The amazing haul of the the Nationals
This came across the MLB.com transaction wire today:
Signed RHP Tim Redding, RHP Joel Hanrahan, INF Josh Wilson and OF Michael Restovich to one-year contracts. Signed RHPs Jermaine Van Buren, T.J. Nall, Colby Lewis, Felix Diaz, Eduardo Valdez, Josh Hall, Winston Abreu, Jim Magrane; LHPs Mike Bacsik, Billy White and Chris Michalak; C Juan Brito and C Danny Ardoin; INF Joe Thurston and INF Alejandro Machado; and OF Darnell McDonald and OF Wayne Lydon to Minor League contracts.
As Dave put it
Yea, Jim Bowden signed almost every interesting minor league free agent on the market. It’s amazing that they all signed with one organization. I’m guessing their standard NRI contract is better than every other club’s standard offer.
While my opinion of Bowden as a GM is pretty low, this is a great batch of signings.
I’ll try and briefly hit the highlights. Read more
Matsuzaka: what the hell?
If you’ve been around here for very long, you know that we’ve been rabid for the team to go after Matsuzaka. We were happy knowing they were ready to do it. I’d sum up the USSM consensus as: his arm’s either going to explode or he’ll do great. I don’t think any of us buy the “his arm is made of adamantium so there’s no way his ligament snaps” – that argument’s been used for many, many pitchers who later went under the knife.
But they’re not going to even bid for him. Why? Let’s hit the big ones.
Too expensive
The posting fee on top of what Matsuzaka is looking to sign for is going to be a ridiculous total package, even for an ace. Say he gets an AJ Burnett contract, plus the team has to pay $30m for the right to give him that contract. Even in a ace-scarce environment, that’s terrifying.
The M’s might look at Schmidt and see a known quantity they can count on who, even on a 4/$45m deal would be much cheaper than Matsuzaka will be.
No accounting hijinks
While the posting money doesn’t count against the salary cap (making this particularly attractive to the Yankees), it looks like the M’s didn’t get a special dispensation from Nintendo to make a bid and still spend $whatever on payroll and player development. Whatever the M’s have said in the past about accounting differently for foreign players acquired as undrafted free agents, it appears that today it’s just another line item, and they decided that they could get more from the money than they would from putting it in a Matsuzaka bid+contract.
Matsuzaka doesn’t want to play with Ichiro
… and he told Boras who told teams, so the M’s said “okay, we won’t bid, then.” I don’t even know how we would start trying to prove or disprove this one.
Waiting it out
Accusations are already flying that teams are trying to tamper with the process, considering posting an immense bid and then telling Boras to stick it. Before the hijinks started, I would have thought that the chance Matsuzaka went on the market as a free agent next year were slim. Now, it’s a real possibility. Maybe, especially given the other factors, they’d rather sit this one out.
He’s repped by Boras
Boras is not a factor. It’s not. Bavasi and Boras are friends, and they’ve come to easy agreements with Boras clients before. The team isn’t afraid or even reluctant to pursue his clients.
The Mariners hate us and want us to be miserable
Between this and Hargrove’s retention, I have to admit that this is pretty persuasive.
(I’ll add more if there’s any suggestions for additional things)
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I really don’t know that going after Matsuzaka, especially through the posting process, is financially responsible. It’s going to be a ridiculous amount of money. But in trying to fill holes through free agency, GMs are trying to make the least bad decisions possible. Matsuzaka + random minor league free agents to fill out the rotation is almost certainly going to be a much better decision than Jason Schmidt+Adam Eaton, for instance, even if it’s a pretty wild bet.
The big question that remains, though is that if it’s financial, why not submit what they consider a reasonable bid, even knowing it’ll lose? Even if you think Matsuzaka is going to demand $100m, you can bid $12m, offer him 5y/$35m, and let him go if by some miracle your bid wins. Unless you think he’s not even worth a shot in the dark, and he clearly is, why not buy that free lottery ticket?
I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t understand why you’d want to look apathetic about the best pitcher on the market this off-season, especially given the team’s poor showing these last few years.
Free agent reviews: Jason Schmidt
Heyyyy, Jason Schmidt. That guy’s supposed to be pretty good, right?
Nope. There’ve been a number of good write-ups on this I’ll point you to, particularly Jeff Sullivan’s writeup on this at but to sum up: he’s not a #1 starter. He hasn’t been in years. The last really good season he had was 2004. Since then, he’s been an average pitcher.
