Looking at David Stearns' decision to bypass the top three free agent pitchers

The Mets had three starters who combined to pitch 534 innings for them in 2024 file for free agency. In either the trade market or thru free agency, they figured to import three starters for 2025. And that’s exactly what they did. They re-signed Sean Manaea and added Clay Holmes and Frankie Montas as free agents.

Notorious by their absence were three free agents considered to be the top of the class in Corbin Burnes, Max Fried and Blake Snell. The Mets were never seriously attached to any of these three, which was at least a little bit of a surprise, given that Burnes was drafted in 2016 while David Stearns was the GM of the Brewers.

But one of Stearns’ core philosophies is not to give a long-term contract to people on the wrong side of 30. And each of Burnes, Fried and Snell have crossed into their 30s. But so, too, did Manaea. So, why the exception for Manaea? Without having a direct conversation with Stearns, we’re left to guess. The most reasonable explanation to me is that Manaea signed a three-year deal, while Burnes got six years, Fried inked for eight years and Snell signed for five.

With that as our backdrop, let’s look at recent free agent starting pitchers who signed for four or more years, with their first year of the free agent contract being at age 30 and above. ESPN lists free agent signings with contract terms dating back to the 2006-07 offseason, so that was the source for this list, with assistance from MLB Trade Rumors on the most-recent years.

Whenever you do a list like this, you have to make choices. My decision to require the pitcher to be in his age-30 season left a couple of notable people off the list. Patrick Corbin was in his age-29 season at the start of his six-year deal, as was Barry Zito. Those were two of the biggest free agent busts in our time period. On the flip side, Gerrit Cole’s first year in his initial deal with the Yankees was his age-29 season, too. That’s why these people aren’t in our sample.

FanGraphs calculates the Dollar Value of the performance of a player, what it would cost to acquire that production on the free agent market. Currently, that value is a little over $8 million per unit of WAR. But that’s a flexible amount over time. Back in 2007, the value was about $5.5 million per unit of WAR. But that’s perfect, as contract values have increased over time. This allows us to make apples-to-apples comparison

From the 2006-07 thru the 2023-24 offseasons, we have a sample of 45 pitchers who fit the requirements of being at least 30 and signing a deal of at least four seasons as a free agent. Here’s the list:

There’s a lot to take in here. Let’s start with the positives. Here are the pitchers who provided at least $10 million in excess value to their contract: Max Scherzer (108), Zack Wheeler (80), Ted Lilly (39), Ryan Dempster (24), Cliff Lee (23) and Mark Buehrle (13). That’s a total of six players. But that’s only counting players who’ve completed their contracts. Michael Wacha has already exceeded his contract by $22 million. He’s opted out of his original deal but the decision here was to go with the original terms. Also, Kevin Gausman has essentially matched his contract, with two years left to go.

Shota Imanaga is in good shape after his first season. But we would have said the same thing about Kodai Senga after his initial year and now he’s slightly underwater. Aaron Nola also beat his AAV in the first season of his deal. But with six years remaining, it’s hardly a sure thing he’ll match or exceed the dollar value when all is said or done. Jon Gray has a shot to equal his contract, too, needing about 1.5 fWAR here in his final season of his four-year deal. He notched a 1.8 fWAR in 2024.

And now for the negatives. Here are the pitchers who fell at least $20 million worth of production of their contracts: Stephen Strasburg (-245), David Price (-125), John Lackey (-83), Madison Bumgarner (-79), Jordan Zimmermann (-70), James Shields (-68), Johnny Cueto (-64), Zack Greinke (-58), Jason Schmidt (-46), Hyun Jin Ryu (-42), Ian Kennedy (-39), Jeff Samardzija (-34), Jeff Suppan (-30), Brandon McCarthy (-27), Alex Cobb (-25), Drew Pomeranz (-24), C.J. Wilson (-23), Jon Lester (-21). That’s a total of 18 players, or three times as many as the good ones.

Of the guys who’ve yet to finish their contracts, Eduardo Rodriguez, Carlos Rodon, Jacob deGrom, Taijuan Walker and Robbie Ray are all likely to fall $20 million or more short of their contract. And while Jameson Taillon and Steven Matz may miss that arbitrary $20 million cutoff, their contracts are likely to wind up underwater, too.

