Monday, March 31, 2014

2014 MLB Preview, Part VI: NL West

1. Los Angeles Dodgers
2013 record: 92-70 (First place. Beat Atlanta in NLDS. Lost to St. Louis in NLCS.)
Offseason grade: D

As we've seen in the past with big payroll teams, there's not a lot of room to maneuver in the winter when you've guaranteed big money to every position around the diamond as well as fourth outfielder. I liked this group of players a year ago, and that was before I was aware of the greatness that is Puig. It would have been cool to see them go for someone better than Juan Uribe at third, and I don't think it's possible for a 7 year, $215M contract to work out, even if it does go to the 25-year-old best pitcher in baseball who already has two Cy Youngs and a runner-up on his resume. But I'm not predicting for 2018 here, and the only thing that's sinking these Dodgers would be a Softball-Simpsons-esque series of misfortunes to every starting pitcher.

2. San Francisco Giants
2013 record: 76-86 (Tied for third/fourth place)
Offseason grade: C+

I'm on record as saying the Tim Hudson contract will be one of the best bargains of this past winter, and I'll stand by that. Since Brian Sabean has kept the team more or less together since their 2010 World Series win, there's no reason to expect a big step forward- except, of course, that this is an even-numbered year. Don't ask me how, just know that the Giants will win some games. It won't make sense when it happens, and it will make baseball dorks like myself want to bang our heads against a wall. I'm just trying to get ahead of the game here. When GM Brian Sabean signed Tim Lincecum and Hunter Pence to above-market deals before free agency even opened, everyone knew it was completely asinine, so they'll probably work out brilliantly. To say nothing of signing a 36-year-old LOOGY to a 3-year deal. That's at least two Rolaids awards and a Cy right there.

3. Arizona Diamondbacks
2013 record: 81-81 (Second place)
Offseason grade: D+

Arizona GM Kevin Towers is kind of like Brian Sabean. They both make terrible decisions that seem to have no bearing whatsoever on their teams' performance. The difference is, whereas Sabean's teams alternate between cellar-dwelling and World Series wins, Towers's teams win exactly 81 games. For his next trick, he's going to win exactly 81 games while making the farm system... disappear! Enjoy Bronson Arroyo and Mark Trumbo, D-Backs fans. Try not to think about how much better the team would be if it still had all the guys Towers traded away this winter and last.

4. Colorado Rockies
2013 record: 74-88 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: F

I'm not gonna make the obvious "Pot is legal in Colorado now, that explains everything" joke. I just wish I could think of another explanation for what's going on here. Acquiring Brett Anderson for Drew Pomeranz looks like a win-now move, but dumping Dexter Fowler for next to nothing looks like a straight salary dump. Signing Boone Logan for three years and Latroy Hawkins for one just looks stupid. Signing Justin Morneau to a multi-year deal can only be the result of the following thought process: "We already miss Todd Helton. Are there any other first basemen who were awesome ten years ago but have not yet retired? Ideally he will have concussion-related mental issues, so if we start calling him Todd and ask him to grow a Grizzly Adams beard he'll roll with it." The whole thing makes so little sense I want to pick them to win the division out of sheer befuddlement. If they hadn't made Latroy their closer, I'd do it, too. But as I no longer do drugs, I have my limits.

5. San Diego Padres
2013 record: 76-86 (Tied for third/fourth place)
Offseason grade: D

Read what I said about the Rockies. Then ask yourself how bad a team would have to be for me to pick the Rockies over them. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2014 San Diego Padres.

2014 MLB Predictions, Part V: NL Central

1. St. Louis Cardinals
2013 record: 97-65 (First place. Beat Pittsburgh in NLDS and Los Angeles in NLCS. Lost World Series to Boston.)
Offseason grade: C-

I wasn't a fan of much the Cards did this winter, but it doesn't matter. You can give up on David Freese when you can just slide Matt Carpenter over to third and let Kolten Wong share second base with Mark Ellis. They  gave Jhonny Peralta a lot of money coming off a PED suspension and that doesn't seem like a Cardinals kind of move, but then again, I'd be sick of Pete Kozma by now too. The point is, the Cardinals have a mind-bogglingly large and talented core of home grown players. As long as Wainwright, Wacha, and Miller are fronting the rotation, and as long as Craig, Molina, and Carpenter (with Oscar Taveres on the way) are the heart of the order, the Cards will win 90+ games every year. Questions like "Who plays shortstop?" and "How do we fix our outfield defense?" can sink other teams, but they're just the cognac-infused cherry atop the gold-flake sundae that is being a Cardinals fan.

