M’s Acquire Cliff Lee!?!?!
Okay, so, I’ve had a few hours to let this sink in. Initial reactions that are still premature because we don’t really know what the trade looks like, exactly.
1. I love our front office. How many names have we heard them tied to so far this winter, and yet not one whisper about Lee? They’re like ninjas. No one has any idea what they’re going to do next, but you can usually bet that it will be awesome.
2. I also love Cliff Lee. The command, the change-up, the way he pitches – he’s great. He’s as good as Felix. Maybe better. Not as talented, but right now, you have about the same odds of winning with either one on the hill. The M’s just traded for a left-handed version of Felix.
3. There are going to be a ton of inevitable comparisons between this deal and the Bedard deal. We can’t compare them until we know what we’re giving up, but let’s just get this out of the way – Bedard is no Cliff Lee. Lee is a significantly better pitcher than Bedard has ever been. The durability factor is just a (huge) bonus.
4. Remember when we talked about the need to add a bunch of wins at below market rates? Lee is roughly a +5 win pitcher and he’s going to make $8 million in 2009. The M’s just acquired about 1/3 of the wins they needed to add this winter at a price of $1.6 million per win. We’ll evaluate the total cost of the trade when the outgoing players are known, but from a budget/wins standpoint, this is exactly the kind of deal the team needed to make.
5. I talked about this briefly on FanGraphs the other day, but the M’s are at a point where every marginal win they add is significantly more valuable than the average. They just made a trade in which they picked up Lee and kept Halladay away from LAA on the same day that Lackey signed in Boston. This is a huge shift in talent between the Angels and M’s, and Hideki Matsui doesn’t close the gap that much. The M’s are still several players away from being as good as LAA, but they are legitimately at a point where the wins added have a real impact on their odds of making the playoffs. Between this move and the Figgins signing, the M’s have put themselves in a position to be legitimate contenders for the AL West crown in 2010.
6. I doubt they can sign Lee to a long term deal. Philly traded him in part because they didn’t like how negotiations on a long term deal were going with him, and it sounds like he wants to hit free agency. But that’s okay – he’s basically a lock to be a Type A free agent, so the M’s will be able to recoup a couple of draft picks even if he’s just a one year rental. This isn’t a situation where we’re looking at watching him walk away and get nothing.
7. You have to think that signing Figgins and trading for Lee will do something to convince Felix the M’s are serious about winning. I think we can take “he wants to see how committed management is to putting a good team on the field” off the list of things to be concerned about in negotiations.
8. One of the things that Tony Blengino said at the USSM event last January is that their goal was to “get good and stay good.” I don’t think anyone anticipated how quickly they planned on “getting good”. These guys do not mess around.
9. I love Cliff Lee. I’m going to do my best to be rational about the trade once its announced and we know all the parts, but just be warned ahead of time, he’s exactly the kind of pitcher that I am enamored with. He does everything I want a pitcher to do. I’m not sure I can be objective about him. He’s awesome.
Baker On Twitter
Geoff Baker has a pretty good piece on the rise of the power of Twitter as a hub for rumor mongering and its effect on how teams interact, especially at the winter meetings. The piece is good, but I want to focus on a Zduriencik quote that is sort of related:
“We’ll share it,” he said. “A lot of it’s just rumors, dialogue from people in the lobby. I chuckle sometimes on a couple of the names I hear [linked to the Mariners]. I’ll go, ‘That’s funny.’ And then a day or two later, I’ll get a call from that agent and I’ll go, ‘Ah-ha!’ ”
Zduriencik says this happens far more often than people think.
“If you really think about it, you have to create a market,” Zduriencik said. “So, how do you create a market? You create it by, if I talk to you, talk to you and I talk to you, then I can go tell you, ‘Hey, I just talked to three general managers.’ Which I did. I’m just creating my own market. That’s what it does. And it spurs action.”
This is one of the reasons why I pitch logic tests for rumors. Agents, and teams to a lesser extent, push this kind of false information all the time, trying to put themselves in better bargaining position. Keep this in mind when you hear stuff about a certain team being linked to a player who just doesn’t make any sense for that team – the reporter may be acting on information that he was given for the sole purpose of creating a market.
M’s Interested In Luke Scott?
A conversation with a friend tonight revealed some rumblings that haven’t been reported yet, so I’ll toss this out there with the usual caveats – I’m not a reporter, I don’t claim to be, and this is third hand information, so take it with the appropriate amount of salt.
The M’s have apparently had talks with the Orioles regarding Luke Scott, and if the rumblings are true, he could be pretty high up on their list. He makes an awful lot of sense for the M’s, so this one certainly passes the logic test.
As a 31-year-old outfielder, he’s not exactly a cornerstone of the Orioles foundation. In fact, due to their logjam of outfielders, they’re not even really sure where he’s going to play next year. Nolan Reimold and Felix Pie are expected to split the LF job, leaving Scott as a 1B/DH, even though he played less than a dozen games at first base last year and his glove is wasted when he’s not playing the field.
