2012-2013 MLB Offseason Thread: Go forth to the 2013 MLB Thread
 

For those of us with teams not in the playoffs, there's always this

SI

So, uh, that three team deal is a bit weird.

D'Backs Acquire Heath Bell In Three-Team Deal: MLB Rumors - MLBTradeRumors.com

The DBacks pick up the remaining 2/$13M on Bell and get Cliff Pennington (um, yay?) on a sell low of Chris Young, who looked injured for a lot of last year (or at least that's what I'm telling myself to make up for how he performed for my fantasy team). And the Marlins get to pay $8M to have Bell just go away.

SI

And does it seem weird to anyone else that players are traded for managers.

Cooperstown Confidential: trading the manager (article from last year about it)


SI

How about the Japanese kid who bypassed NPB for MLB? Seems like a good way to strain our relationship.

Maybe the Heath Bell deal smooths the way for Ozzie's return?

If I could have one offseason Royals wish, it would be Anibal Sanchez with a contract that's not too awful above market value. They've said they're going to target pitching but then mentioned Sanchez and Lohse in the same breath. Those are two totally different pitchers and two totally different contracts.

Likely Royals offseason:
What grade would you give this hypothetical offseason? - Royals Review

• Starting Pitching #1 - Signs Kyle Lohse to a 5-year, $65M contract.
• Starting Pitching #2 - Signs Jeremy Guthrie to a 2-year, $15M contract.
• Second Base - Signs Kelly Johnson to 1-year, $5M contract
• Relief Pitching #1 - Signs Jon Rauch to a 1-year, $3.5M contract
• Relief Pitching #2 - Signs Michael Gonzalez to a 1-year $1M contract

I would be excited about this Royals offseason:

• Anibal Sanchez 5/$75M (I doubt Greinke is coming back here but at least kick the tires)
• A 1 year deal like Edwin Jackson signed last year for a pitcher like him or kicking the tires on the Angels for Haren (if healthy-ish) or Santana or even some sort of salary dump. I'd rather give up the ample salary flexibility we have over actual young talent to get another pitcher
• Jeremy Guthrie 2/$12M
• Second base: Someone cheap who makes sense as a platoon or just give Getz/Gio a shot
• Longoria-esque deal for Wil Myers

SI

Why would any FA go to the Royals?

Typically, a player will go to the team that offers them the most money?

SI

Heh...cause the O's have had such great success. ;)

This year, it will be interesting to see what a good season does to make Baltimore a more attractive destination for FAs.

In Angels news, a few weeks ago they signed Iannetta to an extension, something like 3 years, $15 M. That's a good steady contract for a guy who is fairly steady and productive when healthy.

I don't know yet if the Angels intend to pick up the options on Santana or Haren. I am hoping they at least keep Haren. If they could pick up the option on Santana but then trade him for specks, that would also be awesome. I know they will want to clear salary space to offer Greinke the $20 M per contract he's probably going to demand.

I am fearing Torii played himself into a contract the Angels won't want to match, since they are deep in the OF and stuck with Wells albatross of a deal. He seems to like it in SoCal, though, so I am hopeful they can bring him back on a 2-3 year deal at a reasonable amount.

We'll see what happens, but I don't see Lohse or Sanchez leaving their current teams to go to the Royals of all places, even if they offer them the most money. I don't see any big name FA going to Baltimore either.

I fear the Orioles will move forward with what they have and be the 70 win team they were supposed to be this year.

Guillen fired. That's interesting.

Ozzie Guillen fired as manager of Miami Marlins - ESPN

Nope.

Who more toxic...

Guillen or Valentine?

Guillen gave us 2005.

Jose Oquendo to manage Marlins?

Gonna steal from Simmons

Who would write the better tell all book about this past season?

SI, did you read Rany's piece? 5/75 is what I expect it to take for Anibal Sanchez, but given what Det gave up for him, I'd be surprised if they don't try to resign him.

Yeah, I was reading that in a doctor's office waiting room yesterday, in fact.

I'm sure a lot of people will be looking for Anibal Sanchez. With the influx of money into MLB, I'm worried the Royals won't be able to get it done. Rany has the two on my radar that I do: Sanchez and Edwin Jackson, as a significantly lesser fallback. Dayton Moore came out and said Sanchez and Lohse are his two top targets. Lohse scares the living daylights out of me: he's Jose Guillen 2.0 but with double the salary.

