We’ve been doing this for several years now. We reviewed some of the top free agents, as rated by Keith Law in The Athletic and Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, using the contracts FanGraphs suggests they will receive, and asked if we should sign them.
Ranger Suárez is number six on Keith Law’s list, number nine on Ben Clemens list.
Suárez is a 30-year-old left-handed pitcher who has spent his whole career (eight years) with the Phillies. He has been a full-time starting pitcher for the last four.
Last year he was 12-8 in 26 starts with a 3.20 ERA and a 4.0 fWAR. He also threw a career high of 157.1 innings. He gets a lot of ground balls, which, with our defense, would make him a good fit. He is much better vs LHB (.221/.275/.336 last year) than RHB (.265/.313/.383), but then he wasn’t bad against right-handers.
Of course, I’m a big fan of strikeouts and Suárez doesn’t get you a lot of those.
He’s had back problems the past few years. Those can get worse in your 30s (or your 50s for that matter).
Keith Law said:
Suárez is a sinker/changeup pitcher, and only throws true breaking pitches (curves, sliders, sweepers) 20 percent of the time, unusually low for a left-handed starter. The sinker does its job, keeping the ball on the ground, and the changeup ranges from above-average to plus, while he has always been more effective against lefties even without a plus breaker. He has plus control that he pairs with limited hard contact, especially in the air, and if he were more durable he’d be a $30-million pitcher. I’d rather have Dylan Cease (more on him below) on my team in the regular season, for all the innings he provides, but I’d rather have Suárez starting an elimination game for me in October.
That last line rings a bell for me. That’s the thing we need.
Clemens says:
For the past five years, Suárez has been churning out three-win seasons like clockwork. He’s done it in a way that is going to be very polarizing to potential suitors this winter, though. Modern pitching analysis leans heavily on measuring pitch characteristics to produce an approximation of raw stuff. Suárez doesn’t excel there; instead, he gets the job done by mixing five pitches and locating them with great precision. He’s an archetypical crafty lefty, in other words, a throwback to a previous era. He’s also hit the IL in three straight years, missing a month or so each time; in fact, he’s never hit even 160 innings in his major league career.
Ben figures Ranger to get a five-year contract at $26 million per, for a total of $130 million. I think those last couple of years might not look very good, but that’s likely what it would take.
