Last season was uneventful but that was because they didn’t land who they were trying for.  I can’t remember the last time they didn’t try for anyone.

If they are this strapped for cash, it kind of makes you wonder why they were going after Lee in the first place?  Were they just counting on Honey Badger opting out and letting him walk?

[1] The Yankees may have re-calibrated their budget projections since the new CBA.  So saith Sherman, anyway.

And agreed last offseason was worse because of the Soriano signing.  I also hated the Jeter contract and the melodrama surrounding the negotations.

At this point I favor Kuroda on a one-year deal, two if that’s what it takes, and re-upping with Andruw.

[2] I feel like I don’t even know who this team is anymore. 

If anyone needs me, I’ll be over at Halosheaven.com

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/12/mets-agree-to-two-year-deal-with-francisco.html

The Mets sign Francisco Franko.  The hope is that he’ll be a unifying symbol and whip the team into shape.

Does a closer who never has a save situation to pitch in make a sound?

gaseous emissions in the bullpen?

[1] The have been saying for a while (since the original CC signing) that they only wanted to spend the big bucks on premiere talent. So, maybe that’s why they went after Lee but passed on Wilson/Darvish/Human Centiped. Now keep in mind they still went and signed AJ Burnett, Sorikneelo, and 18 flat-ground LOOGYs to multi-year contracts during that time.

I will do as you say, tedbrogen, and keep those things in mind.

[7] - And Teix.  They had a huge need for him but they paid him like a top talent in the game.  We all knew he wasn’t a top tier 1b man.

[8] Wow. You really are bored.

[10] It might have something to do with being in the midst of an enormous document review.  Please help me Ja Rule!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo-ddYhXAZc

[5] Their agent usually does.

[7] Agreed, but I think anything prior to the 2009 season was still a different team mindset.  I think after blowing those dollars - and even then they were on a budget as Cashman had to “borrow” from the 2009/2010 budget to sign Teix.  Soriano was Levine convincing the Steinbrenners they had to do *something*.  I think they’ve learned their lesson from that.  Cashman just wants to be smarter about spending…and $4M a year is still pocket-change for a LOOGY.

We all knew he wasn’t a top tier 1b man.

Sure.  If Pujols is the top-tier and everyone else is below him, Teix wasn’t a top-tier 1B.

Mike K, will you please agree with something I wrote and then tell me how I’m all wrong in the same breath?  Thanks, and happy holidays, Mel Hall

[14]  You’re the lawyer, you should be used to this.

My wife has started watching “Damages.”  I don’t get it.

[6] I agree those are the sounds you’d hear out of the bullpen.  I disagree with you putting that image in my mind.

[7] We all knew he wasn’t a top tier 1b man.

Seriously? By Fangraphs he was #4 in WAR from 2003-2008, 0.2 behind Todd Helton and about 6 WAR behind Lance Berkman. The other guy ahead of him was Pujols, who is sort of in a league by himself.

Teixiera’s rookie year was 2003, so if you change the criteria from 2004-2008, he was 3rd in WAR, <2 WAR behind Berkman.

2005-2008, he passes Berkman, albeit slighlty, and trails only Pujols.

2006-2008, he drops back down and is behind Berkman and MCab (and Pujols). 2007-2008, he’s right back there trailing no one but Pujols.

Pretty safe to say that he has been a top tier 1B from the moment he stepped onto the field until the day the Yankees signed him.

[13] The smartest team with the smartest GM in the world tried hard to sign him. He must have been top tier.

At that point he was coming off of seasons of 149 and 152 OPS+ with well-reputed gloveitude, and it was reasonable to consider him one of the five best first base guys. Some would have said second best after Pujols

I like the neologism “gloveitude” and intend to steal it from Ed.

[16] well played, Michael Kay.

[17] - So it was a weak time for 1b.  Cabrera had just moved to 1b but we all knew he was no Miguel Cabrera.  That’s not to say he was a scrub, just that he wasn’t worth a top 5 salary in the game.

