Just How Bad Was the Abreu Deal?

June 22, 2024  •  11 minutes  • 2232 words

The Houston Astros released first baseman José Abreu on June 14, 2024. It was less than halfway through the three-year deal they signed him to in November of 2022.

Just how bad was this deal? We can assume that his performance didn’t meet expectations, but was his output for the Astros objectively bad?

Would this deal have still been bad for the Astros even if he had maintained his pre-2023 performance?

Finally, should the Astros have known better? Were there indications in Abreu’s stats that his production was likely to decrease? He turned 36 before the 2023 season, so there had to be something to suggest it was worth it to take the risk. Right?

Let’s try to get a sense of just how bad this deal turned out to be, and maybe how bad it was when it started.

Abreu Before 2023

José Abreu played for Los Elefantes de Cienfuegos of la Serie Nacional de Béisbol from 2003 [age 16] until defecting from Cuba in August 2013. He led the team in OPS from the 2007–08 season until his departure. His best season was 2010–2011, when he set the league home run record (33HR in 66 games) and hit .453/.597/986.

Abreu entered the major leagues in with the White Sox in 2014, signing the largest rookie free-agent contract ever given to an international player. He played 145 games and won AL Rookie of the Year at age 27. He was the first rookie to end the season in the top-5 of all three triple crown stats.

He won the Silver Slugger in 2014, 2018, and 2020, and was AL MVP in 2020.

Abreu had an average wins above replacement of 3.54 during his time with the White Sox (2014–2022). WAR was highest in his 2014 rookie season (5.8), 2017 (4.9), and 2022 (4.3). His other six seasons ranged between 2.0 and 3.5. The last four seasons with the White Sox, he registered 2.5, 3.0, 2.9, and 4.3 wins above replacement.

Like almost all first basemen we’ll compare him to, his net-positive WAR is entirely due to his hitting. His defensive WAR for those last four seasons was -1.1, 0.2, -0.9, and -0.9. He’s also not the guy you’re going to have stealing bases, as he took 11 bags in 9 years with the White Sox, and was caught stealing 5 other times he tried it.

We’re really only concerned with hitting stats, but since baserunning and defense are pretty similar across first basemen, we’ll lean predominantly on WAR (which tackes into account fielding and baserunning).

How Bad Was His 2023/24 Performance?

For this question, we’re only concerned about the contract period: all of 2023 and through his last game on June 12, 2024.

WAR clearly indicates an offensive decline. His WAR for 2023 was effectively zero, and was -1.6 so far in 2024. Remembering that he was acquired for his offensive potential (his defensive WAR actually showed marginal improvement over his last two years with the White Sox), this was a very bad turn.

But now I’m curious what drove that huge drop. Was it just hits? Total bases? Did walks play a part?

Yes. While making 85 fewer plate appearances (61 fewer official at-bats) in 2023 than in 2022, he had 55 fewer hits AND 17 fewer walks. He was also hit by pitches 6 times instead of 12. We might normally ignore that, but it was provided a sizeable percentage of times he achieved first base without a hit. His 2024 stats were even more abysmal, with his rates in hits, walks, and HBP less than half of what they were even in 2023.

How does that play out? It may be easiest here to just look at the slash lines:

That’s a heck of a decline for a guy you just gave a $58.5 million contract to.

Comps by Wins Above Replacement

Let’s look at top ten first basemen by WAR for 2022. All of their defensive WARs were zero or negative, with the exception of Christian Walker (1.0). These guys are pretty much pure hitters. Abreu’s contract sticks out as maybe being a bit high, particularly for the oldest player on the list. He’s getting paid the most money per win above replacement.

Goldschmidt was the AL MVP. Freeman got Dodger money. 2022 was a down year for Matt Olson, who seems to run hot and cold (but that’s an analysis for another day).

Let’s look at 2023 IF Abreu had maintained the same WAR:

And there’s Olson back at the top. He ended up coming in 4th in NL MVP voting behind teammate Acuña, Mookie Betts, and… Freeman.

Goldschmidt started a slide that hasn’t so far shown signs of stopping (0.6 WAR so far in 2024).

Abreu would have still been on the pricier end for a productive first baseman. Except he wasn’t productive. His actual WAR was effectively zero, which puts him at replacement-level, and doesn’t justify any big contract.

What about top ten by salary?

Comps by Salary

Well, when you look at it that way it almost doesn’t look so bad. But my first thought is not that the Abreu deal isn’t that bad, it’s that a lot of first basemen managed to get some pretty good deals for themselves.

Note that Votto, Hosmer, and Belt (and now Abreu) are not playing major league ball in 2024, so someone figured that out.

