The last time anyone saw Walker Buehler on a mound, he was busy closing out the New York Yankees and earning the World Series title for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
It was a joyful ending to an otherwise brutal age-29 season for Buehler. Across 16 starts, he notched a 5.38 ERA (72 ERA+) and a 2.29 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Both marks represented new career-worst measures for someone who, as recently as 2021, was a perennial All-Star Game and Cy Young Award candidate.
Yet the first month of the offseason has revealed that Buehler might be in for a better winter than indicated by his statistics. Buehler has already been linked to those Yankees and the Atlanta Braves, a pair of World Series hopefuls. The Mets are reportedly interested as well. Anytime a pitcher coming off a dreadful year is drawing interest from all corners of the league like that, it's worth investigating just what those clubs are seeing.
With that in mind, here are three reasons why Buehler is likely to remain in demand this offseason despite his misgivings during the regular season.
1. Stuff is better than results
Although Buehler's results don't suggest it, he fits into that classic bin of free-agent pitcher with better stuff than topline results. You don't have to take our word or our evaluation of the pitches for it, either. Thankfully, there are various public-facing pitch-grading models nowadays that take an offering's innate traits (velocity and movement included) into account to produce a number corresponding to quality.
To illustrate the point, consider the table below. We've listed all of the pitches Buehler used at least 5% of the time last season, as well as the marks those pitches generated in the eyes of two pitch-grading models: FanGraphs' Stuff+ (the higher the number the better) and Baseball Prospectus' StuffPro (the lower the number the better).
| Pitch | Usage% | Stuff+ | StuffPro |
|---|---|---|---|
Four-seamer | 29% | 85 | 0.2 |
Cutter | 21% | 103 | 0 |
Curve | 19% | 100 | -0.3 |
Sinker | 16% | 82 | -0.1 |
Sweeper | 8% | 122 | -1.3 |
Changeup | 5% | 70 | 0.6 |
You don't have to favor one model or the other in order to walk away thinking there's something here. Both tend to agree that Buehler's sweeper is really good and that his curve is at least average. Additionally, depending on your model of choice, there may or may not be something to work with on his cutter and his sinker.
At absolute minimum, there's enough going on here for teams to envision Buehler being able to hide his four-seamer and still have plenty of looks to offer opponents.
2. Good track record
While we acknowledge that teams pride themselves on only looking forward, it doesn't hurt Buehler's case that he has a better past than most pitchers who find themselves in this situation. Indeed, even now he possesses a career 3.27 ERA (125 ERA+) and a 3.97 strikeout-to-walk ratio. According to Baseball Reference's calculations, he's averaged 2.56 Wins Above Replacement for every 150 innings thrown. For comparison, Tyler Glasnow led the Dodgers this season by posting 1.9 WAR in 134 innings.
There's another component of Buehler's history that, again, may not help his perception with teams but can't hurt it: his postseason performance. Including this fall, he's now amassed a 3.04 ERA in 94 career innings.
It's not just that Buehler has demonstrated he's capable of being above-average starting pitcher before. It's not just that the underlying measures suggest he could return to that form in the future. It's a combination of those elements, plus the external force that is the wildness of the winter's early pitching market.
3. Wild pitching market
As we recently explained, all signs point to this being a bull market. Nick Martinez and Nick Pivetta received the one-year, $21 million qualifying offer, with Pivetta rejecting his. Frankie Montas declined his part of a $20 million mutual option and then turned around to sign a two-year, $34 million deal with the Mets. And Yusei Kikuchi signed a three-year pact with the Angels worth more than $20 million annually. Those pitchers all have their charms, but it's fair to write they're not worldbeaters.
It only makes sense, then, based on everything we've written above and based on the environment at hand, that someone like Buehler would be a hot commodity. Teams are going to be hard-pressed this winter to find a bargain on the starting pitcher market.
Buehler might end up being as close as they can get -- and that, ironically enough, could in turn push his contract beyond the usual bargain range.