The Guardians are Paying for Ceiling with Josh Bell and Mike Zunino

The Guardians accentuated their club by rolling the dice for Josh Bell and Mike Zunino. These acquisitions are more about the cost to buy ceiling rather than the cost of projected output.

A fundamental team building conversation requires balancing risk. Earlier this week, my esteemed colleague, Mike Hattery, wrote about incurring unnecessary risk for a marginal baseline gain with the Mike Zunino and Josh Bell deals. While he emphatically stated that they are necessary and worthy acquisitions, his commentary was mostly centered around their expected production and how those expectations balance against each player’s contract structure.

Josh Bell is a large gain over the Guardians’ MLB-worst 68 weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) in 2022. Yet, the argument would be more about competing designated hitter options rather than the team’s previous production at the position. The entire criticism base of the Josh Bell deal would be based on relative abundance of designated hitter avenues. Was it necessary to offer an opt out after year one of Bell’s contract?

To understand the margins gained in the Bell deal, we must use a baseline against the remainder of designated hitters and first basemen. A quick grab of the 428 seasons by these positions with at least 400 plate appearances reveals a bell curve that could be expected. The most player seasons of at least 400 plate appearances fall in the 111 to 113 wRC+ bucket (30 individual seasons, or about 7 percent). This is a bit higher than the league average wRC+ of 109 for first basemen and designated hitters since 2012, as the lower performers are not likely to attain 400 plate appearances.

This distribution gives us a proper estimation of which first basemen and designated hitter production levels should be readily available, either within the organization or via diminished risk gambits in trade or free agency (relative to the Bell contract). Plotting Bell’s seasons here is the truly revealing aspect of why he commanded the player-friendly opt out in 2024.

Sure, it’s simple to find a player that can match Bell’s floor of 108 wRC+ over a full season. The expensive part tends to be buying anything to the right of our most common output of 111 wRC+, which is where most of Bell’s seasons have landed as indicated by the tallies on the bottom of the image above. The Guardians were forced to incur risk in order to buy a chance at the further right sections of the orange-colored range, which is where the bigger money tends to get allocated to these offense-first positions.

The same general principle can be used to understand the risky gamble on Mike Zunino, who is rebounding from thoracic outlet syndrome and entering his age 32 season. It is widely known that the Guardians place a premium on catching and that Zunino’s game calling, management of the pitching staff, and pitch framing are big pieces of the decision to hand him six million for the 2023 season.

To do so, we can run through the same exercise utilized for Bell, but for catchers. Given that catchers play far less frequently than their counterparts, to achieve a sample size in the 500 range, we must peel back the plate appearance requirements to 150.

This process reveals a similar bell shape as the first base and designated hitter exercise, but with wider extremes. Notice that the midpoint is also shifted substantially to the left, due to teams prioritizing the defensive side.

The path to understanding the decision to sign Mike Zunino lies firmly on the defensive expectations with an expectation that thoracic outlet syndrome, albeit on his non-throwing shoulder side, will not hinder his pop time or framing. Unlike with Bell, the hitting expectations do not firmly shade one way or the other. In fact, the wide error bars in his previous outputs render that side a large roll of the dice.

The argument would center around the scarcity of his three 80th percentile campaigns, while maintaining that his defense could help weather the storm in the event of one of his three 20th percentile campaigns rising to the surface. However, this scenario is reflected in the price the Guardians paid for Zunino. A six million-dollar salary to carry the bulk of catching work is of the lottery ticket variety, while the club also has a safety net of vaunted catching prospect, Bo Naylor, lurking in the shadows.

Further, if we benchmark against the five million that the Pittsburgh Pirates gave Austin Hedges a week later, it shines much brighter. Though some may believe Hedges to be a greater defender, consider that projection systems slightly favor Zunino’s defense in 2023. For simplicity’s sake, call the defensive side a slight advantage for Hedges if you must. Plotting the range of Hedges’ offensive outcomes against that of Zunino’s reveals the real foundation of the decision to give Zunino that money instead of Hedges.

The Hedges offensive profile is likely overstated by an outlier 90 wRC+ season, but it clearly lays out the delta in upside. This chart alone indicates the upgrade opportunity Zunino offers on the offensive side. Even if not the projected outcome, as we discussed with Josh Bell, it is imperative to note the increased financial commitment required to buy anything above the baseline offensive expectation for a particular position group.

Both of the free agency contracts doled out by the Guardians over the past month are littered with risk. However, that is generally true of free agency contracts. For a club that is aiming to bolster a young core that exceeded expectations in 2022, these were the two positions which required immediate attention. Regardless of what other options existed and why those did or did not materialize, these are sensible plays for the 2023 Cleveland Guardians.