Jose Bautista spent the offseason learning how to bunt better than Teixeira.

[0] Yeah this makes sense.  His defense is still sound, and if you squint a bit you can see if healthy he may hit a bit better than last year.  You’re paying for basically a .2 win player, right?  There are certainly questions if Bill Hall can do that.  And though I’m confident, there are also questions if Laird can do that.  So…

Hey just looking to pick up fractions of wins on the margins right now.  This allows Laird to play more in AAA (hopefully improve pitch recognition/patience) and keep developing, and allows them to have 2 major-league backups in ST (Chavez and Hall).  Good move.

I’m not crazy about this, but the financial terms are reasonable so I can’t complain too much.

Offensively he was poor last year, and he was also fragile, but this gives them dept at 3b.  Laird is better served getting regular playing playing time.  I know we all wanted Betimit but right now is there a better option out there so we aren’t one injury away from having Austin or Bichette backing up A-Rod?

I’m not complaining, but what do you guys think was the rationale for signing Aardsma?  He got a major-league deal and a club option for 2013.

I’m not complaining

Why not?

Yankees grab Aardsma, because why wouldn’t you want an extreme fly ball right hander coming off of elbow issues in DNYS?

[3] Wasn’t he OKish for the early season and then not very good when he came back from his obligatory injury?

“I’m not complaining”

Wrong blog.

SG, since there’s a new thread I’ll post this here, thanks for the analysis of Mr. Burns’ softball team.

Aardsma’s Tommy John surgery was in July.  That means he’s about a month behind Joba.

Can we sponser pages on behalf of RLYW?

The Phil Hugehs player card page on Brooks Baseball is currently unsponsored. And we are the home of the Nakes Phil Hughes Picture…

Unfortunately for Schteeve, Robertson is already sponsored.

I’m not complaining, but what do you guys think was the rationale for signing Aardsma?  He got a major-league deal and a club option for 2013.

It seems stupid to me.  I’d rather they see what Brad Meyers has and having Aardsma on a major league deal makes it much less likely that he can stick on the 25 man roster all year.

Seriously, Aardsma is probably worse than any other right-handed reliever in the current bullpen.  Why would you guarantee him anything?

Nice to see them using that money they recouped by trading Burnett in ways that help the team in no discernible manner.

Aardsma is a proven closer.  You know, one of those guys that gets to have coffee.

Just like J.J. Putz.

[11] Well, the can stick Aardsmaa on the 60 day DL to start the season, so he won’t take up a 40 man spot until July. But, yeah it doesn’t really make sense.

I’m sticking by my “Randy Levine is taking over GM duties while Cashman deals with his mess” theory.

The Yankees have enough money to track down the Fountain of Youth.

Nice to see them using that money they recouped by trading Burnett in ways that help the team in no discernible manner.

So they use Jedi mind tricks to move A.J. Burnett to save some money and we’re complaining that they haven’t immediately spent all the savings?

Seems like in a world where the available options are all mediocre-to-bad, the Yankees are going with the cheapest ones for now, while keeping some money in the bank for a potentially better and more-needed midseason acquisition.

[16] Joba is a month ahead of Aardsma and is a far better option if they desperately need BP help. And it’s not as if the Yankees are poor in potential BP help at AAA and AA. Aardsma is simply a poor allocation of resources, especially given his batted ball profile and poor control.

“especially given his batted ball profile and poor control”

He had those removed during surgery.

[17] - Looking at the numbers he reminded me of David Robertson.  Full disclosure I took a quick look and mainly noticed his K and BB.

[11] I could have sworn I just read some stuff in the Post about Cashman saying bullpen expenditures were stupid.

Aardsma goes on the 60 day DL, and I’m not sure what the option buy out is, but this is kind of a head scratcher.

UNLESS.. Aardsma is the new Joba, and Joba is the 5th starter in 2013.

[19] Robertson has a similar walk rate but strikes out signifigantly more batters. Also, He gets more groundballs and has posted more sustainable BABIP numbers. Keep in mind that Aardsma’s only decent/good years took place in Safeco.

Aardsma 2009: 10.5% BB 27.1% K 25.4% GB .254 BABIP
Aardsma 2010: 10.9% BB 24.3% K 34.1% GB .231 BABIP

Robertson 2009: 12% BB 33% K 35.6% GB .320 BABIP
Robertson 2010: 11.3% BB 25.9% K 38% GB .335 BABIP
Robertson 2011: 11% BB 36.8% K 47.1% GB .289 BABIP

They aren’t all that different, Aardsma has 3 pitches - Fourseamer, Slider and Splitter He gets almost all of his GBs off of the splitter and the other two pitches are flyball heavy.

Robertson fourseamer gets slightly more GB than FB and his curve is a strong GB pitch.

[20] Pretty sure Banuelos is the 5th starter in 2013.

(22) or 4th.

So they use Jedi mind tricks to move A.J. Burnett to save some money and we’re complaining that they haven’t immediately spent all the savings?

No, I’m actually complaining that they are spending the savings poorly.

