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CHICAGO WHITE SOX
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Re-signed 1B/OF-L Mark Kotsay to a one-year, $1.5 million contract. [11/4]
Acquired 4C-L Mark Teahen from the Royals for 2B-L Chris Getz and 3B-R Josh Fields. [11/5]

If the Teahen trade goes down, as it seems it will, this will be interesting. Initial speculation suggests that Teahen’s purpose would be to stock right field. If true, that’s news both good and bad. It’s good in that it means that they see Alex Rios as their everyday center fielder, where Rios’ bat plays better. It’s bad news, however, because it means that they haven’t really beaten the Podzilla problem of starting a bad-hitting regular in the outfield. Now 2700+ PAs into it, Teahen’s career as a hitter is now substantial enough that we can kick aside his slumps and brief good patches and take him for what he is-a guy who’ll post an EqA in the .250-.260 range, doesn’t walk much, and has lousy power for a starting outfielder-career .419 sluggers in right field aren’t assets, they’re liabilities. His arbitration-eligibility makes him expensive-he made almost $3.6 million in 2009-so if he’s a starting outfielder, he’s a stumbling block in terms of his addition to the payroll as well as in the lineup.

So, take a step back. What if Teahen’s not going to play right field? What if, instead, he’s going to resume regular duty at third base, where his glove work may not be special, but it’s endurable, and where his virtues as a hitter are more typically standard? Major league third basemen managed a .264 EqA last year; Teahen’s good for something around that. If Rios comes out of his fugue, he can be a league-average or better hitter in center; expensive, but employable, and an improvement on last year’s cast of characters, let alone Jerry Owens. You still have to find a start-worthy right fielder (unless they retain Jermaine Dye) as well as a DH, unless they re-sign Jim Thome, in which case they’ll have put the band back together, only with a better supporting cast.

All of which goes towards what would be the significantly beneficial upshot of adding Teahen to their infield, which is that it gives them a clear reason to push Gordon Beckham back into the middle infield, taking over the second-base job that a year ago we expected would be his by 2010. It’s surprising to me that this isn’t more readily obvious; the Sox moved Alexei Ramirez to short after he’d had a good rookie season at second, after all, so it isn’t like the Sox shrink from these sorts of changes. At second, Beckham’s a future All-Star and a significant offensive asset. Add in the eventual breakthrough of Tyler Flowers, and you can start to see the shape of an offense that actually scores runs instead of supplying them in desultory fashion.

Was the price worth it? Certainly, although the expense needs to be measured more in terms of what it’ll cost to employ Teahen (yet to be determined) as well as the role he winds up in, because if he’s their right fielder, he doesn’t just cost them money and at-bats, he costs them the opportunities to explore better alternatives in right field. Getz is just a placeholding, scrappy, organizational soldier type as starting second basemen go; nice to have, easy to deal, and not too difficult to find another like him. Fields represents another disappointing legacy of their older, more conservative, college-oriented draft strategy that produced so little in the way of worthwhile talent, and which they broke with sharply in 2007 when they picked Aaron Poreda. Teahen might have just turned 28, and that can inspire appropriate tut-tutting that he’s as good as he’ll ever be. But keep in mind that Fields will turn 27 next month, so it isn’t like the Sox surrendered some unrealized future potential-they knew what they had, and didn’t like it.

KANSAS CITY ROYALS
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Traded 4C-L Mark Teahen to the White Sox for 2B-L Chris Getz and 3B-R Josh Fields. [11/5]

The Royals didn’t want to have to deal with Teahen’s arbitration case, preferring to non-tender him, so somewhat like the Akinori Iwamura trade, this was a matter of ditching someone they weren’t going to keep for something, or in this case, just about anything. But I also think they very simply had increasingly little idea about what Teahen was for. That’s more than a little understandable, considering he’s turned out to be a lot less valuable than expected, whether you set your expectometer to his being drafted by Billy Beane or when he came back from a demotion having (briefly) rediscovered how to hit. He’d been reduced to something of a lineup flywheel, covering an outfield corner when they were short there, or third base whenever the latest Alex Gordon issue cropped up. The most celestial mystery was the decision to make him the club’s Opening Day second baseman this year, a particularly inspired bit of reflexively answering a question with the same answer of initial resort. (“We need a _______.” “Teahen?” Mad lib away.) A few ugly plays later, they got over that notion three games into the experience.

The question now is what Getz and Fields do for Kansas City, besides cost less combined while taking up more space. Illustrate the second law of thermodynamics as symptoms of Royal entropy? It beats me. Sure, it’s easy to say you’d rather have Teahen, maybe, but Teahen was outbound, so if anything, we could be generous and take this as a violation of the first law and the conservation of energy, in that the Royals got something that’s supposed to be something for something that was about to become nothing. Me, I’m not sure I buy it: they had something about to become nothing, and traded it away for something that appears to already be nothing, just more of it.

