Why did the Atlanta Braves sign Drew Smyly?
The deeper we look, the more curious this Drew Smyly signing by the Atlanta Braves appears.
Certainly, the Atlanta Braves don’t shy away from the stats game. In fact, I was initially prepared to suggest that this Drew Smyly signing was driven entirely by analytics… and that still could be true to some extent… but only if you narrow the focus to an elite group of stats. We’ll get to that in a bit.
But the price? $11 million for one year. If that sounds steep, you’re not alone. Right now, there’s a clear disparity between the perceived value of players and their actual value:
- MLB Trade Rumors estimate: 1 year deal, $5 million
- Jim Bowden of TheAthletic (paywall). Didn’t rank Smyly in his Top 25 free agents, and his #25 was estimated at 2 years, $12 million.
- Keith Law of TheAthletic (paywall). Didn’t rank Smyly in his Top 40 free agents (no contract estimates given).
- Smyly’s ask: 3 years/$10 million apiece.
Hearing Smyly was asking teams for the neighborhood of 3/$30m. Not sure why he took 1/$11. Perhaps he felt the #braves were a good personal fit, or he could get even more with a good, full 2021. He is from Arkansas.
— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) November 16, 2020
The philosophy employed by the Atlanta Braves under Alex Anthopoulos has been to go for the quick, big strike — particularly for the one-year contracts:
Alex Anthopoulos continues to be the godfather of the 1 year contract. Absolute king.
— SportsTalkATL.com (@SportsTalkATL) November 16, 2020
This has been done in recent years with Josh Donaldson, Marcell Ozuna, and Cole Hamels. Two of these worked out very well. That other one really didn’t hurt the team that much.
There’s also this odd dynamic that will be going on this Winter: more than a few free agents may be looking at the new owner of the New York Mets and wondering if they will throw money in their direction.
Even if not, agents could be banking (literally) on the threat that the Mets could spend big to keep the prices high for their clients — at least for a couple of months. That kind of thinking could partly have been at work here — along with the fact that Atlanta was targeting Smyly.
The biggest surprise from a Braves Country point of view might be this: the team spent $11 million when they may not have needed to. So maybe they’re going to go higher on the payroll than we thought?
It’s hard to rail against such short-term moves for very long. That’s probably going to be the case here as well, though it’s worth asking: ‘why this guy in particular?’
In the next couple of pages, we’ll explore a couple of further answers to that question.
You Gotta Start Someplace
There’s a number of directions we can go here, but first, know these things:
- Nobody threw more than 86 innings for the Braves in 2020 (counting the post-season).
- Eliminating Max Fried, nobody threw more than 51 innings counting post-season play.
- The Braves were forced to use 14 different starters in just 60 games.
- Ramping back up to anything resembling a 200-inning level may be difficult — if not outright unhealthy — for most of the returning staff next season.
The Atlanta Braves need extra arms: Smyly is merely the first one.
While rotation projections have been made over the last 24 hours that include Soroka/Fried/Anderson/Smyly/Wright (in some order), there’s a clear problem with that list… Soroka probably won’t be available to start the season on time and Wright still may or may not be able to be counted upon.
So with all of that taken together, it could require up to two additional pitchers for the Braves to enter the 2021 campaign.
That’s why you go out quickly and get Smyly. That’s also why you ‘overpay’ for him — because you need a quick answer and a quick result.
With Smyly, it isn’t going to be about the quality so much (though we’ll talk about that shortly) as it is his availability.
The Braves aren’t done here: they may now try and land a low-cost veteran — like they tried with Felix Hernandez last year. But those guys are easy to find at any point. The bigger deal could be had via trade… if they can convince a club to make a deal for a Blake Snell or a Joe Musgrove… somebody like that.
True enough — there are still some interesting free agents out there, too: Jon Lester, Adam Wainwright, Corey Kluber, etc. But do look for something “bigger” than Smyly to come now that they’ve broken the ice.
Now let’s get to those stats…
About Those Stats
"It's an upside play, no doubt about it," said Alex Anthopoulos when asked about the $11 million spent on Drew Smyly. "We'll find out 10 months from now how that worked out."
— Joe Patrick (@japatrick200) November 16, 2020
"Our approach the last few years has been to be specific and target certain guys and be aggressive."
Let’s check out some of the stats leading toward that “upside”:
Barrel% – the percentage of batted balls “barrelled up” by opposing hitters. Smyly has not typically been great here, but was among the 4% worst in the NL in 2020 — and double the MLB average.
Not coincidentally, 41.7% of his batted balls against were hit on the sweet spot… 7% above average (that’s not good).
Exit velocity: on average, he’s a full 2 mph above the MLB average.
To be sure: his strikeout numbers soared in 2020 with 37.8%… the top 3% of the league. His walk rate dropped and his ERA was nearly cut in half as compared to 2019.
https://twitter.com/anthops_brain/status/1328460008019910658
Long-time readers will understand that this FIP (Fielding-Independent Pitching) stat always sends me into a rant… it’s like applying a tunnel-vision stat to pitching that leaves out roughly 2/3rds of the game. It also heavily favors strikeout pitchers.
Quick Example: Max Fried had a 3.10 FIP in 2020. So who was the better pitcher: Smyly (3.42 ERA) or Fried (2.25 ERA)?
What all that means is that Smyly was throwing many more strikes… some of them got whiffs while some of them were pounded hard.
Indeed, he was getting a 50% whiff rate on his curveball (a pitch he threw over 1/3rd of the time) and 32.5% whiff rate on his cutter… a pitch he might consider throwing more often than 17.8% of the time.
In 2019, Smyly used a changeup occasionally (under 5% of the time) — with decent whiff results (32.7%). He abandoned that pitch in 2020 and upped his curve rate instead.
His fastball is fast enough (at least that was so in 2020… up 2.6 mph to 93.8 over 2019) to get whiffs on that as well.
Alex Anthopoulos on the signing of Drew Smyly: "We looked at him even last offseason as well. When he came back from the finger injury, his last four outings were really strong. The curveball is a real weapon for him. In our minds its one of the better curveballs in the game"
— 680 The Fan (@680TheFan) November 16, 2020
Actually, the problem with Smyly’s game may be with his curveball. When it works… it’s good (great, even). When it doesn’t, it gets hammered.
This could be related to a 10th percentile spin rate, which I suspect is the difference between a good curve and a “cement mixer” that doesn’t move.
The data doesn’t show us the variability of his spin rate, so there’s no good way to know whether he has elite spin at times and no spin at other times… or if it’s consistent and reacts differently during different weather conditions.
If the Braves believe they can fix that, then they could have an elite gem on their hands… a lefty who can do… well, roughly what Max Fried does (or at least Sean Newcomb on a good control day).
If they can’t fix that, then he’s a backhalf-of-the-rotation arm that the team overpaid for. But at least they should be able to get innings coverage out of him — and that’s still valuable.
But just wait — he’s not the only pitching target that Atlanta has this off-season.
Related Story. The News of the Day - Smyly Signed. light
All stats quoted are from MLB’s baseballsavant pages.