[23]True there’s a possibility the Yankees give Joba another chance as a start in 2013. A lot depends on how they hand his rehab this spring and how he performs in said rehab. They could rehab him as a starter to serve as a backup plan for midseason ineffectiveness/injury and slot him in is as a releiver is a spot doesn’t open up. But it seems more likely that he will remain a reliever with the Yankees.

:(

I think the logic for signing Aardsma is pretty simple and nearly defensible (if not entirely so): When you have a team this good, it is inexcusable to not make the playoffs, and so you want to make sure that you have pitching depth in the rotation and bullpen, so that no matter how bad your injury luck is, you don’t miss the playoffs because you are out of major league arms in September. If you need a reminder for why it is horribly ill-advised to lack depth in September, just look at the 2011 Red Sox.

Fangraphs recently did a study of what tends to be the reason that GMs get fired. What they determined was that disproportionately, GMs get the boot immediately after a season that their bullpen shits the bed. I guess the logic is that a GM should be able to put together a solid bullpen for not too much money if he has any friggin idea what he is doing, so if he doesn’t build a deep pen and his team misses the playoffs, the ownership and the fanbase concludes that he is a total farnsing moron and needs to be fired.

Hence, GMs overspend on relievers relative to their WAR because if they mess up the ‘pen, everyone blames them. And that might be what Cash (Levine) is doing with these last few moves. Maybe a little bit of an overspend, but at least they didn’t sign Gonzalez to a 3 year, 12 million dollar deal (yet).

Today’s signings provided that final information allowing me to break the code on the Yankees player evaluation strategy this winter:

They like pitchers with names ending in “a” and position players with names ending in “ez”.

If they have to, they’ll settle for pitchers with names ending in “o” or position players with names ending in “es”, but only if they’re minor leaguers.

Jesus Christ. Two “wild cards,” Raul Ibañez, and now David Aardsma? I think my interest is waning.

I saw a Thursday day game at Camden Yards in 2010 between Seattle and Baltimore. Probably 5,000 paying customers. I got bored in the middle innings and went over to stand behind the Mariners bullpen and watch pitchers warm up. Brandon League was pretty nice. He was tossing balls (mostly to women). He later gave up a go-ahead grand slam to Luke Scott.

Aardsma, who clearly thought he should have been called into the game in place of League, went absolutely nuts. He started punching his glove manically and biting it like a rabid dog. He then commanded the bullpen coach and some ball boy dude to stop tossing balls to bystanders. When the game was over (Scott threw Ichiro out at the plate, cutting off the tying run…think it was the final out), he started cursing loudly and embarrassingly, and grabbed the bucket of balls and ran it into the stadium (I guess to prevent his teammates from interacting with fans and signing autographs).

It was still early in the year (I just checked, and the loss dropped Seattle to 13-21), and I realize that being a pro is really important. But David Aardsma is a roided out loser, especially if he thought his team was going to do something other than lose 101 games that year.

Joba is a month ahead of Aardsma and is a far better option if they desperately need BP help

This ignores the fact that Joba demonstrably sucks donkey balls, while Aardsma is both unproven and hard to type.

[29] That is true. Joba is looking a lot less puffy this year, closer in appearance to 2007 and 2008 Joba in appearance. Maybe with the improved appearance we’ll see improved performance too.

[29]  I went to that demonstration in Thailand.  [shudder]

Steamed or fried

I like the Aardsma signing, because relief pitching seems to be random.  A pitcher is good one year and bad the next.  The bigger the pool of potential relief pitchers, the easier it is to find the group who are good this year.

(That comment applies only to human relief pitchers.  Mariano Rivera, being a god, doesn’t have that limitation.)

Yankees sign Magnum PI.

The Red Sox get the fake Chris Carpenter and we counter with the fake Burt Reynolds. Game, set, match.

David Robertson might not be a god, but he is not human. “Like Hercules or something.”

[36]  The term you’re looking for is demigod.

I was also appropriately quoting “The Sandlot.”

UJD- you got smacked there. Sandlot quotes are very common. Even I got it.

Oh sorry, my bad.  Didn’t mean to be douchey, but sometimes there’s no helping it.

Slow news day today. I amused myself by going back to the September archived threads over at SOSH.

Highly recommend.

Sandlot?  Didn’t even know that existed.  Probably never made it to France.

I assume everything anyone says here is a quote.  I tried to write a short story recently that way, but even leaning on google it’s too hard for me.

Aardsma always seemed to me like a poor man’s Kyle Farnsworth. Which is basically horrendous.

[43] Yeah, highly doubtful Aardsma ends up being a sexy signing.

Aardsma isn’t supposed to help this year.  My understanding is they are paying him essentially the minimum to rehab, and if he’s ready to help in September or the playoffs that’s a bonus.  They have a club option - also apparently cheap - for 2013.  So the idea is, if he looks like he’ll be 100% recovered by NEXT year, they have a quality middle reliever for peanuts.  If he doesn’t look good, don’t pick up the option.  Best case, he recovers quickly and can be useful in the stretch run/playoffs.

Honestly, this isn’t a move to get worked up about…