In perhaps the fasteset set of transactions I’ve ever seen, the Astros announced that they were releasing Livan Hernandez at 12:07 pm eastern time, and then Jon Heyman reported that Livan was signing with the Braves at 2:02 pm eastern. Livan wasn’t even unemployed for two hours.

Livan’s a pretty fascinating guy. While his xFIPs are crazy consistent over the last four years (xFIP- of 112, 111, 114, 111), his results have swung wildly from awful in 2008-2009 (ERA- of 138 and 133) to pretty good in 2010 (ERA- of 91) back to not great (ERA- of 118) last year. On one hand, you know exactly what you’re getting with Livan – a durable innings eater who won’t miss bats. On the other hand, you have no idea what you’re going to get from Livan, as his BABIP and HR/FB rates have fluctuated wildly over the last five years.

This series of moves perfectly illustrates how a player can have value to one team but not another. The Braves needed to reduce their exposure to disaster performances, and signing Hernandez gives them some rotation depth and the ability to let Julio Teheran and Randall Delgado start the year in the minors. While he doesn’t do anything to help raise their upside in win total, he probably helps raise the downside slightly, as they now have a decent enough fifth starter to keep the team from imploding if the kids aren’t quite ready on Opening Day.

The Astros, though, have little need to reduce their volatility. The marginal value of a win to a team in their position is quite small, and as a pure rebuilding organization, they’re better off figuring out what they have in a guy like Kyle Weiland instead. The innings Livan would have pitched for Houston would have just reduced the number of chances the team would have had to evaluate their young arms, and so the value of having a veteran stop-gap in place simply wasn’t there.

It’s weird to see a contender pick up a guy that the worst team in baseball just decided they didn’t want, but in this case, it makes sense for both sides. Perhaps that’s why it all happened so fast.

Reports last night suggested that the Angels and Indians were working on a deal that would ship Bobby Abreu’s discontented soul to Cleveland. The deal has apparently fallen apart, and right now, it doesn’t look like Abreu’s going to get his wish to get out of Anaheim. However, Buster Olney raised an interesting question this morning:

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In this article about the Dodgers sale (which raises some of the same questions I’m having about the price), Andrew Zimbalist says this about Frank McCourt:

“It’s problematic,” Zimbalist said. “He was looking for some kind of ongoing income stream and he got it. Here’s a guy who borrowed practically all the money to buy the team for $430 million and now he’s selling it for $2.15 billion and he’s coming out with a healthy capital gain — it’s repulsive. This is someone who doesn’t deserve to walk away with a healthy profit after eight years of running the Dodgers in the most egregious, the most inefficient, the most self-interested, and the most vainglorious, idiotic way possible. It really is repulsive that he will still be making a profit in some way.”

Amen, Mr. Zimbalist. A-men.

This isn’t one of those articles where the headline is written as a question and then I attempt to answer the question in the post. This time, I really am asking a question that I don’t think I know the answer to, and I’d love to see a good discussion in the comments about the $2.15 billion price that Magic Johnson’s group just paid for the Dodgers.

Here’s what we know.

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Dave Cameron laid out the methodology behind the rankings last Friday. Remember that the grading scale for each category is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox

Seattle’s 2011 Ranking: #17

2012 Outlook: 36 (26th)

You don’t have to crunch too many numbers to figure out that this year’s Mariners are an extreme longshot to make the playoffs. They haven’t scored 600 runs in a season since 2009, and the team is breaking in a host of young, inexperienced players, many of whom have significant question marks surrounding their 2012 production levels. The team is basically betting on regression to the mean for previously useful position players (Chone Figgins, Ichiro Suzuki, and Franklin Gutierrez) to bolster the offense, but they’re still likely to be among the lowest scoring teams in the league.

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This morning, the Boston Red Sox optioned Jose Iglesias to Triple-A. Given that he hit .235/.285/.269 in 387 plate appearances during his time in Pawtucket last year, this seems like a pretty obvious decision. While Iglesias has defensive skills that suggest he can have value even if he doesn’t ever develop into much of a hitter, there’s still a level of minimally acceptable offensive performance to make the big leagues, and it’s not clear that Iglesias currently crosses that level.

