Players who are good every year end up getting a giant bag of cash when they hit free agency. Now, that range can be pretty wide, but it\u2019s not uncommon for these players to sign multi-year contracts worth eight figures a year.<\/p>\n
The supply of these players is not very high, so some of those players end up inking deals that bring their total free agent compensation into the nine-figure range. Those that don\u2019t may not be worse so much as they are less reliable.\u201d<\/p>\n
When less reliable players hit the free agent market, they are usually one of two types. The first type of player had been good, but most recently was not. The second type of player is the opposite: they had some seasons in the not-so-distant past of mediocre performance, but most recently they were good.<\/p>\n
Which one would you rather have?<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have to look very far to find a perfect example of this. New Royals outfielder Lane Thomas had a recent season in which he hit .268\/.315\/.468 and accrued 2.9 Wins Above Replacement per Fangraphs. Former Phillies and Twins outfielder Harrison Bader just signed a free agent contract; he had a recent season in which he hit .277\/.347\/.449 and accrued 3.3 WAR.<\/p>\n
The Royals chose Thomas. That 2.9 WAR season was in 2023; Thomas followed that up with a significantly less successful 2024 and suffered through an injury-filled 2025 season that\u2019s better just to be forgotten. That history secured Thomas a one-year, $6 million deal.<\/p>\n
The Giants, on the other hand, chose Bader. From 2022 through 2024, Bader was a right-handed Kyle Isbel who hit a rather abysmal .239\/.284\/.360. But Bader\u2019s breakthrough season was just last year, when he was effective for Minnesota and Philadelphia alike. That history secured Bader a two-year, $20.5 million deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat have you done for me lately?\u201d is the motto for professional sports in general, and so it makes sense that Bader would be the one who ended up with that contract instead of Thomas. It also helps that Bader\u2019s best year of the last three was better than that of Thomas; to go back to supply and demand, there just aren\u2019t a lot of true center fielders with the offensive talent to put up a wRC+ of 122.<\/p>\n
But while Bader is getting paid roughly twice what Thomas will this year, I\u2019m not sure that I\u2019d be willing to wager that Bader will certainly be twice as good. I think Bader will probably be better than Thomas. For what it\u2019s worth, the ZiPS projection system has Bader at 2.1 WAR next year and Thomas at 0.8 WAR, and ZiPS is smarter than me.<\/p>\n
Still, I\u2019m spooked by Bader\u2019s extended run as a light-hitting center fielder. I\u2019m also spooked by Thomas only being able to play 39 games last year, and that he turns 31 this August. I might just be spooked by a lot of things these days. Who knows.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re expecting a grand argument or a definitive opinion on this particular issue, prepare to be disappointed. Most recently, Bader has been the better player, and at a two-year contract, that\u2019s probably a gamble the Royals should have made. And yet, Bader is primed for a fall back to earth, and the Royals could have had to eat $20 million of mostly dead money, which screams \u201cHunter Renfroe.\u201d Meanwhile, while Thomas has less upside, the Royals aren\u2019t relying on a $6 million guy in the same way they\u2019d be relying on a $10.25 million guy for twice as long.<\/p>\n
At any rate, it\u2019ll be interesting to see if the Royals made the right decision here. Wake me up in about five months to see how we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Players who are good every year end up getting a giant bag of cash when they hit free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,2596,2595,4,252,39420],"class_list":["post-546208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-royals","tag-baseball","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascityroyals","tag-mlb","tag-royals","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115985320403839087","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}