Free Agent Watch: Bruce Chen

He is coming off his second best season in his career at a 2.6 WAR (worth 7.8 million, while he only made 2 million). Only a 8.6 WAR in 13 years. He is 34 and is coming off his second most innings ever. His PE was unimpressive at 2.053. In his career, his PE is 1.718. Has about an equal BAA against and strangely, a better strikeout to walk ratio as a starter (he has significant time as both in his career). .99 PE as a reliever, 1.868 PE as a starter. He had a pretty miserable 8.43 TR in 2011, and it is even worse in his career, at 7.14. While ERA (and perhaps WAR as well, perhaps raising questions about how Baseball Reference does WAR, FanGraphs had him at 1.7 WAR) suggests Chen had a pretty good year in 2011 (even so much that the Red Sox tried to trade for him to make just 1 start), but all other metrics suggest this was either fluky, or not even good. His FIP was 4.39, hardly very good (it is a putrid 5.03 for his career). He is a flyball pitcher, and he doesn't strike out many and walks a little bit too much. IF (!) you can get him for the 2 million dollars he made last year, then it still makes some sense to sign him. However, it would seem he is going to get more than that. If that is true, he is definitely a trap and should be avoided.