Framber Valdez Lands with the Tigers
Breaking down the new landing spot for one of the game's most reliable lefties
The Tigers landed one of the biggest free agent names last night, inking Framber Valdez to a massive three-year contract. It seems we’ve reverted back to shorter contracts with large annual salaries after a stretch of everybody trying to grab ten-year deals.
It was $115 milly for three years with a $20 million signing bonus. That’s a ton of money for Framber, but that’s the value of a really good, reliable starting pitcher.
Everybody ran to commenting about Tarik Skubal as part of it. I don’t have anything to say about Skubal and the arbitration stuff going on. It does seem like the Tigers are playing this whole thing pretty lukewarm. Nobody really expects them to be the team that gives Skubal his next contract, but they’re also not willing to just pack it in and do another rebuild. So they replace Skubal with Valdez. They were already the favorite to win the AL Central this year, and now they are even moreso.
Since Valdez lasted so long in free agency, I didn’t get to his player write-up. So I’ll use this space for that.
Valdez has been an ironman dating back to 2022. He’s made at least 28 starts and has logged at least 176 innings in each of the last four. That alone is worth quite a bit of money. But he’s done it with very solid ERAs as well.
Things did get a bit worse last year. The walk rate came up to 8.5% while the strikeout rate dropped almost two points. He’s never been a high K% guy, but two points is two points. A 23% K% is significantly worse than 25%.
That said, Framber is one of these elite groundball pitchers. That is how he’s gotten the job done. A 59.4% GB% last year, and that turned into another elite 0.7 HR/9.
He gets enough whiffs (12.6% SwStr%) and throws enough strikes (35.6%) to be consistently good and not be a Jose Soriano type, where things go really badly from time to time because he’s walking guys and not cleaning up the mess with the strikeout.
Let’s take a look at the pitch mix:
No surprise to see a sinker and curveball heavy approach. Those are ground ball pitches for pretty much anybody throwing them. Framber’s top three pitches (accounting for 95% of his usage) are all above a 55% GB%. It’s really tough to lift the ball off of Valdez. He’s #8 in the league in HR/9 dating back to 2023:
HR/9 Leaders - Qualified SPs 2023-2025
Paul Skenes 0.59
Blake Snell 0.63
Logan Webb 0.65
Jose Soriano 0.67
Max Fried 0.68
Tarik Skubal 0.71
Cristopher Sanchez 0.73
Framber Valdez 0.75
Cole Ragans 0.76
Chris Sale 0.79
That gets you a lot of the way there. There’s only one non-ace on that list.
Valdez is 32. That’s not a huge issue, but it does mean he’s past his prime years. So maybe he loses some bite on the pitches and you see the K% slip slowly down toward 20%, the BB% rise slowly toward 9%, and the GB% maybe come down into the mid-50s. I think he’ll age just fine.
The other note is that this park shift is a good one for him. It can be tough to be a lefty in Houston because righties can so easily pull some cheap dingers into the Crawford boxes. You won’t be seeing any of these hit off of Valdez this year:
Unless Altuve or Paredes do their old teammate dirty when the Tigers go to Houston in June!
To put some numbers on it. Daikin Park (HOU) is a 106 for right-handed power (six points above the league average), and Comerica Park (DET) is at 93. So it’s a 13-point positive move for Valdez.
He wasn’t giving up many homers in the first place, so this isn’t a Nick Pivetta situation where he can cut off 0.6 HR/9 due to a home ballpark shift. But maybe Valdez can do something ridiculous like 0.5 or something.
What I’m trying to say is that the ERA is very safe. And the volume is about as safe as you’ll find.
The new projection:
29 GS, 173 IP, 3.76 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 23.4% K%, 8.2% BB%, 11 W
Ranks-wise, I moved him up. When I’m reviewing SPs, I’m mostly focused on the skills rather than the volume stuff. And that causes me to over-rank some of the younger, more exciting potential arms. So it’s time for me to make some adjustments. I’ve moved Valdez above Shohei Ohtani and Eury Perez. I’ve also moved Chase Burns down the list. Per-inning, I’d take any three of those guys over Valdez, I think, but Valdez’s max innings is at least 40 innings higher than that group of pitchers, and that has to be considered when putting together a fantasy team.
I’ll talk a lot about that in a podcast we’re doing today on my top 25 SPs.
So that’s the story with Valdez. I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know if you’re a serious fantasy baseballer, but now you have my take on Valdez the Tiger.