Friday night, the Angels revealed their biggest signing yet - right-handed relief pitcher Robert Stephenson.  Stephenson's career has been an interesting one to look at, but with a 2023 that was nothing short of monumental and several other outstanding years, it's fair to say his impact should be felt in the Angels bullpen come opening day.

He first came onto the scene in 2016 as a Starting pitcher, starting 22 rather unimpressive games for the Reds from 2016-2018. Although his numbers from these years are nothing to gawk at (An 81 ERA+ and 5.50 FIP), the flashes of his ability to fool hitters shined through at times.  

From 2016-2018, Stephenson pitched in 37 games.  In his first full year in a relief role, he made 57 appearances and absolutely hit his stride. It was an enormous step up from his previous production, with an ERA+ of 125 and a FIP in the high 3s over 64.2 innings.  These numbers are respectable in themselves, but his underlying numbers were absurdly good.  He made hitters swing and miss at a near league-best rate - his 39.0 Whiff% finished second to only new Astro Josh Hader. If the batter made the decision to swing, there was a 2 in 5 chance that they were hitting nothing but air.  These whiffs were converting themselves into strikeouts, too. He was one of only 38 qualified pitchers to strike out 30% or more of the hitters he faced - out of 279 total.

2020 was a rough year, for baseball and for Robert Stephenson. He gave up 11 earned runs in only 10 innings, leading to the Reds shipping him and Jameson Hannah to Colorado for Case Williams and Jeff Hoffman.  

His 2021 campaign in Colorado was an impressive return to form, arguably Stephenson's best full season. He put up a 154 ERA+ and 3.63 FIP over 46 innings with solid swing-and-miss numbers as always.  After a pretty poor start to 2022 from both Stephenson and the Rockies, they waived him and he was claimed by the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he finished 2022 strong, and even with his poor numbers still finished the season in the 93rd percentile in Chase%.  Something to note with his time in Pittsburgh he seemed to pitch to a lot more contact than he did with the Reds or Rockies, which could have many different causes, but I lean towards blaming pitching coach Oscar Marin's ideologies. 

After yet another rough start with the Pirates, Stephenson was dealt to the Rays for Alika Williams in early June 2023.  The next day, June 3rd, Stephenson did something he had never done over his entire career. He threw a cutter. Or, at least, a pitch Statcast defined as a cutter. He calls it a 'hard slider,' as opposed to his more loopy, top to bottom slider he's thrown his whole career.  He then threw this 'hard slider' 41% of the time for the rest of the season, over 20% more than he threw any other pitch. It was the 4th best cutter in the MLB according to Baseball Savant, behind only very solid players like Corbin Burns and Kodai Senga, and per 100 pitches it's run value was only exceeded by Chris Martin's cutter.

 After moving to Tampa Bay, he went nuclear. Armed with the cutter, he exploded onto the scene, finally having his swing-and-miss abilities utilized.  From June 2nd onward he struck out an unbelievable 42.9% of hitters faced, hitters whiffed on his pitches nearly 50% of the time, and chose to swing at his out-of-the-zone pitches nearly 40% of the time. Since pitch tracking began, nobody with 50 or more IP has ever had a higher percentage of their pitches be swinging strikes than Robert Stephenson's were in 2023. 

His career trajectory raises some question marks - do the Angels have the pitching mindset that Stephenson will succeed in? What was hindering his swing-and-miss numbers from leading to strong results in Cincinnati? Is this just classic Rays devil magic? and, most of all, is the cutter sustainable? After all, as much as it was dominant in 2023, it was a small sample size.

The deal is for 3 years, $33 Million with an option.  According to FanGraphs, 1 Win Above Replacement is about equal to $8 Million. By this logic, they'd project him at about 3 years, $22.5M - making this a moderate overpay for the Angels, however, after the Astros gave Hader $19M a year (FanGraphs estimates his worth at $13.6) Stephenson was the most coveted reliever on the board, making the overpay a byproduct of the market (also, I don't love WAR as a tool for judging relievers).

After all this, 1 question remains - Why?  

The Angels offseason has been, very noticeably, painfully slow. Which makes this Stephenson deal feel very odd. You won 73 games last year, lost your top performer, haven't made practically any improvements, and you sign a relief pitcher to a multi-year, 8 figure deal? It feels like a deal that the Phillies or the Rangers would make, not the Angels in their current state.

Personally, I have 3 possible theories:

1) The Angels are gearing up for a 2025 push.  Their young studs will all be a year older, next offseason will have less uncertainty since presumably the Bally thing will be over with, and there's a lot of talent in the free agent class next year (especially on the pitching end).  Signing Stephenson now gives you a concrete arm in the pen that's relatively inexpensive and allows you to focus on starting pitching and middle of the order bats next year like Burnes or Santander.  

2) Arte isn't keen on spending money, so this is the biggest splash that could be made. From what's being reported it seems to be a strange situation with Bally Sports and Diamond and all the potential lost money that's hindering the Angels willingness to spend.  It's possible that names like Bellinger, Snell, Montgomery are all being tossed around, but are unrealistic and wouldn't get approved because of the price tag, leading Perry and Co. to look at players in the $8-12M price range who can have an impact ASAP.  Stephenson would be a pretty solid fit for that kind of approach, as would players like Duvall or Kike Hernandez.

3) The front office spun a wheel and it landed on Stephenson, so they signed him. The next wheel spin's choice has not yet been reported.

Which of these is correct, I'm afraid we may never know. Only time will tell.

All in all, I'm not offended by this deal. It's certainly risky, but it's the kind of risk that is both capable of paying off in a major way and manageable if things go awry. Stephenson was one of my most desired free agents for essentially all of the offseason so far, although I was anticipating a few more corresponding moves to go along with it. At the very least, this Angels bullpen will be extremely interesting to watch with their mix of funky deliveries, fireballers, and stuff wizards.