I was recently doing some research for an ESPN article using our depth charts, and a few observations came to mind:
1) No one has any idea what to make of Alexander Guerrero;
2) The Astros are actually getting some respect, and the Marlins aren’t; and
3) Wow, would you look at the non-Jay Bruce members of the Cincinnati outfield? Read the rest of this entry »
By now, the “Kendrys Morales is this year’s Kyle Lohse” jokes are already stale, but the point remains: Just as we saw with Lohse last year, a decent-yet-hardly-elite player is going to get weighed down by the anchor of the qualifying offer placed upon him. Not only does the offer drop the cost of a draft pick on Morales, but it sets the baseline of a $14.1 million salary, and while there’s nothing that says he can’t ultimately accept less than that, the fact that he’s a Scott Boras client makes it incredibly unlikely.
As you’d expect, the proclamations for his future are getting dire, especially now that the Mariners — the only team who wouldn’t need to surrender a pick for him, of course — went out and added Corey Hart and Logan Morrison to a roster that already had Justin Smoak (and, somewhere, Jesus Montero). One unnamed GM told Peter Gammons that he “can’t see Morales signing until after the [June] draft,” when the compensation pick would disappear, which seems a bit drastic, but Buster Olney’s suggestion of “February or March” looks absolutely reasonable.
Boras eventually found Lohse a home in Milwaukee days before the 2013 started, and he’ll do the same here eventually. So let’s play along: Where can Morales land in 2014? Read the rest of this entry »
Last year, in the electronic pages of FanGraphs+, I wrote this about Juan Uribe: “There’s your run-of-the-mill ‘being terrible at baseball,’ and then there’s the performance art piece put on by Juan Uribe in 2012.” I talked about how the only two players who had a worse wOBA (with at least 450 PA) over 2011-12 were Chone Figgins and Jeff Mathis. I laughed at how Dodgers manager Don Mattingly had buried him down the stretch in 2012, refusing to start him after August 14, though he remained active; I ended, snarkily, by saying “What can be said about Juan Uribe at this point that hasn’t been already been said about other great disasters in world history? At least the Titanic had a band providing entertainment until the very end.”
Mean, perhaps, but then again, it’s difficult to express just how phenomenally atrocious Uribe had been in the first two years of his contract. When the 2013 season began, it seemed something of a minor miracle that Uribe had even survived the winter, a fact seemingly more due to the team’s inability to find an insurance policy for Luis Cruz or a suitable first base backup for Adrian Gonzalez than anything. If Scott Rolen had accepted the team’s offer to come play third base, Uribe maybe doesn’t make the roster. If Cruz hadn’t imploded so spectacularly, Uribe maybe doesn’t see July. Either way, if his career somehow even extended past 2013, it felt all but certain it would be on non-roster invites for the rest of his days.
Over the weekend, the Dodgers reached an agreement with Uribe to come back for two more seasons. They guaranteed him a reported $15 million, and they reportedly had to beat out at least the Marlins and Rays to do so. The world’s a twisted place. Read the rest of this entry »
If it’s possible to both buy low and sell low simultaneously, then that might be just what the Rockies and Athletics did by swapping 25-year-old lefty starters Drew Pomeranz and Brett Anderson on Tuesday afternoon at the Winter Meetings. (The A’s are reportedly also sending $2 million; Colorado sends 23-year-old righty starting prospect Christopher Jensen, who has has yet to make it out of A-ball and is on no one’s top prospect list.) Read the rest of this entry »
Lest we get totally overwhelmed by $200 million contracts and Jacoby Ellsbury jumping from Boston to the Yankees and the Astros actually signing major league free agents, let’s not let a smaller yet incredibly fun story pass us by.
27-year-old Indians catcher Carlos Santana, who hasn’t played third base with any regularity since way back in Single-A in 2006 (for a town [Vero Beach] that doesn’t even have a team any more, and for a club that had 43-year-old Pat Borders seeing time behind the dish) wants to give his old position a try next season.
