Archive for Daily Graphings

Imagine, if you will, that the Yankees signed Matt Garza. Alternatively, imagine that the Yankees signed Ervin Santana, or Ubaldo Jimenez. Those guys have been considered the three best domestic free-agent starting pitchers, and if the Yankees were to pick up one of them, it would be a major investment and it would be considered a major improvement to a rotation in some need. It would make headlines, and it would cost the Yankees three or four or five guaranteed years at something in the neighborhood of $15 million each. It would be a splash, the latest in what would be a series of offseason splashes for the front office.

The Yankees just recently signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys in 2013. They signed a free agent who was more valuable than each of those guys between 2011-2013, and they signed a free agent who projects to be more valuable than each of those guys in 2014. I’ll grant that what Hiroki Kuroda doesn’t have on his side is age, but what he does have is ability, and for a year and $16 million, he ought to be Hiroki Kuroda again. Which is likely to be under-appreciated, again.

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I don’t mean to pick on Nelson Cruz. I know I already named him as the biggest land mine of the 2014 free agent class, and I’m not trying to pile on. But down here in Orlando, it is widely expected that Cruz is going to sign in the next few days, probably for around $15 million per year for between three and five years, depending on how intense the bidding gets.

It’s nuts. The way the market for Cruz is shaping up, he very well could sign the most ridiculous free agent contract since the Barry Zito deal. Sure, there have been some serious overpays for overrated players in previous years, but in most of those cases, it’s just been too much money for a still-good player. Prince Fielder wasn’t worth $216 million, but Prince Fielder was a legitimately good player. Nelson Cruz isn’t even that. Nelson Cruz is a mediocrity on the verge of getting paid like a guy who matters.

So, teams bidding for Nelson Cruz, I would like to offer you a sobering list of comparisons that might make you reconsider your bids.

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The goal, always, is to win a championship, and indeed there’s nothing better than being able to win a championship, but such a triumph can come with certain consequences. Prominent among them is the common desire to keep a championship team together, even if other moves might be more useful. There’s also the tendency to over-favor a championship model, since, you know, the plan already worked once. But an advantage of winning it all can be that other people want to join the team, or that quality members want to come back. After the Red Sox won it all, Mike Napoli became a free agent. And late last week, Napoli re-signed, reportedly leaving money and years on the table to give the Sox a discount.

Consider that Napoli is 32 years old, and he re-signed for two years and $32 million. Curtis Granderson is 32 years old, and he signed for just about twice that much despite coming off a bad year. Carlos Beltran is 36 years old, and he signed for an extra year despite age leaving him a mess in the field. All three players were extended qualifying offers. It’s not directly comparable, but Tim Lincecum was given a slightly bigger contract than Napoli despite having allowed a billion runs over the last two seasons. Napoli’s getting up there, yeah, and the issue with which he was diagnosed a year ago hasn’t gone away, but as players in his situation go, he’s signed to something of a bargain deal that fits right within Boston’s organizational model.

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Roy Halladay is calling it a career, having been prematurely pushed out of the game by a shoulder that simply would no longer cooperate. According to Jon Heyman, the Blue Jays will officially sign Halladay to a one day contract and announce his retirement this afternoon, so that he can finish his career with the organization where he made his mark as one of the game’s best pitchers. And make no mistake; Halladay is one of the best hurlers of his generation, and he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Halladay doesn’t have the legacy numbers that usually go with Hall of Fame induction. He will finish with 203 career wins and just 2,749 innings, putting him at the very low end of acceptable totals for induction among starting pitchers in those two categories. But, thankfully for Halladay, baseball is moving away from evaluating pitchers by career win totals, and his run of dominance makes him deserving of a place in Cooperstown.

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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 »

Ryan Webb was one last week’s more surprising non-tenders. Miami decided Webb wasn’t worth his projected $1.5 million salary, according to Matt Swartz’s arbitration projections. In the past two seasons, Webb was worth 1.2 wins for the Marlins while working in 131 games. But don’t feel bad for Webb. He didn’t stay unemployed long: Baltimore added the reliever on a two-year deal for $4.5 million.

The team reportedly liked how Webb’s ground-ball skills compared to the freshly-traded Jim Johnson, and acknowledged Webb’s career splits while also noting he made improvements in that department this past season. Pitchers can change the type of pitcher they are, such as Edward Mujica’s transition from an extreme fly-ball pitcher to a heavy ground-ball pitcher. But how does a pitcher  improve his ability to get out opposite-handed batters without adding a pitch?

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In a court filing late Friday night, Major League Baseball told the federal judge hearing San Jose’s lawsuit against the league that MLB rejected the Oakland A’s proposal to move to San Jose in June.

Specifically, MLB wrote on page 6 of the Joint Case Management Conference Statement:

In fact, MLB denied the Athletics’ relocation request on June 17, 2013, one day before this lawsuit was filed. On that date, Commissioner Selig formally notified the Athletics ownership that he was not satisfied with the club’s relocation proposal. (Emphasis in original court filing).

