James "Big Maple" Paxton Signs With Red Sox
On Paxton's signing, and where that puts the Red Sox starting rotation in 2022 and beyond
The Red Sox beat the CBA deadline! Last night, news leaked that the Red Sox had signed starting pitcher James Paxton to an interesting contract: one year, $10 million with a two year club option attached. They got it done before the Collective Bargaining Agreement expired today, December 1, so now they’ll have to come up with something else to talk about on sportstalk radio rather than the Red Sox aren’t doing anything. If they need topics, might I gently suggest that trading Mookie Betts, much like milk, was a bad idea. Anyway, back on topic: the Paxton signing is especially notable because Paxton had Tommy John surgery last April, meaning it’s unlikely he’ll be able to pitch until the middle of the 2022 season.
So, that’s a lot of stuff! Let’s get into it after I say hello, welcome to Sox Outsider. Hello! Welcome to Sox Outsider! I’m Matt Kory. I’ve written at The Athletic, Sports on Earth, Vice Sports, and other places, and now I’m covering the Red Sox here. So subscribe! It’s free, fun, and now thanks to the holiday season, festive! It couldn’t be easier. Just press this button.
The run on starting pitchers and really free agents of all types over the past week plus has been impressive, and it’s all been driven by the expiration of the CBA. Teams and players have both been looking to get things done before the owners lock the players out, and that’s lead to a whole mess of contracts. The Red Sox though have mostly sat this process out. Alex Speier of the Boston Globe reported an agent told him the Red Sox weren’t in any rush to get things done. That isn’t entirely a bad thing. Rushing to get things done can be a good thing if you have to get something done, but the Red Sox don’t, in fact, have to get something done. The off-season isn’t over, and opening day is nowhere close. (I wrote about this further on Tuesday if you want more depth.)
The point is the free agent market for starting pitchers was starting to get a bit thin. Oddly, James Paxton was never mentioned as an option. Like not for any team at all ever. If you search MLB Trade Rumors, Paxton was mentioned back in April when he had TJ surgery and then his next mention came yesterday, after he signed with Boston. No rumors, no quiet whispers in the corner of boardrooms, no midnight calls to agents or bouquets with love professed on a small, perfume-scented card. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing BAM signed.
So that’s a paragraph on process, but let’s get to the meat of this. Paxton signed a one-year deal for $10 million, essentially the same deal the Red Sox gave Garret Richards last off-season. That’s right, he got that Richards money! The difference between the two is that while Richards’ contract contained a one-year club option (since declined), Paxton’s deal contains a club option for two seasons. Essentially, after the 2022 season, the Red Sox have the option of keeping Paxton in Boston for two years and $25 million. It’s the kind of deal where, if Paxton comes back healthy and effective, the Red Sox could make out like bandits, or at least whatever the a-baseball-team-signs-a-player-to-a-good-deal equivalent of a bandit is. So there’s definite upside here.
However, there’s downside as well. Paxton has had his run-ins with injuries over the past few seasons. Before undergoing TJ surgery in April, he missed time while with the Yankees in 2020 with a forearm strain that came mid-season and, before that, back surgery, which prevented him from starting the season on time. There’s more injuries further back, too, but let’s just say he’s had injury issues throughout his career and leave it there, otherwise we’ll be here for a while.
When healthy though, Paxton has been quite good. Through the 2019 season (so not counting the 21.2 total innings he threw in 2020 and 2021, Paxton’s ERA has been 17 percent above league average. That’s really good. From 2016 through 2019, Paxton was worth over 15 WAR according to FanGraphs, and over nine according to Baseball Reference. He strikes out a lot of guys for a starter, he doesn’t walk too many, and while he has given up a fair number of homers in his time, it’s manageable.
Paxton has an overpowering fastball that he throws about 60 percent of the time. The rest of his repertoire has fluctuated a bit as these things tend to do over the course of a career, but typically he augments his fastball with a cutter and a curveball. He also throws a changeup very occasionally, as well. The entire package, again, when healthy, is very good number three or a good number two in a starting rotation.
The question with Paxton, especially now as he gets into his mid-30s (he’ll be 33 in 2022) and coming off back surgery and his second TJ, is can he stay healthy enough to be effective? And maybe more to the point, what will the Red Sox do with his rotation spot as they wait for Paxton to get healthy?
As we sit right now, the Red Sox rotation looks like this:
1. Nathan Eovaldi
2. Chris Sale
3. Nick Pivetta
4. Michael Wacha
5. …Tanner Houck?
That fifth spot obviously belongs to Paxton when he returns from surgery, but who occupies it until then? And what happens once Paxton comes back?
Often times these situations sort themselves out via another unforeseen injury or underperformance, so perhaps figuring that out shouldn’t matter so much right now. What this signing does do though is hold a spot for Paxton, which means in essence that the Red Sox aren’t likely going to go find any more starters on the free agent market (which is good because there aren’t too many left). After all, what starter is going to want to come to Boston now with almost no available rotation spots?
That doesn’t preclude making a trade though, as traded players doing get to choose whether to join the team they were just traded to. So that Walker Buehler for Jeter Downs and the rights to Mark Bellhorn deal you’ve been dreaming of is still on the table. Technically. But outside of something unexpected, it seems that this is your 2022 Boston Red Sox starting rotation. The questions for Paxton are when will he be healthy, and who fills in while we wait for his health to return?
So that’s newest Red Sox starter James Paxton. There’s real uncertainty about what he can give the team in 2022, but if he’s healthy and good, the Red Sox can keep him for two more years at a very reasonable salary for a good starter. And if he’s not good? In that case, they can do what they did with Richards, namely move him to the bullpen, and ultimately not pick up his option. From that standpoint, it’s a low-risk signing. If Paxton isn’t good and/or isn’t healthy, the team has no obligation to him beyond 2022.
From the standpoint of winning in 2022 though it’s a higher risk signing. There is no guarantee Paxton comes back at any specific point during the season, as recovery from serious surgery is a notoriously difficult thing to accurately predict. There’s also no guarantee that a guy with Paxton’s extensive injury history manages to stay healthy even after his return. The Red Sox are gambling here, though they have some outs. If he’s not good or if recovery takes far longer than expected, or both, there’s always the trade market. Alternatively, they can always pull someone up from what has become a pretty good starting rotation in Triple-A Worcester.
I was going to end it there, but I think that’s the wrong note to finish on. I’m not sure I’ve really made the point strongly enough that when he’s been healthy he’s been very good. That’s been true since he broke in as a starter with the Mariners back in 2013. So yes there are risks here, but the Red Sox just got a good starter. That has to count for something.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please subscribe. If you’re already subscribed, thanks! Consider passing this along to a friend who you think might enjoy it.