Archive for Yankees

Up until about 18 hours ago, hitting prospect and kinda, sorta catcher Jesus Montero was slated to be more or less the everyday DH for the New York Yankees in 2012. In the meantime, however, he and right-hander Hector Noesi have been traded to the Seattle Mariners for a pair of players — most notably, Michael Pineda, a talented and hard-throwing right-hander entering his age-23 season. As Dave Cameron notes, the deal compares favorably, in term of cost, to similar bids by the Nationals and Reds to add young, frontline starters.

The Pineda move, coupled with the subsequent signing (like, three minutes later) of Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $10 million deal, has, in Paul Swydan’s words, remade the Yankees rotation in one night.

What it’s also done is to create a vacuum at the DH spot for New York.

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Oh, what a night! Michael Corleone, er, Brian Cashman, handled all rotation business in one night, trading Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi for Michael Pineda and Jose Campos, and before the dust had settled they signed Hiroki Kuroda to a one-year, $10 million deal. The two moves transformed the Yanks’ rotation from solid =with a couple of question marks to dominant.

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A few hours ago, news broke that the Yankees finally shipped Jesus Montero to Seattle for their premium right-handed starting pitcher. However, despite a couple of years of rumors and suggestions, Felix Hernandez is not the one donning pinstripes – the Yankees landed 23-year-old (in five days, anyway) Michael Pineda instead.

While Pineda isn’t King Felix, he’s a pretty terrific young pitcher in his own right. He jumped directly into the Mariners rotation out of spring training last year and was good enough to make the All-Star team in his rookie season. And, while Safeco Field is a nice place for a rookie pitcher to learn his craft, Pineda did most of the good work on his own.

Among qualified AL starting pitchers last year, only Brandon Morrow and Justin Verlander posted a higher strikeout rate than Pineda, who whiffed 24.9% of the batters he faced. His K% was better than David Price, CC Sabathia, and yes, even Felix. Pineda’s live fastball and willingness to live up in the strike zone led to a lot of swinging strikes, and that had nothing to do with the park he played in.

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The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will release its list of  soon-to-be inductees on Monday. Some discussion has focused on Bernie Williams and how much his postseason performance should count towards his hall candidacy. I’ll look at a simple way to add postseason plate-appearances into a player’s career WAR.

Of all the candidates eligible for the hall of fame in 2012, Williams had the most postseason plate appearances — and by a large margin. He had 545 of them, which is more than twice as many as any other hall-eligible player. Javy Lopez is second with 225, and Fred McGriff comes in at 218. Impressively, 141 of Williams’ 545 plate appearances came during the World Series. For reference, Williams’ World Series total is nearly three times as many as  Mark McGwire, who had 53.

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Most of us spent the holidays with friends and family, celebrating the New Year and making resolutions we probably won’t keep. Brien Taylor was busy celebrating his 40th birthday the day after Christmas, two decades after the Yankees made him the first overall pick in the 1991 draft.

“I’ve been through 28 drafts,” said Scott Boras back in 2006, “and Brien Taylor, still to this day, is the best high school pitcher I’ve seen in my life.”

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It’s been an uncharacteristically slow offseason for the Yankees, at least in terms of bringing in players from other teams. How easily we forget that they gave out the fourth largest pitching contract in baseball history a few weeks ago. The Yankees brought back another one of their 2011 players late last week, agreeing to a one-year deal with Andruw Jones. He’ll earn a $2 million base salary with another $1.4 million available in incentives.

Most of us remember Jones from his days with the Braves, when he was hitting 30+ homers annually and playing a historically great center field, but he hasn’t been that player in five calendar years now. He’s effectively carved out a second career as a platoon corner outfielder after his disastrous stint with the Dodgers, producing a .356 wOBA and 3.7 WAR in 266 games and 881 plate appearances split between the Rangers, White Sox, and Yankees from 2009-2011. It’s a .367 wOBA and 3.1 WAR over the last two years, and most of that damage has come against southpaws: .401 wOBA vs. LHP and .336 wOBA vs. RHP. He’s walking more than ever before (13.5% from ’09-’11 after 9.9% from ’96-’08), and the advanced metrics generally approve of his defense in the corner spots (though the sample sizes are problematic).

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Mariano Rivera’s cutter is the most dominant pitch in the game today, if not one of the best ever. Baseball’s all-time saves leader has carved out a brilliant career with his signature offering, sawing off a lumberyard’s worth of bats along the way. Hitters know it’s coming, but rarely can they square it up.

When a pitcher possesses such a weapon, it is easy to assume that he can simply rear back and let it go. Unlike a Greg Maddux or a Mike Mussina, he doesn’t need to be a practitioner of the art of pitching. He just blows hitters away with pure stuff.

According to Rivera, it isn’t that simple.

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On Tuesday, we took a look at the New York Yankees surprise acquisition of SS Hiroyuki Nakajima via a $2.5M positing bid — the lowest bid for a position player since 2000. Now, it sounds increasingly likely that the Yankees will explore trades for the 29-year-old infielder.

According to Ken Rosenthal, the Chicago Cubs and the San Francisco Giants are both interested in Nakajima, and — frankly — I am surprised there are not even more teams rather interested in one of Japan’s best hitting shortstops.

Rosenthal got some quotes from a rival scout that are somewhat illuminating on the defensive makeup of Nakajima:

“This kid wants to play baseball,” the scout said. “He’s not going to take Jeter’s place, but he’s capable of being an everyday shortstop in the big leagues.”

The scout projects Nakajima as a .270-.280 hitter who will drive in runs and use his instincts to steal bases, despite being a below-average runner. He lacks arm strength at short, but has great hands, very good range to his left and hangs in on the double play, the scout said.

So does Nakajima fit with the Cubs or Giants?
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Last week, we heard the official word that the New York Yankees had acquired negotiation rights to Japanese infielder Hiroyuki Nakajima. In order for teams to win rights to negotiate with players leaving Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league, they must participate in a silent auction called the posting system. The winning bid goes to the NPB team currently in control of the player’s rights, unless the team cannot sign a major or minor league contract in 30 days.

The Nakajima posting seemed to go by with little fanfare. The Yankees won the rights to negotiate with Nakajima, bidding a paltry $2.5M, and promptly announced their intentions to make him their second utility infielder.

To me, it seems pretty clear the Yankees had no expectations of actually winning the bid. Not only do they lack a position for Nakajima, they have already been rumored to be seeking a trade partner. On top of that, their bid was low. I mean: Seriously low:

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Jim Bowden tweeted over the weekend that six teams were pursuing reliever Luis Ayala. The list of suitors included progressive teams like the Red Sox, Yankees, Rays and Blue Jays. Since these teams typically spend money wisely, their interest in a retread reliever like Ayala is pretty puzzling.

Yes, Ayala had a decent 2011 season with the Yankees, but he isn’t the type of player all these teams should pursue. He isn’t a closer or a traditional setup man. Aside from last season, when he had a 3.40 FIP against lefties and a 4.99 mark against righties, he isn’t very effective against opposite-handed hitters. He has never really lit the league ablaze against same-handed opponents either.

Throughout his career, Ayala has posted average strikeout and walk rates, a decent groundball rate, and home run rates — per nine innings and relative to flyballs allowed — right in line with the league. He was also previously reputed as a rubber-arm reliever, though injuries have taken their toll on his durability in recent years.

Ayala does not really stand out as a reliever worth a guaranteed major league deal that may start a bidding war between teams serious about contending.

The only way this amped up pursuit of his services makes sense is if teams are convinced that he is actually the reliever that posted a 2.09 ERA in 56 innings with the Yankees. That would be a foolish belief.

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