Also, I saw him say pretty much what I did, too, about kicking the tires on Greinke but ultimately, I don't think KC will be in the cash ballpark there.

I also really like what Rany said about Moore jumping the gun. It's a constant thing that Royals fans have come to fear every offseason: that stupid early trade. This time, if he wants to "overbid" right off the bat to get Sanchez, make it happen. That may turn out to be a wise play.

SI

Yeah if I was a Royals fan, I would be terrified of a 34 year old Boras client who just had a career year. Loose is due for a heavy regression.

The fact that Dayton Moore mentioned the two as similar candidates again underscores his inability to judge major league talent

SI

If you're the Royals, you need to give up on the idea of buying pitching. That's never getting it done for you. It's too much of a crap shoot. You need to develop young pitching. There's not nearly enough upside to having a single good pitcher. Those guys cost too much and blow up too easily.

I don't wish ill on anybody. But how does that guy still have a job? You need to be better than the other GMs if you run KC. This guy is clearly worse than the other GMs. Go steal one of Cashman, Williams or Daniels' assistants. The only clear point if you're a Royals fan has to be that the team is never turning around under this guy.

I'm a big fan of Rany's writing. I've been reading the same thing about the Royals for over a dozen years. It's the same shit he used to write about the Gunnery Sergeant Muser years. Can Moore point to anything better about his regime than Allard Baird's?

I think the Reds and Royals match up pretty well for a trade. Reds send Bailey to KC for a RH outfield bat, or Gordon? Is that doable?

When good young arms go in a deal, someone involved is usually getting taken.

Pineda
Sanchez
Jiminez

There is usually something wrong with the guy.

I'd be pretty wary of Bailey if I were the Royals.

Corner outfielders with moderate pop are fungible. Young starters with #2 upside are rarer than pretty girls that love cooking for their boyfriends. You have to wonder why one is giving up the latter for the former. I mean, as poorly as the Rays hit, they haven't given up any of their pitching for bats.

Billy Beane had to give up Gio Gonzales because he couldn't pay him. That's not the case with the Reds. It'd make me nervous.

You can have Jeff Francouer for free. You just have to pay him next year ;)

Lorenzo Cain for Homer Bailey would be an interesting swap but I doubt the Reds would have interest.

If I were the Royals GM, I would have no interest in Gordon for Bailey. First off, I like having Gordon affordably under control for the next 3 seasons and he's someone I'd want to build around. But, I can't fall in love with my own players so here's where performance ranks.

You know I've voiced many times my reservations for using fWAR as a shorthand for player value, particularly when a player derives a lot of value from defense and incomplete defensive statistics. However, I'm going to do it here with the understanding that it's not quite the whole story but a decent approximation (particularly since Gordon is gets less than a 1/4 of his value from fielding and not overcoming a negative bat like Franklin Gutierrez or Chone Figgins or Endy Chavez). Gordon has been worth 6.9 and 5.9 WAR the last two seasons after a crappy 2010. Bailey has been worth 1.9, 1.5, and 2.8 the last 3, which is 6.2. Using WAR, Gordon's 2011 was worth Bailey's 2010, 2011, and 2012.

I couldn't do that trade at all, as desperate as I am for pitching.

SI

To be fair, they've been trying. The system has developed a decent number of bats and they had a similar number of good pitching prospects but they have mostly gone down in flames. Look up the pedigrees of Montgomery, Melville, Lamb, and Dwyer. There are more but that's just off the top of my head of guys who were on the BA's 100 for one or more year in the last couple of years.

We'll get to the "just sign a pitcher" thing in a second here...


That was the theory: steal a GM assistant from a good team. It was between Moore and Wren for who would take over for Schuerholz in Atlanta For the record, I wouldn't take someone from New York or Texas- I'd want to rob from Tampa or Oakland or somewhere else who could win under a smaller payroll. The assistant GM is Mike Arbuckle who they stole from the Philles as he was their assistant GM and development guy in the early-mid 00s when a lot of their good players were coming up and I think he's been a good find for player development. I wouldn't necessarily mind seeing him with the job tho going another direction entirely works for me, too.

