The Angels and 30 year old Cody Allen have agreed to a one year contract worth $8.5M, and also includes $2.5M in incentives per Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. This one year contract marks the 5th one year major league contract for Angels free-agent signees this off-season,(Justin Bour, Matt Harvey, Trevor Cahill, Jonathan Lucroy) though this certainly doesn’t appear to be the last as the Halos appear to be looking for at least one more reliever, and possible a utility man.
Last season with the Tribe, Allen appeared in 70 games, 67 innings pitched, while sporting a 4-6 record and accumulating 27 saves along the way. He also had a 0 fWAR, 4.70 ERA, 4.56 FIP, 80 strike outs(27.7 K%), 33 base on balls(11.4 BB%), 5 blown saves and didn’t give up a run in 52 of his 70 appearances.
Billy Eppler is continuing with his “Reclamation projects” and “high octane bullpen” with the signing of Cody Allen who is coming off what is his worst professional season of his career. Last season with the Indians, Allen posted career worsts in fWAR, FIP, ERA, base on balls, home runs, runs, and blown saves. Since 2014 Cody Allens fastball velocity, spin rate, whiff%, and fastball usage has slowly declined in almost every season.
2014: 96.4 MPH/62.7% usage
2015: 95.9 MPH/62.5% usage
2016: 95.2 MPH/63.2% usage
2017: 94.6 MPH/55.5% usage; 2506 Spin Rate/23.3 Whiff%
2018: 94 MPH/60.2% usage; 2445 Spin Rate/ 21.2 Whiff%
Though with all that being said, there is plenty to look forward to with Cody Allen, who appears to be in line to be the Angels Opening Day closer as Keynan Middleton is still sidelined until at least June recovering from Tommy John. In each of his last six seasons Cody Allen has pitched at least 67 innings and had at least 80 strikeouts and 24 saves. His curveball which he threw nearly 40% of the time last year had a 51.77 Whiff%.
Next season, FanGraphs steamers projections project the newly acquired Angel to post a 3-3 record with a 0.3 fWAR, 3.92 ERA, and 3.93 FIP in 55 innings. As of right now the Angels Opening Day bullpen will look along the lines of this, Cody Allen, Ty Buttrey, Hansel Robles, Luis Garcia, Justin Anderson, Cam Bedrosian, Taylor Cole, Noe Ramirez, John Curtiss, and Williams Jerez. 7 of the 10 have been acquired within the the past 365 days.
