Happy Thanksgiving! image via bloguin.com
A shortened Thanksgiving edition, with me being on travel for the holidays visiting family in Dallas.
Unfortunately they’re not really baseball fans down here, so conversations about whether or not the move of the Houston Astros and forthcoming rivalry with the Texas Rangers fall mostly on deaf ears.
After watching the last couple versions of this post get really bloated and difficult to read, i’m dividing this one up by topic.
Nationals In General
- Cole Kimball is back, two days after we lost him on a waiver gamble. Clearly the team values him, though now my post questioning the move and all the subsequent arguing in comments is moot and seems over-reactive.
- Nats add four players to the 40-man … but only two that I predicted. More thoughts/opinions here.
- MLB’s Jonathan Mayo put up his Nats top-10 prospect list. Its a list that does not include any 2011 draftees, so it differs widely from Baseball America’s and Fangraphs. He also has some odd rankings, includes Cole Kimball and has Rick Hague above other more promising candidates such as Robbie Ray or Steve Lombardozzi, given that both are pretty big question marks going forward due to injury.
- No surprise here; Shairon Martis signed a minor league deal with Pittsburgh. Clearly he wasn’t going to make it in this organization; good luck to him moving forward. He’s very young and could still have an impact.
- The new deal probably delays Bryce Harper‘s debut, due to new changes in the super-2 status. This is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of what the two sides needed to do; we want to see these star rookies sooner, not later. Frankly at this point despite it being essentially a useless delay, I’d be in favor of completely scrapping the “super-2” status and just go to a hard 3-years of arbitration. If players are kept down artificially for a week in April, that’s still much better than wasting them til mid-June. Here’s additional links from Adam Kilgore and Mark Zuckerman both discussing this same topic.
- Here’s some welcome news: Matthew Purke struggled early but finished strong in Arizona due to a quick adjustment by Nats pitching coaches. By the end of the AFL he was hitting 95 with good life on his breaking pitches. That’s fantastic news; if Purke can continue showing this kind of velocity coming from the left-hand side with good secondary pitches, he’ll clearly be closer to the #1-starter potential he showed two years ago.
- As pointed out by Zuckerman, The Nats won’t be getting any more revenue sharing under the new CBA. And frankly, nor should they, being in the 6th largest market and owned by a billionaire. This is one small modification in the new CBA that makes 100% sense.
Free Agents/Player Transaction News
- Yoenis Cespedes apparently expects a deal in the neighborhood $35-50M. Wow. Thats a lot of risk for a player who won’t be MLB ready in year one and who most people only know by his incredibly odd youtube scouting video.
- At one time Scott Kazmir was an “Ace” in this league; a guy easily within the best 15-20 arms in the league. The Angels gave up on him and released him this summer, eating $9.5M. Nobody else even sniffed the guy. Now he’s set to play in the Dominican Winter League to try to re-invent himself. I agree with the comments in this article mostly; he isn’t even 28 yet. Someone may take a flier on this guy and really get themselves a diamond in the rough.
- Here’s Jon Heyman‘s predictions on salaries, with some thoughts on possible locations for the top free agents this off-season. Not destinations; amounts. He has Nats sniffing around on Fielder, Buehrle and Madson. Nothing really earth-shattering there.
- Tim Dierkes reporting that the Nats are visiting Buehrle at his home, and that he’s the #1 priority for this team. We’ll see; I still have my doubts that Buehrle would come to Washington. But signing him pretty much spells the end for Ross Detwiler.
- The Rangers made an interesting FA signing, getting closer Joe Nathan for 2yrs/$14M. The signing isn’t as much interesting b/c of Nathan (and $14M for what Nathan put up last year coming back from injury is a huge risk). But it does imply that Neftali Feliz is going back to the rotation, and THAT would imply that the Rangers aren’t really that interested in re-signing CJ Wilson. Fair enough for me; starters are far more valuable than closers, and if the Rangers make the world series again in 2012 having lost their #1 pitcher in each off-season, the GM should get a gold star. They’ll go into 2012 presumably with this rotation: Feliz, Ogando, Harrison, Holland and Lewis. They could also slot in Scott Feldman in place of an injury, as a former starter who struggled in 2011 due to injuries. Do you think the Nats would ever consider doing this with Drew Storen?
