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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For one moment, picture yourself in the Miami Marlins’ shoes. You have run a cruelly efficient organization over the past 18 years – emphasis on the “cruel” – and as a result, you’ve managed to alienate a large portion of your local fanbase. The common narrative surrounding your team is that you’re profit-driven and ruthless, and the current SEC investigation into your new stadium’s funding isn’t helping matters any. Your attendance has been among the worst in the majors since 1999, and things were so bad last season you had to close to upper deck partway through the year.

Finally, though, you want to change all that. You have a new stadium, new uniforms, and a new name, and MLB has given you a not-so-subtle kick in the pants recently to spend more money. You have few financial commitments past the 2013 season, and you expect to see an increase in revenue over the next few years as a result of your new stadium’s attendance booster shot.

Given this situation, how do you create a successful, sustainable franchise in the state of Florida? The common assumption is that you’d approach the situation much like you would anywhere else: invest money in the team, build a winner, and don’t overreach your arm. As long as you make steady progress, the fans will respond.

But in case you haven’t noticed already, the Marlins have chosen a different plan of attack. Instead of staying within their means, the Marlins are acting with reckless abandon. They have already signed Heath Bell and Jose Reyes to long-term deals, locking up $19 million in payroll for 2012, and they’re in on nearly every big name free agent. With their new stadium set to open this season and bring in a wave of revenue, the Marlins are the kids in the candyshop that just got their allowance and are impulsively buying everything in sight.

Is this a risky strategy? Oh, definitely. The Marlins are already getting called all sorts of ugly names by analysts – idiotic, short-sighted, etc. – but at the same time, this is a risk they have to take.

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Thursday morning C.J. Wilson, the consensus top free agent starting pitcher, signed a five-year, $77.5 million contract with the Angels. His new contract has an average annual value of $15.5 million, which is only $1 million more than Mark Buehrle’s four-year, $58 million deal signed less than 24 hours earlier.

Wilson is younger — 31 to 32 — and better — career FIP- 83 to 92 — than Buehrle, so why did he sign such a similar deal?

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As of this writing  — and the way news is breaking right now, this could be outdated in anywhere from twelve hours to twelve seconds — the market for C.J. Wilson still stands at two teams: the Angels and Marlins. The common assumption was that the Marlins would pull out of the Wilson sweepstakes after landing Mark Buehrle last this afternoon, but at the moment, they have left their six-year offer on the table. Considering that the Marlins were willing to commit $220 million to Albert Pujols, it appears that a mere $58 million deal is not going to prevent them from jumping back in on another big-name free agent — especially when the trade market for starting pitchers is so steep.

With Buehrle off the market,it begins to get a bit easier to make some estimates on how much C.J. Wilson will get paid. The FanGraphs crowd-sourcing project had originally pegged Wilson as signing a 5 year, $15.5 million/year contract, but the Marlins have thrown a wrench in everything by giving Buehrle a contract with an AAV of $14.5 million. Since Buehrle was considered the second best pitcher on the market behind Wilson, it follows that Wilson should get a considerable amount more than that and will likely surpass his FanGraphs estimates. Then again, it seems unlikely that he approaches Roy Halladay’s deal from last offseason ($20m AAV) or surpass Jered Weaver’s current deal ($17m AAV).

Here’s where things get interesting to me: if the Marlins sign Wilson as well as Buehrle, they’ll then have two left-handed starters locked up through their age 36 season. If we assume that Wilson gets paid around $17 million/year (and we know Buehrle will receive $14.5m/year), which deal looks the best?

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First it was Heath Bell, at $27 million. Then it was Jose Reyes, at $111 million. Jeffrey Loria’s team isn’t done spending. Wednesday, the newly-branded Miami Marlins pulled the trigger on a third big-name free agent signing, reeling in Mark Buehrle from the White Sox on a four-year, $58 million contract.

