Look at Ray Ray Run

Yes, agree 100%. I think there's risk tied to Wheeler because of the surgeries, but the best part about the surgeries is it's limited his arm mileage. Odorizzi seems to be a classic case of a veteran pitcher figuring out some form of contact suppression paired with a slight spike in velocity, but based on others that shared his similarity scores, there's a higher chance of escalated regression during the tenure of his next contract than Bumgarner and Wheeler. I think the Anibal Sanchez comp was actually an excellent one for Odorizzi. Wheeler isn't really a candidate to fall off a cliff - non-injury related - which I found really promising when it comes to signing him. I'm tying a bunch of other parameters into these drill downs - such as FIP, BABIP, LOB%, and HR/FB% and wRC+ against, FB% and GB% - to match up the similarities even further. I just can't get over what a machine Scherzer is. Talk about an outlier. Verlander is the closest and he's not all that close due to his mid-career downswing.

No worries, the best part about this is that from over my shoulder, it looks like I'm doing my job. ? Slow few days at work before the storm hits me on Thursday/Friday.

I'm not drawing any conclusions based on just this, as there are hundreds of variables that I need to look at further, but if you wan to do similarity scores on these pitchers you see the following comparisons: 1. Bumgarner - Closest similarity score is CC Sabathia; who had a similar spike early and mid, only to fall off a cliff for 350 innings and then rebound to a level that was about 70% of his previous highs. CC's return to being slightly above average lasted for roughly 490 innings. He never regained form following his initial decline. 2. Odorizzi - If you remove the injury year, Odorizzi's closest comp of regression is Anibal Sanchez. Sanchez was average and then had a five peak year run where his WAR/IP stayed above .02 WAR/IP. Odorizzi would be in year 2 of his spike - it doesn't mean he has three years left of productivity it just means that's the closest equal. 3. Wheeler - Well, this one is kind of tricky. Wheeler could head in one of two likely directions as he has to comps through his IP total and one of those comps is an OOOOO la la. One comp through his IP total is Max Scherzer ironically enough. Wheeler is in year 2 of his growth post surgery, and he has seen a steady increase in WAR/IP year over year at the same rate as Scherzer. Obviously, Scherzer is the biggest outlier of our data set and continued to grow. Wheeler is certainly not guaranteed to do that but man it sure is nice to dream. His other is Johnny Cueto, who is still a nice comp in regards to age regression. In general, I'd say I feel most comfortable with Wheeler of the three. There's risk there, but you can dream on Wheeler like you can't on the other two IMO. Wheeler is trending up for all the right reasons; while Odorizzi has some artificial WAR escalators.

This data is exported from fangraphs; I have a breference export and others as well, but only tied FGraphs into this set. Here is a graphic of all the pitchers we discussed. The trends are as follows: 37 of the 49 pitchers experience a steady decline following their peak (which on average took place after 987 innings pitched). There were some exceptions: 1. Scherzer is like fine wine - look at that man's chart! He just keeps getting better and better. 2. AJ Burnett had no real peak - his career was a culmination of 3-4 peaks and valleys not tied to age but possibly injury 3. Buehrle had an earlyish peak, but he remained pretty constant over his career. 4. Cliff Lee struggled mightily early (as most knew) and then steadily increased after 1000 IP. 5. Bumgarner has shown a similar constant to those in the 37 of 49 group; he peaked at about 950 innings, and has been on a decline before this years small spike upward. The question with Bumgarner is will he normalize at his new level, or will his outputs look really similar to the rest o pitchers who continued to trend downward despite a spike in an individual year here and there at the end of their career. I'm going to put Odorizzi, Wheeler and Bumgarner side by side to look at and I'll build a quick projection based on the expected decrease post 987 innings to see where there WAR could sit the next 4-5 years. https://ibb.co/C9PtJz7 You'll have to click on the link to the picture above because it is too large to attach to this file.

I'll see if I can work age in. I'll attach all 43 breakdowns once I finish with something for actual work. I have Bumgarner's and can export coles/wheeler/odorizzi as well to see where they fall. From an analysis I did prior, IP had a higher correlation of decline than age - which makes sense. Mileage would have more of an impact. I didnt export player age with this data export - I have ages on my computer at home but forgot to transfer that table over to pair it to the player ids.

And I broke them all down individually as well: Here are the first 8. I think you can see the trend here. Scherzer and Verlander are not the norm.

As we can see from the attached, there is a significant downward trend as the innings go up - we notice a spike last year, but that is because certain pitchers qualified for the threshold for the first time last year. Despite the WAR totals increasing as more pitchers become eligible based on the 1800 inning limit, we see an overall decrease in WAR/IP.

Some observations off the bat: I set the threshold at 1800 innings since 2000 as the barometer of a work horse like arm. 1. Pitchers that exceeded the 1800 inning limit had a significantly higher WAR/IP than pitchers who did not. Pitchers > 1800 IP = .016 WAR/IP. Pitchers < 1800 IP = .010 2. I don't have age data exported - simply IP data. I haven't exported all the players BDay's so I can only analyze a pitchers fall off based on age; I can only do it based on work load which I believe has a greater impact on arm failure than age. 3. Mark Buehrle is the 9th most productive pitcher in all of baseball since 2000. Beast. 4. Clayton Kershaw and Randy Johnson are light years better than the competition - coming in at .028 WAR/IP while the next closest is .026 which is Max Scherzer.

OK @bmags I transferred all my data sets over to my work computer and I'm running an analysis now. Here are the top 46 pitchers since 2000 in regards to IP - this puts the threshold right around 2000 innings pitched. I will break this down further to year by year to see what their WAR expectations were based on every 200 IP interval as their career progressed. If you have anything else you'd like me to look at further, let me know.