As for seeing him fired. Hell, I'd prefer it happen before this offseason as this seems like a good chance to really screw things up. There are young players pretty much across the diamond with varying degrees of talent (C Perez, 1B Hosmer, SS Escobar, 3B Moustakas, CF Cain with LF Gordon and DH Butler as "older" guys). And I'm worried we'll see something stupid like Wil Myers for crapp- veteran starter or guy who has been lucky.

That said, I think the bats mature and get better so pitching is where it matters for this team. They're never going to have the talent level of a New York as they can't afford to. But all those young bats are getting better. They have no real pitching, especially for the first half of 2013, as Paulino and Duffy will be coming back from TJ.

But, let's flip this around: how many teams /aren't/ a pair of #2s away from contention. Not winning a World Series but at least making the playoffs? If the Royals can sign one and develop another between Duffy, Odorizzi, or someone else flying through the system (Kyle Zimmer? Yordano Ventura?), doesn't that at least give them hope to make the playoffs. And that's all we're really looking for.

They have a lot of cost control locked in (Gordon, Butler, Perez, Escobar all have contracts through and if they can't develop pitching or haven't gotten any yet, then you look at your cost controlled hitting and go "well, I guess I'll have to go buy some pitching". They /should/, unless they get stupid, have $25M to play with next year. They've been locking up any young player who will listen and they have cash. It needs to be spent on pitching.

What's the other answer? Blow it all back up with a bunch of cost controlled guys and start over, aiming for 2017?

Also, there have been a couple of things that Moore has done well. I would be remiss to just totally run him down when he has done a couple of things well. It's bad, sure: he can't judge major league talent and that's probably because he doesn't know of any more advanced statistics than OPS.

But, he has gotten Glass to open up the checkbook for development. If you're the Yankees, you take that for granted. But how hard is it to ask a cheap owner to open up the pocketbook for Noel Arguelles? Until the recent CBA changes, they were one of the top spenders in Latin America. He realized it was smart to overspend in the draft and get those signability guys in later rounds and it has paid off pretty well. A lot of the organizational depth came from there. The Royals actually have 1 more minor league team than anyone else in baseball and they hired a lot more scouts and increased the pay of theirs, trying to lure some better ones to the organization. So, in short, they've really hammered on the scouting and development side of things on his watch and he deserves credit for that. He did pretty well on the Greinke trade: Escobar looks pretty good and Cain and Odorizzi still look like pieces that could be part of the future.

That said, you can't just be average or a little below average with KC and expect to win anything. We all know that with the payrolls the way they are, you need to be whole steps better than more well financed clubs just to make the playoffs.

SI

Well, SI, at least you have the benefit of being in the crappiest division in the AL. Neither the Twins nor Indians are getting better any time soon.

Your problem as a Royals fan is that you've got two of the best GMs in the game with the two biggest markets in your division. Williams and Dombrowksi have both realized the situation they're in. neither is going to give up on reloading and trying get one more stretch run while the other three teams are so bad. They both know that they start the season as 50-50 shots to be division champions. Even if they get beat by the other guy, they have a reasonable chance to leapfrog better teams in the other divisions because they get a third of their schedule against truly bad teams.

But i think your first order of business in KC is dealing with this:

I'm guessing that's Luke.

Hate to say it, but I just non-tender him. Some pitching coach is going to get ahold of him and probably could get a couple of good years out of him but it won't be in KC. Good arm, no head, and falls all to pieces with runners on.

SI

That's Luke all right. You can't have your GM repeatedly saying that the guy who produces those numbers is guaranteed a spot in your rotation next year., which Drayton has essentially done.

I'm not quite old enough to remember any Yankee-Royal playoff series. So I don't have any animosity toward the fanbase. But the level of incompetence over a long period of time is only matched by the Dolan Knicks in current sports.

The Reds would be dealing from a position of strength, to an area of weakness. Bailey did come through as the real deal this year. And he's controllable for 2 or 3 more years. Look at his pitching away from GABP, he was a bonafide ace this year. I figured the Royals would jump at the chance to get at least a #2 for a young hitter, which they seem to have. Not a chance I take Cain for Bailey.

I'd think Shaun Marcum would be a reasonable target for the Royals. He's from Kansas City and won't cost a fortune in terms of money or years.

Maybe we should do a fix the Royals groupthink.

