The Mariners are one of the better run-prevention teams in baseball, and yesterday they added to a pitching staff that allowed the fourth fewest runs (675) in the American League last year by agreeing to a one-year contract with Hisashi Iwakuma. The 30-year-old right-hander will earn just a $1.5 million base salary in 2012, with another $3.4 million available in incentives tied to starts and innings pitched.

This deal comes one year after the Athletics won Iwakuma’s negotiating rights with a $19.1 million bid through the posting process, though the two sides failed to reach an agreement and the righty ended up back in Japan before becoming an international free agent this winter. Oakland was thinking something along the lines of $3-5 million per year while Iwakuma was said to be seeking Barry Zito money. The two sides never got close, so he returned to the Rakuten Golden Eagles on a one-year, $3.6 million contract.

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For more on the Venezuelan Winter League, check out Carson Cistulli’s final SCOUT leaderboards for said league.

With the MLB in the middle of its winter hiatus, we of the baseball-addicted must roll our listful eyes towards the winter leagues. One such league is the wildly popular Venezuelan Winter League. It is hard to say what exact level the Venezuelan league constitutes — but it certainly has a few veterans of both leagues, as well as a few MLB guys (though usually nobody who is already well established in the majors).

This year, Chicago Cubs fans have had the delight of being able to keep tabs on their… exciting… pitcher Carlos Zambrano. Big-Z — perhaps in an effort to ingratiate himself with the new Cubs regime, perhaps in a move to showcase his talents to the league — has now pitched five games for the Caribes de Anzoategui, but according to some recent rumors, Zambrano may be calling it a winter.

And maybe he should.
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While we’ve spent the last few days talking about the Hall of Fame, and this post is somewhat inspired by discussions about Edgar Martinez’s worthiness for enshrinement in Cooperstown, this isn’t really a post about whether or not he deserves induction. I get why people are hesitant to vote for a guy who spent most of his career at DH, had a relatively short career, and who played in an era that saw offensive records shattered left and right. I might not agree with their conclusions, but Martinez is a bubble candidate, and legitimate cases can be on both sides of the coin.

However, one of the arguments that I’ve seen more often this year is that Martinez simply wasn’t a great enough hitter to overcome his lack of defensive value. This argument was laid out most plainly by Jeff Fletcher in his explanation of why Martinez is not getting his vote. He looked at Martinez compared to his contemporaries, and sums up his stance with this line:

So if I’m going to vote him in based solely on his bat, he’d better be an absolute slam dunk offensive HOFer…

The argument that a career DH needs to be an elite, premium hitter for induction is valid, and a standard I would argue for as well. I just disagree with Fletcher that Martinez was not that kind of elite, all-time great hitter.

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After throwing 231 innings and compiling a 3.31 ERA in the independent league ranks between 1999 and 2003, the Seattle Mariners took a chance on left-hander George Sherrill and signed him to a minor-league deal. He promptly broke into the big leagues a year later and served as a core piece of the Mariners’ bullpen for four years before being shipped to Baltimore prior to the 2008 season in the blockbuster deal that brought Erik Bedard to the Pacific Northwest.

The career of George Sherrill now comes full circle, as he reportedly will return to Seattle on a one-year contract worth $1.1M plus incentives.

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Sometime today the posting fee for Yu Darvish may leak — even though the Nippon Ham Fighters have until Tuesday to publicly accept the winning bid. The number may not be as high as the $51.1 million that it took to get Daisuke Matsuzaka, and yet it still might cause some eyebrows to rise. At the same time, Darvish is a 25-year-old pitcher available for money alone. How much would a comparable pitcher garner in America if he was a free agent?

Let’s try to find a comp.

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Ned Colletti has reportedly given Adam Kennedy a major league contract. $800,000 is not a big deal to a major league team — it’s not even going to be 1% of the final player budget for the Dodgers. But why not save almost a half-million dollars?

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In a weekend that was filled with football, college basketball, and leftover turkey, the Tampa Bay Rays and Seattle Mariners hooked up for a trade that pulled us back into the clutches of the simmering Hot Stove – the deal saw Tampa trade 28-year-old catcher John Jaso to Seattle for 27-year-old right-handed reliever Josh Lueke and a player to be named later (or cash considerations).

Jaso is a very solid, buy-low acquisition for the Mariners. He endeared himself to the sabermetric community by hitting .263/.372/.378 as a rookie in 2010, but followed that up by hitting only .224/.298/.354 this past season. That .288 wOBA, however, was largely due to a dip in BABIP to .244, which should see some natural correction next year.

The left-handed hitting catcher possesses a keen eye for balls and strikes at the plate and is extremely selective when swinging. He has walked more than he has struck out over his career, while swinging at a mere 34.9% of the pitches he sees over his 687 plate appearances in the big leagues. Only Bobby Abreu, Brett Gardner, Joe Mauer, and Jamey Carroll take the bat off their shoulder less often than Jaso.

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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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Thanks to Patrick Newman for his help in writing and researching this article.

Judging from the first responders to the coming storm over the Pacific, this title bears repeating: Yu Darvish is not Daisuke Matsuzaka. The natural search for comps, paired with the disappointment that was Matsuzaka’s career, will lead to suspicion when it comes to the newest ace slated to come over from Japan. Why should it work out this time if it didn’t work out the last couple times? But there are real differences between the two pitchers that could use a little emphasis.

Consider this list your consolation if you are dumbfounded by the posting fee that your team will spend simply for the right to speak with Darvish.

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