Nationals Arm Race

Remember this guy? He’ll be 100% for next spring and may spell a changing of the guard in the division. Photo via AllansGraphics.com

With major moves being made this off-season for the rotations of the NL East teams, we seem set to be in store for some serious pitching duels intradivision in 2012.  How do the rotations stack up, right now?  If the season started tomorrow, here’s what we’d be looking at for rotations:

By team, some observations:

• Philadelphia plans on replacing Roy Oswalt‘s 2011 starts with a call-up who looked pretty good last year in Worley. Joe Blanton looks like the odd-man out and his $8.5M salary may be wasted by virtue of an underrated but saavy acquisition of Joel Pineiro.  The Oswalt trade didn’t give the team what it seeked (a World Series title) but it didn’t cost them a ton in prospects either (JA Happ didn’t exactly light it up for Houston).  They’ve signed Dontrelle Willis for rotation depth.  Still, you can’t argue with three Cy Young candidates at the top of your rotation, and this team remains the team to beat in the division despite injuries (Ryan Howard) and aging (every single projected starter not named Hunter Pence is 30 or older, and Pence will be 29).   The pitching staff was #1 in ERA in the NL and I can’t imagine them dropping far from that.    If Worley performs like he did in 2011, and if Pineiro returns to his St. Louis form, then this is just as tough a 1-5 as last year.
• Atlanta should have won the wild card last year and seems set to roll out a rather similar rotation this year.  They’ll replace their worst starter Derek Lowe with starts from one of three up-and-coming rookies (I’ve got Delgado slated there now but likely Mike Minor wins the #5 spot in spring training) and should be improved.  Hudson is a year older and hasn’t missed a start in 2 years, but is slow coming back from off-season back surgery and may or may not be ready for opeing day.  The staff was #4 in the NL in team ERA and should do nothing but improve … but there’s some serious injury question marks.  Their incredible SP minor league depth should get them through.
• Miami has a some major question marks, despite acquiring Mark Buehrle to slot into their #2 spot.  They will cross their fingers on Josh Johnson; if he’s not healthy this team will be really hurt.  Nolasco can be brilliant or awful from start to start.   We still don’t know if Vazquez is retiring or returning; my initial guess would have been that he was too good in 2011 (3.69 era, 106 era+) and too young (reportedly 34 but i’ve never heard of any age-questioning here) to retire.  To provide cover though, the team traded for the volatile but possibly still talented Carlos Zambrano to slot in at #5.  Which Zambrano will they get?  And will his notorious clubhouse antics gibe with new hot-head manager Ozzie Guillen? On paper, a 1-5 of Johnson, Buehrle, Nolasco, Sanchez and Zambrano spells an awful lot of power and a lot of Ks.  They could be tough.  They should improve on last year’s #10 team ERA ranking.
• Washington just got a lot better, replacing 29 mostly awful Livan Hernandez starts with a healthy Stephen Strasburg and likewise replacing 35 combined mediocre starts out of Jason Marquis and Tom Gorzelanny with newly acquired power lefty Gio Gonzalez and power righty Edwin Jackson. They were 6th in the NL in team ERA, have mostly the same bullpen in place (5th best in the league in ERA in 2011) and seem set to improve.   Chien-Ming Wang seems set for the #5 spot, leaving John Lannan potentially being the most expensive pitcher in Syracuse.   The jeopardy the team now has is an utter lack of starting pitching depth; Peacock and Milone WERE our 2012 rotational safety nets; now we have just Detwiler, Gorzelanny and a couple guys who clearly seem to be AAA starters.  For this reason the team probably keeps Lannan around with the eventual goal of having him provide cover until our next wave of high-end pitching prospects develop.  Either way, this rotation and bullpen look to be improved from 2011.
• New York faces a grim 2012, not only in the rotation but also in the front office.  We’re hearing reports that Johan Santana is still too hurt to make opening day (though he’s since spelled some of these concerns with his first spring training outing).  Converted knuckleballer R.A. Dickey spent his off-season in a nasty fight with management over his charity climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  All their other starters posted ERAs in the mid to upper 4’s (or worse) with ERA+ figures in the 78-82 range.  And there doesn’t seem to be help coming on the Free Agency front (since the team can’t afford to keep operations running without bank loans) or on the prospect front (a quick glance at their AAA and AA starting talent resulted in ONE starter who had a minor league era in the respectable range, an 18th rounder in AA).  I think this team is finishing dead last in 2012 and may lose 100 games despite their payroll.  And to add insult to injury, the owners were just forced to cough up $83 million in a pre-trial settlement over their Madhoff scandal involvement.  Tough times are ahead for the Mets.

What do you guys think?  In terms of Washington, more than a few pundits have stated that the addition of Gonzalez makes the Nats a wild card contender, right now, and that was before the Jackson move finally brought some plaudits from typically cynical national baseball writers when considering signings by this franchise.

Do you think the Nats have now supplanted the Braves as having the 2nd best rotation in the division (as ESPN’s Buster Olney is opining?)  I think they have; I think Atlanta’s starters may be taking a slight step back while our quintet looks to be a solid, young but relatively experienced core.

Gonzalez signs a long term deal; we're committed now. Photo Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images via nydailynews.com

This is your semi-weekly/periodic wrap-up of Nats and other baseball news that caught my eye.  Apologies for the delay in posting; new rules on laptop usage at work have thwarted my typical read-sports-news-at-lunch habits.  I’ll have to get creative.

Nationals In General

• Nats extend Gio Gonzalez for 5 years.  Terms: 5yrs, $42M with two more club options.  A little more than $8m AAV, or in other words what we were paying Jason Marquis.  I’m sure its backloaded somewhat, but I like the deal for two main reasons.  First, we buy out all the arbitration years ahead of time and avoid the arbitration process altogether (which does nothing but serve to bruise the fragile egos of professional athletes over a few hundred thousand dollars of salary).  Secondly, it locks up the player for the longer term and gives the team some stability for the next few years.
• Jim Callis at BaseballAmerica answered a question about what an updated Nats top 10 prospect list would look like post trade: he’d promote up Destin Hood, Chris Marrero, and Michael Taylor.  Considering what Marrero’s prospect status is now, considering how long it has taken Hood to get the hang of playing baseball, and how far away Taylor is from the majors, I think its safe to say our farm system is officially “thin.”
• Nice little piece on Bryce Harper from Buster Olney, who relays the well known opinion that Davey Johnson really likes young superstars and predicts that Harper may break camp with the team.  Why doesn’t anyone relay all the facts in this case?  Like the fact that there wasn’t a concept of “Super-2” when Johnson promoted Gooden and Strawberry and there wasn’t a punitive financial issue lurking by doing so.
• Great news to see so many of our arbitration eligible guys settled well ahead of going in front of the arbitrator.  These cases don’t help anyone in the long run and end up arguing semantics over a few hundred thousand dollars that the team can clearly pay.
• Though I havn’t seen any confirmation of this elsewhere, Bill Ladson reports that the Nats are engaged in extension talks with Ryan Zimmerman.  If so, this comes at a relatively good time for the team to be doing the negotiating; Zimmerman’s value is as low now as it has been since before his rookie season, on account of multiple injuries and a lack of overall production.   Which is exactly why I don’t think any long term deal is going to be struck this off-season frankly; Zimmerman would expect a Troy Tulowitzki like deal and I don’t think he’s done enough to earn it.