In fact, he really wants to, as GM Chris Antonetti told reporters a few days ago: Read the rest of this entry »
Since Monday night, the Tigers have gone to considerable lengths to remake a pitching staff that ranked among the game’s best in 2013. On Monday, it was the confounding trade that sent Doug Fister to Washington for some stocking stuffers; on Tuesday, reports surfaced that they’d signed closer Joe Nathan to a two-year deal, after reportedly being rebuffed by Brian Wilson.
Dave went over the Fister deal already, so we won’t rehash it here, except to point out that it’s quite likely that Drew Smyly will shift from the bullpen to the rotation to replace Fister. At the moment, that means the Detroit bullpen, a source of so much concern last year, has added Nathan via free agency and Ian Krol in the Fister trade, while subtracting Smyly and free agents Joaquin Benoit and Jose Veras. They now have a closer, but do they have a better bullpen? Read the rest of this entry »
While most teams took the opportunity to enjoy a quiet Thanksgiving holiday, the Minnesota Twins instead figured the time was right to hand out the two biggest free agent contracts in team history. On Wednesday, they signed Ricky Nolasco for four years and $49 million; on Saturday night, it was Phil Hughes for three years and $24 million. In the span of four days, Terry Ryan added two pitchers who lost 25 games last year to his 96-loss team, and guaranteed them $73 million in the process.
If you think that’s crazy, know that you’re far from alone. Between the dual questions of “is either pitcher really worth that money?” and “why is a 96-loss team spending this much to maybe get to only 90 losses next year?” it’s easy to question the Minnesota plan here. That being said: these are moves that are still pretty defensible. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last few days, you’ve no doubt heard a lot of grumbling about the fact that players with PED histories are getting paid. You heard it a little when Marlon Byrd (career earnings: approximately $22 million) signed for a guaranteed $16 million with the Phillies, and a little more when Carlos Ruiz (career earnings: approximately $15 million) accepted $26 million to stay in Philadelphia.
But of course, that was just a prelude to the howling that came when Jhonny Peralta, with around $30 million in career earnings to his name, picked up a $53 million contract from the Cardinals — and it’s only going to get worse if Nelson Cruz, who has earned approximately $20 million in his career, actually gets the 4/$75m contract he’s reportedly asking for. Read the rest of this entry »
If there’s any baseball story that’s just never going to end this winter — other than, “Jack Morris should/shouldn’t be in the Hall!” and “Alex Rodriguez fights with MLB!” — it’s almost certainly going to be “the Dodgers have too many outfielders, who will they trade?”
It’s been a slowly building narrative for more than a year now, and now that Yasiel Puig has proven himself to be a quality major league player and top prospect Joc Pederson is just about ready to join him, it’s deafening. That means Matt Kemp is going to the Blue Jays… or the Rangers… or the Mariners… or the Red Sox… unless Andre Ethier goes to the Mets or an unlikely Puig trade blows up the baseball world else first. It’s both a fun and frustrating time of year, where every report that one team may possibly have communicated with another about some player sends fans into a frenzy. Read the rest of this entry »
No team has been on a faster pace early in free agency so far than the Phillies, who have added Marlon Byrd to their outfield and agreed to retain catcher Carlos Ruiz. As you certainly know, both moves have been met with derision in certain corners of the baseball world, partially because both Byrd & Ruiz are older players with recent PED suspensions and at least one lousy year in the last two, and partially because Ruben Amaro’s reputation is such these days that he could find a way to trade John Mayberry for Mike Trout and people would still laugh at him about it.
Amaro’s earned a lot of that scorn, obviously, thanks to the atrocious Ryan Howard extension, his bets on Michael Young & Delmon Young last winter, and his insistence on retaining an aging core as the team has fallen from 102 wins to 81 to 73 in the last three years. But while these new moves aren’t exactly slam dunks, you can defend each of them on their own. Byrd’s contract is exactly in line with what basically everyone on the internet — FanGraphs readers included — expected he would get, and while guaranteeing Ruiz three years at his age is a lot harder to stomach, Dave Cameron did lay out a convincing case for why it can be considered a reasonable move. Read the rest of this entry »