The bait many, many people are biting on – is that his raw stats from last year look just fine. 3.59 ERA, 180 K, 80 walks, only 21 home runs allowed? That’s pretty good. Part of the problem is that, like Jarrod Washburn, he got really lucky with runners on, which made his ERA look good. Some supporters of him pick up on this as some kind of skill but, as we discovered with Jarrod Washburn, it’s not.
Plus, as Jeff mentions, he’s not a spring chicken. You’d be giving a power pitcher clearly on the decline a huge long-term deal that will probably pay out $10m+ for his age 38 and 39 seasons.
Or, they’re trying to make arguments that he’s got some magic glow, that somehow Schmidt is special, that his stuff will translate well, or… or whatever. The argument that he’s somehow the exception is lazy. We can go to every pitcher and by hand-picking our statistics or our scouting reports find a way to support the contention that that pitcher is special, and will be awesome forever. And maybe one of them pans out. And maybe the Mariners have scouted this all out and have reason to believe he’ll succeed in Safeco, so they give him his money, Schmidt comes to Seattle and he’s an ace for five years and we look dumb (hey, look at Raul Ibanez). The point isn’t that that can’t happen – but it’s whether it’s a good gamble or even, as I put this last year, he’s the least bad free agent choice available. For a reasonable amount of money, I’d take the chance, but I’m with Dave (and Jeff) – I wouldn’t bet more than $10m a year, and on a fairly short contract. That won’t land him.
Schmidt’s going to demand ace money and he’s not going to be worth it. Do we really want another Jarrod Washburn on the roster, being paid far more than his contributions warrant? We should hope that the Mets or some other team with even more money than sense makes Schmidt a ridiculous 5/$50m offer and the M’s let him go.
Free agent reviews: Alfonso Soriano
Rumor on the street is that Alfonso is looking for $17m/year. And in M’s fandom, some fans want the M’s to sign Soriano and Schmidt which is clearly insanity.
Soriano’s 30. He’s made five straight All Star teams. His conversion to left field started badly but I’d bet the good end-of-year defensive stats are going to show him at average or not much below average (he’s a weird case for the bad, traditional stats: his fielding percentage is bad, his zone rating good). BP’s got him at 9 runs above average, which… well, RAA isn’t a great fielding stat. I’d be shocked if that was borne out by UZR/etc.
Reasons to sign him:
– Add offense, hopefully
– Add a little bit of speed
Reasons not to sign him:
– What the hell happened to him this year?
– He’s right-handed and they’re not moving the fences
– They already have a big roster issue with too many LF/DH/1B guys
– Soriano doesn’t look like a guy you really, really want to be paying $17m when he’s 35
– The Phillies supposedly want him, and every horrible move Gillick makes us feel good about his departure
The first question is the really unsettling one. David Pinto at Baseball Musings touched on this last week, so I’ll quote him
If I’m a GM interested in signing Alfonso, I’ll want to know what changed. Why did he draw so many more walks than in 2006 than in previous seasons? Did the Washington coaches get him to change his approach? Was it that with a poor offense behind him, he got less to hit? If it was coaching, it this something that he’s absorbed, or does he constantly need to be reminded?
At .350, with his power, he’s a very productive player. At a .330 OBA, he’s more of an out machine and certainly not a good leadoff hitter. My guess is that the teams convinced 2006 is real are the teams that wind up bidding for Alfonso. The other will find the money offered too rich.
I entirely agree with Pinto on this. My thought is it’s likely a combination of factors: RFK suited him, for one, it was a contract year and (as we learn in “Baseball Between the Numbers”) the contract year effect is real. I don’t think this is a new level of performance for Soriano, though as a Mariners-obsessed writer I haven’t spent the kind of time researching this that a team thinking about plunking down $17m would.
Let someone else overpay. The M’s have more important needs and even if you want to upgrade the offense somehow, there should be better ways to spend that money.
Soriano’s deal, though, will still be better than whatever Carlos Lee gets.
USSM re-floated, again
Thanks to everyone who helped out, now or before, by chipping in any amount of money. Grand total for the new box was just under $2,200. And if I may, this thing is faaaaaaaaaaaaast. It’s all yours, dear readers. I’m really happy – this was a long, stressful week backstage, as we fought with the box and getting a new server in while I had to turn around the copy edits for my book (received last week, due back tomorrow).
I find it amusing that when I checked in I found that once the site had gone back up, people went back to commenting on Dave’s last post without missing a beat or even noting we’d been down for a while.
If any of our fine readers are (or know) a decent accountant we could chat with, could you drop us a line? I’m not sure how we’re going to account for this thing.
Further bulletins as events warrant.