The upcoming MLB free agent class is stacked. Freddie Freeman. Corey Seager. Kris Bryant. Trevor Story. Noah Syndergaard. Marcus Stroman. Carlos Correa. I’m probably missing someone great. But it’s a good class, and there are a few players who could make it even stronger by opting out or declining to exercise an option. Nick Castellanos, for example.
One of those players—a guy with a mutual option—who was something of an afterthought entering the year has, over the last few weeks, ceased to be an afterthought in anything baseball-related. Kyle Schwarber has been baseball’s best player since June 12th, about a third of an fWAR better than the next-best, a small-market fella by the name of Fernando Tatís Jr.
Schwarber’s success comes at a great time for the slugger. Not bad defensively but not good, he already stood to benefit from the expected rollout of the universal designated hitter. Now, he’ll likely be in line for a multi-year deal, and perhaps one of the richest of the offseason.
This isn’t entirely shocking. Theo Epstein, noted successful baseball man, loved Schwarber when he was in Chicago. Schwarber’s swing drew comparisons at times to that of Babe Ruth. Schwarber had a scalding rookie campaign and a heroic comeback story in his sophomore season, then proceeded to smoke the ball in 2018 and 2019 (and even 2020, though the results didn’t always come) while reinventing himself as a slimmer, more capable defender. The Cubs, under pressure from ownership to save money early in the offseason and finally rid of Epstein’s attachment to Schwarber, moved on from him in the wake of a below-average offensive season results-wise (Schwarber’s xwOBA over last year’s 60 games was .335, well above league-average, which makes this look even dumber in hindsight), but it wasn’t a traditional non-tender. There was the potential Schwarber could break out. His swing was still there. His power was still there. His makeup was still there. And he’d finally be out of the Cubs organization, which is evidently one where promising hitters go to die.
Still, it’s stunning. He is smoking the ball. He’s on pace for 50 home runs now, his wRC+ is 18th among qualified hitters, and his xwOBA’s in the top 15, implying he’s been ever-so-slightly unlucky. Kyle Schwarber is a beast right now.
Where, though, does he go from here?
Schwarber’s only 28, so using the most standard view of hitters, he’ll have two more seasons before he starts to decline. The current expectation, per FanGraphs’s depth charts, is that he’ll finish the year a 3.8-fWAR guy. Say the expectation becomes that he’s a 3.5-fWAR guy each of the next two years (a fairly conservative estimate). If that’s the case, he’ll drop to 3.0 fWAR in projections for 2024, 2.5 for 2025, etc., meaning if you were signing him to a four-year deal, you’d be expecting to get 12.5 fWAR out of him, which comes out to about $100M worth of value using the standard $8M/WAR calculation, or a $25M annual salary.
That’s a lot of money. Joey Votto, per Spotrac, is making $25M this year, and per Spotrac that’s the 20th-highest salary in the game.
Of course, if you stretch the deal out longer—say you try to go seven years (aggressive, but perhaps a bargain in the end?)—you should be able to have him for only $136M, or $19.4M per year. But still. That’s above a qualifying offer. Kyle Schwarber is in a position where it would be reasonable for him to turn down a qualifying offer just one year after being non-tendered. And it’s possible we’re being too conservative here. If the projection becomes 4.0 fWAR for each of the next two years, you’re looking at $29M/year for four years, or $23.4M/year for seven. That $29M is in Giancarlo Stanton territory.
Good for him.
