sk7326

As long as the industry is drowning in cash ... new TV contracts, taxpayer funded gifts (like in Miami), better national TV money. The Rays get like $60M before a ticket is sold. You take this along with teams getting smarter collectively about locking up prime assets, it has been a major major buyer's market the last few years. The high salaries are a good thing - it shows the industry across the board is doing very well. There is a fun media narrative that talks about the game going down the tubes, but that is nearly total bollocks.

As recently as 5 years ago, Grady Sizemore was arguably the best position player in the AL. The injuries have killed him, but it totally makes sense for the Red Sox to actually look under this rock. Gutierrez has also had a lot of injury problems lately but with a lower ceiling. Gutierrez is the safer bet. At the same time, and this is where I do get the Red Sox perspective here - the Red Sox need a backup OF, but they do have a job opening at LF which could be taken. Sizemore has a bat which can carry LF (if he is healthy). Also, as a former CF, he might translate nicely defensively as a LF (if he is healthy). Red Sox are payin $750K to kick the tires - I am not expecting a ton here, but I get the thought process. If he craps out, they can always find another backup OF on the market.

From most of the scouting stuff I've read, Tanaka has a wipeout splitter and excellent command. The big risk is his workload at his age - and whether it portends something problematic. The other risk is whether his approach is too "Japanese". Darvish's approach was (even in WBC evidence) very American - pitch to contact, come right at hitters with your best stuff. Daisuke never made that adjustment. Having 6 pitches and nibbling works in Japan - here you are better off throwing your 3 best pitches with location and command and going after guys. Dice-K lacked either the confidence, or was just too stubborn. I lean to the latter since he flashed evidence of the tools, and still does. That said, we know based on the current salaries and the way you expect them to inflate that a B/B+ starter who can provide a lot of bulk is going to be worth 20-25 million. So the dollars for Tanaka, especially given the Yankees balance sheet - is fair. There is a risk, but that describes all deals for pitchers, including ones in this offseason's lot (like Ubaldo Jimenez). The gamble on a 25 year old makes more sense. My guess, just based on reading and not having seen him, is his ceiling is more or less Jon Lester - not one of the top 5 pitchers in the league, but capable of touching that level from time to time, but able to churn out 200 really solid innings without any real drama. Off Topic - Edes' speculation of Lester's extension being 5/120 or so seems totally reasonable based on all the comps ...

Yanks have done it both ways, internally (1996-2000) and using the power of the purse (2009). Any free agent is speculation, but going on a middle of the road sort of projection it's a good signing. All the top shelf starters in the cohort had questions. Given the choice of a 25 year old with questions vs a 32 year old with questions at the same price and a significant commitment, the 25 year old is a better bet.

If the wins are significant, they pay for themselves, certainly enough to go over a soft cap by a little bit. This ain't the NFL and the Red Sox have much more flexibility than the Rays do. I think any hitch with Drew is a one year one - both sides would prefer that. Also - and this is relevant, he is a legitimate trade asset if signed at a reasonable rate. If you want to get under whatever budgetary apron that makes you happy (and it is entirely their choice, not the law), you can move him later in the season for a bag of baseballs (though hopefully more).

Drew proved he is a quality starter at SS last year. Jhonny Peralta got $13M a year, so that is Drew's floor. He can hit - in streaks - and his approach prevents the slumps from being too terrible. His defense is outstanding, so much so he remained playable in October despite being useless at the plate. The fangraphs $/WAR is a global average thing and ignores the realities that every market has its own business decisions to make ... that said, a 3-win player is worth well more than $7M. Now, on the bright side, there are 1300-1400 plate appearances that can be distributed between Drew, Bogaerts and Middlebrooks ... and sort of let the development of each guy sort of hash out the AB shares. With Bogaerts and Middlebrooks on pre-arb contracts, there is no financial pressure to solve that problem, and with Middlebrooks' trade value being at its lowest there is a lot of incentive to have him play his stock back up again. Because of Bogaerts' ability to play 3B, and Drew's near total incompetence against lefties - there is plenty of room for everyone for a while at least.

Renteria was a LOT better. He just had a career worst year with Boston. Drew had a solid run for us. Chemistry is a trailer of guys who can play baseball.

If he gives a durable #3 starter sort of performance, with the innings that come with it ... that will be a success for the Yanks here. Any Darvish proclamations issues in his hype are due to nationality - Darvish at the WBC it was abundantly clear had arguably the best pure stuff on earth - Tanaka ain't that. But if Tanaka offers durable Hiroki Kuroda-ish level performance for several years - that is easily worth the money he is being paid.

If they had re-signed Cano, this would have been a REALLY good haul. However, their position free agents basically only slightly offset the Cano loss. It's a good offseason, but last year the Yankees were an 86 win team with the peripherals of a .500 one. They needed a lot more, and the business case was there to shop for it, but they decided not to. The Yankees are closer to us, given some level of regression on our part ... but not by any margin which scares me.

Tanaka was a good pickup for the Yanks ... Darvish had a 3.90 ERA, but with pretty spectacular peripherals, and a WAR commesurate with a Cy Young candidate. There was no evidence that he was not going to be extremely successful. Matsuzaka's peripherals were ghastly throughout - his ERA sometimes hid the reality of the most horrifying non-awful Red Sox pitcher to sit through in my lifetime. Kuroda had a 3.52 XFIP over 185 innings as a rookie. Health is a bigger risk here than performance ... the 25 to 32 years of a guy who can be a #2/#3 starter throughout that time frame is well worth that money, especially for a team with the Yankees revenue function. The player option here, usually a horrible idea contractually might help the Yankees, since he might opt out of years that the Yanks were squeamish about. Once again, this is another log on the fire of a Yankees offseason that would have been outstanding if they had not chickened out on resigning Cano.

He's almost certainly not Darvish - but a Kuroda peak ain't shabby. The posting fee will be a non-issue. A lot more teams will be in on this, just a matter of where he wants to go.

The Yankees have been hilariously dithering with the luxury tax - they want to have their cake and eat it too in way that their offseason has turned out TOTALLY incoherent. They have been both big spenders and penny pinchers at the same time, a hard double for sure. IF they made their shopping spree AND said screw the luxury tax and kept Cano - this offseason would have been a success ... one they'd pay for down the line, but it would have made a genuine difference in the standings and in their playoff prospects and thus in their local revenue generators. But when you take their +'s and remove Cano, the best player of the various comings and goings, you are left with the Yankees paying a net of $29 million to field the same team performancewise that they had in 2013.

If he went to get 2nd or 3rd opinions, which he should by all means - I do get it. And the player has to be the one to agree to things.

Potential though in his case is a bit more ... he HAS BEEN one of the best starters in baseball before. His best is absolutely the best on the staff. He just has not been particularly durable. But can that be fixed or improved? If so, potential is a non-issue, he is there.

You can't be too sentimental - everybody is available for the right price. At the same time, it is hard to get good controllable pitching, and Buchholz warts and all is a quality starter. Part of the idea of "making lots of starts" and that whole thing about our Top 6 guys doing almost all of the lifting is a combination of durability (duh) but also being good enough to do so (that they merited that consideration). Buchholz, with the best stuff on the staff and the best "top end", is a very hard guy to let go despite his flaws. I think at this point, when it has happened so frequently, he knows he has to be able to make 30 starts a year for his long term viability as a pitcher.

Bullpen is very important, although your starters have a lot to do with bullpen effectiveness. Most big league bullpens are laid out extremely suboptimally, but that has been rehashed numerous times by now.