Free Agents/Player Transaction News

• The arbitration case to watch this coming off-season will be Tim Lincecum; he is asking for $21.5M for 2012, with the Giants offering $17M.  Wow.  There’s really no case like his out there to use as a precedent; if you think he should earn roughly 80% of his FA value, then $21.5M equates with an annual salary of $26.875/year AAV.  That’s more than Cliff Lee, CC Sabathia or Johan Santana (the three highest paid pitchers at current).  So I guess you have to ask yourself; is Lincecum the best pitcher in the league?  Because he’s about to be paid in line with that title.

Hall of Fame items

• Not HoF specific, but inspired by it.  David Shoenfield compiles a list of the best players by running 5-year WAR figures to show some enlightening information.  WAR has some limitations over longer terms but I like what it shows for season-to-season value for players.  His point was that some relatively unsupported hall of fame claims appear on these lists.  For me the last couple periods showing guys like Chase Utley and Matt Holliday were kind of eye opening.

General Baseball News

• Phillies sign Joel Pineiro to a minor league deal.   I know he struggled in LA last season, but at one point this guy was pretty decent.  If he can regain his health and his St. Louis form, suddenly the Phillies might have themselves a pretty good 5th starter option to take mediocre innings away from Joe Blanton.  I’m surprised they were able to get him on a minor league contract.
• I’ve read bits and pieces about the fall of Puerto Rican baseball before; but this is the first article i’ve seen that really delves into it deeply.  Rob Neyer lists the cause and effect; baseball subjected Puerto Rican’s to the normal draft and almost immediately killed baseball in the country.  This is the lesson/concern about going to an international draft; individual teams won’t cultivate and build off-site academies if they serve to build players who can be drafted by other teams.  This is what happened in Puerto Rico and its probably what would happen in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and other developing countries.  Its a scary thought.
• Related to the above Puerto Rican story is this: Cleveland pitcher Fausto Carmona arrested in the Dominican Republic for falsifying his name and age ahead of his big signing.  For all the lamenting of the above Puerto Rican situation … this is yet another example (see Gonzalez, Smiley for Nats fans) of the flip side of the lack of an international draft.  Draft experts and scouting mavens lament the loss of Puerto Rican development and think that the exact same thing would happen in the D.R. if they were included in the draft, and yes its hard to argue differently.  But the down side of having such a “lottery” for 15-16 yr old players in the impoverished D.R. is the continued fraud among players growing up there related to age falsification.
• Sabre-nerds may decry the lack of statistical science behind it, but Tom Verducci‘s annual “Year After” effect (which has come to be known as the Verducci-effect by others) has had an 84% success factor in predicting either injury or distinct decline in performance for his named pitchers.  The most interesting names on the list are newly traded Michael Pineda, Jeremy Hellickson, and both Texas mid-rotation starters Matt Harrison and Derek Holland.  Holland in particular threw a whopping 77 more innings this year over last.

General News; other

• Not that any of us needed to read any more about the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State Scandal, but reading Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins‘ front page story with Joe Paterno‘s first interview post-scandal was an interesting read.  Frankly, I don’t buy some of the way the story reads (intimating that Paterno had “little to do” with Sandusky by the time the 2002 allegations came around, for example).  It doesn’t seem like Paterno was really challenged in the interview.  Gene Wojciechowski echos some of these sentiments in this analysis piece here, criticizing Paterno’s convenient stance on the scandal and on the multitude of other stories that have come out about his manipulation of the system and real influence at the university. The real problem is just the nature of dealing with a legend; he worked for Penn State for 61 years and made the university what it is; how do you possibly deal with such a figure, who clearly was larger than the university?  Update: just prior to publishing this, Paterno lost his battle with lung cancer, a quick and unfortunate end to his legendary career.  Its amazing to consider that just 3 months ago, Paterno was still the larger than life legend and nothing bad had ever happened on the campus.
• I’m sure the real story is somewhere in-between the original story and the “Update” at the end, but there seems to be enough truth in the former to not necessarily believe the latter.  A new Utah high school’s board decided that the student-voted mascot name “Cougars” can’t be used because the name is derogatory towards middle-aged women who hook up with younger men.  Seriously.

Jesus Flores remains our most successful Rule 5 Draftee. Photo Toni Sandys/Washington Post

The Rule 5 draft is being held on December 6th, 2012 at the annual Baseball Winter meetings.  Frequent readers of this and other Nats blogs are well aware of the Rule 5 draft; the Nats have been frequent participants in the Rule 5 draft process, somewhat to the ire of other teams (who I suspect lately have been “returning the favor” by taking players from us and sitting on them for a year, as mentioned below).

Most scouting pundits bemoan the changes made to the CBA, saying it gutted the Rule 5 draft, but it has still featured some pretty significant names even in recent years.  Guys like Dan Uggla, Johan Santana, Shane Victorino, Joakim Soria, Josh Hamilton, RA Dickey, Scott Diamond and Evan Meek are all example draft picks from the past few years.  So I believe the draft is still important and can lead to significant players changing hands.

I split this post into two parts: Below we’ll review the Nats Rule 5 draft history.  Then in Part II tomorrow we’ll talk about our own possible rule 5 players warranting protection, and then talk about what the Nats may be looking for in 2012’s rule 5 draft.

Part I. Nationals Rule-5 draft history

Baseball-reference (of course) has Rule 5 draft results from recent years.  Here’s a list of the Rule 5 drafts since 2005, with our players taken/received noted and with some thoughts on how the player turned out for either side.  Note i’m only doing this analysis for the major league section of the rule 5 draft; there’s just far too little eventual MLB success to be found in the AAA and AA sections of the Rule 5 draft to do the analysis.