Oh and Re: Yu…

I’m not sure who to root for at this point.  All the “He is definitely going to Texas” articles before the bidding were annoying as hell but on the other hand Blue Jays fans have been so annoying for years.  Their inferiority complex for both being Blue Jays fans and Canadian are just too much.  I’ve already seen Jays fan saying this puts them in as favorites to win one of the two Wild Card spots.

Annoying voices aside I’d have to say the Jays because, even though they are in the same division, they aren’t in as direct competition with the Yankees right now.  But man I’d love to see the Cubs or O’s swoop in out of nowhere.

Yes I’m bitter.

I mean, did anyone really expect Jay Buhner to pan out when Dan Pasqua hadn’t, and neither had Brian Dayett?

[21] Cabrera had just moved to 1b but we all knew he was no Miguel Cabrera.

Career WAR, PA:

Cabrera: 43.7, 5777
Teixiera: 39.7, 6034

Cabrera’s been better, especially over the last two seasons, but at the very least they are comparable. They both started playing in 2003.

Tex sucks

[24] - That’s because there is about a 10 WAR difference on defense and a lot of that difference was for Cabrera’s time in the OF.  I would make long term signings based on defensive stats.

15 I watched it the first few seasons, it always started well, went nowhere, too many red earrings, too many characters and sub plots, and an unresolved finale that made Twin Peaks ending comprehensible.

[27] I watched the first episode of Twin Peaks and thought to myself - this is strangely normal for a David Lynch piece. Then I kept watching and the weirdness was there. I’m still working my way through it on Netflix instant.

Is Homeland as good as they say?

Is Breaking Bad?

I’m short on dramas right now…

I haven’t checked in for a few hours, have we signed anybody yet?

29 no and YES!!  Justified starts in January which is also very good.

Breaking Bad is the best TV since the Wire.

Especially this past season.

[15] Dr. Mrs. Rilkefan likes it.

I’m a little bit sad that they are doing another season, because I really like where this one ended, but I have faith that it will continue to be high quality.

[26] Cabrera playing the OF and 3B is a double edged sword. He has worse in absolute RSAA, but had less of a position adjustment relative to 1B. 

The delta in fielding WAR between the two is actually more like 8, not 10. Teix gets hit with a ~10 WAR positional adjustment, while Cabrera gets about ~5.6 due to all of his time in the OF and 3B.  So Teix is +8 fielding, ~-4 positional, for a net of ~4. The baserunning is about similar.  I’m not sure why you “would”(n’t?) sign players to long term deals because of defense. That seems to be the first question we talk about for long term deals for position players - how long until this guy is a DH? For Teixiera, I think we’re all hoping (and not unreasonably so) that the answer is ‘not before the end of this deal.’

We’re on this Cabrera/Teixiera tangent, but the original discussion was about Teixiera being a ‘top tier’ 1B.

If you want to look at WAR/$, I doubt you are going to find many players on the top of that list that are on big post-FA-eligible deals; such is the nature of compensation in MLB until about 2009 or so.  You got paid for your past performances.

Teixiera was clearly one of the top 3 1B in the game when they signed him and had demonstrated sustained superior performance for the previous 6 seasons. Teix was also 17th in WAR for all position players from 03-08. Ahead of him on that list include such soon-to-be non-entities as Bonds (who manages to make 9th on this list having played only 50 games in 2005 and not playing at all in 2008), Andruw Jones, Chipper Jones, and Todd Helton. If you shorten to the more immediate past, like 2006-2008, he ends up 18th, and some of the more contemporary high WAR players replace some of those has-beens.

The point? Watching Teixiera become the intestinal parasite version of Jason Giambi really sucks, but pretending like we signed up for a guy we knew had one foot in the bucket is basically false.

[36] Agreed. But we knew it by the end of April 2009.

[19] Steal away, my man. Steal away.

[37] Except that the rest of his 2009 was really good. It’s really just in 2010 and 2011 that his average and OBP have been sub-par.

