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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Obviously it is the horse talking.

News broke Monday night that the Texas Rangers signed once-great, maybe even possibly still-great, reliever Joe Nathan to a 2-year contract for $7M a year, plus a $9M option.

FUN FACT: Over the last two years, Joe Nathan and I have the exact same WAR — we both have been worth precisely 0.0 wins! Which makes us ask: Why did the Rangers choose Nathan?

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During a discussion with reporters on Wednesday, Brian Cashman talked about the budget that he was operating under. Or perhaps more specifically, the lack of a fixed budget.

“There’s always the target area (for the payroll),” Cashman said. “But obviously we’ve always been in the position thankfully that depending on what becomes available, how it looks, what our current circumstances are, if we’re quote unquote in trouble, we have an ownership that’s receptive to having conversations obviously regarding that. I’ll give you an example.

“Like last year, Russell Martin became available so we stretched to make that work. There wasn’t an intention there. But that was something that he allowed me to do a little bit more on because … we weren’t expecting that. We were going to go with the young catchers. But when he became non-tendered, and if we could get a deal at a certain amount, it took a lot of conversations with Hal Steinbrenner. He allowed that to happen and it was a real big benefit for us and we appreciate that.

“So you have those give and takes that take place. Sometimes it’s no, and sometimes it’s yes, but obviously the flexibility, as you already know, there’s no set number where you can’t exceed it that obviously exists in other environments.”

Not that this is any real surprise, but the Yankees don’t have a payroll limit, they have a “target area”. Ownership probably wouldn’t go for a $300 million payroll, but as long as Cashman can make a compelling case that there’s value to be had in spending a bit more money, he has the ability to dip into an essentially unlimited pool of resources.

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On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

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Yesterday afternoon, Jayson Stark considered the question, “Is the MLB’s competitive balance a joke?” His answer was a rather blunt no:

MLB’s competitive balance is NOT a joke.

It beats the NFL.

It beats the league formerly known as the NBA.

And … I can prove it.

Stark’s method of proving it — plucking facts from the recent playoff series and comparing them generally to the NFL and other major leagues — was less than rigorous. In general, I agreed with his assertion: Parity in the MLB exists naturally far more than any other sports league.

HOWEVER, if my foot has less gangrene than your foot, does that mean I don’t need a doctor? No. I probably still need a doctor, and I probably need to stop playing barefoot tag on Rusty Nails Pier.

Relative success does not necessitate absolute success. And frankly, I feel the “parity” in the MLB indeed has a gangrene of sorts, a disease that is causing only specific segments of the league to rot while the rest hum along uncaring.

Of course, it is one thing to suspect something and demand more research, but it is another to pull the sabermetrician stocking over your head and answer that suspicion with a Falcon Punch of data.

Let’s do just that.
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Draft picks are going to bust far more often than not in this game — even highly-touted first rounders. The further away you get from the top of the first round, though, the more the bust potential increases. Few first rounders have busted as hard as Andrew Brackman, not just in terms of his failure to contribute to the team that drafted him, but also in terms of how much he cost.

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