Even if we accept that Iglesias is a better hitter than his numbers last year indicate, ZIPS still projects him for just a .268 wOBA as a big leaguer this year, or about the same level of production provided by Alex Rios and Adam Dunn in 2011. Even if he was the best defensive shortstop in the game right now, that level of offense would mean he’d still top out as about a +2 win player. The upside for this skillset is basically Alcides Escobar, who posted a .282 wOBA and +10 UZR last year, and was worth +2.2 WAR in 598 PA. In reality, we’re dealing with a hitter who would need to improve significantly to get to a .282 wOBA, and projecting him as a +10 defender as a rookie is extremely aggressive.

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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

Baltimore’s 2011 Ranking: #16

2012 Outlook: – 31 (29th)

The Orioles would be a long shot to be a contender in any division in baseball, as their young pitching hasn’t emerged as they had hoped and they’ve struggled to find good complementary offensive pieces to surround their best young players. As such, this a team that is going to give up a lot of runs and not score enough to compensate. When you add in the level of competition they face in the American League East, it would take something close to the largest miracle in sports history for the Orioles to win their division this season. The addition of a second wild card spot does make it more possible for the Orioles to hope they can play in October again at some point, but that point is not this year. The talent level just isn’t in place to compete with good Major League teams, and in a division with three of the seven best teams in baseball ahead of them, they should consider a 75 win season a success.

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The hits just keep on coming. Per Ken Rosenthal, Ryan Madson is the latest pitcher to need Tommy John surgery, and will be lost for the 2012 season. The falling dominos will push Sean Marshall into the closer’s role with the Reds, and Aroldis Chapman will move back to the bullpen to replace Marshall in the vacated lefty setup role.

Obviously, this is lousy news for both Madson and the Reds, and you can’t help but wonder how this might have changed the face of the National League race had things turned out differently this winter. Depending on who you believe, the Phillies were either considering or had already agreed to a four year, $44 million deal with Madson, but ended up going after Jonathan Papelbon instead. Had the Phillies finalized that deal with Madson instead of Papelbon, we might be talking about the Marlins or Braves as frontrunners for the NL East today.

Instead, this deals a significant blow to the Reds chances of taking the NL Central, and perhaps evens out yesterday’s news that the Cardinals have lost Chris Carpenter “indefinitely”. The Reds have enough talent to contend this year, but without Madson, their bullpen takes a significant hit. Cincinnati desperately needs Chapman to get back to his dominating 2010 form, rather than the inconsistent hurler he was last year.

I also wonder how this news will affect players willingness to bet on themselves by taking Scott Boras’ advice and going for a one year “pillow contract”. Madson took a one year deal to attempt to cash in big next winter, but this news is going to crush his potential for future earnings, and in reality, he may have missed his only chance to land a long term contract. It will be interesting to see whether players begin to decide that they’re better off taking the security of a multi-year deal when they have the chance, rather than deciding that they can do better in 12 months and betting on a one year deal.

This news was expected, but Bob Dutton confirms that Joakim Soria will have Tommy John Surgery on April 3rd and is going to miss the entire 2012 season. Given that the average recovery timetable for this injury is 12-18 months, it’s likely that Soria will not be ready for the start of the 2013 season as well.

Soria will be an interesting free agent next winter once the Royals decline their $8 million club option. His prior success will mean that there will be teams interested in picking up the tab for the rest of his rehab in order to get his services for the second half of next year – the Yankees did this with David Aardsma this winter, for instance. UCL replacement has become advanced enough that many pitchers are able to return to something close to their prior form, and Soria is just 28-years-old, so he should still be able to coax a few more good years out of his arm.

The Royals have been getting a lot of grief for not trading Soria before this occurred, and in retrospect, I’m sure they wish they would have moved him when they had the chance. However, it’s also important to understand that injuries are very difficult to predict, and trading young relievers is not always guaranteed to bring back a premium return. After all, Kenny Williams got a lot of flack for dealing Sergio Santos for Nestor Molina this winter. We can’t criticize both rebuilding GMs who trade young cheap closers and rebuilding GMs who keep young cheap closers. The Royals probably should have traded Soria, but this wasn’t in an inevitable outcome, and we can’t fault the Royals for not being able to accurately predict the future.