The pros and cons of the top remaining free agent starting pitchers (and David Price!)

The Blue Jays still appear to be in the hunt for another starting pitcher, and with the Trevor Bauer saga now finally over, it surely must be finally time for all of the other dominos to start falling, right?

Right???

Whether it’s now or a week from now, chances are the Blue Jays will find themselves signing — or at least trying to sign — one of the few remaining guys on the market. So, with that in mind, and with the fact that I didn’t start this site until last month (and therefore didn’t do the kind of off-season busywork that other people who cover the team normally get done in November) also in mind, I’ve decided to take a closer look at the free agent starters who remain unsigned at this point. Plus David Price, who, although a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers and not a free agent, we all could use a few minutes dreaming on, I think.

David Price

• Pros: Toronto Blue Jays legend; still effective when healthy; likely still owns the robe.

• Cons: health; cost; another left-hander.

I put Price on this list because it really is a fun idea. I then found that the more I picked at everybody else’s flaws, the more I tended to move him up in my own esteem. Part of that, I will fully admit, is sentimental. Price’s arrival in mid-2015 electrified a Blue Jays fan base that was already plenty jazzed about Troy Tulowitzki. Then over 11 starts he went out and delivered on every ounce of promise he’d brought with him. God, it was spectacular.

Problem is, five MLB seasons have been played since then. Price was great in the first of those, 2016, but managed to pitch a full workload in just one of rest — including 2020, which he opted out of. His innings totals over the last four years? 74 2/3, 176, 107 1/3, and zero.

That said, he was incredibly effective when he was on the field over that span, posting a 3.75 ERA and 3.82 FIP across the three seasons combined, and setting a career best strikeout rate (27.9%) in 2019 while still issuing walks at a below average pace. Despite some initial concerns that he may opt out again this season, Price seems to be getting ready to go and feeling good about it.

David Price @DAVIDprice24

Never felt better!!

The Dodgers, especially now that they’ve signed Bauer to go along with five other excellent non-Price rotation candidates (Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Dustin May, Julio Urías, and Tony Gonsolin), don’t especially need him. However, given his health history, that’s also maybe the ideal situation for him.

The reason the Dodgers may look to move him — and there really haven’t been rumblings of this so much as there has been wishcasting from Jays fans — is cost. The Red Sox are on the hook for half of the two years and $64 million remaining on his contract, but that still means he’s got a two-year commitment worth $32 million on the books.

Would he have been able to get that sort of money in free agency this winter at age 35? Maybe, but I doubt it. Charlie Morton is a little older (37), but has been more durable over the last half decade, just about as good, and pitched in 2020 (and was better than the numbers suggest if you take away his getting roasted by the Blue Jays in the season opener), yet only managed to get a one-year deal from Alex Anthopoulos’s Braves for $15 million.

If the Dodgers eat some salary, maybe it would work. Or, as I’ve liked to fantasize, if they took Tanner Roark back from the Jays. (“Some in the industry view Tanner Roark as a possible trade chip,” noted Ben Nicholson-Smith in a recent piece for Sportsnet). The Dodgers have blown past the luxury tax threshold for 2021 with the Bauer signing, so that’s less of a concern now. But they’ll still have to think about next winter, when Kershaw, shortstop Corey Seager, and closer Kenley Jansen will all hit free agency, while 2019 NL MVP Cody Bellinger will likely continue to set salary records as an arbitration-eligible player.

I suspect the Jays won’t be nearly as unbothered as their fans are by a $16 million commitment for 2022 to a then 36-year-old Price, and his left-handedness is not exactly an ideal fit for a rotation mix that already features lefties Hyun Jin Ryu, Robbie Ray, Steven Matz, and Anthony Kay. Especially when the Jays are due to have so many crucial games against a Yankees team that tilts very heavily to the right side. But if you’re going to gamble — and that’s what a deal with any of these guys will require — there’s a lot to be said on betting on the guy with the Cy Young upside, even if that’s obviously a long shot at this point. Plus, it sure would be a whole lot of fun to see him back, wouldn’t it?

Taijuan Walker

• Pros: Excellent results in 2020; seemed to really like it here; easy guy to cheer for

• Cons: Messy track record; unimpressive underlying numbers; health

Taijuan Walker had some great results in 2020, particularly after he came over to the Blue Jays, and he really seemed like a fun and thoughtful dude who liked being with the club. He is a great, genuine personality on Twitter, and really seems like he would be a strong addition to the team both on the field and off. I'd like to see him as a Blue Jay for more than just six starts.

