Bad news for Michael Bourn – the Phillies just emphatically closed the door on bringing back the free agent center fielder, giving up Vance Worley and top prospect Trevor May to acquire Revere from the Twins. Given the price that we just saw Denard Span go for last week, this is a bit of a shocking price for Revere, and looks like a significant overpay for the Phillies.
The Angels at one point recently had a threadbare starting rotation, but it was considered pretty likely they’d be able to re-sign Zack Greinke. The Angels, since then, have all but dropped out on Zack Greinke, and added Tommy Hanson and Joe Blanton. Hanson cost the Angels Jordan Walden. Blanton cost the Angels two years and $15 million. The Angels aren’t necessarily done, but instead of having four starters they’re sitting on six, and it looks like the rotation isn’t going to add a high-profile arm. They might have to make do with what they have, and because they now have Joe Blanton, we should probably talk about him.
Last year, over 30 starts, Blanton posted a 4.71 ERA. That was his lowest ERA since 2009. He’s nearly 32 years old, he can’t stop coughing up dingers, and he missed a lot of 2011 with an elbow problem. There’s a reason Blanton wound up with the contract he did, and there’s a reason he didn’t seem to be highly sought after in the market. My role now is to try to sell you on him. There are elements of Joe Blanton’s game that should appeal to you quite a lot. You, being the avid reader of FanGraphs.
The third base market continues to clear. Eric Chavez is now off the market, as the Diamondbacks signed the veteran to a one-year, $3 million deal Wednesday.
As the contract suggests, Chavez is unlikely to be a full-time player in Arizona. However, given the myriad struggles the club experienced at third base last season, we can expect Chavez to play a significant role. He hit .281/.348/.496 last season with the Yankees and could form the meaty side of a platoon in Arizona — 273 of Chavez’s 313 plate appearances came against right-handed pitching, and he hit them for a sharp .299/.366/.545 (144 wRC+) line. Arizona third basemen posted just a .240/.293/.382 in 2012.
Since 2010, ten different players have played third base for the Chicago White Sox. One of them has posted a positive WAR, and he’s currently a free agent, looking for a multi-year contract. The position has been something of a trouble spot, and on Wednesday the White Sox addressed said trouble spot by agreeing to terms with Jeff Keppinger. Word is it’s a three-year contract worth something in the neighborhood of $12 million, give or take your average annual salary.
Keppinger had been hotly pursued, despite a broken leg. There was talk that the Yankees were very interested, as third base has become a problem spot for them, too, but the White Sox were able to offer Keppinger a ~guaranteed starting job, which might have played a role in his decision. The Yankees have an opening now, but they might not have an opening upon Alex Rodriguez’s return from injury. In Chicago, Keppinger presumably won’t be pushed.
The Indians have made it pretty clear that they are shopping Asdrubal Cabrera. With at least a serviceable fill-in on the roster in Mike Aviles and Cabrera’s trade value likely at its peak this winter, they’re attempting to use their 27-year-old shortstop to acquire more young pieces with an emphasis on future value. Arizona has been most often linked to Cabrera, as their never ending search for a shortstop makes them something of a logical fit. Reports this morning suggest that Cabrera could be the bait that gets them Trevor Bauer or could be part of a larger, multi-team trade that results in Justin Upton finally being traded.
Clearly, the cost for Cabrera is quite high, and before Arizona surrenders one of their best trade chips, they should be aware of what they’re getting – a decent-but-not-great hitter who might not really be a shortstop much longer.
The Brewers aren’t sure that they want to go to three years for Ryan Dempster, but they do need a pitcher now that Shaun Marcum is seeing other teams. There are good reasons to like him — a few changes he’s made in his approach have seem to stuck — and there is one main reason to worry about giving him too many years.
We have already run two pieces on Shane Victorino since he signed his new contract with Boston by Eno here and by Michael Barr at RotoGraphs. They are both fine pieces in their own right, but one issue that needs more discussion is Victorino’s platoon split.
