A few deals coming through as the winter meetings draw to a close.

Reds sign Arthur Rhodes, two years, 4 million

Rhodes went from out of baseball in 2007 to a desirable commodity in 2008. The Marlins dealt an arm for Rhodes at the trade deadline, but decided against offering Rhodes arbitration, costing them a compensation pick. Two years for a 39-year-old situational reliever seems a wee bit silly, especially one with some red flags like Rhodes.

Rhodes’ BABIP was .319 in 2008, despite allowing 27.9% line drives. When your pitches are being hit that hard consistently and most of them are still turning into outs, then there’s some level of luck involved. 45% of Rhodes’ batted balls were of the fly variety, and yet zero of those flyballs found their way into the bleachers. Rhodes has never allowed too many homeruns, but within the Great American Ballpark it’s likely that number is going to be a little less round.

The Reds are paying for less than 0.5 WAR annually, so the money itself is fine. Marcels says 43 innings and a 3.66 FIP for the ancient one, making him worth the money all ready. That’s without taking leverage into account, which might be around 1.5.

Good deal financially, but still a bit questionable to give a guaranteed second year.

Royals sign Kyle Farnsworth, two years, 9.25 million.

Let’s jump right to the Marcels projection: 61 innings 4.8 FIP. That’s below expectations for a replacement level reliever. One of the Dayton Moore’s alleged strengths is his ability to build cost-efficient relief corps. In fact, that was a large part of the reason Ramon Ramirez and Leo Nunez were traded. This however, is neither cheap or wise.

The odds of Farnsworth pitching like he did in 2006 are low. His fastball velocity has dipped, and so with it have his strikeouts and ability to keep pitches hit inside of the park. Farnsworth probably won’t allow more than two homeruns per nine like last season, but he’s a safe bet for one bomb. Farnsworth’s walks wouldn’t be an issue if not for the homeruns, but even a single walk can quickly result in a two run swing.

Kansas City might see the 4.48 ERA and 99 ERA+ and think Farnsworth is a pretty average pitcher, they would be wrong, and they won’t realize this until Farnsworth’s 84.7% strand rate regresses, if only to his 72.8% career mark. Kauffman Stadium is going to suppress some homeruns, and really that’s the only positive to get from this signing. Otherwise, the Royals could have saved cash and signed four or five minor league free agents (like Horacio Ramirez) and slotted a few into their bullpen with the same or better results than this signing is going to breed.

Today we tackle Mark Mulder.

When the Cardinals dealt Dan Haren (amongst others) for Mulder prior to the 2005 season, they assumed an ace was on the way. In 2005, Mulder looked like a good enough pitcher despite losing a bit in performance, 200-innings, 4.3 FIP, so-so strikeout, walk, and homerun rates, and an increase in groundballs. Then 2006 came, and since here’s a list of injuries Mulder has suffered:

– Left shoulder impingement (6/06)
– Left shoulder surgery (8/06)
– Left shoulder surgery recovery (07)
– Left rotator surgery recovery (3/08)
– Left shoulder strain (7/08)

That’s a scary pattern for someone who just so happens to rely on his left shoulder to throw a baseball. As you would expect, Mulder’s velocity has been inconsistent, jumping from 88 in 2005 to 86 in 2006 back to 87.5 in 2007 and finally to 90 in the 1.2 innings 2008 provided. Changing speeds manually is good, changing speeds because your body requires you to as part of the aging process is okay too, but changing speeds because your body can’t decide how it feels that year is a bit frustrating.

Concerning performance, Mulder has been awful since 2005. In 2006, Mulder had a 6.01 FIP in 93 innings. Only a dozen innings since leaves Marcels without a decent outlook, and the monkey actually has Mulder with a FIP of 5.06 and 55 innings. Frightfully, that would actually be an upgrade over Mulder’s past two seasons. Still, that would not be too much better than a replacement level starter would bring, making the case for signing Mulder a pretty weak one.

As for the talk that Mulder could become a LOOGY, well, there’s the small problem of him not being exceptionally good at pitching to these of the same hand. The graph below is a nice visualization of his splits, but for the most part Mulder held lefties to an OPS between .650 and .700. His career OPS against is a touch higher due to rough seasons recently and in 2000.

I hesitate to state that any player is “done”, but Mulder doesn’t appear to have a ton of pitches left on his shoulder. If injured pitchers are like used cars, then Mulder’s the one with clanks bellowing beneath the hood and leaves a trail of smoke and oil behind him.

Like most recent off-seasons, there’s no shortage of injury prone starting pitchers hobbling around for another gig. Over the next week I’m going to look at a few of the more intriguing options to see what teams should expect and whether a signing would be a wise investment. Since poster boy Mike Hampton is off the market, we’ll instead begin with the “new era” Hampton, former Yankees pitcher Carl Pavano.

When Pavano signed for four years and roughly 40 million in December 2004, the Yankees expected Pavano and fellow free agent signing Jaret Wright to transform their lacking rotation. Although there was no way of knowing at the time, Pavano would only make a total of 30 starts for the Yankees. Pavano was fresh off back-to-back 200+ innings seasons, a sixth-place finish in the National League Cy Young voting, an all-star appearance, and a pretty win-loss record that mystified the New York media.

A myriad of injuries would strike Pavano, beginning with shoulder tendonitis in July 2005 that effectively ended his season. Back strains, forearm tightness, elbow surgery, and just about any other injury you can name kept Pavano out in 2006 and most of 2007. Pavano would make his return from surgery in August 2008, starting seven games without much success.

Pavano has always relied heavily on his fastball, throwing it more than 50% in each of his past three seasons, including 63.5% in 2005. Unfortunately, it appears he’s lost a few ticks since then, with his average fastball coming in just shy of 88, rather than 90. A mixture of sliders, changes, and split-fingered fastballs make up the other 40% of Pavano’s pitches. While Pavano was never much of a strikeout pitcher to begin with, his per nine ratios should exceed 2008’s 3.93. It’s worth noting that Pavano’s swinging strike rates were on par with his 2005 totals, that indicates that at least some of the stuff that made him successful is still there.

Generally, the question that needs to be answered in cases like this concerns the percentage of playing time (or number of innings) makes this player a wise investment. For that, we turn to Marcels. The monkey has Pavano pitching 78 innings with a 4.60 FIP. That is an optimistic projection and one not completely based in reality, considering Pavano hasn’t thrown that many innings combined since 2006. For the sake of argument, if Pavano does reach such a point he’ll be worth roughly a win over a replacement level starter, and if he can give a team 100 innings around his career FIP (4.21), he’ll be a worthwhile pick-up out of the junkyard.