Before we get on with the recent past, it's time to show you my Hall of Fame ballot for 2016. We finally have good news to report, for the first time since I stated my position two years ago. Many of those voters who acted as moral arbiters without bothering to cover the sport in any capacity have at long last been relieved of the voting privilege. The Hall has always taken this process quite seriously, but until now, you couldn't say the same about all voters. No more blank ballots- or at least, fewer blank ballots. No more sanctimonious articles about how Bonds and Clemens broke America's dog and ran over its heart, or something like that. And in an unforeseen but most welcome development, some writers have even come around to the idea that a Hall of Fame with the best players of the 90's and 00's is better than one without them. It is in that spirit that I once again submit my Baseball Hall of Fame ballot. I won't waste more words, as I've made my feelings clear in this space before.
1. Barry Bonds
2. Roger Clemens
3. Ken Griffey, Jr.
4. Mike Piazza
5. Jeff Bagwell
6. Tim Raines
7. Alan Trammell
8. Curt Schilling
9. Mark McGwire
10. Mike Mussina
Alright. Let's win some winter.
11/20/15: Blue Jays trade RHP Liam Hendriks to Oakland A's for RHP Jesse Chavez. After years of bouncing around as a quad-A starter, Hendriks found a home and thrived in Toronto's bullpen last year. He comes with four years of team control. Chavez will give the Jays another depth option for their starting rotation, but only for 2016. Toronto does need to build rotation depth, and it's not like they traded Osuna or Sanchez here, but I still think Oakland wins by getting a useful, controllable player.
Atlanta Braves trade CF Cameron Maybin to Detroit Tigers for LHP Ian Krol and LHP Gabe Speier. Speier has more than zero potential as a future big league reliever, and Maybin hasn't been a good player since 2012. The Braves took on Maybin last spring as a salary equalizer in the Kimbrel/Upton, Jr. trade, so getting rid of his 2016 contract is a win by itself. Good to see Atlanta's front office mixing it up and acquiring a couple relievers instead of more starting pitchers.You can field a team of 25 pitchers, right?
Oakland A's sign LHP Rich Hill, 1 year, $6M. Hill's story was one of the most fun in baseball this past September. Sometimes the guys who wash out from injuries and inconsistency don't stop pitching, but they usually don't make it back to the show and shut down the American League for a month at age 35. Oakland is hoping Hill will pitch well enough to bring back a prospect in July, and for the price, why not give it a shot? Win to Hill for making it back at all, and then another win for scoring a substantial guarantee in free agency.
11/23/15: Seattle Mariners sign C Chris Ianetta, 1 year, $4.25M with a team option. The Mariners' new front office doesn't take kindly to Mike Zunino and his sub-replacement-level offense, so to put pressure on him, they signed a guy whose bat was solidly replacement level in 2015. Wait, what? Okay, that's not completely fair. Ianetta's BABiP was miserable last year, and he was a pretty good hitting catcher in the previous two seasons. So this might be fine. But if you're going to move on from Zunino, I would have gone with a guy with a higher floor than "Zunino with a few dingers". I don't think there's a winner here.
11/25/15: Chicago White Sox sign C Alex Avila, 1 year, $2.5M. I mean, Avila can take a walk every now and then, at least. But this is probably another team trading out the old bad catchers for new bad ones. This might not matter much anyway, because Dioner Navarro is probably going to get the bulk of starts for the Sox. An aside: what in blazes happened in 2011 for Alex Avila? He put up an .895 OPS and got freaking MVP votes! He's still only 28, so maybe there's some magic left. At least there's more upside there than with Tyler Flowers. Sox get a lukewarm win.
Houston Astros trade 3B Jed Lowrie to Oakland Athletics for RHP Brendan McCurry. And so continues the strange saga of Jed Lowrie and these two teams. The Astros first traded him to the A's before the 2013 season in a larger deal for Chris Carter and two others. After two solid years in Oakland, Houston signed him as a free agent last winter. Now Oakland gets him back in exchange for relief prospect McCurry. Sometimes I think baseball GMs just like messing with us, like when San Diego and Detroit had a timeshare on Brad Ausmus that spanned the better part of a decade. Oakland used Lowrie at shortstop last time they had him, so maybe this is the end of the Marcus Semien era. If so, sure, win to the A's. Not that Lowrie would be good there, but he couldn't be much worse than Semien. If those two are going to be the keystone combo, though... Wow. That could be really bad.
