Kuroda to Dodgers? Who knows
Conficting reports this morning on the status of Horoki Kuroda – the Kyodo News says he’s going to sign with the Dodgers, while Geoff Baker says not so fast – we’ll find out shortly either way.
I’ve been ambivalent about Kuroda since the start, and honestly, I’ll feel the same way about this news. Kuroda isn’t particularly impressive to me, but this is a pretty unimpressive crop of available pitchers this winter. If losing out on Kuroda means that we throw $50 million at Kyle Lohse, than this is terrible news. If it means we throw $10 million at Bartolo Colon, then it’s awesome. But we don’t know which way the organization is going to go if they really do lose out on Kuroda, so I find it hard to have an opinion about him potentially going to LA one way or another.
OMG, someone bought an ad
Hey, so for a while I’ve been screwing around with ads — the Project Wonderful easy-bid thing, we did some Google ads randomly — and nothing made any money. So I signed up for blogads, and wow, today there’s an ad for a hair product of some kind. We put up the “buy us a beer” thing for a while (and got about 40 beers total over two trials).
Anyway, the short version is: we’ve been trying to figure out how to make USSM at least somewhat financially less horrible a venture without plastering the site with ticket scalper ads, and this is the the latest in the long tinkering. We’ll see if it hangs around.
Announcing the mods
Hey all — some time ago, we put out an open call for people to help us with the comment moderation, and I wanted to follow up, because I realized it’s been well over a month. We got a great bunch of volunteers, names you’ll likely recognize from their contributions in the comments: Graham MacAree, Jeff Nye, Mike Snow, and Jim Thomsen. As a group, they’re about 4x more qualified to be moderating comments than I am.
So far, it’s been going swimmingly: I don’t ever log in to see 35 comments in the moderation queue, for instance, and no one’s gone insane with power.
I am happy and grateful to them, and to everyone who volunteered to pitch in, for their help in keeping the site manageable as it grows in fits and bursts.
Shameless holiday gift-giving suggestion
May I shamelessly suggest The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball for any and all baseball fans you know?
The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
M’s Select Knuckler in Rule 5 Draft
The Rule 5 draft was this morning as the wrapup to the winter meetings. Last year, the Mariners grabbed Sean White, and this year, it was R.A. Dickey. Dickey was a former 1st round pick who never made it as a normal pitcher, so he’s taken up the knuckleball as a way to try to have a major league career. He threw 170 innings for Nashville in the PCL last year with typical knuckler results – lots of walks, not many strikeouts, but a lot of groundballs and weak contact, leading to a decent ERA.
Maybe Dickey will get to spring training, be lousy, and the M’s will be out $25,000 when they return him to the Twins. But, I still like this move – having a knuckler in camp fighting for a spot on the pitching staff will be fun, and if the M’s decided to use him in relief, we could see all kinds of hilarity when he comes in to replace Felix Hernandez.
Jose Guillen to get suspended for steroid, HGH purchases
Wow. From ESPN:
The Major League Baseball Players Association is negotiating with MLB officials on a possible 10- to 15-day suspension for outfielder Jose Guillen for his reported involvement in the purchase of steroids and human growth hormone, sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Buster Olney on Wednesday.
If that’s right, you have to wonder how much that affected the Guillen extension talks this year – we know they were all but signed for some time, certainly until the Byrnes contract. Did it play a part in their decision to let Guillen walk?
BTW, I don’t know if this is true:
Seattle declined its $9 million option and Guillen turned down a $5 million player option, receiving a $500,000 buyout.
If I remember, the $9m option was mutual: both the team and Guillen would have had to accept it, and then if the team turned it down, Guillen had an option to extend for one year at $5m, and if he turned that down, he couldn’t get the buyout.
But when I try to look up the details, I’m just finding a lot of conflicting information.
Win Now? Do This.
