A whole Hot Stove season in ten posts. Sounds about right. Coming soon: The post where I declare the winter's winners and losers, and then, the seven-part season preview. It's almost back, people. We're almost there.
1/17/15: Diamondbacks sign Cuban RHP Yoan Lopez to an $8.27M signing bonus. Dave Cameron at Fangraphs did a good job of breaking down the cost behind the cost here. Like the Angels after signing Baldoquin, Arizona won't be able to participate on any meaningful level in the next two years of international free agency. Since the D-Backs finished 2014 with the worst record in baseball and 2015 is also likely to be a bad year for them, they're forfeiting two consecutive years of big bonus pools- more than any other team would give up in making this deal. So can the Snakes still win this? Sure, if two things happen. One, they need to sign at least one more significant Latin American prospect before July, doubling down on the strategy and mitigating the cost of the two year penalty. Two, Lopez needs to turn into a major league starting pitcher sooner than later. Opinions are split, but the prevailing one is that Lopez is about as talented and projectable as a mid-first-round draft pick. Since all the best Latin American prospects end up commanding budget-busting bonuses and teams have no choice but to play by the current rules, maybe it's best to just zero in on the one their scouts really like. Then when the team can't play in that sandbox next year and the year after that, at least they got their guy. So if Lopez is better than anybody who comes out of Latin America in the next two winters, this was a win. I don't know that. Nobody does.
1/19/15: Brewers trade RHP Yovani Gallardo to Rangers for three prospects: RHP Cory Knebel, IF Luis Sardinas, and RHP Marcos Diplan. Gallardo is entering the last year of his contract and his age-29 season. He's been a healthy and consistent staple in the Brewers' rotation since 2009, with ERAs and FIPs consistently in the high 3's. So one year of a solid-ish number 3 starter got the Brewers a former first round pick and future closer in Knebel, a glove-first shortstop who cracked the majors in 2014 at age 21 in Sardinas, and a teenage lottery ticket in Diplan. There's at least a late-inning reliever and backup infielder there, and it's easy to imagine Gallardo falling apart completely, switching leagues and facing better lineups in the AL West. The cost in depth of losing Sardinas and Knebel probably cancels out whatever Gallardo brings, and that's just for 2015. So I like the Brewers' side.
1/19/15: Astros trade OF Dexter Fowler to Cubs for 3B Luis Valbuena and RHP Dan Straily. The other moves the Cubs have made this winter- the trade for Miguel Montero, the Lester and Hammel signings- say that the Cubs will contend again in the near future. This trade says they're serious about 2015 specifically. Fowler is a fine player, a better leadoff hitter and center fielder than most teams have, but since the Cubs only have him for one year I think this trade was premature. When you look at the rest of their lineup, Fowler wasn't the last piece of the puzzle. They still need to find out what they have in Alcantara, Baez, Bryant, Soler, and so on, and most of them need to succeed immediately if the Cubs are going to pull this off. Meanwhile, Houston adds a viable league-average third baseman to deploy until Colin Moran is ready, although Valbuena won't do much to help the Astros' strikeout problem. Absent context I think Chicago did well here, but as I don't like the timing of it I have no choice to declare both teams losers. The Cubs don't need a rent-a-CF and the Astros shouldn't be trading studs for middling major league parts.
1/19/15: Giants sign OF Nori Aoki, 1 year, $4.7M. There's a couple signings every winter where a player somehow manages to avoid getting overpaid, and this is one that really jumps out at me. So maybe Aoki wasn't as big a deal as playoff commentators made him out to be. And maybe he's lost a step in the outfield. But healthy players with .350 OBPs and the ability to play passable defense don't usually have to settle for one-year deals. Just ask Melky Cabrera. There's no way for the Giants to lose this deal. The only question I have for them is, how do the pieces fit this year? They lost Sandoval and Morse and replaced them with Aoki and Casey McGehee, two of the worst power hitters in the game today. Are Posey, Pence, and Belt really good enough to be the heart of the order, or is Royalball the new market inefficiency?
1/20/15: Astros sign OF Colby Rasmus, 1 year, $8M. Home runs are as rare and valuable as they've ever been these days, but doesn't there still have to be a limit of how many shortcomings you'll put up with in order to add a few dingers to the lineup? Rasmus looked like a potential stud coming up with the Cardinals, but his batting average and walk rate keep dropping. Some day soon, all that's gonna be left is the 25 at bats a year where the ball leaves the yard. Maybe in June or July I'll see Jeff Luhnow's vision, but it isn't working for me just yet. This is an oddly constructed team, and if it works, the offense will be the first successful one of its kind.
