It’s December. Free Agency had started but nothing major had happened. As far as the Jays are concerned, they had made a (I feel very well) calculated move in locking up Estrada, and traded a reliever in Liam Hendriks for another fringe starter in Jesse Chavez. Both moves, while not major, look good. Competition at the back end of the rotation is never a bad thing, and I feel Estrada is the real deal. Bring in one top end guy and this rotation is solid I think. Then it happens. The alert pops up on my phone. Welcome back J.A. Happ.
Like many others out there, my initial response was not a great one. My kids may have received the benefit of learning a few new curse words at his expense (no no guys, those are Mommy and Daddy words…). What are they doing!? Your ex is your ex for a reason! A bunch of monkeys! Fire Shapiro!
The thing is, emotion was the driver on this reaction. Based on memory in the moment, he had never performed exceedingly well for the Jays in the first place, and the refusal to accept a bullpen assignment was fresh in my mind.
The thing is, emotion was the driver on this reaction. Based on memory in the moment, he had never performed exceedingly well for the Jays in the first place, and the refusal to accept a bullpen assignment was fresh in my mind.
The thing about emotional decisions, is that they are very often incorrect, so I wanted to investigate this signing further to try to gain some perspective on what exactly the brass was thinking. I pulled together a collection of free agent pitchers to compare last years numbers, and see just what exactly we were getting in our “ex”. There was Happ, and then 5 other pitchers who were labelled as the top free agents, but also reasonable acquisitions for the Jays (basically just excluded Price and Grienke).
Player A: IP 172 k/9 7.9 bb/9 2.35 hr/9 0.84 Era 3.61 xFiP 3.69 war 3.3
Player B: IP 201 k/9 7.33 bb/9 1.74 hr/9 1.07 Era 3.66 xFiP 3.82 war 3.0
Player C: IP 129.2 k/9 7.7 bb/9 1.46 hr/9 1.25 Era 3.54 xFiP 3.27 war 1.8
Player D: IP 214 k/9 6.86 bb/9 2.06 hr/9 1.22 Era 4.96 xFiP 4.31 war 2.7
Player E: IP 212 k/9 7.47 bb/9 1.95 hr/9 0.89 Era 3.44 xFiP 3.78 war 4.1
Player F: IP 183 k/9 7.62 bb/9 2.90 hr/9 0.98 Era 3.10 xFiP 4.14 war 2.4
Without knowing names, these numbers are a lot closer than expected. I mean really, Happ should stick out like a sore thumb… So which was he. Emotional “I hate J.A. Happ” is looking for negatives. There’s one player that sticks out as the worst pitcher by a relatively large margin. Player D, come on down to the Jays rotation. Wrong. Congratulations on the 18 million Mr. Samardzija.
Well how about Player F? That xFIP shows some serious luck. He had to have been lucky to be on par with some of the top free agent starters, right? Wrong. Scott Kazmir doesn’t have a contract yet, but that’s him.
Without knowing names, these numbers are a lot closer than expected. I mean really, Happ should stick out like a sore thumb… So which was he. Emotional “I hate J.A. Happ” is looking for negatives. There’s one player that sticks out as the worst pitcher by a relatively large margin. Player D, come on down to the Jays rotation. Wrong. Congratulations on the 18 million Mr. Samardzija.
Well how about Player F? That xFIP shows some serious luck. He had to have been lucky to be on par with some of the top free agent starters, right? Wrong. Scott Kazmir doesn’t have a contract yet, but that’s him.
How about player B? The lowest K/9 of the bunch. JA never did seem to have that knock out pitch. Nope. Zimmermann is likely more than happy with his 22 million though.
Lowest war? That’s Iwakuma. A more reasonable 15 million.
The two players left are A and E. Player E is Johnny Cueto, who just pulled in almost 22 million with concerns of a bad elbow, leaving you with J.A. Happ. Excluding Kazmir who hasn’t signed, he is also making the least of all of them at 12 million per.
By providing these numbers, I’m not trying to convince myself, or anyone for that matter, that JA Happ was a better signing than all of these other pitchers. There is so much more to assessing a player's value than cherry picking one season. Track record, scouting, raw talent, potential, and many other stats that aren’t listed here are all other factors that could skew you away from J.A. pretty fast. What it does show though, is that maybe, J.A. is better than the emotional WTF reaction called for. If he truly did sort things out in Pittsburgh, the Jays just landed a colossal bargain. To top it all off too, he’s a lefty, which is a rarity among Jays potential starters.
So as I get past my vitriol from the smack in the face the web alert provided, step back, take a few breaths, and put this into perspective, this definitely is Happ-ening. And well, call me crazy, but I like it.
Dustin
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