Alan Truex: Dallas Keuchel has spring training at Camp Boros
Updated Friday, March 15
As a trade-deadline acquisition last July, Martin Maldonado brought excellent defense to the Houston Astros at the most important defensive position: catcher. The Astros wanted to keep him. When the season ended they offered him a two-year contract for $12 million. Maldonado’s agent, Scott Boros, rejected the offer.
Last week Maldonado signed with the Kansas City Royals.
For one year and $2.5 million, with incentives that could take him to a maximum of $3.9 million.
Maldonado, 32, blamed Boros for negotiating him into such a retreat, vastly overplaying his hand. So Maldonado fired Boros, who at 66 has not moved with the times. This is not his father’s Major League Baseball, where freewheelers like George Steinbrenner, Peter O’Malley and Ted Turner would outbid each other for all the star players or even the average ones.
These were very competitive capitalists, but they were also passionate sportsmen. With them, winning on the field was as important as winning on the bottom line. And with O’Malley and Turner (not so much with Steinbrenner), they promoted the game of baseball across the continent and the oceans.
Baseball is different now, more bottom-line than it’s ever been. And that’s starting with the commissioner, Rob Manfred.
He’s determined to whittle the average game down to 2 hours, 50 minutes if it means clocks, bullpen carts, shorter commercials and reducing the number of mound visits and pitching changes.
Meanwhile, the science is in: There’s been rampant overspending on the baseball free-agent market. Everyone knows that, with the possible exception of Scott Boros.
Turns out that when you put computers to work on analyzing data, the return on investment usually hasn’t been good on 31-year-old pitchers signing multiyear contracts. Also not so good on 32-year-old catchers, like Maldonado.
In these happy times of nearly full employment, supply and demand are nicely balanced, albeit with a cloud of collusion on the horizon.
Boros has long believed that the ballplayer market is in constant ascent. When the market froze up after the 2017 season, he saw that as an aberration, not a new era. Or his error.
When free-agency reopened last November, Boros overstated the market value not only for Maldonado but for one of MLB’s top-30 starting pitchers, Dallas Keuchel, 6-foot-3 lefthander who pitched 205 innings for Houston last season.
Boros let the teams know he expected better than the 3-years, $75 million he got a year ago for another Cy Young/World Series-winning pitcher in his 30s, Jake Arrieta.
A repeat of that history was not likely to happen. Still isn’t. Time is not on the side of Boros and Keuchel. The season opens in two weeks and they’re not getting any better while they wait.
Keuchel is following the same path as Arrieta, who didn’t find a home with the Philadelphia Phillies until March 11. He struggled for most of last season, and missing training camp might have been a factor.
“I just think it’s so difficult for starting pitchers,” Arrieta said, “trying to build arm strength, get up to 100 pitches. There’s gonna be a period of time where he feels he’s not able to catch up. I had that for a couple of weeks.”
There’s also the case of Alex Cobb, who gained a 4-year, $57 million contract with Baltimore, but not until March 21. He had cashed in, if belatedly, after a season very similar to Keuchel’s entering free agency. In 2017 Cobb was 12-10 with a 3.66 ERA for Tampa Bay. Keuchel was 12-11, 3.74 ERA last season for Houston.
Cobb after his 12-win season turned down a qualifying offer of $17.4 million from the Rays. The Astros in November offered Keuchel $17.9 million, which he rejected.
While Arrieta was going 10-11 with a 3.96 ERA for Philadelphia last season, Cobb was 5-15, 4.90 for Baltimore.
Keuchel, 31, is trying to stay in shape by working out in California at a training facility operated by Boros to accommodate the clients he can’t get placed into jobs.
Camp Boros is not the same as being on a team.
“I underestimated what it really is to go through a big-league spring training and have the ability to progress every single day,” Cobb told the Baltimore Sun.
Keuchel was worth more in early December, before the New York Yankees gave two years, $34 million guaranteed, to J.A. Happ, 36-year-old lefty who was not valued as highly as Keuchel when he was a Houston farmhand.
Keuchel had more value before the Astros in January signed a 32-year-old lefty, Wade Miley, for $4.5 million on a one-year deal. Miley had a fine half-season for Milwaukee in 2018: 5-2, 2.57 ERA in 16 starts.
By now, the Astros have had enough time to evaluate their pitchers in camp. They’ve determined they can get by with Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole heading their rotation and veteran starters Collin McHugh, Miley and Brad Peacock competing with a strong-armed 25-year-old prospect, Framber Valdez, for the other starting roles.
As general manager Jeff Luhnow put it: “At this point, we’re so close to opening day, we’re going to start with the guys we have in camp and go from here.”
So the market for Keuchel is shrinking. The Atlanta Braves are interested, and Boros indicated one other team is in the picture – most likely Philadelphia. There would be no point in Keuchel going Maldonado and firing Boros. Too late. The damage has been done.
