/7 of the payroll for 2 years, assuming his option vests and he hits very achievable goals. Having a league-average pitcher eat up that much of the payroll is somehow better than having a better pitcher eat up more of it?
Nate Silver on Schmidt:
While I wouldn’t usually call your attention to win-loss record — especially this early in the cycle when we don’t have a good gauge of a pitcher’s run support — it does tell us something here. Schmidt is a slightly above-average pitcher; a 15-10 guy in his best years, a 9-11 guy in his lesser ones, and somewhere in between that the rest of the time. He’s not an ace.
If 15.67 million gets you 6.3 WARP, then isn’t 10 million for 5 WARP a better deal, with fewer years and player option making it even better?
Regarding contract length, I vaguely recall a quote from Sandy in response to a question posed “What are some of things you regret?” His answer was “Signing any player to a long term deal”. Not bad players, any player. And he has a point; how do you know at the start of the deal whether it will be a killer or not? You don’t, so you are taking on a lot of risk. Just imagine if Reyes and Wright got serious injuries, deals generally applauded by all of baseball? NY would struggle to find replacements, but could weather the financial storm. We cannot. So, you have that philosophy at the top, we are not going to see any LT deals.
With the player money out there, this really is a “creative” destruction game. You build a team up, knowing you have to let it crumble soon enough but set the seeds up for the next few squads. It kind of reminds me of the NFL, where it is all the draft and coaching because the players careers are so short. The only difference is that where in the NFL all the good players get hurt or retire, in the MLB they all go NYA, BOS, LA, NYN or, apparently, CHI.
I like the Maddux signing very much, and hope our money gets us a LF and 2B/utility guy. As an aside, I would love to have Nady back and see if he could play that role. He was a decent 1B, played 3B in college and can play OF.
Geoff’s comments that we can wait are probably accurate and probably a good strategy, especially if the money keeps flowing. People will be tapped out, creating opportunity.
I really do hope Wells come back; he cannot be as sharp as 2004, but could be a very solid 4-5 slot guy. I really like Peavy-CY-Maddux-Clay/Wells.
57: Maddux was worth 5.9 WARP last year. That’s 0.1 less than Schmidt. There’s a big difference between 14% and 24% over two years versus three.
Just heard on XX: Jack Kronin, playing the part of Giants FO: Barry, we’ll take you back but you’re not going to be a starter. We’re going to give Linden more starts in LF.
Good call, Jack.
56: We tied with L.A. this year. Are you sure about that? It’s not your $7 million.
Oh and with regard to Geoff’s “waiting” comment, this was an interesting blog post by Nate Silver.
I like Hensley a lot too. Glad he finally got the chance as a starter last year. Seems like a good guy on top of it all.
Re: 37 — If we had signed Schmidt, he would have been our #1 or #2 starter. He really is better than Young and Hensley at this point. He is probably even better than Peavy, although that can easily be disputed. No, I am not saying long term, I am simply talking about today.
Re: 62 — Stephen…no, we did not tie with them. We were the Western Division Champs and they were the WC. Would I have liked the extra 2-4 wins Schmidt would have given us, yes, but don’t be Dodger fan saying Co-Champs…there is no such thing.
62: They replaced Maddux with Schmidt. We replaced Woody Williams with Maddux. Both are 1-2 wins better than the guy they’re replacing. Also, woudn’t Schmidt cost a pick or was he not offered arbitration?
How worried can we be about the Dodgers when they’re doing stupid things like signing Juan Pierre to a 5 year deal?
re 67, I was very afraid when De Podesta went to LA. Thankfully, that did not work out and we have him and LA has a the mini-me from SF. I would say we now have LA and SF with veteran biases, against constant regeneration. I really think Arizona and Colorado are going to be the teams to watch out for over the next 2-5 years. But they do not command the same resource differential as LA or SF, so it is a fairer fight.
Amusing post from True Blue LA
68: Hopefully the McCourts are more patient with Ned. Give him say the rest of his career to see if he works out.
I am very happy with the Maddux signing. He is a horse who will keep us in every game he pitches. This was a great way of shoring up the rotation. We should be able to put a solid, qualified guy in at the fifth spot making our pitching again our leading asset.
