MLB Offseason 2013-2014

Yeah, the funniest part of this to me is that the Yankees made a ton of dumpster-diving moves over the past two years to get under 189: Trading for Vernon Wells and structuring his contract so they paid most of the money last year; Chris Stewart: Starting Catcher; trotting out the corpses of Travis Hafner and Lyle Overbay; giving Phil Hughes and Freddy Garcia about 300 innings; so on and so forth. And this was the only year they could hit the luxury tax reset button, so they will now be paying the 50 percent penalty until the end of the current CBA after the 2016 season.

I mean, it's clear that until now they were on a budget; they were clearly shooting for $189, and the 2011 - 2012 offseasons look awful if you don't believe they were aiming for a budget number. The thing is they missed the playoffs in 2013 and then, shocking no one except Hal Steinbrenner, missing the playoffs meant they lost $50 million in revenue. They also own a stake in YES, which is why their TV deals are always under market value so they can hide revenue from MLB, and the YES ratings were way down, which meant they lost out on sponsorship proceeds. It's pretty patently clear that someone eventually either ran the revenue numbers or beat it into Hal that fielding a dogshit team for the sake of saving a few million dollars per year just didn't make sense.

The Yankees needed to make this move, and good for them, because Sabathia is old, Kuroda is ancient, and the rest of the rotation is dogshit, but it's definitely risky to give $155 million to a guy whose entire career has been throwing to AAAA batters -- he could be a Darvish-level phenom, or he might flame out spectacularly. In any event, it's the fifth-largest contract ever given to a pitcher, and it's for a guy who's never thrown a major league pitch. Bananas. I'm glad the Cubs didn't sign him for that money.

That's a lineup that hit 117 home runs last season, which would put them 27th in the league (and that's being generous by including both Johnson and Nunez; if we're even more generous and give Jeter 11 HR by averaging 2011 and 2012 since he lost almost all of last year, they go all the way up to ... 26th). The infield defense is going to be so, so bad, and they're really going to miss Cano's bat in the lineup. Ellsbury is Carl Crawford 2.0 (no power, plays decent defense, runs really fast, doesn't give you anything else), and offense out of 2B and 3B is going to be a black hole of shit (and Jeter's old and hurt, so God only knows what they'll get out of him). There's still a logjam at DH, too. The bullpen's a mess and the 4 / 5 spots in the rotation are tremendous question marks.

All things considered, I'd probably say that's the third- or fourth-best lineup in the AL East, behind Boston and Toronto and arguably Baltimore, and somewhat better than Tampa Bay.

 

Man, save "A-Roid" for talk radio or Rivals.com or some shit. "A-Roid," "Barroid," other cutesy-ass names like that just aren't funny. Anyway, the Yankees clearly knew as far back as December that Rodriguez was going to be getting a lengthy suspension (I said as much when they signed Ellsbury).

Let's go through the lineup, then:

Ellsbury -- Runs really fast, no power. Potential injury risk and really needs to learn how to draw walks.
Jeter -- Old, hurt, has exactly one season with an OPS north of .800 since 2008. Defensive liability and power is effectively gone.
Beltran -- Old, hurt, has arthritic and degenerating knees. Good hitter when he's on, but will be 37 and is reaching a point where he can't play every day.
Teixeira -- Aging, hurt (major wrist surgery for a guy who relies on power as his primary hit tool is a huge red flag). Might be decent, might be terrible.
McCann -- I have no complaints about him. Solid hitter who should be in the 3 spot.
Soriano -- Old, power is rapidly diminishing and still swings at pitches that are in New Jersey.
Johnson / Nunez -- Shitty and shitty.
Roberts -- Old, hurt, hasn't played a full season since 2009, concussion history, was objectively one of the worst hitters in all of baseball in 2012.
Gardner -- Decent but not great, very little power, is basically league-average in almost every respect.

This is not a murderer's row. There is no way anyone can say with a straight face that this lineup is better without Cano than with him.

Cervelli is a .271 / .343 / .710 hitter. He's below league-average. He's a guy who occasionally comes off the bench, nothing more.

The Cubs' offer went to $150 million, but it's not known if they included the opt-out. The Dodgers' offer was north of $160, possibly as high as $170 million, but they refused to include an opt-out clause.

As I said, it's a good move for the Yankees. But if they were going to blow past $189 anyway, they shouldn't have spent the last two years putting together a dumpster fire of an infield and outfield.

 

Same as it's been since 2012: Keep developing young talent, which takes time. They pretty clearly were betting the farm on getting Tanaka, so I'm sure they need to do a little re-evaluation at this point, but next year's free agent class is pretty deep for pitching, so I don't think it's a huge concern -- and on the off chance Tanaka shits the bed, having him signed to a mammoth deal would seriously set the Cubs back. Baez, Soler and Bryant should be coming up to the majors either this September or in spring 2015, Rizzo should rebound, and they're in wait-and-see mode on Mike Olt and his seeing-eye dog. Organizational turnaround takes time, particularly when you're cleaning up after Jim Hendry, and anyone who expected the Cubs to be contending for the NL Central before 2015 was either high as a kite or functionally stupid.

 

Sizemore's deal could be worth up to $6 million in incentives.

What on Earth.

 

Yeah, it's just ... strange to give a guaranteed contract to a guy who's been out of baseball for two years.

 

Sizemore was easily a Top 25 player from 2005 - 2008.

Sizemore will be a fourth outfielder; there's no way the Sox are insane enough to count on him as an everyday player. He'll probably be used to spell Jackie Bradley, Jr., since he's still really raw (and has a very troubling strikeout problem) or Victorino. At $750K, it's not exactly an expensive flier to take, but when a guy hasn't played since 2011, you give him a non-roster invitation to spring training, not guaranteed money.

 

I imagine this will be of some interest: Someone on Reddit made a site where you can query MLBAM's PITCHf/x data and get detailed results, including video clips: http://baseballsavant.com/pitchfx_search.php