While there are still some intriguing pitchers left on the free agent market — Roy Oswalt chief among them — the free agent pool for hitters is rapidly drying up. Prince Fielder is still on the market, but outside of him, there is little offense to be found outside of a trade. Casey Kotchman, Derrek Lee, Johnny Damon, Vladimir Guerrero, Brad Hawpe — all these guys have some sort of offensive upside, but not much.

As a result of this dearth of offense, one player is beginning to get some attention on the rumor mill: Carlos Pena. Pena looks like the best remaining free agent option for teams looking to add offense (again, in the non-Prince-Fielder crowd), as he hit 28 home runs and posted a .354 wOBA last season with the Cubs. He may be getting older, but there’s still plenty of pop in his bat.

There was wide speculation that the Yankees could sign Pena to fill their hole at DH, but according to a recent report from Jon Heyman, it seems as though they may not have the payroll space to sign him. But there is still a wide number of teams interested in Pena: the Blue Jays, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Nationals, Orioles, Pirates, Rangers, and Rays (according to MLBTR, at least).

Despite Pena being the best remaining hitter on the market, though, there are some reasons teams should be wary about guaranteeing him too much money: his BABIP, power production, and platoon splits.

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There might just be one split worth worrying about on Michael Pineda’s player page.

There, among a bunch of splits that don’t have much predictive value, is one set of numbers that holds a little possibility for pain for the new potential star in pinstripes. It’s not the monthly splits — no sample of any size has shown those splits to be predictive — and Dave Cameron did a great job pointing out why even the home and away splits haven’t really shown a predictive pattern for Pineda.

But there might just be one split worth unpacking.

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There are a lot of opinions out there about the deal over the weekend that shipped Michael Pineda and prospect Jose Campos to New York in exchange for Jesus Montero and Hector Noesi. A lot of people think the Yankees got a steal, while others point to the risks associated with young arms and argue that the Mariners might have done well to transfer some of that risk to a team that could more easily live with the consequences should Pineda’s arm blow up. However, if there’s a consensus on the deal, it seems to be this – how well this deal turns out for the Mariners is directly related to how many games Montero spends behind the plate.

Everyone thinks Montero is going to be a good hitter, maybe even a great one – though, I’d suggest that if Brian Cashman really thinks he’s Mike Piazza or Miguel Cabrera, as he stated over the weekend, then he simply shouldn’t have traded him – but Montero’s been evaluated as an elite prospect based on the premise that he might be able to catch in the big leagues. After all, the average catcher hit just .245/.313/.389 last year, so having a guy behind the plate who can provide real offensive value can be a significant advantage for a Major League club. As a catcher, Montero could be the best offensive player at his position. At DH, that’s a lot less likely.

So, clearly, the upside play is to stick him behind the plate – the best possible outcome for the Mariners is that Montero’s defense improves to acceptable levels and he becomes their version of Mike Napoli, who was perhaps the key figure in the Rangers run to the World Series last year. However, looking at the potential reward of two different options is only half of the question that needs to be asked, and chasing upside is not always the correct decision. Are there reasons for the Mariners to pass on Montero as a catcher and just move him to designated hitter full time now?

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When the Seattle Mariners dealt left-hander Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers for a package centered around first baseman Justin Smoak, my initial reaction was surprise – the New York Yankees were in the hunt and had apparently offered their top prospect, only to be rebuffed at the 11th hour. In March, a spring training piece I wrote on Montero included even stronger sentiment:

Jesus Montero has a chance to have a very special career for the New York Yankees, or any franchise he may be dealt to. Personally, I thought the Seattle Mariners were nuts for wanting Justin Smoak over Jesus Montero at the trade deadline last season.

Having never had the opportunity to scout Smoak in person, my frame of reference for discussing Smoak became Montero as he still ranks as the best pure hitting prospect I’ve had the opportunity to scout.

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Since the swap of Michael Pineda for Jesus Montero became public last night, a few talking points have become pretty commonplace. Some of them – Pineda’s reliance on his fastball and slider due to a subpar change-up, for instance – are definitely true, and are stories supported by the evidence. However, there have also been a few points that have been raised that don’t stand up to closer scrutiny, and those mostly stem from cursory looks at Pineda’s splits.

Split data, by its nature, generally consists of small sample sizes. In breaking a season down into smaller slices, you’re necessarily introducing greater uncertainty into the numbers. It’s important to not draw too many strong conclusions from what appear to be trends in split data, and at the same time, to make sure you’re looking at the entire picture.

With Pineda, two of his 2011 splits are most commonly cited as reasons for the Yankees to have some concern about his future performance – his home/road splits (specifically, the 2.92/4.40 ERA numbers) and his first half/second half splits (3.03/5.12 ERA). From these numbers, questions have been raised about how well Pineda will do outside of spacious Safeco Field and whether he’ll be able to hold up over a full-season and still be able to pitch well for the Yankees in the playoffs.

In both cases, however, looking a little deeper than simple ERA shows that these concerns are probably overblown.

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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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