2004 Rule 5 Draft (ahead of the 2005 season)

• Tony Blanco: 1B; Drafted from Cincinnati.  He batted .177 as a 1st baseman backup while eating a roster spot all season, then we cut him from AAA after 2007.  He kicked around Colorado’s system for a year and has been playing in Japan ever since.  Verdict: failure.
• Tyrell Godwin: CF, Drafted from Toronto.  Prior to the 2005 season, the team traded another minor leaguer to keep his rights, so this really played out less like a rule-5 pickup in that Godwin didn’t have to stick on the 25-man roster all year.  He played a grand total of 3 games for the Nats, kicked around AAA for a while an hung them up in 2007.  Verdict: failure.

2005 Rule 5 Draft

The Nats did not draft anyone, but had a player drafted themselves who went on a whirlwind tour of MLB organizations before getting returned mid 2006.   Chris Booker was rule-5 drafted by Detroit, who immediately sold him to Philadelphia, who then waived him in May of 2006 with the intent of returning him … except that Kansas City picked him up, hung onto him for a couple months and eventually returned him to Washington.  The Nats eventually called him up but he was relatively ineffective and he washed out of the game (likely due to injuries) after 2008.

2006 Rule 5 Draft

• Jesus Flores, C, drafted from the New York Mets, stuck with the team all year despite having only played high-A ball in the minors.  Despite his downslide and injury issues, Flores remains the hopeful “found gold” prospect that can be had in the Rule 5 draft.  Verdict: success.
• Levale Speigner RHP (a closer) was drafted from Minnesota and, as with Booker above, eventually was traded for by the Nats so they could keep him and stash him in the minors.  After some awful outings for the big team, he passed through waivers mid 2008 and was released from AAA in 2008, bounced around a couple other organizations, and retired after 2010.  Verdict: failure.

The Nats lost one player in this draft: Alejandro Machada was drafted by Minnesota just a month after the Nats had re-signed him to a minor league contract.  So Machada didn’t have to stay on their active roster.  And indeed he didn’t; he was injured all of 2007 and stayed with Minnesota’s AAA team until 2009, never again broaching the majors.

2007 Rule 5 Draft

• Matt Whitney: 1B/3B, Drafted and then eventually returned back to Cleveland, who eventually made the former 1st rounder a ML free agent and we signed him after the 08 season.   We cut him after the 2009 season and he retired after 2010.  Verdict: failure.
• Garrett Guzman: LF/RF: after Rule-5 selecting him, the team eventually traded a PTBNL for him to Minnesota, then we cut him outright and nobody picked him up.  He played two years of Independent ball and is out of baseball after 2010.  Guzman is more infamously known as the player who was caught having sex with an underage girl while playing for our AA team in Harrisburg in 2008, likely the reason why nobody picked him up after his DFA.  Verdict: failure.

2008 Rule 5 Draft

• Terrell Young: Drafted with the #1 pick in the Rule 5 draft from Cincinnati.  He got hurt, never played for us, and was eventually returned to the Reds.   His injury was severe enough that he was out of baseball after being drafted; he has no professional games after 2008.  Verdict: failure.

2009 Rule 5 Draft

• Jamie Hoffman; OF, Drafted with the #1 pick in the Rule 5 draft from Los Angeles Dodgers and immediately traded for Brian Bruney in a pre-arranged deal.  NY returned him to the Dodgers later that spring.   Bruney, meanwhile, immediately went to arbitration and lost with the team in the spring of 2010, was awful out of the gate, and the team outright released him before the end of May.   Verdict: failure, all the way around this transaction.

Zech Zinicola was drafted away from us by Toronto, who eventually returned him to the Nats without any Toronto appearances.  His selection was probably due to Dana Brown‘s recent hiring in Toronto, going from Washington’s Scouting Director to being a special assistant to the GM in Toronto.  Zinicola remains in our farm system to this day and likely is nothing more than an organizational arm.

2010 Rule 5 Draft

• Elvin Ramirez RH reliever, drafted from the New York Mets: he was injured in spring training and spent the entirety of the season on the DL.  Interestingly, the team returned him to New York in October, long before they needed to, and with New York this year he made his way to the majors for some appearances.  If the team drafted him, why not keep him through spring training of 2012 to see if he was worth keeping?  It just seemed odd to give up on the draft pick while procedurally you could still keep him.   Verdict: failure.
• Brian Broderick, RH Starting Pitcher, Drafted from St. Louis and stuck into the 2011’s bullpen as the long-man/mop-up guy.  He was awful, he was costing the team, and was eventually returned to St. Louis before May was out.   However, St. Louis waived him towards the end of last season and we picked him back up, so he sits on our AA roster now.  I project him to be one of our AAA starters in 2013.  Verdict: failure.

The Phillies drafted Michael Martinez away from the Nats, and he’s stuck on their roster both in 2011 and 2012 as a backup middle infielder.  His batting lines are awful though, and the Nats clearly have depth at middle infield, so losing this player was not that big of a deal.

2011 Rule 5 Draft

The Nats did not take anyone for the first time in years, but had two players themselves taken.  Neither player drafted was a surprise; I posted at the time that I thought both these players should have been protected.  Brad Meyers (RH starting pitcher) was drafted by the New York Yankees, but he suffered an injury in spring training and was DL’d all year.  He was recently returned to the franchise and looks set to be in our AAA rotation in 2013.  I think Meyers is a right-handed version of Tommy Milone and could feature for the big club in a pinch, but isn’t the big-time power arm that the team is looking for in a 5th starter.

Erik Komatsu was drafted by St. Louis (possibly in retaliation for our taking Broderick the previous year), made their 2012 opening day roster, played for a while before being waived, got picked up by Minnesota, and by Memorial day was returned to Washington in a whirlwind set of transactions.  I think he remains a minor league caliber player, with too little offense for a corner outfield position but not enough speed to play center.  He likely features in Syracuse’s outfield in 2013.

Summary: we’ve drafted 10 guys in the rule 5 draft since 2005, and I’d classify 9 of the 10 draftees as eventual failures.  Not a great track record.  Plus its safe to say that every player drafted FROM us has been a failure as well (the one exception perhaps being Martinez).  Clearly the Rule 5 draft isn’t a great way to reliably find players.

Part II tomorrow, just ahead of the 40-man deadline date ahead of the Rule 5 draft, where we’ll talk about who we may protect.

Is CJ Wilson worth a 9 figure contract this off season? We’ll see. Photo Chris O’Meara/AP via livesportsdb.com

As the World Series ends, and as clubs start exercising (or more importantly, declining) player options, the FA market for starting pitching is starting to really take shape this off season.

The Nats don’t “need” Starting Pitching as they have in the past, but a quality veteran starting pitcher would certainly be preferred to the question marks that we might have if we used the likes of Ross Detwiler, Tommy Milone or Brad Peacock as a 5th starter in 2012.

