Photo Credit: Ian D'Andrea
Last winter the Milwaukee Brewers made a big splash by making a pair of long-term commitments, signing Lorenzo Cain and trading for Christian Yelich on the same day and taking on a combined nine years of salary commitments (plus Yelich’s club option for 2022). This year their biggest move of the winter was a much shorter arrangement.
Their recent one-year deal with Yasmani Grandal is interesting from a baseball economics perspective for a variety of reasons. First, it’s unusual for a player as valuable as Grandal (MLB Trade Rumors ranked him as this winter’s sixth most valuable free agent and the third position player, trailing only Bryce Harper and Manny Machado) to be willing to accept a single-year deal, especially with over a month remaining before spring training. MLBTR predicted he’d receive four years and $64 million this winter. It’s possible he’ll eventually exceed that earnings projection by going year-to-year, but it’s a risky move.
This also means that a small market team has outbid their large market competitors for a top free agent at least once in each of the last two years: Last year three of MLBTR’s top seven, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas and Lorenzo Cain, signed with the San Diego Padres, Kansas City Royals and Brewers, respectively. Despite baseball’s unique economic disparities, some of the market’s highest-rated players are still finding their way to less likely new homes.
Grandal’s stay in Milwaukee could be relatively brief, but it does give the Brewers a star-caliber projection behind the plate, something they’ve rarely had in franchise history. Baseball Reference estimates that Grandal was worth around 3.3 wins above replacement during the regular season in 2018, a figure only two Brewers backstops have exceeded since the 1970’s: Jonathan Lucroy was worth 6.6 WAR in his career year in 2014 and Ted Simmons was valued at 4.0 WAR in 1983, his last season as a primary catcher.
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If you add on the somewhat recent understanding of the added value a catcher generates via “pitch framing,” Grandal’s value takes another significant jump. Baseball Prospectus factors a catcher’s ability to get extra strikes called for his pitcher into player value and estimates Grandal has been worth about 26 extra runs on average in each of the last four seasons, adding multiple wins to his total value annually. When Grandal is not in the lineup behind the plate his primary backup is likely to be Manny Pina, who also has a reputation as a solid defender with one of the game’s best throwing arms.
Grandal is also an exception to another interesting trend across baseball: The decline of the switch hitter. During a ten-year period in the majors from 1986-95 about 21% of all the full-time position players in baseball (players with at least 500 plate appearances in a single season) were switch hitters. Most of the notable switch hitters in Brewers franchise history, including Jose Valentin, the Brewers’ career leader in PAs for a switch hitter, came during that era.
That 10-year average has trended down nearly every season since and hit a low point from 2008-17, when just 13% of MLB regulars batted from both sides of the plate. That was the lowest mark over a decade in the majors since 1974-83. Switch hitting rebounded slightly in 2018 with 26 players getting full-time playing time, but that was the highest total in a single year since 2007.
It makes sense that the current era of baseball wouldn’t be kind to switch hitters. Recent upward trends in pitcher velocity and reliever usage make it harder than ever to develop a swing to succeed from one side of the plate, much less two. The fact that Grandal can do it effectively (he has a career .797 on-base plus slugging as a righty and a .728 mark as a lefty) continues to improve the Brewers’ roster flexibility. Grandal could give the Brewers a valuable bat off the bench in nearly any situation on days when he’s not catching, provided Craig Counsell is willing to use a backup catcher in those situations.
The catcher position still remains a long-term question mark for the Brewers, one that’s unlikely to be resolved in 2019. In the short term, however, the Brewers pulled off a rare feat by landing an upgrade of this magnitude on a short-term deal.
