Kyle Finnegan Is Back in Washington

The 2024 season was a big one for Kyle Finnegan, or at least it started that way. On the strength of a 2.45 ERA and 25 saves, the Nationals’ closer made his first All-Star team (he finished the year with 38 saves, good for second in the National League). Yet he struggled in the second half, and in November, the Nationals non-tendered him rather than risk a trip through arbitration. On Tuesday — the same day I highlighted his continued free agency within this roundup — he returned to the fold nonetheless on a one-year, $6 million contract.

The deal, which is pending a physical and a 40-man roster move at this writing, is not yet official. Given that Finnegan made $5.1 million last year, the new contract constitutes about an 18% raise for the 33-year-old righty. However, in his annual projections for arbitration-eligible players at MLB Trade Rumors, Matt Swartz estimated that Finnegan would land a salary of $8.6 million, just shy of a 69% raise, because saves play well in arbitration. The view that Finnegan got something of a raw deal by this process is offset by the fact that he did get to test free agency a year ahead of schedule, only to find the market for his services limited enough to make a return his best option. Among the other 29 teams, the Cubs appeared to show the most interest.

Earlier this month, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo told reporters that the team had kept in touch with Finnegan “throughout the offseason.” He likely lingered on the market because his profile and his performance both have some notable dings. Conceptually, Finnegan is basically a two-pitch pitcher, with a four-seam fastball that averaged 97.2 mph in 2024, and a splitter that has replaced his slider as his main secondary pitch over the past couple of seasons. By the pitch models, the fastball is about average, while the splitter is above-average but short of being a true plus pitch. He doesn’t miss a ton of bats, and while he generates a healthy share of groundballs, he gives up a lot of hard contact.

Though Finnegan placed seventh in the NL with 28 saves in 2023 and has racked up 88 saves over the past four seasons, his track record is unremarkable. Of the 27 pitchers with at least 50 saves since the start of 2021, he owns the fourth-highest ERA (3.62), the second-highest FIP (4.28), the second-highest home run rate (1.29 per nine), and the second-lowest strikeout rate (23.3%) while being in a virtual tie with Will Smith for the lowest WAR (1.0). He’s got the fourth-lowest bWAR in that span as well (2.4).

Finnegan’s 2024 first-half performance wasn’t quite as strong as it looked, but it was a whole lot better than his second-half performance:

Yikes. Finnegan’s strikeout rate fell by nearly 10 points after the break, while his walk rate crept upward. Both his chase rate and his overall swinging strike rate declined notably, and according to the pitch modeling systems, his command regressed by roughly one full standard deviation. Per PitchingBot, his command graded as 62 on the 20–80 scouting scale in the first half but fell to 52 in the second, while his overall score fell from 59 to 52. Per Stuff+, his Location+ and Pitching+ scores both fell from 108 to 99.

With that compromised command, Finnegan was hit harder:

Like so many extreme splits, the actual differences are wider than the expected ones; Finnegan’s xSLG in the second half was actually lower than in the first, but batters still increased their SLG by 145 points. The overall numbers tell a story that’s worrisome enough: Finnegan’s average exit velocity ranked in the first percentile, and his hard-hit rate in the second. Fortunately, he avoided the barrel often enough to place in the 65th percentile in that category.

A closer look at Finnegan’s pitch splits shows that batters actually did less damage against his splitter in the second half than the first; their SLG against it fell from .432 to .320 even as his whiff rate dropped from 33.7% to 23.3%. The real problem was that his four-seamer was pummeled with increasing intensity, with the SLG against it rising from .310 in the first half to .585 in the second. And since he was throwing the heater more than twice as often as the splitter… it wasn’t pretty.

Also not pretty: Finnegan — who’s already one of the majors’ slowest-working pitchers — led the majors with 11 pitch clock violations, three more than any other pitcher. Our estimates place the value of those 11 extra balls at a meager -0.6 runs, but as Baseball Prospectus‘ Patrick Dubuque pointed out, he did make a dubious bit of history on June 22 against the Rockies, waiting too long to deliver a 3-2 pitch to Ryan McMahon with the bases loaded and the score tied in the bottom of the ninth, thus producing the first walk-off pitch clock violation in major league history. Where’s the Topps Now card for that one?

All of the above helps to explain why Finnegan didn’t land a larger deal. Yet the Nats did think enough of him to bring him back at a higher salary than last year, because even lousy teams — they’re projected for 72.6 wins, the NL’s third-lowest total ahead of only the Rockies and Marlins — need closers. Without Finnegan, the team entered camp with lefty Jose A. Ferrer and righty Jorge López the top candidates to close; now they and righty Derek Law will be in the setup mix.

One thing worth wondering is why Finnegan didn’t use his slider more often last year. He threw it 5.6% of the time (9.9% against righties, but just one random pitch to lefties). Within that limited sample, PitchingBot scored it as average (50) but Stuff+ really liked it (124). Batters hit and slugged just .133 against it while whiffing one-third of the time. Those results were much better than what he’d gotten out of his slider before because, well, it was a different pitch, about four ticks slower than the one he threw in 2023 (85.4 mph vs. 89.5 mph) and with different movement. From a David Laurila piece last May:

Finnegan used to throw a “tighter, harder, cutter-slider,” but as it was essentially the same velocity as his splitter, some separation was in order. He didn’t get the horizontal break he was looking for with his new slider, but considering that it is the least used of his three pitches – only 5.2% both this year and last – he concluded that whatever additional movement he could get would be enough.

“I set out to throw a sweeper, but I couldn’t quite get enough horizontal to where it would be classified a sweeper,” explained Finnegan. “But really, I think they’re all sliders; some just go more left than others. I kind of settled somewhere in the middle. The sweeper I was trying to throw was about 80 [mph], and the slider I ultimately switched to is around 85. It still moves more left than than my older slider, and I get a little bit of depth on it as well.”

Given that Finnegan will hit free agency this fall, there’s a very good chance the first half of his season will be an audition for a late-July trade to a contender. He might become a more desirable trade candidate — and a better pitcher, which is the real point — by adding a new pitch or refining his current ones, and heaven knows, speeding things up so as to avoid those pitch clock violalations couldn’t hurt. Having received the mixed message from the Nationals through this sequence of transactions, it’s on him to boost his game.