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Detroit Goes for It, Signs Prince Fielder
The Mystery Team strikes again. After months of rumors that had Prince Fielder going to Washington, Texas, Baltimore, Seattle, and everywhere in between except Detroit, the Tigers decided to respond to Victor Martinez’s knee injury in the most extreme way possible – giving Prince Fielder an enormous amount of money.
As first reported by Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports, with the details added by Jon Heyman, Fielder is set to receive $214 million over the next nine years, or just under $24 million per season. Essentially, he got the same deal as Albert Pujols, just minus one year in length. This deal ranks behind only that deal and the two Alex Rodriguez contracts as the largest investment in the history of the sport, so Fielder has essentially been paid at a level that puts him in the same company as two inner-circle Hall of Famers. No pressure or anything.
Let’s start with this deal from the Tigers perspective. As I wrote yesterday, the Tigers couldn’t afford to settle for an inferior DH replacement after losing Victor Martinez for the season with an ACL tear. With Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander in their primes, the team was essentially committed to contending, but they didn’t have a championship roster around them. The Tigers were absolutely in the sweet spot of the win curve where improving the roster could have the most impact. Adding Fielder pushes them from a solid team that would be in the mix to win a bad division up to being able to plan on playing in October and potentially challenging for a World Series title. After Martinez went down, there was probably no team in baseball that needed Fielder more than Detroit.
Would Taking a One-Year Deal Help Edwin Jackson?
While there are still a number of free agents on the market, there are only three guys left who project to make a significant impact on a team’s win total next year – Prince Fielder, Roy Oswalt, and Edwin Jackson. Fielder is still available due to a strategy decision by his agent, who has dragged out the process to try and lure more teams into the bidding. Oswalt is reportedly being picky about where he’ll sign, and as an older pitcher coming off an injury plagued season, he fits the mold of guys who traditionally sign later in the off-season. Jackson remains on the market, however, simply due to a lack of interest in his services.
The Yankees were rumored to be a potential landing spot, but they traded for Michael Pineda and signed Hiroki Kuroda instead. The Red Sox seem to prefer Oswalt. The Reds gave their last remaining free agent dollars to Ryan Madson and Ryan Ludwick. Most of the other teams still shopping for starting pitching seem to be looking through the bargain bin, deciding between the likes of Rich Harden, Jeff Francis, or Zach Duke. So, today, Ken Rosenthal reported that Jackson may settle for a one-year deal with plans of hitting the market next winter and landing a bigger contract.
This plan has worked for others before – Adrian Beltre, Lance Berkman, Carl Pavano, Bobby Abreu, Randy Wolf, and Kyle Lohse are all guys who took one year deals in order to try and re-establish some value, then had a good season and cashed in with larger contracts the following winter. However, in just about every case, the player was coming off a lousy season compared with what they’d done in years prior. Beltre (8 HRs in 2009) and Berkman (14 HRs in 2010) were coming off seasons where their power disappeared. Bobby Abreu was headed into his age-35 season and his defense had degraded to the point where he needed to be moved to DH. Pavano posted a 5.10 ERA in the first healthy season he’d had in five years, while Wolf had just put up a 4.30 ERA while spending the first two-thirds of the season pitching in Petco Park. Lohse’s 4.62 ERA, supported by mediocre strikeout and ground ball rates, also wasn’t overly appealing.
Do The Tigers Need To Make A Significant Move?
When it was announced last week that Victor Martinez suffered a torn ACL during off-season workouts, I advised on Twitter that we not “overreact” to the news. While Martinez was a good player in his first year for the Tigers, his value on the field was likely overstated through having a high average and getting to bat behind Miguel Cabrera. That combination led to 103 RBIs and a 16th place finish on the AL MVP balloting, but his 130 wRC+ as a guy who spent most of his time at DH led to just +2.9 WAR. He was essentially the Tigers version of Michael Young – a nice player, but not one who couldn’t be replaced with a little bit of effort.
The most obvious candidate to step into Martinez’s vacated role was Carlos Pena, who posted a similar-ish 126 wRC+ last year, even if he got there in a very different way. However, he settled up with Tampa Bay last week, and now the team is kicking the tires on the likes of Johnny Damon, Raul Ibanez, Hideki Matsui, and yes, even Juan Pierre. Those four players combined for +0.1 WAR last year, and Damon was the only one who even resembled a guy who a contender should be willing to give regular playing time to. If the team does decide to pick a replacement out of that crop, then Martinez’s loss will represent a pretty significant downgrade.
And, honestly, I’m not sure the Tigers are in a position to be accepting that kind of loss right now. While the AL Central is neck-and-neck with the NL West for the title of weakest division in baseball, both the Indians and Royals have enough interesting young talent on hand to win 90+ games if things break right. And, given all the regression that Detroit needs to be expecting from the talent they are retaining from last year’s division winning roster, winning 90+ looks like it could be a challenge.
