Cueto be a trade chip…

But my initial reaction is that an average of $6.5 million/year seems pretty expensive for him.

Depending on his progression, if this is really his breakout year like some are predicting it could save the team some money, but otherwise I feel the team could get a better deal in arbitration.

I’m waiting to see what nycredsfan or RijoWhatever says about it in their deal breakdowns (which will probably be in a few days, right?)

Bruce, Votto, Cueto, Arroyo all locked up long-term…been a pretty good off-season for the Reds.

Good for the Reds and Johnny. The hell with cost certainty. He’s a rotation certainty. Can strike you out or make you hit his pitch. And he’s getting better. Gimme 4 more years of that, please!

There is little chance this bites the Reds in the ass. They are essentially paying for about 5.5 WAR at current rates. Cueto was worth exactly 5.5 WAR in his first three seasons. So again, barring injury, it’s hard to see him being worth less than that over the next 4.

Of course, they shouldn’t be paying FA WAR rates for the next 3 seasons, but I’ll let JinAZ do the advanced math (read: arithmetic) on that. I think it’s a solid deal.

Are we not the youngest and most cost certain team in Major League Baseball?

It’s not exactly the kind of sexy market-exploitation that gets Brad Pitt cast in your role, but damn, Walt. You knew what you wanted to do and you did it. Nicely done.

1. You believe fangraphs’ “1 WAR is worth $5M in every situation” meme, and
2. Either fangraphs or baseball-reference correctly estimate pitcher WAR, and
3. Arb contracts in years 1/2/3 are worth 40/60/80% of FA value…

This is a decent deal. Not a great deal by either side, but decent. At least the Reds got a FA season out of him.

Both fWAR and bWAR thought Cueto was worth a bit more than 2 WAR last year. If 1 WAR is really worth $5M/yr, this deal values him as just below a 2 WAR pitcher.

I’m on record as saying that I don’t trust the WAR values for pitchers, nor do I believe that the monetary value of a win is the same for every position. To me, though, this contract passes the “smell test”.

Although Jockety, through teh Fay, denies a deal’s been done.

I guarantee it.
This is a bad deal.
Count on it.
Sigh.

Oh well at least it ain’t Volquez

…So I’m not going to do a big post. I’m writing this on the old desktop computer I just hooked up to my TV (I’m ready for MLB.TV this season!!).

But THT projects Cueto for 2.4 WAR next year (4.23 ERA, 178 IP). ZiPS has him at a 4.01 ERA over 190 IP. So they see some regression from last year—his peripherals would agree with that—but still show him as an effective middle rotation pitcher.

Actually, here’s THT Oliver’s projected WAR for each year of his new contract, along with approximate cash value, adjusted for arb over those first three years of the deal

2.4 WAR * $5M * .4 = $4.8 M
2.2 WAR * $5.4M * .6 = $7.1 M
2.2 WAR * $5.8M * .8 = $10.2 M
2.2 WAR * $6.3M * 1.0 = $13.9
Total: $36 M

So that would indicate that this was a pretty nice deal for the Reds—classic trade of potential earnings by the player for the security of never having to work another day once you finish your baseball career.

I don’t know how I feel about zero aging after the first year, however, and I think I remember hearing the Brian’s not completely happy with his aging curves for pitchers. If you instead assume 0.3 WAR per season aging, mostly due to risk of injury, it becomes:

2.4 WAR * $5M * .4 = $4.8 M
2.1 WAR * $5.4M * .6 = $ 6.8M
1.8 WAR * $5.8M * .8 = $8.4 M
1.5 WAR * $6.3M * 1.0 = $9.5
Total: $29.5

…which would make the deal about dead even value. ’Course, if you go with the ZiPS projection instead of the Oliver projection, Cueto looks valuable, so it again becomes a deal that favors the Reds.

I’m generally not crazy about locking up pitchers long term, as they always seem to get hurt. But this only takes Cueto through his age 28 season, and he’s never had major injury problems despite his size. So I like this. Seems like a good way to lock up a young talent. And what I really like about this is that the Reds have done it with two other players this offseason, and therefore are insuring each of them against each other. Yay!
-j

If this didn’t happen, Cueto would get ~3.5M this year if they settled. The team should get some kind of discount since they’re committing four years, so you figure something like 3, 5, 7, and then 12 for the FA year. Actually that’s pretty decent. I like this.

I recently ran some similarity scores for NL starting pitchers, based off of the three stats that I felt defined each pitchers “talent type” the most. They were K/9, BB/9, GB/FB. For the Reds, using the rotation of Volquez, Arroyo, Cueto, Leake, Bailey… the five similar pitchers for them came out to be (based on Fangraphs projections)…

E.Volquez = B.Norris (K/9) 9.43 vs 8.95 (BB/9) 4.68 vs 4.33 (GB/FB) 1.34 vs 1.04
B.Arroyo = K.Lohse (K/9) 5.38 vs 5.50 (BB/9) 2.58 vs 2.71 (GB/FB) 1.01 vs 1.12
J.Cueto = A.Harang (K/9) 7.16 vs 7.38 (BB/9) 2.76 vs 2.69 (GB/FB) 1.02 vs 0.93
M.Leake = R.Wells (K/9) 6.50 vs 6.57 (BB/9) 2.90 vs 2.76 (GB/FB) 1.58 vs 1.43
H.Bailey = T.Gorzelanny (K/9) 7.54 vs 8.00 (BB/9) 3.93 vs 3.88 (GB/FB) 1.20 vs 1.06

Of course this only compares 2011 projected stats and does not take into consideration things like contract status, age, etc….

Full list here.

I’m not exploding in my pants over it, but I’m on board with locking Cueto up over Bailey and especially over Volquez.

I guess I really just like how the Reds finally have multiple young, homegrown studs worth locking up for years to come.

 I guess the reason I never really understood the arbitration process until a few years ago is pretty simple: if all your young talent sucks to the point that they’re either non-tendered or traded, you never find out about buyouts and extensions.

Now we know, and knowing is half the battle.

After seeing the numbers exchanged on Cueto, speculation was circling a number in the $3.5 million range for a one-year deal to avoid arbitration. Does that mean Cueto’s FA value for 2011 is $8.75 million? Would he get that much on the open market?

No, it’s not a gay porn site:

Tracking down my online haters

That’s been my experience, too. The most dickish people on the Internets turn out to be normal, and very polite, people if you ever encounter them in real life. People say things online they’d never dream of saying in person.