You'll notice, however, that I said he had great results in 2020. That's not quite the same as saying that he pitched exceptionally well, is it?

It really depends on how you want to define pitching well, I suppose. Walker came to the Jays sporting a 4.00 ERA, then over six starts lowered his season mark to 2.70. He allowed just four earned runs (though ten runs total) over 26 1/3 innings with the Jays, giving him a 1.37 ERA for his time with the club. Can anyone really say that he didn't pitch exceptionally well? Technically no, I suppose. But one can certainly point out what a small sample we’re looking at there. Or the fact that his .243 BABIP for the season is awfully friendly, and that his strikeout and walk rates are bog-standard.

The thing is, the addition of Walker just a little before the trade deadline was really about depth more than anything. That he came in and pitched so well is a credit to him, but also, like I say, a bit of a mirage. So would the Jays be looking at him as anything more than that? Ideally their final big pitching move this winter will be for someone who could be termed a number two, or at least a number three. The Jays liked Walker enough to trade for him once, but I'm not sure if they'd like him as that. Especially when you also consider that he barely pitched in 2018 and 2019, and that he accumulated just 5.0 fWAR combined from 2015 to 2017, despite averaging more than 27 starts per year over that span.

"Good not great," is probably what I'd say, looking at all the numbers. And the other guys in this market have had a bit more great about them in their careers.

But that doesn’t mean any of them are going to be great going forward, or that Walker can’t be. He is, it must be noted, a different pitcher now than he was before.

In 2020, Walker used his fastball less than ever by far, turning to the pitch 50.3% of the time compared to a career rate of 60.6%. The cutter he once threw has now become a slider — and his main secondary pitch. (The Baseball Info Solutions data at FanGraphs also says he moved from a changeup to a splitter, though Baseball Savant's Statcast data has always classified the pitch that way — Walker himself calls it a “split-change.”)

"I went to Driveline about a week after the 2019 season ended," Walker told David Laurila of FanGraphs last month when asked about his background with analytics and pitch design. "I had a chance to really learn the numbers, whereas before it was more like, ‘Hey, these are your numbers,’ but never really having them explained to me. It was never, ‘This is what they mean, and this is how to make [a pitch] better.’"

The whole interview is very much worth a read, especially for Blue Jays fans. In it, for example, Walker laments that he was only with the Blue Jays for a short while. “I feel like the Blue Jays are pretty far ahead of the game with all the technology, all the data, and the way they set it up. They’re really prepared. Pete Walker is amazing. I wish I’d have had more time to work on stuff with him.”

He also says this:

“I guess as I’ve gotten older, and the more I’ve been around the game… like, velocity is definitely a big key in baseball. You can get away with more mistakes if you have better velocity. But it’s also not the only thing. I watched Marco Gonzales this past year. He’s 88-89, and a phenomenal pitcher. He’s an ace, and he doesn’t throw hard. It’s all about mixing your pitches. If you can keep hitters off balance, 88-89 can look like 95-96. A guy like Marco is able to get that good separation between his changeup, his curveball, and his fastball. So it’s not all about velo, but at the same time, if you have it, it’s definitely helpful.”

Understanding stuff like that is certainly easier than doing it, but Walker is clearly embracing ways to make himself better, and may legitimately be one of those guys — like Gonzales — who can consistently keep guys off balance, induce poor contact, and produce results that belie his FIP.

I wouldn’t bet against it at this stage. But would I bet on it? I’d feel better about it if he’d done it for longer, if his health history was a little better, or if there wasn’t some bigger potential upside available elsewhere.

Jake Odorizzi

• Pros: Great 2019; relative durability; a Charlie Montoyo fan

• Cons: Awful 2020; meh track record; looking for a multiyear deal

In his latest for Sportsnet, Ben Nicholson-Smith notes that the Jays are currently considering Walker and James Paxton (who we'll get to in a moment). "As for Jake Odorizzi," he writes, "he was an off-season target for the Blue Jays a year ago and has remained on their radar this winter, but their current level of interest in the right-hander is unclear."

The Jays’ interest in the former Rays right-hander last winter made a lot of sense at the time. Odorizzi was coming off a 4.3 fWAR 2019, heading into his age-30 season after a 3.51 ERA campaign that saw him push his strikeout rate to a very respectable 27.1% after four straight years in which he average or below, and his average fastball velocity had ticked up from 91.1 mph to 92.9.

