Getting Caught Up: AL East Moves

AL East moves:
C.C. Sabathia signs a 7 year, $161 million contract with the dreaded New York Yankees
Well, all Sabathia's talk of wanting to play on the West Coast and wanting to play in the National League led to him signing with the Yankees, who don't even want their pitchers batting in Interleague games.

There's not much to say, if there's a pitcher worthy of a 7-year contract, it's Sabathia, who has proven himself to be the best pitcher in all of baseball over the last two seasons. Sabathia would have been a shoo-in for the National League Cy Young Award if he'd managed to get the season to be a month longer, dominating the league even when pitching on three days rest. He has weight issues, but has managed to pitch well even at 300 pounds.

Sabathia has never had a major injury -- the longest he's been sidelined was a few weeks with a strained oblique. Sabathia's biggest deficiency is that he's not a strikeout an inning pitcher (at least he wasn't until 2008). He also has some concerns arising from the pitcher abuse points he's piled up in the last two years.

The problem for the Yankees is that they didn't really secure a 7-year contract, they have a contract where Sabathia can opt out after three years, holding the Yankees hostage for more money. So although Sabathia is the kind of pitcher who seems likely to be worth the 7-year deal, the way the deal is structured means there's no real way the Yankees can win on this deal, short of winning the next three World Serii.

A.J. Burnett signs a 5 year, $82.5 million deal with the New York Yankees
For all the buzz the Sabathia deal got, the Burnett deal is way underhyped as being one of the dumbest investments ever made by anyone ever. For whatever deficiencies pets.com and Enron had, at least there was an opportunity to believe those items could someday be worth the money they're
offered.

Burnett, on the other hand, should be facing grand larceny charges in the New York Supreme Court shortly.

It's not that he's not a good pitcher. By all accounts, A.J. Burnett is a good pitcher. But "good" isn't worth $17 million a year on this market, particularly when "good" is followed the by the asterisk that Burnett has, which is that he's had three seasons over 200 innings in 7 full years in the majors. Every time he's done it, he then follows with two injury-plagued years, and then woo! -- contract year -- stays healthy, throws 200 innings, and signs a new deal. The real bad news for the Yankees is that he's coming off his 220+ inning season.

For a team like the Yankees, Burnett doesn't make sense. The reason they needed pitching is because their young pitchers haven't shown the ability to pitch well in the majors on a regular basis and the other pitchers suffered a spate of injuries. So they add an aging (32 as of opening day) starter who has never managed to stay healthy for long. Sure, he makes the rotation look good on paper, but that's where most of his accomplishments will be.

If you want to see what the Yankees have acquired, I think the baseball-reference comparables are spot on here, though they really should mention Carl Pavano just as a reminder to Yankees fans. Juan Guzman -- lasted 9 years in the majors, missed large chunks of several seasons with injuries and was finished at 34. (Sounds like Burnett to me). Ben Sheets -- good pitcher, strikes out batters, gets himself out of games with injuries -- will be signed for way less than 5 years and $82.5 million, probably around an $11-12 million per year pitcher this offseason -- on a one or two year deal. (Sounds like Burnett to me.) Ben McDonald -- pitcher with
tremendous stuff that never really achieved up to his stuff. Lasted 8 seasons in the majors, then retired after an injury. (Sounds like Burnett to me.) #4 is intriguing -- Randy Wolf. He doesn't have the strikeout potency of A.J. Burnett, and you have to be concerned about anyone who put up a 4.74 ERA pitching for the Padres, but he seems like another candidate for "much safer risk" for the Yankees and at a considerably smaller contract. Plus, he knows the subway system and has lost loves to rediscover. Most similar by age for A.J. Burnett right now is Pete Harnisch, who went on to have two more good seasons and then have his career basically finished.

I suppose it's possible that Burnett stays healthy for the duration of his five year deal. But coming off Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, and all the rest that forced the Yankees to trot a rotation of Darrell Rasners and Ian Kennedys to the mound in recent years, I'd have thought the Yankees would have focused their dollars on someone who might actually produce for most of their contract. Instead, they're out a first round pick (which is where their willingness to spend limitless amounts of money SHOULD be helping them build a non-terrible farm system, but has not) and have landed a player who might win 60 games for the Yankees during the span of his contract.

Yankees projected rotation after these moves:
LHP Sabathia
RHP Wang
RHP Burnett
RHP Chamberlain
RHP Hughes

Matt Clement signs a minor league contract with the Toronto Blue Jays

This deal makes sense if Matt Clement isn't really interested in having much competition for the rotation, because injuries to Dustin McGowan and Shaun Marcum that have depleted what could have been an excellent rotation. But at the same time, it's not a major league contract and it's for a team that's very unlikely to contend because of the aforementioned pitching injuries. So my best guess is that Clement wants to get traded in July to a contender.

Clement was ineffective in 2006 before he went down for 1 1/2 seasons, but has the potential to be a strikeout an inning pitcher if he's right. There's no evidence he can put up those kind of numbers in the American League, though, so I wouldn't hold my breath. The Blue Jays should be happy if he can put up about 170 innings and win a dozen games.

