The two teams most often connected to free agent slugger Prince Fielder are the Washington Nationals and the Texas Rangers. The Nationals are largely considered the leader in the clubhouse for the Fielder sweepstakes, though the Rangers reportedly met with Fielder and Scott Boras over the weekend for preliminary talks.

Signing Fielder to a long-term deal puts any organization into a precarious financial position. He is a legitimate +5 or +6 win player at this moment, but his defensive liabilities and his physical build have caused organizations to question whether that level of production will last over a five-plus year contract. Those concerns remain the primary reasons as to why the 27-year-old first baseman is still available.

Pushing aside those financial worries, though, and simply viewing baseball as athletic entertainment, Texas would perhaps be the most enthralling landing spot for Fielder this winter. The addition of his bat to the Rangers’ lineup would transform the second-best offense from 2011 (ranked by team wOBA) into a bona fide juggernaut next season.

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There are a lot of opinions out there about the deal over the weekend that shipped Michael Pineda and prospect Jose Campos to New York in exchange for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi. A lot of people think the Yankees got a steal, while others point to the risks associated with young arms and argue that the Mariners might have done well to transfer some of that risk to a team that could more easily live with the consequences should Pineda’s arm blow up. However, if there’s a consensus on the deal, it seems to be this – how well this deal turns out for the Mariners is directly related to how many games Montero spends behind the plate.

Everyone thinks Montero is going to be a good hitter, maybe even a great one – though, I’d suggest that if Brian Cashman really thinks he’s Mike Piazza or Miguel Cabrera, as he stated over the weekend, then he simply shouldn’t have traded him – but Montero’s been evaluated as an elite prospect based on the premise that he might be able to catch in the big leagues. After all, the average catcher hit just .245/.313/.389 last year, so having a guy behind the plate who can provide real offensive value can be a significant advantage for a Major League club. As a catcher, Montero could be the best offensive player at his position. At DH, that’s a lot less likely.

So, clearly, the upside play is to stick him behind the plate – the best possible outcome for the Mariners is that Montero’s defense improves to acceptable levels and he becomes their version of Mike Napoli, who was perhaps the key figure in the Rangers run to the World Series last year. However, looking at the potential reward of two different options is only half of the question that needs to be asked, and chasing upside is not always the correct decision. Are there reasons for the Mariners to pass on Montero as a catcher and just move him to designated hitter full time now?

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Prospect trades are incredibly difficult to evaluate. Trades of this ilk often depend on the future production each team receives from their acquisitions, making it nearly impossible to know for sure which team will come out on top without the benefit of hindsight. In order to deal Michael Pineda, the Seattle Mariners had to consider many factors; including the current state of their franchise and the cost of developing young pitchers. While it will take years to know definitively which team won the deal, trading one of the best young pitchers in the game was the right decision for the Mariners.

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Neither Bert Blyleven nor Bert from Sesame Street have much need for pants.

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

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Projecting: ZiPS for Kansas City
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Minnesota Television

Assorted Headlines
Baltimore With Two More Interesting Acquisitions
New Baltimore GM Dan Duquette has found talent a number of ways this offseason, acquiring infielder Ryan Flaherty from the Cubs during the Rule 5 draft, signing left-handers Wei-Yin Chen and Tsuyoshi Wada out of Japan, and using a major-league deal to secure the services of infielder Matt Antonelli. Nor do the team’s two most recent acquisitions represent a departure from this trend. This weekend, the O’s signed (per Patrick Newman, per Nikkan Sports) 36-year-old left-hander Yoshihiro Doi out of the NPB and (per Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun) 24-year-old infielder Peter Fatse out of the independent Can-Am League. Here are stats for both players: Doi, Fatse.

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When the Seattle Mariners dealt left-hander Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers for a package centered around first baseman Justin Smoak, my initial reaction was surprise – the New York Yankees were in the hunt and had apparently offered their top prospect, only to be rebuffed at the 11th hour. In March, a spring training piece I wrote on Montero included even stronger sentiment:

Jesus Montero has a chance to have a very special career for the New York Yankees, or any franchise he may be dealt to. Personally, I thought the Seattle Mariners were nuts for wanting Justin Smoak over Jesus Montero at the trade deadline last season.

Having never had the opportunity to scout Smoak in person, my frame of reference for discussing Smoak became Montero as he still ranks as the best pure hitting prospect I’ve had the opportunity to scout.

