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Yovani Gallardo, Baltimore Oriole: 3 years, $35 million, per Heyman

Jon Heyman tweets that the Orioles and Yovani Gallardo have agreed to a 3 year, $35 million contract

By Adam J. Morris
Peter Llewellyn-USA TODAY Sports

Yovani Gallardo is a Baltimore Oriole, with the pitcher and club agreeing on a 3 year, $35 million contract, according to Jon Heyman on Twitter.

This is well below what I expected for Gallardo...when there was talk in the middle of 2015 about the Rangers possibly extending Gallardo at 3 years, $40M, I scoffed at the notion, predicting that Gallardo would be getting something like the 5 year, $70M deal that fellow free agent starter Ian Kennedy fetched.  And Gallardo's career-best 3.42 ERA last season, while throwing 184.1 IP in helping to lead the Rangers to a division title, would have seemed to support that.

But as has been discussed before, the peripherals for Gallardo, who turns 30 this month, have been declining for a while.  Despite his career-best ERA, his FIP of 4.00 was the worst of his career, while his K rate declined for the sixth straight season, to 5.9 batters per 9.  Out of 78 qualifying major league pitchers, only 8 had a worse K rate than Gallardo.  Combining that with his mediocre walk rate meant that Gallardo's K/BB ratio was tied for second worst among qualifying pitchers, ahead of only Alfredo Simon of the Orioles, and tied with someone named Tom Koehler, who supposedly pitches for the Marlins, but which could be a made-up player FanGraphs put in their database just to mess with us.

In any case, Gallardo was a great pickup for the Rangers for the 2015 season, even at a cost of Corey Knebel, Luis Sardinas and Marcos Diplan, but there are clouds on the horizon for him as far as the future goes, and thus letting him leave and collecting the compensatory draft pick was the right move.

In regards to the impact on the Rangers' 2016 draft, the Orioles will forfeit their first round pick, #14 overall, which will move the Rangers' first pick up to #19.  The Rangers will also end up with a compensatory pick for losing Gallardo, which should be around #30.

UPDATE: The money breakdown: