"The Diamondbacks have signed reliever Greg Holland

The move fits the pattern of previous off-season bullpen arms acquired by Mike Hazen to a one-year contract Tim Tebow Jersey , pending a physical. The news was first reported by Robert Murray, and the deal is heavily incentive-laden. According to Jon Heyman, Holland will get a base salary of $3.25 million, but can make up to the same again in incentives for games and games finished. Holland started his career in 2010 with the Kansas City Royals, and from 2013-17, only Craig Kimbrel and Kenley Jansen racked up more saves than Holland’s 166. That’s despite him missing the entire 2016 season because he was recovering from Tommy John surgery. He rebounded very nicely, joining the Rockies the following year and notching a league-high 41 saves. He was able to parlay that into a one-year, $14 million contract last season with the St. Louis Cardinals as their closer. But right from the start, he struggled. In his debut, he retired one of six batters faced, walking four and taking the loss. He spent some time on the DL with a hip issue, but in the end, the Cardinals designated Holland for assignment on July 27. He was 0-2 with three blown saves in six attempts and a 9.45 ERA - given the Cardinals missed the second wild-card by three games, you can argue Holland was that difference. However, when he signed with the Nationals, Holland was an entirely different pitcher. He had an ERA of just 0.84 over 24 games, holding batters to a .130 average.This move seems an extremely Hazen-like move, and I imagine Holland is likely to start the season as the Diamondbacks’ closer. As with Fernando Rodney in 2017 and Brad Boxberger last season, the team has brought in someone with closer experience, but who did not end the season in the role, and so was not looking for “closer bucks”. As with Rodney - also traded in the middle of the season before we acquired him, and who performed radically differently for his two teams - the success of this move will depend on which pitcher we get. If it’s the Cardinals’ version, it’s gonna suck. But Holland could also turn out to be a bargain, if his early season struggled were something “fixed” in Washington. Blake Finney had a look at the difference in Holland between the two versions. “The noticeable improvement in his stats was the contact rate against him Jay Bruce Jersey , which dived down from 73.8 percent to 65.7 percent after joining the Nationals... Based on FanGraphs Pitch Value, his slider went from a -2.1 value with the Cardinals to a 5.8 value with the Nats. He did this by focusing on getting his slider down and away, mostly out of the zone. If you compare his slider’s heatmap from his time with the Cards, to the same heatmap with the Nats, you notice how much the pitch leaked over the plate in St. Louis. The swings and misses followed and were a big reason he turned his season around.”As with most such extreme splits, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. Holland is neither as bad a pitcher as he was in St. Louis, nor as good as he was with Washington. His overall fielding-independent ERA was 3.83, which is very similar to the figure he posted in his successful season with Colorado (3.72). That is higher than he had during his most dominant years with Kansas City - over six seasons there, his FIP was just 2.23. But in another point of similarity, it’s also remarkably close to Rodney’s number (3.80) in the campaign prior to his arrival in Arizona. If the results in 2019 are similar to our archer’s, I don’t think there’ll be too much cause for complaint. Unfortunately, Blake Snell is putting those hopes in jeopardy."Here we are in MLB awards season again, and life is still pretty darn good for former Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander. Already the owner of Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, and Most Valuable Player awards, the 35-year-old finally won his first World Series ring with the Houston Astros last year. He returned with another monster campaign in 2018, and while his legacy is now assured, no doubt he would love to finally add a second Cy Young Award to his career achievements.Verlander has a heck of a good case. He led all American League pitchers in fWAR and in WARP (Baseball Prospectus’ version of WAR), though he finished behind Blake Snell, Chris Sale, and Corey Kluber by Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation. While each of those three will show up on voters ballots — as will Trevor Bauer and Gerrit Cole — Verlander’s combination of workload and dominance might be the kicker used by voters to untangle a messy award picture.Writers have been grappling with these issues since the season ended. