Jayson Stark of ESPN and Bradley Woodrum of Fangraphs have somewhat dueling takes on competitive balance in MLB, with probably a little bit of truth to both. Stark’s overall point is correct (I’ll go so far as to say baseball probably has even more competitive balance than the NFL at the margins, but that’s largely because no one baseball player is as important as a quarterback is in the NFL), and Woodrum is right that a) money still matters a little bit and b) that the method of looking at how many different teams have won a championship recently isn’t really the best means of looking at this question.
Still, I’m not inclined to ding Stark too much. On the latter point, though the methodology is hardly rigorous, it is the standard by which football triumphalists mostly want to judge things, so I can hardly blame someone for pointing out that the argument fails on its own terms. As to the former, of course money matters! Money always matters, and it matters in the NFL as well, it’s just hidden a bit better, and there’s more money flowing to everyone because their television contracts are so lucrative. The only way money could not matter at all would be if everyone had the exact same amount to spend on all aspects of baseball operations, something that obviously isn’t going to happen, ever.
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Though there have been a few moves already, the Hot Stove season is off to a slow start. From the fans’ perspective, most of the action won’t happen until some time around the winter meetings in December, and the current period is largely about laying the groundwork for your offseason. And to that end, multiple outlets have reported that Brian Cashman has contacted the agents of Edwin Jackson and C.J. Wilson/Roy Oswalt (they share an agent) to express interest in the pitchers, and probably to get a sense of what each is looking for in their next contract.
Of course, the Yankees aren’t going to sign all three pitchers, so this is more about due diligence and kicking the tires than anything else. In fact, unless they’re planning on being very aggressive in the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, I expect the Yankees to be very patient this offseason and see how the market shakes out before making any moves. The market for starting pitchers isn’t stellar by any means, but there are enough options that I think the Yankees will wait for the best bargain, rather than jump in with both feet to land any one in particular.
The Yankees also held a private workout for Cuban sensation Yoenis Cespedes, according to Ben Badler of Baseball America. The Marlins are the purported favorites to sign Cespedes once he’s declared a free agent, but the Yankees are very interested in Cespedes as well.
Here’s the second half of Passan’s free agent list, and my general thoughts on what the Yankees should do this offseason.
Jeff Passan recently compiled a list of all 182 players eligible for free agency (!), starting with the best and and, um, movin’ on down. A Tigers fan recently covered just about every one of those for his team, and with his permission, I’ve borrowed the idea for the Yankees. Keep in mind, the rankings are Passan’s, not mine, though it’s pretty difficult to quibble with any of these.
I’m not going to spoil this with words. Just watch.
That is Yoennis Cespedes, a 26 year old outfielder from Cuba who has defected and hopes to sign with a Major League team for roughly the same amount of money as Aroldis Chapman got from Cincinnati. Though the video focuses more on Cespedes’ raw athleticism than his baseball talent, his numbers from Cuba are quite impressive, as you can see from his BR Bullpen page. And here’s Kevin Goldstein’s take on Cespedes (and the video).
Long story short, Cespedes is a legitimate center-field prospect and a very good hitter in his physical prime. I imagine the Yankees will take a look at him, and certainly could be among the contenders for his services if they like what they see.
The rumor mill is off to a slow start this off-season, with very little in the way of meaningful gossip about the Yankees’ plans so far. We know they’ll talk to C.J. Wilson‘s agent, but that doesn’t mean anything. Brian Cashman briefly set off a firestorm of speculating that they’d try to trade A.J. Burnett, but that’s not happening either. But one thing with some legs we’ve heard in the past week or so is that the Yankees are interested in bringing Freddy Garcia back for 2012, and Garcia is open to a return as well.
Honestly, I’m a little conflicted about this. One the one hand, Garcia was pretty good in 2011, so it stands to reason that bringing him back cheaply wouldn’t be the worst of ideas. On the other hand, I’m not really confident he can repeat the performance (though to be fair, I was bearish on him all season, and he never fell down to my expectations). I just don’t see how a junk baller who doesn’t even get many groundballs can maintain a 4.12FIP and 4.36 xFIP at 35 years old.
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Buster Olney reports that the Orioles have asked permission to interview Yankees’ director of pro scouting Billy Eppler and director of amateur scouting Damon Oppenheimer for their general manager position. Both Eppler and Oppenheimer previously interviewed for the opening in Anaheim, with Eppler reportedly the runner up to Jerry DiPoto for the job.
In case you missed it, the Orioles are having a heckuva time with this job search. Their first choice was DiPoto, who took the Angels job instead. Okay, nothing particularly noteworthy about that, but when they made a formal offer to Blue Jays’ assistant GM Tony LaCava, LaCava turned it down and announced he was staying in his current job. Then, when local reports starting making noise about Dodgers’ assistant De Jon Watson, Watson took his name out of the running for the job. As far as I know, this is basically unprecedented, and its as close to organizational rock bottom as I can imagine a Major League Baseball franchise getting, at least in terms of baseball operations.