As I mentioned in this morning’s post, the Mariners are in win now mode – coming off an 88 win season and with jobs still on the line, building for 2009 is not an option. However, as the Tigers, Yankees, Red Sox, and Indians continue to set the bar for just what a legitimate contender looks like, the M’s have some serious ground to cover if they’re going to actually try to win it all next year. Johan Santana wouldn’t have been enough. Erik Bedard won’t be enough. This team needs to make some significant improvements at multiple positions if they’re actually going to make a run for the pennant. (Note – I don’t support this philosophy, but realize that the organization won’t do what I want them to, so at least we can try to help them do the best while pursuing a suboptimal roster building approach).
So, here’s a totally made up series of moves (please don’t call these rumors or email beat writers asking how likely these moves are – they’re fictional creations from Dave Land) that could potentially help the Mariners accomplish their goal of having to be taken at least semi-seriously in the A.L. next year.
1. Trade Adam Jones, Brandon Morrow and Jose Lopez to Baltimore for Erik Bedard and Brian Roberts.
The M’s aren’t going to get Bedard without surrendering Adam Jones, but it doesn’t make any sense to just make that move and not fix the rest of the roster. By going from Lopez to Roberts, the team takes a significant step forward at second base; Roberts is one of those ridiculously underappreciated players in the game, because his contributions (lots of doubles, walks, and good defense) are generally undervalued among talent evaluators. Like Bedard, Roberts is under contract through 2009 at a below market salary, and is just 29 years old. While the team would be trading a lot of future value, they’d be getting two guys in their primes, both under club control for two more years.
If you’re going to trade Adam Jones, this is the kind of package you have to get back.
2. Sign Geoff Jenkins to a multiyear deal.
If Jones is traded, this is almost non-negotiable; the team would have to replace him with a quality defensive outfielder or we’ll just see a repeat of last year’s debacle in the outfield.
3. Sign Bartolo Colon to a one year deal.
We’ve talked about this – it’s a good idea, and if he goes into the season as your #5 starter behind Bedard, Felix, Batista, and Washburn, the downside if he gets hurt is limited (Rowland-Smith and Baek are still around), and the upside is still there for him to move into the upper half of the rotation, removing the team’s need to potentially throw Washburn to the wolves in a playoff series.
Ideally, they’d go beyond even these moves, dealing either Sexson or Vidro and replacing Ibanez with a real outfielder as well, but that might be asking for too much. If they’re going to get serious in a deal for Bedard, however, this is the path they need to commit to going down. Bedard and Kuroda is just not enough to make them real contenders. This team needs more than that.
Adding Roberts and Jenkins to the offense would add two more bats that can swing from the left side and are a good fit for Safeco Field, while also hopefully keeping the defense at least passable, rather than the disaster it was last year.
I’d still rather the team not trade Jones in some far fetched attempt to grasp at glory, but if they’re going to do so, at least we can hope that they’ll do something like this. Don’t settle for just adding a pitcher or two – either get serious, make the team good, or hold your cards.
Winter Meetings, Day Three
48 hours into the winter meetings and the news continues to come out of cities besides Seattle. As mentioned below, the Tigers just launched themselves right back into the discussion in terms of AL Contenders with their trade yesterday. While the Mariners won’t think this way (after all, jobs are on the line), it’s really quite clear that the 2008 Mariners just have no chance of being in the top tier of American League clubs.
The Red Sox, Yankees, Indians, and Tigers have essentially locked themselves into fighting over position as the four best teams in baseball. The dropoff between those clubs and the fifth best team in the game is pretty staggering. They have, for all intents and purposes, taken any chance the AL West had of winning the wild card and thrown it in a wood chipper. The only way for the Mariners to make the playoffs next year is to win the division, and even if they can do that, they’re looking at having to beat two beheamoths just to even get to the World Series.
In an ideal world, where the franchise wasn’t being run on a win-or-lose-your-job mandate, and the front office could make decisions based on what is best for the franchise, the M’s would just fold up their 2008 tents and become sellers. They are three or four all-star type players away from competing with the big boys in the A.L., and they simply don’t have the resources to make the type of upgrades necessary to get themselves in a legitimate position to win postseason games.