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic cited workload as a key deciding factor in his column on the subject, in which he proclaims Verlander as the top choice for the Cy Young. Keith Law of ESPN made a similar argument, and actually ranks Snell fifth overall. Verlander has a stronger case on the basis of his strikeouts, walks http://www.metsfanproshop.com/authentic-tim-tebow-jersey , and workload.On the other hand, as Jayson Stark of the The Athletic, Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, and CBS Sports decided, some will find Snell’s season too strong to overlook. As the AL leader in ERA and wins, Snell has a lock on two of the most significant traditional metrics used to evaluate a pitcher’s season. While wins aren’t widely used to evaluate a pitcher anymore, runs, earned or not, still form the fundamental basis for how pitchers are graded. As a result, Snell seems like the consensus choice and likely favorite to take home the hardware.What do we value in a starting pitcher, and how do we weigh those various factors? On Wednesday, we will get a look at how the Baseball Writers Association of America answers those questions, at least for the 2018 season.2018 AL Cy Young CandidatesPitcherIPFIPERAWHIPK%BB%fWARrWARWARPPitcherIPFIPERAWHIPK%BB%fWARrWARWARPWhile Chris Sale sputtered out entirely in the second half of the season with shoulder issues, it’s worth a look at just how dominant he was in his 158 innings of work. Had he topped 180 innings, even with diminished performance, he would have his first Cy Young locked up. And that perspective sheds some light on the issues at hand.In terms of ERA, Snell is over a half a run better than Verlander. He also has 21 wins in 31 starts compared to Verlander’s 16 wins in 34 starts. We’ll leave pitcher wins out of this, as voters still weighing a team statistic as a part of the Cy Young voting probably aren’t going to change their mind. When you combine that shiny 20-win threshold with an ERA of 1.90, you’re going to have a lot of voters on your side.The problem with that perspective is that Sale only threw 17 2鈦? fewer innings than Snell. This isn’t much of a margin, and neither player’s total even approaches the vague 200-inning threshold that has generally held sway over the past quarter century. Sale also dominated Snell by a full run in FIP, with only a slightly higher ERA (2.11). Sale too leads Snell in two of the three major WAR calculations.If workload doesn’t matter quite so much as it once did, it would seem to favor Sale more than Snell. In terms of starting pitcher usage, progressive BBWAA voters probably aren’t the type to be swayed by wins or a “lowest ERA is the winner” methodology to begin with. If voters who are more open-minded about workload split their votes between Sale and Snell to a greater degree than expected, it could have opened the door for Verlander instead. Yet David Wright Jersey , support for Sale’s candidacy has been rather quiet, and he isn’t even a finalist.Verlander, on the other hand, wins most of the advanced metrics. He posted a 2.78 FIP to Snell’s 2.98 mark. Verlander’s fantastic strikeout numbers and extremely low walk rate wwere enough to make up for the fact that Snell prevented home runs more effectively. Verlander also has his own case to make in more traditional terms, like total innings and totalstrikeouts. He punched out a ridiculous 290 batters in 2018, easily the best mark of his career. He also cranked out another 34 starts and threw 214 innings, second in the American League to Kluber, who nipped him by one inning. He threw nearly 40 more innings than Snell, and was arguably on a per inning basis, despite the much heavier workload.Verlander, of course, famously lost two previous Cy Young awards in 2012 and 2016, where he also looked like the clear winner. David Price was probably close enough to make it a coin toss in 2012. Verlander’s rare MVP award for a pitcher the year before may have generated a bit of backlash, as well. In 2016, Verlander’s body of work appeared substantially better than eventual winner Rick Porcello. However, Verlander was inexplicably left completely off the ballot by two writers, which was enough to tip the balance in a contest that probably shouldn’t have been as close as it was.The 2018 version is a bit trickier. Because of the disparity in workload and changing views on that subject around the game, Snell’s historically low ERA, and the looming shadow of pitcher wins as a thing to care about, it’s difficult to forecast not just the winner, but how voting for some of the other candidates may affect the final vote tallies. There aren’t perfect distinctions between an argument based on advanced metrics versus more traditional statistics. It’s possible sabermetrically-inclined writers are going to tip toward Verlander, while more traditional ones are going to like Snell’s ERA, but it’s not even close to a perfect dividing line this season.The Cy Young awards for both leagues are set to be announced Wednesday night around 6:00 p.m.