Chris Archer Signing Is A True Test Of Tampa Bay Rays’ Special Sauce

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In one sense, it’s just another off-season transaction—the Tampa Bay Rays signed right-handed starter Chris Archer to a one-year, $6.5 million contract. A onetime budding star, derailed by injury, signs a short-term, make-good deal to determine whether his career will have a second act. Happens all the time, right?

This deal, with this team and this type of player, most certainly does not happen all the time. The Rays, who annually jockey between last and next to last with the Oakland Athletics in the team payroll rankings, do not throw $6.5 million deals around lightly. And the player they are spending it on just happens to be one with a special place in their history, both for what he accomplished in their uniform and for the mother lode of talent they received in return (Rays regulars Tyler Glasnow and Austin Meadows plus top pitching prospect Shane Baz) when he was dealt to the Pirates in mid-2018.

So what’s up? Why would the Rays dedicate more than 10% of their 2021 payroll as things currently stand on a fallen star, one who didn’t pitch at all in 2020 because of thoracic outlet syndrome, a condition that has ended many pitching careers?

First and foremost, they have obviously been given the go-ahead to get to this point by their medical team, and the deal will not be finalized until Archer formally passes a physical.

Secondly, we need to take a step back and remember how good Archer was at his best. Not too many major league starters strike out well over a batter per inning over their first 1,000 frames in the majors. Archer has whiffed 1,349 batters in his first 1,235 innings.

Despite such dominance, Archer has just a 60-80 major league record with a 3.86 ERA. Yes, there is much more to life than pitchers’ win-loss records and ERAs, but in this case, it clearly suggests that something was missing within his portfolio.

Archer’s problem has always been contact management, or his lack of ability in that skill.

For those who have read my work here, I often refer to the metric I have developed to measure pitchers’ performance in that area, Adjusted Contact Score. On a scale where 100 equals league average, and the lower the number the better, Adjusted Contact Score measures the level of production a pitcher “should have” allowed based on the exit speed/launch angle mix of all batted balls allowed.

Archer has been historically bad in this area. From 2016 to 2019, he posted consistently poor Adjusted Contact Scores of 108, 111, 113 and 117—bad and trending consistently worse. Next to Robbie Ray, he’s been the worst contact manager among regular MLB starters over the past five seasons.

Despite his gaudy strikeout totals, his poor contact management performance has prevented him from reaching his potential. His “Tru” ERA- (my ERA/FIP proxy that is based on Adjusted Contact Score) marks of 88, 84, 97 and 101 from 2016 to 2019 are roughly in line with his FIP- levels and suggest an average to slightly above-average starter, not a potential star.

Oh, but if he could even be an average contact manager. …

Yes, that is exactly what the Rays are thinking.

Surely, Archer is going to have to make some changes to be an average contact manager, but what does past performance suggest about his ability to make those changes?

Most of the truly bad contact managers in the game today—Ray and Patrick Corbin, to name two—don’t throw a changeup. The changeup is the single best contact management pitch in the game, by far. In 2019, the average changeup Adjusted Contact Score among ERA qualifiers was 81.0. In 2020, that barely moved, to 80.6. Archer does throw a changeup; we’ll get back to it a little later.

The worst contact management pitch? The four-seam fastball, with average Adjusted Contact Scores of 114.7 in 2019 and 115.7 in 2020. I’ll give you one guess which pitch Archer throws most often, and at a much higher rate than the average ERA qualifier. (It’s the four-seamer.)

Each season, I assign letter grades to the primary pitches in each ERA qualifier’s repertoire, based on his pitch-specific ability to miss bats and manage contact. (Shameless plug: The 2020 pitching grades series starts next week.) Here is a summary of Archer’s letter grades from 2016 to 2019; he didn’t qualify for the ERA title in 2018 or 2019, but I went back and calculated those grades anyway.

2016:

2017:

2018:

2019:

(Not enough batted balls for CH to qualify.)

Some interesting observations. If you consider a B-grade pitch an average pitch, Archer had only one above-average offering from 2016 to 2019 combined: his slider in 2019. This is largely due to contact management issues. He never posted a pitch-specific four-seamer Adjusted Contact Score better than 129 over that span. The best pitchers in baseball—the deGroms, Verlanders and Lynns—dominate with their fastball(s). Archer will never be one of the best pitchers in baseball, as his four-seamer hasn’t even been average one single time since 2016 despite above-average velocity in the 94-to-96-mph range.

The slider is his best pitch. Its pitch-specific whiff rate is consistently above average, and it has also been in the league-average range contact management-wise. He has thrown his slider a ton, in the 35% to 45% usage range. Pitchers who do so tend to be injury-prone, like Archer. Only Dinelson Lamet (53.4%) and Corbin (40.3%) threw their sliders more than 40% of the time among 2020 ERA qualifiers.

But what about that changeup? Archer has thrown it only about 10% of the time each season, and it’s been basically a league-average pitch each season, with whiff rates and Adjusted Contact Scores at or near league average. Why not throw it more?

So to return to our original question, what are the Rays thinking?

1. There were 40 MLB starters who pitched enough innings to qualify for the ERA title in 2020. None of them were Rays. This is the team of the opener, of the fleet of bullpen power arms. They are likely not asking Archer to deliver them 162-plus innings; 120 to 140 would be just fine.

2. Perhaps they raise that slider percentage even higher and turn him into the AL version of Lamet. This would be a dangerous gamble, in my opinion, but it is just a one-year deal, so it can’t be ruled out.

3. Maybe the Rays see something in his fastball that can play up in shorter stints. Glasnow and Ryan Yarbrough are two polar opposites stylistically, but both get extra mileage from their heaters since they know they aren’t going deep into games. Glasnow is the bat-misser, Yarbrough the contact manager.

4. Lastly, the most likely scenario, the one I think has the best chance to work: Roughly double the changeup’s usage rate, primarily at the expense of the four-seamer, with slider usage also nudging down a tad. Archer has consistently shown a league-average changeup and a below-average fastball. It just makes too much sense. His K rate shouldn’t be materially negatively impacted, and he should approach the goal of becoming an average contact manager.

So 20% changeup, 35% four-seamer, 30% slider and 15% curveball/two-seamer looks like a pitch mix that could work.

Sorry, Pirates fans, but the arc of Chris Archer’s career, not to mention those of Meadows, Glasnow and Baz, hasn’t worked in your favor to this point, and it could get worse. The Gerrit Cole/Astros/Yankees experience has obviously been a drag, too. Some organizations have got it; some just don’t.