Kelly Shoppach is going back to where he started. The 31-year-old catcher agreed to terms on a one-year, $1.35 million contract with the Boston Red Sox — the organization that drafted him in the second round of the 2001 draft. With incentives, the deal could be worth $1.75 million.

Signing with the Red Sox ensures that Shoppach will remain in the American League East, where he spent the past two seasons with the Tampa Bay Rays. His time with the Rays was largely disappointing: he hit .185/.285/.340 in 440 plate appearances. In the four seasons prior, he posted a .343 wOBA with the Cleveland Indians — the fifth-best mark among AL catchers with at least 800 plate appearances.

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When Alex Anthopoulos and the Toronto Blue Jays acquired center fielder Colby Rasmus for Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel, and Marc Rzepczynski just before the Trade Deadline last summer, the blogosphere and Twitterverse were exploding with praise for Toronto.

Anthopoulos parted with relatively little to acquire a young center fielder who was worth 4.3 WAR in the previous season at only 24 years old. His .366 wOBA was the third best in baseball by a center fielder, which was only bested by Josh Hamilton and Carlos Gonzalez. Rasmus also had three-and-a-half years remaining under team control, which only augmented his value as a baseball asset.

The trade was an unequivocal win for our amiable neighbors north of the border. Toronto’s stat-friendly, new-age general manager hoodwinked his backward counterpart in St. Louis, and frankly, it wasn’t even close.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen.

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An artist’s rendering of Luis Rodriguez, who re-signed with the Mariners.

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Offseason Notes.

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Prospecting: John Sickels’ Top-20 List for San Diego
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Cleveland Television

Assorted Headlines
Seattle Signs 11 Minor Leaguers
The Seattle Mariners have signed 11 players to minor league contracts with invites to spring training, the Associated Press reports. Among the players who might be worth something better than replacement-level are middle infielder Luis Rodriguez (currently atop the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Venezuelan Winter League) and right-handed reliever Josh Kinney, who posted a 71 xFIP- (24.7% K, 8.6% BB, 59.6% GB) in 17.2 innings after pitching excellently at Triple-A Charlotte. Also on the list is outfielder Darren Ford. Ford’s offensive game is particularly refined, but he has crazy speed and likely offers a plus-glove in center field.

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Episode 114
While veteran baseball writer and stay-at-home dad Dayn Perry has little of substance to say, at least he says it loudly and sprinkles it with profanity. Baseball topics covered: Albert Pujols and Skip Schumaker. Non-baseball topics: Blind Boy Fuller and pigmeat.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 28 min. play time.)

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According to Jon Paul Morosi, the Orioles have signed 30-year-old Japanese free agent Tsuyoshi Wada to a two-year, $8.15 million contract with an option for 2014. Though the left-handed Wada isn’t a well-known name or a young prospect, and he has flaws that may keep him from being a great starter in the American League, there are a few mitigating factors that make the deal interesting.

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The Philadelphia Phillies might not have a strong farm system, but it certainly is an intriguing one. Considering how much talent the organization had to give up to acquire the likes of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee (the first time), Roy Oswalt and Hunter Pence, that’s an impressive accomplishment. And its perhaps even more impressive when you figure in the number of high draft picks the club has had to deal away to assemble its impact ensemble. Still, all those trades have definitely hurt this organization’s minor-league depth:

1. Trevor May, RHP
BORN: Sept. 23, 1989
EXPERIENCE: Four seasons
ACQUIRED: 2008 fourth round, Washington HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: Fifth

SCOUTING REPORT: May is a big, strong pitcher with a solid repertoire that includes a 90mph to 95 mph fastball. He also has a potentially plus curveball, a changeup and a new-found slider. His delivery gets out of whack at times, which causes his command to suffer. As a player from a cold-weather state, he’s always been a little behind prospects from sunny weather locales, such as California, Arizona and Florida — but he’s definitely playing catch-up now.

YEAR IN REVIEW: Brody Colvin took a step back in 2011, and Jarred Cosart was traded to Houston, so May’s breakout season was more than welcomed by the organization. The right-hander pitched a career high 144.1 innings and had a 2.69 FIP. He maintained an outstanding strikeout rate (12.10 K/9), but his control remained inconsistent (4.05 BB/9) — and that is the biggest thing preventing him from becoming an elite pitcher.

YEAR AHEAD: May will move up to double-A in 2012 and he isn’t far from contributing to the big-league team. Still, he needs to polish his secondary pitches and improve his control.

CAREER OUTLOOK: May has the potential to develop into a No. 2 starter – especially if he commands his fastball at the major-league level. He has the frame to become an innings-eater.

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With Albert Pujols off the free agent board, Prince Fielder finds himself next in line to an immense pay day. Although Fielder hasn’t put up quite the numbers Pujols has, his accomplishments to date, at age 27, are nothing short of spectacular. He is the type of player that can immediately impact a line-up in a profound way, but questions of how he’ll age, remain. The main issue with Fielder is his weight, but this past week super-agent Scott Boras brought up a new component of Fielder’s body-type;

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Last Saturday, Jon Heyman mused via Twitter that he hadn’t yet seen any trade interest develop in Astros’ first baseman/outfielder Carlos Lee. The tone of Heyman’s tweet was one of surprise; he noted “Guy did have 90-plus rbis for awful team.”

Putting aside Heyman’s reliance on RBI to make his point, the question remains. Is there a trade market for Carlos Lee? He will turn 36 next June and is in the last year of six-year/$100 million contract with the Astros. According to Cot’s Contracts, the Astros still owe Lee $19 million.

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On the list of things I thought I’d be writing about today, Andy Sonnanstine ranked somewhere just south of nuclear physics. He was among the worst pitchers in baseball last year, running a 7.09 FIP in 36 innings at the big league level, leading the Rays to non-tender him yesterday and put his Major League career in jeopardy. He’ll probably be able to land a minor league deal from some team that needs Triple-A innings, but there’s a pretty decent chance that he’s seen his last days in the big leagues.

So, why am I writing about him? Well, thanks to the rabbit hole that David Appelman has created with his custom reports features on the leaderboards (seriously, if you’re not using these, you’re really missing out), I ended up spending a decent amount of time this morning looking at some of the differences in how pitchers perform in various situations. What led me down this path?

Well, when looking at Sonnanstine’s player card, I noticed that his career LOB% was an incredibly low 65.5%, the kind of number that is almost always driven by a relatively terrible performance with men on base. Some pitchers just do not perform well pitching from the stretch, so the gap between their bases empty performance and their men-on-base performance can be stark. Indeed, when looking at Sonnanstine’s splits, this is exactly what we find.

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