Brewers sign Suppan for 4 yr./ 42 million

[Spike]

To me, this puts Krivsky's situation this winter in proper perspective. I would be trying to strengthen the bullpen and get quality players whenever possible too if I were he. I think now that any significant trade will happen later in the spring, if at all. This is getting incredulous! Suppan at $42 million? Come on!!!!!!!

http://www.rotoworld.com/Content/pla...aspx?sport=MLB

[guttle11]

So basically they traded Doug Davis for Jeff Suppan.

As a Reds fan, I'm ok with that.

[Puffy]

Jeff Suppan - blech. I'm glad he's still in the central.

[GAC]

Originally Posted by Puffy

Jeff Suppan - blech. I'm glad he's still in the central.

Him and Marquis. It's almost like going out to the curb and trading garbage cans with my neighbor.

[Ltlabner]

Brewers agreed to terms with RHP Jeff Suppan, who had been with the Cardinals, on a four-year, $42 million contract with a club option for 2011.

A contract that was impossible to envision when Suppan's ERA was over 5.00 for the majority of last season. Suppan is durable, but he still fell short of 200 innings in each of his three seasons in St. Louis. Last year, he gave up 100 runs and struck out 104 batters in 190 innings. The Brewers are committing an awfully big chunk of their payroll to a guy who might not be anything more than a fourth starter. Still, while we'd like to argue that the money would have been better spent on a center fielder, it's not like the guys in the same price range -- Juan Pierre and Gary Matthews Jr. -- were better investments.

From rotoworld.com

[StillFunkyB]

Originally Posted by GAC

Him and Marquis. It's almost like going out to the curb and trading garbage cans with my neighbor.

But what if said garbage can holds more crap?

[Eric_Davis]

Originally Posted by Spike

To me, this puts Krivsky's situation this winter in proper perspective. I would be trying to strengthen the bullpen and get quality players whenever possible too if I were he. I think now that any significant trade will happen later in the spring, if at all. This is getting incredulous! Suppan at $42 million? Come on!!!!!!!

http://www.rotoworld.com/Content/pla...aspx?sport=MLB

No kidding! $10M per year for four guaranteed years for a pitcher who'll be lucky to be at .500 for those four years?! That's not a market I would want to participate in either. That's a fool's market.

[Heath]

everytime I read this thread, I absolutely laugh out loud.

[GAC]

Originally Posted by StillFunkyB

But what if said garbage can holds more crap?

Then it's time for a garage sale!

[GAC]

Originally Posted by Heath

everytime I read this thread, I absolutely laugh out loud.

We both must do a lot of laughing between here and clevelandbrowns.com

We're a sorry lot!

[GAC]

Originally Posted by Eric_Davis

No kidding! $10M per year for four guaranteed years for a pitcher who'll be lucky to be at .500 for those four years?! That's not a market I would want to participate in either. That's a fool's market.

More like a flea market where 99% of the stuff ain't worth the purchase.

My wife convinced me to by one of these last year at the local flea market.

It was in the trash 2 weeks later

[Johnny Footstool]

Originally Posted by Eric_Davis

No kidding! $10M per year for four guaranteed years for a pitcher who'll be lucky to be at .500 for those four years?! That's not a market I would want to participate in either. That's a fool's market.

Do you think next year's market will be any better? I don't.

Mediocre players available next season will still be outrageously expensive. Real talent will cost even more money.

Krivsky bowing out of this year's market because it's "too expensive" is just an excuse to keep fans pacified.

[westofyou]

Krivsky bowing out of this year's market because it's "too expensive" is just an excuse to keep fans pacified.

Cardinals are doing it too, it's not just the Reds.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...F?OpenDocument

With the exception of a few familiar faces, the Cardinals do not see a free agent worth pursuing at current prices, and the club is content to report to Jupiter, Fla., with the roster it has today, general manager Walt Jocketty says.

Jocketty said that absent adding an unsigned Cardinals' free agent, he would prefer to tinker with the team after spring starts and a secondary market develops than to anxiously spend now.

"There just isn't much available. So, why use our bullets now? Then we'd get to spring training or the trade deadline and wish we hadn't spent the money.

[Johnny Footstool]

Originally Posted by westofyou

Cardinals are doing it too, it's not just the Reds.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...F?OpenDocument

I'll bet they're still negotiating with Barry Zito.

[flyer85]

BP on the Suppan signing

Between the two, on Christmas Eve, came the mildly surprising news that Jeff Suppan had reached agreement on four-year, $42-million deal with the Brewers. The Brewers aren't generally a destination for free agents, especially ones coming off NLCS MVPs and who are one of two top pitchers remaining on the market. The Brewers had already made one significant move this offseason, dealing starter Doug Davis for catcher Johnny Estrada, and the financial commitment to Suppan shows that they think they have not just a good team, but a potential winner in the short term.