There are still things to like about Odorizzi now, but 2020 took quite a bit of the shine off. His velocity gains held, but his strikeout rate did not, sagging to 20.0% — his worst rate since a seven game cameo with the Rays in 2013. His overall results were disastrous, with his ERA jumping to a fugly 6.59 and his FIP to 6.12.

Granted, we're only talking about four starts and 13 2/3 innings pitched. As MLBTR explained when ranking him their number 11 free agent this winter, Odorizzi started 2020 on the injured list because of a back injury. In his third start back he was hit in the chest by a comebacker and missed nearly a month. His first start back after that was cut short by a blister, and he was unable to pitch again before the season ended.

Getting hit in the chest was a freak thing that can’t be held against him, but a pitcher with back and blister problems is usually a red flag. In this case, however, those are maybe reasons to feel better about him if he really is back at full health. Odorizzi simply wasn’t himself in 2020. Or, at least, not what had a year earlier seemed to be his new self.

The narrative coming out of 2019 was that the added fastball velocity had transformed Odorizzi into something approximating a frontline pitcher. Michael Augustine of FanGraphs wrote about exactly that in November of that year. Yet in 2020, despite throwing it just as hard as the year before, his whiff rate on the pitch dropped from 30.7% to 18.6%, and instead of throwing it 57.9% of the time, he threw it just 39.2% of the time.

According to Statcast, Odorizzi's whole pitch mix changed in 2020, in fact. In 2019 he relied heavily on the fastball (57.9%), mixed in a cutter primarily to right-handers (18.4%), a splitter primarily to left-handers (17.1%), and occasionally (6.5% of the time) dropped in a curveball. As noted above, in 2020 his fastball rate dropped significantly (39.2%), he also upped his usage of the splitter (28.4%) and threw it more regularly to right-handers; his percentage of cutters dropped by about half (9.8%), as did his percentage of curveballs (3.4%), and he brought back a slider (19.1%) that had been his main secondary pitch back in 2018.

Now, while pitch classifications are better these days with Statcast than they used to be, they can still occasionally be wonky, and I do wonder if there's anything like that going on here. Regardless, something was clearly different in 2020.

Did the back and the blister force him into doing something differently? Could a return to what worked in 2019 restore Odorizzi’s promise? I don’t know. Frankly, I’m not sure I want to find out.

Odorizzi “developed a deep respect for manager Charlie Montoyo from their time together with the Tampa Bay Rays,” according to a November 2019 piece from Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. That’s a good thing that could maybe (minimally) factor into his decision on whether or not to come here. Another good thing, sort of, is the fact that Odorizzi has been relatively durable, making at least 28 starts for six straight years prior to 2020. But there are reportedly more suitors for Odorizzi than the other starters on this list, which means that he’s more likely to require a multi-year commitment from the Jays. While I’d make an exception for Price because I’m sentimental like that, I think the Jays are right to be mindful of their flexibility next winter. If they can land someone comparable on a one-year deal, it makes more sense to me to do that than commit to multiple years of Odorizzi.

That is, unless they really believe 2020 was a blip and 2019 was his new normal. Colour me unconvinced.

James Paxton

• Pros: Elite strikeout pitcher; Big Maple!; bounce-back candidate

• Cons: Durability; potentially diminished stuff; left-handed

Paxton is the author of one of the best pitched games at Rogers Centre in recent memory, his no-hitter against the Blue Jays back in May of 2018. The fact that the big lefty from Ladner, BC, who sports a maple leaf tattoo on his right arm, managed the feat on Canadian soil obviously meant a lot to him — and endeared him to a lot of Blue Jays fans.

Of course, Paxton has a deeper history with the Blue Jays than just that. He was a supplemental round pick (37th overall) for the club in the 2009 draft, but failed to sign.

Under normal circumstances Paxton would have simply returned to the University of Kentucky for his senior season. However, then-interim Blue Jays president Paul Beeston admitted to John Lott of the National Post that summer that he had been negotiating Paxton’s deal with his longtime nemesis, super-agent Scott Boras.

In his first incarnation as Jays president in the 1990s, Beeston got to know Boras, already the toughest gunslinger among baseball agents. And in recent weeks, Beeston had a sense of deja vu as he personally handled the Paxton negotiations.

"They were cordial. They were firm. They were businesslike, and they took a while. I couldn't convince him and he couldn't convince me. Things have never changed between us," Beeston said yesterday with a guffaw.

