The Guardians have agreed to a two-year, $33MM contract with the free-agent first baseman Josh Bell, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post. Bell, a client of the Boras Corporation, will be able to opt out of the contract after the first season of the deal.
It’s a short-term but lucrative annual deal for Bell, who looked poised for a long-term commitment in free agency before a sluggish finish to the season following a trade to the Padres. Bell opened the season on a tear with the Nationals and maintained that production into late July, but after slashing .301/.384/.493 with the Nats (143 wRC+), Bell hit just .192/.316/.271 in San Diego.
Ups and downs are nothing new for Bell, who has at multiple times in his career appeared on the cusp of solidifying himself as a star-caliber slugger, only to fall into a prolonged slump. Back in the first half of the 2019 season, for instance, the former No. 61 overall draft pick erupted with a .302/.376/.648 batting line and 27 home runs. That netted him what remains the only All-Star nomination of his career, but following the Midsummer Classic, Bell backtracked with a solid but unspectacular .233/.351/.429 slash.
His offensive doldrums spiraled out of control in 2020, when he turned in a career-worst .226/.305/.364 slash in the shortened 2020 season, and the Pirates sold low on the former top prospect by flipping his final two years of club control to the Nationals in exchange for righty Will Crowe and minor leaguer Eddy Yean. A month into Bell’s Nationals tenure, it looked to be more of the same, but he righted the ship in May and never looked back.
From May 1, 2021 through this year’s trade deadline, Bell came to the plate 945 times and recorded a stout .289/.373./489 slash with 39 big flies, 46 doubles, an 11.5% walk rate and a 15.3% strikeout rate that’s far lower than many would expect from a 6’4″, 255-pound first baseman with 30-homer power.
In spite of that sizable frame and the clear raw power Bell possesses, however, he’s never really been a consistent power threat — at least not to the extent one would expect. The juiced-ball season in 2019 was his lone 30-homer campaign (37, to be exact), and his season-to-season home run totals have otherwise ranged between 12 (2018) and 27 (2021).
It’s hard not to wonder what might happen were Bell to commit to elevating the ball more, but that’s easier said than done for any hitter. Bell’s enormous 49.9% ground-ball rate is far higher than one would expect for a slugger of his stature, and he’s taken that mark north of 50% in each of the past three seasons, topping out with a mammoth 55.7% grounder rate in 2022 Since 2020, only five hitters have put the ball on the ground more frequently than Bell — a confounding trait for a switch-hitter with plus raw power. Three different teams have been unable to coax consistent power production from Bell, but the Guardians will give their best effort to getting him back into form.
To be clear, Bell remains a well above-average hitter in the aggregate, even with the glut of grounders and a career punctuated thus far by peaks and valleys. He’s been 20% better than the average hitter by measure of wRC+, dating back to 2019, and his career mark in that regard sits at 116 (16% better than average). Bell is a lifetime .262/.351/.459 hitter whose only below-average season at the plate came in the shortened 2020 season.
Also appealing to the Guardians was surely the fact that Bell, like so much of their team, is exceedingly difficult to strike out. No team in baseball fanned at a lower clip than the Guardians last year — nor was anyone even close — and Bell struck out at just a 15.8% rate in 2022. He’s kept his strikeout rate at 19% or lower each season other than that grisly 2020 campaign, and he’s also drawn walks in an excellent 11.8% of his 3406 career plate appearances.
All of that aligns well with Cleveland’s general offensive philosophy, and while it seems that Jose Abreu was the Guards’ first choice — Cleveland reportedly made him a three-year offer before he signed in Houston — Bell still adds some needed thump who can slot in at designated hitter and/or first base. Bell isn’t an all-world defender at first, but he’s improved his defensive ratings from sub-par to slightly above average in recent seasons, and the Guardians surely feel confident that he’s a reliable source of at least 15 to 20 homers with a robust on-base percentage. He’ll join Jose Ramirez as a switch-hitting, middle-of-the-order threat, continuing to give the Cleveland lineup plenty of balance.
More to come.
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