2. Cincinnati Reds
2013 record: 90-72 (Third place. Lost Wild Card game to Pittsburgh.)
Offseason grade: D

The Reds join the Braves and Indians on the list of 2013 playoff teams who may suffer from not replacing their free agents this winter. I'm not suggesting they should have matched the offers Shin-Soo Choo and Bronson Arroyo wound up accepting, only that replacing an MVP candidate and a mid-rotation starter are the kind of tasks most teams would accomplish via free agency or the trade market- not by plugging in two rookies. With big contracts for Votto, Bruce, and Bailey set to engulf the payroll in the coming years, Reds fans may have to get used to seeing good players leave in favor of players the team can actually afford. So if the Reds' window is closing, why do I have them ranked this highly? First, because Cueto, Latos, Bailey is still a thing. Second, because Pittsburgh has to deal with the Plexiglas principle. Third, one might argue that the Pirates had an even worse winter. In fact, I'll make that argument in a bit.

3. Milwaukee Brewers
2013 record: 74-88 (Fourth place)
Offseason grade: C+

We haven't heard much from the Brewers since the Cardinals beat them in the NLCS in 2011, but Doug Melvin has quietly put together some talent since then. Any lineup featuring Carlos Gomez at the top and Ryan Braun in the middle (hopefully for the whole season) is going to be at least okay. Jonathan Lucroy is awesome in his own right. Khris Davis has some buzz in his first go at everyday play. Yovani Gallardo is still just 28, and signing Matt Garza was one of my favorite moves of the winter. Of course, there are issues- first and second base could be disaster areas, and the rotation behind the top 3 might not be good enough. Still, there's enough here for me to call the Brewers my deep sleepers for the year.

4. Pittsburgh Pirates
2013 record: 94-68 (Second place. Beat Cincinnati in the Wild Card game. Lost to St. Louis in NLDS.)
Offseason grade: F

As important as 2013 was for the Pirates organization, this past winter should have been taken just as seriously. Winning 94 games, getting two home playoff games, and generally being accepted as a good major-league team are all awesome, but none of those wins count in 2014. It's up to ownership and management to examine the processes that got them this far and take them to the next level. They had an obligation to at least try and turn a one-year wonder into a consistent contender. That means retaining your own talent. That means upping the expenditures a little as a show of good faith. That means aggressively pursuing upgrades when needed. It sure as hell doesn't mean replacing A.J. Burnett with Edinson Volquez and going into the season with Travis Ishikawa and Gaby Sanchez as your first basemen. Essentially, the 2013-14 winter looked a lot like every other winter this century for the Pirates. I'm not even a fan of the team and that still makes me kind of mad. It took a lot of luck to get Pittsburgh those home playoff games last year, and that kind of luck never hits the same team two years in a row.

5. Chicago Cubs
2013 record: 66-96 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: C

The Cubs sat on their hands just as effectively as the Marlins this winter, and those teams should again do battle as the worst teams in the NL in 2014. I think I'm coming around on the Cubs a little bit, though. Whether the decision makers foresaw this or not, hitters are harder to come by than pitchers right now. And if there's one thing the Cubs have, it's minor league hitters with star potential. Where the pitching is going to come from, nobody knows just yet. But whether there's a player development-driven renaissance or another group of Corey Pattersons and Hee Seop Chois on the horizon, I solemnly swear to make fun of it with every drop of blood in my black and white heart.

2014 MLB Predictions, Part IV: NL East

1. Washington Nationals
2013 record: 86-76 (Second place)
Offseason grade: B-

This is the same as last year's disappointing team, except Doug Fister replaces Dan Haren. I call that an upgrade. I also think there was some roster-wide underachievement last year that's unlikely to repeat itself. Maybe more importantly, I can't talk myself into any other team in this division being as good as Washington should be. All the high draft picks from the lean years are on the team and producing. If it doesn't happen now, it's not happening.