11/27/15: Blue Jays sign LHP J.A. Happ, 3 years, $36M. The same J.A. Happ who was mediocre in Toronto for two and a half years, before they traded him to Seattle and he was mediocre some more, before he went to Pittsburgh and Ray Searage fixed him for two months. The Pirates' resurgence is still recent enough that we don't have a ton of data on how their reclamation projects do elsewhere. Edinson Volquez is probably the best comp we're going to get: a journeyman who landed in Pittsburgh at age 30, got right, and went to Kansas City where he was good again... so far. I wouldn't bet on Happ pitching well for the whole 3 year term. Maybe he gives them one decent year, maybe not even that. I give Happ the win, and I'm calling him a stealth Dollar Sign Bag award contender. $36 million isn't a lot in baseball, but it is a lot to put on the line for a player with his track record.
11/30/15: Detroit Tigers sign RHP Jordan Zimmermann, 5 years, $110M. With the Tigers' once-intimidating depth dwindling, a major signing was pretty predictable, and I think they picked the right guy. Price and Greinke are better than Jordan Zimmermann, but that's more than reflected in the cost to sign them. Maybe Cueto is better too, but after his brief stint with the Royals, you can't blame an AL GM for being skittish. Regardless of what other options Al Avila considered, he wound up putting up $22M a year for the early 30's of a consistent, healthy 3-5 win pitcher. That seems fine to me. If Verlander is really back, suddenly the Tigers have a scary top of the rotation again, plus now they have the pitching prospects they brought in when they punted 2015- Norris, Fulmer, etc. They're still a breakout or two away from having depth, but this team is trying to get good again in a hurry and moves like this one won't hurt.
12/01/15: Minnesota Twins sign Korean 1B Byung Ho Park, 4 years, $12M (Plus $12.85M posting fee). There's a nasty trap that hobby bloggers, and even professional baseball writers, fall into now and then. Every time a black, left handed starting pitcher is looking like a high draft pick, David Price is the name that comes up. Cubs shortstop Addison Russell is compared to Barry Larkin much more than he is compared to, say, Cal Ripken or Manny Machado. I really wish there was a way to write about this signing that didn't require me to fall into this trap. I know Park and Jung-Ho Kang are different people with different skill sets, and we don't yet know if Park's powerful swing will translate well to MLB. But after the Pirates scored one of last winter's best bargains when they signed Kang out of Korea, I can't help but be surprised to see this year's import land an almost-identical contract, and not significantly more. I'll just say what I said a year ago, when we all had no idea how any position player from Korea would fare in MLB: If this guy is half the player he was in his home country, the Twins just scored a massive bargain. If he's anything less, then the financial loss is acceptable. As a White Sox fan, I'm terrified of a Park/Sano middle of the lineup giving Sox pitchers whiplash for the next four seasons.
12/02/15: San Diego Padres trade LHP Marc Rzepczynski and 1B Yonder Alonso to Oakland Athletics for LHP Drew Pomeranz, LHP Jose Torres and OF Jabari Blash. "Scrabble" Rzepczynski is a fungible, but decent, reliever. Yonder Alonso is what would have been referred to as an "A's player" two decades ago, in that he's high-OBP, inexpensive, and possesses a skill set that doesn't fit his position (Most first basemen have cleared the 10-homer mark at least once). Of course, now that every team values OBP, the A's had to give up something to get these guys. Blash was one of the higher-rated players in this year's Rule 5 Draft, so he stands a good chance of sticking with the Padres and maybe even getting some playing time in their sketchy outfield. Pomeranz is on the long list of top pitching prospects who got destroyed by Coors Field, but in his two years in Oakland he reestablished himself as a quality swingman at worst. Torres is a relief prospect. This move does a lot for the Padres: It frees up first base for Wil Myers. It gives them a pitcher in Pomeranz who should do fine in Petco. And in Blash, they get a guy who can actually play right field and maybe hit a little while mitigating the loss of name-awesomeness incurred by trading Yonder and Scrabble. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I think Preller wins this one in a walk. That's three players with value for almost nothing. Now, about that infield, A.J....
