Dbacks sign Wilmer Flores to a one-year
$3.75MM deal with a $6.00MM team option and a $500K buyout.

Wilmer Flores is a fine baseball player. I mean, he’s not anything special, but he’s fine. He’s about a league average hitter who can stand at every position on the dirt, although the defensive metrics aren’t convinced that he is particularly good at any of them, but he’s fine. He’s the kind of player that you would love to be your fifth infielder—a good hitter with defensive versatility, similar to what Daniel Descalso was over the past two seasons.

But Flores, as is currently slated, is not going to be the fifth infielder; he’s going to be the starting second baseman. Marte would be shifted to center, Lamb would take over at Goldy’s corner, and Escobar would cover third. That means the 2019 Diamondbacks would be more or less complete, and Hazen’s offseason would be essentially over.

The offseason is naturally a boring time for baseball fans, and we try to hold ourselves over until Pitchers and Catchers Report Day through projections, prospect rankings, and offseason signings. But in the past few years, offseason signings have dwindled, and the dreary winter months have been more boring than ever. For the Dbacks, this has been more true than most teams, quite remarkably, because Hazen, three offseasons in, has yet to make a major splash in free agency. Each offseason has been highlighted by one major trade (Segura, Souza, Goldy), followed by a series of minor pickups that you will have forgotten in five years time.

If you take a quick look at Hazen’s free agent signings over the past few years, it feels like the headline name was accidentally deleted. The Dbacks have been competitive over the past few years, making the playoffs once, and Hazen even says that he wants to compete this season. (Actions speak louder than words . . .) For a team with that kind of record, you would expect that they would have gone after at least one big free agent, but Hazen has never spent more than the seven million a year he gave to Eduardo Escobar, a deal that was seen as a major discount when it was signed just months ago.

Rather than laying down cash in the free agent route, Hazen has relied on trades to bring in new players and improve the team. He took a gamble on Taijuan Walker and Ketel Marte for his first big move in office and followed that up by landing J.D. Martinez for cheap. He picked up Steven Souza Jr. before the 2018 season, along with Eduardo Escobar and a series of smaller names that ended up disappointing but mildly successful. Then, this offseason, he sent Goldy to St. Louis for long-term pieces in Luke Weaver and Carson Kelly. In free agency, Hazen hasn’t landed a single player with the impact potential or established track record of those he’s traded for. Part of this is due to the natural differences between trades and free agency, but a majority of this lies in Hazen’s strategy.

It’s not that free agency hasn’t been a part of Hazen’s plan but that he has spent on a budget. Part of attempting to evaluate a General Manager is realizing that, while the owner (any team’s owner) could give him significantly more to spend, that GM is capped at however much money his boss is willing to spend. Without inside information, we are left to assume that whatever the final payroll is also is what the budget was. With that in mind, Hazen’s limited spendings have still played a large role in the success of the Dbacks. Jeff Mathis was a sneaky steal, as he provided almost as much WARP as millions of dollars that he was paid. Daniel Descalso was an excellent utility man who proved to be far more this past season. Fernando Rodney and “Yoshi” Hirano helped anchor a bullpen that has been good enough to belong on a competitive team. However, based on the amount of money that he has spent in the free agent market, it seems that he doesn’t have a large enough budget to be comfortable to sign a big name.

Also, building a team through trading is more costly talent-wise than it is through free agency. Hazen has given up stars like Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger, plus a long-line of lesser-known prospects, one of whom is likely to come back to hurt him considering the number that he has dished away. The costs of trades are evident and painful. Free agency, on the other hand, only hurts the team in terms of opportunity cost, the next best alternative that the team could have bought. For example, if Team A’s payroll will be $140MM, and they have already spent $120MM, then they have several options on which they could use that $20MM. They could buy one near All-Star player, or several good players. If the team determines that the best option was to buy the several good players, then the cost of buying those players wasn’t the $20MM that was spent (it would have been spent regardless), but the value of the star player because that was what the team gave up to get the other players.

Because we don’t know the budget that Hazen is working with, or how that budget changes over the course of the year, it is difficult to judge the job that he is doing. Without the budget, we can’t determine what the opportunity cost of his signings were. For example, Yasmani Grandal just went for $18.25MM guaranteed, with an option for 2020, so theoretically, the Dbacks could sign Grandal for $18.50MM guaranteed (with the option). However, we don’t know if Hazen was given enough money to sign Grandal without trading away a valuable asset. So while signing Grandal would certainly improve the Dbacks, even if they are rebuilding, we can’t say for sure whether Hazen should have signed Grandal with the money he was given.

Without any budget information, this time of year becomes boring, especially when the Dbacks, or any team for that matter, aren’t signing anybody. The best we can do is speculate and wait. Really, there’s only one thing we know for sure about free agency: it’s a whole lot more fun when things happen. Until then, we have prospect rankings and projections. Hopefully, Spring Training will come soon.