Today’s installment of our series on the coming free agent market takes a look at some of the first base and DH options that will be available. While the 2012 free agent class is pretty shallow overall, at first base (and DH, if you include it) there is some true quality and a bit of depth. At the top of the list are an old player, a player some people think will get old fast, and a player some people think is older than he says he is.
We know this much: The NL will send a team from its Central Division to the World Series. Who? We do not yet know. But: The fact remains that this circumstance is no less a surprise to many prognosticators, forecasting systems, and blathering media faces. I cannot recall any one credible source projecting the the NL Central as the team to send a World Series team into the fray — much less to two playoff-teams to the tourney.
Nonetheless, here we sit on the cold stone of pondering, staring into the abyss of unpredictability, the majestic, mysterious abyss of this:
A moon ago, we heard news of the impending Astro’s sale, which comes with a DH apparently, as the proud once-Colt .45s intend to move AL-wise.
This is bad news for the top chihuahuas of the NL Central who feasted on their weak division, and produced perhaps the two least-qualified World Series contenders in a long… long… long time.
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News broke this morning that Red Sox President of Baseball Operations (the de facto Red Sox GM) Theo Epstein and the Chicago Cubs have agreed to, though not finalized, terms which will bring the Yale grad to Chicago’s Northside. The deal appears to be worth $20M over five years, but the Cubs will undoubtedly need to send compensation (say, a prospect or some Benjamins) the Red Sox’s way — which may well escalate the cost beyond what’s beneficial to the Cubs.
If the compensation package includes a number of significant prospects, this may well result in Theo Epstein starting from scratch as the Cubs GM. So, let’s assume he is starting with a largely depleted farm system (one that was half-depleted in the Matt Garza trade). What moves does Epstein need to make immediately? And no, extending John Grabow is not one of them.
1) Fill the Front Office
The Jim Hendry regime nearly took pride in how small their front office was. They had scouts, sure, but their “statistics department” had long consisted of one man, Chuck Wasserstrom, until Cubs owner Tom Ricketts doubled their staff, bringing in Ari Kaplan and presumably purchasing a few more bristles for their push-broom.
From Dirk Hayhurst’s Twitter:
“You know what would be really cool…”
~Baseball Gods, right before THIS all happened.
They’re calling it “Wild Wednesday,” and it was, but it was also Wild Twenty-Aught-Eleven. The Tampa Bay Rays closed the books on their 2011 campaign with one of the craziest nights in baseball history and one of the most absurd paths to the postseason ever.
At 12:03 a.m. ET this morning, Robert Andino hit a sinking line drive to left field off Jonathon Papelbon. Carl Crawford charged the ball, but it popped off his glove and Nolan Reimold dove onto home plate, giving the Orioles a 4-3 win. The first Orioles player to reach Andino chest-bumped him to the ground — maybe knocking the wind out of him — as the cameras watched the Baltimore bench fall onto his seemingly-frightened and breathless face.
At 12:05 a.m., Evan Longoria reached out — almost into the other batter’s box — to foul off a slider from New York Yankees pitcher Scott Proctor, holding the count at two balls, two strikes. Longoria exhaled deeply, puffing his cheeks like a trombone player, as Scott Proctor wound for the next pitch. It was a fastball away that got lost and asked Longo for directions.
“Two-two and line SHOT! DOWN THE LEFT FIELD LIIIIINE! THAT BALL IS GONE!!!” Rays television announcer Dewayne Staats called, presumably leaning out of the booth to watch as Longoria’s 31st homer ricocheted around behind the Crawford Cutout — a low wall added so then-Ray Carl Crawford could rob a few extra home runs.
Last night’s (and this morning’s) Rays game was beyond spectacular (for non-Red Sox fans, that is; my condolences to the northeast). It was parts Spring Training game (with the parade of Yankees pitchers), parts Little League World Series (with the Rays using nearly the entirety of their bench in key roles), and all parts unbelievable.
