This offseason, Brian Cashman and his minions will have 5 decisions to make–Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, Andy Pettitte, Eric Hinske and Jose Molina. Let’s do away with Jose Molina right away, as the easiest of the decisions. Francisco Cervelli has shown himself to be more than adequate as a backup, and he’s essentially free. Thanks for the memories, Jose. Eric Hinske is a minor decision as well, though I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see Cashman retain him for the bench.
Hideki Matsui has been great this season for the Yankees, ranking 8th in plate appearances, and somehow ranking 2nd in RBIs. His .381 wOBA ties 2007 for the best of his career, and is second only to 2004. Moreover, he’s done this while dealing with the worst luck of his career, with the 2nd highest LD% (20%) and lowest BABIP by far (.277). That said, he can no longer play any sort of defense, which hurts his value to the Yankees who historically have reserved the DH slot for use as a rotating day off for their perenially older roster. Given his production at the plate, there will be a team out there willing to give him a 3 year deal at a reasonable salary, and willing to deal with his defensive shortcomings. That team will almost certainly not be the Yankees.
Johnny Damon has also turned in one of his best seasons, with his wOBA of .382 a small tic below the .386 he turned in on the Royals in 2000. Good work by Erik Manning over at fangraphs.com points to his performance being significantly magnified by the new Yankee Stadium, but that’s not a big issue for the Yankees, because if they resign him, he still gets to hit there half of the time. What is an issue for the Yankees is that Damon’s defense has slipped precipitously. Combining Damon’s position adjustment and his fielding contribution from fangraphs.com for the last few seasons, you get a composite value of -11.4, -1.9, -7.3, and -15.6 from 2005-2009 respectively. Between making the switch from CF to LF, and losing several steps worth of speed, Damon appears to be on a fast track to DH-land.
Andy Pettitte, of course, has turned in a typical year, earning himself a good chunk of change after signing his much maligned contract reliant on performance bonuses this past offseason. His FIP ticked upwards a bit, but is right around his career AL average, at 4.09. He looks like a very credible #3 starter going into the playoffs, and don’t be surprised one bit of the Yankees resign him for 2010 and possibly beyond.
For the moment, let’s focus on the outfield situation, and I’ll touch on pitching in a later post. The Yankees currently have 9 outfielders on their 40 man roster–Damon, Matsui, Swisher, Melky, Gardner, Eric Hinske, Shelly Duncan, Freddy Guzman and Xavier Nady. Of these, only Swisher, Gardner and Melky remain on the roster day one of the offseason, and are viable starters in the OF. Unfortunately, both Gardner and Melky are significantly below average offensively in corner outfield spots. The most effective alignment here would have Gardner starting in CF, and Melky as the 4th OF, and a solid LF bat acquired in the offseason. So, let’s go find ourselves an LF.
From Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the prospective OF free agents of note are Bobby Abreu, Vlad Guerrerro, Jason Bay, and Matt Holliday. The Rays also have uberprospect Desmond Jennings knocking at the major league door, and a constrained payroll. ESPN speculates that they may be looking to trade either BJ Upton or Carl Crawford to make room in the offseason. I’m going to go ahead and suggest that Brian Cashman won’t be looking to add another massive longterm contract–the downside risk on such contracts are enormous, and the Yankees already have a number of notables on the team. That would seem to knock them out of the Holliday chase, though don’t be surprised to see them pushing up the price for the Red Sox, who will be after him to replace Jason Bay. Bay will be looking for a bigtime payday as well, and if you believe the more advanced defensive metrics, will end up getting paid a lot more than he’s really worth. Vlad Guerrerro is really a DH these days, and can’t seem to stay healthy long enough to be productive. Bobby Abreu has flourished in LA, will cost a draft pick, and still can’t field.
Trading for Bossman Junior would be an opportunity to buy low for the Yanks, and his tremendous defense would be a boon in the Yankees’ spacious left field, assuming he rediscovered some of the offensive ability he showed in 2008 (as the Red Sox remember from that ALCS). It would be interesting to see what the Rays would demand to trade him, and what other teams are willing to offer.
Alternately, the Rays could look to move Carl Crawford coming into his free agent season. They’d have to get enough talent to justify moving the speedy leftfielder, who is almost guaranteed to be a Type A free agent, but he’d be an almost perfect acquisition for the Yankees. That said, Cashman hasn’t ever been particularly aggressive going after players into their FA seasons. If he wasn’t willing to send Hughes to Minnesota for the best pitcher on the planet, I really don’t see him sending him to a division rival for one year of Crawford.
And of course, the name all Yankee prospect hounds are wondering about not being included here is Austin Jackson. There are several issues with slotting Jackson in for 2010, the first and most significant one being that he’s simply not yet developed enough. The second is that he is cut in the Brett Gardner/Melky Cabrera mold (with added offense). He looks like he could become a very good centerfielder both defensively and offensively. Transfer the bat to a corner spot, though, and he’s average at best. When it’s Jackson’s turn, one of the Melky/Gardner duo will be shipping off elsewhere, and the remaining player will be the 4th outfielder.
It remains to be seen what the market will bear in terms of FA pricing this coming offseason. I learned my lesson about projecting prices after last year, when I was one of many voices disparaging the Yankees’ choice to not offer arbitration to any of their departing FAs. As is often the case, they were right on, and I was dead wrong.
Crystal Ball (in other words, my guess): While Carl Crawford is probably the perfect player on a one year deal, he’ll be very expensive in terms of prospects. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Yankees ended up offering arbitration to Johnny Damon and he accepted it (which would net him upwards of $14.5 million for 2010). Boras knows fullwell that Damon’s value to other teams will be constrained by his lagging defense and his Yankee Stadium driven offense.