But, that isn’t the reality of the situation. The front office doesn’t have the ability to make that kind of decision – the minute they start selling, they’re writing their own pink slips. This franchise is in win now mode – unfortunately, so are five other American League teams, and they’re all far better at it than the M’s.
So, today, we’ll see talk shift to Erik Bedard, as the M’s try to make a splash and impress some people. After yesterday’s trade, I’m now just hoping that we get through the rest of this winter without destroying the future, because the idea of winning it all in ’08 seems about as likely as Steve Kelley writing an entire paragraph.
The Most Fun Trade Ever, Part Two
Okay, so this qualifies as something better than yesterday.
The Tigers are sending their entire farm system, along with the draft rights to every player they pick for the next 1,000 years, a partridge, and a pear tree to the Florida Marlins for Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis.
It’s the blockbuster to end all blockbusters. The Tigers instantly thrust themselves right back into the top tier of the American League superpowers, while the Marlins acquire a ridiculous haul of talent not seen since the Herschel Walker trade.
This deal makes the Tigers better in a time where their window to win is not huge. Detroit has a significant core of their roster who won’t be helping them win for much longer or are about to head into decline, so they’re in a position where trading future help for current help makes a lot of sense. Miguel Cabrera, while not much defensively, is a hall of fame hitter heading into the prime of his career. You can’t acquire a player that good and not get better.
Did they overpay? Yea, probably. My love affair with Andrew Miller is long and well documented, and while I think Cameron Maybin is a little overhyped, he’s just terrific instead of stupendously awesome. The other four prospects account for, basically, every last bit of talent in the Tigers system besides Rick Porcello (who they aren’t allowed to trade yet). It’s a massive haul for the Marlins, and gives them some chances to realign their roster to help alleviate some of their defensive deficiencies.
From the Mariners perspective, Cabrera’s not an Angel, so we should all be thrilled about that.
Winter Meetings, Day Two
A fairly boring day one of the meetings. Let’s hope today provides a little more excitement. Here’s what we know after 24 hours.
1. With the M’s out of the Johan Santana sweepstakes, they’re now pursuing Erik Bedard – he’s not quite as good as Johan, but he’s still a terrific pitcher, plus he’s under club control through 2009. However, just as with Santana, the price is exhorbitant, and I’m still of the opinion that the Mariners aren’t one pitcher away from being a legit contender.
2. The Edwin Jackson rumors didn’t last long, as it appears the M’s were only offering scraps to Tampa, who are too smart to give up a quality young arm for pieces of questionable value like Ben Broussard or Rob Johnson. If the M’s want to get a guy like Jackson, they’re going to have to part with a talented player in return – Wladimir Balentien actually makes a lot of sense for both clubs, especially now that the Rays have traded Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes in the last week.
3. Apparently, Hiroki Kuroda’s first name isn’t Hideki. Whoops. M’s still seem like the frontrunners for his services.
4. Also, Jose Guillen signed with the Royals for 3 years and $36 million. Because the M’s declined to offer arbitration, they don’t get any draft pick compensation. Bavasi gave the typical crap answer about the team not wanting the exposure of him potentially accepting arbitration and wrecking their budget with a $12-$15 million award down the line. However, that’s a load of B.S.
The actual exposure the team had was 1/6th of whatever they projected his potential arbitration award to be, thanks to a clause in the CBA that allows teams to release players prior to March 15th and only be liable for 16% of the salary they were given in arbitration. So, if the M’s thought Guillen would accept abritration and they really didn’t want him back, they could simply release him by paying him something around $2 million to just go away. That’s their real exposure.
And really, what were the odds of Guillen accepting arbitration? 10%? 20%? No way it was higher than that. A 20% risk of a $2 million exposure is about $400,000 in risk. The team punted a supplemental first round pick because $400,000 scared them away. What a bunch of pansies.