Archive for Teams

It’s no secret that I don’t think the Kansas City Royals made a very good trade last night. In my view, the price was just too high, and the Royals weren’t in a position where their team needed to give up that kind of future value to improve their chances of winning in 2013. Reasonable folks can disagree, of course. There’s a case to be made that the Royals are closer to contending than I think they are, and if KC can overtake Detroit for the division title, then the reward may justify the cost. Win-now moves can be worth it, and as teams like the Nationals, Orioles, and A’s showed last year, pre-season projections aren’t written on stone tablets and handed down from on high.

But, this morning, I’m not reading many arguments in favor of this trade that come from that angle. Instead, the defense of this trade from the Royals perspective is coming mostly from a different angle. Here’s Jeff Passan’s take, for instance:

While Shields is a known quantity – six straight seasons of 200-plus innings, a strikeout rate that approached one per inning last year and battle scars of the AL East to show for it – there is little allure in the expected. The fetishization of prospects is a baseball-wide malady, and it’s why sentiment skewed decidedly in the Rays’ favor. Granted, it should – Myers has the sort of talent that wins awards, Odorizzi looks like a mid-rotation starter, Montgomery is a high-ceiling left-hander and Leonard comes with the one tool, power, that everybody wants – but not nearly to the degree it did.

There’s a reason Tampa Bay turned down Myers for Shields straight up. There’s a reason Oakland turned down Myers for Brett Anderson straight up. Despite the scouting reports that glow and the awards he won this year, the 22-year-old Myers remains a risk. He is a safer one than most – his .314/.387/.600 line with 37 home runs between Double-A and Triple-A last season portends stardom – but any number of players have aced the minor leagues only to lag behind early in their major league careers.

Shields “is a known quantity”. Myers “remains a risk”. The Royals just traded a grab bag of who-knows-what for an ace, turning potential into performance. Myers might be good, but Shields already is. This argument gets trotted out there every time a team trades young for old. Unfortunately, this argument simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

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In some ways, this post feels like a repeat. When rumors first surfaced that the Royals were considering shipping off Wil Myers to acquire a veteran starting pitcher, I wrote up my feelings on why that wasn’t such a great idea. If you want to see my full breakdown on swapping Myers for Shields, start there. The brief summary goes something like this; sure, the Royals need better pitching, but they also need better outfielders, and better infielders, and better everything. The Royals were not a particularly good baseball team last year, or the year before, or really any time in recent history.

They won 83 games back in 2003, the last time they had a winning season. Prior to that, you had to go back to 1993 to find a season where they won more games than they lost. Two winning seasons in 20 years can make a franchise desperate for respectability. And desperate teams often do desperate things. But I don’t think anyone saw the Royals doing something this desperate.

If you haven’t heard the news yet, the Royals agreed to trade OF Wil Myers, RHP Jake Odorizzi, LHP Mike Montgomery, and 3B Patrick Leonard to Tampa Bay for RHP James Shields, RHP Wade Davis, and a PTBNL or cash. Whenever there’s “or cash” attached, you can be pretty sure the PTBNL is no one of note, so basically, the Royals traded their best prospect, their best pitching prospect, and two other talented youngsters for Shields and Davis.

The obvious comparison here is the Erik Bedard trade. Coming off an 88 win season, the Mariners decided to go for broke, shipping off prospects Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio along with reliever George Sherrill to acquire Bedard from the Orioles. The Mariners weren’t as close to winning as they thought they were, and after they won 61 games in 2008, the entire front office was fired and the organization went into a full scale rebuild. Bedard spent his two years in Seattle on and off the disabled list, while Jones has blossomed into one of the game’s best center fielders and Tillman continues to flash some potential as a young starter with a big league future.

That trade is generally regarded as the worst prospects-for-veteran swap in recent history. This might be worse.