1/21/15: Nationals sign RHP Max Scherzer, 7 years, $210M. Scherzer's one of the game's best pitchers at the moment, but I'm still struggling to come up with a way this changes the outlook for Washington. It doesn't affect the Nats' profile as a franchise. They were already a first-division club. It might add one or two regular season wins to a team that was already projected to win its division handily. It doesn't hurt anything come October, but the upgrade from Gonzalez, Roark, or Fister to Scherzer for one to five starts is not significant. All that said, if you're going to give a 31-year-old pitcher a downright ridiculous contract, you could do worse than giving it to Scherzer. He's got a long track record of health and dominance and it's reasonable to expect another couple of years of ace-level pitching before things go downhill. But every pitcher eventually breaks. If and when it happens, losing a year of Max Scherzer, along with the financial cost, along with the uncertainty of a pitcher in his 30's coming back from Tommy John is almost enough to make you worried for Nats fans. Almost. For now, the Lerners can breathe easy about Fister and Zimmermann approaching free agency, Tanner Roark can wait his turn in the bullpen even though he was arguably the team's best pitcher in 2014, and Washington can throw aces every day this October. Which they would have been able to do even if they hadn't signed Scherzer. All that for the low low price of $15M a year for the next 14 years. Must. Be. Nice.
1/26/15: Reds extend C Devin Mesoraco, 4 years, $28M. Locking up a mid-20's catcher who just had a massive breakout year (50 extra-base hits), buying his arbitration years and one free agent year at $7M per? Nothing sucks about this. If the 2014 Mesoraco is what he really is, the Reds might be equipped to better absorb the declines of Votto and Bruce. If he's not a borderline MVP candidate and is instead 'just' an all-star catcher, this is still a bargain. The Reds have guessed wrong a lot in recent years- signing Bailey instead of Latos, locking up Votto to a contract that was one of the worst in the game before the ink was dry- but this looks like a good decision.
1/27/15: Marlins sign Ichiro Suzuki, 1 year, $2M. As a fan of baseball and greatness, I'm a little bummed that Ichiro probably won't get an honest shot at 3,000 hits as Miami's fourth outfielder. But as someone who roots for the Marlins, I'm liking the thought of countless triples into the huge outfield gaps at Marlins Park. Any shot Miami has at contention this year lies in the health and productivity of the best outfield in baseball, Giancarlo in particular. But if one of them misses significant time and Ichiro is the fallback, that isn't the worst thing in the world. For a team whose biggest weakness was and is position player depth, this insurance policy looms large.
1/28/15: Pirates trade OF Travis Snider to Orioles for RHP prospects Stephen Tarpley and Steven Brault. For the second year in a row, Baltimore waited till spring training was almost here to get their shopping done. It's probably fair to say that Snider won't match the production of last year's last-minute addition, home run champ Nelson Cruz, but Snider is one of those guys who seems older than he is because baseball nerds have been hearing his name for a long time. He's about to enter his age-27 season and put up a strong slash line in a part-time role in 2014, so a Pearce/Jones/Snider outfield might be better than it sounds. On Pittsburgh's side, they got a pair of A-ball righties who ranked somewhere between 10 and 20 on Baltimore's prospect list, but the more immediate result is that 23-year-old Gregory Polanco now has right field all to himself. If he can make good on a fraction of the promise he's shown in the minors, the Pirates will have three stud outfielders. A fine deal for both sides.
2/6/15: Cubs sign LHP Francisley Bueno to a minor league contract. I told you I'd have this covered. Maybe it's time I start believing in the Cubs. The man's last name means good. And his first name means Francisley. He's the good Francisley. What more do you want!?
2/11/15: Padres sign RHP James Shields, 4 years, $75M. This winter must have been tough on Shields- I mean, as tough as a few months can be when you know you're going to make close to $100M in the end. But when the Royals picked him up two years ago, he was billed as an ace, the guy who could lead a young Royals team deep into October. And in 2014, the Royals went as deep into October as a team can go. But somewhere along the way, people realized Shields is really more of an archetypal #2 starter than an ace. He gives you innings and lots of 'em, with good peripherals and results all around, but he doesn't ever quite give you the dominance. So that 5 year, $100M number one starter contract never materialized. But when you look at what the real ace (Scherzer) got, and you look at what the other pitcher in Shields' class (Lester) got, it's pretty clear that A.J. Preller got opportunistic again, bought low, and possibly won the winter because of it. I can't yet say whether this deal puts San Diego in that 90-win range, but I do think it's about more than legitimacy. It's about trying to sneak up behind the Giants and Dodgers and jack them with a sock full of pennies. It's about completing the most drastic one-winter franchise makeover we have ever seen. It's about adding talent on top of talent until on-field success goes from impossible to probable. I can't wait to get to my predictions posts this month. That lunatic in San Diego's gonna make things real interesting.
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