Monday’s signings, rumors
Catalanotto signs with Rangers for 3y, $13m
Garciaparra reups with Dodgers for 2y
Added by Jason: Ryan Howard wins NL MVP
Soooo… hitters, apx 2006 win value from offense, new contract annual value
Henry Blanco, 0, $2.6m
Sean Casey, -1, $4m
Alex Cora, -1, $2m
Mark DeRosa, 2, $4.3m
Jim Edmonds, 2, $9.5m
Alex Gonzalez, 0, $4.6m
Wes Helms, 2, $2.7m
Aramis Ramirez, 4, $15m
Alfonso Soriano, 6, $17m
Scott Spiezio, 2, $2.3m
Frank Thomas, 4, $9m
By the way, here’s the contracts of Frank Thomas. The 2006 base salary of $500k was so low I felt obligated to include the incentives he made, but otherwise this is straight:
Don’t Call It A Comeback …
… I’ve been here for three weeks. And my log-in and password still work. Excellent!
Folks, Dave has on occasion kvetched about cross-country flights, which is certainly a truism. Let me vouch for the fact that moving across the International Date Line is no less trying. Between getting my project set up, trying to furnish a home, fill out myriad mystifying forms and leap headfirst into two mutually-unintelligible languages (three, if you count English), chores aplenty have rolled in. This has left me wondering whether there is an opposite of “combobulated.”
Oh yeah.
Keeping up on baseball news has been shuffled down on the priority list somewhere just above “is there any drawback to living with wild geckos?” and just below “register for the health care system.” I’ve been a lot better at keeping up my Okinawa blog, but then, this place is the epicenter of the next year for me, so I’d better. If you’re interested in mundane details about my apartment, political and environmental news about a place you might not know much about, and the occasional bit of strangeness, pop on over.
Though my absence is no doubt helping the average Post Intelligence Quotient over here, I’ve been looking for an excuse to duck in, say “hi,” and hopefully bring something in the way of Japanese baseball news to the table.
It’s the offseason here, too, but here’s what I’ve got: the Yokohama Bay Stars train in Ginowan City, where I live now. They just did a little meet n’ greet with some American kids. The Bay Stars (along with many Japanese teams) will be back in Okinawa in February for spring training.
That’s right, they have two offseason camps. Rumors that they force pitchers to throw hundreds of pitches during each are unsubstantiated, but let’s just say I’m bringing the camera in three months.
Mariner fan photo blogging: while I was strolling around Highway 58 today trying to sign up for local cultural activities, I ran into these two kids, who were anxious to try out the only English word they know — and, coincidentally, the phrase that I popped over here to say — “Hi!”
Always happy to meet another Mariner fan, I pointed out in Japanese that I’m from Seattle, where the Mariners play. They looked perplexed and then laughed, as it became readily apparent that the young fella wasn’t so much a baseball fan as someone who thought the hat looked sweet.
I also saw a weird advertisement featuring Ichiro today, but neglected to bring my camera, which is always — always — a mistake. At least it will give me fodder for another post sometime in the next several months.
Kidding. Kind of.
Sorry, Cubbie fans
Jim Hendry has just tied a monumental millstone around the necks of the Chicago Cubs franchise, reportedly agreeing to an eight year, $136 million contract for Alfonso Soriano.
Good Lord. This offseason is a repeat of the Hampton/Neagle/Vaughn stupidity.
Comparison Fun
You know I think the free agent market is nuts. You know I support acquiring talent via trade instead of paying these prices. You may not know that there really are good deals to be found, even in this sea of insanity. For instance, look at this comparison of left-fielders:
Player A: .287/.358/.457, 601 PA, 79 runs created, 32 years old, well above average defensively
Player B: .300/.355/.540, 624 PA, 113 runs created, 30 years old, terrible defensively
Player A is more of a line-drive gap hitter with athleticism. His defense is probably worth +5 to +10 runs a year, and even more on a team with a spacious outfield and a flyball pitching staff.
