Yesterday I wrote a bit about C.C. Sabathia‘s option to opt-out of the final 4 years of his current contract, and last night, Mark Feinsand reported that Sabathia is expected to do just that:

A source with knowledge of the situation said that barring a major injury or some unforeseen circumstance, Sabathia – who is 40-15 with a 3.27 ERA in two years with the Yankees – is expected to exercise the opt-out.

Sabathia loves playing in New York, but after he watched Cliff Lee score a five-year, $120 million deal at the age of 32 this winter, it would make little sense for Sabathia – who will be 31 in July – not to opt out and sign a new pact for six or seven years.

Which only makes sense; there’s not really any reason to secure an opt-out clause if you don’t intend to use it, and given what Lee just got (as well as what the Yankees offered him), as well as the relatively weak crop of free agent starters, it’s just good business for Sabathia to opt out.

Both the Reds and the Rockies have made some headlines this off-season, but they’ve done little to bring in new talent. Headlines, instead, have centered around the extensions both teams have given out to some of the very talented young players each team has. The Rockies extended Troy Tulowitzki through his Jamie Moyer-age season and Carlos Gonzalez for the next 7 seasons. The Reds extended Jay Bruce and Johnny Cueto, and they attempted to extend Edinson Volquez and Joey Votto. Baseball people have frequently commended both teams for investing in their youth, but there’s a distinct difference in the reasoning of those extensions.

Extensions for under-control players are very different from free-agent contracts. Free-agent contracts, obviously, are given to free-agents who are receiving offers from multiple teams, and players usually receive contracts commensurate with their worth. Controlled players, however, receive contracts that are below their market value through their arbitration years and, hopefully for the team, get free-agent years at below market value as well. Theoretically, younger players get enough money to set up their grandchildren while teams save a little money and gain payroll certainty. Teams take on the risk that the young player will get hurt, underperform, etc. while players risk losing out on money they could earn by performing well, becoming superstars, etc. There’s some give-and-take on both sides, but it definitely could make sense for both sides as well.

The thing is that, while the Reds have succeeded in doing this, the Rockies essentially took on a lot of risk while getting nothing in return except for cost certainty. Bruce was headed for Super Two status, and after an excellent 2010 campaign, $2.75 million is probably toward the lower end of what he would have received through arbitration. Considering his status as a top prospect and minor flukiness in his BABiP, it seems very reasonable that he’ll repeat that performance (5.3 fWAR) in the future, if not outperform it, and he will receive $5MM, $7.5 MM, and $10MM for his arbitration years, which may end up being well below what he may have made otherwise. During his first two “free-agent” years, he’ll make $12-12.5MM, and the Reds hold an option for another season at $13MM. Of course, he could get hurt and become an albatross, but sound reasoning would argue that this may very well end up being a steal.

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Though Pitchers & Catchers Day may be a bit overrated, at least the players are actually starting to come to camp and we’ll start to get some real news to kick around between now and the start of Spring Training games. And we got just such a nugget today from manager Joe Girardi about Derek Jeter:

Jeter, coming off his worst offensive season, is in no danger of losing his hold on the leadoff spot in the lineup. The rest of the pieces will take time to sort out, unlike last year, when Girardi was choosing between Nick Johnson and Curtis Granderson for the No. 2 spot. As for Jeter, Girardi said: “We signed him to be our shortstop and we signed him to be our leadoff hitter. And he’s got a pretty good track history of what he’s done in the game of baseball.”

He added, “I’m not really too concerned about him as our leadoff hitter. But as we all know in this game, you have to prove yourself year in and year out, no matter who you are. That’s just the nature of the game, and there’s always people trying to take your job.

There’s nothing terribly surprising about the idea of Jeter being penciled into the leadoff spot to start the season, but in light of his poor 2010, if Jeter starts the season slowly, it’s going to be interesting to see how much rope he’s given to continue hitting at the top of the lineup.

Better than he first looked back in Spring Training 2009. [And for kicks, this]

Source: Daylife, via Stephen_MR

As we get closer to the self-imposed deadline for a contract extension for Albert Pujols, and as the likelihood of getting a deal done gets smaller and smaller, expect to see a lot of reactions from Cardinals fans around the internet like this one. Baseball fans really don’t like it when elite players who have spent a career playing for their favorite team go somewhere else to get paid full market value for their services. And that’s understandable, on an emotional level, but it’s worth taking a second to really consider how ridiculous this is.

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More fun with charts! The length of the bars below (with the $ amounts) highlight the spreads from the minimum team payroll to the maximum team payrolls:

The jumps are pretty startling, particularly the jump from 2002-2003, when the spread increased from $91.5 million to $133.1 million. The Yankees’ payroll jumped to $152.7m in 2003 from $125.9m while the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ payroll fell from $34.4m to $19.6m. In 2003, the Yanks added, among others, Raul Mondesi ($13m), Hideki Matsui ($6m) and Jose Contreras ($5.5m).

And in case you’re curious, the Yanks have had the highest payroll since 1994, with the exception of 1995 (Blue Jays) and 1997 (Orioles). Other leaders: Royals (1990), Athletics (1991), Blue Jays (1992, 1993).

