The decision whether to offer a player a contract by the December 13 deadline is automatic in most cases. Where it is not, or more accurately, when the team declines to offer a contract, it makes for an interesting statement on that player. “We don’t want you, we’d rather have the roster spot.” You can argue that in some cases the decision is designed to avoid an arbitration award that the team may deem excessive, but since an arbitration-determined salary is almost always below market value, that doesn’t carry much water.
The list of players, 42 in all, who were cut loose by their teams isn’t sexy. There are some highlights, but for the most part it’s a group of players who haven’t been able to get their careers going, either for performance or health reasons, and who have moved from “exciting” to “disappointing” in just a few short years. A number have been regulars on the transaction wire, such as Denny Bautista and Wil Ledezma. Injury cases, where a team seems to have decided that it won’t pay a player to not play or play poorly as they work back from injury, include Takashi Saito, Scott Proctor, and Chris Capuano. There are players who have played in the World Series recently, such as Willy Taveras, and a bunch who have rings: Aaron Miles, Tyler Johnson, and Randy Flores.
The biggest surprise, in my eyes, was the Orioles giving up on Daniel Cabrera, Cabrera has never come close to meeting the expectations set by his talent and his performance in 2005 and 2006, when he was a strikeout/ground-ball machine who needed just an improvement in his command to become a number two starter. That improvement never came, and in chasing it, Cabrera lost what he did well and watched his strikeout rate fall to half of its peak last season, his second straight with an ERA above 5.00. The innings he threw and his service time would have led to a mid-seven-figures arbitration award, regardless.
I can almost understand the decision… almost. Cabrera has shown few signs of improvement, and will be kind of expensive for a fourth or fifth starter. At the same time, the Orioles aren’t exactly deep in the rotation. They have prospects coming, and coming quickly, but the major league rotation could use some bodies. To take a pitcher who at the least has established that he can make 30 starts and who retains his upside-if little chance of getting there-and turn him loose just for want of some cash seems a little shortsighted. If this were a different team, one needing to win a lot of games in ’09, or one with seven or eight starters, I would feel otherwise. Cutting loose Cabrera denies the Orioles a player they could use, and cuts them off from the chance that he could find his way back. That the Orioles, who know him as well as any team, would let him go is valuable information, but I can’t help but think that Cabrera is going to have 425 soft-focus, “they didn’t believe in me” features written about him next summer as he starts the year 6-1, 2.66 for a new team.
At least Cabrera was a back of the rotation guy for his team by performance. The Nationals cut their number two starter from last season, Tim Redding, after he made 33 starts and threw 182 innings-both team-leading marks-with a 4.95 ERA. Redding was homer-prone and posted a marginal strikeout rate, but you would think a team that used 13 starting pitchers in 2007 and 11 last year would see the value in keeping a pitcher who can take the ball that often. As with the Orioles’ decision, I suspect that both of these cuts reflect a front-office mindset that is overrating the team’s short-term future. Both of these teams need to play for 2010 and beyond, and in 2009 they would do well to have some stability at the cost of performance. Given that both teams are chasing Mark Teixeira, they would appear to have delusions of grandeur, seeing Cabrera and Redding not as assets on a bad team, but as below-average pitchers with limited upside. I’m not sure the answer there isn’t “both,” but I do know that neither team is so deep in pitching that they should be giving away talent.
Where the non-tenders get interesting is when one team says, “don’t want him,” and a number of others do. Getting non-tendered by the Astros will almost certainly make Ty Wigginton money, as he now becomes a free agent coming off of the best season of his career (.285/.350/.526) as a third baseman and left fielder for the Astros. This has to be a cost-cutting decision; I’m not a big Wigginton fan, but the Astros have just Geoff Blum to play third base in Wigginton’s absence, and that’s not going to work very well. For the Astros to pinch pennies on Wigginton is just the latest episode in the ongoing saga of baseball’s bipolar franchise, as Drayton MacLane flits from wanting to win rightthisverysecond to not quite doing so if it might cost him money. Some team is going to give Wigginton a multi-year deal for a total value north of $12 million, which is a nice contract for a guy being cut by one team.
Of the players not yet mentioned, I’d take flyers on…
-
Chris Britton: The right-handed reliever has never quite caught on in Baltimore or the Bronx, despite a 3.83 ERA in 891/3 innings in the majors. He has the stuff to back that up as well, and could be an eighth-inning solution for any number of teams. -
Joey Gathright: He’s not going to hit enough to be more than a marginal regular, but he has so much raw speed that he’d be a bench weapon on a team good enough to care that much about tactical issues. He can pinch-run, be a defensive replacement, and an occasional early-inning pinch-hitter. In a league with room for so much roster dead weight, Gathright brings more to the table than most. -
Joe Nelson: Nelson had a 2.00 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 54 innings. Granting that he’s 33 and not quite this good… what the hell? How can you like money so much that you won’t take a chance on going to arbitration with a middle reliever who might get $2 million? The Marlins are a blight on the face of the American sports landscape, and the citizens of Florida are supposed to reward that by coming out in droves to watch and taxing themselves to build a new ballpark? Please.
—
Way back when-the file is named “November 18”-I threw together a piece as a followup to the "Free Agents I Like" column, loosely titled “Five Guys I Wouldn’t Sign.” I diddled with it on and off and never had it quite ready for publication; I’m not sure why, but it happens sometimes. I suppose after I get hit by a bus, someone can dig through my hard drive and post the unpublished thoughts of Joe Sheehan like a posthumous Tupac album.