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I had recently become a bit smitten with the idea of acquiring Roy Oswalt this offseason, but if this report from Wally Matthews is accurate, the Yankees are not so interested in him. The reason? His back is in really bad shape:
Oswalt, whose option was declined by the Phillies after a 9-10 (3.69 ERA) season, has had back problems dating to his days with the Houston Astros. He reportedly has two degenerative discs in his lower back and while he has never undergone back surgery, he has had numerous cortisone shots. As recently as June, when the recurrent pain sent him to the disabled list for six weeks, Oswalt talked about possibly having to retire because of the injury.
Those concerns prompted a baseball insider with knowledge of the Yankees’ thinking on the free-agent pitcher market to tell ESPNNewYork.com that the club was “very worried about his injury history. The guy’s falling apart from that back of his. That’s why Houston dumped him.”
Oswalt had a very good season in 2010, so Matthews’ source might be overstating things a bit, but if the Yankees aren’t comfortable with the condition of Oswalt’s back, I don’t expect them to pursue him that hard. On the other hand, if everyone else has the same concerns, Oswalt’s value takes a real hit, and the Yankees are better positioned than anyone to take a flyer on a guy like this at the right price, and until free agency opens no one but the Phillies will get a chance to actually look at Oswalt’s medicals. So I doubt that the Yankees have completely ruled out Oswalt yet, and this is probably mostly an attempt to influence the market.
Ain’t the Hot Stove season great?
The theme of the day in the New York media seems to be that the Yankees and general manager Brian Cashman are planning a “quiet offseason,” and may not plan on making too many moves. This is based on the comments Cashman made, and didn’t make, during his call with reporters yesterday, and would be a stark contrast to most winters for Yankee fans to be sure. Even last year, in what became the Winter of the Scrap Heap, the Yankees had originally made a hard push to sign Cliff Lee. So, are the Yankees going to dial things back this year?
Well, probably not.
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The winners of the 2011 Rawlings Gold Glove awards were announced last night, which means that it’s time to make fun of the selections this morning. In all honesty, there’s only two winners in the American League that really stand out to me, but then, I regard the Gold Gloves with more of a morbid amusement than righteous outrage these days. I don’t really understand how Erick Aybar wins at shortstop and Alcides Escobar isn’t even a “finalist” (they changed the announcement process a bit this year, apparently to create more interest in the award, which is pretty much the definition of putting lipstick on a pig), and, of course, Alex Gordon beating out Brett Gardner in left field is a farce.
I’m not even going to rant or complain about this one. The Gold Gloves’ credibility issues are well known by now, and I really doubt I have to make a strong case that Gardner deserved the award. In any case, Gardner did win The Fielding Bible award for left fielders, which should be seen as a bigger honor anyway.
Brian Cashman, in a conference call with the various beat writers, just announced that the Yankees have declined an option on Andrew Brackman. Per Brackman’s contract, the Yankees were bound to release him if the option was declined, meaning that the Yankees’ 2007 first round pick is now a free agent. Brackman was a highly touted prospect coming into this previous season, but a disastrous year really hurt his value, to the extent that the Yankees would rather give up 5 years of team control rather than pick up his 2012 option.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like the treatment C.J. Wilson is getting with regards to this offseason. Not that I’ve been the guy’s biggest booster, or anything, but I’ve been a bona fide cheerleader for the Rangers’ southpaw compared to most of the media, who just come up with more and more ways to run Wilson down. The New York media has been particularly brutal, which is really unusual. Usually they connect almost all of the top 3 or 4 free agents in a given class to the Yankees in one way or another, with various levels of certainty that the Yankees just have to sign them. This year you get the impression that there will be riots in the press room if the Yankees sign the best available MLB pitcher not named “C.C. Sabathia.”
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Well, this is not what I expected to be writing today. Like seemingly everyone else, I expected C.C. Sabathia to opt-out of his contract with the Yankees and at least kick the tires on free agency. Sabathia was coming off of one of the best seasons of his career, after all (statistically it was basically equal to his 2007 season, when he won the A.L. Cy Young Award), and would stand to make an awful lot more than the $92 million over 4 years he had left on the contract.
Well, Sabathia will still make more money than that, but it didn’t quite go down the way I anticipated. Rather than reading that Sabathia had exercised his opt out clause, my phone delivered the news that Sabathia was coming back, as Suzyn Waldman might say, having agreed to an extension with the Yankees before the option’s deadline. If it had been April Fool’s Day rather than Halloween, I don’t think I would have believed it.
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