If you look at the remaining top free agents, more than one are going to be left without a chair. There simply not enough suitors in this market where teams don't have the money to spend. Which is why I feel like each passing day we get closer to getting Ozuna at a very reasonable price, and each passing day the Smyly deal looks more and more like a big time overpay.
While I get the sentiment, the more difficult I think it becomes to call it "big-time" - regardless of how things shake out - when you really think about it. It really becomes a situational thing depending on the team and player.
As a general rule, teams ALWAYS overpay for pitching. If we break this winter's group of available free-agent SPs down by tiers, you'd probably have had...
Tier 1. - Bauer
Tier 2. - Morton, Stroman, Odorizzi, Gausman, Tanaka, Paxton
Tier 3 - Minor, Smyly, Ray, Happ, Hamels, Samardzija, Richards, Quintana, Wainright, Archer, Walker
We can fuss over a couple of names (on or off that list) belonging and where I listed them there, but that's not particularly important. The point is that Tier 1 guys are the "break the bank/Ace" group - the guys that will make big-time money. The next tier are the guys that fit solidly in the top half of just about any team's rotation - these guys are likely going to get something in the $14-$18 million AAV range. Then you've got the Tier 3 guys who are typically your solid MOR arms that may have stretches of time where they pitched like #2-#3s - these guys will probably fall in the $8-$12 million AAV range.
If you're asking these guys to set the market and sign early, you're going to have to pay a premium. If you want these guys to sign shorter deals, you're going to have to pay a premium. Stroman and Gausman were "overpays" in this case, but they signed early and took one year deals. Minor was an likely an overpay since he got two years - was there really a market for him on more than a one year deal?
I think you kinda have to grade AA's SP signings this winter as a whole rather than separately. This team is too close to winning it all to be allowed to have what happened to the 2020 rotation happen again - he's much better off spending a little extra money and building an incredibly deep rotation rather than get put in a situation where he has to overpay for guys like Milone just to have a couple of back-end SPs at the deadline IMO. He arguably got a "deal" on Morton since it was probably go back to Tampa, sign with Atlanta, or bust for him. He probably paid Smyly a little more than the tier of guys he fits with will get, but he got him early and for one year. DMGM had to give Minor an extra year to get him to sign early. Which is the better deal? Who knows? Atlanta was already in a situation where Julio was making in that $8-$12 million range for a couple years when he wasn't good enough to pitch in the rotation in the postseason during AA's tenure. Maybe his main goal was not to have someone on the books like that - someone that you have to take a lot of guff from the fanbase because they think their salary is the reason they should be starting a playoff game. Hindsight's always 20/20 and lots of fans would make the argument that you wouldn't have to have traded for Milone if you had picked up Julio's option last year, but was that really the case? Julio was plenty awful last season, and turned out to be an overpay on a 1 year/$9 million deal. Would things have been any better if he'd have been in Atlanta with the DH in the NL (making $12 million)? Probably not.
The Smyly deal is probably a slight overpay - but probably only by a couple million dollars, and getting it done early accomplished a couple important things. 1.) It settles how much money he has left to spend on offense, and (probably more importantly) 2.) it keeps him from potentially having to overpay in years if the other guys in that MOR tier start getting 2-3 year deals in that $8-$10 million range.
At the end of the day overpaying a little to get that off AA's plate was probably worth it, and if Soroka comes back healthy and Wright and Wilson continue to improve he might even be in a position to get a couple prospects for Smyly come deadline time if he's pitching well and is healthy. That might not be the case if he was on a 2-3 year deal and he wasn't a pure rental. Teams might prefer paying a little extra for him than being stuck with Minor's salary for an extra year.