And here’s 2023 IF Abreu maintained his 2022 WAR:

Most of these guys are probably getting overpaid for their production.

Again, Votto is no longer in the major leagues. Neither is Cron. Gallo is still on a major league roster, but is down to a $2.5M/year contract for 2024. The Dodgers can afford to pay $4.2M/WAR to Freeman. I guess the same is true of the Yankees, but I’m not sure I can explain why they’ve ever paid so much to Rizzo. Alonso somehow ended up with a $20.5M contract with the Mets for 2024, and is repaying that vote of confidence with a WAR of 1.3 so far. Guerrero hasn’t approached the output he showed in 2021-22, but is getting paid like he has.

It definitely seems like teams continue to put too much weight on the past performance of players they know. When that performance suddenly goes south, they’re left holding the bag. Now, there may be plenty of other factors involved in the decision to retain a player: clubhouse cohesion, fan support, etc. But in many cases, paying league minimum for a replacement-level player may have had a better result in terms of wins and losses.

But was Abreu’s drop in performance drop all that sudden?

Who Could Have Seen This Coming?

So our final question is whether the Astros should have expected Abreu’s performance to continue, or whether they should have anticipated at least some drop-off.

At first glance at his WAR and OPS+, it looks like he was a pretty consistent player for the White Sox. Other than his rookie year and the COVID-shortened 2020 season—in which he made the most of playing in every one of the 60 games—nearly all of his stats were right around his career average, with possibly even some slight improvements to both WAR and OPS+ in 2022. It might have been natural to assume that he would continue on productively for at least another couple of years.

But while WAR and OPS+ tell us a lot, and are great big-picture stats, it could be that they obscure potential issues of the kind that ended up plaguing Abreu. Since they’re a mish-mash of a number of metrics, if some go up and some go down, the calculated value can stay consistent. Let’s dig into some of the components. We’ll look at ratios to try to even out that short 2020 season.

Notice the massive uptick in walks for 2021 and 2022. From 2014 to 2020, Abreu was walked 6.3% of his plate appearances. He was walked 9.3% and 9.1% in 2021 and 2022, respectively.

In order for OPS to remain relatively consistent, there has to be some give somewhere. In 2021, we see a drop in batting average. In 2022, his average recovers, but he only hits half as many home runs. The result is that slugging percentage is depressed even more than in 2021.

Further muddying the water is that Abreu had a career-best strikeout percentage of 16.2% in 2022, so even with the collapse of his home run numbers, OPS and OPS+ stayed about average, or even improved.

We’re hard-pressed to diagnose the drop in home runs. By all indications, exit velocity, and hard-hit percentage are pretty consistent and well above the MLB average. We’re seeing a bit more tendency toward ground balls, but not really any more than he had earlier in his career. He hit just about as many fly balls, but they just stopped going out.

All we can say is that something changed. Was it mechanics? Was it mental? Maybe both? When Abreu was optioned to the Astros spring training facility earlier this year GM Dana Brown remarked on Abreu’s frustration as well as his timing and rhythm. Upon Abreu’s release, Brown again said, “Ultimately when guys lose their timing, you look for them to go down and to regain their timing and to get on time with the baseball to have quality at-bats and things like that, and we just didn’t see it. We didn’t see that there was a change in the at-bats, and we felt like it was probably time to make a change.”

I’m not sure we can pick up nuances like frustration and timing from stats alone, but let me know if I’ve overlooked something.

So…

What happens if average and home runs stay depressed, but the walks disappear and strikeout percentage returns to normal (or worse)?

We get Abreu’s 2023-24.

Hindsight is 20/20. Two years later, it might be easier to pick apart what might have been warning signs. But players’ games change as they age. If Abreu’s game was becoming less slugging and more small-ball, it wouldn’t really matter if he showed up with the same wins over replacement—if he kept getting on base and hitting runners in.

He was able to maintain that for a couple of seasons, but it ultimately became a collapse at the expense of the Astros.

For as much as his numbers suffered—and he was certainly at replacement level or below since signing with the Astros—it’s possible that the perception was magnified by his being presented with more opportunities to deliver, but being unable to. In 2023, Abreu saw 25 grand slam opportunities for the Astros. His previous high was 17 in a season. He was only able to convert 1 of the 25 into a home run. Two-thirds of the home runs he did hit were on the road. That certainly makes it hard to build fan or front office support.

At least the Astros fared better than they likely would have with his predecessor Yuli Gurriel (77 OPS+, -0.5 WAR in 2023, now on a minor league contract with the Braves ).