The Risks and Rewards of Signing Jose Abreu
Abreu is an excellent hitter who fills a clear hole in the Astros lineup; he makes the team better in 2023. But signing him to a 3rd year creates big risks of decline due to aging.
Some times predicting baseball is pretty hard. And sometimes, nearly everyone can make the right prediction—that the Astros would sign Jose Abreu as a free agent. And yesterday, news broke that they did.
It was not hard to connect Abreu to the Astros. The Astros had a hole at first base, in part because their first baseman from 2022 is also a free agent, and in part because that first baseman had a poor season. Abreu is a really good player who plays first base and only cost Jim Crane’s money to acquire him. Chandler Rome quoted “one person in the organization” as saying that Abreu was “our top priority” this offseason.
The Astros have been connected to Anthony Rizzo already this off-season and when he re-signed with the Yankees, Abreu was the best first baseman left on the market.
The most important fact about the Abreu signing is that it is for 3 years. The 3-year length was necessary because other suitors for Abreu offered him a contract of that length.
But the 3-year contract greatly increases the risk that this contract could go poorly for the Astros. The Astros have signed Abreu for his age 36, 37, and 38 seasons. The average player peaks in his mid-to-late 20s. Occasionally, a player can hold off aging late into his career, but the vast majority of players decline as they enter their 30s, and especially their mid-to-late 30s.
There are reasons to think that Abreu can hold off the effects of aging. He adjusted his swing decisions in 2022, chasing less and walking more. But there are also signs that age is hurting him already. His power was down in 2022 and he struggled with fastballs. These issues may snowball over the life of the contract.
But this move was not made with the future in mind. It is clearly a win-now move that is designed to boost the team in 2023 as it defends its World Series title. Abreu brings obvious strengths as a hitter that made his desired by a number of teams this offseason. He represents a clear improvement over the Astros incumbent first baseman and should help offset expected regression in other places on the roster.
I discuss Abreu’s strengths and weaknesses below, as well as addressing two puzzles in the data about him—whether his defense is declining and whether his power is declining. If the signs of decline in both of those areas are overstated and if the signs that he is holding on to his skills are solid, then this is a very good signing for the Astros. But there are big ifs in that statement.
Abreu’s Strengths
The advantages of an Abreu signing are obvious—he’s an excellent hitter. In 2022, he slashed .304/.378/.446 for an OPS of .824. That was 33 percent better than the average hitter in 2022.
And those totals are not the result of a fluke season. His career slash line is relatively similar: .292/.354/.506. His OPS+ of 134, which is 34 percent better than the average major league hitter.
One way to look at Abreu’s talents as a hitter are to look at his worst season at the plate, which was 2018. In that season, he slashed .265/.325/.473 for a .798 OPS. He was 17% better than league average. That’s obviously not great, but if that’s your worst season, you’re a heck of a hitter.
There’s another clear strength to Abreu’s game—durability. Abreu has played in more than 150 games in six of the eight full seasons he has played in the majors. He also played all 60 games in the pandemic shortened 2020 season. Over the last 4 seasons, Abreu has missed only 18 of the 546 games his team has played.
Injuries happen to everybody, but they seem to be less likely to happen to Abreu. Abreu may be aging, but that has not kept him from answering the bell just about every night.
Abreu’s Weaknesses
The weaknesses of Abreu start with his age. He will turn 36 in January and is now signed through his age 38 season. Baseball players peak in their mid-to-late 20s and Abreu is well past that. If the end comes quickly, the Astros will be left with a big financial sinkhole on the 2025 balance sheet.
Thus the biggest concern about this deal is the third year on the contract. When assessing the Top 50 free agents this off-season, Ben Clemens at Fangraphs estimated that Abreu would garner an offer of 2 years at $18 million per season. Reports are that Abreu will get $19.5 million annually, which is close to that estimate, but over 3 years, which is not. That’s another year of commitment and salary, and to a player who will be 38 at that time.
The third year is the cost of doing business. As noted, the Guardians offered a third year to Abreu and it is likely that other teams did as well. But it brings much more risk to this contract. It would be a slam dunk excellent move if the contract was for 2 years because if would limit the downsides of the deal. At 3 years, those downsides grow significantly.
The Puzzle of Abreu—Is His Power Declining?
Are there signs that age is affecting Abreu’s game? If you look at his slugging percentage in 2022, the answer is yes. His slugging percentage of .446 was 71st best among major leaguers with 250 plate appearances or more.
But if you look at Abreu’s expected slugging—which takes into account the quality of contact—he ranked 21st best among major leaguers with 250 plate appearances or more.