As a guy headed to arbitration for the second time, coming off a $2.4 million salary for 2009, he’s at the point where his salary is too prohibitive for Baltimore to keep him around as a part-time player. He’ll probably make $4 million or so in 2010 – still less than what he’s worth, but too much for a team who isn’t sure where to put him. So, he’s available.
And he’s pretty much exactly what the M’s are looking for – a power hitter with some defensive value and versatility who also has the approach at the plate they’re preaching. Scott’s a career .264/.350/.494 hitter, drawing most of his value at the plate from his patience and power. At the plate, he’s like Russ Branyan dialed back a few degrees – not quite as many walks or strikeouts and a bit less power, but the same general player type.
Scott also offers a pretty decent glove in the outfield, though – in 2,500 innings between left and right, his career UZR is +10.6, which is about +5 runs per full season. Given that he’s headed for his 32nd birthday, you’ll want to project some erosion in his defensive skills, but he’s still likely be to average-ish out there. He won’t hurt you with the glove, though, and that’s not easy to find in a guy who can slug .500.
His willingness to play first base – he was recently quoted as saying that he felt that if you gave him spring training to improve, he thinks he could be pretty good there – offers the kind of flexibility the M’s are clearly looking for this winter. He could end up starting in left field if Saunders doesn’t claim the job in spring training, start at first if the team can’t find the right fit in free agency (or that right fit ends up on the DL), or DH on a day where the M’s want to run out an all-defense team and still have some punch in the line-up.
Acquiring Scott would let the M’s take some health gambles at 1B/DH. Or it would give them the chance to make Carp and Saunders fight for one starting job, if they wanted to go young at either 1B/LF but not both. His salary is low enough that he wouldn’t stand in the way of other pursuits, and he shouldn’t cost so much in talent that it’s prohibitive to acquire him. Since the team is in the market for a +2 win LF/1B/DH who won’t break the bank, Scott seems to fit the bill better than anyone else.
He hasn’t been talked about much so far this winter, but I have a feeling we might be hearing his name quite a bit more over the next week or two.
Your current depth chart for the 2010 M’s
Pitching
SP-R Felix Hernandez
SP-L Ryan Rowland-Smith
SP-R Brandon Morrow
SP-R Ian Snell
SP-R Carlos Silva
SP-R Doug Fister
SP-R Yusmeiro Petit
RP-R David Aardsma
RP-R Mark Lowe
RP-R Shawn Kelley
RP-R Sean White
RP-L Jason Vargas
RP-L Garrett Olson
RP-L Luke French (?)
RP-R Kanekoa Texeira
There’s a lot of play in who out of the potential SP/RP guys ends up where — do they push Silva to the bullpen, even.
Position players
C-R Rob Johnson
C-R Adam Moore
1B-L Mike Carp
2B-R Jose Lopez
SS-R Jack Wilson
3B-B Chone Figgins
LF-L Michael Saunders
CF-R Franklin Gutierrez
RF-L Ichiro!
DH-L Ken Griffey Jr.
UT-R Bill Hall (IF/OF-R? OF-R?)
IF-L Jack Hannahan
.. and then Tui? They do love Tui.
There’s shopping to be done.
Why The M’s Can’t Platoon The DH
Given all the reports that the M’s are looking for a right-handed hitter and the never ending thirst for power, you will undoubtedly see suggestions that the M’s should sign a guy like Jack Cust or Jonny Gomes, both decent hitters who were let loose by their respective teams today. While it’s a nice enough idea, though, given the current roster, the team can’t really afford to run any platoons. Here’s why.
On the position player side of the ledger, there are 11 spots basically committed to a player, or at least a player type with some kind of current stand-in:
Adam Moore and Rob Johnson are the catchers.
Jose Lopez, Jack Wilson, Chone Figgins, and Jack Hannahan are infielders.
Franklin Gutierrez, Ichiro Suzuki, Michael Saunders (or whoever they get to play LF), and Bill Hall are outfielders.
Ken Griffey Jr is the pinch hitter.
That’s 11 guys, giving the team two open spots on the non-pitching roster. And, right now, there’s no first baseman or designated hitter in the group. You add two guys to fill those open spots, and you’re full at 13. The last two guys added to the roster can’t be part-time players, or they’d be forcing one of the current bench players (Hannahan, Hall, Griffey) into regular playing time. And that’s probably not something the team should be interested in doing.
This is the cost of carrying Junior. You can’t sign a Marcus Thames or a Johnny Gomes to platoon with Branyan at DH when youve already decided to go with 12 pitchers and you’re using one of your four bench spots on a pinch hitter. You can’t do it – the other three bench spots have to go to a backup catcher, a backup infielder, and a backup outfielder. Even with the versatility provided by guys like Figgins and Hall, you can’t justify having three designated hitters on the roster, which is what it would take to run a platoon there.
If you want to argue that they should carry 11 pitchers in order to free up the ability to platoon at 1B or DH, you can make that argument. But in the end, there is little reason to believe the M’s are willing to make that kind of decision. They ran 12 pitchers all of last year despite leading the league in run prevention. The odds of them being willing to go with one fewer pitcher in a year where the staff is expected to give up more runs are just really low.
