Baseball Isn’t Boring
Framber Valdez. Ranger Suarez. Zac Gallen. A Close Look At Who Is Left.
13 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What free agent pitchers are still available this offseason?
Nobody. Maybe like Passon or something. Come on. I'd talk to Passon over myself. I mean, come on. Well, he's actually never been on the podcast. You've got to get him. There's no animosity. But, no, I mean... No, there's nobody. I'm thinking about it. There's nobody. I woke up this morning. I said, you know what? There's nobody. Absolutely nobody. How are you, my friend? I'm doing great.
How about you? Good, good. I saw you at the winter meetings, but we're literally like sprinting by each other. It's business, man. I feel like those days flew by. I mean, nothing happened, but it was like, you have to be sort of on edge for something to happen. Now, I will ask you this.
Are you, because part of our family, our baseball's important family, Courtney Finnegan was there, and that was our first winter meetings. And I was so proud of her because she closed the bar every night at 2.30. That's impressive. Yeah, but that's sort of where the rumors happen. I got to be honest with you. I deferred and delegated to her in that respect. I'm like, I'm good. I'm good.
I've seen enough people today. I'm good. Are you that person that mingles around that area or – You know, the lay of the land. I did frequent the bar the first couple of nights. I just, I did not stay until three 30. I think I left probably around like 1230 or one. That's good. That's fair. Like I need to get some sleep, you know, like I wanted to get like seven, eight hours.
And I was, I feel like I was there early enough such that I got enough combos in and stuff. Yeah. No, that's solid. I respect that. I would imagine you talk to people and you get things, little bits and pieces, but at the same time, as you said, you've got to be up the next day. You don't know when stuff is going to happen. It could happen at 9. Who knows? Anyway, you're doing a fantastic job.
Your brand has never been hotter. Thank you. You know, I think that there's nobody, there's not only nobody I'd rather have on the podcast, there's nobody who'd rather talk about their subject more than you. And it is one of the ones which, I guess as we land here. It's gone fairly under the radar, and what I'm talking about is the top-level free agent pitching that's been still on the board.
Because I get it. There's been some guys, Dylan Cease, Amai, these guys. But you're still sitting there with these guys who the projections for them were five- and six-year deals, at least for Frambert, Valdez, and Ranger Suarez. I guess the first question I have for you, Lance, is
Are you surprised the names that we're about to talk to, again, Frambois Valdez, Ranger Suarez, Zach Gallant, that they're there, that they're still there? I don't think I am. I feel like it's often hard to pace out the offseason in terms of who signs when. It just seems like the higher dollar guys probably have smaller markets.
Most of the time, you're not getting eight, nine teams involved on them, usually getting a strong three to five maybe. And I wonder if that just causes situations where teams are just willing to wait a little bit longer on, Hey, let's just like make an offer or like not make an offer and see where other guys have it. Let the market kind of define itself before we then come in.
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Chapter 2: Why are Framber Valdez and Ranger Suarez still unsigned?
I wouldn't say like a ground ball merchant because he does generate a lot of swing and miss with his curveball, but he just does things in a slightly different way. Now, the knock you could say on Cease is that his mix is somewhat tight. He basically just throws like fastball slider, and he's gone through so many iterations on other pitches.
He's had that weird changeup, and he got that a little bit harder. I'm still kind of surprised he hasn't thrown an even harder changeup. That feels like such an easy layup for a guy who has a 97-mile-per-hour fastball And I think as a result of the tight mix, what we've run into over the last like four years, if you look at his lines, is like his underlying data is good.
Like he's been, you know, around like a 3-5-ish fit guy in three of the last four years. It was very, very strong. It's like a top 20 arm in baseball, probably higher than that off the top of my head. But the results, like the raw ERA, now this is perhaps dependent a bit on offense and bad luck and other things.
But, you know, he had a 2-2, then he had a 4-6, then he had a 3-5, then he had a 4-5-5. So, like, you get, like, this crazy kind of rollercoaster situation. So the bet here by the Blue Jays is this just evens out, and he's, like, a 3-5 ERA guy, which is what you would assume he could be from, like, an underlying data standpoint.