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One of my favorite* old writer techniques was when people would try to analyze Zack Greinke’s decision-making process based on the fact that he had social anxiety disorder. It was as if the condition made Greinke more understandable, as opposed to less. “Greinke would never want to play in a large market,” people would assert. “He wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Zack Greinke, most recently, has been a free agent. Zack Greinke just reportedly signed a six-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $147 million. As markets go, Los Angeles is pretty big.

* least favorite

Greinke was the market’s best available free-agent starter, so in that sense it’s not a surprise that he wound up with the Dodgers, since the Dodgers have all of the money. Even your money is the Dodgers’ money now. They even took your laundry quarters. In recent days, this wasn’t so clear, though, as it was down to the Dodgers and the Rangers, and there were indications that Greinke preferred Texas. But those indications were just rumors, and the smart bet would’ve been on the team with all of the money. The team with all of the money was and is the Dodgers.

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Recently, it was reported on a great number of occasions that the Angels had strong interest in free-agent Brandon McCarthy. The Angels wound up giving two years and $15 million to Joe Blanton, seemingly pulling them out of the running. Today, McCarthy has signed a very similar contract — one worth $15.5 million over two years, with the Diamondbacks. This is more or less the contract McCarthy was destined to end up with, and Arizona is the lucky team that gets to give it to him. This being FanGraphs, of course we’re somewhat biased where McCarthy is concerned, but it’s not bias that makes this look like a potential steal, and a probable bargain.

Let’s ignore the contract breakdown and just look at the overall figures. For two years and $15.5 million, the average team would be looking to add, what, three wins over replacement? A little bit more than that? Yes, pitcher WAR has its issues, and yes, of course not every team looks to spend the same amount of money per win on the free-agent market. Efficiency is more important for some than for others. But a $15.5-million contract over two years is not a hefty contract, and you’d expect only so much of a return. McCarthy is positioned to give a better return.

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Yesterday, the Chicago White Sox warmed the cockles of the present author’s heart by taking 29-year-old infield-type Angel Sanchez from the Angels in the Rule 5 draft. Because Sanchez can play the infield (including shortstop) and because he has some kind of offensive upside (owing to his excellent contact skills) and because he’s cheap (he still has just two years of service time and will likely make the league minimum), Sanchez will allow the White Sox to spend money elsewhere. Or, otherwise, to not spend money elsewhere and just keep that money and use it for whatever, like for a donation to an important New England boarding school.

Players who are chosen in the major-league phase of the Rule 5 draft (as was Sanchez) must be kept on the selecting team’s 25-man major league roster for the entire season after the draft — which suggests, if he’s retained by the White Sox, that Sanchez will fill some manner of utility role behind Gordon Beckham, Jeff Keppinger, and Alexei Ramirez.

Paying a player like Sanchez at or near the league-minimum salary would seem to give the signing time a competitive advantage. It’s also possible that that’s not the case at all. What the author found himself wondering — and what he attempted to answer by means of this post — is the question: “How much are utility infielders worth these days?”

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The Reds have been looking for a consistent leadoff hitter since the current iteration of the team began contention in 2010. Drew Stubbs was supposed to fill that role, but his performance has trended the wrong way since 2009 — after a sharp 105 wRC+ in 2010, Stubbs has posted marks of 90 and a brutal 64 in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Between Stubbs and Zack Cozart, Reds leadoff hitters hit an awful .208/.254/.327 last season.

Now, the Reds are looking to fill the two holes Stubbs’s decline has left them with — leadoff hitter and center field. The club was interested in Ben Revere but the Phillies beat them to the punch. CBSSports.com’s Danny Knobler reports the Reds are shifting their sights towards Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler.

Knobler reports starting pitcher Mike Leake may be the cost for Fowler. Homer Bailey’s name has popped up as well. Is Fowler enough of an upgrade over Stubbs for the Reds to deal away one of their MLB-ready starting pitchers?