2. Atlanta Braves
2013 record: 96-66 (First place. Lost NLDS to Los Angeles.)
Offseason grade: A-

Everything that was in Atlanta's control this winter, they did right. They were coming off an impressive year with a young, experienced, and talented team. Just two of their important players were free agents, and it looked like they had replacements locked and loaded. It made every kind of sense to just sign the best players long-term and try to pull a '90s Indians in the 2010's. Then the ligaments started snapping. Sure, Ervin Santana was still waiting for a team and he'll help once he catches up, but throwing three rookies into the fire from day one was not part of the plan.

3. New York Mets
2013 record: 74-88 (Third place)
Offseason grade: B

Maybe this team will stick in a holding pattern for another year while man-with-the-golden-arm Matt Harvey recovers from Tommy John, but I like the way Sandy Alderson attacked the offseason nonethesame. Bartolo Colon is a massive gamble in every sense of both words. Chris Young and Curtis Granderson flanking Juan Lagares actually sounds like a pretty good outfield. There have even been reports of signs of life in the Mets farm system. They aren't going to be a sad sack forever, and you can see the turnaround starting to take shape.

4. Philadelphia Phillies
2013 record: 73-89 (Fourth place)
Offseason grade: D

OK, so their run ended in 2012 and I was a year late in noticing. We're good with that, right? The thing is, Ruben Amaro didn't really do anything to Ruin Tomorrow this winter. Yeah, yeah, the Marlon Byrd contract is about the same as setting $16M on fire, but it's only two years. The late winter yoinking of A.J. Burnett for one year was a decent value play with the possibility of a deadline trade. My giving them a D is sort of a product of circumstances- I don't know how anyone is supposed to make anything good happen there for a while. They're farther from contention than any other team in baseball because of their expensive, aged roster and weak farm system, but at least they didn't throw money at every available free agent in a futile attempt to patch holes. And if the hangover from that great 6-year run takes a few years to pass, I don't think Philly fans have any right to complain about it. They went for it and they got there, then they went for it some more and almost got there again. It's fun to root for a team like that.

5. Miami Marlins
2013 record: 62-100 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: C+

The pitching is fine for now, so I base my grade on the likelihood that Miami's offense is again an embarrassment- not just bad, I'm talking the kind of bad that will make Jose Fernandez want to quit baseball and do something less soul-crushing, like mining diamonds or seeing what that whole human trafficking thing is all about. The Furcal, McGehee, and Jones signings are just throwing stuff at a wall to see if anything sticks, but Saltalamacchia looks like a real addition at a position of need. Throw in the outfield of Stanton, Yelich, and Ozuna/Marisnick and it almost looks like a major league team. There's a ton of work to do here, and it will be very disheartening the next time they burn the rubble down instead of keeping players. But if they ever decide to support a payroll with money instead of bits of string, they could home-grow a contender before too long.

2014 MLB Predictions, Part III: AL West

1. Oakland Athletics
2013 record: 96-66 (First place. Lost to Detroit in ALDS.)
Offseason grade: B

Oakland starts 2014 with a deeper bullpen, and an otherwise similar team to the one that won the past two
AL West titles. Their pitching depth, though taxed by Jarrod Parker's torn ligament and the absence of Bartolo Colon, still can't be matched by any other team in the division. The web of platoons and matchups Bob Melvin employs in the lineup has gotten outstanding results out of a group of flawed players, although non-Trout, non-Cabrera MVP Josh Donaldson has a lot to do with that.

2. Texas Rangers
2013 record: 91-72 (Second place. Lost tiebreaker game to Tampa Bay.)
Offseason grade: B+

Let's just put this out there: While the players Texas added this winter will become albatrosses one day, they make for a monster lineup in 2014. It should start off great and only get better when Jurickson Profar joins the team around midseason. It'll need to be great, because the team's best three pitchers are going to start the season on the DL. If everybody comes back on time and is effective, this is a 90+ win team. If they don't, they're more like 80 wins. Without knowing how long the likes of Darvish and Harrison will be out, this is one of the hardest teams to project.

3. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
2013 record: 78-84 (Third place.)
Offseason grade: A

I loved the Angels' offseason moves, in particular landing the inexpensive pitching they needed in exchange for Mark Trumbo. The problem is, their big-ticket free agents from the past two years were franchise-sinking mistakes. Josh Hamilton was never worth the deal they gave him, and Albert Pujols's decline has been faster and more immediate than most expected. They can fill out the margins of the roster as ingeniously as they want, but not even Mike Trout can salvage the season if the other marquee guys aren't doing their jobs.

4. Seattle Mariners
2013 record: 71-91 (Fourth place)
Offseason grade: D

Let's do a compliment sandwich on the M's. I like how they didn't trade Taijuan Walker or any of their other good young pitchers in a win-now move. I don't like how they gave $240M to a 31-year-old second baseman. And in principle, I like how they got Logan Morrison, once a future slugger, for just a reliever. But perhaps more infuriating than the Cano signing was the choice to give Willie freaking Bloomquist a guaranteed two year major league deal. I just don't understand. Was there competition for his services? If so, why? I also don't enjoy how the roster is clogged with 1B/DH types after a winter in which Kendrys Moralez and Raul Ibanez both LEFT the team. Seriously, Jack Z, do you even know what baseball is? Yeah, I know, you need power. You also need to give your manager enough players to fill out a lineup card. If anyone who isn't playing first base or left field has to leave a game, I don't even know what happens here.

5. Houston Astros
2013 record: 51-111 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: C

The whole "ignore the majors, get the best farm system in baseball" thing is working just fine. The major league moves are a little confusing- why overpay Scott Feldman, what's the point of acquiring Dexter Fowler- but they don't affect the team's long term outlook one whit. And with this team, that's still the only thing that matters.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

2014 MLB Predictions, Part II: AL Central

1. Detroit Tigers
2013 record: 93-69 (First place. Won ALDS vs. Oakland, lost ALCS vs. Boston.)
Offseason grade: D

Other than the bullpen, the Tigers took a hit in every aspect this winter. The deep rotation is a little less deep; the powerful lineup quite a bit less powerful. Even their defense suffered when Jose Iglesias went down in spring training. Still, they have two of the best pitchers in baseball, they have the best hitter in the game, and they get to play the White Sox and Twins a bunch of times. They'll be OK.

2. Kansas City Royals
2013 record: 86-76 (Third place)
Offseason grade: B

The Royals were just a couple good players away from being a playoff team last year. This winter they picked up Omar Infante, Nori Aoki, and Danny Valencia- no superstars, but good players who will replace bad ones. Of course they're replacing Ervin Santana with Jason Vargas, so they'll need a young guy or two to step up in the rotation. We'll have to wait till part 7 of this series to see how it shakes out, but I can say right now it wouldn't shock me to see the Royals take a Wild Card spot. If everything breaks right, they could even win the division.

3. Cleveland Indians
2013 record: 92-70 (Second place. Lost Wild Card game to Tampa Bay.)
Offseason grade: F-

It was a good year for Cleveland last year as they made the playoffs for the first time since 2007. Apparently the additions of Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn a year ago were the last parts of the plan, because it was a quiet winter. Now the plan is for young stud Danny Salazar and former prospect Carlos Carrasco to take the places of departed free agent pitchers Ubaldo Jimenez and Scott Kazmir. If Cleveland can repeat last year's success after that, it'll be Terry Francona's greatest accomplishment. I doubt they'll be much better than .500.

4. Chicago White Sox
2013 record: 63-99 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: A

Rick Hahn has begun the difficult task of assembling the core of the next good White Sox team from the remnants of Kenny Williams's all-in-every-year reign. In Adam Eaton, Avisail Garcia, Jose Abreu, and Matt Davidson, Hahn's added some significant major league-ready talent. The lineup should be better, younger, and cheaper than it's been in quite some time. The pitching staff after Chris Sale is a tire fire that seems likely to drag this team to another dismal season, but I still love the long-overdue youthanizing. And hey, if everything goes wrong, back-to-back top five picks!

