sk7326

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.

And 14 for about 700 which is in line with a full season ... which is a reasonable expectation. The homeruns will go-up with the switch to Yankee Stadium most likely - probably won't get you to 20 (although I wouldn't be surprised if it did) but should get a guy who is not a slap hitter into double figures.

Dice-K did not work out but it was the sort of evaluation that made sense. 6 years of control of a 26 year old with a strong track record? Yes please. Of course, his unwillingness to change his approach for the US killed him. At least Tanaka has flashed from scouting reports more American approach a la Darvish. It's a plus. I tend to look at front office moves as 1) genuinely bad, 2) defensible, 3) genuinely good ... categories #2 and #3 can still have bad results. You can't predict the future, but if you are making percentage plays, you can only get so mad at a front office. (it's why the Gonzalez trade does not fill me with anger or anything)

He'll hit homeruns in NY. Nothing insane - but he is shifting to the best lefty power ballpark in the bigs, on that basis alone he should be a low double figures sort of guy there at worst. It is a reason why I think the signing is a bit more defensible for the Yankees - but not as part of the offseason strategy they have in fact actually executed i.e. letting Cano walk for Ellsbury.

SoxSport is half right - the compensation system is stupid. However, the logic of the compensation system is passe - just let the teams trade their picks and everybody would get more value out of it.

They changed inconsequentially at catcher, held at 1B and added some bullpen help which is never a bad thing. They have improved maybe - but they have not gotten worse. There is a bit more uncertainty, comes with putting high ceiling but unproven guys in key spots - but it's exciting. Verducci may not be wrong, but whatever the difference is is pretty minor.

The 2012 Dodgers won 86 games. It was not some sort of Hindenberg disaster. They also had the best pitcher in the NL (maybe either league). They were "contenders" they just missed the 2nd wildcard by 2 games. The Dodgers did not have some epiphany - adding Greinke moved them from an 86 win team to a better one (that and a shocking bounceback year from HanRam).

Appreciate the catch. Of course this all hurts smart small market teams and helps cheapskate owners. But in a way that was the point.

The simple example for how the draft slotting works. Imagine having 3 picks as slots A, B and C. The commish's office assigns slots: A: $3,000,000 B: $1,000,000 C: $500,000 This means your total bonus pool is $4,500,000. This is bonus money for ALL of your picks. And you only get the $4.5M by signing the 3 guys. Now suppose you DO sign the 3 guys for the following bonuses A: $2,900,000 B: $1,100,000 C: $250,000 You signed them for a total of $4,250,000. This means you have $250,000 to spend on bonuses outside of the slotted rounds (first 10 rounds). So you could try to lure a Middlebrooks or Westmoreland from a harder commitment with the $250,000 for instance. Now what if you cannot sign the B slot guy. Then your max pool drops to $3,500,000 in this case. That money is gone. The system forces you to take a few easy signs to keep you in the game on the harder guys.

It's based on number of picks etc ... what you probably expect with the sandwich picks is a bit of portfolio management. You only get access to the "slot" if you sign the guy. So the Red Sox' bonus pool is dictated by the picks and their value - but can only be realized by signing those guys. What this means is that while the position of the picks sound amazing - the fact is that the Red Sox are not going to use all of those picks in a straight "best player available" sort of way. Some of them will be used that way, but a number of them will just be easy signs (like senior college players) so they can get the bonus money which if they manage things right, might allow them to take a true "tough sign" in the later rounds like the olde days.