Dodging Bullets and Edwin Diaz

Free agency hasn’t even begun yet and the Mets have already paid their closer, Edwin Diaz, $100M to forego the open market he was slated to explore and return to Queens. Five years at over $20M per year equates to the biggest contract ever for a reliever.

For some Yankee fans, hope for the perfect offseason is now already over before it even began. The allure of having another elite closer in the Bronx was surely enough to start dreaming over the idea becoming a reality this offseason. 

However, while the Yankees should, and likely will, add to the bullpen before opening day, it should have never been Diaz. That’s right – signing Edwin Diaz would have been a mistake for Brian Cashman. Not because Diaz isn’t great, but because while operating on a limited budget (sigh), spending significant salary on relievers is an inefficient allocation of resources.

Diaz was awesome this season. I mean…really awesome. In 62 innings, he pitched to a 1.31 ERA while striking out over 50% (!) of batters. Perhaps even more impressive was that he was actually a little unlucky, evident by a 0.90 FIP. Fangraphs estimates his 2022 production was valued at just under $24M. But spending big on relievers should not be part of the Yankees prerogative for two primary reasons: year over year volatility and relative replaceability. 

Reliever Volatility

Diaz was the best reliever in the game this year. However, last year he was good, not great, sporting a 3.45 ERA and a 2.48 FIP. In 2019, he was straight up awful: 5.59 ERA, 4.51 FIP, he had the highest HR per 9 innings rate in the league, he was in the 2nd percentile in hard hit rate allowed…it goes on. And this came after arguably his best season in 2018! 

You see my point. As Yankees fans have seen for years with Aroldis Chapman, and even Clay Holmes already, even the most elite relievers oscillate between good, great and bad throughout their careers. While Diaz was certainly worth $20M in 2022, there’s little guarantee he will be worth the same next year. And if he regresses back to his “good, not great” self in 2023, is he really a difference maker?

Relative Replaceability

Let’s double click on that last thought. If Diaz regresses to his career averages in 2023, how much more are you paying him over other relievers that provide similar value? Simply put, the opportunity cost of handing big checks to relievers is uniquely high due to how “easy” it is to find good, cheap labor in the bullpen.

The Yankees themselves are a fantastic example. Clay Holmes was acquired for 40-man cast-off, Hoy Park. Wandy Peralta for Mike Tauchman. Lou Trivino was a throw-in to a trade centered around someone else. Michael King, too. Lucas Luetge was quite literally signed off the street. And these were all just within the last two years! 

The cherry on top? Those 5 relievers, in addition to Jonathan Loaisiga and Ron Marinaccio, combined to make barely over $8M in 2022. 

One of the few roster-building, data-leveraging edges the Yankees seem to have is finding quality bullpen arms. When even the best are so volatile, and you can find 2-3 effective relievers near league minimum salaries every season, why would you allocate big contracts to relievers?

Ironically, the Yankees also paid Aroldis Chapman and Zack Britton $32M this past season. Another perfect example of money that could have been better spent. 

For comparison’s sake, how else could a team use $20M? 

Brandon Nimmo, Anthony Rizzo and Willson Contreras are all projected to receive around that number annually this winter. Nimmo hasn’t had a sub 115 wRC+ (15% better than league average, offensively) season since his rookie year, and has eclipsed 130 in 4 of the last 6 years. Rizzo has only had one season since 2013 with worse than a 113 wRC+, and it was 2020. He also mashed to a 130 or better benchmark in 6 of the last 9 seasons. Contreras has been arguably the best hitting catcher in baseball since he entered the league in 2016.

These are not easily replaceable players. Think of all the guys the Yankees have called up over the last decade or so. Aaron Judge is the only one that has produced at the level of players of this caliber. Meanwhile, god knows where the Yankees found Lucas Luetge last year, (who already seems to be getting phased out) and yet they got a 1.4 fWAR season out of him in 2021. Diaz has out produced that number 4 times in his career, and failed to meet it 3 times. 

Think about that again. The best reliever in the game has only outproduced what the Yankees got out of Lucas Luetge 4 times out of 7. 

So when we only have a certain amount of salary to give, why would we give out $20M to Diaz, when you can get a middle of the order bat that will almost certainly give you somewhere between 115 and 140 wRC+?

Still don’t believe big money for relievers is bad money? 

If you entered 2022 with a bullpen consisting of the 8 highest paid relievers in the game in terms of AAV, you would have spent about $122M to throw 387 innings and produce just over 6 fWAR. According to fangraphs, that production was worth about $55M, effectively producing almost a $70M loss in investment. (Those relievers consisted of Hendriks, Chapman, Jansen, Pressley, Iglesias, Kimbrel, Smith, and Britton).

If you had entered the season with the 8 relievers who pitched the most for the Yankees in 2022, you would have received 434 innings, producing 7.3 fWAR and worth $57.7M. This group would have cost you just over $8M. That’s almost a $50M return on investment.

Even if you remove Zack Britton from the first group due to his small 2022 sample and replace him with the ninth most expensive reliever (Josh Hader), it still would have cost over $100M more than the Yankees group in 2022, produced less fWAR, and would have been worth $2M less on about the same number of innings pitched.

This is not a “let’s spend less” argument. This is an opportunity cost argument. We can clearly build a bullpen as valuable as the most expensive relief arms in the game for pennies on the dollar. Every dollar saved is a dollar that can be spent on middle of the order bats and front line starting pitchers.

Say it with me: We. Don’t. Spend. On. Relievers.