Player B is a classic slugger with power who doesn’t walk enough to be a superstar, but has enough juice in his bat to be a very effective player. His defense is a detriment, but the bat more than makes up for it.
When factoring in total value, Player B is probably 15 to 20 runs better, assuming neither undergoes drastic decline. Player B should make more money, and since he’s two years younger, should get a longer contract, but the differences shouldn’t be monumental. A few million more and an extra year, maybe two, for Player B. Given their worth relative to the ease of finding a left fielder who can hit, I’d say Player A is worth something like 2 years, $10 million and Player B is worth 3 years, $24 million. Or something like that.
Player A is Emil Brown, who the Royals can’t give away, because he’s arbitration eligible for the first time and is probably going to be awarded a salary of $3 to $4 million for 2007.
Player B is Carlos Lee, who has half the teams in baseball fighting to give him a 5 year, $75 million contract.
Major League GMs are willing to pay an extra $11 million a year for “power”, which optimistically translates to a 15-20 run advantage for Lee, and guarantee Lee all-star money through the rest of the decade. Meanwhile, Dayton Moore can’t find anyone interested in Emil Brown, who he’d like to move to create a spot for uberprospect Alex Gordon.
That doesn’t make any sense. Carlos Lee is a better player than Emil Brown, but the difference isn’t huge. The difference certainly isn’t worth an extra $11 million in 2007, much less the commitment from 2008-2011. So please, please, please stop telling us that these contracts are “market value”. They’re free agent value, but the baseball player talent industry is a much larger market than that segment of the population.
Friday’s roundup
Terse headlines
A’s bench coach Geren steps up to manager
Frank Thomas signs 2y, $18m deal with Blue Jays
USSM still not supplied with Wii despite constant promotion of Nintendo-owned team
Even though they’re sending everyone else one and we’re local
And we promise we’d write an article
A’s talking to Bonds
MLB owners approve new TV deals worth $3 billion+
Meteor shower! Good thing we live in a city with near-total cloud cover for nine months a year.
Other good stuff
Over in an article at Baseball Prospectus, Nate Silver’s quoted saying the dollar cost teams are paying per win a player contributes looks like it’s jumped 30% or more this season. Teams have money to spend, labor peace, and there aren’t many free agents worth having.
I still can’t believe Scott Spiezio got 2y, $4.5m from the Cardinals and he’s trash talking about the M’s.
The M’s in Pinto’s defensive model
“I’d like to patronize your store, and by that I mean I’d like to buy something.”
“I know what it means! Don’t patronize me.”
— Sam & Max: Culture Shock
We’ve talked a lot about defense here at USSM lately, particularly with regards to Sexson the Albatross, and it always generates a lot of discussion about how we can, or can’t, measure defense. It’s true that defensive tools aren’t nearly as fine as offensive tools are perceived to be, but as we’ve learned in the last few years, those aren’t quite as good as we thought. And, in general, I agree with what Dave’s been trying to say: that while none of the defensive systems people are working on is as good as we’d like, you can look at the good ones and immediately get a reasonable idea of a player’s contributions, and by looking at several, you can get more confident. And when there are contradictions, it’s worth thinking about how those can arise, and what they reveal about the systems and the players.
But if you look at some player and various defensive systems rate him at +5 runs, +10 runs, +12 runs, and +8 runs, you can be reasonably assured he’s good with the glove.
All of which is a long introduction to this: David Pinto’s been working on “Probabilistic Model of Range” and he’s published some cool stuff at Baseball Musings.
Here’s his team breakdown by air/ground stats.
The M’s are the fourth-best on ground balls. Woo-hoo! Go Betancourt/Beltre!
They’re in the middle of the pack in fly balls. Boo Ibanez! Yay Ichiro and Snelling!
(Okay, so I’m clearly introducing unsupported allegations there)
Overall, the team came out sixth overall in total rankings.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in this yet – from early comments it appears that the numbers Dewan’s going to put in the Hardball Times annual will be a lot different, and moreover, the whole baseball community is only really starting to figure out how to use the better data, particularly play-by-play data with hit location and speed. Pinto’s model is based on 2002-2006. The systems will get better.
