Archive for Teams

The Chicago Cubs have had two sets of negotiations involving Jeff Samardzija. The two sides have talked about a long-term extension — so far nothing’s been agreed to — and the sides seem pretty far apart. The front office also has fielded some trade offers, and while you can never be entirely certain about rumors, certain reports have painted the asking price as astronomical. From the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cubs supposedly wanted Aaron Sanchez, Marcus Stroman and more. From the Braves, the Cubs supposedly wanted Justin Upton or Jason Heyward. Even if the names are off, the message is clear: the Cubs are looking for a massive haul. Last year, Samardzija posted a worse ERA than Kevin Correia and Jeremy Hefner.

It’s been suggested the Cubs want more for Samardzija than the Rays have been looking for in return for David Price. Samardzija, of course, isn’t as good as Price. On the other hand, he’s considerably cheaper, and Samardzija isn’t coming off a season with an arm injury. His big-league health history is clean. So it’s not an outlandish position, but nothing’s been agreed to yet, because no one’s been willing to give up what the Cubs have wanted. More recent reports have suggested the Cubs intend to revisit the Samardzija trade market in the middle of the season. At first, it seems like this could only deflate Samardzija’s value. It would, after all, leave him with less time to make a contribution to a new employer. But there are good reasons for the Cubs to stick to their guns. Come June or July, they could still turn Samardzija into a blockbuster.

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Camps are opening across Florida and Arizona. Baseball is happening! Yet we’re still talking about Stephen Drew (and the other remaining qualifying offer players) because he doesn’t have a job, in no small part due to a system that absolutely does not work as currently constituted. It’s endless. I’m sick of it, and so, I imagine, are you. At least we have a new wrinkle to discuss: Scott Boras’ indication that he reportedly now wants an opt-out clause for Drew after the first year.

Predictably, this was met with a chorus of “oh yeah, well I want a pony” indignation from the internet, no doubt shocked by the impertinence of a new demand coming from an agent representing a player who, again, is still unemployed as spring training begins, and will come at the cost of a draft choice. (This also comes with the obvious caveat of believing a word that Boras says as anything other than simple leverage, especially through “a source,” but for the sake of argument let’s go with it for now.) Read the rest of this entry »

Once upon a time, Tommy Hanson’s career seemed like it would be spun into legend. He was one of the best young pitchers in baseball, in one of the best organizations. Now, heading into his age-27 season, his story seems more like a particularly cruel choose-your-own-adventure story. Shoulder injuries will do that. On Monday, he agreed to a deal with the Rangers. There are conflicting reports as I write this as to whether it is a minor league or major league deal. Either way, this will be Hanson’s third team in three years, and if things don’t work out for him in Texas, this could be his last chance.

That is not to imply that Hanson has some sort of tragic career. Far from it. If you slice and dice enough data, you can find plenty of comparable cases to Hanson. By the end of his age-24 season, which was his third season in the majors, Hanson had crossed the 450-inning threshold in his career. Since the expansion era started in 1961, there have been 105 other pitchers who have accomplished such a feat. To wit:

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Earlier today, polite and Canadian and polite Marc Hulet published his 2014 organizational prospect list for the Cleveland Indians.

It goes without saying that, in composing such a list, Hulet has considered the overall future value those prospects might be expected to provide either to the Clevelanders or whatever other organizations to which they might someday belong.

What this brief post concerns isn’t overall future value, at all, but rather such value as the prospects from Hulet’s list might provide were they to play, more or less, a full major-league season in 2014.

Other prospect projections: Arizona / Baltimore / Chicago AL / Chicago NL / Cleveland / Colorado / Houston / Kansas City / Los Angeles AL / Miami / Milwaukee / Minnesota / New York AL / New York NL / Philadelphia / San Diego / San Francisco / Seattle / Tampa Bay / Toronto.

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The other day, Buster Olney tweeted that some executives see regression in the Pirates’ immediate future. Projection systems seem to be in agreement, and Dave talked about this very thing as soon as the Pirates were eliminated from last year’s playoffs. Nobody thinks the Pirates are going to go back to being terrible — there’s way too much talent there — but people see them more as fringe contenders than NL Central favorites, and it’s not like they’ve had the most constructive offseason, with the biggest move to date being the loss of A.J. Burnett.

Of course, the offseason isn’t over. The Pirates might still be able to get Burnett re-signed, which would be a significant improvement. They’re another one of those teams in a high-leverage position on the win curve, so any kind of improvement should be pursued. And with that in mind, right now the situation at first base involves Gaby Sanchez and unknown others. You probably know that Gaby Sanchez is a real player, but he’s never done much to draw attention to himself, and he’s not a regular. It seems like the Pirates are ripe for a first-base upgrade. But then, what’s really available to them?

