Cliff Lee Rumors
If you were around twitter tonight, you saw an interesting series of rumors about Cliff Lee and the Twins. Right about the time the first pitch started, chatter began that an unnamed Detroit radio station was reporting that Lee to the Twins was a done deal. In general, I don’t take reports like this very seriously, and advised anyone from reading too much into that sketchy, unsourced report. Sure enough, the Twins had issued a denial within a half hour or so.
Then, about an hour later, Jon Heyman of Sports Illustrated said that talks between the two clubs were getting interesting, putting a little more teeth to the rumors of a potential deal heating up. A while after that, Jeff Fletcher of AOL chipped in with a rumored offer, saying that he’s heard that the Twins have offered OF prospect Aaron Hicks and C prospect Wilson Ramos for Lee.
Fletcher has credibility, and combined with the earlier report from Heyman, it’s likely that there’s some fire behind this smoke. Will it lead to a deal? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s the kind of offer that could make this happen sooner than later.
Ramos is the guy who has been mentioned prominently because he’s a catcher and has already reached the majors, but Hicks would be the guy who makes this deal work. He was the 14th overall selection in the 2008 draft, and while he’s not close to the majors at age 20, he’s got some serious upside. He’s a switch-hitting premium athlete with five tool potential who is already showing a decent grasp of the strike zone at a young age. He’s not a polished product by any means, as he doesn’t currently possess big time power and he strikes out too much, but the natural abilities are there for him to become a star.
Baseball America ranked Hicks as the 19th best prospect in baseball before the season started. Keith Law agreed, putting him at the same spot on his list. When Law updated his list last week, he put Hicks at #9 among guys currently in the minors.
Ramos is a decent prospect who could compete with Adam Moore to figure out who would be the team’s catcher of the future. He might not be any better than Moore, but having two decent young catching prospects isn’t a bad thing. Hicks, though, could be a star – a center fielder who can hit, field, and run. He’d require some patience, but the long term value makes this an offer that Jack Z would have to seriously consider if it was really on the table.
I agree with Tom. That’s why it makes some sense to deal with Texas. It could be win-win-win for Texas. Seattle pays part of Lee’s 2010 salary, Texas gets Lee for the stretch drive and the playoffs, and two draft choices when Lee walks, and the M’s maybe sweet-talk Texas out of LHP Martin Perez, 19, and SS Jurickson Profar, 17, and maybe RHP Wilmer Font, 20.
Churchill ran down these guys some days ago, and other scouting reports are high on all of them. Perez in particular could be playing here by the end of 2011.
Keep Cliff Lee, DFA the hack veterans hitting .200 and play the spoiler in the AL West. Give us another 10 weeks of Lee, Hernandez and maybe Bedard and attendance could be decent. Or we can set the Duwamish on fire and try to be Cleveland. Trading Cliff Lee to the Rangers or anyone else in the American League makes we want to puke.
While I share the hope that Texas takes the bait to get into the ring for real on Lee, Churchill also said Martin Perez was untouchable to that organization. The only reason Profar could be had is because he’s so far down the road.
Dave how would a Ramos/Hicks deal compare to a Pagan/Flores deal and would the latter even be a realistic offer that might be made?
What about a Reds deal from a group of guys like Heisey/Alonso/Mesoraco/Wood which kind of seems like quantity over high impact?
Well, jimbob, if you wanna do no better than playing the spoiler from time to time, by all means, keep Lee. Personally, the idea of NEVER contending makes ME puke.
Hey guys! I have a great idea! Let’s trade all of our players that nobody wants, such as David Aardsma and Russ Branyan, and trade them for good things! You know we could do that if we just tried hard enough.
Lee, by the by, is Exhibit A why the league needs to get away from these stupid, stupid Elias rankings and go with straight salary awarded in free agency You could do it on a per-year basis if you disallowed Dolgoff plans by limiting the max years offered to, say, 7, and also prevented teams from front-loading contracts. Granted, it would have a negative effect on salary so the players would be against it but surely there is a bone to throw in that direction to make this happen?
Anyway, Hicks + Ramos does seem nice, if a bit of a way off. I know I’d much rather see Adam Moore compete against guys who deserve to be in the major leagues than Rob Johnson.
Oh yeah, and to Dave Clapper’s point, haven’t we already gotten rid of the sub-.200 hitters on this team? I’m thinking chiefly of Eric Byrnes (granted that that was a small sample size; still, I maintain that there are things you can see in the way a guy hits that transcend that sort of thing) and Junior. Bradley makes too much and was too good recently to declare his salary sunk (of course, we had pretty much done that exact thing when it was Silva making that money, but still), Chone is beginning to hit, and Lopez looks like he’s soon to be out the door as well (albeit in a trade rather than release). Sure I’d love to replace Rob Johnson but realistically it’s not like the M’s can make up 5 or 6 games in the standings just by replacing him with Eliezer Alfonso.
