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Front office split on Halladay extension

Posted by Chris H. at 6:00 pm 16 Responses »
Dec 022009

The main issue at hand, at least from a financial perspective, with regards to a Roy Halladay trade is whether or not the 32-year old right-hander would require an extension upon being moved. Such a contingency would be extremely costly for a team, especially after parting with high-end prospects from one’s farm system. After witnessing the way in which the Johan Santana trade unfolded, most believe that Halladay would demand a new and expensive contract, although there have been reports stating that he is eager to test free agency. Based on a article today, however, in the NY Post, it seems as though extending Halladay is also a point of contention within the Yankees front office.

According to Joel Sherman, “one faction of the Yankees front office has advocated trying to trade for Halladay, but not extend his pact. That way they would get Halladay on a very good contract for 2010 ($16 million) and then offer him arbitration after the season to secure two draft picks as a way to recoup some of the prospects given up in the trade.” The merits of this idea are certainly worthy of consideration, as the Yankees would maintain some semblance of financial flexibility after the trade, and could theoretically replenish their organization’s development system by refusing to offer an extension and collecting compensatory draft picks once Halladay rejects an arbitration offer and signs elsewhere via free agency. The practicality of this particular plan is questionable, however, in that history tells us that Halladay would most likely demand a market value extension prior to being traded (especially from the Yankees).

Of course, in the Yankees “front office,” there are those who probably think such an extension is a good idea after giving up a tremendous group of prospects and young players — it’s the other “faction” — though, in my opinion, if I were forced to choose, I might be more inclined to agree with the group Sherman outlines rather than the latter.

What about you? Where do you stand on the extension issue?

Photo by Peter Thompson/National Post

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Yanks considering Jermaine Dye

Posted by Chris H. at 4:00 pm 2 Responses »
Dec 022009

About a week ago, it was reported that the Yankees were interested in former White Sox, Jermaine Dye (who wasn’t offered arbitration), although that report was subsequently shot down. Today, though, Joe Cowley, of the Chicago Sun-Times, rekindles that rumor, noting that the club has asked for Dye’s medical records (for review). “The New York Yankees denied a report that they had interest in Dye,” notes Cowley, “but that was seemingly the Bronx Bombers trying to work under the radar, especially because a source familiar with the talks said the Yankees already had asked for medical reports about Dye.” In the same text, Cowley states that the Texas Rangers were considered the principal suitors for Dye, however, they wanted him to be their designated hitter and he found that to be “unappealing.”

Now, I’ll be blunt in my analysis of Dye, a right-handed right fielder who hit .250/.340/.453 with 27 HR in 2009 — he’s awful. Since 2007, due to his wildly inconsistent bat — .417 wOBA in ’06, .343 in ’07, .376 in ’08, .344 in ‘09 — and his consistently miserable defense — UZR/150 of -24.5 this season, the worst in the American League — Dye has only been worth 0.7 WAR. Yes, you heard me correctly — 0.7 WAR over a three-year period. For comparison purposes, Sergio Mitre, with a 5.30 FIP, was worth 0.8 WAR this season. Even if you limit Dye’s defensive miscues by slotting him in as the team’s DH — a role he finds “unappealing” — his bat, which is also one of the worst in baseball in the context of high-leverage situations, won’t make up for the lack of roster flexibility he provides. Basically, the numbers indicate that he’s one of the least productive free agent options available to the Yankees, regardless of the role.

Therefore, I’m hesitant to accept Cowley’s report. Either the source he cites is inaccurate, someone is spreading disinformation — Dye’s representation, perhaps — or the Yankees are simply going through the offseason motions, collecting dozens of medical reports as they weigh a number of free agent options. Either way, I’m not buying it.

UPDATE – Jon Heyman also says that the Yankees are interested in Dye, but that their “interest is dependent on other options falling through.” In the end, I think Cashman is smart enough to pass on him, no matter what the situation.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

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Discussion: Why Not Manny?

Posted by Moshe Mandel at 2:00 pm 11 Responses »
Dec 022009

This is a discussion that I had with a number of people on Twitter last night and garnered some strong reactions. With the Dodgers in a bit of turmoil and having had some success with Manny suspended, it is conceivable that a team could steal Manny Ramirez at a low cost in terms of prospects. I suggested that there are worse options out there for the Yankees than Manny Ramirez. Let’s run through the pros and cons.

Pro: Manny spent most of his career in the AL and is one of the greatest hitters of all time. He is not afraid of the big moment.

Con: Manny’s OPS decreased each month, and he looked slow on fastballs late in the year.

Pro: he still matched his career OPS+ of 155 and had a .991 OPS outside of Dodger Stadium. He had an amazing .418 OBP, showing that he still has a stellar eye.

Con: He cannot field.

Pro: At least he can play out there a bit, so he can be a good DH/LF candidate.

Con: He’s Manny. That means major distractions and effort issues.