- The Nats may be chasing Buehrle, but here’s an interesting note: Roy Oswalt was NOT offered arbitration by the Phillies, so signing him would cost us no picks. And, more importantly, we wouldn’t surrender our unprotected 1st rounder.
- The Angels need a catcher. We have catcher depth. Maybe we can work a trade?
New Labor Deal Items
- Not many details at first, but the announcement came on Friday 11/18 that the two sides had reached an agreement for a new 5-year labor deal, per Ken Rosenthal breaking the story. Tom Verducci is right though in complaining that there are precious few details right now on how the Houston move affects the schedule. Here’s a nice Labor agreement overview from a good Business of Baseball blog that covers the business-side of the industry, and also a detailed review of the new CBA.
- Apparently one feature of the new agreement is the elimination of free agent compensation for relievers. This is a welcome move and is refreshing to see, in that this particular rule was clearly broken and wasn’t in the best interests of either the clubs or the players.
- Matthew Pouliot reports that the new agreement could have a “low-payroll” tax on clubs that don’t spend a certain amount. I struggle with this concept to a certain extent. Clearly teams that pull the plug on free agency and start over have shown that they can be successful in this league. Tampa Bay and (to a certain extent) Texas in recent times have won playoff series with payrolls in the bottom 5 of the league. Meanwhile teams like Pittsburgh and Kansas City may not have big MLB payrolls but are investing heavily in the draft ($17M by Pittsburgh last year). So any such tax would have to be implemented in a way that it allows teams to “start over” without incurring such a tax. I think the last thing we want is to see poor free agent signings and millions of dollars in payroll wasted just to reach an arbitrary level. The bigger problem in this league is not at the payroll bottom, but at the payroll top.
- Rosenthal calls the new deal a “dagger” to small-market teams. Hard to disagree.
- Scott Boras says the new deal hurts “all of baseball.” I realize he’s quite biased, but I don’t disagree with him either. It really seems that Selig and his little band of millionaire owners paid little attention to the growth of the game and competitive balance achieved by smart teams building through the draft, and were more interested in saving a few million dollars annually in the draft. Really disappointing.
General Baseball News
- Some career-reflection comments from the Owners meetings in Milwaukee from commissioner Bud Selig. Like him or not, his tenure has resulted in a lot of significant events in the history of baseball. Some good, some bad. Expansion, Wild Card, Divisional play, steroids. Its all in there.
- Apparently there’s some movement in the A’s relocation to San Jose possibility. There’s some direct parallels here to the plight of the Washington Nationals, and I’d guess that the Giants will get a similar sweetheart regional sports network deal in order to “relinquish” their San Jose territorial claim. For me though, the difference between the Baltimore and Washington markets is much more distinct; there’s really only one road between Washington and Baltimore, and a realistic trip to reach Baltimore’s inner harbor from the Northern Virginia area on a week night in traffic would take more than 2 hours. San Jose is a comparable distance from San Francisco, but with multiple interstate-speed routes between the two cities (I-280, California 101 and I-880) the San Jose market is less distinct from San Francisco. People regularly commute between the two cities.
- Interesting article from Mike Silva about possible future expansion in the MLB. He thinks two more teams would make sense, one in New Jersey and the other in, wait for it, Montreal. I posted on more or less this same topic in July, concluding that two new teams (San Antonio/Austin and Portland) would make a ton of sense. Of course, what would make MORE sense is two new teams in the two massive markets of New York (perhaps in Jersey somewhere as is suggested) and Los Angeles (specifically in Riverside/Valley area that’s 1.5 hours on a good day from either Anaheim or down-town). But baseball has allowed these owners to have territorial claims that are somehow gifted by god (see the previous San Francisco/San Jose argument) and thus making expansion into these markets an impossibility.