On the other side of that, Fromber is the guy who's had more consistent success, but he's a slightly older, two years older. And maybe the risk there is that he kind of, like, bottoms out. His trend line isn't as strong from, like, Dylan Seasmis' ton of bats, you know? So... It's an interesting situation. I would say I don't think Cease is head and shoulders above Fromber.
Would I prefer to sign Cease if it meant adding on this extra two years above his projected? He was projected for like five for 30 a year. So in that window around 150, he got basically add two years onto that at the same AAV. Fromber, I'm very curious to see what the contract is. I don't think he gets seven. There's no way a 32. Does he get... Four or five?
Is the team scared and they want to build in an opt-out because everyone assumes the back end of that contract is not going to be good?
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Chapter 3: How does the market impact the signing of top pitchers?
Tough. It's a tough situation. So, yeah, I like Cease a lot. I think he was the best pitcher in his class. I don't think he's heading shoulders above Fromber, but I get why the Blue Jays would push seven years on him as opposed to maybe giving four or five to Valdez. So you're kind of answering my next question, which is the Framber versus Ranger Suarez conversation.
And here's a way to phrase it. Who's closer to Framber? Was it Dylan Cease or Ranger Suarez? It's a good question. Yeah. Maybe they're, maybe they're like equidistant from one another. Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's a good question. I think with, with Ranger, the difficulty is some of the velocity drop he's had over the last couple of years. Now the testament to him is that he's been able to be incredibly successful despite that velocity drop. He kind of wasn't great from an underlying data standpoint in 24. And then last year he was
really solid despite the fact he fell another mile per hour i have to imagine whoever is wanting him is trying to figure out where the velocity went and if they could get it back and that's really the bet there you know and i think that's partially why his dollar is just going to be lower i am a bit more concerned with him than i am with fromber um i think fromber will be good for the next couple years it's more a matter of when he's like 35 67 like how much is that contract crushing you
But I think you can say that for any contract. You can say that about the Bregman contract that's just signed. What is he going to be when he's three years, four years from now getting paid on a pure AV basis $35 million? So I think Suarez just is more of like a bet. You're taking a bet on him.
Fromber, you're just figuring out how much you're going to tolerate the bad production at the end of the contract. Cease is more of like... Okay, he's 30. Like, we have four years, five years of production. I don't really care what happens at the back end of the contract. Suarez is like, okay, you're paying him less than both those guys.
Can you get him on, like, a two-year opt-out, four- or five-year contract at, like, 25 a year? Pay him, like, 125 for five? You know, like, that would be kind of interesting because if you could get the velo back up, you give him a shot to then reenter the market, but you get the first two years on that where it looks really good. So... That's the problem.
It's really to me, and I haven't really gotten great answers from people as to whether, you know, is it a mechanical thing? Is it an injury thing? Like, why is it off? I think Caleb Coffin does an amazing job with the Phillies. So that is partially a concern with me as to why the field didn't come back up.
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Chapter 4: What are the strengths and weaknesses of Framber Valdez?
Because if anybody was going to fix it, I think the Phillies would have fixed it.
um but yeah maybe they just needed him to get outs and they weren't really willing to like go to a guy like andrew painter struggling a bit at triple a and i l and suarez or making an adjustment just saying he's been successful like it's hard to it's hard sometimes to look at success and go we need to change this you know it's like well just wait for the guy to fail and then change it because it'll be it'll be easier for him to buy in when he has like a four or five vra then he's a three five and we're like man you've got to get your velo back up he's like i gotta three five and a
What do you want me to push my veal up for, you know? So I really think that's the conversation around Rangers. Like, what is he going to sit next year on a sinker? And is it going to be enough to continue having success? You know, with Framber and this, I mean,
You may not have an answer for this, but this is sort of the elephant in the room with him, which was the, hey, you're going to have to go get more chest protectors for your catchers. And it's interesting. And I don't know if this happened. I think it was the GM in winter meetings, but there was some talk that he was going to meet with teams and, hey, I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy.