Defense rocks.
Thursday news
Devil Rays are top Iwamura bidder (mlb)
Frank Thomas may sign with Blue Jays (mlb)
Bonds, Giants spar
Also, because a reader emailed to point out we haven’t mentioned this beyond “the Missions left us”, the M’s had a whole affiliate shuffle.
AA swaps from San Antonio to the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. The extra ‘X’ is for eXtra.
Their Cal League affiliate for A ball moves from Inland Empire to the High Desert Mavericks.
Wednesday’s news, tightly edited
From sensory deprivation tank, Mussina agrees to 2y, $22.5m contract with Yankees
NL Manager of the year is Marlins’ fired Girardi
Leyland wins AL Manager of the Year
Acta named new Nationals manager
100-year old Hernandez gets two year, $12m contract
Mark DeRosa gets 3y, $13m
M’s sign nine
Read all about it (scroll down, it’s at the bottom, notes-style).
The Mariners signed nine players to minor-league contracts Tuesday, including SS Rey Ordonez, who hasn’t played in the majors since 2004. Also signed to Class AAA contracts were pitchers Renee Cortez and Jesse Foppert, outfielder Tony Torcato and infielder Brant Ust. Signed to AA or A deals were pitchers Cibney Bello, Josh Kite, Michael Wagner and Jared Eichelberger.
Yes, that’s the Rey Ordonez. Gold Glove Winner Rey Ordonez. My buddy Seth over at Seattlest has a funny take on this one. This is the kind of signing people might get too worked up about, but it’s really not a big deal. He’s AAA insurance at best. He’s not taking Betancourt’s job.
The world has not ended
The announcement of the Daisuke posting bid sent columnists across the country to their keyboards, ready to crank out an easy day’s work wringing their hands about how this is the end of baseball.
It’s not. This is ridiculous.
He’s not an everyday player.
Starting pitchers don’t play everyday. But they’re involved in far more outcomes each game than position players. We might as well say that Alex Rodriguez doesn’t deserve his money because he only has a chance to affect the outcome of a game four or five times each day.
The Red Sox are paying more for the right to talk to Daisuke than great players make in a year
So what? The posting process is strange. MLB’s arrangement with Japanese baseball is weird, and it produces results like this. It results in crazy one-time payments that don’t have an equivalent in domestic baseball.
But this is a lot like the wailing about draft pick signing bonuses, or international signings of young undrafted players. “Oh, how can some Felix Hernandez kid get a million dollars when he hasn’t even thrown an inning of minor league baseball?”
Baseball is not a free market. Teams are constantly trying to keep their labor costs down and where they can’t control it, we get these kind of extremely strange values.
This changes everything
Dogs and cats living together!
No it doesn’t, any more than Ichiro’s posting did. It’s true this is unprecedented, but so was Ichiro’s posting, and that didn’t destroy baseball.
Teams are flush with cash and crazy!
Yup. Baseball’s been doing quite well for itself, and good teams spend that money improving the quality of their product. So be it. The fans win when baseball is a more lucrative option for athletes who have choices between sports.
Other athletes get paid far less!
Boo hoo. Football and basketball both broke their unions and, because they went through near-death experiences, are a lot more… socialist? in their structure, where revenue comes from national sources and gets evenly distributed (though, as always, this wavers).
Should we really be celebrating that Peyton Manning is underpaid in the NFL because their ownership groups control labor costs and are able to pocket more money?
We should be celebrating. That smart teams are willing to spend so much on a Japanese player, no matter what the circumstances or how foolish the system may be, is a sign of baseball’s great health, its increasing international reach. It’s an endorsement of the talent in NPB, and how far that league has come.
Yesterday was shocking, but if you’re a baseball fan it should also be a bit thrilling. How many people are going to follow Matsuzaka’s starts this year? How can that be a bad thing?