[39] I didn’t say we were right. I said we knew.

Tex hasn’t slugged over .500 since 2009 either, though I don’t know how much of that is because of lost singles.

[41] I think most of it is because Tex sucks. Or it’s Alex’s fault.

[36] - I’m not looking at $/WAR, I’m doing something much simpler. I’m looking at the top 5 contracts in the game at the time and saying Teix doesn’t belong with those players. Saying he is a top 3 1b doesn’t mean anything. He wasn’t a top teir player. 17th in position players, what was he overall?

Yes he was young but he wasn’t elite and he didn’t play a premium position. We knew all this. We knew it was going to take a top contract to get him and we wanted him anyway because it was the best way to improve the team at the time.

I’m not saying we should have seen 2010 and 2011 but we knew he was an overpay compared to the others at his salary level.

The Yankees should have released Teix and signed Pujols.  They can afford it…

We knew it was going to take a top contract to get him and we wanted him anyway because it was the best way to improve the team at the time.

You say this as if it’s a bad thing.  If you want to win more than once every couple of decades, you’re going to have to do things like this sometimes.

[42] Teix hasn’t been good since Joba commenced to suck. Coincidence ? I say Nay.

[45] - No, I say this in response to [7].

And Texas wins Yu.

I did suggest that the Darvish bid would slightly exceed that of Matsuzaka’s.

I hope Yu sucks.

What’s the over/under on Cashman’s bid ? $30M ? Will the other bids be disclosed ?

YZ… Homeland is very good.

I didn’t think of Steve Kemp as a top tier talent but he sure helped that ‘83 team finish 3rd after the Yankees showered him with FA money.  His playing time should have been given to Oscar Gamble’s afro and Brian Dayett.

I was just thinking, what about trading for Volquez? San Diego is not going to compete, and maybe a package built around David Adams and a minor league arm could get it done? Volquez has either been injured or ineffective since 2008, but his stuff is… dare I say it… electric…

[54] Edinson the Eel.  Edi(n)son.  Probably something for somebody clever in there.

When he has a 5.00 ERA in June, front page of the Post: CON EDINSON

[56] This is fun. What else is there for the current team? If Teixeira had chosen TWN at the last moment and spurned the Yanks: M.T.NAY

In good news, I just got my tickets to the Pinstripe Bowl!

[57]  When Darvish pitches a perfecto against the Yanks in the ALCS:  YU GET WHAT YU PAY FOR

[57] Also Jon, what or where is CUO?

Yu just too good to be true.

Yu win.
Yu the man.
(when he wins the WS MVP) Yu-niverse

[60] Cyclist-Unfriendly Orlando. I think it was named the worst city in the country for non-auto transportation at one point. Wide streets, no bike lanes, and every kind of horrible driver archetype you can think of.

I don’t live there anymore, actually, but I also haven’t yet come up with anything witty for my new home of NYC..which I now understand has its own unique love-hate relationship with those of the two-wheeled persuasion.

[63]  Although it’s now legal in NY for those of the two-wheeled persuasion to get married.

Since Swish and Tex are likely to go a combined 0-40 no matter who pitches for Texas in the playoffs the signing wont impact us at all.

How much empirical support is there for the notion that the most important determinant of success or failure in the playoffs is starting pitching?

I guess my lazy thinking is that while whether a team makes the playoffs is to a significant extent is determined by how much money a team has and how it spends it, the playoffs are a crapshoot, because of the small number of trials.  If that’s true, then CAIRO’s early projections of the Yankees’ 2012 performance gives me some comfort.  If, otoh, our chances of another title are impaired because we will not have upgraded the starting rotation, then I’ll be kind of pissed. 

Bottom line emotionally is that I wish we had won the rights to Yu.

Today is the first day of Hannukah, and a happy one to my Jewish friends.

In case you were wondering, I have no Jewish enemies.