This isn’t to say that Detroit has a bad team, but they do need to prepare for a number of their most important players from 2011 to perform significantly worse in 2012.
Fausto Carmona Is No More
Yesterday, Enrique Rojas broke the news that Fausto Carmona’s real name is actually Roberto Heredia, and he’s three years older than his listed age of 28. Additionally, because he was using a false identity, Carmona’s Heredia’s chances of securing a work visa seem to be less than stellar. Previous players who have gotten caught using a false name and birthdate have ended up getting stuck in their home country, and it’s an open question whether or not Heredia will make it to the U.S. this year. The Indians are likely best off preparing as if he’s not going to be a member of their rotation in 2012.
Replacing a guy who posted a 130 ERA- last year doesn’t seem like that big of a challenge. In fact, the Tribe could run out pretty much any random Triple-A arm they wanted and expect to get similar or better results than what Heredia gave them a year ago. Of course, since you’re reading FanGraphs, you’re likely aware that past year ERA isn’t a great predictor of next season ERA, especially in cases where the results don’t line up with the underlying peripherals. In Heredia’s case, his xFIP- of 103 suggests that he was more likely to post an ERA closer to league average this year than he was to be lousy once again, and a starter who can throw 200 league average-ish innings has some real value. The Indians realized this as well, which is why they picked up his $7 million option rather than letting him hit the free agent market.
Unfortunately for Cleveland, Heredia’s in-flux status means that they can’t really count on being able to void his contract and reallocate those funds to another pitcher. There’s still a chance he could get his visa and join the team, in which case the club would still be on the hook for his salary – trying to get the contract completely voided on the basis of fraud isn’t easy and the case wouldn’t be settled any time soon.
So, with potentially limited funds to spend (after all, they still need a first baseman as well), Chris Antonetti will likely have to turn to the trade market if he wants to find a replacement for what the team was expecting Heredia to provide. And, luckily for the Indians, they might have a chance to make a deal that could allow them to bring in a pretty similar pitcher that they’re already very familiar with – Jake Westbrook.
What Darvish Needs To Do To Earn The Money
With a total commitment of around $111 million, Yu Darvish certainly didn’t come cheap for the Texas Rangers. While the team may expect to recoup some of that investment through generating revenues associated with having him on the team, it’s not very easy to plan a trip over from Japan to watch a starting pitcher, so we should be careful projecting large attendance gains based on having Darvish on the roster. And, while some may argue that the $51 million posting fee was a separate expense than player payroll, it’s still money the organization no longer will have access to that was a direct cost of having Darvish on the roster. Regardless of how the Rangers account for it in their ledger, it’s part of his expense, and needs to be considered when evaluating just how well Darvish needs to pitch in order to justify the Rangers decision.
So, how good does he need to be in order to accumulate approximately $110 million of value over the next six years? At $5 million per win with five percent annual inflation, the Rangers would be paying for +19.7 WAR during the life of the contract. If you think inflation’s going to be a little less than that, then you’ll come in around +21 WAR, a little more and you’ll be closer to +18 WAR. Most reasonable assumptions in terms of the current and expected future market for wins will lead you to somewhere in the general range of +20 WAR as Darvish’s target.
So, how reasonable is it for the Rangers to expect +20 wins of value from Darvish over the next six years. To answer that question, I decided to look at rolling six year windows over the last 10 years to see just how many pitchers have generally been able to perform at that kind of level. Here are the totals for each six year window since 2002:
Jesus Montero: Cabrera, Konerko, or Karim Garcia?
Over the last couple of years, I’ve expressed an amount of skepticism relating to Jesus Montero’s status as an elite prospect. Essentially, my argument has been that since Montero is likely to be the kind of player who produces all of his value at the plate, he’s going to have to develop into a monster hitter to justify the expectations placed upon him. For bat-only players, the offensive bar to become a superstar is extremely high, so Montero would have to become one of the very best hitters in baseball to be a truly elite player.
The counterpoint has usually been that Montero is going to become one of those hitters, with scouts comparing his offensive profile to Mike Piazza and Miguel Cabrera, among others. He’s extremely strong, he’s got pretty good plate coverage, and he’s held his own in the minors while being pushed aggressively up through the minor leagues. Several of the game’s best hitters had very similar development paths, and it’s clear that Montero could develop into that kind of offensive force. Given what the Mariners paid to get him, they’re clearly hoping for that outcome.
Still, Cabrera and Piazza are Montero’s ceiling – the best possible outcome if he continues to develop, stays healthy, and maximizes his physical abilities – but projecting a player solely based on upside will often lead you astray. In evaluating Montero as an offensive prospect, we need to not only know what his ceiling would be, but the range of potential outcomes and the likelihood of each one coming to pass. To find a more complete picture of what a Montero-style hitting prospect usually turns into, we turn to history and the lessons of players who were lauded in similar ways as Montero is now.
Is Jesus Montero More Valuable at Catcher or DH?
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?
A Quick Note On Michael Pineda’s Splits
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.