Friends, we finally did it. Everyone bowed. It took until July 20, but we finally found the last home to hold for Ben Clemens’ top 50 free agents in 2025. The Phillies fired on Sunday in luck. 46, agree to sign a $16 million contract for veteran rescuer David Robertson. The contract will actually pay about $6 million in the later start date. Ken Rosenthal sports Breaking the news, while MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported the details of the contract. According to Matt Gelb sportsRobertson will need an upgrade period, which means he needs to agree to the task of minors.
So, why does it take so long? This is my best answer: Uh…age discrimination?
Let’s start with Robertson’s top 50, which I’m not sad about when I steal here because I wrote this letter:
Robertson has 2.82 ERA and 3.24 FIP over the past three seasons. In 188 appearances and 201 innings, he accumulated 3.8 wars, ranking 12th out of all rescuers. When he entered his 40-year-old season, Robertson stood out for his best FIP since 2017. His knives averaged 93.3 mph in 2023 and 2024, the fastest since Obama’s first semester. According to Statcast’s running value, Cutter is worth 19 times this season, making it the sixth largest pitch in any baseball game. Zips knows its knowledge of the aging curve and the volatility of the relief arm, Robertson projected the 0.5 war, but we humans should at least be open to the possibility of him being alive forever. Until we see him breaking down with his own eyes, there is no reason to believe that he will not only wait until some time in the next decade to serve as an effective bullpen arm. Robertson will perform well on his fourth straight year-on-year contract with the playoffs.
The general manager of the entire league obviously disagrees with me, but do you know who agrees with the last sentence? David Robertson. Robertson turned down the end of his $7 million choice with the Rangers after he beat more than a third of the batsman he encountered last season. USA TodayBob Nightengale reported in April that Robertson was looking for a $10 million one-year contract. That’s what he got from the Mets and the 2024 Rangers (an additional $1.5 million was acquired from the option). I won’t list all the teams that look great for Robertson. It’s not really a thing to have a team that can’t use one of the best reliefists in the game. But probably because he faced the 40-year-old season, so during the offseason, only the Bears and Tigers actually had connections with him. Both teams found other right-handers. Robertson played Sudoku in the first half.
He was supposedly also kept warm as he was impressed by a bunch of them on Saturday at Providence (a Renaissance city, appropriately enough) in Rhode Island. In fact, he is so impressive that his signature marks the first time we try the deadline season. After Robertson showed he was still the guy he was in September, Rosenthal reported that interested teams include the Mets and Yankees, and Jon Heyman’s Jon Heyman New York Post Mentioned the Red Sox, the Tigers and “many other people.”
The Phillies certainly seem to be a perfect fit. After their bullpen burst with 11.37 ERA tunes and NLDS’s 6.96 FIP, they let Jeff Hoffman into free agency, who ended up leaving as the Blue Jays. In exchange, they signed Toronto’s close-range Jordan Romano for a year-on-year, $8.5 million deal, betting on a rebound after the frustrating 2024 season, where he hosted a 6.59 ERA and 6.17 FIP. Romano’s FIP bounced back badly, but his era was even higher, with 3 of his 11 savings. Overall, Philadelphia’s Relief ranked 23rd with a 4.33 ERA and 19th with a 4.19 FIP and 4.20 XFIP for the 22nd time. If you’re just looking at the right-handed relief, these numbers are even more stark: the Phillies are ranked fifth in the bottom tier of ERA, FIP and XFIP, and their -0.2 war ranks 28th. In a way, Robertson was just trying to stop the bleeding.
More importantly, the team hopes Robertson in October. In May, Feinsand reported that the team had contacted Robertson for failing the PED test in 80 games with José Alvarado. The Phillies have roughly the same results since Alvarado’s suspension, but the Bullpen’s 4.55 FIP and 4.39 XFIP are fifth in the league. They will win Alvarado in mid-August, but he will not be eligible for the playoffs, and like this Phillies have had arguably won the chance to win the World Series in the past four seasons. Robertson has 42 career playoffs, after 3.04 ERA and 3.45 FIP.
That said, if you’re a Phillies fan, I don’t need to tell you that this looks like a perfect fit. Robertson signed a two-year, incentive-filled $23 million deal with the Phillies in 2019 and chose the third year. He only played seven games before his surgery. He didn’t play in 2020 at all, and the Phillies didn’t choose the 2021 option. This may sound ominous, but the Phillies also sold to Robertson for the 2022 deadline, who ran 22 ERAs in 22 appearances before getting better in the playoffs. Overall, Robertson has a total of 3.30 ERA with 29 appearances, which will drop to 2.87 if you include the playoffs.
There is no guarantee that Robertson will be effective. Maybe the 40-year-old does cause him to become a pumpkin, or maybe he will pull himself back when he first tries to bend over and send a comeback. But no matter what happened during the offseason, the competition for his service was intense over the weekend, and there was good reason. Coming into season 17 of his career, Robertson has 2.91 in his career era, and if you only look at the past eight years, that number will drop to 2.82. Now, he hasn’t been on IL for three consecutive years (except for the 2022 Covid release). Because all he spent was money, he was the steal of the deadline. The $10 million a whole year is obviously enough to scare every team in baseball, but now everyone is getting more desperate after 60% of the season, and 60% of the $10 million looks like a steal.
