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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On Monday night, the Nippon Ham Fighters announced they would accept the Texas Rangers’ $51.7M bid for 25-year-old right hander Yu Darvish. The decision ended a months-long rumorfest concerning Japan’s best pitcher last season — and put on full display the oddity that is the Nippon Professional Baseball posting system.

Much digital ink has spilled in service to the tricky nature of the MLB-NPB player transfer process. It stinks of inefficiencies; it dances around yet-fully-realized moral hazards; and it is, quite possibly and quite rightly, nearing its demise.
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When Alex Anthopoulos and the Toronto Blue Jays acquired center fielder Colby Rasmus for Edwin Jackson, Octavio Dotel, and Marc Rzepczynski just before the Trade Deadline last summer, the blogosphere and Twitterverse were exploding with praise for Toronto.

Anthopoulos parted with relatively little to acquire a young center fielder who was worth 4.3 WAR in the previous season at only 24 years old. His .366 wOBA was the third best in baseball by a center fielder, which was only bested by Josh Hamilton and Carlos Gonzalez. Rasmus also had three-and-a-half years remaining under team control, which only augmented his value as a baseball asset.

The trade was an unequivocal win for our amiable neighbors north of the border. Toronto’s stat-friendly, new-age general manager hoodwinked his backward counterpart in St. Louis, and frankly, it wasn’t even close.

At least, that was what was supposed to happen.

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Barely two months after signing Sergio Santos to a three-year extension worth a guaranteed $8.25 million, the Chicago White Sox have traded him to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for pitching prospect Nestor Molina. Eno Sarris has you covered from the White Sox perspective, so let’s look at the deal through the scope of Alex Anthopoulos and the Toronto Blue Jays.

Last winter, the Jays acquired the tandem of Jon Rauch and Frank Francisco to handle the late inning duties. Rauch was largely disappointing in his 52 innings of work, managing a 5.26 FIP. His 12.9% HR/FB was well above his career average, but a 4.56 xFIP shows that he was mediocre even if his home-run rate was a bit fluky.

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The White Sox traded Sergio Santos to the Blue Jays for prospect Nestor Molina today. It was a bold move, not only because of the particulars of the trade, but because of the implications. For a hyper-competitive General Manager like Kenny Williams, it must be hard to admit that it’s time for a rebuild. At least he seems comfortable with it.

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Jim Bowden tweeted over the weekend that six teams were pursuing reliever Luis Ayala. The list of suitors included progressive teams like the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays and Blue Jays. Since these teams typically spend money wisely, their interest in a retread reliever like Ayala is pretty puzzling.

Yes, Ayala had a decent 2011 season with the Yankees, but he isn’t the type of player all these teams should pursue. He isn’t a closer or a traditional setup man. Aside from last season, when he had a 3.40 FIP against lefties and a 4.99 mark against righties, he isn’t very effective against opposite-handed hitters. He has never really lit the league ablaze against same-handed opponents either.

Throughout his career, Ayala has posted average strikeout and walk rates, a decent groundball rate, and home run rates — per nine innings and relative to flyballs allowed — right in line with the league. He was also previously reputed as a rubber-arm reliever, though injuries have taken their toll on his durability in recent years.

Ayala does not really stand out as a reliever worth a guaranteed major league deal that may start a bidding war between teams serious about contending.

The only way this amped up pursuit of his services makes sense is if teams are convinced that he is actually the reliever that posted a 2.09 ERA in 56 innings with the Yankees. That would be a foolish belief.

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Major League Baseball will announce the winner of the 2011 American League Most Valuable Player this afternoon. While sabermetric tools such as Wins Above Replacement are very helpful, and perhaps even necessary for sorting out which players have been the most valuable, they are not necessarily sufficient by themselves for deciding such issues. As I discussed in an earlier (no-longer-so-“official”) post on using WAR to help determine the MVP, WAR and its cousins should start conversations about the MVP, not end them. However, this post is less about the general framework and more about why I think, despite the presence of other viable candidates just as Jacoby Ellsbury and maybe Justin Verlander, Jose Bautista is my choice for the American League’s Most Valuable Player of 2011.

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Earlier this week I posted about the best bunts of 2011. Taking some of the comments to that post into consideration, the obvious follow-up is the worst bunts of the 2011 season according to Win Probability Added (WPA).

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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Yesterday afternoon, Jayson Stark considered the question, “Is the MLB’s competitive balance a joke?” His answer was a rather blunt no:

MLB’s competitive balance is NOT a joke.

It beats the NFL.

It beats the league formerly known as the NBA.

And … I can prove it.

Stark’s method of proving it — plucking facts from the recent playoff series and comparing them generally to the NFL and other major leagues — was less than rigorous. In general, I agreed with his assertion: Parity in the MLB exists naturally far more than any other sports league.

HOWEVER, if my foot has less gangrene than your foot, does that mean I don’t need a doctor? No. I probably still need a doctor, and I probably need to stop playing barefoot tag on Rusty Nails Pier.

Relative success does not necessitate absolute success. And frankly, I feel the “parity” in the MLB indeed has a gangrene of sorts, a disease that is causing only specific segments of the league to rot while the rest hum along uncaring.

Of course, it is one thing to suspect something and demand more research, but it is another to pull the sabermetrician stocking over your head and answer that suspicion with a Falcon Punch of data.

Let’s do just that.
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