Lets take a look at the starters on the market, put in some predictions as to what kind of money they’re going to get, and discuss whether or not the Nats should (or might) pursue them.  For reference, here’s a list of 2012 FAs from mlbtraderumors, as well as the Elias rankings as of the end of the 2011 season.  Remember, thanks to their end of the season run, the Nats 1st round pick is NOT protected and would be forfeited if they signed a type-A free agent.  So the FA types will be of importance when talking about each of the pitchers below.

Category: Aces (or nearly Aces) and Type-A starters.

• CC Sabathia seems certain to opt-out of his remaining Yankee contract and will almost certainly re-up with the team.  11/1/11: he has done just that.  5yrs, $122M, fewer years honestly than I thought he’d demand.  He raises his AAV from $23M in the last deal to $24.4M and gets one additional guaranteed year.  The structure of the deal pays him $23M/year for the first four years, then $25M the last.  There’s an option for 2017 at $25M that he most likely makes if he stays healthy.
• CJ Wilson is also a type-A FA and seems set on testing the market.  I would too if I were Wilson; I don’t think he’s an ace but he’s certainly going to be paid like one.  He seems set to get an AJ Burnett type deal (5yrs $85M) or perhaps more.  I hope the Nats don’t over-spend and get him.  I’d guess he heads to Boston; his free-spirit personal seems to fit with that franchise and the team just got a shock bit of news that John Lackey, despite how bad he was in 2011, is out for the entirety of 2012 with Tommy John surgery.
• Roy Oswalt had his team option for $16M bought out on 10/25/11, but I’m guessing this is just a procedural move to re-sign him and keep the “big 4” together for a few more years.  Oswalt’s on the wrong side of 30 and had a rough season of declining stats and missed starts, but still slots in as the best #4 starter in baseball and certainly didn’t come to Philadelphia for anything less than a World Series shot.  I’d guess he re-ups for 3 years, $36M with the Phillies.  Other pundits disagree and see him moving back to Texas to take over Wilson’s #1 spot on the Rangers rotation.
• Edwin Jackson: another guy whose post season performances seem certain to hurt his FA prospects.  Big arm, good numbers, right age (only 28 hitting free agency), but a propensity to get hit hard and often.  Mike Rizzo loves him, tried to trade Adam Dunn for him in 2010, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to see the Nats go after him again.  Look for him signing with the Nats for 3 years and $28M.  Unless a pitching-starved big-money team like Boston or New York offers him a ton more than that.  I’m not really in favor of this deal for the Nats, but wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen.
• Yu Darvish: as I opined here, I really do hope that the Nats do not spend fools money after Darvish.  A posting fee in the $40-$50M range, then at least that amount to sign the guy.  I know he’s got great numbers in Japan.  So did Dice-K.  There’s a halfway decent chance he doesn’t even get posted this year, so all ink spilled over Darvish could be moot.  Baseball Prospectus put out a great article about Darvish, including lots of analysis and links to others who share the same concerns that I do.  If you’re in the “pro-Yu” camp there’s a couple good articles on places like fangraphs that support your case.

Category: Mid-rotation/decent starting options.

• Mark Buehrle is hitting the FA market, but i’d be shocked if he leaves Chicago at this point in his career.  I’m sure he’ll take a team friendly deal that extends his career out 3-4 more years, at which point he may very well retire a one-franchise guy with a surprisingly high number of career wins.
• Hiroki Kuroda just finished off a sneaky-good season, going 13-16 with a 3.07 era.  The problem is that he’s 36 and had a ton of innings on his arm in the Nippon league prior to getting here.  He’d be a risk.  The Dodgers franchise is a mess but its the only team he’s known, and I’d guess he wants to stay on the west coast.  I’d guess he gets a decent 2-year deal from Seattle if the Dodgers can’t find the money.
• Javier Vazquez looked washed up during last year’s FA market analysis, having lost 3-4 mph on his fastball and getting shelled in NY.  However, he had a great bounce-back season in Miami and i’d guess he re-ups there for the new season and new stadium.  However, there’s word out there that he may retire.  Hard to see a guy who just put in a decent, comeback season retire though, especially if guaranteed money is thrown around.

Category: Aging/Back of the Rotation starters

• Bruce Chen has very quietly put together two pretty good seasons for the Royals all things considered, but will be 35 and may see a precipitous drop in production.  He’s not any better than the options the Nats face now, when you consider price and productivity.
• Freddie Garcia had a revelation of a season for the Yankees; I’d think he stays there as insurance for 2012.   Still hard to believe the Yankees won 97 games giving no less than 51 starts to Garcia and Colon.
• Bartolo Colon is in the same boat as Garcia, but is 38 to his 34 and may be cut loose to find another team willing to give him a shot with his stem-cell enhanced shoulder.
• Joel Pineiro has never stayed healthy long enough to reach his potential, and he just laid an egg in his contract year in LA.  I’d be surprised if he got anything more than a 1yr $5M deal.
• Aaron Harang: beware the veteran pitcher who goes to San Diego and suddenly looks like a #2 starter.  2011 numbers: 14-7, 3.64 era.  Home/Away splits?  3.05 era at home, 4.70 on the road.  I’m sure he’ll get some money, somewhere for a back-of-the-rotation job.
• Livan Hernandez reportedly offered to move to the bullpen for the Nats, in order to stay here.  Unfortunately he pitched so poorly, and takes so long to warm up, that using him in extended relief really isn’t much of an option.  My guess is that Livan returns to his roots in Miami as the Marlins’ 5th starter on the cheap and enjoys one more spin around the league.
• Jason Marquis, in a remarkable sense of timing by the Nats, was traded for Zack Walters and then promptly broke his leg.  Its too bad for Marquis, who clearly was using 2011 to regain some market value for his free agency this off-season.  At this point he certainly won’t be getting any 2year deals for 8 figures.  I’d guess he gets a 1yr $4M deal with some incentives, if that.
• Chien-Ming Wang, by virtue of being in THIS section and not the next, has already had a successful 2011.  He is what he is right now; a guy trying to reclaim former glory and his former sinking fastball, and a guy who looks like a #4 starter who has capabilities of improving as he gets more and more innings into his repaired shoulder.  My guess is that he repays the Nats for nursing him back to health while providing him millions in salary and signs for a 2-year deal worth roughly $6-7M overall.
• Tim Wakefield; I would have predicted him to possibly hang up the spikes until news of Lackey’s injury and Dice-K’s question mark.  Wakefield’s stats have really declined the past two years, but Boston seems in need of a back of the rotation guarantee that Wakefield’s $4M standing salary can fill, cheaply.
• Brad Penny, Jeff Francis, Paul Maholm, Chris Capuano, Vicente Padilla, Rodrigo Lopez, Zack Duke, Aaron Cook, Kevin Milwood, Dontrelle Willis and anyone else not already mentioned: all of these guys were either so mediocre in 2011, went unsigned in 2011, or are so old, that i’d be surprised if more than just a few of them got major league deals for 2012.