If I were stocking an infield, I’d rather have Alex Gordon at third base than Fields, and Alberto Callaspo at second than Getz. In this, I suspect Dayton Moore and I are like-minded; the Royals, ill-starred as they may be, already have Gordon and Callaspo. Getz isn’t really a great utility option, although he does have experience at third and short, and if this organization could see a Teahen-shaped second baseman, and is the sort of outfit that throws money at Willie Bloomquist for being scrappy, I can see how they might decide Getz is their sort of scrappy utility infielder. It beats another spin with Luis Hernandez, right? So put a gold star on that and call it progress-y.

As for Fields, he is reliably, politely referred to as athletic, what with his past play on college gridirons for Oklahoma State, where he still holds the record for career touchdown passes. Try as they might, the Royals never will make it to the Cotton Bowl, unfortunately, so they’ve taken on the task of doing with him what the Sox could not, and figure out what he’s for on the diamond. His play at third base could be flat-footed and tentative, and if he doesn’t play third, it’s worth wondering whether he’ll ever hit enough to be an asset at any other corner. If Fields is bound for the outfield-as has been at times rumored-he’s not a great alternative to the still-awful lineup choice the Royals had between Mike Jacobs or Jose Guillen while they still had Teahen in their possession; it’s sort of like choosing flavors at a Howard Johnson’s when you really would rather be at Paciugo if actual satisfaction is the goal. If you want to moon over Strat cards past, people are still fond of his brief bit of southpaw smashing in 2007, when he slugged .698 against them in his rookie season. He didn’t replicate anything like that in his time at Charlotte in 2008 or this year in The Show, though, so there’s not a lot to hang your hat on. Have we mentioned he’s got athleticism going for him?

It’s easy to be cruel here; these are the Royals, after all. Even so, you can credit Dayton Moore for converting the economic certainty that Teahen was an ex-Royal into two warm bodies on the 40-man. You can credit him for landing people you can bet they’ll use in 2010, because this should help spare them any more mistakes big (like Guillen) or small (like Bloomquist) when it comes to picking your 2010 Royals position players. You can hope that the cost savings realized by deleting Teahen by whatever method encourages them to do their pitchers a favor and pick up their 2010 option on Coco Crisp. It would be easy to kibitz on what else he might have gotten for Teahen, but it’s important to recognize that Teahen’s career has not been all that special.

It might be more appropriate to wonder what the point was, since this doesn’t advance the Royals in any particular direction beyond “staffed,” and as sorry as their lot may be, this isn’t a division stocked with unassailably great ballclubs. To do so would be to ask whether they plan on wasting Zack Greinke‘s greatness, however, and that could be seen as impolite.

SEATTLE MARINERS
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Claimed RHP Yusmeiro Petit off of waivers from the Diamondbacks. [11/4]

Petit’s may have managed 7.4 K/9, but that was pretty much the lone highlight of a miserable season with the Snakes. It might seem strange to expect good things from him moving from the National League to the American, but I expect a key component to his potential success in Seattle is tied to his fly-balling ways and coming to a club in a bigger ballpark that also places an obvious premium on outfield defense. His G/F ratio was 0.6, and whatever his strikeout rate suggests, he’s not a power pitcher as much as one who gets by with guile; pitching in Corporate Banky Bank Bandbox, he got spindled and mutilated, allowing a dozen homers and 37 runs in 41⅓ IP. That’s not to say he didn’t get punished for his mistakes on the road-seven homers allowed in 48⅓ IP doesn’t get mistaken for ‘good’ except in a relative sense-but there’s enough here to like as far as a flyer. If Petit makes it through the winter on the 40-man, you can take that as an evaluation of how highly they value his upside; if he doesn’t, it’s worth having dibs on him in case nobody else has the desire to claim him later on this winter.

ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS
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Outrighted OF-Ls Alex Romero and Trent Oeltjen to Reno (Triple-A); declined to pick up their 2010 club option for 1BL Chad Tracy noted that INF-L Danny Richar and RHP Daniel Cabrera have filed for free agency; further noted the losses of RHP Yusmeiro Petit and LHP Doug Slaten on waiver claims by the Mariners and Nationals, respectively. [11/4]

Before their free-agent declarations (and decisions about whether to offer any of them arbitration), the Snakes are down to 37 players in-house to carry on their 40-man over the winter, counting their trio on the 60-day DL (Brandon Webb, Chad Qualls, and the especially ill-fated Conor Jackson). However, Doug Davis, Qualls, and Scott Schoeneweis are eligible for free agency, with a 2010 club option on Webb (which appears to be a certainty). So we’re probably down to 34, and they nevertheless have some additional slack that seems likely to be cast off by the time they add minor leaguers they’ll want to protect from the Rule 5 draft: there’s not a lot of cause to carry journeymen like Luke Carlin or Josh Whitesell across a full winter, not when those are players of the type you can replace or retain via minor league free agency between now and February, and make room for as required.

