If you told the average Toronto Blue Jays fan halfway through the 2015 season that their team would go on to spend $62 million on pitching in free agency they probably would have been pleased.
That amount of money doesn’t go as far in the baseball world as it used to, but a number like $62 million represents a significant investment in any context. Moreover, the Blue Jays haven’t doled out that kind of capital on free agent pitching since A.J. Burnett signed on the dotted line 10 years ago Sunday.
So, it would be reasonable for this hypothetical fan to be excited by this news, but that excitement would be short-lived when they found out exactly who the Blue Jays were going to spend this money on.
Less than six months ago, the idea of signing J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada to multi-year deals worth eight figures annually would have seemed preposterous. At the time Estrada a swingman who was just getting a foothold in the Blue Jays’ rotation and Happ was a retread with an ERA in the fours at pitcher-friendly Safeco Field.
Looking at the pair’s numbers from the beginning of 2014 to the 2015 All-Star Break, they were both average at best.
| Pitcher | Innings Pitched | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Happ | 253.2 | 7.38 | 2.69 | 1.01 | 4.19 |
| Estrada | 237.2 | 7.42 | 2.76 | 1.48 | 4.05 |
Considering these statistics and their combined age of 65, the duo appeared unlikely to cash in after the season. Then in the second half they took off.
| Pitcher | Innings Pitched | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Happ | 76.1 | 8.96 | 2.36 | 0.83 | 2.95 |
| Estrada | 94 | 5.94 | 2.49 | 1.34 | 2.78 |
Down the stretch Happ and Estrada were rotation stalwarts for playoff teams, with the latter mixing in some October heroics for good measures. Two journeymen in their early 30’s became impact players seemingly out of nowhere.
The difficult question becomes how much of this success they can replicate going forward. While luck is always in play, both pitchers made tangible adjustments that helped increase their effectiveness.
Estrada formed a profitable partnership with Dioner Navarro and changed his pitch mix to include more cutters, curveballs and high fastballs. His peripherals did not improve markedly, but he did force more popups and softly-hit fly outs, the least dangerous types of batted balls.
For Happ it was a matter of fine-tuning his mechanics under the watchful eye of pitching guru Ray Searage in Pittsburgh and attacking the strike zone with a more fastball-heavy approach.
Theoretically, there’s no reason why these stylistic changes can’t carry over in 2016, but generally speaking statistics from half of a season are less meaningful than bigger samples. Players make adjustments all the time only to slide back into old habits or discover the league has adjusted back.
For this reason these contracts deserve a fair amount of scrutiny. The Blue Jays signed Happ and Estrada to deals that would have been out of the question had they not ended their years in spectacular fashion. It’s very possible that the team is overeacting to a small sample size.
However, it’s also important to note that Happ and Estrada aren’t being paid like they’re expected to pick up where they left off. If anyone thought Happ could sustain the 1.85 ERA and 2.19 FIP he had in his 11 starts with the Pirates he’d be wildly underpriced at $36 million.
The Blue Jays don’t need these pitchers to be top-end starters to get value in return, but they do need them to be better than they’ve traditionally been, and therein lies the gamble. While the duo’s second-half brilliance doesn’t have to mark a complete transformation, it must mean something.
A team featuring Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion and Josh Donaldson knows the value of a late-career renaissance more than most, but for every breakthrough there are countless cautionary tales.
The last pitcher to leverage a sizzling closing stretch into big free agent money was Ubaldo Jimenez, who received a four-year $50 million deal after leading the majors in WAR in the second half of 2013. His FIP in the two years prior to that run? 4.35. And in the two years since signing with the Baltimore Orioles? 4.28.
More often that not a player’s career-long track record is the best indicator of what they have to offer going forward. By signing Happ and Estrada the Blue Jays have made a sizable bet on the gap between “often” and “always.”