Free Agent Poll: James Paxton

I picked up this idea off waivers from Lone Star Ball. It isn’t the first time I’ve stolen from them. The idea is to go through some of the top free agents, use the contract FanGraphs suggests they will get and have a poll asking if we would like to sign him for that amount.

I really should have been keeping a list of who we’ve looked at. My memory isn’t great.

I see that Marcus Stroman has accepted the Qualifying Offer made by the Mets. He likely wasn’t going to get a multi-year deal or more money on a 1-year contract, but I figured he might go for it anyway, to pick his team.

James Paxton is #13 on both FanGraphs and Keith Law’s lists.

Craig Edwards figures he’ll get a 1-year, $15 million contract.

Paxton did not have a good 2020, putting up a 6.64 ERA in 20.1 innings, missing time recovering from back surgery and later with a strained flexor tendon in his left arm. Paxton had injury issues his whole career. He’s never made 30 starts in a season. But when he has pitched, he’s been good.

2019 he had a 3.82 ERA in 29 starts. Over his past four seasons, he’s had bWARs of 3.6, 3.2, 2.4, and -0.5.

A good Canadian boy, if that helps. He’s 32, which surprises me, I thought he was younger. I guess we have been talking about him for a long, long time.

There is no doubt about his stuff, and we do have enough pitching to ‘cover the innings’ as Mark Shapiro said, so if he were to go down with an injury, we could full the innings. But if he can pitch, he would fit well with Ryu and Pearson at the top of the order.

His agent, Scott Boras, tells us that he is almost ready to throw for ‘talent evaluators’. Ummmm, isn’t that just stating that he isn’t prepared to throw? Is this a selling point?