Even if we land a pounder to play left, this time will struggle to score runs again next year making the Maddux move vital to staying competitive in the division.
#43 – I think his name is Josmel Sledruz. Juamel was his brother!
72: Crudge has to be the last name.
61: Schmidt also has a couple of 8.0 WARP seasons in his recent past. He has a chance to do that again. Maddux’s chances of doing that are non-existent. Schmidt is also 7 years younger. That mitigates some of the risk. A 2 year deal for a 41 year old or a 3 year deal for a better 34 year old?
74: I’ll take Maddux as 10/6-10 over two years every time.
Over the last three years, Maddux and Schmidt have the same WARP total.
65: I could have been clearer. My point was if one or two more wins means going to the playoffs or going home, I’m going to spend the extra $7 million. Now obviously, Towers can’t go to Alderson in December and say, “We win 90 and L.A. wins 89 if we spend extra on Schmidt.” But I think it’s a reasonable expectation that a healthy Schmidt is worth that much over a healthy Maddux.
77: Where did I get the $7 million? I meant the yearly difference in salaries.
77: In his best seasons which are behind him, Schmidt was worth about 8 wins over replacement. Last season, Maddux was worth 6. Do you really think Schmidt is LIKELY to have a career year next year? Also, it’s not an extra $7M it’s an extra $24M and I believe a draft pick.
The Schmidt signing by the Dodgers gave them surplus starters. My worry is that one or more of those starters would net them Manny Ramirez.
BTW, Saito will return as the Dodgers’ closer. He and the many young arms (Billingsley, Broxton, Kuo) will give the Dodgers good pitching arms. We can hope that Colletti will trade them away for some older ‘proven’ players.
77: Exactly.
76: That’s entirely because Schmidt was hurt in 2005, which is admittedly something to be aware of. But if you’re looking for peak performance, you go with Schmidt. 180Ks vs 117. More likely to dominate a game, which would be nice to have in the playoffs if we get there again.
79: That extra 24 million buys you not only higher performance, but an entire extra season.
I’d be a lot more worried about the draft pick if we hadn’t completely blown it the last time we had this many, and if we’d been aggressive in the draft the last 2 years. Losing a draft pick that we’d likely spend on a low-ceiling college player, not so much of a worry.
Back of the envelope calculations: I think we’re looking to be about three wins better with our position players. That’s projecting a dropoff at catcher and left field, and an improvement at first, third and right.
83: I also think the rotation is considerably better. If you project no improvement (or dropoff) from our “big 3″ and Maddux. They would equal the production we got from all five starting spots last season on their own.
83- why do you project an improvement at first?
79- what would you spend the extra $24m on?
#85 – With a better third baseman, some of the throws AGon is going to get will be more catchable. I suspect this will help his defensive stats a little. Being an old 1st baseman in semi-pro ball, I was always pissed when I was charged with an error that should have gone to the thrower.
85: Adrian is young enough that he should still be improving and also he played a good bit better after the first couple months. I’m only projecting maybe a 1 win improvement.
It’s actually a $27-31M difference (not sure where I got 24). I’d consider investing some of that money back into our players before they reach arbitration. I’m not a fan of big free agent acquisitions because you can’t help “overpaying” relative to what you’d give guys for extensions or even in arbitration. I can’t begin to comment on potential trades because I have no idea what’s out there.
Richard, I can’t believe you wrote this.
RICHARD wrote on December 06, 2006 11:46 AM: “Woo hoo! Earlier the Padres were interested in Barry Bonds and now their going to sign Greg Maddox. Last year they gave us Piazza and Wells.This team is a joke! Its the senior tour of the league.The city of San Diego bent over backwards to give this owner a new ball park and this is the team he expects us to support?! I guess to him 40 really is the new 30.So ten years from now maybe they’ll sign Jeter or A-rod to a fancy one year contract…cant wait!Alex Spanos is an owner thats been dedicated to winning from day one and has backed it up with spending and now he has one of the best GMs in the league who has built a team of young, talented stars yet they might leave because the city wont let them build a new stadium?! Pathetic.”
From the North County Times Web site under the “Maddux signs” story.
88: I guess I have to go back to commenting with my last name attached.
If you want to rely on WARP, Baseball Prospectus has Schmidt down for a projected 4.9 next year.