The 2011 Rays season has shown that though baseball is about probabilities, it is probabilities with replacement — truly any event can occur with the very next pitch, even if it happened just a few innings ago — or if it has never happened before.
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Aramis Ramirez is ready to leave the Chicago Cubs. After eight-and-a-half seasons with the team, Ramirez’s agent announced that his client will test the free agent market this off-season. While Ramirez initially was hesitant to leave Chicago, he apparently changed his mind once he realized the Cubs are transitioning into a rebuilding period. Ramirez, 33, has also acknowledged that he wants to move to a winning team as he transitions to the twilight of his career.
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The MLB season is drawing to a close, which means it’s about time for rampant speculation about next year’s free agents. One of my favorite off-season storylines is that of the east Asian baseball markets both giving and absorbing talent.
This past off season, we witnessed the likes of Chad Tracy, Wladimir Balentien, and Micah Hoffpauer head west to the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league while Japan sent Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Ryan Vogelsong Minnesota and California’s way.
Let’s look at the present NPB league statistics, so we can start writing our wishlists and dreaming about next year’s rosters.
Heath Bell and Carlos Pena were each claimed on waivers earlier this week, though it appears that neither player will be moving.
The Giants claimed Bell, most likely to bolster their bullpen given the injuries to Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo. The waiver claim could have also been submitted to block the Diamondbacks from acquiring Bell. The Yankees claimed Pena, even though Mark Teixeira plays virtually every inning at first base and Jorge Posada has performed well against righties this season with a .359 wOBA.
But given the Yankees place in the standings and the lack of need for the Red Sox, the claim on Pena probably wasn’t used as a blocking mechanism.
Both players should have been dealt back at the trade deadline, when teams could unilaterally work with one another. Both Bell and Pena might not represent massive improvements to anyone with only a month remaining in the season, but they could have impacted the playoff picture if traded in mid-July, when more teams were seemingly in the race. Let’s take a look at both situations.
Earlier this season, I re-introduced the two statistics Shutdowns and Meltdowns. In short, these two stats are an alternative way of evaluating relief pitchers, providing an alternative from the age-old standbys Saves and Blown Saves. If a pitcher enters a game and makes their team more likely to win, they get credit for a Shutdown; if they make their team more likely to lose, they get a Meltdown. It’s a simple enough concept, no?
Shutdowns and Meltdowns are a great way to look at which relievers are under- or overvalued based on their Saves total, and it can also be a useful tool for evaluating middle relievers. So which relievers have are being sneakily good or bad this year? Let’s take a look.
Coming into today, I can’t say I had more than a surface-deep opinion on Jim Hendry. I don’t follow the Cubs as closely as I do other teams, and while I knew that Cubs fans didn’t like him, I’d never done enough research to form an opinion more than, “Eh, he’s not the best.” And now that Hendry has been fired by the Cubs, I’ve done plenty of research and spent the day reading around…yet I still don’t know exactly what to think about him. Hendry is a tough knot to untangle.
I don’t think you’ll find any Cubs fans out there that criticize Hendry’s character. From all reports, he’s a stand-up guy that cared deeply about his players and the Cubs franchise. Heck, he stayed on for multiple weeks after he was fired, for the sole purpose of helping the Cubs sign their draft picks and transition smoothly. If that’s not dedication, I don’t know what is.
But the Cubs are currently adrift without any real focus or direction. They are on pace for their second straight fourth place finish in the NL Central, and they haven’t had a strong, competitive team since 2008. And yet, Hendry built this team as if he intended to compete this season, signing Carlos Pena and trading for Matt Garza. Did Hendry misevaluate the Cubs’ place on the win curve? What was his plan going forward? Did he necessarily have one? With all these questions swirling around him and the Cubs, it’s about time Hendry moved on.
So what exactly was Hendry? A good GM? Bad GM? As you’d expect, the answer is somewhere in between.
Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.