5. Minnesota Twins
2013 record: 66-96 (Fourth place)
Offseason grade: B-

The lineup is Joe Mauer and a bunch of whatever, and the rotation needed the additions of Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes just to get to mediocre. Everyone knows there's lots of help coming from the minors, but it's not getting here in 2014 (Thanks for getting injured, Miguel Sano!). The majors will remain a total mess for another year.

2014 MLB Predictions, Part I: AL East

Seven baseball posts in one day? Hell yeah we can do this!

AL East

1. Tampa Bay Rays
2013 record: 92-71 (Second place. Won tiebreaker game vs. Texas and Wild Card game vs. Cleveland. Lost ALDS vs. Boston.)
Offseason grade: A

Two things have been constant since the Rays Renaissance of 2008: winning records and offseason trades or free agent losses of prominent players. The rest of the league should be very concerned that this winter, they said "Know what? We like our team and we're gonna keep it." Hell, they even added a high-OBP catcher and another bullpen power arm. There will be stiff competition, but the Rays could hardly have had a better winter.

2. Boston Red Sox
2013 record: 97-65 (First place. Won ALDS vs. Tampa Bay, ALCS vs. Detroit, and World Series vs. St. Louis.)
Offseason grade: D+

I'm trying my best not to overreact to the Sox' dominant 2013, nor their underwhelming winter. Picking between Boston and Tampa Bay might be the hardest call in my divisional posts. The deciding factor for me was that I don't trust Will Middlebrooks or Jackie Bradley, Jr. Boston also got verrrrry lucky with their pitching last year, and Lackey/Okajima/et al will give back a few games in 2014.

New York Yankees
2013 record: 85-77 (Tied for third/fourth place)
Offseason grade: B

Am I the only one who loves it when the Yankees buy a new lineup every winter? And does anyone else love looking forward to 2019, when Brian McCann is the new Mark Teixeira, Tanaka is A.J. Burnett times two, and Ellsbury can't play center anymore but is doing so anyway? Fun times are ahead. I can't count the Yankees out of the Wild Card race this year, but I pretty much can for the entire second half of this decade.

4. Baltimore Orioles
2013 record: 85-77 (Tied for third/fourth place.)
Offseason grade: C+

Dan Duquette's winter strategy of waiting until the market sagged was a good one. I just don't think Ubaldo Jimenez and Nelson Cruz are enough help to push this team back into the playoffs. I'm happy they're relevant again, and if Bundy and Machado had just managed to stay healthy, they'd be part of the discussion. But they haven't, so they aren't.

5. Toronto Blue Jays
2013 record: 74-88 (Fifth place)
Offseason grade: F

I don't understand how the Jays' front office decided to give the 2013 team another crack at it. Your team is full of injury-prone players. That is why they got injured and will likely continue to do so. That rotation just makes me sad. You're really going with Hutchinson, Morrow, AND McGowan? Do you expect them to combine for the starts of one normal pitcher, or...? The lineup makes me happy until I see the red X next to Jose Reyes's name and realize it's already begun again.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Winning the Winter, part 12

It's going to be a photo finish as I try to get my 2014 MLB prediction series out before my team starts their season this coming Monday. Cool if I skip the under-the-radar transactions and just hit the big difference makers in one winter-abolishing megapost? Cool. Predictions hopefully coming tomorrow.

12/27: Rangers sign OF Shin-Soo Choo, 7 years, $130M. Choo's been a consistently good player with a few very good years mixed in. He draws walks, hits for a little power, and steals the occasional base, although his steal success rate isn't great. That package of skills has twice gotten him some MVP votes, including a 2013 season where he played most of the year out of position in center field but put up a monster .423 OBP. Given the Rangers' losses of Hamilton, Cruz, and others over the past two years, Choo fills a need. At some point the seven years and $18-19M salary will look ridiculous, but there could be a few good years at the beginning of the deal.

1/03: Rays re-sign 1B James Loney,3 years, $21M. Loney rebounded from a disastrous 2012 with a solid 2013, highlighted by a .348 OBP. He's not the traditional slugging first baseman, but few are anymore. I'm surprised the Rays chose to spend their limited resources on Loney's early thirties. That said, it's not a huge contract, and keeping last year's roster together for another run is a pleasant surprise from Tampa Bay. I neither love nor hate the signing, but like everyone else, I do like the Rays.

