Thought the main thrust of this article is that the Yankees aren’t particularly interested in any of the currently available starting pitchers out there, the most interesting nugget is the quote John Harper gets from Brian Cashman about Hector Noesi:
“Nova arrived sooner than expected,” Cashman said Tuesday. “When you’ve got the tools, that can happen. He knows now that he can dissect a major league lineup and go deep into games. He’s a legitimate weapon every five days.
“And Noesi is the next Nova. He’s throwing the (heck) out of the ball in the Dominican Winter League right now, hitting 98 on the gun with his fastball, and commanding his stuff. He’ll be ready to step in next season if we need him.”
That’s some high praise for a guy with just 43 Triple-A innings under his belt, but Noesi did perform admirably in his big league role next year, and he does compare favorably to Nova both from a scouting and statistical stand point. On the latter point he’s actually better, as his career 8.2 K/9 and strikeout to walk ratio of 5.14 blows away Nova’s minor league numbers. Though the strikeouts have tapered off considerably at Triple-A, so that’s something to be mindful of.
Noesi isn’t a finished product, by any means. As much as anything, he would be well served to develop a true go-to out pitch, which he currently lacks, but I seem to have been more bullish on Noesi than most people for a while, so I think he can do it and become a legitimate middle-of-the-order pitcher in the big leagues relatively soon.
One thing is certain though; if Noesi can be the 2012 version of Ivan Nova, it will be a huge boost to the Yankees, and will make the decision to not aggressively pursue an outside answer to the starting pitching question look like a stroke of genius.
With C.C. Sabathia and Fredd Garcia safely back in the pinstriped fold and the front office not in love with any of the starting pitchers on the market this year (or at least their price), the team is beginning to make noise that their 2012 rotation may already be set, bringing back the 2011 corps sans Bartolo Colon, with a rotation of C.C. Sabathia, Ivan Nova, Freddy Garcia, A.J. Burnett, and Phil Hughes. So where does that leave us?
First of all, let’s establish what we (think we) know. Leaving possible injuries aside, C.C. Sabathia should be great, and A.J. Burnett will probably be solidly not good. Ivan Nova likely won’t be as good as he was at the end of 2011, but given the kind of stuff and poise he displayed, he should be good in his own right. That leaves us with true question marks in Garcia and Hughes. The latter is the enigma of all enigmas, to the extent that I’m not sure I’m even going to try to figure him out this winter. Given the nature of Hughes’ injury last season, reports that he came to camp out of shape, and the ever-changing nature of his stuff, I don’t think we’ll have any idea what we’re going to get out of Hughes until April rolls around. He may have a strong bounce back campaign, he may crater completely, or he might settle in as a below average big league starter without a solid off-speed pitch or a go-to out pitch. Your guess is as good as mine.
(click “view full post” to continue reading)
Jim Callis has more information on some details of the new draft rules at Baseball America, and they are not good. It’s not all bad by any means, but the bad definitely outweighs the good. This is the most important, and most distressing, bit of news in the post:
The most significant new detail: If a team fails to sign a player in the first 10 rounds, its draft cap is reduced by the assigned value of his pick. It can’t reallocate that value to sign other players. However, it can reallocate the difference between a player’s bonus and the value of his choice.
So, in other words, the idea that teams will get a “pool” of money to spend on their draft picks is only kinda-sorta true. If you sign a pick for under slot value, you can take the balance and reallocate it elsewhere. But if the player refuses to sign within the range you can offer, you lose the slot value of that pick and can’t use it to spend more on your remaining picks.
(click “view full post” to continue reading)
Beyond starting pitching, one area we’ve consistently heard that the Yankees may be looking to upgrade at is in the area of left-handed relievers. Unfortunately, the market for those guys is downright atrocious this year, so it seemed unlikely that any moves would be made on this front.