MLB’s bold statement appeared to be a shift in position, if not in emphasis, from previous public statements. But a source familiar with the situation told me this morning that the June letter rejected only the specific proposal the A’s had submitted to MLB, on the grounds that the proposal lacked certain information and assurances sought by the league. The source couldn’t provide additional information on where the general idea of the A’s to San Jose currently stands.

Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that A’s owner Lew Wolff said that “because the matter is a legal proceeding, he cannot comment, and he stressed, as always, that he is following the  procedures set up by Major League Baseball.”

The June letter from Selig to the A’s has not been made public. In fact, it hasn’t even been shared with the City of San Jose, its attorneys or the Court. MLB is waiting for the Court to enter a protective order before providing the letter in the litigation. Protective orders are common in lawsuits that involve confidential business information, although the breadth and scope of the orders vary from case to case. Neither MLB nor its attorneys responded to specific questions on the basis for keeping the June letter confidential from the public.

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In the winter of 2011, Carlos Beltran hit free agency. He was heading into his age-35 season, but he was also coming off a pretty great walk-year, as he posted a 152 wRC+ in 598 plate appearances, the best single season wRC+ of his career. Even with declining defensive skills and a sub-par UZR rating, he still racked up +4.3 WAR, 15th best in baseball among outfielders. And, because of a clause inserted in his contract, the Giants were not allowed to offer him arbitration, so he hit the market as a no compensation free agent.

And he got 2 years and $26 million. Heath Bell got $27 million that winter — granted, it was for three years instead of two — but the market still gave Heath Bell more guaranteed money than Carlos Beltran two off-seasons ago. Since then, two teams have paid to get rid of Heath Bell, and I think it’s fair to say that the market missed on that deal. But the market also clearly missed on Beltran that winter, as he was one of the most productive hitters signed that off-season and got a fraction of what the premier free agents were landing. That wasn’t a recessionary winter; that was the winter that saw Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder land deals for over $200 million apiece and $100+ million commitments for both Yu Darvish and Jose Reyes.

Now, Beltran is two years older, and heading into his age-37 season. His new walk year wRC+ is 132, still very good, but not at the level he was at the last time he went into free agency. His defense has continued to decline, and now his walk-year WAR is just +2.0. Still, the Cardinals made him a qualifying offer, so this time around, any team signing him would have to forfeit a draft pick in order to do so.

Two years older. Not as good of a player as he was. Compensation attached. This time, 3 years and $45 million.

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Hey, Tony Blengino here. You might remember me from such Mariner classics as “MMIX – Negative Run Differential Theater” , or “2010 – A Spaced Odyssey”. For some years, I was a scout with the Brewers, and in more recent years I was an assistant to the GM with the Mariners. While I’m between baseball adventures, I’ve been given the privilege of writing on the storied pages of FanGraphs. I know the bar is high here, and I’ll do my best to reach it.

Alas, I am no longer a Mariner, but I was one long enough to help assemble a crew of talented, relatively inexpensive youngsters that made the Robinson Cano Era possible. This article will not attempt to say whether a 10-year, $240M commitment to Cano is a sign of the apocalypse, the gateway to a golden era in Mariner baseball, or something in between. There will be plenty of other articles for that. In this one, I will simply take a look at the player’s potential aging curve, from a couple of different perspectives — one historical, one more qualitative. Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go — Robinson Cano is pretty good. Clearly the best bat on the free agent market, and certainly a sturdier asset than Prince Fielder and Josh Hamilton were at the time they entered the free-agent market. He has been remarkably consistent, and remarkably healthy throughout his career. He provides offense at a position where it is not plentiful. But where does Robby Cano fit in with other offensive 2Bs in baseball history, and how did they age? Let’s take a look. Read the rest of this entry »

It was pretty weird when Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners for the Rangers. It was weird when Jose Reyes left the Mets for the Marlins, and it was weird when Albert Pujols left the Cardinals for the Angels. There have been unexpected big-money moves in free agency before, but this one feels like it might be unprecedented, given who the Yankees are, and given who the Mariners are and have been. It makes total sense, of course — Robinson Cano couldn’t turn down ten guaranteed years — but the fact of the matter is that the Yankees lost a superstar to a team that’s been an also-ran, a team criticized for not opening up its wallet. This is not what people expected would happen, as little as a month ago.

This is a page of 2014 Steamer projections. You’ll find Cano seventh in projected WAR, between Troy Tulowitzki and David Wright. No matter how you look at it, Cano, right now, is among baseball’s very best position players. The Yankees don’t have him anymore. Look at the rest of that first page of projections and you’ll notice most of the top WAR guys are unavailable. They are, rightfully, under control and difficult to acquire. The Yankees need to figure out life after Robinson Cano, but despite the sequence of events, the team has already started. Really, he’s already been replaced.

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