Projected Blue Jays' Rotation:
RHP Halladay
RHP McGowan?
LHP Purcey
RHP Litsch
RHP Clement


The Tampa Bay Rays trade RHP Edwin Jackson to the Detroit Tigers for Matt Joyce
Well, this may put an end to rumors of the Rays pursuing major free agents like Pat Burrell, Adam Dunn, or even Jason Giambi. The Rays have acquired their outfielder, and his name is Matt Joyce. While it's not impossible that the Rays could still pony up the money to add a name, the Jackson move seems more like a move made out of necessity than one they simply couldn't pass up because of the value added in return.

The move seems questionable, unless the Rays are really confident Joyce will turn into more than a AAAA platoon piece. That said, they're giving up a player who had absolutely no value before last season and they turned him into a 15-20 home run platoon outfielder who is two years from arbitration. From a financial standpoint, it's an exemplary trade. At the same time, it seems to point out how improbable a return Series run would be for the Rays. They can't afford to take chances on marginally expensive players like Edwin Jackson and are forced to effectively slot more maybe guys into their right field revolving door.

Right now, the roster doesn't have a hitter who's logical to pair with Joyce in a platoon in right field, so perhaps the Rays will give him an opportunity to hit against lefties, but the Tigers were deathly afraid of it apparently (25 AB against left-handers in 242 AB). The best guess to platoon would be Ben Zobrist (.269/.356/.449 against lefties in 78 AB) or maybe Fernando Perez, but neither of those players offers any real power potential, so there'd still be a significant hole in the lineup.

Joyce is a solid enough defensive outfielder that he'd be likely to displace Gabe Gross (who's the presumptive DH if the season began tomorrow -- again, this Rays team will not be returning to the World Series in 2009), but is not going to have the range of a Fernando Perez.

Projected Rays Lineup:
2B Iwamura
LF Crawford
CF Upton
3B Longoria
1B Pena
RF Joyce/Zobrist
C Navarro
DH Gross
SS Bartlett

The Baltimore Orioles sign SS Cesar Izturis
The Orioles cycled through a number of ineffective defense-first shortstops last year but apparently want to stop the cycle by paying one defense-first no-hit shortstop enough to pre-empt other players.

Izturis had a bad offensive season in 2008, but it was one that showed tremendous consistency with his prior ineffectiveness as an offensive player (.628 OPS in 2008, .629 career OPS). Apparently the Orioles see him as a safer bet than the lousy offensive shortstops they trotted out in 2008 -- Alex Cintron (.682 OPS), Brandon Fahey (.601 OPS), and Freddie Bynum (.444 OPS). Personally, I'd have had higher hopes for Cintron than Izturis, but Izturis is a defensive upgrade and Cintron is now 5 seasons removed from the .848 OPS season he mustered for the DBacks in 2003.

Izturis is a weak hitter, which explains his consistently below-par BABIP -- in his 8 major league seasons, only once has he had a BABIP above league average. There's an easy answer why -- he doesn't hit the ball hard. The isolated power number shows it, the high percentage of ground balls doesn't help, and his lack of plate patience seals the deal, because he won't wait out for a pitch he can drive.

I'm sure it appears like an upgrade to the average Orioles fan, who has at least heard of Izturis from stints with more successful teams. But even on paper, it's a pretty lateral move unless the Orioles have a platoon in mind that would free Izturis to only play against left-handed pitchers (against whom he hit well in 2008 (.308/.356/.366) -- though that's an aberration)

The Baltimore Orioles trade C Ramon Hernandez to the Reds for OF Ryan Freel, IF Justin Waring and IF Brandon Turner

The Orioles acquired a versatile player that doesn't seem to fill any of their needs in Ryan Freel and acquired two middling minor league infield prospects who could someday develop into something. In exchange, they got rid of a player they had no interest in keeping and a couple million dollars.

Freel is a relatively useful player. He can hit for a decent average at times and he runs well, but he's always going to be more valuable as a fill-in player than as an everyday player. He also has a great motor and goes all-out, but this leads to him spending more time on the disabled list than on the field, and he hasn't shown good judgment in stealing bases in the last few years. He had shown a good eye at the plate in the past, but that fell apart in 2007 and was underwhelming for the small part of 2008 for which Freel was healthy.

Freel's limitation for the Orioles is that he doesn't fill a need at all. They're supplied at second base and third base. They have Adam Jones in center field. What the team needs more than anything is a first baseman or DH to add some potency to their lineup. Freel isn't worth being in the lineup as a DH, is weaker than Adam Jones in center field, and isn't probably an everyday leadoff guy that would move Roberts down in the order to be more of a run producer. That likely means Freel will spend the majority of his time either as a utility player or else play in left field in lieu of Luke Scott, who would then be the DH.

Turner and Waring are borderline major leaguers at best. I went into more depth in my last post.

Projected Orioles Lineup (Yes, I've rethought this):
2B Roberts
3B Mora
RF Markakis
1B Huff
DH Scott
CF Jones
C Wieters
LF Freel
SS Izturis