It took nearly a month after Dylan Cease’s massive deal with the Blue Jays, but we finally have another major starting pitcher deal to potentially kick off an additional flurry of moves.
There’s not much of an argument that the Michael King signing wasn’t bad news for the Cubs. I don’t just mean because the Cubs didn’t get him, mind you, though I am bummed about that part.
Even in a world where the Cubs, themselves, had no interest in King, he was an option out of the market for other suitors might might otherwise sign a starter in whom the Cubs do have interest. Since the Padres sure seemed very unlikely to be one of those suitors on the big names outside of retaining King, this move did not exactly help the Cubs’ market position.
The deal King got, by the way – three years, $75 million, opt outs after each year – was reasonable in the abstract. We talked about the Cubs’ appetite for risk on signing King, though, and it’s not at all hard to surmise that the Cubs would’ve hated being on the hook for $75 million if he’s broken, while getting just a single year of contribution if he’s not.
There’s another issue, though. For any non-Padres club, you had the draft pick compensation cost attached. Teams hate to give that up in a deal where they might get the player for just one year. With King returning to the Padres, and only with the Padres, that wasn’t an issue.
I can’t help but wonder whether we could see something similar happen with Zac Gallen and the Diamondbacks. Like King, Gallen has reason to pursue a short-term, opt-out-heavy deal if the longer-term contract isn’t out there. But would a team like the Cubs want to give up their second highest draft pick and $500,000 in IFA pool space (or TWO draft picks if you’re a luxury tax paying team, and $1M in IFA pool space) to sign Gallen to a deal that, if it goes well, is just one year? And if it goes badly, is three or whatever?
Either way, I could absolutely see the King deal being held up as a comp for Gallen, who doesn’t have the same injury risk, but who is similarly-aged, coming off a very down year, but offering the upside of a front-half starter. A straight three-year, $75 million deal for Gallen would probably be a good get. Once you start baking in the opt-outs, though, it becomes a lot less attractive for the team.
Would I have wanted the Cubs to sign this particular deal on Michael King? Well, on the one hand, I really hate this kind of deal with the draft pick compensation cost added. You get all the downside and almost none of the upside. On the other hand, King was my second-favorite free agent starting pitcher target next to Tatsuya Imai. If this was the only deal available, it might still have been worth it. (Obviously what I really want is to reject the hypothetical, and say I wish the Cubs had just been able to get him for four years and $100 million or whatever.)
The question now is whether the King signing does nudge anything else forward, or was otherwise a signal that other starting pitcher deals have been close to being finalized. We have heard almost nothing lately on any of Gallen, Imai, Framber Valdez, or Ranger Suarez, and certainly nothing on the various possible trade candidates. Things have been mum, too, on the guys in the next tier (Chris Bassitt, Lucas Giolito, Zack Littell, Tyler Mahle, Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, etc.).
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