A few hours ago, news broke that the Yankees finally shipped Jesus Montero to Seattle for their premium right-handed starting pitcher. However, despite a couple of years of rumors and suggestions, Felix Hernandez is not the one donning pinstripes – the Yankees landed 23-year-old (in five days, anyway) Michael Pineda instead.

While Pineda isn’t King Felix, he’s a pretty terrific young pitcher in his own right. He jumped directly into the Mariners rotation out of spring training last year and was good enough to make the All-Star team in his rookie season. And, while Safeco Field is a nice place for a rookie pitcher to learn his craft, Pineda did most of the good work on his own.

Among qualified AL starting pitchers last year, only Brandon Morrow and Justin Verlander posted a higher strikeout rate than Pineda, who whiffed 24.9% of the batters he faced. His K% was better than David Price, CC Sabathia, and yes, even Felix. Pineda’s live fastball and willingness to live up in the strike zone led to a lot of swinging strikes, and that had nothing to do with the park he played in.

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Yoenis Cespedes made his professional debut Thursday night in the Dominican Winter League. The much-hyped Cuban defector promptly went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts and a hit by pitch. At least there’s nowhere to go but up.

Although Cespedes has yet to establish residency outside of Cuba and is still ineligible to sign as a free agent, the market has largely cleared (outside of Prince Fielder), and thus the Hot Stove’s attention turns his way. Expect the hype to approach and potentially surpass that which surrounded Aroldis Chapman two years ago — Cespedes may not having something as tangible as a 100 MPH fastball, but he does have The Showcase. He also has a tremendous record as one of the Cuban League’s best hitters at just age 26. But it’s difficult enough to project the performance of solid minor leaguers, where data is largely complete and comparables abound. How can we even begin to filter through the noise in Cespedes’s excellent statistical record?

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The Reds entered the off-season with two possible paths forward:

1. Trade Joey Votto for a bushel of young players and accept a consolidation while breaking in the foundation of their next core group of everyday players.

2. Trade some of those young players for roster upgrades in an effort to win while they have Votto under contract.

They choose the second path, shipping Yonder Alonso and friends to San Diego for Mat Latos, sending Travis Wood to Chicago for Sean Marshall, and then using most of their remaining budget allowance to sign Ryan Madson to a one-year deal to take over as the team’s closer. While Latos offers both present and future value, the other moves only upgrade Cincinnati’s roster for 2012, and next winter, they’ll have a tough time retaining Madson, Marshall, and Brandon Phillips while also paying Votto the significant raise that his contract calls for.

So, the Reds are something close to being all-in on this season. If they win, they might create enough extra revenue to give Votto a long-term mega-contract and keep their franchise player. If they don’t win, however, then they’re going to have a hard time selling Votto on re-signing, and they’ll have to explore moving him before he can leave via free agency. That’s not a good scenario, and so the Reds should be highly motivated to maximize their positive outcomes in 2012.

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The Red Sox entered the 2011 season with high hopes of winning their third championship of the millennium. Best laid plans didn’t come to fruition as the events of that wild and wacky final day of the regular season kept them out of the playoffs entirely.

Their offense wasn’t to blame, as the Red Sox posted a league-leading .351 wOBA and 116 wRC+. Their bullpen led the junior circuit in WAR and FIP as well, while throwing 517.1 innings. That innings total was the second-highest in the league, indicative of their major problem area: the rotation.

While the Red Sox starting rotation wasn’t atrocious, it certainly didn’t live up to expectations. It posted the highest walk rate in the American League, and finished in the bottom third in all of ERA, FIP and SIERA. Josh Beckett and Jon Lester pitched well, as did Clay Buchholz over his 14 starts. Everyone else left much to be desired.

After seeing the Yankees eek solid seasons out of Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia, the Red Sox seem to be adopting a similar approach for the 2012 season. Instead of looking for major splashes, or even above average reinforcements like Edwin Jackson and Roy Oswalt, the Red Sox have signed Aaron Cook, and are currently engaged in talks with Vicente Padilla. Cook makes some sense, in spite of his recent struggles to stay on the mound, because he offers one of the best groundball rates in baseball when healthy, and averaged close to 4 WAR from 2006-08.