Not so fast my friend! Buster Olney is now reporting that the White Sox are looking to trade Matt Thornton and the $12 million they owe him over the next two seasons. Thornton is one of the better relievers in the game, an All-Star in 2010 who posted double digit strikeout rates every year from 2008-10, a run that was broken with a mere 9.5 K/9 in 2011. Thornton has been tough on lefties in his career, holding them a mere .229/.297/.349 slash line, but he’s far from a LOOGY, as right-handers also hit just .231/.317/.353 off the hard-throwing southpaw.
The biggest downside to Thornton is probably his age (he’ll turn 36 years old next September), but for now he’s still one of the top left-handed relievers in the game. The White Sox are currently seeking some salary relief, so unless there’s a lot of serious interest in Thornton, a team shouldn’t have to give up a top prospect if they’re willing to pick up most, if not all, of the money Thornton is owed.
I don’t know what their level of interest will be, obviously, but this could be a match made in heaven for the Yankees.
Commenter John asks: “Hey Brien. Wanted to know your thoughts on Garza being floated as potential trade from the Cubs. Yes/no and what would you give up for him?”
I’m actually pretty high on Garza. Having just turned 28 years old this past Saturday, Garza is in the early part of his prime years, and he’s already established himself as a consistent and dependable big league pitcher, hurling at least 184 innings in every season since 2008, and pitching 203, 204, and 198 innings in 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. He’s coming off of the best season of his career, with a 3.32 ERA that actually under-performed his 2.95 FIP, and he put up career best numbers in strikeout rate, home run rate, and ground ball rate. Yes, he did all of that in the National League’s Central division, but we all know he’s got that all important A.L. East experience. According to FIP- he was largely an average pitcher from 2008-10, but that’s nothing to complain about from a pitcher in his age 24-26 seasons.
(click “view full post” to continue reading)
As I said when news broke that the Yankees were close to getting a new deal done with Freddy Garcia, the one potential concern I had was that the Yankees now have five nominal starting pitchers on what figures to be the 25 man roster coming out of Spring Training, and that makes me a little bit worried about what their plans for the rotation are as of today. And now, along those lines, Andrew Marchand is openly wondering if the Yankees are not, in fact, going to be deep in the market for more pitching, with the flat out assertion that he simply doesn’t think there’s any way the Yankees sign C.J. Wilson, the best pitcher on the market.
For the most part, I don’t think that silence to this point in the Hot Stove season really means much. General managers can deny it all they want, but I think you’d have to be pretty naive to actually believe teams weren’t waiting to see what the new CBA would bring (especially with both sides pushing some major changes) before making too many commitments this winter. Now, with the CBA done, Thanksgiving past, and the Winter Meetings right around the corner, I expect things to start moving pretty quickly, at which point the market for available players will really start to take shape.
So to that end, I can’t say I’d be totally surprised if the Yankees don’t make anymore moves. They’re certainly not likely to drastically overpay for one of the available starters, especially with some big raises for Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson, Brett Gardner, and David Robertson potentially on the horizon. But they do have some money to spend, and are once again in a situation where their projected starting rotation is C.C. Sabathia followed by four question marks. Given that context, I really can’t envision them standing pat unless the market goes well beyond what they’re willing to invest.
One theme I’ve heard the commissioner’s office trot out in defense of the new cap on amateur playing spending is that the semi-slotting system will create a draft in which players are selected “in order of talent,” rather than having some of the top prospects in the draft dropping out of the top half of the first round due to signability issues. There’s some conceptual logic here, to be sure. Under a true hard-slotting system, talented high school players would have little incentive to spurn the drafting team for college, as the potential future returns on waiting would be much lower. And to be honest, the current system will probably do a reasonably good job of approximating that effect. Beyond that narrow exception, however, the logic here seems deeply flawed to me.
First of all, I don’t see much of a case that this phenomenon of talented players routinely dropping to deep pocketed teams because of outrageous signing demands is actually happening anymore. The last two most notable cases are Zach Lee and Josh Bell, who were viewed as tough signs for different reasons. Bell had what was thought to be a firm commitment to play college ball at Texas, and told teams prior to the draft that he intended to go to college no matter what, causing him to fall into the second round. Lee had a commitment to play quarterback at LSU, and teams let him fall to the Dodgers and the 28th overall pick in 2010. But a funny thing happened along the way; both of these players signed with the team that drafted them, for amounts of money that wouldn’t have been particularly outrageous if they’d been picked at the top of the first round.