Category: Reclamation Projects/Injury recovery guys.  The Nats have a history of pursuing former glory with recovering stars.  Would they try it again?

• Adam Wainwright: his injury in spring training 2011 amazingly didn’t really cost the Cardinals, who marched right into the World Series without their #2 starter.  Wainwright’s injury couldn’t have been worsely timed in terms of his contract options; St Louis dodges a major payroll bullet by being able to opt out of millions of dollars of guaranteed money.  But Wainwright is free to look elsewhere.  Will he?  Doubtful: i’d guess he signs a one-year incentive-laden contract with St. Louis aimed towards regaining his career.  10/26/11 update: the team exercised its options on Wainwright, meaning he’s off the market.
• Justin Duchscherer: had some lights out seasons, but missed all of 2009 and 2011 with injury.  Will anyone take a flier on him?
• Chris Young and his 6′ 10″ faster-than-it-seems fastball only got 4 starts (2 against the Nats) before getting shoulder surgery.  Seems to run in the NY Mets family (see Santana, Johan).  It wasn’t as bad a surgery as it could have been, and he should return for 2012.  He’s now missed games in 4 straight seasons and its buyer-beware.
• Jon Garland had season-ending surgery in July after just 9 starts, but when healthy is a 105 ERA+ guy, a 4th starter who can eat innings and be solid.  He had great durability up until this injury, having not missed a start since 2002.  But now its not clear if he’ll even be ready for 2012.
• Ben Sheets is in almost the identical spot as Duchscherer; ironically both have a history of pitching in Oakland.
• Rich Harden; mr Day Game split (or Mr. Unreliable Injury guy, if you play fantasy baseball) just finished yet another unproductive season with a 5+ ERA pitching in one of the best pitchers parks in baseball.  He seems set for a minor league contract for one last flier at a comeback.
• Eric Bedard wasn’t half bad for Boston down the stretch, with a 9.0 k/9 rate on the season.  But at the end of the season he was yanked early in two critical games and i’d bet the team won’t be willing to roll the dice with him again.  We’ll see who overpays for his injury-plagued services in 2012.  With Boston’s sudden shortage of starters, look for Bedard to resign in Boston and start the year as Boston’s #4.
• Brandon Webb: got some looks in spring training 2011, including from the Nats, but then went under the knife yet again.  You can usually come back from TJ surgery.  Shoulders are tougher.  He may be done.

Predictions:  I’d guess the Nats throw their name in the mix for Wilson but get scared off by his price tag.  Maybe we’ll post a respectable figure for Darvish.  But Rizzo goes hard after Jackson and we get him.  Meanwhile Rizzo also signs one of these injury reclamation projects to a nominal guaranteed contract to see what pans out.

Is Ankiel the solution for the Nats in center field? Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images via federalbaseball.com

Editors note: I was out of town last weekend and had this queued up but never hit publish :-).

MLB’s Nationals beat writer Bill Ladson hasn’t done an inbox for a few weeks, probably because he’s been busy at spring training.  Now that the regular season has started and we’ve had some debatable 25-man roster decisions made, he has published another edition of his Inbox column.  Here’s how i’d answer the questions he selects…

Q: What are you most worried about with the Nationals in 2011?

A: I’d say, in order, offense, the starting rotation, center field, and the back end of the bullpen.  I feel like we took a step backwards in terms of offense, we have improved the rotation over last year but still would probably rank this rotation 28th or 29th in the league, that Rick Ankiel in center field doesn’t really help us a ton, and that Drew Storen had such a rough spring that our end-of-game scenarios may be challenging.

Q: How do you think the Nationals will fare this season in the National League East with their off-season signings?

A: Probably the same as last year; last place.  Philadelphia and Atlanta are probably playoff bound no matter how many injuries the Phillies sustain.  Florida is probably taking a step side ways, having lost Uggla but picked up Vazquez (honestly, I don’t see how their fans don’t revolt at their perennial 87 win team doesn’t spend the $10 needed to improve themselves to be a 92 win team and challenge for the wild card).  The Nats may finish above the Mets, if only because that franchise is in such disarray right now.  They’re eating more than $20M in salary for players they’ve already released, they made no significant off-season moves and there’s serious injury question marks around 4 of their 5 best paid players (Santana, Beltran, Bay and Francisco Rodriguz).  I can see that time imploding badly and the Nats sneaking ahead of them for 4th place, maybe.

Q: If Bryce Harper has an amazing year in the Minors, is there a chance he will get a Major League callup?

A: They shouldn’t … but they may.  I would not be surprised to see the kid rocket through low-A and high-A ball.  It would be purely a late-season revenue grab to call him up, but they need to be careful on his service time accrual.  If he plays 30 days in September we’d have to keep him down an extra 30 days in 2012 to ensure he doesn’t become a super-2.  For those not clear on the implications of super-2 screwup, read this bit about the mistake the Giants made with Tim Lincecum.

That being said, i’d love to see him playing in the bigs before his 19th birthday.  That’d be fantastic.  And he may very well earn it.  His weakness in the AFL and in spring training was offspeed pitches, but its hard to fault the kid for wanting to swing and make something happen in the limited time he’s seen.  Once a full season gets going and he’s getting 4 ABs every night, he will learn patience, he will earn walks as pitchers work around him, and he’ll pick his spots.  This, more than anything else, is the lesson he needs to learn to advance in the minors.

Q: Do we see a parallel developing between Roger Bernadina and Justin Maxwell? How long do we have to wait?

A: It isn’t a bad parallel to note.  Bernadina lost the LF job, then the CF job, then the 4th outfielder job to a non-roster invitee.  He’s burning his last option as we speak.  He has a career 80 OPS+.  I openly questioned in this space why he was the presumed starter in LF all off-season, and as it turned out I was right about Morse being the better player.  I think he’ll play out the string in AAA this year and get traded for a low-level minor leaguer at the end of spring training 2012, just as we did with Morgan and Gonzalez this week.

Q: What do you think of the job general manager Mike Rizzo and manager Jim Riggleman have done since they took over in 2009?

A: I think Rizzo has done a decent job with the major league team and a pretty good job with the farm system.  I feel like he’s tried a little TOO hard to rid the team of the non-defensive hitters Willingham and Dunn, and could have gotten more for them.  I understand the Werth signing but think (like the rest of baseball) that he overpaid and strangely backloaded the contract (why back load instead of front load?  We’re actually at LESS payroll this year than last, so we could be paying him $20M this year instead of $10M and still look like we’re treading water).  He’s definitely assembled a team in his vision; defensively gifted, a bullpen full of power arms.  Next step; power rotation.