LOL!!!
Though, unfortunately, it still took the Indians another 25 years after that happened for them to finally get around to winning another pennant!
Lee, by the by, is Exhibit A why the league needs to get away from these stupid, stupid Elias rankings and go with straight salary awarded in free agency You could do it on a per-year basis if you disallowed Dolgoff plans by limiting the max years offered to, say, 7, and also prevented teams from front-loading contracts. Granted, it would have a negative effect on salary so the players would be against it but surely there is a bone to throw in that direction to make this happen?
I agree that the elias rankings fail to capture actual value in any meaningful way. As for the rest of this comment–could you translate it into English?
Sorry. Dolgoff plans were created by a guy working in the ABA (the old basketball league) where they’d sign a guy to a 25-year, $25 million contract but only actually end up having to pay like $10 million of it because they could just invest it and use the interest to make up the rest. Later on, Jim Kelly’s contract with the LA Express of the USFL was set up like this, and as recently as the late 90s Bobby Bonilla renegotiated a big deal into something similar.
Front-loading would be something to avoid because a team could offer a player $40M for 3 years, paying him $15M the first two and $10M the third, which would keep the overall value of the contract at $13.3M but then they might have a behind the back deal going in which they agree to renegotiate for the third year.
And, of course, basing free agent compensation on salary is by definition going to create a drag on salary. Some guys are still going to get theirs in free agency but for guys who aren’t quite at that A-list level, teams will probably think twice about signing someone for a contract that forces them to give up their 1st round pick, even if they’ve determined that he’s otherwise worth the money. Still, you’d have to think there’s something baseball, which now finds itself in a fairly decent relationship with the players, could give out or concede in exchange for this.
I hope that helps. IMO nothing explains value better than how much a team is willing to spend on a player.
Slick – why would they need to do that in baseball? I’m talking about the front loading with the behind the back agreement thing for the third year.
I also have no idea what you’re talking about in paragraph 3.
>>>>>terry on July 6th, 2010 4:17 pm
What about a Reds deal from a group of guys like Heisey/Alonso/Mesoraco/Wood which kind of seems like quantity over high impact?<<<<<
I personally like an Alonso/Francisco/Mesoraco as much as Hicks/Ramos; I'd take either. Not sure why Alonso is being shunned to a "C prospect" level because of a broken hand. Pujols aside, I can't think of someone with better plate discipline, and I think his power will come back over time.
And, of course, basing free agent compensation on salary is by definition going to create a drag on salary. Some guys are still going to get theirs in free agency but for guys who aren’t quite at that A-list level, teams will probably think twice about signing someone for a contract that forces them to give up their 1st round pick, even if they’ve determined that he’s otherwise worth the money. Still, you’d have to think there’s something baseball, which now finds itself in a fairly decent relationship with the players, could give out or concede in exchange for this.
Now I get what you’re saying–the current system, in theory at least, should slightly suppress the salaries of type a and b free agents who have been offered arbitration, because of the additional cost. This slight suppression should be somewhat greater in the cases of the most undeserving of the type a (and type b) free agents. Ultimately, though, if these features don’t particularly bother the MLBPA and management, I don’t particularly see why I should care one way or the other. In what way does this hurt baseball?
Oh God the Bedard deal hurts so bad.
If you say that, for example, the top 11 free agent signings by dollar amount are going to be classified as Type A (just throwing a number out), the Cliff Lees of the world are still going to get theirs but the guys who are the 10th and 11th best players in free agency, who aren’t really a lot better than the guys who are the 12th and 13th, are going to face GMs who are somewhat interested in them but not quite enough to give up a first round pick. So in some cases they might be low-balled, at least until someone establishes their salary at that A-level (which is not easy since all these negotiations are in private).
That’s going to cause overall salaries to go down, and I’m sure the MLBPA would see that in a second. That’s why the owners would need to toss something else to the players. What, I really don’t know, which is probably why this will never happen.
What about getting an established MLB player for Lee in a 3-team trade? Yeah, a Cliff Lee for Prince Fielder trade would make no sense to either team this year. BUT, It could be a very enticing 3-team trade for the M’s building towards next year.
Let’s say something like this:
Seattle Gets:
Prince Fielder
Wade Davis
Tampa Bay Gets:
Cliff Lee
David Aardsma
Milwaukee Gets:
BJ Upton
TB B Level Prospect
Seattle B Level Prospect
Hey, that would be such a blockbuster trade, it might actually warrant its own hour-long special on ESPN!
A trade with Texas would be the best. Perez is untouchable but a deal for Saltalamaccia and possibly Holland and possibly a low level prospect sounds pretty good. And I know this doesn’t mean anything, but MLBTR is reporting the Rangers to be “working hard” to aquire Lee.