Certainly the end to 2021 turned us sour on Barnes, but you and a few other seem to have deep and lasting negative feeling towards him.
He sure doesn't look like he deserves $9.4M a year, but when you compare him to other RP'ers in MLB over the past 5 years, he places in the top third in many key categories.
2017-2021: Let's assume 7 RP'er per team and 30 teams, so 210 pitchers in the sample size. (Many teams use 8, but I'll go with just the top 7 by innings pitched since 2017. 110 IP brings the sample size to 233. I'll go with that and then make a larger sample size study.)
Top 233 RP'ers by IP since 2017. Barnes places:
14th xFIP- at 71
15th in xFIP at 3.10
17th fWAR at 4.6
22nd K-BB% at 23.5%
26th SIERA at 3.08
80th K/BB at 3.1
94th ERA- at 83
109th WHIP at 1.26
All this with a pretty crappy D behind him (195th in BAbip at .311)
So, top 3rd tier is anyone above 77th. Middle tier 78-155. Bottom tier 156-233.
5 categories fall in top tier
3 in middle tier
BAbip in bottom tier (poor D)
Let's up the inning sample size to 190 and we get 88 pitchers, or about the top 3 from all 30 teams: Top tier 1-30, 2nd tier 31-60, 3rd tier 61-88.
Barnes places:
9th in xFIP
9th xFIP-
14th K-BB%
15th fWAR
15th SIERA
40th K/BB
48th ERA-
56th WHIP
80th in BAbip
Again,
5 categories in top tier, but none in middle tier, and 3 in bottom tier plus the awful BAbip.
Comparatively speaking, he's been pretty good. $9.4M good, no, but still pretty good. Speaking of $9.4M, here's what the top RP'ers signed for, this winter:(WAR ranking from 2017-2021)
$16M x 1 Jansen (3rd)
$14.5 x 4 R Iglesias (7th)
$10M x 1 McHugh (44th)
($9.3M x 2 Barnes 15th)
$8.5M x 2 Neris (32nd)
$8.5M x 2 Loup (53rd)
$8.5M x 2 Kelly (55th)
$8M x 3 Graveman (DNQ)
$7M x 2 Melancon (36th)
$7M x 2 Tepera (40th)
$6.5M x 2 Chafin (24th)
On the bright side, we could have signed Kelly for slightly less.