Why We Cut Yordan Alvarez

In league 13, the FanGraphs Staff Ottoneu Head-to-Head league, I co-manage a team with Niv Shah. We just won a few auctions and among the cuts we made to get legal were an underperforming reliever (Joel Payamps), a low-value OF (Andrew Benintendi), a roller coaster of a starting pitcher (Yusei Kikuchi), and one big-time star: Yordan Alvarez.

The first three all look like pretty typical cuts, but that last one stands out and clearly caught some leaguemates by surprise. But there were good reasons for the decision to drop Alvarez.

I could just say he’s been a huge disappointment, not worth anywhere near the $52 we were paying him, and that would be true. He has only put up 3.7 P/G, he has been injured, and he simply isn’t helping our team. But, of course, he is still Yordan Alvarez and a few rough weeks and one injury aren’t enough to make him worthless.

And under the hood, he’s been solid. His xwOBA is .364. That isn’t vintage Yordan, but it’s very good. His plate discipline looks fine. He is hitting the ball hard. Everything I see suggests the HR/FB rate and BABIP will both regress positively and Yordan will be Yordan. We didn’t cut him because he is bad and I would generally be quite happy to add him in any league.

Instead, this was a strategic cut. Our team has been underperforming overall. Alvarez is part of that, but injuries and some poor roster planning have played a role, as well. Alvarez was a key piece of our roster coming into the season, along with Juan Soto, Francisco Lindor, Kyle Schwarber, and Teoscar Hernandez. We landed a great C in Tyler Soderstrom. We got some good luck with Kristian Campbell making the Opening Day roster. We went cheap at 1B, but kept Spencer Torkelson and traded for Kyle Manzardo. Alec Bohm and Isaac Paredes should make a strong 3B pairing. We were weak at MI and lacked depth, but that offense should have been strong.

Except Soto has been good rather than transcendant and Alvarez has been bad. Bohm has struggled. Campbell hasn’t been able to carry us at MI. And Teoscar got hurt. And Yordan got hurt. Our OF depth took a hit with Parker Meadows being out. Our pitching wasn’t as deep and then we lost Grayson Rodriguez and George Kirby.

And so we found ourselves quickly falling out of the playoff hunt. And, to make matters worse, we had no cap space. Even as players were added to the 60-day IL, we couldn’t replace them.

So we started looking to sell, but hadn’t found a deal. And we felt the need to start refreshing the roster. So we “traded” Alvarez. We traded him not for other players, but we cut him for the cap space to fill our vacated 60-day roster spots and to be able to cut guys like Benintendi, Kikuchi, Payamps, and eventually others. Without cutting someone more expensive, we couldn’t have replaced all of those players. Alvarez was the guy who both cleared the most cap and was doing the least for us.

In addition, at the time we made the cut, no team in the league had more than $15 in cap space. This meant two things:

1. We now have $22 cap space, giving us the most in the league. That doesn’t mean we can just buy anyone we want, but as free agents pop up, players breakout, etc., we have the ability to target whoever we want. And that $22 is going to grow – someone already started a Kikuchi auction, so in 48 hours we’ll be up to $25 in cap. And someone will go after Alvarez giving us another $26 in cap, likely soon.
2. When someone does go after Alvarez, they will have to bid $26 minimum, which will require cutting at least $22 in salary to get legal. That will either put one big name on the market at a low price or will refresh the FA pool with a few new names.

Who might get cut? Just looking at a few teams, there a number of ways teams could bid $40 or more on Alvarez:

• One team could get up to $51 in cap by cutting Matt Olson, Willy Adames, Ian Happ, and Anthony Santander.
• Another could get to $53 by cutting Roki Sasaki, Carlos Correa, Nathaniel Lowe and Christopher Morel

Will those teams make those cuts? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe someone will pick up Alvarez without cutting anyone interesting. But realistically someone will be cutting at least one if not more $20+ salary and those players, even when disappointing, are often interesting acquisitions when the minimum bid is half price.

In the end, the biggest thing cutting Alvarez did for us was give us flexibility to play in the free agent market, which is a crucial step towards rebuilding a struggling roster. It’s possible we could have gotten more by trading him, but $52 is a lot of cap space to play with and I suspect by the end of the season, we will have accomplished more with that money than we would have via trade.