[67] The Jewish side of my family thanks you.  The Catholic side labels you a heretic who should be persecuted.  Family gatherings can be confusing…

[66] Roughly 0.  Give or take.

How much empirical support is there for the notion that the most important determinant of success or failure in the playoffs is starting pitching?

Ask the 2011 Phillies.

I wanted Yu, but am glad he’s at least not going to be in the AL East.

[70] - I’d rather have him in the AL East on the Blue Jays than on a team who the Yankees are in direct competition with for a playoff spot.

[68] NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

Future foreign language Oscar winner and not the brilliant actor, golfer in the role of the monster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwjzeO8gG8I

I wanted Yu, but am glad he’s at least not going to be in the AL East.

I wanted Yu, but I’m glad that the Yankees didn’t spend over 50 Million just to speak to him.

[72] Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and fear…

[74] Agreed.  Especially as it is looking like another $75M to sign him.

[75] I guess so.  But my boredom has a value, too.  I need entertainment and I expect the Yankees to placate that with a dodgy high priced free agent acquisition.  Pronto.

Or maybe a splashy tell-all book could be released?  Bubba Crosby? Gene Monahan?  He must have hundreds of pages worth of behind the scenes material.

[76] What if they make a sensible trade instead?

Yeah, I’m sure Monahan could write two books; kind of a PG version that wouldn’t piss anyone off, and an R version that would piss off a lot of people.

So apparently Brad Radke has been retired for the requisite five seasons and will now appear on the 2012 Hall of Fame ballot. Is anyone else shocked by this? I really thought the Twins were signing him to a minor league deal for next season..

[78] Wow…wonder if he’ll get enough votes to stick on the ballot for a few years?  Definitely not HOF worthy of course…

—I wanted Yu, but am glad he’s at least not going to be in the AL East.—

This was my first reaction, but now I’m second guessing myself.  If he’s on the Jays, he faces the Yankees x more times a year, but that’s also true of the Sox and the Rays, possibly the Yankees biggest obstacles to the playoffs.  Now on Texas, he’ll be chipping away at Angels wins, but Texas becomes a lot stronger.  Jays aren’t going to be in the mix for the playoffs (famous last words), so I THINK it would have been better to bury him on that team.

Now, all of this would have to be qualified with money issues in terms of the teams now being less/more able to spend on other talent.  BUT, in a hypothetical where someone was adding talent to a team for free, i think it’s better on the Jays than Texas.  Thoughts?

While none of this is new or a surprise, I heard Monday morning that Kuroda was close to agreeing to a new contract and it wouldn’t be with the Dodgers. The Seattle Mariners said it wasn’t them, and the Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, among others, answered similarly: “Not us.”

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-brown_hiroki_kuroda_dodgers_121911

[80] Looking at the latest CAIRO and applying quick logic…Darvish would probably - if you assume he is a 5 win pitcher - add about 4 wins to the Jays.  Maybe more w/o looking at their depth charts.  So that takes them from 75-79 wins.  Easy thing to do then, take 1 win away from each divisional foe to get the Jays to their 79 wins.  So Yankees now have 93 wins instead of 94.  Yankees still finish 14 games ahead, on average.  So chances are yes, him going to the Jays would have been better.  Him going to the Cubs or something would have been best.

Of course, if Darvish ends up being a bust, you probably want him on Texas.  They have money, but if he’s a 1-WAR player it likely severely limits their ability to resign some of their young players, and/or replace with new talent.

So the moral of the story is, Scarlett Johannson.  Take it Mel!

[81] Would anyone be surprised if it was the Orioles giving him a 2/36 contract?

[82] “So the moral of the story is, Scarlett Johannson.  Take it Mel!”

Plus, she’s Jewish!

According to ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand, the Yankees bid less than $20 million for Yu Darvish.
The Rangers won exclusive negotiating rights to the Japanese right-hander with a record $51.7 million posting fee. Compared to that effort, the Yankees barely even tried. Darvish, 25, posted a sparkling 1.44 ERA and 276/36 K/BB ratio in 232 innings this past season in Nippon Professional Baseball. Texas now has a 30-day window to work out a contract with him. The Cubs also bid less than $20 million, according to Marchand.