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The Marlins lost 100 games last year, and there’s no way around it: that’s a terrible season. It’s the low point to date of a slide that started after an 87-75 2009, dropping to 82, 90, and 93 losses before hitting the century mark last year, and that’s embarrassing even if we’re just sticking to the on-the-field miscues, rather than also including the continued tragicomedy that is the ownership of Jeffrey Loria. Were it not for the teardown of the Houston Astros, the Marlins would be the worst team in baseball.

But even then, it was easy to argue that it wasn’t entirely a lost season. The atrocious optics of last winter’s massive deal with Toronto gave way to a quiet appreciation that the move actually made a good amount of baseball sense, and of course they saw Jose Fernandez go from “highly touted prospect” to “Rookie of the Year and arguable Cy Young winner in a world without Clayton Kershaw.” I tried to make the case at ESPN last summer that the considerable amount of young talent the organization was accumulating could have them poised to make one of their once-a-decade runs, and my pal Marc Normandin did much the same at Sports on Earth in September.

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Kevin Towers is a confident, talkative man. He’ll tell you what he’s thinking about, and he’ll tell you what he’s doing. There aren’t many anonymous leaks that come out of the Diamondbacks organization because Towers doesn’t exactly keep many secrets — even when he’s actively negotiating. Towers has spent much of this offseason talking about how badly he wanted to acquire a No. 1-type starting pitcher. He was in on Masahiro Tanaka; he’s been in on David Price. He admitted he wanted to make a significant splash. Just the other day Arizona signed Bronson Arroyo for two years and $23.5 million. Or three years and $30 million. The bigger point is that Arizona signed Bronson Arroyo, and now they’re finished.

Arroyo, of course, is no one’s idea of an ace. Most simply, the best pitchers get strikeouts, limit walks and limit dingers. Arroyo does one of those things. He’s 37 in a couple of weeks, meaning he’s basically 37 now. There’s little sexiness with this acquisition, and Towers would tell you he knows he didn’t get a No. 1. Still, Arroyo does have something going in his favor. It’s just a matter of how much you believe in it.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Dodgers rotation from a fantasy perspective for RotoGraphs. At that time, the Dodgers had a pool of starters than went 10 deep. Now they have 11 potential starters. Most teams would be satisfied with 10 starters. They might look to add some minor league depth, like a Rodrigo Lopez type, but they probably wouldn’t give out any more major league contracts.

However, the Dodgers have reason to worry about their depth. Chad Billingsley is currently rehabbing from injury. Prospects Zach Lee and Ross Stripling might not be ready in 2014, or the Dodgers may prefer not to rush either pitcher. Stephen Fife is a decent swing man, but the Dodgers would probably prefer to avoid turning to Matt Magill. Josh Beckett and Dan Haren are penciled into the rotation, although both pitchers were less than stable in recent seasons. Beckett in particular is coming off a nerve impingement surgery that limited him to eight starts last season.

So what have the Dodgers done to combat the flakiness of their rotation depth? Why they’ve hired yet another pitcher who fits into the back of the rotation and comes with health concerns.

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The last few weeks before pitchers and catchers report is mostly a time of great anticipation for players and fans. However, it is often serves as a time when veteran free agents without teams decide that the available offers are not attractive enough to be worth it and retire. This seems to have been the case with Michael Young, who announced his retirement last week. He retired as as a member of the Texas Rangers, and he and the team seem to have been able to put aside whatever differences they had over the last few years of Young’s time with Texas.

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The Houston Astros have done some unspeakable things to their fans. The primary defense for watching bad baseball is that bad baseball is better than no baseball, but at times the Astros have caused people to question whether what they’re watching is even baseball at all, or some kind of deliberately unwatchable performance art. The good news is that there’s good news. Psychologically, this experience has made Astros fans stronger, more tolerant of adversity and less prone to hysterics. And on the field, the Astros as a ballclub are making forward progress. They’re still not good, but they’re getting closer to good, and they shouldn’t be as dreadful as they have been for a long long time. With a wave of young talent on the way, Astros fans can begin to envision a most majestic, formidable crest.

Among the brightest of potential stars is 24-year-old George Springer. The former first-round pick ought to debut somewhere in 2014, and Springer is nearly the perfect prospect. He has plenty of power, as evidenced by last year’s 37 home runs. He has plenty of discipline, as evidenced by last year’s 83 walks. He has plenty of speed, as evidenced by last year’s 45 stolen bases. Defensively, he’s a center fielder who could stick there. He has range and he has an arm, and though he’s not unusually young for his level, he’s right on track to be a core asset. There’s just one thing that Springer is missing, and he’s missing it in spades.

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