So, don’t get too excited about possible platoons in Seattle. We traded that right to keep Griffey around for another year. This is the price of team chemistry.
Non-tenders of note
There is some crazy stuff happening with today’s deadline to offer contracts: A’s didn’t offer Jack Cust a 2010 deal. Chien-Ming Wang is free. Garret Atkins may not get a deal. Johnny Gomes (already Geoff Baker look-endorsed). One of the two Rays catchers may also get cut. And that’s just the stuff we know about so far.
The M’s might have to get up early tomorrow and start making some calls.
Also, how dumb are the Royals and Nationals? I mean holy mackeral. It’s like there’s a payroll floor and they’re being forced to burn money.
Dave adds: M’s non-tender Langerhans. This has been a lock ever since Griffey re-signed. There’s no room on the roster for him unless he’s the starting LF, and the team has their sights set higher. They may try to re-sign him a minor league deal, but with Corey Patterson already in the fold, he might head elsewhere.
Metro bus service for M’s games may return
From many places: Senator Patty Murray’s attempting to reverse via legislation the nonsensical Bush-administration “rule” that prohibited public transportation systems from offering special game-day service if a private company said they’d do it.
And again, not a “could do a better job” or “could save money” or any kind of selection. It’s “I’ve formed Joe’s Bus Company out of spite and I’ve decided to run shuttle service to M’s games for $100/seat” means Metro can’t even compete. And not just here, where we got particularly clobbered — everywhere teams partnered with local transit faced this.
So it’s not done yet, and yeah, it’s not a Big Issue in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the right thing to do and makes some small improvement to life. Kudos to Murray for looking out for a chance to fix this.
The M’s did a good thing in subsidizing special bus service to the games in partnership with Metro: those things ran like clockwork, helped a lot of people get to the game easily, and it’s a boon environmentally too. Hopefully we can get back to that.
Silva, Bradley, and Burrell
So via Jayson Stark, the latest in Milton Bradley rumors:
Certainly not to Seattle, and especially not for Carlos Silva.
What about Carlos Silva and… umm… Skillet caters the clubhouse food next time you’re on a road trip in Seattle? No?
So all signs continue to point, if they can ever figure out the money disparity, toward Bradley’s winding up in Tampa Bay, in what now figures to be a one-for-one trade for Pat Burrell. The Cubs would then do their best to spin Burrell elsewhere, to a destination still unknown.
I don’t see this. It sounds like a deal someone would pitch in fantasy baseball. “Okay, I know you don’t need another first baseman, but you can trade him to someone else…”
Let’s say you’re Tampa Bay. Sure, you might like to get rid of Burrell, but you’ve just seen the Cubs weren’t just unable to move Bradley but they couldn’t even get nibbles from more than a few teams who then decided it wasn’t worth it. Say what you will about Burrell, but he doesn’t come with the complete matched baggage set. I don’t remember the last time I saw a player valued so low as Bradley is right now. And with that, everyone knows the Cubs aren’t going to get less desperate. They’re not going to bring Bradley to spring training and try and spread the good news about how they’ve reached an understanding and Bradley’s healthy and re-dedicated, so anyone who needs an outfielder/DH should certainly not call them, that’s how excited they are.
Well, not with any sense of pride or credibility.
If you’re any team that might be considering trading a contract sink (like Silva!) for him, you’re probably demanding so much the Cubs would rather buy out the remaining years and be done with it. And good for you.
The Adrian Gonzalez Rumor
So, Jon Paul Morosi wrote up this morning that the M’s are trying to get Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres again. It made for a nice morale boost after a four day stretch that saw the team add no one while losing out on Rich Harden. Here’s the problem – it’s just really, really unlikely.
Like with Felix here, Gonzalez is a player that everyone in baseball covets – an all-star with two years of bargain salaries before he hits free agency. Like with Felix here, the Padres don’t want to trade him, even if other teams are coveting his abilities. Gonzalez is not just the Padres best player, he’s their only player. New ownership is loathe to get rid of the only guy on the roster that fans want to see play just a few months after shipping Jake Peavy out of town. It’s one thing to lose a lot of games – it’s another to have the fan base just give up on the organization.
They’ll trade Gonzalez eventually, but from everything I can gather, it’s not going to be this winter. That’s why you didn’t hear any Gonzalez rumors at the winter meetings. Everyone just knows that SD wants to keep him, so they didn’t bother trying to make something happen.
It’s a nice dream, but Boston fans are having the same dream about Felix. We’re about as likely to deal our ace as they are to deal their first baseman.
M’s Draft Kanekoa Texeira
The M’s used their Rule 5 selection on RHP Kanekoa Texeira today. Think Sean Green – he’s a right-handed sinker-slider guy who gets a lot of groundballs and uses an arm slot that makes him tough against righties. His slider is good enough to get some swinging strikes, and his command is okay, but not great.
If he’s going to have a major league career, it will probably be as a situational middle reliever. The M’s are so deep in RH relievers that I don’t expect him to make the club. He was likely drafted as Sean White insurance – if White’s healthy, he has almost no shot at making the team.