Understand that concern. I also think my contract to odorizzi was too generous. If the QO is attached to him, I think he probably gets closer to 50 million.

The corner outfield market is dead in baseball for mid-tier guys.

I added some names above to my post from a quick scan. I'm not in front of my home computer so I could not run all the parameters you requested, but I'll give it a try when I get home. Edit a few more names: Lincecum, Cain, Zito, Brandon Webb, Weaver.

I'll see if I can pull this out of all the data I have exported out - I believe I only have data from 2000-2019. The problem with using a memory of work horses if you tend to remember the arms that survived into their late 30's and not the ones that flamed out. For example, someone like Jon Garland would qualify under your innings set but you wouldnt have considered him - he was never that good but he ate innings until he was 30, had some good seasons sprinkled in and then was out of baseball by 32-33. Some other quick adds from a quick scan - Roy Oswalt, Javy Vazquez, Johan Santana, Jake Peavy, John Lackey, David Price, Dan Haren.

How much value did giolito have at the end of last year? Collins might suck but I'd rather be the team to figure that out. For some reason a lot on this board have soured on Cease too because he didn't dominate from day 1.

It would be absurd to consider trading Cease and Collins for one year of Mookie Betts at 28 million. My goodness. For the white sox, future WAR is worth more than present WAR. they could merely sign Mookie without giving anything up a year from now if they were that interested. It would be one of the most nonsensical trades in MLB history.

I agree, for the record. My contract to him may be a little high. It's really difficult to read his market or to see it because hes been very inconsistent. 3 years 36,000,000 may be high and he might be a 2 year 20 million dollar guy. I don't want puig, and think it would be a poor signing, but it's a very White Sox signing and they have liked Puig for a while. If the Sox have faith in their young starters, they can bypass the odorizzi signing, take his money and Puig's money and sign ozuna or JDM.

A couple pointers; I am obviously aggressive with Robert's projection but that is because I think his impact defensively and on the base paths will carry him to a 3 WAR season without any bat support out of the gate. If he hits at an 800 OPS clip, he's likely a 4 WAR player from day 1. I also think the extremely high floor on Madrigal means 2.5 is attainable from year one. My Abreu WAR is slightly elevated; I penalize 1st baseman less than fWAR does for their defense. I also think Abreu will spend some time at DH but we'll see about that. If the Sox want to sign Grandal, then I would move Leury or Engel out and put him in there - same thing with JDM. Obviously that would push payroll closer to 140,000,000 million but their win projection would go up to about 98. Outside of that I'm not too aggressive. I think Timmy will actually grow from this year, but projection wise I couldn't put anymore weight into this years performance than I already am. Moncada's WAR is reasonable, and I actually think I have undersold Kopech but it's because I do think the White Sox will take a slower approach with him.

So, I usually put together an off-season plan every year; store them, and evaluate them at later dates - I used to have dreams too! This is just one sheet from my 2020 workbook, but it sums up the 25 man roster, the payroll obligations, the potential signings. I want to emphasize this is a combination of what I "like" but mostly what I think is possible based on the Sox habits and tendencies in the past. For example, I have one with JD Martinez - which is what i'd like - and this one which doesn't include him. I'm not sure how this will copy and paste here so I'll paste a picture of the excel export instead:

By adding Rendon and Betts contracts you're adding way more risk than I think you are acknowledging. That said, I think we've all wasted far too much time on a scenario that would never happen. What I cant process is why you think that trade would be accepted by the Dodgers if there was a substantial edge to the White Sox. All things considered, trades need to be reasonably fair and fair value for Moncada would encompass added risk to an already risky filled rebuild. I like your outside the box thinking, I just am not a fan of the execution but its just my opinion - it's not some superior outlook versus yours.

The way I see it: Strasberg - not available, my prediction is the Nationals will rework his deal to tack on another year and he'll sign there instead of opting out. Bumgarner - not available; Bumgarner has made it very clear he has no intention of playing AL baseball. That leaves Cole and Wheeler. I think theres a chance Cole resigns with the Astros if they win the World Series. If not, they're less likely to retain him. I would guess some team, not a big three team, will overbid the market to retain Coles services - I'll say, 7 years 240 million. The White Sox will not go to that level for an arm and they probably shouldn't as they cant afford a miss of that size to an arm. White Sox sign Wheeler - 4 years, 85 million. If they whiff in Wheeler, I'll say they give Odorizzi 4 years, 70 million. If they whiff there, god bless us Sox fans.

Verlanders are exceptions to the rule. For every verlander there are 5 Felix Hernandez'.

He has said he has no interest in pitching in the AL so I don't think theres too much to worry or think about.

No one said it was, but the rebuild was kicked off by acquiring moncada. Now that its close to coming go fruition you want to trade him for more prospect risks. Also, why would the Dodgers trade all those guys if they were safer/better than Moncada? As I said, you can phrase it however youd like but it's the perpetual rebuild model. Always getting younger and accumulating more. At some point you need to move forward with what you have, not hit the refresh button over and over again.

I just don't agree with the strategy. You kicked off the rebuild trading an elite asset for 2 top of the line prospects. One of those prospects has now turned himself into a superstar caliber player - that's what you were looking for to kick off your rebuild. By kicking the can further down the road you're simply increasing your risk for no real reason. I like outside the box thoughts but this doesnt really belong in the "realistic offseason plans" and I actually don't think an analysis would say its expected outcome is better than the current expected outcome. You already moved 3 cost controlled top of the line assets to acquire younger, more abundant, assets. So far, it looks like those trades were a success. If you then move those cost controlled assets for even more you're just perpetually rebuilding. Its really hard to find stars in baseball; I wouldnt recommend trading them when they are still under control. Rarely in baseball do you get back equal value for stars when traded.

The perpetual rebuild strategy.