Melewski suggests Sonny Gray

[interloper]

5 minutes ago, 7Mo said:

Jon Heyman says 3/75.

I am all set on $25 million dollar per year 35-to-38 year-old Sonny Gray and loss of a draft pick. 

Edited November 27, 2023 by interloper

[forphase1]

I'm fine that we didn't match that offer.   25M/year plus the loss of the draft pick is a bit more than is want to give up for 3 years years of Gray.  

[e16bball]

7 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

Pedro Martinez, Fernando Valenzuela , and Johnny Cueto are all under 6 feet. Martinez had a 3.63 ERA in his age 37 season. Cueto had 3.35 ERA in his age 36 season. Valenzuela had a 3.62 ERA is 170 innings in his age 35 season.

Pedro pitched a total of 44 innings in the season youre citing — not exactly a banner year for him. He was worth 1.2 WAR in the 34-36 window that I specified, pitching 270 total innings to a 91 ERA+.

Fernando was worth a total of 2.9 WAR from 34-36, pitching to a 93 ERA+ over 351 innings. Largely because he had two terrible seasons sandwiched around the one solid year you pointed out. 

Cueto did have one excellent year with the White Sox at 36. He also was basically worthless for the two (actually, four) seasons prior to that, posting a combined 4.4 WAR (102 ERA+ over 336 innings) from 34-36. He averaged 110 innings of league-average pitching, and that makes him the gold standard for modern short/old starters. 

You could take all 3 of these guys you’ve suggested as exceptions to the rule I’m proposing — all of them excellent (CY level) pitchers in their prime — and combined they still weren’t worth the 9ish WAR you’d be looking for on a $70M deal.

7 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

Ron Guidry had ERAs in the 3’s in his age 34-36 seasons.

Yes, Ron Guidry is the one guy I found when I expanded the search to include 5’11 guys. He threw 569 innings with a 115 ERA+, providing 9.5 WAR between 34-36. Paying $70M for those years would have been a successful investment.

There’s also Fred Norman of the Reds in the late 70s. He pitched 594 innings with a 106 ERA+, making him worth 6.7 WAR between 34-36. Not a “win” for $70M, but not a terrible loss. Call it a draw. 

I noticed you also mentioned Billy Wagner. There are actually several great short/old relievers (John Franco, Fernando Rodney, Steve Farr, Tom Gordon, Jeff Montgomery, etc). But I would hope we could agree that paying more than $23M/year for a reliever — and likely not even a closer in years two and three — is a loss by default. That’s never going to be a good deal for this team.

7 hours ago, Roll Tide said:

So while it’s a valid concern that mid 30s guys start to run out of gas. I think the rest of your argument has holes, No?

I really appreciate all the work you put into looking into this, because I know how long it takes and because you raised some good counter-points. But I don’t know that I’d agree that there are “holes,” per se.

We’ve got one guy in the last 50+ years (Guidry) who would have been a win on a $70M deal. We’ve got one guy (Norman) who we probably would have been satisfied with. Neither of those are exactly “modern” — Guidry was the more recent of the two, and he was 34 in 1985, the year I was born. I’m 38 now. 

Behind those two, every single short/old SP would have been a big loss on a 3/$70M deal from 34-36. Yes, there’s Johnny Cueto and his magical 3.5 win season, but he gave you nothing in the other two seasons. And he’s taking home the bronze amongst all these guys over half a century!

If you’re signing a player saying “hey, we need you to be substantially better than every single guy who shares this particular trait with you over the last 4 decades or so,” I think you’re asking for trouble. I don’t think the Mike/Sig model would consider that a bet they’d be interesting in laying. 

[e16bball]

6 hours ago, Frobby said:

I’ve never heard that the age curve varies depending on how tall you are.  Is there research to that effect?

I haven’t found anything specific on it, save for a FG community post that sort of got halfway there — reaching the conclusion that while numerous short pitchers had been successful in the early 2000s, signing them as FAs had really not worked out. Which I think is sort of a proxy for the idea that they can be just as good when they’re young, but they hit the wall sooner (and harder). 

Here’s the link to the B-R search results for anyone who is interested. I think it’s relatively powerful evidence of what I’m suggesting — but perhaps there are just so few SPs under 6 feet tall that the failure rate at advanced ages is similar to taller pitchers, the sample is just tremendously smaller (no pun intended).

I don’t think so, though. It’s pretty remarkable that not one guy shorter than 6 feet has put up even 5 WAR as a SP between the ages of 34-36 in almost 40 years.