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The Albert Pujols-Miami Marlins contract negotiations are heating up, and at this point it seems more than a possibility that El Hombre could be among the first to don a uniform with Miami across the chest in 2012. Pujols alone does not a winning team make — he cannot turn a team of replacement level scrubs into a 90-win squad. Still, his exceptional talent could give the Marlins a quick path to the playoffs, even relative to the other stars the Marlins have been eyeing this winter.

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Over six seasons with the (now) Miami Marlins, Hanley Ramirez proved to be a mediocre defensive shortstop. If history is any guide, he will likely be a worse defender at third base.

With the Marlins signing Jose Reyes to a six-year contract worth $106 million, Ramirez will no longer be the Marlins shortstop. Every indication is that he will be moved to third base, although Ramirez is expressing his extreme displeasure with the move.

Reyes is by far the better defender at short. In more than 8,800 innings at short, Reyes has a cumulative UZR/150 of 2.1, with 8 Defensive Runs Saved. Ramirez, by contrast, has logged more than 7,150 innings at short, amassing a cumulative UZR/150 of -9.1, with -49 Defensive Runs Saved.

Reyes is six months older than Ramirez — Reyes turned 28 in June and Ramirez will turn 28 at the end of this month. But Reyes has maintained more of a shortstop’s physique. He’s 6-1/200 pounds. Ramirez is 6-3/229 pounds.

For these reasons, playing Reyes at short makes the most sense for the Marlins. The question is what kind of defense they’ll get out of Ramirez at third.

If history is any guide, Ramirez will be an even weaker defender at third than he was at short.

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The Marlins made the first big move of the winter meetings Sunday night, agreeing to sign Jose Reyes to a six-year contract worth $106 million. It’s obviously the largest contract in franchise history, more than doubling the four-year, $52 million pact signed by Carlos Delgado prior to the 2005 season. It’s also the second largest contract ever given to a free agent shortstop, and the fourth largest ever given to a shortstop overall.

Reyes joined some exclusive company with his contract, becoming just the fourth shortstop to secure a nine-figure contract. Two of the other three guys are first ballot Hall of Famers, and the third is one of the five best players in the world. The Marlins are hoping Reyes will live up to those standards during the next six years, as well as spark interest in Miami’s Latin American community. Here is a breakdown of how four of baseball’s wealthiest shortstops performed during the life of their contract…

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When the Miami Marlins signed Heath Bell to a three year, $27 million contract Thursday night, the reaction on Twitter was…well, do I even need to tell you? It’s like clockwork; some team signs Proven Closer X to an expensive contract, and the sabermetric Twitterverse nigh explodes with negativity and snark. All this has happened before. All this will happen again.*

While the standard critique of this signing rings true — Why bother paying a premium for closers? Especially when relievers are so fungible and unpredictable?  — there was a side argument that especially piqued my curiosity. The Marlins are now committing $9 million per year into one reliever, but wouldn’t they have been better served trying to sign young slugger Mike Stanton to an extension? They could have use the money that went into signing Bell and locked Stanton up for a considerable amount of time instead. Considering Stanton is one of the best and most exciting young players in baseball, that’s an attractive option.

So I’m curious. Does the Heath Bell contract preclude the Marlins from locking up Stanton? If the Marlins were to engage Stanton in discussions about a long-term contract, what would the deal look like? Let’s find out.

*Kudos to all you fellow nerds that got that reference. I’m currently five episodes away from completing Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica. Frak, I don’t want it to finish.

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Two weeks ago, it was reported that the Marlins were planning to move on without Juan Oviedo (the closer formerly known as Leo Nunez). Last night, they followed through on that plan by agreeing in principle to a three-year deal (with an option for a fourth year) with free-agent reliever Heath Bell, using him to replace Oviedo, who they mean to non-tender.

Bell’s 2011 season has been the subject of much scrutiny. On the one hand, Bell is the only pitcher in baseball to save 40 or more games in each of the past three seasons. On the other hand, Bell’s K/9 dropped precipitously last season. His walk rate dropped in accordance, but it didn’t drop down to a career-low level or anything — he had better control in the first four years of his career.

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