1/16: Dodgers sign SP Clayton Kershaw to a 7 year, $215M extension. This is what the best pitcher in baseball costs. Now we know. It was a foregone conclusion that the Dodgers were going to go way over the line to keep Kershaw around. I don't have a problem with this one absent context, but I do have a problem with Kershaw, Greinke, Gonzalez, Kemp, Ethier, and Crawford all making massive salaries for the next several years. This core might have a World Series or two in it, but it's also got a future that looks a lot ike the present-day Yankees.

1/22: Yankees sign SP Masahiro Tanaka, 7 years, $155M (plus $20M posting fee). And the Yankees went ahead and bought the Japanese version of Kershaw. Even though his numbers from NPB call to mind a peak Bob Gibson or Pedro Martinez, MLB is a different game and nobody seems to think Tanaka is as good as the last next big thing from Japan, Yu Darvish. Comments from Yankees brass that they expect Tanaka to be "a good number 3 starter" seem realistic, but for that, they gave a contract not that far off from what they gave C.C. Sabathia. 2013 was the first object lesson of paying prime value for a roster full of players past their prime. Tanaka is neither good enough nor Benjamin Button enough to reverse that trend.

2/4: Braves sign OF Jason Heyward to a 2 year, $13.3M extension. Once the Braves got their new stadium deal finalized, they went right to work signing their core. While other guys got four to eight years, they only bought out Heyward's arbitration years. Heyward's always looked like an MVP waiting to happen in my opinion and more years would have been better, but the cost would have been prohibitive and the player isn't without risk. This extension changes very little for the Braves- in two years, they'll probably be letting Heyward leave as a free agent so they can afford everyone else they signed.

2/5: Braves sign 1B Freddie Freeman to an 8 year, $135M extension. Signing a breakout star through age 32? OK, that's fine. Good OBP, possibly great if 2013 wasn't a fluke? Gotta like that. Home run totals in the 20's? Not terrible, as long as he's got help in the lineup. This deal looked astronomical at first glance, but the more I look at it, the more I think there's a chance Freeman's fifth-place MVP showing last year will be the norm for a while. I'll call it fair.

2/7: Diamondbacks sign SP Bronson Arroyo, 2 years, $23.5M. The Diamondbacks are an average team, and they've signed an average pitcher for good-pitcher money. He's also old enough that that durable arm could run out of mid-80's gas at any minute. Either add a couple years to the guarantee and get Matt Garza, or let a young guy have a crack at it. Add this one to the "Kevin Towers is a dope" file.

2/14: Braves sign SP Julio Teheran to a 6 year, $32.4M extension (option for 7th year). Atlanta followed up the Freeman and Heyward signings with a typical contract for a good pre-arb pitcher. Atlanta buys out at least one free agent year on the only one of their major league-proven young arms who won't start this season on the DL. Other than the standard caveats about young pitchers, there's nothing not to like here.

2/16: Phillies sign SP A.J. Burnett, 1 year, $16M. This doesn't change the Phillies' fortunes in any meaningful way, so it's a good place to talk about the qualifying offer system. In hindsight, Pittsburgh lost a draft pick by not tendering the one-year offer to Burnett, but at the time the choice was made, Burnett had said it was either Pittsburgh or retirement. Making the offer would have set the price, and it may have been too rich for the Pirates had he decided to accept. The argument against the current system is that it hurts the market value of good free agents, but let's not forget they had a choice in this. When someone turns down a $14M guarantee, that's the point where I lose sympathy if things don't go their way. The elite free agents aren't even affected by this; it's the Kendrys Moraleses and Nelson Cruzes of the world who lose out because of choices they made. This offseason produced some wacky outcomes- seriously, Stephen Drew is still unsigned?- but the players will learn from it. Teams are already pretty good at picking which players to extend the offer to, and in the 2014-15 winter some one-dimensional slugger is going to look at the contract staring him in the face, think of Kendry Morales, and accept it.

