Every single winter, some MLB team makes like an attention-deficit poker player and pushes all-in on the next season. It pretty much never works, but those of us who follow these things are dreamers, and it's fun to imagine what could be. "Of course Toronto's gonna be good in 2013! Did you see who they added?" Yeah, they added the expensive core of a 93-loss Marlins team and proceeded to lose 88 games. The year before that it was Albert Pujols to the Angels, and if you want to go back any further, just look at any Mets or Cubs free agent signing ever. These future albatrosses are translated into Wins Above Replacement per dollar, a team that's about to lose 90 games is declared the winner of the winter, and the Francisco Lirianos and Shane Victorinos of the world are the additions that wind up mattering. (Nailed it on Liriano, BTW. Fist pump.) With that in mind... Who's up for an MLB offseason analysis series? I'm going to try to catch up to real-time at some point during the Winter Meetings, but the past 5 weeks have given us plenty to chew on already so I'll crank out a short post every day or three. My way of embracing the silliness of this exercise is to assign to each transaction either a winner, a loser, or both well before any games are played. Let's do this!
10/22: Giants re-sign SP Tim Lincecum, 2 years, $35M. In 2009, Big Time Timmy Jim won his second consecutive Cy Young Award while still pitching on pre-arbitration (read: comparatively cheap) salary. The next year, he got an $8.3M raise, threw fewer innings, gave up more hits, and started what has become a clear and unrelenting decline. Whether you like advanced stats or traditional ones, there is no argument to be made that Lincecum is the same pitcher he was 5 years ago. So the Giants cut his pay by $4.5M a year because they really want to see how bad it gets, I guess? Look, he's just 29 (Next year is officially his age 30 season) so there's a chance he's still got some gas left in the tank. And a two year commitment isn't like, I dunno, giving a 10 year, $240M contract to a 31-year-old Robinson Cano. But over the past 2 years he's made $40M to essentially pitch like a waiver claim. GM Brian Sabean's got two rings that say he's better at running a team than most, but this move is high on risk and vanishingly low on reward. Why not throw that money at a Matt Garza or Masahiro Tanaka instead? The Giants are clear losers on opportunity cost alone, and Lincecum wins big. Now watch him snap out of it and rattle off two more Cy Young seasons.
Dodgers sign Cuban 2B Alexander Guerrero, 4 years, $28M. I have no insight into this deal, other than to say I hope Ned Colletti knows not every Cuban is Yasiel Puig. Guerrero has nice numbers for a middle infielder, including walks and power, but he hasn't played since the 2011-2012 Serie Nacional (Cuban League) season. The range of possible outcomes here is vast and I'm not even going to try throwing a duck at this particular balloon. I'm going to give the win to Guerrero's family.
10/29: White Sox sign Cuban 1B Jose Dariel Abreu, 6 years, $68M. Again, not a Cuban or a professional scout, so I can't say I know what's going to happen. But Abreu's numbers in Serie Nacional look like he found a way to hack the scorekeepers. OBPs over .500. SLGs over .800. A temporary holder of the Cuban home run record. And he's only 26 years old. This is a gamble in the sense that the Sox really don't need another defensively useless ex-slugger wasting at-bats, and also in the sense that Abreu's ABs will by necessity come at the expense of Paul Konerko, one of the most popular White Sox of all time. But every number I can access suggests that this is likely not only a good signing, it could be a great one. I'm beyond cautiously optimistic on this one, so I'll just take a page from M.I.A. and say everyone's a winner.
11/1: Yankees re-sign "SS" Derek Jeter, 1 year, $12M. Only the Yankees could give up $12M and a roster spot as a golden parachute. In the absence of their beloved leader, the 2013 Yankees failed to make the postseason for only the second time since the Strike. Wait, that's not right. In the absence of suitable back-of-rotation starters and productive hitters not named Robinson, the Yankees missed the playoffs. There, that's better. Cap'n Jetes has earned the right to leave the game on his terms, and when he was healthy in 2012 he was a good enough player to be worth something like $12M. But while his offensive production seems to bounce between "barely anything" and "All-Star level" from year to year, he hasn't been a capable defensive shortstop in... well, ever. This is probably the contract for his farewell tour, and he'll get so many props it'll be like every announcer is Tim McCarver for a whole season. He's been a great player- honestly, he was much better than I ever gave him credit for when he was in his prime- but in baseball terms, this is a sunk cost. Be prepared to see a lot of Brendan Ryan, Yankee fans. Baseball wins this deal because of what Jeter symbolizes- you know, the whole myth of good clean cut all-American boys playing for the love of the game. Once Jetes retires, everyone in the game will be on steroids, greenies, uppers, downers, ludes, benzos, psilocybin, and aborted fetus extract ALL THE TIME.
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