Pro: The Yankees are used to dealing with distractions and have a very strong clubhouse that should be able to handle Manny.

Con: He costs 20 million dollars.

Pro: It is a one year deal. Jason Bay and Matt Holliday have never had a 155 OPS+ in their careers, and they want close to 20 million for 5+ years.

Con: He was a Red Sox.

Pro: It will drive their fans crazy.

Is Manny my first option? No. But would he make more sense than some of the big names out there? I think so. What do you think about Manny?

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Mark McGwire Deserves A Vote For The Hall of Fame

Posted by EJ Fagan at 11:54 am 26 Responses »
Dec 022009

A lot of very unqualified writers are going to be voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame over the next few months. Unlike the seasonal awards voting process, many of the BBWAA members who vote for the Hall are no longer actively covering the game, and because of this have not been exposed to the baseball information revolution. Generally, Hall of Fame debates follow the quantitative vs. emotional theme (I refuse to call it quantitative vs. qualitative, because they gives too much credit to the people voting against Bert Blyleven and co.), where really scary and memorable players like Jim Rice and Goose Gossage get votes, but objectively better players get left behind.

The Mark McGwire debate is very different. Nearly every writer will probably acknowledge that Mark McGwire was one of the best hitters of his day. Sure, they may point out that he played poor defense, call him “one-dimensional”, or mention his short career. But when push comes to shove, they’ll admit that McGwire’s .263/.394/.588 batting line and 162 career OPS+ (12th all time!) would, all else being equal, qualify him for the Hall of Fame.

Of course, all else is not equal. McGwire has implicitly admitted to using steroids, which was and is considered cheating. This has disqualified McGwire in many minds. I say: so what?

Baseball has always been a cheaters game. One of my favorite baseball books is The Cheaters Guide To Baseball. Some of our favorite Hall of Fame players made their careers through cheating. Former Yankees Whitey Ford and 300 game-winner Gaylord Perry have openly admitted to both scuffing balls and applying all sorts of foreign substances to them. Perry was frequently searched in the middle of nationally broadcast games, and would even taunt umpires into trying to find where he hid his stash of pine tar or Vaseline. Whitey Ford used to bring sandpaper with him on the mound.

And who can forget the great Albert Belle corked bat caper? This has got to be my favorite story in baseball:

The Indians, knowing the bat was indeed corked, dispatched relief pitcher Jason Grimsley to retrieve the bat. Grimsley took a bat belonging to Indians player Paul Sorrento and accessed the area above the false ceiling in the clubhouse and crawled across with a flashlight in his mouth until he reached the umpires’ room. He switched Belle’s bat with Sorrento’s and returned to the clubhouse.[2] During the sixth inning, the umpires’ custodian noticed clumps of ceiling tile on the floor of the umpire’s room, plus twisted metal brackets in the ceiling. After the game, Phillips noticed the bats were different when he saw that the replacement bat was not as shiny and also was stamped with Sorrento’s signature. The Chicago police were called and the White Sox threatened charges against the burglar. An investigation that Saturday was carried out by a former FBI agent flown in by MLB.[3] The equipment room was dusted for fingerprints and the path the burglar took was discovered.

Grimsley had to replace the corked bat with Sorrento’s instead of a clean Albert Belle bat because… all of Albert Belle’s bats were corked. And great Yankee heroes aren’t exempt from corked bats either – Graig Nettles once broke his bat in a game, only to find a bunch of Superballs fall on to the field.

It happens! Cheating is part of the game. Sure, its something that we should police, but there is no precedent in baseball history to punish non-gambling cheating all that much. John McGraw and Ty Cobb were infamously dirty, cheating players, but they are known as some of the game’s best early pioneers. But Mark McGwire (and soon, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmeiro, and Sammy Sosa) is held to a different standard. Their method of cheating evokes an emotion in baseball fans that doctoring balls and corked bats do not. Gaylord Perry probably made a Hall of Fame career out of it, but we ignore that.

Like Perry, McGwire would probably have been a pretty damn good player without cheating. He hit 49 home runs in his rookie year in 1987 (an MLB record for a rookie, pre-steroids) and still holds the University of Southern California home run record. The man could hit home runs long before juicing up. Just like Gaylord Perry could probably throw pretty well before doctoring the ball. Baseball, when push comes to shove, is a game of talent and skill; two things that you can’t fake.

I also get a sense from writers that they feel is it their duty to correct history. McGwire and Bonds held and broke records that are held deep in the hearts of baseball fans. When Roger Maris broke Ruth’s record, he was not only threatened, but also was branded with an asterisk to let us all know that he wasn’t really the home run king.

There may be legitimate beef with both record breakers. Sure, Maris did it in more games. But Babe Ruth didn’t have to play against players locked in the Negro leagues, just as Roger Maris didn’t have to hit against pitchers who were pumped up on steroids, nor McGwire or Bonds have to hit against a high mound. My point is that history corrects itself. Writers don’t need to do it with silly little symbolic stands based on emotion.