(click “view full post” to continue reading)
In addition to signing Jayson Nix today, the Yankees also decided to offer arbitration to Freddy Garcia. Garcia qualified as a Type B free agent on the strength of his surprisingly good 2011 campaign, so if Garcia declines arbitration and signs with another team, the Yankees will receive a supplemental round pick in exchange. That might be moot, however, as new reports indicate that the Yankees and Garcia are close to agreeing to terms on a new one year deal to keep Sweaty Freddy in pinstripes for the 2012 season.
I’m not necessarily opposed to another go-round with Garcia, but I do wonder what it says about the team’s plan for the 2012 rotation. Re-signing Garcia would give the Yankees five nominal starting pitchers, so if they still plan to add an upgrade to the rotation in the offseason, either Garcia, A.J. Burnett, or Phil Hughes would have to be the odd man out.
The Yankees signed Jayson Nix, utility infielder, to a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training. Nix has only four seasons of experience but he’s pretty terrible, with a .207/.280/.368 career line, including .169/.245/.309 last year. Still, it’s just a depth move and he probably won’t even be a bench player, so it’s hard to get upset.
Enjoy your Thanksgiving, and all of us here at IIATMS are extremely grateful for our readers.
I have to say, I’m thrilled that the new CBA’s amateur player provisions are being widely panned around the internet, and the Players’ Association is being properly excoriated for colluding with the league against the interests of amateur players and the greater good of the industry itself. When details of the agreement began leaking, I was afraid that the lack of a work stoppage and unprecedented comity between the two sides would overshadow what an awful deal that comity produced. I don’t get the sense that anyone would have preferred a strike to the deal we got, but there is at least widespread recognition that this labor peace is a result of both MLB and the current membership of the union deciding to enrich themselves at the expense of future players, small market teams, and the long term interest of the sport.
On the other hand, one thing that seems to happen when everyone broadly agrees on something is that they do a less thorough job of really explaining things, and I think that’s happened a little bit with the point that the new draft rules will cause baseball to lose talent in the long run by pushing athletes away from the sport. I won’t go quite as far as Rob Neyer does into “we don’t know what the effects will be” territory, because we kinda do (and we have Puerto Rico as a good case study to support the notion), but I will take a moment to dive deeper into just why the new system will cost baseball talent.
(click “view full post” to continue reading)
First, my apologies for dropping the ball on the weekly updates. The last month has been incredibly chaotic for me and I am just now starting to feel like I am catching up. That said, here is how the Phoenix Desert Dogs and their Yankee prospects ended up the Arizona Fall League.
Phoenix ended the season 14-22, twelve games behind the Suprise Saguaros who lost to the Salt River Rafters in the AFL title game. The Yankees members of the Desert Dogs had a mixed bag of results by the season’s closing. Daniel Burawa went 1-4 with a 7.53 ERA over twelve games and 14.1 innings of work. Preston Claiborne went 0-2 with a 3.00 ERA over twelve games and innings. David Phelps went 2-2 with a 4.41 ERA over eight starts. He struck out 28 and allowed just nine walks. Rounding out the Yankees’ hurlers, Chase Whitley had a strong fall, going 0-1 with a 1.62 ERA over 16.2 innings.
Corban Joseph, who started his fall by smacking a three-run homer, slowed as the season progressed. He ended going .227/.287/.371/.658 over 25 games. He had two homers and eight doubles. Rob Segedin hit .250/.367/.407/.775 over 29 games with three homers, a triple and six doubles. Ronnier Mustelier’s season was interrupted with a brief injury, but he made good use of his sixteen games. He hit .344/.354/.516/.869 with a pair of homers and three stolen bases.
Relax, it’s only for an issue with his vocal chords that has apparently been bothering him lately. But admit it, your heart skipped a beat for a second, didn’t it? I know mine did.