Suppan's contract looks like it fits in with the others we've seen this winter, a four-year deal for around $10 million a season, in line with what Ted Lilly and Vicente Padilla and Gil Meche got. Suppan has some markers than those guys don't, however. He’s thrown 200 or more innings five times in his career, and hasn’t missed a start in a very long time. He has more seasons of league-average or better work on his resume than those three combined. If you buy that postseason performance is predictive—most people in the industry put some stock in the notion, although there's no evidence for it—Suppan has had success in October.

With all of that, there's very little chance that this signing is going to be deemed a success by the Brewers. There’s a void between the pitcher they think they’ve signed and the one who will pitch for them next year, one that has little to do with Suppan himself, and everything to do with the context changing around him. Suppan, remember, isn't an overpowering pitcher. Even over the past three years, his Stuff scores have been unimpressive (2, 5, 5, respectively, where zero is average) and his DERAs have run a half-run to a run higher than his ERAs. Suppan has posted three of his highest GB/FB ratios the past three years as well, pitching to the strength of the Cardinals’ defenses.

The following chart shows the Rate for each of the past three seasons for each of the Cards' four infield spots, along with the PECOTA projections for the Brewers' infield starters in 2007:

1B 2B SS 3B
2004 STL: 108 92 95 114
2005 STL: 105 100 98 113
2006 STL: 111 91 98 107

Average: 108 94 97 111

2007 MIL: 102 96 105 100

That's J.J. Hardy's number at shortstop. Bill Hall is projected to a 99, although he's expected to play a number of positions while Hardy gets the playing time at short.

This is a pretty generous accounting of the Brewers' infield defense, including considerable improvement by Rickie Weeks, who has a career Rate of 90 and who looks bad in Chris Dial’s system as well. (If you just look at the one-year numbers in that system, the Brewers' infielders were roughly one win worse last year at first base, second base and shortstop than the Cards’ infielders were.)

Even if you accept the generous assessment of the Brewers' defense in '07, you can expect Suppan to give up more hits next season than he has been previously. The bounce he'll get from having Hardy at shortstop is more than lost by the downgrades on the corners. The falloff on the right side of the infield, where the soft-tossing Suppan needs support, is going to cost him hits and runs. (I'm sorry, but I again have to note that the number there for Rickie Weeks just doesn’t feel right. This will be an interesting PECOTA debate.)

Loosely speaking, PECOTA projects the Brewers to have a league-average infield in '07. Let’s go with that. The Brewers think they’ve signed this guy:

ERA
2004: 4.16
2005: 3.57
2006: 4.12

In reality, though, Suppan has been helped by his defense so much that he's actually this guy:

DERA
2004: 4.99
2005: 4.65
2006: 4.51

I suspect that we're underestimating the actual effects of more Suppan-generated groundballs becoming singles. There's not just the outs/hits tradeoff, but more pitches thrown, more pitches throw out of the stretch, more pitches thrown under stress, all of which increase the potential for injury to a 32-year-old arm that generall works at max effort.

Whereas Jeff Suppan was pitching to the strength of his teammates the last three seasons, he'll be pitching to a weakness in 2007. If he were to turn in the exact same performance in 2007 as he did in 2006, it is likely that his ERA would climb by at least half a run just because the defense behind him isn't as good as the one he’s used to. While that’s not his fault, the difference adds up to real runs; Suppan is a 4.50 ERA pitcher who’s been pitching in front of a defense that saves him a third to a half-run of ERA a year. In front of a defense that costs him that much, his ERA will push 5.00.

That's the difference between a free-agent signing that gets praised and one that gets hammered.

I mentioned some of the other pitchers who have signed deals this winter. Consider a couple of key 2006 statistics for the pitchers who’ve signed free-agent contracts this winter in roughly the range of Suppan’s deal:

K/9 Stuff
Mike Mussina 7.84 27
Jason Schmidt 7.59 23
Andy Pettitte 7.47 20
Vicente Padilla 7.02 17
Ted Lilly 7.93 16
Gil Meche 7.52 14
Jeff Suppan 4.93 5
Adam Eaton 5.95 2
Jason Marquis 4.45 -5

That's a pretty good ordering not only of those pitchers, but of the contracts they signed. The Suppan deal looks a lot more like an expensive risk—not as bad as the Jason Marquis contract, not as good as the Lilly and Padilla deals—than it does a safe bet. The core skills for pitchers are reflected in their Stuff scores, and Suppan's pales not only in comparison to the best pitchers on the market, but to his economic peers. The Brewers simply haven’t purchased what they think they have, and unless their infield defense becomes as good as the recent Cardinals' infield defenses, they're going to be disappointed.

The issue in play here—the importance of considering the context of performance when evaluating any player