Perhaps using raw dollars isn’t the best way to look at this. First, contracts have gone up in value, making it a non-equal comparison over our time span. And also, if you sign someone to a big contract and they provide that value – that’s a good outcome. So, looking at only the free agents who’ve completed their contracts, let’s divide the Dollar Value of their production by the dollars paid in their contract. Here’s that chart:

This chart is broken into three sections, with those separated by color. The first group is the ones who really over-performed their contract, the ones whose Dollar Values were at least 110% of their contract. Seven of our 33 pitchers fell into this category. Lilly provided almost twice as much value as his cost.

The next group is the ones who were worth their deals, with their Dollar Values ranging from 90%-109% of their contract. There were just three players in this group.

The final group were the ones who finished with Dollar Values of 89% or lower compared to their contract. And this is our largest group, with 22 players. That’s two-thirds of our sample. We also have to consider this is not comprised mostly of guys producing in the upper 80s. Instead, 12 of these players provided under half the value of their contract.

There are other ways that we can look at this. Of the nine pitchers out of 33 to match or exceed their contract, five of them were on four-year contracts. If we just look at the ones who signed for five years or more – like Burnes, Fried and Snell this offseason – we have 16 players, four of whom exceeded their contracts and one (Darvish) who essentially matched his deal.

If we looked only at the players who got $100 million or more, there were 10 pitchers, three of which exceeded their contract and one who essentially matched. And of the five players who got at least $100 million here recently but haven’t completed their contract, only Gausman looks like a good deal. There are three that look bad in deGrom, Ray and Rondon and one that’s just too soon to tell in Nola.

From our samples, the best thing you can say is that pitchers who’ve signed a deal of five years or greater, with a value of at least $100 million – it’s a coin flip if they’ll be worthwhile. And if you’re going to commit nine figures worth of salary to someone – don’t you want better odds than 50-50?

And if we zoom out and look at our original focus of any pitching deal of four years or greater for players on the wrong side of 30, it’s even worse. The success rate is in the 33% range.

We never know what’s going to happen. If we did, there’d be no reason to watch. It’s certainly a possibility that any or all of Burnes, Fried and Snell will be worth their contracts. They might turn into the next Scherzer or Wheeler. Or they might turn into the next Bumgarner, Price or Strasburg.

Most teams need to have upside or risk on their roster. But do you want to have 5-7 years’ worth of risk at $25 million or more each year? In the specific case of Burnes, it’s an AAV of $35 million over six years. That’s a lot to gamble on a guy with declining peripherals. Even if you were agreeable to a 50-50 coin flip in principle, do you want to do it here? And different questions arrive with Fried and Snell, who both carry injury risks. Snell’s only reached 30 starts in a year twice in his career and will be in his age-32 season. Fried combines the durability concerns of Snell and the peripherals issue of Burnes, even if that just manifested last year.

None of our trio of free agent pitchers in this year’s class enter with the back-to-back ascendent seasons that Scherzer and Wheeler had in their pocket when they hit the open market.

My preference is to make decisions when the odds are in your favor, knowing full well that doesn’t guarantee a positive result in the end. If history said these long-term deals had a 67% chance of succeeding, it would be a completely different story.

But while Stearns is avoiding risk by passing on the top level of free agent starters, he’s certainly not eliminating all risk in his SP portfolio. Paying $30 million combined to Holmes and Montas certainly comes with risk. And upside. Last year, the Mets paid $27.5 million for Manaea and Luis Severino and got $39 million worth of production.

That risk paid off and the club is trying the same maneuver this time with Holmes and Montas. You hear people say that it’s vanity on Stearns’ part, thinking that he can repeat last year’s reclamation success stories. Maybe it is. If nothing else, we’ll have an earlier resolution of the risk/reward equation with the reclamation pitchers than with the free agents who signed contracts of 5-7 years.

In the end, regardless of where you stand now on Stearns’ choice to avoid shopping at the high end of the starting pitching market, be prepared to admit if you were wrong, in addition to tooting your horn if you were right. I was wrong on Stearns’ gamble last year that Severino could stay healthy and be a useful pitcher. See, it’s easy to admit you’re wrong.