Just trust me. I'm a nice guy. I don't know, like, from your perspective. And, again, maybe it's just – I guess, but from perspective, is that sort of the cloud lingering over? Maybe it's even cutting off a year. Maybe it's cutting off two years or affecting his market at all. I think it is, for sure. I talked to a couple teams that were like, yeah, the makeup stuff's not good.
Now, whether that prevented them from thinking about an offer or making an offer, I can't confirm or know. But I imagine it definitely did push some teams off him. If a team is thinking about spending that money, perhaps this swayed them off it because of the makeup stuff. What I will say is...
Yeah, I mean, I think what I predicted... So at the beginning of the offseason, I did like a where are all these pitchers going YouTube video. And I don't remember. I think I predicted Framber to the Giants, which I'm going to pull back on. That was an early season prediction. What I think he ends up now is the Orioles. I think it makes a lot of sense from a fit standpoint.
And I say that I think... If there's a team that could perhaps get around some of the makeup stuff, I think it's the Orioles. Their pitching coach is Drew French, who comes from the Astros. And he and Frambois overlap for, I believe, like three or four years with the Astros organization.
At AAA, I believe he was their AAA pitching coach for a period of time where Frambois was there for a short period of time. And it seems like they even crossed over earlier in Frambois' career. So if anybody knows Frambois, It's French, you know?
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Chapter 5: What factors contribute to Ranger Suarez's market value?
Like for the most part, Justin Verlander wasn't a good hitter. So you were accepting some poor performance for the fact that he could be in the clubhouse and be a leader. Justin Verlander and the basket can like give you a hundred, 150 innings pretty easily. And they're good. You know, you, everybody, every team has a pitching puzzle they got to solve. And it's about 1400 innings per team.
And I mean, I'm happy to plug one of those guys in there for a hundred, 150. You just never know what you're going to run into. You take some pressure off. Like for the Cubs, for example, I think it would be kind of fun for them to add one of these guys. Like Steele's not coming back until late in the year.
I don't think they actually necessarily have room in the rotation right now as I think about it. But think about it in that respect. Like I think even good teams can add a guy like this. By the way – I like them both. Yeah, no, two good ones. And also there's a value. You don't need to have them pitch – from stem to stern all throughout this 162. And look at Bassett.
Look at what Bassett did in the World Series. And I know it was out of the bullpen, but that was a huge part of getting to that ninth inning of Game 7, Chris Bassett. All right. Well, I don't know if you want to join. We're doing Best Shape of Our Lives Club because everyone's in their best shape of their life in spring training. Of course. We're just picking one thing.
One thing that by opening day that you want to have improved upon. Examples, Joe Kelly's bench pressing 225 pounds. I'm going to find an ab. A lot of people in this club, a lot of people are really, really well-intentioned people about losing weight, running fast. So it's funny. Me, my, my fiance and I do like a end of year recap with each other.
We literally put together like a presentation of like our past year and what we're thinking about for the future. It's very corny, but I actually find it really valuable to like zoom out. I don't, I don't know. I haven't, I haven't finished my presentation yet. We're presenting them in a couple of weeks. You can let me know. It's okay. Yeah. I think it'll probably be, it's funny.
Everyone's trying to lose weight. I'm always on like the gain side. So at my working out, it's more like trying to gain because I'm like a hard gainer and I got to eat a lot of food and I'm tall and stuff. So that's probably mine is probably to put on like another five, 10 pounds. You let me know. I'm going to send you the link. I'm going to send you the link to the, uh, our halo Lincoln. Um,
You could do Kopech. Kopech was inspired by Yamamoto. He said he wants to hold a handstand for like 10 seconds. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, he's a big dude, too. That would be impressive. He's not Yamamoto's size. Yeah, he had mentioned the one-arm handstand. I'm like, don't rip your arm off. Yeah, man. We got to get you.
You got to be on the mountain throwing. Yeah. Punching dudes. All right. Well, man, you're one of the best. I really appreciate everything. Thanks. Good seeing you, Rob. Take care.
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