Riggleman is doing the best with what he has; I don’t believe other managers could do much better.  Most people believe we have probably the 28th or 29th best collection of talent in the majors, but we’re achieving better than 29th place.

Q: Besides Harper, which rookie impressed you during Spring Training?

A: I cannot disagree with Ladson’s selection of Cole Kimball as “most impressive rookie.”  I would not be surprised to see him called up in 2011 and to start getting high-leverage appearances.

Clay Buchholz provided the best Wins/salary in the majors last year. Photo baseballrumormill.com

A few weeks back si’s Tom Verducci posted an article discussing the value of starters over closers.  One of the points that he made in the article related to the general fact that Ace Starters are more likely to be with the same team that developed them than being free agent acquisitions in the modern game.  In Verducci’s article, he analyzed the 20 best pitchers by ERA from last season and found that 13 of them are still with their original organization.  Furthermore, 10 of them were first round draft picks.

Modern baseball teams are being built more and more through the draft.  Last year’s World Series champions San Francisco featured 4 home grown starters, each of whom would slot in as the best or 2nd best pitcher on most every other rotation in the league.  Tampa Bay rode a slew of home-grown (and cheap!) starters to the 2nd best record in Baseball over the past 3 years.  And now we clearly see Mike Rizzo trying to build up his starting pitcher cache in the minors through mid-season trades and a focus on pitching in the past couple drafts.

I thought I’d take this point a bit further, as it relates to a topic that I have found more and more fascinating.  The New York Yankees and their $200M payroll struggled to find starting pitching in the off season and are now essentially conducting tryouts in spring training for the #4 and #5 starter spots in their rotation.  How did they find themselves in this predicament?  The answer is thus; it has been years since they developed a home-grown Ace starter.  Their best pitcher (CC Sabathia) was a (very) expensive Free Agent, their 2nd best a home grown rookie (Phil Hughes) and their third best (AJ Burnett) another pricey free agent.  Arguably it has been since either Chien-Ming Wang or possibly Andy Pettitte that the Yankees have developed a starter worthy of mention.  Now, the Yankees have certainly bought themselves a whole lot of offense that will mask their weaknesses in the rotation, but the fact remains that they could easily miss the playoffs in 2011 despite their payroll if the first three members of their rotation do not pitch well.

Lets look at the “Aces” in baseball, and take a look at their acquisition methods and their contract status.  Here, “Home Grown” means the team that developed the pitcher, not necessarily the team that drafted him.  When prospects get traded, I credit the acquiring team for developing and delivering the player to the majors.

• Home Grown: Johnson, Hamels, Wainwright, Jimenez, Lincecum, Cain, Lester, Buchholz, Price, Verlander, Liriano, Felix Hernandez, Jered Weaver.
• Free Agent Acquisition: Halladay, Lee, Carpenter, Sabathia.
• Trade Acquisition: Oswalt, Santana, Greinke.

Of these 20 “Aces,” 13 are still with their developing organization.  Four Free Agent acquisitions for big money, and three traded Aces that cost their teams plenty (though in retrospect the Johan Santana trade isn’t looking that bad for the Mets).

Another side-point was Verducci’s findings that 10 of the top 20 pitchers by ERA last year were first rounders.  I find that piece of information really amazing, given the notorious “crapshoot” mentality of baseball Drafts.  Here’s a quick followup analysis of the Initial Acquisition method of my 20 “Aces” and determining draft or international free agent. Here, we’ll put “supplemental first rounders) into the “1st round” category.

• Draft: 1st Rounder: Hamels, Halladay, Carpenter, Wainwright, Greinke, Lincecum, Cain, Buchholz, Price, Sabathia, Verlander, Jered Weaver.
• Draft: top 5 rounds: Johnson (4th), Lee (4th), Lester (2nd).
• Draft: 6th round or later: Oswalt (23rd).
• International Free Agents: Santana, Jimenez, Liriano, Felix Hernandez.

So by my analysis, 12 of the best 20 pitchers in the game were first round picks.  Only Oswalt looks like a complete diamond in the rough find.  For all the talk about how the draft is a crap shoot (hey, Albert Pujols was a 13th round pick), it really seems apparent that these first rounders paid off handsomely.

Here’s one more look; of the 13 “home grown” aces, lets look at their current contract status.  All data per Cot’s fantastic salary database site.

• Johnson: 4 years/$39M (2010-13)
• Hamels: 3 years/$20.5M (2009-11), but he has a 4th arbitration year in 2012.
• Wainwright: 4 years/$15M (2008-11), plus 2012, 2013 club options (this contract is in complete peril though, since the club can terminate at the end of 2011 when Wainwright is on the DL.  That essentially kills $21M guaranteed to Wainwright in 2012 and 2013.  Tough, tough break for the player).
• Jimenez: 4 years/$10M (2009-12), plus 2013-14 club options (the club options are very reasonable for an Ace)
• Lincecum: 2 years/$23M (2010-11), but these are just his first two arbitration years.  Two more to go to take him through 2013.
• Cain: 3 years/$27.25M (2010-12)
• Lester: 5 years/$30M (2009-13), plus 2014 club option
• Buchholz: 1yr/$480K (est): Still on a pre-arbitration contract, possibly the best value in baseball right now.  Controlled through 2014 by the Red Sox.
• Price: 6 years/$8.5M (2007-12).  Wait, actually THIS may be the best deal in baseball, since Buchholz will probably garner a massive first-year arbitration award in 2012 just as Price’s 6 year deal ends.  However, Price can void the contract and file for arbitration as soon as he becomes eligible, presumably for the 2012 season.
• Verlander: 5 years/$80M (2010-14)
• Liriano: 1 year/$4.3M (2011).  Still in his arbitration years, under club control through 2012.
• Felix Hernandez: 5 years/$78M (2010-14)
• Jered Weaver: 1 year/$7.37M (2011).  He lost his arbitration hearing this year after going “only” 13-12 but leading the league in strikeouts and coming in 5th in Cy Young voting.  Under club control through 2012.