For an idea of contrast, in 2012: the "best rotation" made 112 starts, in 2011: 126

I think that is fair - although when you see how hard the team played in 2008 and 2010, it is hard to think that he forgot how to handle a team in 2011. The Red Sox from 2010-2012 suffered what was, if not unprecedented certainly incredibly unlucky, streak of horrible injury fortune from a lot of guys who mattered. When I look at the 2013 Sox for instance, the "number" that will always stick with me is 144. Dempster-Peavy-Lester-Lackey-Doubront-Buchholz making 160 of the 178 regular and postseason starts. Our best players were able to take the field in a way that just didn't happen the seasons prior. I do think the sentiment on Tito is fair, 8 seasons is a long time in this business. But he was and is one of the top 3 or 4 managers in the game.

A .354 OBP will be just fine ... I am not EXPECTING him to knock out one of his minor league seasons, but that gives you an idea of what he can do. Also it is worth noting that the O of the OPS is way way more important than the S. You get .350+ OBP from him with excellent defense and we won't miss Ellsbury that much at all.

Key for Bradley is not whether he matches Choo's output - let me save you the bandwidth there, it's unlikely. If Choo is in the same ballpark as a hitter as he was last year (not guaranteed, but possibly), moving him from CF to a corner will help (as it improves his defensive value a lot). Now can Bradley approximate Ellsbury's contribution. That is also unlikely obviously, a 31 year old vs a guy having his first serious run as a starter. But if Bradley just replicated one of his minor league seasons offensively and continue to show the defensive ability scouts laud in him - to turn the scouting reports into metrics - that is an All-Star, though more of a Bernie Williams sort of All-Star which takes a little bit more sophistication to appreciate as a baseball fan.

Stolen bases are nice if you have them for sure. They are generally not very important in the run scoring pursuit Sox in the last decade have done it both ways. Generally 3-run homers are still more effective. Bradley won't be Ellsbury as a base-stealer. But if he can advance to 3rd on a single and score on a double regularly enough, that is more than sufficient.

His teams led the league in runs (or near it) virtually every year he was there. He did not hit and run much - although they ran as much as they did this year. He believed in getting baserunners on, and letting good hitters hit. Is that a bad thing in some games? Possibly - but for the most part that is how you score, and it's the game that Earl Weaver cracked many moons ago. He actually got better strategically as he learned how to work with the data - put the right lineups in there more consistently, and ran the bullpen better. For the whining about 2011, 2010 was probably his very best managing job. Did he get stupid when they went 81-42 in their 4 healthy months of the season? The collapse in 2011 was a number of factors, but players falling apart had a lot more to do with it, but the fans wanted someone to pay - although to their credit most of them knew Tito to Valentine was a strange shift at best. As someone who has been a fan since 1986 - he is far and away the best manager this team has had ... it's not really close, although Jimy Williams does not get as much credit as he deserves (partially due to being kind of a weirdo media-wise).

Right ... I don't even think it has to be that high. League average was more like .320 so if he was a .315-.325 sort combined with a significant defensive improvement, there is a damn good starter. (the tools are there, it has not shown in the results yet)

Really trading Middlebrooks coming off of the last 12 months or so just doesn't make sense. If you think his career has any sort of improvement in it at all - and I certainly think it does, you are better off trading him when that appears and then you can get a better haul. From the scouting stuff I see, Middlebrooks probably does everything on the ballfield better than Cecchini except hit ... which of course is the most important skill a position player can have. But if Middlebrooks can get himself to even a C/C+ level on-base guy (league average, maybe even a shade below), he can be a very valuable starter.

Which I should have noticed ... appreciate the catch At the same time, if you take his 2013 as a reasonable estimator ... he hit 5 of the 9 homeruns on the road although his slugging in general was higher at Fenway (which is actually the typical park effect for Fenway). The homeruns I expect to increase - how much is the more interesting. I think the 12-14 ballpark is fairly safe as an estimate. In 2013 he had his lowest fly ball rate in about 5 years - just getting back to the flyball tendencies he showed 2009-2012 will improve the homerun count. It's not germane to the question about whether the Yankees made a good decision (since you have to look at it in the context of their entire offseason so far) either way.