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Originally Posted by jd1020
3 years isn't even that bad. I was thinking someone was going to give him 4-5. He was a 95 percentile pitcher. If he can stay healthy, probably a good chance the Cardinals come out ahead on the deal. I guess the main issue is that they've committed themselves to a retirement age rotation.
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If he makes 80 starts over the life of that deal, they'll probably come out ahead or roughly break even.
That should probably net them about 9 WAR. I think to truly come out 'ahead' on the deal I'd want to see them get nearer to 11/12 WAR over that term but I don't think that's terribly likely. He'd likely need to get to 90 starts for that and I'm not seeing it.
Ultimately I think it's just a pretty high floor deal in that Gray gets hurt quite a bit but rarely catastrophically. It's just some 3-5 week absence that costs him 6-8 starts and otherwise he's gonna go throw 6+ innings/start and be 25-30% above average in those starts.
Not much ceiling there; certainly not as much as Yamamoto and likely not someone that's going to anchor a meaningful post-season run. I mean ultimately the stuff's just not there for that; he's a crafty righty who leans into his breaking stuff. As an undersized righty there are some breakdown concerns there but they're lessened by the fact that he's not really a max-effort, fireballer type.