With the three-year, $15 million contract given to fellow reliever Scott Downs used as the starting point of the negotiations, former Chicago Cubs set-up man Sean Marshall can be happy with his three-year, $16.5 million contract extension from the Cincinnati Reds. He was acquired by the team earlier this offseason in a trade with the Cubs, and he is one of baseball’s premier high-leverage relievers and is underrated. He has been worth over 2 WAR during the past two seasons, including a 2.8 WAR season last year.
The Reds are paying Sean Marshall $5.5 million a year, which is a bargain. Relievers who are much worse than him have been getting more lucrative contracts this offseason, solely because they will be used as closers. The closer tag is the most overrated role, because it is all about which pitchers perform in the amount of high-leverage innings they are given.
In 2011, Sean Marshall tossed 75.2 innings of 1.86 FIP ball and had a strikeout rate of 9.40 batters per nine innings. Armed with a walk rate of 2.2 BB/9 and a nasty cutter-curveball combo, Marshall was doing work for the Cubs. Expect more of the same with the Reds, and a 2 WAR season is what will be expected from him.
Thirteen fans on FanGraphs submitted helpful projections for the set-up man, and they value him as a 1.9 WAR player over 76 innings
(2.59 FIP). This is a better projection than a simple Marcel that values him as a 2.3 WAR pitcher, but Sean Marshall can definitely be worth a total of 2.5 WAR next season. However, it is more likely that he is worth 1.9 WAR than 2.3.
Thus, Marshall is worth $8.5 million per year and is one of the premier relief pitchers in baseball, and this deal is a definite win for the Cincinnati Reds organization. Their new set-up man is being paid like a 1.3 WAR reliever, which isn’t cheap, but he is well worth that money. It might seem like a lot now and most people don’t like giving multi-year deals to relievers, but the 29-year-old Marshall is worth this much. If we decrease his value over the next two seasons to 1.5 and 1 WAR respectively (extremely pessimistic), then he is still worth more than this deal. In fact, a 1.9 WAR season in 2012 from Marshall means that he will have to be worth $8 million in the last two years of his deal ($4 million per year). That isn’t much and is actually under one full win, which basically means that he needs to be worth 1.8 WAR (0.9 WAR per season) in the last two years of his deal if he is worth 1.9 WAR next season.
This is a good deal for an underrated set-up man who is one of the best relievers in baseball, and the statistics prove it. He causes a hitter to whiff about 11% of the time and allows contact less than 75% of the time. Those are shut-down numbers, and he has 61 shutdowns in the past two seasons to prove it. He also has just 19 meltdowns in that time period for a 75.3% shutdown rate that trumps his contact rate allowed last season. Sean Marshall is a premier reliever, and the Reds are paying him a significant amount of money as such. However, he is definitely worth $5.5 million per year.
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