All of which goes towards my way of saying that it’s interesting that they decided to punt Petit and Slaten. Not that they aren’t much more than staff filler-a fifth starter if Petit’s in a rotation, or a long reliever and a second lefty if they’re both in the bullpen. Those aren’t useless things to have, of course, just obviously replaceable, and it’s interesting that the pair has been discarded, and for what we can infer from the decision as far as the organization’s relative confidence in its remaining pitching talent.

CINCINNATI REDS
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Outrighted 1BL Kevin Barker to Louisville (Triple-A). [11/4]

LOS ANGELES DODGERS
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Declined to pick up their 2010 club option for $10 million on RHP Jon Garland, making him a free agent. [11/5]

SAN DIEGO PADRES
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Outrighted 2B-R Edgar Gonzalez to Portland (Triple-A). [11/4]

WASHINGTON NATIONALS
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Claimed LHP Doug Slaten off of waivers from the Diamondbacks. [11/4]

Whatever muscles are involved in cringing, you’d have to expect that Nationals fans are used to flexing them, but as nabs of second lefty aspirants go, Slaten’s not the worst guy to grab. He can dial up his fastball to around 90 on average, he mixes in a good slider, and take him out of the horrors of the bandbox in Phoenix, and you might have a worthwhile reliever. His career rates against lefties in the majors aren’t dominating (.261/.322/.394 overall), striking out 22 percent of them, but it’s worth seeing what he might do elsewhere, as he’s held lefties to .245/.283/.363 in 91 PAs away from the Ballpark Formerly Known as Bob. If he flops, he’s easily cut-worthy, so it isn’t like the stakes are all that high either way.

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keithkowalski
11/05
Christina:

Why would the Royals pick up an eight million dollar option on a CF that missed over half the season and in the forty nine games he did play in he hit a meager .228?

It's not my money but I'd rather pay the $500k buyout and then offer him a one year incentive laden deal. As a Royals fan I'd love to have him and his wheels back in CF, especially if the lead footed Jose Guillen is patrolling right.
Oleoay
11/05
The thing for me is Teahan has some value for his versatility, and as you said, could man third base at an adequate level... so he gets flipped for a less valuable utility player like Getz and a dead bat in Fields. I'd think the Royals could do better and, given their history, put themselves in a bad position where a hot month from Fields or Getz could lead to an overpaid extension.
BurrRutledge
11/05
"and as you said, could man third base at an adequate level... so he gets flipped for a less expensive utility player like Getz and a dead bat in Fields."

Fixed that for you, Richard!