Padilla is another story, as he carries various forms of risk and has never really offered much reward. Minor league deals are almost never detrimental to the signing team, but expectations should be significantly tempered for Padilla, even if he somehow manages to stay healthy.

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Walt Jocketty and his Cincinnati Reds have signaled to the baseball community that they believe the NL Central to be ripe for the taking in 2012.

The organization has been extremely bold this offseason. They opted to leverage several of their young, valuable assets — namely Yonder Alonso, Travis Wood, and Yasmani Grandal — to acquire Mat Latos and Sean Marshall, in hopes of complementing a potent offense that posted the fourth-best team wOBA in the league last season and catapulting the team into the postseason.

Cincinnati ratcheted up that aggressiveness even further on Tuesday evening by inking closer Ryan Madson to a one-year, $8.5M contract.

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NOTE: The left-handed Paul McCartney should NOT be
confused with his Maholmish southclaw brethren.

Late Monday night, Paul Maholm broke the news via his own Twitter account that he has signed with the Chicago Cubs. This morning, Bruce Levine reported that the deal will pay him $4.25 million for 2012 with a $500,000 buyout of a $6.5 million option for 2013, so the deal will either be 1/4.75 or 2/10.75. This puts his guaranteed money at just slightly less than what the Indians took on to acquire Derek Lowe. If he pitches well and the Cubs pick up the option, he’ll essentially have gotten the same deal as Chris Capuano. The market for this kind of pitcher has been pretty clearly defined.

What can we expect from Maholm? And is he a good fit for the Cubs rotation?

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Looking at Howie Kendrick’s performance record, it seems odd that he has only played two full seasons. Those two seasons — his two most recent campaigns — paint a starkly different picture. If Kendrick performs the way he did last year for the foreseeable future then the Angels scored big by extending his contract before he reaches free agency, but even a baseline Kendrick performance will make this contract a good one.

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It really seems as if Manny Ramirez wants to play in the major leagues in 2012. He’s had a rough go of it since last April, having a brief and ineffective stint with the Tampa Bay Rays that ended when he retired to avoid the ignominy of a 100-game suspension for a positive PED test. Yes, Manny brings baggage, and he will be 40 in May. However, despite the way things ended in 2011, Ramirez has a long record of impressive offensive production. It is hard to say which teams might actually be interested, but what teams even have a place for him? Not many, and league-wide interest (understandably) seems tepid so far. But if we scour the league, some possibilities do appear.

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The Texas Rangers took an interesting approach at the 2011 trade deadline. Instead of seeking big-time impact talent in the lineup or rotation, they sought to shore up the bullpen. Jon Daniels worked out deals with the Orioles for Mike Gonzalez and Koji Uehara, and when it seemed like Heath Bell was headed to Texas, it turned out the Rangers’ bid was awarded the prized Mike Adams. Gonzalez was set to hit the free agent market after the season, while both Uehara and Adams were under control for the 2012 season as well.

The impact of the newly acquired bullpen trio was tougher to measure statistically — which is the case for most relievers, especially over minute samples — but the bullpen was certainly improved. In the end, however, best laid plans didn’t come to fruition and Uehara was left off of the World Series roster. The Rangers even fielded calls pertaining to his availability this offseason. This, despite a fluky high home run rate that spat in the face of his 23 strikeouts and one walk over 22 innings after the trade. Regardless, all available evidence suggests that Uehara remains a relief stud, and over a full season has a better chance to make his impact felt.

And in spite of his “struggles” the Rangers still intended to further shore up the bullpen this offseason, signing Joe Nathan, seriously pursuing Andrew Bailey and considering both Gonzalez and Ryan Madson. Their activity suggests that they want to reduce the risk of bullpen attrition by employing numerous top-notch relievers, especially at the back end. This invites the multi-million dollar question: should they sign Ryan Madson given their circumstances?

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It’s generally assumed that the Padres will have no trouble putting together a good pitching staff because of the park they play in, and while they have generally given us little reason to think otherwise, last year the Friars didn’t get such great relief work. Enter Andrew Cashner, who was traded to San Diego this afternoon along with prospect Kyung-Min Na for prospects Anthony Rizzo and Zach Cates.

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