I still have some desire to finish off Black Box, but life got in the way for a couple months so it may not be worth it. In its place, I've decided to try and keep pace with baseball news this winter instead of burning through weeks of old transactions sometime in January. Same rules as last winter: every transaction has a winner, because this is America, consarnit. I get my info from MLBTradeRumors.com and Baseball-Reference.com. I get my opinions from spending 16 years and counting as a baseball nerd. Let's get to work.
10/30/14: Red Sox resign RP Koji Uehara, 2 years, $18M. Uehara will pitch next season at age 40, and 2014 was arguably his worst year since his rookie season as a starting pitcher in Baltimore. Regression has already started, but to be fair, he's still got a long way to fall before he's no longer a valuable relief arm. Taking that into account, along with the contracts fellow elite relievers David Robertson and Andrew Miller will likely command, this looks OK. Still, I'm going to guess that the wheels come off in 2015 and this is a waste of money. Bartolo Colon is the only pitcher who gets to pitch well into his 40's anymore, and that's because Bartolo Colon has transcended his physical self.
11/3/14: Brewers and 3B Aramis Ramirez exercise mutual option, 1 year, $14M. I'm noting this one for a few reasons. One, mutual options are never exercised, because it's never exactly fair to both sides. This time it was and I think that's cool. Two, it's hard for any good athlete to be underpraised in this culture, but I think Aramis just might be. He's quietly had a great career, from his early days as an all-or-nothing slugger for the Pirates, to learning to hit and ending the Cubs' third baseman drought in 2003, to carving out a respectable third act in Milwaukee. When they open the Hall of Very Good, Ramirez will be a first-ballot entry. Good on the Brewers; I suspect Aramis could have gotten multiple years at that pay grade if he'd gone on the open market.
11/10/14: Mets sign OF Michael Cuddyer, 2 years, $21M. When new Rockies GM Jeff Bridich gave Cuddyer a qualifying offer, it was roundly mocked on the internet. You don't really have space on the roster for him, you don't have space in the budget to pay him $15M, he's a 35 year old outfielder who only played 49 games for you in 2014 and missed close to half the games during his latest 3 year deal. All true. What the internet didn't take into account is that in baseball, there is no bad decision that can't turn out well if some other team can out-blunder you. Enter Sandy Alderson, Mets GM. He gave that same player a two-year deal to ply his trade in a pitcher-friendly home park, where his defense-as-performance-art will be on display in another spacious outfield, and gave up his first round draft pick in 2015 for the privilege. To be fair, Cuddyer mashed when healthy in Colorado, but it isn't reasonable to expect both health and production from him in New York. So what were the consequences of Bridich's decision, one that could have gone south oh so easily? A free supplemental draft pick and a roster with one less logjam. This may be the only time anyone can say this for the next twelve months, so I'm gonna make it count: Theeeeeeeeeee ROCKIES WIN!
11/12/14: Pirates trade RP Justin Wilson to Yankees for C Francisco Cervelli. When I saw this, my first reaction was "Well, I guess the Pirates are out on Russell Martin." That was quickly confirmed. Since the Pirates can turn just about anybody into a useful relief pitcher, and this gives them a chance to get some plus offensive production from the catcher spot without completely tying up their payroll in two players, I like this for Pittsburgh. I don't hate it from the Yankees' perspective either, as they acquired a pre-arb reliever with some bat-missing skills, but I don't think Cervellis grow on trees.
11/14/14: Pirates sign SP A.J. Burnett, 1 year, $8.5M. Around this time last year, I ripped the Pirates for letting A.J. walk and signing Edinson Volquez as his replacement. So of course Volquez pitched to a 3 ERA and made all his starts. The lesson here: anyone who tries to predict anything has already lost the greater challenge of accepting the all-encompassing ignorance that is our nature as human beings. That aside, Burnett gave up more than $4M by declining his option with the Phillies and signing in Pittsburgh. I think that sums up the state of the two franchises at the moment. There's nothing not to like about this deal for either side. Burnett gets to pitch for Ray Searage again, and the Pirates get a little bit of badly needed rotation depth. There's more work to be done on that front, but this signing is a perfect place to start.
11/14/14: Tigers resign DH Victor Martinez, 4 years, $68M. Martinez finished second in the MVP vote to Mike Trout in 2014, so Dave Dombrowski made keeping him a priority over keeping ace Max Scherzer. That's fine, as long as you like late-30's sluggers who can't play defense, and enjoy paying them based on what they've already done and not what they will do. I'm resisting the urge to make an Xzibit joke here about what Dave Dombrowski and Mike Ilitch like and how they might like having more of what they like. Martinez is the early leader for the Dollar Sign Bag award, given annually to the player who most brazenly acquires wealth from a foolish team owner.
11/14/14: Rays trade SP Jeremy Hellickson to Diamondbacks for two prospects: IF Andrew Velasquez and OF Justin Williams. Hellickson wasn't THAT good when he won the Rookie of the Year award in 2011, and he's been consistently worse since then. With pitching's rise to dominance over the last five years, it would probably be a stretch to even call him league-average at this point. But hey, Tony LaRussa and Dave Stewart think he's a number 2 or 3. The two players the Rays got are already ranked in their top 10 prospects, which I think is a reflection more of the weakness of their minor league system than a drastic overpay by the D-Backs. Still, I think I'd take two lottery tickets over one year of Hellickson. Moderate edge to the Rays.
11/16/14: Braves trade IF Tommy La Stella and an international bonus slot to Cubs for SP Arodys Vizcaino and three international bonus slots. This one is a head-scratcher from the Cubs' perspective. They're overflowing with talented young middle infielders, so they trade for another one without the upside on offense. Vizcaino, meanwhile, struggled to get healthy after the Cubs acquired him from Atlanta in the Paul Maholm deal of 2012. Then you throw in the bonus slots, a net of over $800,000 going from Chicago to Atlanta that is likely the most valuable part of this trade. (To clarify, the Cubs are not sending cash. They are trading their right to spend that amount of money in the next international signing period to the Braves.) We've seen the Cubs mishandle these situations before, trading for extra slot money then blowing past their spending limit and incurring the penalties anyway. It's really anyone's guess what's going on here. Since the Braves acquired something of real and immediate value, you've got to like their end of the deal, but not as much as you've got to hate it for the Cubs.
11/17/14: Marlins sign RF Giancarlo Stanton to a 13 year, $325M extension. More internet ink has been wasted on this deal than any other, so I'll try to have a real take. Number one, asking baseball writers what they think of something Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria did is like asking a Republican what they think about something our president did. There's always a way to make anything fit the narrative of "Loria's a jerk and a con man," even giving out a record-setting contract to a player who deserves it. Nobody's talking about how the Marlins shut up all New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles writers who have spent years assuming Stanton was coming. Everyone is talking all about how backloaded the contract is, so they can make a half-assed attempt at contending before Stanton starts to make what he's worth and gets traded. The only way to counter that perception is to prove it wrong with factual events, so it's on Loria and his baseball ops team to take this three-year window of having an underpaid superstar and an ace pitcher making practically nothing, move decisively to add talent where it's needed (corner infield, another top starting pitcher, maybe some bullpen help), and turn the Marlins into a success on and off the field. This is not impossible. It's why Stanton- NOT Loria- asked to backload the deal, so Hill and Jennings have some financial breathing room. All it takes is for Loria to make the real investment in the team- not just Stanton, but a full roster- and then everyone can start treating the Marlins like a real baseball team. I've taken time every winter and every July to ask myself how the Marlins could do exactly that, because I happen to root for them. Now's the time to make it happen.
