Shorter contracts for starting pitchers might hasten the end of their careers
Veteran left-handed MLB starting pitcher Rich Hill will turn 45 in March. He is hoping to latch on with an MLB team this coming season. Hill will be an inexpensive enough option that there will be teams that will be interested.
The Mets finally re-signed Sean Manaea this week. He was thought to be looking for a four-year contract or more at an AAV of $20 million per season — or more. He ended up getting three years for $75 million. $23.5 million of the contract was deferred. Everyone except Scott Boras (Manaea’s agent) seems to be happy.
Manaea will turn 33 in February. His next contract at age 36 will be far less valuable, but were Manaea to get a two-year contract through his age-38 season for $30 million, the five-year average annual value would be $21 million — about where it was projected to be. What would be different would be that the risk profile of these deals is more favorable to a team as are deferrals.
Long term contracts for pitchers, like the eight-year $218 million received by Yankees Max Fried, appear to be on the way out. I’ve mentioned that Fried who is an excellent pitcher, but based on his history, he could easily be injured for two of the eight seasons for which he is signed, so he will really end up with an AAV of $36.6 million if he pitches for six of the eight seasons. That’s closer to what was projected than the $27.25 million AAV it ends up being. The Yankees and Fried don’t know when he’ll be injured so spreading the risk out over eight years may work out for the team and the now 30-year-old lefty. We also know that the dollars eight years from now are less valuable than those in the short term. There’s no official deferred money in Fried’s contract it’s sort of built in already.
Pitcher’s continuing arm injuries have changed their futures
The quest for more velocity and more spin has clearly put more stress on pitching elbows and shoulders. Everyone knows this but there’s not an elegant solution to fix it. Fewer innings pitched for pitchers has been the most dramatic outcome. Fewer pitched innings will result in a flattening or lowering of top pitcher salaries. While pitchers having to pitch fewer innings is not an idea cooked up by MLB team owners, the trend doesn’t exactly bother them from a business standpoint.
Fewer pitcher innings = team owners paying less money
I’ve written that the ideal world for baseball owners would be to have a bunch of pitchers who could be effective for three innings. Even if there were to be fewer pitchers on a roster, something that’s being discussed on an ongoing basis, having nine three-inning pitchers who could pitch 9–12 innings per week, and three one-inning pitchers, would deliver the lowest cost to ownership as the flatness would hold down market rates. It would also be awful for fans. In my dystopian, Harrison Bergeron-like* pitching equality world, there are no real pitching stars since standing out from the crowd would be very difficult if not impossible. Ugh.
I believe MLB pitching careers will be shorter and shorter if things do not change.
Can anything be done to make it easier on pitchers’ arms?
Nobody wants a bunch of three inning pitchers. Well, almost nobody. But it feels like it’s heading in that direction, doesn’t it? I am sad to admit that I don’t have a brilliant idea on how to solve the problem. Telling pitchers not to throw so hard, or with less force, is not going to work. Teaching pitchers how to set-up hitters better, how to throw in and out, up and down, changing speeds; all are already being done now. Move the mound back? Lower the mound? These have also been tried without discernable differences.
A tackier baseball would help. If pitchers don’t have to squeeze the ball so hard to make it do what they want, that would help lower arm stress. MLB knows this but has yet to make it happen as it did in Japan years ago in the NPB and the KBO, both leagues use a tackier ball. In general, there are fewer pitcher injuries per capita in the NPB and KBO than in MLB.
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The recent MLB report on pitcher injuries makes note that they will do additional research (among other things) on pitcher injury trends and injury management in foreign leagues like Japan’s NBD and Korea’s KBO.
Ya’ think?
*Harrison Bergeron is a character in a Kurt Vonnegut short story
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com.
