Shortly after the Braves acquired Dan Uggla we heard that the two sides were discussing an extension. The Marlins had previously failed on that front, as Uggla rejected the team’s four-year, $48 million offer. It took a little more than a month to finish the deal. The two sides finalized it yesterday, agreeing to five years and $62 million. The Braves now have someone to man second or third for the forseeable future, but will Uggla’s production match his price tag?
Lock up your young players. That has been the theme of the past two winters. Last off-season we saw a number of prominent players, including Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez, sign extensions that will keep them in their respective towns. This year we’re seeing more of the same. The Rockies doled out perhaps the most prolific extension, signing Troy Tulowitzki through 2020. They were at it again this week, signing Carlos Gonzalez to a seven-year deal for around $80 million. That’s a pretty massive contract for a player who has played one full season and parts of two others. It also seems massive when compared to one of his peers.
It has been three months since the season ended, and many of us are still trying to wrap our heads around the 2010 Blue Jays offense. It’s not often that we see the team with the fifth worst OBP in the league finish sixth in wOBA. Last week R.J. tried to make some sense of the matter and what it means for the 2011 offense. But I’m still stuck on 2010. The platoon split information I found over the weekend didn’t help matters.
Adrian Beltre might very well be the best remaining free agent, but at this point he doesn’t have many clear suitors. Last week, after we heard light rumors that the Angels were taking a step back, Matthew explored some other possible fits. One of those bit the dust yesterday, as Ken Rosenthal reports that the A’s have removed themselves from the picture. While the Angels, despite the rumors, remain the favorites to sign Beltre, there is one other team that I can see making a run.
After improving its starting rotation with the acquisitions of Shaun Marcum and Zack Greinke, the Brewers have moved onto other aspects of team building. On offense the team appears set, as they’re returning seven of the eight starters who contributed to the team’s 110 wRC+ last season, which ranked third in the majors. Where the team could use some fortification is in the bullpen. It has addressed this by signing Takashi Saito to a one-year contract.
If you go to our pitcher leader boards and sort by BB/9, you’ll see a trio of lefties on top. Jonathan Sanchez, Gio Gonzalez, and C.J. Wilson pitched effectively in 2010 despite being the only three qualified pitchers in baseball to walk more than four per nine. Yet all of them out-performed all of their peripherals, in some cases to a considerable degree. It made me wonder who is the best bet in the long-term. In other words, if you got to pluck one of these guys from his current team, under his current circumstances, whom would you choose?
So far this off-season nine relief pitchers have signed a contract of two years or longer. When the Yankees’ signing of Pedro Feliciano becomes official that will make 10. We learned yesterday that the two sides were getting closer to a deal, and this morning they agreed on a two-year, $8 million contract that includes a player option for 2013. The Yankees now join the Angels as the only teams to sign more than one reliever to a multi-year deal.
In the past three seasons no pitcher has made more appearances than Feliciano, and it’s not particularly close. He has entered a game 266 times, and the next closest, Carlos Marmol, has 238. Unsurprisingly, in each of those three seasons he has led the league in appearances. That certainly raises a red flag. That is somewhat mitigated by his status as a lefty specialist. He enters games frequently, but he doesn’t pitch for long. In that same three-year period 48 pitchers have thrown more pitches and the same number have faced more batters. He also has never been placed on the disabled list.
When he does appear in games he’s fairly effective. In 459 career appearances he has a 3.31 ERA, 3.75 FIP, 3.81 xFIP, and 4.06 tERA — though his tERA has been much lower since his return from Japan in 2006. His strikeout rate is always in the 8 per nine range, though his walks have typically been over 4 per nine. It’s no surprise that his finest seasons have come when his walk rate has dipped below 3 per nine. The one mitigating factor there is that a number of those walks are intentional, occurring when the opponent’s lineup goes lefty-righty-lefty. That’s not to say that the intentional walks don’t hurt. They do. But they’re a bit easier to stomach if he faces a lefty afterward.
A groundball-inducing lefty who can also strike out his share of same-handed batters will fit well with the Yankees. He can handle some of the tougher lefties in the division, including new Bostonians Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford. Two years and $8 million might be a bit of an overpay — Feliciano’s WAR/Dollars figure has never hit $4 million. Then again, 1) WAR might undervalue relievers, and 2) the Yankees aren’t on the same pay scale as the rest of the league. With only roughly $185 million on the books for the 2011 season, including projected arbitration raises and reserve clause obligations, they can afford to overpay a few players that can help at the margins.
This off-season we’ve seen 13 catchers sign major league deals — 14 if we count Victor Martinez among them. For the most part these deals were modest in nature, between $3 and $5 million per season for a short span. The exception is John Buck, who signed a three-year, $18 million contract early in the free agency season. While the initial reaction pegged it as a poor deal, there was a chance that the deal could look a bit better once the rest of the off-season unfolded. A month later, it appears to be the opposite.
When the Dodgers non-tendered Russell Martin, it was only a matter of time before some team took a flier on him. Three AL East teams, in fact, were reportedly seeking his services. This morning we learned that the Yankees have come out ahead. MLB.com’s Alden Gonzalez reports that the Yankees have agreed to terms with Martin. His presence could drastically alter how the Yankees approach the next eight months.
They call it Plan B for a reason. Last week, while meeting with the press at the Winter Meetings, Yankees manager Joe Girardi said that the team had a list of five or so players the team had discussed in the event they miss on Cliff Lee. While we don’t know which players the Yankees have identified, we do know one thing: none of them is as good an option as Cliff Lee. But with Lee spurning the Yankees’ bid, they’re stuck with one of these lesser options, or else go into the season with a questionable rotation.