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The Phillies have a hole at third base, and Michael Young is a man without a position in Texas. These two problems look to be coalescing into a trade between the Rangers and Phillies, where Texas would ship Young to Philadelphia in order to give him the chance to have a regular gig again, and they’d receive a little bit of salary relief in the process. The Rangers would still be on the hook for $10 million of the $16 million he’s due in 2013, a natural response to the fact that Young was Major League Baseball’s worst regular player in 2012, but they’d free up a roster spot, save a bit of money, and give one of the franchise’s most popular players a chance to keep his career going in a new city. From that perspective, the deal makes a world of sense for Texas.

But, despite Young’s dismal 2012 season, I like this deal for the Phillies as well. As I noted on ESPN Insider yesterday, there’s a decent list of recent performers who have apparently fallen apart in their mid-30s, only to rebound the next season and regain most of their pre-faceplant production. While Young was genuinely terrible last year, we also need to keep in mind that single year performance isn’t the best indicator of future performance, and any decent projection should be informed by his success prior to 2012 as well as his failure last year.

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This was written in December, but with recent stories surrounding Rodriguez, we’ve pushed it back to the front page for reference.

After his monster MVP season in 2007, Alex Rodriguez signed a new 10-year deal with the Yankees for $275 million, plus an additional $30 million in marketing incentives linked to home-run milestones. So far, the Yankees have paid Rodriguez $161 million, leaving $114 million on the contract. That breaks down to $28 million for 2013, $25 million for 2014, $21 million for 2015 and $20 million in 2016 and 2017.

This week, we learned A-Rod will undergo left-hip surgery surgery in January to repair a torn labrum, a bone impingement and a cyst. The surgery is being delayed to give Rodriguez time for physical therapy to strengthen the hip. Recovery time is estimated at four to six months, which means a return to the Yankees lineup in June — at the earliest.

But what if A-Rod’s recovery doesn’t go as planned? What if the surgery isn’t successful? What if A-Rod doesn’t recuperate as quickly as expected? What if A-Rod doesn’t play in 2013? What if his career is over?

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The Washington Nationals system has been weakened by trades and promotions in recent years but the organization still has some interesting prospects in the system. With that said, the depth in the upper levels of the system took a big hit during the Rule 5 draft when prospects Jeff Kobernus (6th overall) and Daniel Rosenbaum (8th) were selected from the system. It was a curious move to leave those two players unprotected, given that the organization is not exactly overflowing with near-MLB-ready players. The loss of Kobernus and Rosenbaum were done after the Nationals Top 15 list was submitted so I’ll update the list a little later on.

#1 Brian Goodwin (OF)

Opening Day Age: 22
2012 Level: A/AA
Acquired: 2011 draft (34th overall)
Projected 2013 Level: AA/AAA

Goodwin, 22, flashed a lot of potential during his amateur career but it’s taken some time for his tools to start clicking on the field. The former 34th-overall selection spent 2012 playing at two levels and completely dominated A-ball before skipping over high-A for double-A where he struggled.

A talent evaluator I spoke with wasn’t worried about the outfielder’s difficulties in double-A. “He’s got a very, very interesting ceiling. [Goodwin] hits for average, power and has defensive skills,” he said. “He’s a wonderful young man… the make-up matches the ability. He’s very coachable, and a quick learner.” The contact added that Goodwin is also energetic and a hard worker. “His disposition is always the same whether he goes 4-for-4 or 0-for-4.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Sox have found their seventh inning man. The club signed 38-year-old right-hander Koji Uehara to a one-year deal with a $4.25 million base salary Thursday.

Boston’s bullpen struggled last season from Andrew Bailey’s injury to the early implosion of Mark Melancon to the eventual meltdown of Alfredo Aceves. The club finished in the league’s bottom half in both ERA (3.88) and FIP (3.91). Uehara is one of the best control pitchers in the big leagues and he can generate swings and misses. Should Andrew Bailey struggle to get on the field again, the Red Sox have a player they can trust in the later innings in Uehara.

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