So maybe Abreu was just unlucky. Maybe he hit the ball hard frequently, but those balls just found the gloves of opposing fielders. But Abreu had a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .350. The league average is .290 and analytics research finds that high BABIPs are unsustainable, as they are mostly driven by luck.
The data thus present a puzzle. There is evidence that Abreu’s power decline is genuine. His isolated power1 was a career low .141; that's below the league's 2022 average of .152. He hit for only 15 home runs, a career low.2
One reason for the decline in Abreu’s power may be his performance against 4-seam fastballs, which are the highest velocity pitches. The screenshot below is from Abreu’s page on Baseball Savant, and it shows the value in runs of his performance against fastballs since this pitch tracking method began in 2017.
After being able to handle high velocity pitches quite well during most of his career, Abreu struggled mightily in 2022; his performance against these pitches was 9 runs below average. Is Abreu’s swing slowed by age? These numbers are evidence of that.
Or maybe it’s a fluke. After all, if you look at the rest of the batted ball metrics that Statcast has, they show that Abreu stills hits the ball very hard. He was at the 97th percentile in Hard Hit%, 93 percentile in average exit velocity, 89th percentile in max exit velocity. His barrel % was lower at 63rd percentile, but that may reflect that he hit the ball at a lower average launch angle in 2022—it was at 8.0 after being at 10.4 over his career.
So we know that Abreu’s power was down in 2022, but we don’t know if it was down in a way that will sustain itself in the future.
The Puzzle of Abreu—Is His Defense Declining
Power is not the only place where different datasets are in conflict about Abreu’s abilities. Another area is his defense.
According to the Fielding Runs Above Average metric, Abreu had his worst year in the field in 2022, costing his team 3 runs more than the average first baseman. That was down from a +3 rating in 2020.
According to the Outs Above Average metric, Abreu was an league average defensive first baseman. He recorded 0 Outs Above Average (i.e. exactly average). While that’s not a good number, it is better than some of the terrible years he had in the field early in his career (-6 in 2016 and -7 in 2019).
UZR recorded Abreu as a poor fielder (-4.6 rating), while Defensive Runs Saved said he was an average fielder (1 run saved).
The only thing consistent about these data is that they are inconsistent. We can rule out that Abreu is a Gold Glove candidate at first base. But outside of that, it is hard to tell if he is an average fielder or a bad one.
A Change in Plate Discipline for the Good
Abreu has developed better judgment at the plate in his last two seasons. He increased his walk rate to 9.3% in 2021, a new career high by over a percentage point. He sustained that rate in 2022, with a 9.1% walk rate. And in 2022, he cut his strikeout rate to a career low of 16.2%; it had been above 20% for teach of the previous three seasons.
Abreu chased fewer pitches in 2022, swinging at a career low 29.5% of pitches that were outside the strike zone. He also recorded a career high contact rate of 79.1%, and a career low swing rate of 47.4%. Keeping up his improved strike zone judgment will be key to Abreu aging gracefully through his Astros contract.
Abreu the Astro
So how will Abreu perform in 2023 for the Astros? The way to make the best guess is through projection systems. And the Steamer projection at Fangraphs is pretty optimistic; it has Abreu with a projected slash line of .276/.349/.450. That projection assumes that some of his batting average gains from 2022 will go away, but that Abreu will keep much of his improved strike zone judgment. Steamer projects him with a walk rate of 8.4% and a strikeout rate of 18.7%. That projection includes age related decline, but a gradual one.
And in many ways, the key to this deal is 2023. The Astros want to defend their World Series title and Abreu offers a clear upgrade over Yuli Gurriel, who served as their first basemen in 2022. Steamer projects Abreu for 2.4 fWAR, which would be a clear improvement on the -0.9 fWAR that Gurriel produced.
That’s 3 wins of improvement from this move alone. Overall, we can expect the team to decline—it’s hard to win 106 games once, much less twice. In signing Abreu, the front office has identified an area where they can clearly improve on the team’s performance in 2022. It will help balance out the declines in other spots on the roster.
So the verdict of the Abreu signing will be based primarily on his performance in 2023. If Abreu has another very good year at the plate and an average season in the field, he will be a key contributor to a team that is expected to make another deep run in the playoffs.
It is possible that this contract is an albatross in the 2025 season when the Astros must pay $19.5 million to a 38 year old. But if you don’t add in some risk, you’ll never sign a free agent.
There are obvious risks to this deal. But the benefits are clear—the 2023 team is better today than it was yesterday morning. Which, since the team is trying to defend its World Series championship, is a valuable thing in and of itself.
Isolated power is measured by subtracting batting average from slugging percentage. It’s thus isolates a batter’s power (i.e. ability to hit for extra bases) from batting average (i.e. ability to hit for singles.).
And that incudes the 60-game 2020 season; Abreu hit 19 home runs that season.