The Pirates aren’t expected to make a final decision on whether or not to pick up Chris Archer’s $11 million option for 2021 until close to the 5 p.m. deadline on Sunday. The reason: General manager Ben Cherington plans on taking every available second to survey the playing field.
In the meantime, however, some stuff around Major League Baseball has happened, and the established precedent here doesn’t look great for anyone who might’ve purchased an Archer jersey back in July 2018, when the Pirates acquired the right-handed pitcher from the Tampa Bay Rays for … OK, we don’t need to get into that here.
But as far as that precedent, yeah, it’s real. And it’s not spectacular. As you might expect, it’s tied to the lack of gate revenue in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
At best, those missing dollars are forcing teams to re-examine how rosters are constructed. At worst, the losses coupled with an uncertain landscape for 2021 could threaten to quell spending for those on the bottom end of the financial spectrum.
To break down the decision Cherington and the Pirates are facing — pick up the option or buy out the 32-year-old for $250,000 — let’s begin with what has recently happened:
—The Indians on Thursday placed closer Brad Hand on outright waivers. Cleveland’s hope is that somebody will claim Hand, and that team can pay his $10 million club option for 2021. If he goes unclaimed, the Indians would say aloha to Mr. Hand for $1 million.
The move came as a surprise because Hand had a 2.05 ERA in 2020 and led the American League with 16 saves. But the Indians, who had the 24th-lowest payroll in MLB this past season, apparently need to cut costs.
—The Nationals, who had the eighth-largest payroll in 2020, recently severed ties with Adam Eaton, Anibal Sanchez, Eric Thames and Howie Kendrick, declining options for a quartet of heroes from their World Series-winning team in 2019.
Eaton played 151 games that season and slashed .279/.365/.428 with 15 home runs, 25 doubles, seven triples and 15 steals. From 2014-19, Eaton had a batting lien of .289/.367/.423. But he also struggled in 2020, and $10.5 million isn’t anything to sneeze at, even for the big spenders.
—The St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday declined their $12.5 million option on Gold Glove winner Kolten Wong, a move president of baseball operations John Mozeliak told reporters was at least partially tied to the lack of recent revenue and uncertainty ahead.
“Right now we don’t know what our revenues are going to look like,” Mozeliak said according to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “We don’t understand what attendance will look like next year. … This is about mitigating cost as best we can until we have a sense of where we’re going.”
Wong is obviously no slouch. He’s been worth 55 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) in his career according to FanGraphs, including 41 over the past three seasons. In 2019, he had a .784 OPS, and he’s a finalist for the Gold Glove again this season.
So where does that leave the Pirates? Probably not in a position where it makes sense to spend $11 million on someone whose career has been trending downward over the past couple of seasons.
Think about it: How, when and where do the Pirates spend while the Nationals and Cardinals figure it’s best to do more with less? Especially given the cost-cutting measures the Pirates have already enacted, furloughs and firings designed to reshape/streamline the business and baseball sides of the organization.
It’s also smart to remember the baseball end of this decision. Cherington and his staff aren’t married to this horrendous trade. Their focus has been, and will continue to be, building the Pirates for the future. Part of that should include earmarking this money and repurposing it into younger talent.
It also doesn’t make much financial sense. One Win Above Replacement (WAR), per FanGraphs, cost about $9.1 million in 2020. So for the Pirates to get adequate return on their investment, Archer would have to be worth about 1.2 WAR.
Good luck there. Archer was worth a combined 1.6 WAR in 2018-19. After topping out at 3.9 in 2015 — when he amassed 252 strikeouts and finished fifth in AL Cy Young Award voting — Archer has seen his WAR drop to 2.0 in 2016 and 1.3 in 2017 before the previous two-year stretch started.
Meanwhile, Archer’s ERA has increased each year since then, going from 3.23 to 5.19 in 2019, his last season pitched after having season-ending surgery in June 2020 due to thoracic outlet syndrome.
Archer is also coming off a season in which he allowed career-highs in walks (4.1) and home runs (1.9) per nine innings, while he’s worked six or more innings in just 14 of 33 starts as a Pirate.
That sort of gamble isn’t worth $11 million in normal times, especially not for a cost-conscious team like the Pirates. It’s almost impossible to see COVID-19 and the resultant financial losses changing how they do business.