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source: USATODAY.com

Just in case you weren’t aware, as part of the mammoth deal the Yankees ponied up to sign C.C. Sabathia after the 2008 season, the big lefty secured the right to opt out of the deal after three years. If you’re keeping score at home, that means Sabathia can choose to become a free agent after this season.

So far, Sabathia has mostly indicated that he doesn’t intend to opt-out of his deal, and he did so again today when speaking to Marc Carig and other reporters in Tampa. However, it appears he waffled a bit when asked about it more directly by Joel Sherman afterwards.

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(This is the third installment in our series previewing the 2011 seasons of each American League team. Last week we looked at the Orioles and Royals, today we examine the Toronto Blue Jays.)

2010 record: 85-77 (4th place American League East)

2010 run differential: +27 (755 runs scored, 728 runs allowed)

Key additions: Rajai Davis OF, Juan Rivera OF

Key losses: Vernon Wells OF, Shaun Marcum RHP

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We had a bit of fun looking the highest paid players per team last week. Today, another view of the data, but cast against the Yankees payroll. You might need to click on the picture below to get a better read.

All data from Cot’s

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IIATMS can be found on Facebook here and you can follow Jason on Twitter here.

We can officially confirm that a pitcher’s won-loss (W-L) record will never again be taken seriously as a measure of a pitcher’s ability.

The W-L record started looking shaky when K.C. Royals pitcher Zack Greinke won the 2009 American League Cy Young award. In 2009, Greinke’s W-L record was 16-8, and the old guard complained that a W-L record like Greinke’s was not Cy Young-worthy. But for those stubborn defenders of the importance of the W-L record, there was hope: at least Greinke had won twice as many decisions as he’d lost. Then in 2010, Mariners’ great Felix Hernandez won the American League Cy Young award with a W-L record of 13-12. I mean, he nearly lost as many decisions as he’d won! Murray Chass screamed, of course, but the choice of King Felix seemed to generate little other controversy.

And now comes the death blow to the W-L record as a serious statistic. Pitcher Ross Ohlendorf won his arbitration case this week against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates wanted to pay Ohlendorf $1.4 million for the 2011 season; Ohlendorf asked for, and won, a 2011 salary of $2,025,000.

Here’s the thing: Ohlendorf’s won-loss (W-L) record in 2010 was 1-11, for a winning percentage of .083. .083 is not absolute zero, but it is nonetheless very, very cold. According to Baseball-Reference.com, .083 is the fourth worst single season winning percentage in baseball history for any pitcher with at least 20 starts, bested only by NY Met Bob Miller in 1962 (1-12 W-L), Pascual Perez for Atlanta in 1985 (1-13), and Jack Nabors for the Philadelphia A’s in 1916 (1-20; in Nabors’ defense, he also tallied a save in 1916).

How does a starting pitcher win an arbitration case after he’s put up the fourth worst W-L record in baseball history? One answer is that Ohlendorf was opposed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in this arbitration, and the Pirates can’t seem to win anything. But the better answer is that we’ve stopped taking won-loss records so seriously. A pitchers can’t control whether his team wins or loses, and a pitcher who pitches for a last-place team like the Pittsburgh Pirates is probably going to lose a lot of games no matter how well he pitches.

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Two of my favorite Yankee blogs, TYU and the Yankeeist have merged to form The Yankee Analysts.

Larry from the Yankeeist and Moshe from TYU will lead a very talented team and I highly recommend you bookmark the site (if you haven’t already) or update your existing bookmarks.

Best of luck guys!

I confess, I think pitchers and catchers reporting to camp is maybe the most overrated event on the annual baseball calendar. The first spring training game? Sure, I have trouble sleeping the night before and I wake up in the morning doing cartwheels like it’s Christmas morning. But knowing everyone is coming to camp for workouts doesn’t quite do it for me, although at least we’ll start to get some real reports out of camp to make the last two weeks of February somewhat more bearable.

But I do know that for a lot of baseball fans this is like a minor religious holiday, and that’s cool too. So if you woke up this morning with a little extra spring in your step, here’s best wishes from us.

Now, come on March.

Roger Clemens has been spotted:

The Rocket, looking sharp in a light gray suit and tie, was one of several players on hand from the 2000 Yankees-Mets Subway Series. Some fans paid $25,000 to have a private meet-and-greet session with Clemens and other 2000 Series participants, including David Cone, Todd Zeile, Jay Payton, Mike Stanton and former Mets skipper Bobby Valentine. Clemens did not attend a media event, but when approached by two reporters in the hallway, said he would be happy to talk only about the banquet.

Most interesting, via the Post, was Clemens’ comment about the infamous Mike Piazza bat-throwing incident:

“I’m so glad you asked,” Clemens deadpanned to Francesa. “I just remember my form being really good when I fielded the bat.”

Clemens later described the Piazza at-bat as him missing “too far inside. I wasn’t throwing the bat at Mike. I was a little fired up and (ticked) off. I was excited being out there. I didn’t want that to be bigger than the game.”

At least the appearance was for a good cause. Clemens still  faces six felony charges ranging from making false statements, perjury and obstruction of Congress. Expect to see more of this over the summer. Unfortunately. Maybe we’ll see some more equally unfortunate sartorial choices, too.