And, adding in the non-home grown players for a complete picture of the future Ace starter FA market:

• Halladay: 3 years/$60M (2011-13), plus 2014 option
• Lee: 5 years/$120M (2011-15), plus 2016 option
• Carpenter: 5 years/$63.5M (2007-11), plus 2012 club option
• Sabathia: 7 years/$161M (2009-15) but he can opt out after the 2011 season
• Oswalt: 5 years/$73M (2007-11), plus 2012 club option
• Santana: 6 years/$137.5M (2008-13), plus 2014 club option
• Greinke: 4 years/$38M (2009-12)

So, here’s a quick summary of when these Aces may hit the FA market:

• After 2011: Wainwright (but he’ll be post-TJ surgery), Sabathia (probably)
• After 2012: Cain, Liriano, Weaver, Oswalt, Carpenter, Greinke, Hamels
• After 2013: Johnson, Lincecum, Santana (probably)
• 2014 or Beyond : Jimenez, Lester, Buchholz, Price, Verlander, Hernandez, Halladay, Lee

Notice how teams are locking up these Ace pitchers for the long haul.  We’re likely to have perhaps just an injury reclamation project in Adam Wainwright and opt-out 100% certain to return to the Yankees Sabathia as the sole major  free agent candidates this coming off season.  I’ve read differing opinions on whether or not Sabathia opts out of his contract (he’d be abandoning $92M of guaranteed pay over 4 years) but I’d be surprised (shocked actually) if he did NOT opt out, especially if he has a third consecutive year of similar production to his first two for the Yankees.  You would have to think he could easily merit a contract north of Cliff Lee’s $24M/year for 7 additional years.  7yrs/$170M or so.

Lastly, lets look at the 8 playoff teams from last  year and investigate how many of their starters were home grown:

• Giants: 4 of 5 homegrown (Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner).  1 FA in Zito
• Rangers: 3 of 5 home grown (Wilson, Hunter, Feldman), 1 trade acquisition (Lee), and one FA (Lewis)
• Yankees: 1 home grown (Hughes) and 4 Free Agents (Sabathia, Burnett, Pettitte, Vazquez)
• Phillies: 1 home grown (Hamels), 3 traded acquisitions (Halladay, Oswalt, Blanton) one FA (Moyer).
• Rays: 4 home grown (Sheilds, Neiman, Price, Davis) one trade acquisition (Garza)
• Twins: 3 home grown (Baker, Blackburn, Slowey) one FA (Pavano) and one trade acquisition (Liriano).
• Braves: 3 home grown (Hanson, Jurrgens, Medlen/Minor), one FA (Lowe), one trade acquisition (Hudson)
• Reds: 3 home grown (Leake, Bailey/Wood, Cueto), two trade acquisitions (Arroyo and Harang).

Six of the Eight playoff team used rotations that were mostly home grown.  Most of the trade acquisitions here were trading of prospects (either the acquiring team using prospects to acquire a proven Vet, as with Hudson, or the acquiring team acquiring and developing the player, as with Garza).

What is the lesson, after all this analysis?  Draft well, develop well, and then lock down your Aces for the long haul.  That is the pathway to success.  There are some exceptions of course (the Phillies have acquired 2 Aces by leveraging their very good farm system depth, and still have enough lower-level depth to rank among the best farm systems in baseball.  And the Yankees of course have bought themselves a good portion of their team).  But looking at the playoff teams last year, most of them were draft-heavy on starters.

Coincidentally; the Nats 2011 rotation by way of comparison?  2 drafted (Lannan, Zimmermann), 2 FAs (Livan and Marquis) and one trade acquisition candidate (Gorzelanny).  This would look far better of course if we were using two key drafted/developed players (Strasburg, Detwiler or even Maya).

Here’s hoping that the Nats’ higher-end starting pitcher draft picks (Strasburg, Zimmermann Solis, Cole, and Detwiler) become the core of our rotation for years to come.

Cliff Lee. Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images

As Cliff Lee continues to dazzle in the post season (his most recent effort being his 8inning, 2hit 13k gem against the most potent offense in Baseball, your NY Yankees), rumors of his purported price tag in the Free Agency market continue to reach spiraling heights.  The most common numbers thrown out start at 5yrs, $25M per.  One author at Forbes thinks he may approach $200M for 6 years combining salary and endorsements.

If you are trying to compare talent to contract value, then you have to start with the highest paid pitchers at current.  CC Sabathia is at $23M/year, Johan Santana is at $22.9M/year on average, and Roy Halladay took a slight discount to sign with Philadelphia (and be able to live in his offseason Odessa home 2 extra months of the year and drive to Spring Training) and is making $20M/year on his new deal.  Clearly, Cliff Lee has shown that he belongs at least at the $20M/year scale.  But how much higher makes sense financially for the signing team?

Forgetting for the moment that payroll means very little to a team like the New York Yankees (unfortunately his likely destination), lets talk about the value of the Free Agent contract and whether a team that gives out a $25M/year contract can ever really get their money’s worth.  Baseball is filled with horror stories of huge FA contracts that went bust.  Names like Zito, Dreifort, Pavano, Neagle, and Hampton fill general managers and fan’s heads with dispair.

How bad were these contracts?  I put together a spreadsheet with every significant starting pitcher FA contract that I could find, then cross referenced it by the Pitcher’s Won/Loss record during the duration of the contract.  See below: the table is sorted in reverse order of $/win.  In addition to the major FA contracts, I also arbitrarily added every “Ace” starter in the league, resulting in names like Lee, Jimenez, Price and Buchholz being in this list despite not being major FA pitchers (yet).  Their inclusion illustrates one of my major conclusions below.

Comment on Won/Loss records; yes I know that individual pitcher wins are not a great indicator of a starter’s worth.  However, they do reasonably indicate over the course of a longer term period the value of that pitcher to a team.  Perhaps a better argument is free agent dollars per quality start (despite the quality start measuring basically a mediocre start of 3ER or less in 6ip or more by a pitcher, it does generally correlate well to team wins andveven to a “real” quality start of 2ER or less in 6IP or more).  At some point I’ll re-run the analysis and count up QS per FA dollar to see how it compares.

Note for the purposes of this argument:

• The Contract total value is averaged over the life of the contract, even if the payments are different during different years.
• The W/L record is for the pitcher over the life of the contract, not necessarily for the original signing team.
• If the contract is current (i.e., runs from 2009-2012) then I’ve only counted the completed regular seasons.
• There are no off-season records taken into play.
• I entered in both Japanese Pitchers (Igawa and Matsuzaka) with massive posting numbers twice; one factoring the posting fee and the other not.  Without the fee Dice-K looks halfway decent but with it he’s overpriced (something all Boston fans probably already knew about their highly paid #5 pitcher).

Conclusions.

– If  you can get 1 win per $1M expended, you are doing about average it seems.  Anything above $1.25M and you are looking at a questionable contract.

– It is difficult to look at any contract below $1M/victory and say that the team made a bad deal.

– The absurdly low $/victory values for David Price and Clay Buchholz demonstrate as clearly as possible the value of the pre-arbitration superstar.  Tampa Bay (who did a similarly shrewd deal with Evan Longoria, buying out the arbitration years and tying the player to the club past the 6-year pre-FA window) now gets Cy Young-quality starts from Price for the next two years at 1/20th his market value.  Buchholz is even more evident; at a pre-arbitration salary of $443,000 for 2010, he went 17-7 and gave the Red Sox #1 starter capabilities.  On the open market he’s worth at least $15M/year at that level of productivity.

