Bill Hall parlayed his solid 2010 with the Boston Red Sox into one last chance at a starting MLB gig. On Friday, Bill Hall signed a one-year deal with a mutual option, guaranteeing the 30-year-old (31 in about a week) $3.25 million dollars. The Astros have said that Hall will be the regular second baseman in Houston.
If the Brewers’ upcoming season were a game of poker, Doug Melvin just pushed all his chips to the center of the table. The acquisition of Zack Greinke shows that the Brewers want to contend in what is likely Prince Fielder’s last season with the team. After finishing near the bottom of the NL in almost every major pitching category, the Brewers made starting pitching a priority this off-season. With their core offensive players returning, will their off-season acquisitions be enough to push the Brewers to the top of the NL Central standings?
Theo Epstein is determined to upgrade his bullpen this offseason after a season that saw the Red Sox’ unit finish with the fourth-worst WAR in the league. The attempted seduction of Mariano Rivera and successful tempting of Bobby Jenks may draw more headlines, but the signing of Dan Wheeler is another solid addition to a bullpen that appears formidable on paper.
The declarations on how Kansas City fared on the Zack Greinke return varies by expert. Kevin Goldstein tabbed himself a fan of the deal while Keith Law and our own Marc Hulet shared the sentiment of quantity over quality. Regardless of the opinions on the return, why did Kansas City feel the need to move Greinke now?
According to reports, the Kansas City Royals organization has traded Zack Greinke and Yuniesky Betancourt to the Milwaukee Brewers for four young players: outfielder Lorenzo Cain, and shortstop Alcides Escobar, as well as pitchers Jake Odorizzi, and potentially Jeremy Jeffress – although his inclusion in the deal is still up in the air. My first reaction to the package coming to Kansas City was: Really, that’s it? Clearly the asking price dropped a lot in the past 48 hours.
Zack Greinke and Yuniesky Betancourt have been traded to the Brewers for Alcides Escobar, Lorenzo Cain, Jake Odorizzi, and Jeremy Jeffress. Royals fans have been bracing for a trade since Friday when Dayton Moore went on a local Kansas City radio station and stated that Zack was not happy and the Royals were looking to trade him. In the same interview, Dayton stated that he was looking for right handed center fielder. He looks like he got his man in Lorenzo Cain.
With today’s signing of Orlando Hudson by the Padres, we can say that the Adrian Gonzalez trade is finally complete. While Boston didn’t ship Hudson to San Diego directly, it is hard to miss the symmetry between the salary that the Padres shed when Gonzalez was traded and the amount of money that they gave Hudson to take over at second base. For all intents and purposes, Hudson is what the Padres were able to buy with the money they saved by moving their star first baseman.
While that swap doesn’t make the Padres a better team overall, adding Hudson does offset the loss of Gonzalez to a degree. A chronically underrated player, Hudson has been worth an average of +2.5 WAR per 600 PA over his career, and has rarely strayed far from that number, never going lower than +1.2 or higher than +3.7. While he’s showing signs of aging as a hitter, Hudson is still a quality starting second baseman, and at $11 million over two years, he’s a rare bargain in this inflationary market.
It happens every year around this time: someone will point to the NFL’s mounting chaos in the standings and argue that Major League Baseball needs to do a better job of aping the structure of professional football. Never mind that MLB has caught up to the NFL in terms of fan loyalty, MLB Network will soon be in more homes than the NFL Network, and MLB’s digital-media presence outstrips the NFL’s to the point of embarrassment. Most of all, never mind that you simply can’t compare the two leagues.
Consider a few points:
So far this off-season nine relief pitchers have signed a contract of two years or longer. When the Yankees’ signing of Pedro Feliciano becomes official that will make 10. We learned yesterday that the two sides were getting closer to a deal, and this morning they agreed on a two-year, $8 million contract that includes a player option for 2013. The Yankees now join the Angels as the only teams to sign more than one reliever to a multi-year deal.
In the past three seasons no pitcher has made more appearances than Feliciano, and it’s not particularly close. He has entered a game 266 times, and the next closest, Carlos Marmol, has 238. Unsurprisingly, in each of those three seasons he has led the league in appearances. That certainly raises a red flag. That is somewhat mitigated by his status as a lefty specialist. He enters games frequently, but he doesn’t pitch for long. In that same three-year period 48 pitchers have thrown more pitches and the same number have faced more batters. He also has never been placed on the disabled list.
When he does appear in games he’s fairly effective. In 459 career appearances he has a 3.31 ERA, 3.75 FIP, 3.81 xFIP, and 4.06 tERA — though his tERA has been much lower since his return from Japan in 2006. His strikeout rate is always in the 8 per nine range, though his walks have typically been over 4 per nine. It’s no surprise that his finest seasons have come when his walk rate has dipped below 3 per nine. The one mitigating factor there is that a number of those walks are intentional, occurring when the opponent’s lineup goes lefty-righty-lefty. That’s not to say that the intentional walks don’t hurt. They do. But they’re a bit easier to stomach if he faces a lefty afterward.
A groundball-inducing lefty who can also strike out his share of same-handed batters will fit well with the Yankees. He can handle some of the tougher lefties in the division, including new Bostonians Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford. Two years and $8 million might be a bit of an overpay — Feliciano’s WAR/Dollars figure has never hit $4 million. Then again, 1) WAR might undervalue relievers, and 2) the Yankees aren’t on the same pay scale as the rest of the league. With only roughly $185 million on the books for the 2011 season, including projected arbitration raises and reserve clause obligations, they can afford to overpay a few players that can help at the margins.
Since this was apparently Sign-A-Reliever week in MLB, it’s only fitting to wrap it up by asking you guys to project how four of the notable relievers to sign this week are going to do with their new clubs.
Click here to project how Jesse Crain, Matt Guerrier, Bobby Jenks, and Joel Peralta will do in 2011.