Welcome To Seattle Jack Cust
According to Susan Slusser, the M’s have signed erstwhile Athletics ‘LF’. Cust was non-tendered last week by Oakland.
Shannon Drayer’s reporting Slusser’s report, and now I am pointing to Drayer’s report of Slusser’s report.
Dave went over Cust in his post a few days ago, so the same caveats about his 2010 season (and his .371 wOBA) apply. He’s clearly a guy who can hit, but he’s now seen his ISO and HR/FB drop 3 straight years. If the team follows Dave’s advice and platoons him with Bradley, his ISO might even recover a bit. Still, even without a platoon-based recovery, a 15% walk rate and a Michael-Saundersish ISO isn’t terrible. On this team, it adds up to clear improvement.
UPDATE:
Jon Paul Morosi is reporting Cust will make a base salary of $2.5m. Not bad, Mr. Zduriencik. (hat tip-Lookout Landing)
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16 Responses to “Welcome To Seattle Jack Cust”
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Yes, welcome Jack! Now please don’t suck.
Still, even without a platoon-based recovery, a 15% walk rate and a Michael-Saundersish ISO isn’t terrible. On this team, it adds up to clear improvement.
One of the batgirls at DH is clear improvement over 2010. A wet sock at DH is clear improvement over 2010.
Budget-wise, it’s good. Improve over 2010-wise, well, one could certainly do worse. In absolute terms, I’m no more or less excited about 2011 Ms than I was yesterday. Meh.
I suppose this means any Matsui rumors are now dead.
Love this signing! Thank you Jack, if nothing else this means we won’t sign Matsui.
If signing Cust is such a great move….why didn’t the A’s offer him a similar contract? The A’s need a DH too, but they passed on him, and there must be some reason?
Actually, either the Mariner Moose or one of the beer vendors probably would’ve been an improvement at DH over 2010 as well.
I’m with Nathan on Matsui – the projection systems have them pretty close (with the edge in hitting to Cust), but Cust will be lots cheaper.
At this point, neither of them are OFs, so the positional argument doesn’t work anymore.
The A’s have Chris Carter coming up, and even if they did offer him a similar contract, I can understand why he’d turn it down. The club has now non-tendered him two years in a row in order to give him a contract below what he’d make in arb. There was a lot of discussion last year about how pissed he was about being non-tendered (and starting the year in AAA), so I can’t imagine he was too eager to re-sign with the club who non-tendered him again in order to give him 1/2 of what he’d make in arbitration.
Maybe the A’s had a better option in-house. The Mariners didn’t.
The A’s are also trying to make some bigger moves i.e. signing Adrian Beltre so they probably wanted to save money and cutting ties with Cust would do that.
Yeah, he strikes out a ton, but I like the OBP.
I hope he is convinced and allowed to go back to swinging for power instead of contact — if not, I think he’ll still end up a disappointment to us.
If nothing else at least he’ll be fun to watch. I’ll take a fun bad team over a boring bad team any day of the week. At least when Cust is up I will pay attention.
This signing is 5 or 6 years too late.
Also, Jack Cust was my next door neighbor when he was at AAA Portland, and completely randomly, his best friend from HS is a drinking buddy of mine out here in NYC. I’ll be rooting for him.
Could do a lot worse (see: last year’s DH plans). A left handed power bat with a decent OBP was glaringly absent this time last year.
I think if you’ve got a plan for the season that involves spending somewhere around $10 million to add an infielder, a catcher, a middle rotation starter, and a DH, getting Jack Cust’s production for 1/4 of that is probably the best move available to us. Spending more for that position doesn’t make sense (especially with the DH/LF money owed Milton Bradley).
Given the circumstances, I like it.
I was hoping for Vidro.
Cust and Branyan are very similiar. Branyan added more pop, but basically the same amount of strike outs (last year that is). Cust obviously offers a better average and OBP, which is why I am not concerned about the strike outs. We definitely need to get on base more, and this is a step in the right direction. Getting rid of Lopez was another.
I like this a lot. Cust is fairly cheap for what he can bring. Oakland fooled around with him for years, figuring it was no big loss if he left them, and it worked for awhile. If the planets align and Bradley somehow reprises his year in Texas, and Saunders does what we hope he can do, Cust can ride the pine most of the time. Or, who knows, maybe he hits enough but is expendable so that he could get flipped at the deadline for a low prospect and/or salary relief.
Does this necessarily mean that Branyan won’t be returning? I’m still positive about Smoak’s potential, but he still has to win the job.