If you happen to
follow many baseball writers on Twitter, chances are your timeline was blowing
up this past week. With MLB’s winter meetings taking place in Nashville,
Tennessee, there was a lot of activity, as more free agents were taken off the
market. Heck, there was even some trading going on. It was all part of the
dance as we get closer and closer to the start of spring training.
***Perhaps the
most shocking move to come out of the winter meetings was the Red Sox giving a three-year,
$39 million deal to
outfielder Shane Victorino. The Red Sox have publicly declared their new
distaste in giving out large contracts
of lengths exceeding more than three or four years. Apparently they are content
with grossly overpaying players on shorter-term deals.
Part of the
outrage stemmed from ESPN’s Buster
Olney
tweeting that one team executive had previously guessed Victorino would be
lucky to get a one-year deal for $6-7 million. The 33-year-old switch hitter is
coming off the worst season of his career, hitting just .255 with a .704 OPS.
Most troubling were his struggles against left-handed pitching, as he hit just
.229 with a .629 OPS against them in 2012. It’s a big financial gamble on a
player who might only be platoon-worthy at this point in his career. Such moves
can get a GM fired or called a genius for seeing what others couldn’t.
***The average MLB
salary hit
an all-time high of $3.2 million in 2012. The average has climbed nearly $1
million in the past decade and speaks well to the solid financial foundation of
the league and their labor agreement with the players. Right now there is
plenty of money to be made on both sides, and with new tv deals giving teams
like the Dodgers stupid money, there may be no end in sight to this trend
***The downward
spiral of Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez does not seem to have hit rock
bottom yet. It was announced that he will be having surgery later this winter that will keep him out
until at least the All Star break, when he will be approaching his 38th
birthday.
A-Rod’s OPS has
declined precipitously for six consecutive seasons, dropping almost a total of
300 points. The Yankees should not hold their breath expecting to get much from
him during the next five seasons, when they owe him $114 million. Fortunately for
them, they apparently are insured for
the majority of
that amount, softening the blow of their terrible investment. It’s appropriate
to call it a terrible investment because giving a 10-year, $275 million
contract to any player that age (32 at the time) should never be considered a
wise decision.
***One of the
players being eyed to
replace Rodriguez is
former Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis, who was reportedly offered a one-year,
$12 million deal by the Bronx Bombers. It’s another curious decision by the
Yankees. They already have their backs up against the wall with payroll issues
and trying to manage aging players in decline. Adding the soon to be
34-year-old Youk, who looked like toast last season (career-worst .235 batting
average and a strikeout every four at-bats), would seem to be compounding their
problems instead of helping them.
Stats from FanGraphs.com show some reasons for Youk’s decline. His
.268 BABIP suggest he either encountered some bad luck or lost bat speed. His
8.9 wFB (Fastball Runs Above Average) seem to indicate lost bat speed, as that
mark is a far cry from the 35.5 mark he posted as recently as 2009.
Other than
perhaps deciding to reunite with former manager Terry Francona in Cleveland,
it’s unclear that Youk could expect to receive any other offers that could top
the Yankees for one season. If he truly doesn’t think he is nearing the end,
taking the contract might be a good way to show he still has some gas in the
tank and then go out against next offseason to get a multi-year deal.
***The San
Francisco Giants brought back
two of their most important players from their 2012 World Series team. They re-signed center fielder Angel
Pagan to a four-year, $40 million contract, and gave second baseman Marco
Scutaro a three-year, $20 million deal. Although the team may ultimately come
to feel that they overpaid for these two players, neither deal is outrageous,
and it makes sense to retain players who were so key to their close-knit and
efficient group.
Scutaro is 37.
Middle infielders don’t always age well and it’s unlikely he will come close to
matching the .362 batting average he had in 61 regular season games after
coming over in a trade from the Rockies last summer.
Pagan has been
sneaky-good over the past three seasons, totaling a combined WAR of 10.1 He is
a good defensive center fielder, has speed, and has surprisingly even splits as
a switch hitter. If Victorino can get the kind of money he got, the Giants
should feel no shame for what they gave Pagan
***After a lot
of speculation, the Texas Rangers traded
infielder/DH Michael Young to
the Philadelphia Phillies for reliever Josh Lindblom and a minor league
pitcher. It has to be a bittersweet moment for Young, the Rangers and their
fans, as he is on the short list of the greatest players in the history of the
franchise.
Despite a .301
career batting average and 2,230 hits, Young’s production fell off a cliff last
season. His -2.4 bWAR was among the worst in baseball and put him well below
the value of a replacement-level player. Never a great defensive player, he is
now nearly unplayable in the field, yet will be the Phillies 2013 starting third
baseman.
You have to wish
the best to Young and hope that the trade works out for both sides. The Rangers
are picking up at least half of his salary, showing how much they wanted to
jettison their former leader, in part to create more playing time for their
prospect savant, Jurickson Profar.
*** The Dodgers,
aka Scrooge McDuck, struck again, doling out a six-year, $147
million contract to
free-agent starter Zack Greinke, the largest ever given to a right-handed
pitcher in baseball history. Los Angeles has put on a spending spree this past
calendar year that may be unmatched in baseball history. With their owners
having deep pockets and a new tv deal that will bring in an income exceeding
the GDP of many small nations, there seems to be no boundaries for the new-age
Dodgers. Their financial exploits have been oohed and ahhed at by people, but
down the road such spending may be the provocation for stricter salary cap
rules or, heaven forbid, a bone of contention in a future labor dispute.
It will be
interesting to see how Greinke fits in with the Dodgers. Not because of his
supposed aversion to the spotlight, but because of the possible chemistry
issues of such a motley crew. I have not put much stock into all the talk about
how his anxiety issues would supposedly prevent him from being successful in
certain environments. Clearly, only Greinke and certain team officials know
what (if any) his limitations are and what he needs (if anything) to
successfully navigate on a day-today basis. So many people heard the word
“Anxiety” and simply wrote off Greinke as being unable to operate on an MLB
mound unless he was playing for the smallest market teams. By joining the
Dodgers and their Fabrege-esque collection of talent, he is walking into a
literal storm of expectations, media presence, and attention. Clearly there was
no insurmountable concern on his part of that of the Dodgers before the deal
was struck. Hopefully that will be a lesson learned for some of the judgers out
there.
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