As people noted elsewhere in the signing’s aftermath (and analyzed in some detail earlier this season by Jack Moore), Victorino, a switch-hitter, has a very pronounced platoon split, hitting left-handed pitching well and right-handed pitching poorly. In 2012 Victorino hit just .229/.295/.333 versus righties while facing them about in about three-fourths of his plate appearances. How much does this split really hurt his overall value?
It might not be fair to say the Tampa Bay Rays don’t care about player makeup concerns. You could conceivably come up with a hypothetical talented player so awful the Rays wouldn’t take a chance. Based on precedent and indications, it might be fair to say the Rays care the least about player makeup concerns of any team in the league. Almost by necessity, if you figure the Rays need to identify exploitable inefficiencies in order to survive. Given such, perhaps the least surprising move of the winter meetings so far is that the Rays acquired Yunel Escobar from the Marlins in exchange for Derek Dietrich.
Strip away the traits that make this deal unique and it makes plenty of sense on the face of it. Escobar wasn’t much of a fit with Miami, since the Marlins prefer Adeiny Hechavarria at shortstop. The Rays were looking for an everyday shortstop, the acquisition of which would allow Ben Zobrist to go back to roaming. The Rays wanted someone good now; the Marlins wanted someone potentially good later. Escobar is affordable, at $5 million in 2013, with $5 million options for each of the next two years. If the offseason is about front offices answering as many questions as they can, the Rays and Marlins both just answered questions by swinging this deal.
In a vacuum, you could probably make a decent enough case in favor of exchanging Alex White for Wilton Lopez. As Jeff wrote last week, Lopez is the game’s most extreme high GB/low BB reliever, and this skillset allows him to be an effective late-inning reliever. Lopez is a quality arm, and he can be a key piece of a good bullpen. Meanwhile, White has been pretty lousy during his first 150 innings in the big leagues, and there’s a decent chance that he ends up in the bullpen himself. As one person noted to me on Twitter last night, the Rockies traded a guy I’ve projected as a reliever in the past for a better reliever.
There’s just a few problems here. The primary one regards the health of Lopez’s right arm. The reported deal with the Phillies that never materialized last week apparently included Philadelphia having some significant concern over his elbow, and a couple of folks here in Nashville have said that Lopez flunked a physical at the trade deadline that nuked a trade for him back in July. When there’s smoke, there’s often fire, and the fact that Lopez spent a month of the 2012 season on the DL with an elbow issue suggests that there’s almost certainly something there worth worrying about. Without access to the medical information and people who can intelligently interpret it, we can’t say to what degree Lopez is damaged goods, but it is clear that other teams have serious concerns about how long Lopez’s elbow is going to last before he needs surgery.
However, predicting injuries isn’t something anyone has mastered, so let’s just assume for now that Lopez is going to stay healthy. Even with that assumption, it’s not clear that this is a significant upgrade for Colorado relative to simply shifting White to the bullpen.
The perils of rumor reaction writing – Baggarly has amended his original note to suggest that the Giants offer is two years with a vesting option, not three years. So, adjust accordingly.
There are times when a player undergoes a dramatic transformation and essentially forces us to abandon everything we knew about that player previously. Cliff Lee. Jose Bautista. R.A. Dickey. It happens. Guys reinvent themselves, and as a result, their new contracts reflect the recent reality, not the average of all their Major League seasons.
And sometimes, guys have monster rebound seasons, reminding everyone of their previous levels of success, and enable teams to have confidence to pay premium prices to get them under contract. Adrian Beltre, for instance. Giving a veteran player a huge raise is not always an overpay. Sometimes, he’s just done enough to change the market’s opinion of his skills, and his performance requires a drastic change in compensation.
So, I’m not willing to say that every big raise for a veteran is a de facto overpay. But, even with all that said, I can’t say I understand what Marco Scutaro did in 2012 that has made the market drastically reevaluate his value.
