Lest We Forget, Frankie Montas

FanGraphs’ Prime 50 free brokers of the 2024 offseason went live on Thursday, and also you might need seen a beginning pitcher or 20 among the many group. Despite the fact that Shohei Ohtani received’t match the outline till 2025, the highest of the market is simply brimming with rotation expertise, from Aaron Nola to Cy Younger finalists Blake Snell and Sonny Gray, playoff hero Jordan Montgomery, and Japanese phenoms Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shota Imanaga. And the checklist goes on; past the cream of the crop are plentiful second and third tiers. Suffice to say, the market shall be energetic this winter.

Amidst all of the fray, a 30-year-old who completed sixth within the Cy Younger voting two years in the past can have comparably little consideration on him. Frankie Montas misplaced nearly all of 2023 to surgical procedure on his proper throwing shoulder, returning on the ultimate weekend of the common season to get 4 outs – and a win – for the Yankees in Kansas Metropolis on September 30.

The distinction between dropping a complete season and dropping a complete season much less one recreation would possibly imply fairly a bit to a possible suitor in free company. That Montas labored his method again from the surgical procedure, rehabbed for 2 video games in Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and was wholesome sufficient to get into a giant league recreation provides some confidence that he’ll be prepared for 2024. And whereas he threw all of 26 pitches in his solely big-league outing, he topped out at 95.6 mph on his sinker and 95.0 on his four-seamer, which felt like at the very least some proof of his well being:

He bought a pair of outs on the splitter that had emerged as a signature in 2021, together with this swinging strikeout of Logan Porter:

It might be a great little bit of overreaction to say that Montas’ return to a giant league mound was paying homage to his successes with Oakland, or something like that; it wasn’t even a robust outing. However his presence alone was at the very least a little bit of an announcement, and regardless of a lengthier restoration than Montas or the Yankees could have anticipated, Aaron Boone was complimentary of his efforts to make it again to being game-ready. It’s completely inside motive that with a full Spring Coaching, Montas will be capable of regain his prime kind or someplace shut in 2024.

It will also be straightforward to overlook how sturdy Montas was throughout his greatest stretches in Oakland. From the beginning of the 2021 season via the tip of his time there, he ranked ninth within the majors with 291.2 innings, posting a 3.30 ERA, 3.37 FIP, and three.49 xFIP. Since 2019, he’s been value 9.4 WAR over 481.2 innings — a tempo of three.9 per 200 IP. That’s to not say he hasn’t had his hassle; the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, particularly, was none too fairly. We shouldn’t overreact and name his free company something greater than what it’s. However his pre-2023 resume is sufficient that, if a crew may be certain of his well being, he may very well be a steal in direction of the decrease finish of the market on a shorter-term deal.

If the manufacturing weren’t sufficient to promote Montas’ case, his Statcast contact profile suggests he didn’t precisely stumble into this success in 2021 and ’22. In his final full season, he ranked within the 71st percentile in common exit velocity at 87.6 mph and the 78th in hard-hit share at 34.2%. His chase share was even higher, within the 86th percentile at 33.2%, because of that splitter. That helped him handle a 23.4% strikeout price and seven.1% stroll price, each above common, albeit not by a complete lot.

When issues are going proper, that is how Montas operates: he will get swings on pitches on or exterior the perimeters of the zone, inducing a whole lot of dangerous contact, and most of it on the bottom. His pitch combine — the sinker, four-seamer, and splitter alongside a slider and a newish cutter — performs nicely on the shadow of the plate, the place he generated a run worth of +15 in 2022 and a outstanding +37 in 2021, the second-highest whole that season after solely Walker Buehler, with 36 of these runs generated on swings. Montas doesn’t hit the perimeters all that rather more than the league common or get that many extra swings there, however he’s in a position to generate a whole lot of worth when he does.

That splitter is the kind of weapon that may carry an arsenal. Among the many 604 pitches which were thrown as many as 1,000 occasions because the begin of 2021, it ranks tenth with a .190 wOBA in opposition to and ninth with a .199 xwOBA. Of the greater than 500 pitches which were swung at 500 occasions in that point, it ranks twenty second with a 44.0% swing-and-miss price. If Montas is ready to preserve his velocity and proceed to tug the string on the splitter, that’s a recipe for achievement.

As Montas will get into his 30s and his fastball velocity tendencies down, it’ll be fascinating to see if he picks up use of his cutter, which has been an fascinating complement since he launched it in 2021. He throws it just a few ticks decrease than the four-seamer and sinker at round 90 mph, and it cuts 4.0 inches to the glove aspect, nearly twice as a lot because the league common. He threw it simply 8.3% of the time in 2022, however it led to onerous contact on simply 21.4% of batted balls and a mean exit velocity of 83.3 mph. His slider hasn’t been notably sturdy in the previous few years, however the cutter provides him one other helpful weapon to his glove aspect.

Montas’ greatest barrier is his well being, each due to the danger itself and since it makes him tougher to judge with restricted knowledge from final season. However for a participant who has been via some ups and downs, he’s solely 30 — the identical age as Nola, Snell, Montgomery, and Eduardo Rodriguez. Whereas the shoulder surgical procedure is a priority, there’s loads of room for him to return to some model of his previous self and assist a crew within the close to time period. Whether or not that crew will get one of the best model of Montas or one thing shy of it’s anybody’s guess.

Given the sheer amount of beginning pitching expertise in the marketplace this winter, it’s a troublesome 12 months to attempt to promote your providers whenever you’re coming off a principally misplaced season. There’s heaps of danger to signing a participant whose second-most current look was 14 months in the past. However there’s additionally a great deal of danger concerned in taking part in on the higher ranges of the beginning pitching market, and higher-stakes danger at that. Montas will doubtless should be affected person and let the market settle round him, however I’d be lower than shocked if his subsequent contract is trying like a cut price earlier than lengthy.