– The worst FA contract ever given to a starting pitcher wasn’t one of the aforementioned infamous culprets; it belongs to one Kei Igawa.  The Yankees paid the posting fee of $26M just to negotiate with him, then signed him to a 5 year, $20M contract.  For that outlay of $46M guaranteed, the Yankees have gotten a record of 2-4 over parts of two seasons, and he hasn’t appeared in a MLB game since June of 2008.  Luckily the Yankees can afford it; this kind of FA mistake would cripple a mid-to-small market team for years.

– Jason Schmidt‘s 3yr, $47M deal with the LA Dodgers is the largest $$ bust in terms of a pure FA play, not counting the vagarities of the Japanese posting system.  Schmidt had ironically just finished an incredibly efficient deal with San Francisco, where he went 71-36 over 5 seasons on a $40M contract (resulting in a very good $/win number of $563,380).  Six games into his Dodger career he went onto the DL list with shoulder injuries that eventually cost him the rest of 2007 and all of 2008.  He tried to regroup in 09, failed to make the team out of spring, made a few starts and was back on the DL.  All told, 3 wins in 10 starts for $47M.

– Some of the infamous deals do appear close to the top of this list; Neagle’s $51M for a 19-23 record.  Dreifort’s $55M deal resulting in a grand total of 9 wins and only 26 starts.  Ironically, the highest single season salary was Roger Clemen‘s $28M deal with New York in 2007.  For that money the Yankees got a middling 6-6 record.

– Are there any major FA deals that ARE paying off?  Well, you have to dig deep.  CC Sabathia has won 40 games for the Yankees in the first two years of his $23M/year deal, which is easily the best 9-figure deal.  However, it is early; we need to check back in years 6 and 7 of this deal.  Mussina went 92-53 for the Yankees after he signed his $88M deal in 2001.  Verlander won 18 games this year for his $16M annual salary and looks like a good bet to continue that trend.

– The BEST long term FA deal ever signed has to be Pedro Martinez‘s 6year $92M deal.  He went 117-37 between 1998-2004, won 3 Cy Youngs, had 2 Cy Young runners-up, and in the year 2000 posted an ERA+ of 291, which accounts for the best modern-day single-season pitching performance in the history of the game.

Bringing this back to Cliff Lee; the conclusion is thus; he may earn a $25M/year deal but the odds of his continuing to win 20-22 games/year for the duration of the contract and thus inflating the $/win value will eventually prove that contract to be an albatross (even more so if he misses significant time to injury at some point).

Sports writers and baseball analysts have been beating the drum for years for some sort of payroll system modifications in baseball.   Especially in recent years with the dominance of the Yankees and Red Sox, who have been 1-2 in total salary for a while and have both made the playoffs more often than not in the past decade.  Last year was especially bad, when most of the playoff spots went to big market, big teams.  Great for playoff rankings, bad for most of the teams in the league.   The Yankees spent nearly SEVEN times as much in payroll entering 2010 than Pittsburgh; how can that be equitable?

Well, don’t look now but if the season ended today, as pointed out in this USAToday Article, only two of baseball’s top 10 salaried teams would qualify.  Most of baseball’s current 8 playoff teams are from middle-of-the-road payrolls.  There are two notable outliers: Texas comfortably currently sits atop the AL West with the 27th largest payroll and San Diego, with the 2nd LOWEST payroll in the majors, leads the NL west.  (See this google xls I put together briefly to show teams by record rank, playoff position and salary at the beginning of the season).

Each time a team like Tampa, San Diego or Texas competes well with the big boys, it makes it harder to implement some sort of reform.  Especially since you can look at each of the top tier payroll teams that are NOT in playoff contention right now and excuse their season.

• #2. Boston: still have the 5thbest record and would be leading most any other division.  Lots of injuries, transition year away from expensive older vets like Ortiz and Lowell, $10M in dead money.  Theo keeps talking about a transition year; he’s biding his time before he can re-do the team in the image of the 04 and 07 teams.
• #3: Cubs: over paid for Soriano, Zambrano underperforming, Fukodome bad signing.  Just not well constructed team.  Hendry on the GM hot seat.
• #4: Philadelphia: great team, killed by injuries and inconsistent pitching.  You wonder how badly the Lee trade bungling will hurt them in years to come.  I still think they’ll overtake Atlanta, especially now that Chipper is done for the season.
• #5: Mets: how does Minaya still have a job?  They seem to spend money because they have it, not because they acquire good players.  Oliver Perez, Jason Bay god awful signings, and just Santana and Beltran cost more than the San Diego Payroll annually.
• #6: Tigers: you have to hand it to the Tigers owner, who purposely over spent b/c his town was so badly hurt in the economic crash.  But he has some very expensive players tied up (Cabrera, Verlander, Guillen) for a number of years and their role players aren’t good enough.  Dark Days ahead for Detroit.

So, the #1 payroll team has the best record and the #30 payroll team has the worst record.   But the teams in between aren’t acting like we expect.  Is this Moneyball re-incarnated?  Well no.  Billy Beane’s teams success in Oakland was less about his OBP-centric stats drafting and more about the three starting pitchers (Zito,  Hudson, Mulder) his teams were graced with (as pointed out in this excellent Buzz Bissinger article).  What it does point out is that good GMs (even the wealthy ones in NY and Boston) are starting to value the draft pick and the young player and are becoming better and better at drafting them.  San Diego and Texas both kept payroll low, traded away vets, accumulated draft picks.  Texas easily has the best farm system in the majors and now has a powerhouse team for very little money.  This is exactly the same blueprint practiced for years by Florida and Tampa, though Texas has shown they are not afraid to buy talent at the deadline (something the panhandle state teams never do and thus one of the reasons why neither team really has any appreciable fan following).

So, what should base ball do?

1. Should there be a salary cap?  Well, yes I think so.  I think the Yankees have a totally unfair player advantage over the rest of the league and it shouldn’t be possible to have 4 times the payroll of a team within  your own division.  But i have no idea how to implement it.

2. Should there be a salary floor?  Well, no.  Because teams like Texas, Florida, San Diego, Tampa and (in years past) Oakland have consistently shown that you can build great cheap teams by depending on player development, drafting and having an entire team of pre-arbitration or arbitration-eligible guys.  You can’t force a team to spend money just to achieve an arbitrary salary floor.  Plus you have to allow teams to blow things up and start over (essentially what Toronto is doing now) and try to build for the long run.