Said another way, it's a salary dump. To the Royals, Teahan isn't going to be worth his arb salary. It's not moving the team forward, which is disappointing, but it's not eating up their resources for a utility player, either.
Oleoay
11/06
Won't Getz be arbitration-eligible soon enough? And what I was suggesting is that instead of flipping Teahan for Getz, and then flipping Getz for some middling prospect a year later.. why not cut out the middle man and flip Teahan for a somewhat better prospect?
ckahrl
11/06
Getz has little more than a year's worth of service time so far, so he's two years away from arbitration, minimum. Fields is actually closer to two full years.
ckahrl
11/05
Shame on me, I totally left off saying anything about Kotsay. The money's seemingly the current standard for a veteran of this caliber, and it's better than having Darin Erstad, I guess. Like most stick-wielding bipeds who put balls in the air with their sticks, he liked hitting in the Cell, smiting three of his four homers there in 60 PAs. On a team where at least Carlos Quentin's right-handed, Paul Konerko's right-handed, and--if he makes the team--Tyler Flowers is right-handed, there might be at-bats and spot starts to go around as far as playing time at first, DH, and left field are concerned. Perhaps best of all, there's no cult of pointless adulation around Kotsay the way there is with Podzilla, and he's apparently comfortable in a bench role. This isn't cause for handstands or raspberries.
Oleoay
11/06
There's a Hermedia to the Red Sox trade now too. Looks like the World Series ending opened up the floodgates.
onegameref
11/06
Do you know if the Cubs can offer arbitration to Harden and receive picks if he declines? There does not seem to be any mention of this possibility in any of the coverage of his impending status. I still can't figure out why they want to discard him so quickly when he was nearly their most effective pitcher at various times the last two years. Will he ever be a workhorse? I doubt it but he certainly has value that should warrant considering retention.
trialaw
11/06
If the Cubs offer arbitration to Harden, they will receive 2 picks because he is an "A" free agent.
ckahrl
11/06
He also figures to be worth a multi-year offer from somebody--albeit one with plenty of incentive-driven structure to protect the team--so that an arbitration offer makes plenty of sense.
rawagman
11/06
"their older, more conservative, college-oriented draft strategy that produced so little in the way of worthwhile talent, and which they broke with sharply in 2007 when they picked Aaron Poreda"...
Christina, I'm a little confused. I know Poreda was more noted for upside than the high-inducing Broadway specials the blanc-sox had previously drafted, but Poreda still was a bona-fide collegian. So are you being sarcastic, or am I missing something here? I swear I've seen that line (or a derivative thereof before.
ckahrl
11/06
Poreda was seen as an upside-oriented power pitcher, not a traditional, "finished," low-upside college product, a la Fields, or Lance Broadway, or Kyle McCulloch.
Peter7899
11/06
Did you really quote the Second Law of Thermodynamics in a baseball article? Phew! Thank goodness for my bachelors in mechanical engineering. Otherwise, I wouldn't have the slightest clue as to what you were talking about. "Celestial mystery", "reflexively answering", "Royals entropy". Note to self... make sure to bring my textbook collection and dictionary to the next Kahrl article. Then maybe I won't feel so stupid for being talked down to.
ckahrl
11/06
Talked down to? Believe you me, I may see smart people here at the (virtual) office, but in a room full of sharp knives, I settle for spreading butter.
Peter7899
11/06
I apologize, I wasn't trying to be rude. If the audience you're intending to write to is your Ginsu coworkers then you are doing a fine job. I'm just Joe Fan, trying to catch some transaction analysis. I will give you props on the "stick-wielding bipeds" comment. That was pretty witty for sure.
ckahrl
11/06
Nah, no worries, wasn't rude at all. But maybe it's important for me to remind people I do my column with a smile. Except when I'm despairing over something involving the A's. Can't we apply some of that TARP money to Eric Chavez?
Oleoay
11/07
Perhaps Obama will initiate a Cash for Chavez program if Teahan clunks around too much at third base for the White Sox...
radarbinder
11/06
I like the laws of Thermodynamics and appreciated their application to a baseball comment. As a Chisox fan, I fear that Teahen is moving towards the entropy side too quickly because he does not lift the ball. Perhaps a good hitting instructor can get him to swing for flyballs, which is a way to be rewarded with homeruns at the Cell?

Of course Teahen should play third and bop Gordo over to second! The Sox would be idiotic not to make that move. I was assuming that is why they were ready to dump Getz? Beckham and The Missile will make a good keystone combo for years to come. If the Sox intended to keep Gordon at third they surely would not have made this move, right? *Fingers crossed*

Hey, Kenny Williams, do you read this? Hello?
ckahrl
11/06
In his comments to the Score, Kenny Williams has made it clear--Teahen's headed for third base. Score one for the White Sox and common sense, and scratch one from the reporter who was all for putting Teahen in right field.

http://www.670-thescore.com/blog/2009/11/06/dyes-time-with-the-sox-all-but-over/
DrDave
11/06
Aw, no "Tempest in a Teahen" line?
ckahrl
11/06
Some might say that's too easy, but I guess for me it was my recently reading David Pietrusza's history of the 1920 election that had me thinking in a certain rut. Except that saying 'rut' when Warren Harding's involved seems a bit off-color, except saying 'off-color' about Harding's somewhat loaded, which is what the gun of at least one Harding administration miscreant was before he used it to excuse himself from any legal proceedings, and shooting yourself is probably exactly what some Sox fans might be willing to consider if they wind up with Mark Teahen as their everyday starting right fielder.
mlsgrad99
11/06
Ever see a BBC show called Connections? In every episode, they look at the flow of history and show the connections. To cite just one example, how is the size of a nuclear missile silo connected to the width of an ancient Roman donkey's ass?

Considering how deftly Christina got us from a history of the 1920 Presidential election to potential mass suicides in Chicago around early April 2010, she must be a fan of the show as well!
ckahrl
11/06
Very much so. When I was a wee thing growing up on a horse ranch, I was enthralled listening to James Burke explain the critical importance of the stirrup to the Battle of Hastings, something that seems obvious now, but it wasn't something the Romans had thought of, let alone Alexander the Great's Companions. Points to the Normans, plus the kingdom and assorted goodies.
Oleoay
11/07
The Romans were kind of deficient at mounting things. They had a habit of letting Hannibal stomp his elephants all the way from Morocco to Northern Italy and back until they decided to send some legions to Carthage. The ironic thing is that the Huns introduced Europe to the stirrup (by overrunning it), yet they were running all over Europe trying to get away from the Mongols.
harderj
11/07
I appreciated the Strat reference vis-a-vis Fields.