Yeah, there's a lot of speculation on that exact front. But in my mind, if you get Marcum, you have to get at least one more pitcher who is a decent upgrade.

SI

Yes, I'd agree with that too. When the Brewers needed serious pitching, they acquired Marcum. But they still needed to go out and get Zack Greinke.

Marcum is not a guy you want at the top of the rotation but he's solid in the middle. Health and durability is why he won't be getting a better contract.

Yeah- see, I think the Brewers a couple of years ago had a good model: take an ok rotation, add a #1 (Zack) and a #3 (Marcum) and you have a playoff team.

SI

Dodgers to open 2014 season in Australia? - latimes.com

Talks to get the MLB to open the 2014 season in Sydney.

I actually think the Royals should make a run at Greinke. In that division, with the young bets they have, adding Myers next year + Odorzzi makes them interesting. I worry about Dayton Moore though - this is a guy who thinks Francouer is a star.

As I've said, I'd ask what ballpark Greinke is looking for in terms of salary and years. I just think the bidding starts at 5/$100 and goes up from there so I'd rather at a $15M and $10M pitcher than a $25M just because they have more than one hole in that rotation.

SI

I forget what it was Greinke rejected from the Brewers, but I'm pretty sure it was north of 5/100. 5/112 maybe? Don't quote me on it.

Yeah, it was something like 5/100, iirc. That's why I figure it's where the bidding starts. With all the cash teams are flush with, I expect about 6/130 for him to be where it ends up.

I'm a bit concerned that this year will be one of those years when free agency prices go way up at a frustrating time right when the Royals wanted to use some. If only they had made a real play for Edwin Jackson last year, they'd have been halfway there. Then again, it was Boras so they may not have gotten anything done.

SI

Yeah, the Brewers are definitely in the market for a starter to slot behind Gallardo. There are like seven internal options behind Gallardo but all are lacking experience or coming off a major injury in the case of Chris Narveson. I imagine Mike Fiers has a spot locked down but there's still a real need for an Edwin Jackson type in the rotation. Shaun Marcum won't be brought back, which is why I brought him up for the Royals.

The Brewers have money to spend too. I imagine they will overpay for somebody. Doug Melvin has done it before with Jeff Suppan (terrible signing) and Randy Wolf (two good years out of three, won't complain about that one).

I think the benchmarks are changing - baseball is flowing in money and popularity and with plenty of teams having money to spend, you can see that yesterday's $15M starting pitcher is not the same as today's. I'd rather have Greinke at 6/130 than Lohse at 4/50 and Marcum at 3/24.

Depends on what your team needs. If you need to fill 2 spots in the rotation, I'd rather have Sanchez at 5/75 and Jackson at 4/55 than Greinke at 6/130 if I were the Royals. However, if I were, say, the Giants or Nats and just needed one more guy to go with a lot of pitching depth, sure Greinke's a no brainer.

The gap from Luke Hochevar and whoever the hell the Royals #5 starter was this year (JSanchez, Smith, etc) to Sanchez and Jackson is greater than only replacing one of those guys with Greinke.

EDIT: And I just hope to god Lohse is not the "answer". Suppan to the Brewers seems like a decent comp for Lohse at this point in his career.

SI

On another note, Buster Olney kind of stoked the flames about a Josh Hamilton to the Brewers rumor a week or two back. This due to Johnny Narron (Hamilton's "accountability partner) being the hitting coach for the Brewers.

I'm not a big fan of the possibility. For the money he'll cost, he's not actually that much of an upgrade over Carlos Gomez or Norichika Aoki. Pitching is where the focus needs to be.

Goddammit. This is why we can't have nice things. You go out and claim Chris "$3M to suck" Volstad from the Cubs. Even if you cut him for $500K in spring training, that's still $500K less to sign, you know, a good pitcher

SI

Fidel Castro never got fired. Just sayin'.

I somehow missed this, but Rick Hahn is now the White Sox GM. Kenny Williams got promoted.

Peavy resigned for 2/$29 with a 3rd year vesting option. I think he left a lot of money on the table but between him and Floyd's option getting picked up, the White Sox had a good day.

SI

Yup, the WhiteSox did well there, even discounting for health. Should be in contention again.

Cutch won a gold glove. That's funny. I'm guessing he grades out below average.

Gordon got his second Gold Glove. He totally deserved it, using almost every metric

SI