Why Lance Lynn Deserved to Get More Than He Did in Free Agency
About a week ago, it was reported that the Twins and Lance Lynn had talked and Minnesota ended up making a 2-year, $20 million dollar offer, which was later rejected by Lynn and his camp. There were no indications as to when that offer was made, but both sides kept negotiating and ultimately came up with yesterday's structured agreement.
When you look back on this winter's free agency for Lance Lynn, it was a harsh winter as it was for any of the free agents that have signed up to this point or remain out on the open market. Some teams might have been skeptical about whether or not he could repeat his success from last year, while other teams were driven away simply because they wanted to give one of their young starters a shot at making the rotation out of camp. However, according to JP Morosi of MLB Network and FOX Sports, Lynn "also had other offers on the table from various clubs, but preferred Minnesota" because of the optimistic outlook of the franchise and the expected success that the team should experience this coming season.
Overall, a one-year deal seems to not only be offending for a pitcher of Lance Lynn's capability, but something that none of us probably saw coming at the start of the offseason. One of the biggest reasons why, very few people saw this coming and why Lynn should have been paid more, is because of his durability.
If you look at Lance Lynn's 6-year MLB track record, Lynn pitched at least 170 innings in all of those seasons, but during 2011 when he made his MLB debut and in 2016 when he missed the entire season recovering from Tommy John surgery. Add to that, the fact that Lynn tied with a career high 33 games started last season and you can start to see why he deserved more. Keep in mind that last season was his first year back from Tommy John and he still was able to start in the same amount of games that he was back in 2013 and 2014.The one thing with Lance Lynn is any team knows they're always going to get a high amount of innings and that is extremely valuable. Every team needs at least two or three starters who can eat up innings like Lynn does. Besides missing 2016 recovering from Tommy John surgery, Lynn has only been put on the DL two other times over those 6 years. Once in 2011 with a left oblique strain and the other in 2015 with a right forearm strain.
Moving past that fact, how the number of strikeouts that Lynn has raked up over his big league career? Over his 6-year career, Lynn has 919 whiffs over 977.2 IP which has amounted to a career 8.5 strikeouts-per-9 rate. In addition to a high amount of strikeouts, how about Lynn's career 76.6% left on-base percentage? That is good enough for 16th place among qualified starting pitchers dating back to 2011.
Beyond that, dating back to 2011 when Lynn made his MLB debut, he's got a home runs-per-9 rate of 0.79, which ties him with Johnny Cueto of the San Francisco Giants, for 17th place among qualified starting pitchers. All of that equates for a home run-fastball career percentage of 9.1%, putting him 7th on the list tied with Shelby Miller of the Arizona Diamondbacks, his former teammate, Adam Wainwright, and Nathan Eovaldi who is now with the Rays.
If you want to get even more recent, then let's take a look at last season. As mentioned before, it was Lynn's first season back from Tommy John, in which he recorded a 3.43 ERA over 186.1 IP and whiffed 153 batters. All of that equated for a 3.1 WAR along with a 1.22 WHIP and Runs Allowed Per 9 IP (RA9) amount of 3.86.
Digging even deeper, last July and August, Lynn combined for a 2.14 ERA over the span of 67.2 IP. During that time, he recorded a combined 46 strikeouts, gave up only 5 home runs, and had a WHIP below 1.50 both months.
Ultimately, should Lance Lynn have been given a 6-year contract that paid him north of $60-$70 million dollars? The answer to that is no, but he should have definitely been given a 3 or 4-year deal that paid him between $12-$15 million per season. That is just the kind of reward that team's should be giving to a pitcher of Lynn's capability and a pitcher who has the impressive track record that he does. Lynn has already proved what he can do at the big league level so why not give him more than, only a one-year deal, that is basically given to show that last year wasn't a fluke?
The Minnesota Twins could benefit greatly from having Lynn for 3 or 4 years and it still could happen depending on how well he performs this season, but given the fact that the team was never willing to go above 2 years, is sort of questionable. The window to win for the Twins is now and they need to do everything they can to not only capitalize on that window, but put the best team possible on the field everyday. After all, Lynn will turn 31 in May and he has plenty of gas left in the tank. He's not a top of the rotation starting pitcher, but he could have slotted nicely into the 3 or 4 spot within the Twins rotation for the foreseeable future.
For now, the Twins will get Lance Lynn for a year and hopefully he proves everyone wrong who thought that this was the right deal for him or that he never deserved a 3 or 4-year deal. Some may argue that Alex Cobb is the better of the two, but if given a preference, I'd pick Lance Lynn everyday of the week based on all of the information written about above and the leadership that he brings to a starting rotation day in and day out.
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