NCAA players at the time were not allowed to be formally signed with an agent, though they were allowed to employ someone like Boras as an "advisor," just as long as he didn't directly represent the player when negotiating. Kentucky caught wind of Beeston’s admission and Paxton was ruled ineligible to play, forcing him into independent ball for a year. His draft stock dropped and he ended up a fourth round pick, landing a $942,500 bonus from the Mariners that, while good for a fourth-rounder, was below what Boras had been negotiating for the previous summer with the Jays. ("The starting point was somewhere north of US$1-million," Lott's piece says.)

Of course, that was all a very long time ago in baseball terms. Paxton is 32. He's made 136 MLB starts now, a whole lot of which were extremely good. His career ERA sits at 3.58, his career FIP is 3.31, and he's averaged 9.9 strikeouts for every nine innings pitched while walking just 2.75 batters per nine. Between 2016 and 2019 he was the 12th best starter in baseball, per fWAR. Yankees fans weren't exactly thrilled with Paxton's two years in pinstripes, but on the whole he's been very good.

When healthy.

That's the big caveat, isn't it? For a guy who was part of the Mariners' opening day rotation in 2014, 136 big league starts isn't a huge number. And even when Paxton has been relatively healthy he hasn't exactly been someone who pitches deep into games. In 2019 he managed to make 29 starts for the Yankees, but logged just 150 2/3 innings — an average of less than 5 1/3 innings per start.

Then there's the matter of 2020. Paxton made five starts for the Yankees before being shut down with a forearm flexor strain in late August. He was eventually deemed not to require surgery, but missed the rest of the year and wasn't able to throw a showcase for interested MLB teams until December.

In the five starts he did make, Paxton was rocked. His strikeout and walk rates were as good as ever, but he was especially homer prone (a problem that has emerged in the last three seasons for him), his ERA ballooned to 6.64, his exit velocity and hard hit percentage were the worst of his career, and most concerningly, the average velocity on his fastball dropped from 95.5 mph to 92.1 mph.

Boras, who remains his agent, tried to explain away Paxton’s poor 2020 in a radio hit on Saturday, suggesting that he likely attempted to come back too early last year from back surgery that he was forced to have in February. Boras also said that Paxton’s velocity this off-season is once again “where he was in '19, throwing early to mid 90s.”

The back surgery thing is, I think, a real reason to have hope he may be back closer to normal in 2021, but the velocity stuff I’m not sure I buy. In that December showcase, Paxton was still not back to his old self.

Jon Morosi @jonmorosi

Free agent James Paxton reached 94 mph at a throwing session for scouts, source says; as many as 20 teams were in attendance. @MLBNetwork @MLB

I’ve seen optimists try to say that 94 is a fine number for December and that more velocity should be expected to come as he ramps up for the season. That’s not how it was reported though, and Paxton’s camp would have had a whole lot of incentive to make that clear if it was true. What I see is exactly what Morosi’s tweet says, and what Boras is now saying: that he “reached” 94, a number below his average velocity in 2019, and significantly below his maximum that year, which was routinely around 98 and at least once touched 100.

If I was Boras, I’d be shouting from the rooftops that he’s only at 85% at this stage, if that were in fact true.

On one hand, he still managed to generate strikeouts with diminished stuff in 2020, and he could genuinely bounce back if the velocity really is higher and the forearm and back problems are behind him. I’d be happy to see him on the Jays if that were true. On the other hand, I’m seeing a lot of red flags here. Add in the fact that, like Price, he’d give the Jays a very left-handed rotation, and I’m not so sure this is the move to make.

Don’t forget about…

• Matt Shoemaker: Like Walker he doesn’t have a huge amount of upside, and sadly he’s had an awful time keeping himself on the field in his career. But he’s been pretty dependable when healthy these last couple of seasons, and that’s maybe even selling him short. I don’t think he moves the needle a ton — would you really want to commit to him instead of just giving those starts to one of Anthony Kay, Thomas Hatch, Patrick Murphy, Trent Thornton, or Julian Merryweather? — but would be more solid depth.

• Rich Hill: Hill's impressive strikeout rate plummeted from 29.8% in 2019 to 19.9% last year with the Twins, but he was still quite effective, and — surprisingly for him — managed to stay healthy. He's another lefty, and I do think that has to be a consideration, but if all these guys carry health risks — and they absolutely do — maybe the play here is to go purely for upside. Even though turns 41 years old next month, you could make the argument that Hill has that. To do so, however, you'd have to believe those strikeout numbers will come back, and why would you?

Top image: Screengrab via Sportsnet/MLB/YouTube