A source told ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand that the Yankees do not have interest in Roy Oswalt.
The Yankees’ offseason of silence continues. Oswalt has informed teams that he is willing to sign a one-year contract to revitalize his career, and is likely to draw offers from several suitors. The 34-year-old posted a 3.69 ERA, 1.34 WHIP and 6.0 K/9 over 23 starts in 2011 for Philly.

[85] Under 20MM? It sounds like Cash and Epstein are talking to each other too much. That’s a pretty drastic misread of the market, and if they knew the market was stronger, why even bother bidding?

[87] - And if he went for $7M because no one bothered to bid thinking it would take $50M+ to land him you’d be saying “Why not just submit a bid? Even if it is too low what’s the harm?”

[88] We know that in general, fans are pretty good and valuing a player and that teams are not all that different in valuation than the fans. If most people are thinking the posting fee was going to bet 30-40 million dollars, it’s reasonably likely that the winning bid would be in that range (turns out that Toronto and Texas are slightly insane). A realistic “just in case” bid would have been in the 25-30 million range.

Sub 20 million is an absolute joke.

[89]  ONLY I’M NOT LAUGHING.

[80] Looking at the latest CAIRO and applying quick logic…Darvish would probably - if you assume he is a 5 win pitcher - add about 4 wins to the Jays.  Maybe more w/o looking at their depth charts.  So that takes them from 75-79 wins.

I have them at around 77 wins now, so he’d have put them around 82.  Still not enough to be a real contender at their mean projection, but it would move them from an estimated range of say 67-87 wins to 72-92. 

I still think you’d rather have to face him once or twice during the regular season and then in the postseason than face him four or five times every year.  If he turns out to be as good as I think he’s going to be, the Yankees are going to regret not having made more of an effort to get him.  That just becomes more glaring when he’s pitching in your division with the unbalanced schedule IMO.

A source told ESPN New York’s Andrew Marchand that the Yankees do not have interest in Roy Oswalt.

Further evidence for my theory that Cashman was talking about Oswalt when he said this.

“I won’t tell you the name, but there was a guy that was on vacation, and there happened to be a Yankee fan that we knew that was on vacation with him in Mexico,” he said. “All he did was badmouth this place, but I can’t tell you how many times he called trying to get a job here when things didn’t go well in free agency for him, and he was desperate to come here, (saying) ‘Oh, I want to be a Yankee.’

“And I wouldn’t even take the call. I was like, you’re so full of it. I even told his agent, ‘Look, tell your client, our people were right there with him drinking those pina coladas when he was badmouthing us. He doesn’t want to play here. He just wants our money.”

[91] Sounds more like Wilson, given the Yankees’ refusal to even allow him to come meet with them in NYC.

But I doubt Wilson was ever desperate.

[91] Sometimes dickish is the right thing to be.

But wouldn’t it have been better to string said client along, until maybe he’s passed on a few other options, then pull the rug out from under him ? The ol’ Lucy Van Pelt gambit, you could call it.

Personally, I hope it was Manny.

[89] - The Yankees said they don’t value him as an ace.  They saw him more as a #2 or #3.  They shouldn’t bid on him as an ace just because that’s what others were doing.  They should bid on him based on what they think of him.  They knew their bid was going to be low but they put one in just in case.  I think it is exactly what they should do.

I need entertainment…[snip]...Pronto.

This will have to do it for ya.

Does that count as an example of “selective endpoints” ?

[96] - Why in the hell would they edit out the monkey’s face?

[97] Privacy issues ? Maybe it’s a HIPAA thing.

Ediy</t>: Eh, maybe they just couldn’t get the monkey to sign the release.

#drubk

pretty good thread for late December.

It’s a nice mixture of real conversation and humorous drivel.