18:47: Minnesota announced the deal. To make room for Archer on the 40-man list, the club ousted the southpaw Lewis Thorpe.
6:19 p.m.: Archer’s deal has a base salary of $2.75 million with a $750,000 buyout for the Passan reciprocal option adds. His incentives are based on starts or plays of at least three innings, presumably to give Archer credit for “relief” trips after an opening game.
6:15 p.m.: The twins agree with Starter Chris Archer on a one-year, $3.5 million deal, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan (Twitter link). Archer can earn up to $9.5 million through performance bonuses. The deal also includes a $10 million reciprocal option for 2023, reports MLB.com’s Do-Hyoung Park (on twitter).
Archer hasn’t served much in the past few seasons due to injury. He missed the entire truncated 2020 campaign after undergoing surgery to correct thoracic outlet syndrome. After buying out the Pirates after that season, he signed a one-year contract with the Rays but was limited to 19 1/3 innings during his second stint at Tampa Bay. The right-hander ended up on the injured list after only two appearances due to forearm tension. Although it was originally hoped that it would be a short deployment, this kept him out of action until the end of August. He made four appearances on his return later that year, but problems with his left hip sent him back to the IL for a season-ending stint.
The lack of current volume was a new problem for Archer, who was a long-lived and highly productive arm earlier in his career. He went 115-innings every year between 2013 and 2019, including three consecutive 200-inning seasons with the Rays between 2015-17. Archer received All-Star selections in two of those campaigns and finished fifth in the AL Cy Young Award- Voted during a 2015 campaign in which he posted a 3.23 ERA and a 3.08 SIERA.
Archer was a top-of-the-rotation arm during his prime days in Tampa, combining a 3.66 ERA with a strong 26.7% strikeout rate between 2014-17. The Rays brought him to the Pirates before the 2018 trade deadline, a now-infamous deal Pittsburgh parted with Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz to gain club control of Archer for three and a half years. Unfortunately for the Bucs, that deal looked regrettable almost from the start. Archer’s production dwindled early in his tenure at Pittsburgh, and the team didn’t get a single inning from Archer during the affordable 2020-21 club options that made him such an attractive target for the club in 2018.
It’s been three years since Archer has been a productive rotation member. He’s 33 now and the mid-90s speed he had in his prime didn’t resurface on his brief return from TOS last year. Archer averaged just 92 MPH with his four-seam fastball, having previously sat in the 94-96 MPH range throughout his career.
The deal’s low, stimulus-laden structure reflects both Archer’s decent upside and its three consecutive down seasons. If he stays healthy and cements himself as a reliable member of the rotation, he has a chance to earn comparable salaries as backend starters Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heney landed this winter. If he struggles with injury again, the club’s financial burden will be less.
There’s more to come.