The question for induction for the Hall of Fame should be pretty simple. How good of a baseball player was Mark McGwire? Was he good enough to qualify as a Hall of Famer. Let the off-field stuff be judged by history, tell-all books, and time. Stop trying to shape history. History shapes itself.

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WFAN Breakfast with Brian Cashman

Posted by Steve S. at 6:11 am 4 Responses »
Dec 022009

Yesterday morning, I attended the ‘WFAN Breakfast with a Champion’ featuring Brian Cashman at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square. Joe Pawlikowski of River Ave Blues joined me, and I’m sure some of our readers have already seen his recap over there. If not, here’s a link. He goes into depth on some items I’m going to only touch on briefly, so to get a more complete idea of what Brian said about his plans for this off season, you’ll probably want to read both recaps.

It’s somewhat an exclusive event. They only sell a few hundred tickets to the general public and the Yankees don’t allow WFAN to record the event on video or audio, so that the interviewee can feel more comfortable being as open and honest as he can with long form answers. This is made for Brian, who has a reputation for being a bit verbose in person, and he didn’t disappoint one bit.

As Joe P reported, he opened up with the statement that “MLB needs a strong Yankee franchise”. While the Yanks are certainly top dog in Baseball today, and have been for quite some time, it wasn’t always the case.  Cashman recounted a story going back to 1996 when he was an assistant GM and the Yanks couldn’t even find anyone to be his boss. Back then, George was still in his heyday and had just fired Buck Showalter (who he immediately tried to rehire) coming off an amazing late season push to land the first-ever American League Wild Card berth.  According to Brian, the GM job was offered to about half a dozen respected baseball men (who he named) and all of them turned it down. This embarrassed George, and he even hired Torre initially to be the GM, deciding a few days later to offer him the Manager’s job when Bob Watson accepted the GM position.

Watson stepped down in Febuary of 1998, when Brian took over the helm. He said that his goal then was the same as it is now, to “run the Yanks like the Twins with our budget”. He took full ownership of the 1998-2002 teams, but said that after the disappointing 2002 campaign George told him “We’ve done it your way for a long time, now were going to do it mine”. This was the time when he said decisions were being made out of Tampa rather than New York, and the payroll exploded to unheard of before levels (2002-$125 mil/2005-$208 mil).  The results of course, are well known to Yankee fans. The cheaper teams won more, and Brian made it clear that’s the place he’s trying to get back to, saying he plans on lowering payroll this season as a step in that direction. He also made it clear he doesn’t like the A-Rod contract. That’s no surprise to anyone who followed that off season, but it raised an eyebrow to hear him be so direct about it, saying the length of the deal was something he would not have considered. It’s just another example of something Hank Steinbrenner said after the A-Rod contract, that “Brian’s more careful with our money than we are”. The difference of course, is that after the transition from George to his sons  there was some early confusion about roles that resulted in the A-Rod deal (and the botched Santana negotiations). That’s been sorted out, and Brian is back in charge of Baseball ops.

He told an interesting story on Jeter’s defensive improvements. The defensive metrics had been saying for years that Derek was the worst Shortstop in Baseball in terms of range, and Brian had directed his infield coaches to work with him on it. The coaches kept reporting back to him that they addressed it with Derek, and he was taking steps to improve. But it wasn’t showing up in his play, the numbers kept coming back the same, if not worse. So Brian decided to sit down and have dinner with Derek, and he asked him what he was going on. To Brian’s surprise, Derek said this was the first time anyone had mentioned it to him. He added that ‘you’re my boss’ and if he wanted him to do something to improve, he would. Apparently, the infield coaches were too intimidated to confront Derek on such a touchy subject. And that dovetails into what Joe P. discussed in his piece about ‘changing the clubhouse culture’ with the additions of Swisher, Burnett, CC and the various pie throwing antics that ensued. Brian felt it was needed to change the old guard culture that surrounded the team, and the Jeter defense incident only cemented the idea in his mind.

During the Q&A period, I asked Brian a question. I said “How does draft pick compensation affect your decision making on free agent relievers? I ask because last year there was the Juan Cruz situation where a sign and trade had to be worked out since no one wanted to give up picks for him.” He went on a bit explaining how ‘if there was a need on the team for a closer’ or ‘a specific need’ on the team, he would consider it. But ended by saying “For a setup man? No.” He earlier had praised Phil Hughes and Dave Robertson during the Joba debate, saying that Hughes “could have closed for all but 5 MLB teams last year” and Dave Robertson could have closed for a lesser number. Clearly, he prefers internal options when filling holes in the bullpen. So both I and Chris H were both at odds with him when we suggested signing Mike Gonzalez and/or Rafael Soriano. According to Brian, it’s simply not happening.

Pic courtesy of River Ave

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