2/16: Braves sign RP Craig Kimbrel to a 4 year, $42M extension. The rule for reliever contracts: Keep it short-term and low AAV. The question: Is Kimbrel the exception to the rule? He's the best reliever in the game by a wide margin. WAR says he provides as much value as an above-average starting pitcher despite throwing a third of the innings. The contract only takes him through his age 29 season. The back of his baseball card is a total anomaly, one that likely would have broken the arbitration pay scale. That means the Braves saved at least a little money, assuming no major drop in production. So right now, yes, he appears to be worth it. For me, it's just hard to accept that an organization as well-run as the Braves gave out this contract. It's harder still to accept that it might have been the right move. The baseball world has learned from the B.J. Ryans and Jonathan Papelbons of the world over the past decade. It's hard to picture right now, but what if Craig Kimbrel's name gets added to that list?

2/19: Orioles sign SP Ubaldo Jimenez, 4 years, $50M. On the subject of qualifying offers, if Ubaldo can get a $50M guarantee even with a draft pick attached, the players are doing just fine. Jimenez has never had good control, but 2013 was a rebound year of sorts thanks to a shiny strikeout rate. Even the modest expectations of the league-average pitcher Jimenez was last year may be out of reach in Baltimore. All those walks don't bode well when you're facing the sick lineups of the AL East. I don't know if Matt Garza or Ervin Santana would have been a whole lot better here, but I know I don't like this fit.

2/19: Reds sign SP Homer Bailey to a 6-year, $105M extension. Unless the Reds are planning on spending a LOT more money, they aren't going to be able to keep their entire rotation together. With Jay Bruce and Joey Votto already eating up a sizable hunk of their upper-middle-class payroll, it's possible that they just won't be able to keep more than one of their top three pitchers. If that's the case, I have no problem in principle with signing Bailey. He's arrived as a good pitcher, and his health issues aren't as recent as Latos's or Cueto's. The problem is the staggering overpay. Bailey's maybe a $12M pitcher, $15M if he keeps improving. In a couple years, three guys will be making as much as the rest of the team combined and only one of them will be a bona fide superstar. I was enjoying the Reds' recent relevance as I root for three things: The White Sox in the AL Central, the Marlins in the NL East, and standings chaos in the other four divisions. Now that Reds relevance looks like it's got one, maybe two years left.

2/20: Braves sign SS Andrelton Simmons to a 7-year, $58M extension. Simmons is already known as the best defensive player in baseball, but let's not ignore his 50 extra-base hits last year, or the fact that his walk total wasn't too far from his strikeout total. If he can improve his offensive production even a little, he could be the best player in the NL before this contract is up. It's a lot of money for a guy with this little service time, but so was the first Evan Longoria contract. I'm calling this one a steal for the Braves, and by far my favorite deal from their late-winter spendphase.

2/23: Yankees sign OF Brett Gardner to a 4-year, $52M extension (beginning in 2015). I guess when you only produce one home-grown player every five years, you best sign him, right? If he plays the outfield and you've already got 3 other expensive, older outfielders, even better. This won't be a mess at all. In terms of value, it's not that bad. Gardner's a pretty good player and he'll get paid like it.

2/24: Orioles sign OF Nelson Cruz, 1 year, $8M. Other than Kendrys Morales, this was the one guy who definitely should have accepted the qualifying offer. The Ballpark at Arlington agreed with Cruz, and his all-or-nothing production became progressively more important to Texas's offense over the years. The Rangers should be fine with their new additions, and Camden Yards should be kind to Cruz. Health is always a question with him, but it's reasonable to expect 20-25 homers in 100 games, give or take. Pretty good value signing.

3/12: Braves sign SP Ervin Santana, 1 year, $14.1M. This was a strictly necessary move after the Braves learned both Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy would miss the entire season with torn ligaments. The Braves needed a good starting pitcher, Santana needed to sign somewhere, the Royals needed their free draft pick. Maybe this is a win for everyone. But still... I don't usually like to bury a team because they start the season with bad injury luck, but two Tommy Johns is a seriously rough way to start off. Neither Santana's presence nor the theoretical young pitching depth makes me think "That's OK, they didn't need those 60 starts from Medlen and Beachy."