Not exactly 15.67 million in expected value, IMO.
90: That’s a 2006 MORP of $7,887,660. For 2007 (given the crazy inflation), it’ll be higher, but still not in the 15+ neighborhood.
90: I’d be curious about 2 things:
1. What is their projection for Maddux? He’s not cheap.
2. What does the 50th/75th/90th percentile forecast look like for Schmidt? I’ll go way out on a limb and say his upside is mucher higher than Maddux’s.
Maddux isn’t a terrible deal in this market, but his ceiling isn’t high. Peavy is the only pitcher from last year who you can reasonably say should pitch better. I don’t expect Young and Hensley to pitch better than they did. Maddux = Woody. How did we get better here? What we were last year wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great, either. Schmidt would have been much more likely to make us great.
92: Forecasts aren’t out for ’07. Silver just mentioned it in a blog post.
You really can’t compare Maddux to Woody. Over the last five years, Maddux has put up WARP totals of 5.9, 5.3, 6.0, 4.5 and 7.3.
Woody has put up 4.9, 6.3, 3.4, 2.3 and 3.2.
I expect Hensley will pitch better than last season. His pre-ASB numbers were poorer than his post-ASB’s. Considering that hitters are supposed to adjust to pitchers as the season progressed and the pitchers were tiring some, I’d say that’s a good development for Hensley. While he’ll never be a Jason Schmidt, he’s still a good pitcher for next season.
#92: I don’t think Schmidt would have made the Padres great. Even by your account, with a better Peavy and a lesser Chris Young (doubtable if he’s healthy) and Hensley (probable but unlikely), Schmidt does not make that drop in production, unless he’s way great which I don’t think is likely. Yes, the K’s will be there but so what?
While his upside may be greater than Maddux’s for next season, I think the difference is a lot smaller than you think.
What happens to all the talk about Mark Mulder?
Is he waiting for the market to sign Zito to gauge what he’ll get?
Do the Padres still have interest in him? Can’t be worse than getting Estes last season and with better upside definitely.
92: My point isn’t that Maddux wasn’t better over the last few years or over his career. He was only slightly better than Woody last season, 32.7 VORP vs 27.3, and if you add in Mike Thompson, who was the major replacement for Woody during the torn calf period, the gap is tiny. So a 32 VORP from Maddux, which he can do even if its on the high side, doesn’t make us much, if any, better than we were last year.
94: Schmidt’s K rate has actually been falling. Graph at my name. Check out that sweet trendline.
94: Schmidt by himself doesn’t make them great, especially if our LF is a platoon of Sledge/Cruz, Todd Walker plays 2b, and Josh Bard goes back to being Josh Bard. He’s a better pitcher than Maddux with higher upside. Period. More expensive, but better. And if a 87-92 win Padre team makes the playoffs, he’s got a better chance to shutdown another playoff team than Maddux.
Mulder is rumored to want 3 years, which is an awful lot for a pitcher who was declining before he got hurt and won’t be ready to pitch until May or June. Maybe that’s just posturing.
In 2006, BP had Maddux’s 90th percentile at 8.2 WARP; it was 7.7 for Schmidt’s 90th percentile. They seem to think Maddux has higher upside at the margins, although they think that Schmidt is marginally better overall. Both pitchers exceeded their median WARP projections in 2006.
It will be interesting to see how they project 2007.
BTW, when I started looking at this stuff, Tom, I was more on your side. Reviewing the numbers and contract figures keeps on pushing me closer to Richard’s view, although I still do agree with some of your general, non-money dependent points.
98: I e-mailed Silver to ask about Maddux’ 2007 projection so we could compare it to Schmidt’s.
The Schmidt deal makes more sense for the Dodgers than it does for San Diego. They have more resources (money and prospects) to cover their butts if Schmidt gets hurt.
I think the Schmidt advocates make a good argument and if we had signed Schmidt I’d be saying it was a good go for broke type of move since there’s not much else out there. But we got Maddux, also a good move but for different reasons. Ideally the difference in salaries will go toward another decent pitcher or a left fielder so we end up with Maddux+1 instead of just Schmidt.
As for the playoffs, I don’t know what their respective records are but I’d take Maddux over Schmidt any day.