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Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer took over a mess of a roster, one good enough not to completely embarrass, but bad enough to show no signs of improving. Thus, their seeming first order of business is to rebuild. The term rebuilding is consistently misapplied, as the common perception is that teams in such situations must deal away all valuable pieces at once in order to stockpile prospects. While shedding payroll and converting costly players that don’t truly benefit the team right now into stars of the future is certainly a part of rebuilding, it isn’t everything. Another frequent tactic is creating the perception of starting anew by unloading costly players signed by the previous regime.

The Cubs are certainly implementing the latter tactic by attempting to move Alfonso Soriano. According to Bruce Levine of ESPN Chicago, Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is willing to eat most of the remaining $54 million on Soriano’s contract to facilitate a move. The writing is on the wall: Soriano’s days in a Cubs uniform are numbered, and it’s simply a matter of time before numerous teams come calling for an inexpensive outfielder with a decent bat and underrated fielding skills they can deploy in a left field platoon.

At $18 million per season, and in a full-time starting role, Soriano has negative value — his salary outweighs what his production typically costs on the market. But at $2-3 million per year, and in a role that limits his playing time, keeps him healthy, and allows him to face predominantly lefties, a league average year isn’t out of the cards. Though Soriano is a sunk cost, it makes more sense for a rebuilding team to eke out some prospects, after selling suitors on these factors, than to keep him around and platoon him themselves.

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Since the swap of Michael Pineda for Jesus Montero became public last night, a few talking points have become pretty commonplace. Some of them – Pineda’s reliance on his fastball and slider due to a subpar change-up, for instance – are definitely true, and are stories supported by the evidence. However, there have also been a few points that have been raised that don’t stand up to closer scrutiny, and those mostly stem from cursory looks at Pineda’s splits.

Split data, by its nature, generally consists of small sample sizes. In breaking a season down into smaller slices, you’re necessarily introducing greater uncertainty into the numbers. It’s important to not draw too many strong conclusions from what appear to be trends in split data, and at the same time, to make sure you’re looking at the entire picture.

With Pineda, two of his 2011 splits are most commonly cited as reasons for the Yankees to have some concern about his future performance – his home/road splits (specifically, the 2.92/4.40 ERA numbers) and his first half/second half splits (3.03/5.12 ERA). From these numbers, questions have been raised about how well Pineda will do outside of spacious Safeco Field and whether he’ll be able to hold up over a full-season and still be able to pitch well for the Yankees in the playoffs.

In both cases, however, looking a little deeper than simple ERA shows that these concerns are probably overblown.

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Up until about 18 hours ago, hitting prospect and kinda, sorta catcher Jesus Montero was slated to be more or less the everyday DH for the New York Yankees in 2012. In the meantime, however, he and right-hander Hector Noesi have been traded to the Seattle Mariners for a pair of players — most notably, Michael Pineda, a talented and hard-throwing right-hander entering his age-23 season. As Dave Cameron notes, the deal compares favorably, in term of cost, to similar bids by the Nationals and Reds to add young, frontline starters.

The Pineda move, coupled with the subsequent signing (like, three minutes later) of Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $10 million deal, has, in Paul Swydan’s words, remade the Yankees rotation in one night.

What it’s also done is to create a vacuum at the DH spot for New York.

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Michael Pineda is coming to New York, as the Yankees and Mariners were able to swing a four-player deal Friday evening that also sent 19-year-old pitching prospect Jorge Campos to the Yankees’ organization in exchange for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi.  Pineda, who will turn 23 years old next Wednesday, is a pure power pitcher.  He relies mainly on a hard four-seam fastball and a slider, though he’ll show some changeups to lefties as well as the rare two-seam sinker.

Below are some generic pitch results for Pineda in 2011.  Ball% is balls per pitch, whiff% is whiffs per swing, and gb% is groundballs per ball in play (excluding bunts).

          mph   #     LHB%   RHB%  ball%  whiff%  gb%
Fastball  94.7  1602  62%    60%   32%    20%     26%
Slider    84.1  831   26%    37%   32%    38%     48%
Changeup  87.7  162   11%    2%    49%    14%     54%
Sinker    94.2  23    1%     1%    35%    18%     75%

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Oh, what a night! Michael Corleone, er, Brian Cashman, handled all rotation business in one night, trading Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi for Michael Pineda and Jose Campos, and before the dust had settled they signed Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $10 million deal. The two moves transformed the Yanks’ rotation from solid =with a couple of question marks to dominant.

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