Anyway, I mention this because A.J. Burnett has signed, and Burnett was one of the guys in the piece. Here’s his section:
A.J. Burnett: Weren’t we just here? Three years ago, Burnett was a six-year veteran who’d made 30 starts once and thrown 200 innings twice. Then he got a five-year, $55 million contract, made 30 starts once in three seasons and threw 200 innings once in three seasons, both times the season before he was able to exercise an opt-out clause. So he’s on the market again after opting out.
I wouldn’t sign A.J. Burnett with Frank McCourt’s money. There might be perfectly good reasons why the only times he’s made 30 starts have come in walk years, but I’m not willing, if it’s my money, to ignore the elephant in the room: that it may be because of the walk years. Moreover, A.J. Burnett isn’t one of the best pitchers in baseball, and has never been. His career ERA is 3.81, and his lowest mark ever is 3.30 with the 2002 Marlins. He has never, not once, picked up a single vote for the Cy Young Award. That has something to do with run support-Burnett has poor win totals for a pitcher with his run prevention-but also something to do with his not being durable or that far above average.
If I’m spending $15 million a year on a pitcher, he has to pitch. A.J. Burnett has three 200-inning seasons in a 10-year career. If I’m spending $15 million a year on a pitcher, he has to pitch well. Burnett has been one of the best starters in his league twice, both times in the NL, none since 2005.
Maybe this works out, but the Yankees have committed to him for five years, which is two more $16 million seasons-yes, $82.5 million-than he’s had in his life. This isn’t going to end well.
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They have had 4 winning seasons in 6 years, and won 2 championships in their short existence. They put a pretty good product on the field most years of late. Without writing a dissertation on the subject of my favorite team, they are hardly one of the worst run teams in any sports environment.
If you\'ve been to any other major league stadium, even during bad times, you would understand just how pathetic the Marlins handle their business.
But to speak to FSUMatt\'s comment above, perhaps Joe should have been a tad more specific in his \"blight\" comment. I\'m consistently impressed with their front office and management. Beinfest and Fredi Gonzalez seem to represent a franchise getting the most out of what its got, but the fact that they always have to do so points the finger squarely at the ownership. I\'d love to take a look at their books and see how much Loria is scraping directly into his pockets from revenue sharing etc. Perhaps their owner is a blight on the American sports landscape, even if the franchise is not?
it\'s generally just like: \"this was a good baseball decision.\"
I kind of resent this. The Marlins may be cheap but they kept a number of players this year who are getting more expensive. I think there has to be another reason to have cut Nelson -- whether AAA replacements (like Nelson last year) or because Nelson is hurt.
I\'m sure the Yankees are fun to watch too, but I\'ll take my Marlins any day.
I\'m not faulting management, but it\'s tough to defend ownership that routinely shells out half as much on the roster as they receive through revenue sharing ALONE. The Marlins could close the gates on game days and still make a profit! If I was a fan that paid admission and bought concessions, I would hope that some of my money would go toward the product on the field. I also wouldn\'t be too ecstatic about paying more taxes to fund a new stadium for that franchise.
I agree with your premise (hard to defend the ownership) and I\'d love to see them spend some money, but the sweeping statement by Joe is just wrong, and quite frankly below the standards in which his writing has set for itself.
That would be reason enough for me to cut ties with Cabrera. Why pay $6 million or so to a mediocre pitcher whom maybe, just maybe, will get back to being pretty good? The O\'s can pay someone else the minimum to be a bit worse than Cabrera. They\'re going nowhere in (at least) the next couple of seasons, so why waste the money?
In my mind, the Orioles are really looking for replacement level innings eaters, while waiting for the young pitchers to develop - Cabrera, being so wild could never get out of the 5th inning - a team can do better than $6 mil that they would have had to pay Cabrera.
But when that same guy has a 1:1 K:BB ratio, a plummeting K rate, and is only throwing a tick harder than Jamie Moyer it\'s time to move on.
Given the O\'s projected rotation and lack of ML-ready internal options, I have to agree with Joe on this one. If the lack of quality in the ML rotation ends up accelerating the timetables and service clocks of Matusz, Liz, Arrieta, et al., then not having Cabrera in 2009 could actually cost them down the road, when contention might be a possibility.
Besides, why not take the chance that Cabrera regains some of his old stuff, and becomes a tradeable commodity at the deadline to some team that lost a couple arms to injury?
If he tips his hat to the docile fans in Toronto when he stuggles, what will he do when he has problems in New York?
Emotional meltdown coming soon.
September 25, 2007 - Burnett makes Litsch\'s scheduled start against Baltimore.
Burnett is gutless, and clearly only tries when there\'s another lucrative contract at stake.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/splits?playerId=4153&type=pitching3&three=1
Riddle me this: when you sign a talented pitcher with the injury-prone label to a market setting contract, do you:
a) treat him with kid gloves a bit to avoid injury so you get return on your investment?
b) ride him hard up over 120 pitches (when anyone watching tv can tell that he\'s gassed) for 5 straight starts in the second year of his contract so you can then complain that he\'s a wimp for getting hurt?
If you said B, you\'re the Toronto Blue Jays of 2007.
Yes, of course his offensive value is greater at 3B than it is in LF, so teams will want to play him at 3B, but when there\'s that big of a difference in defensive value, you have to start considering it, don\'t you? Are defensive metrics that far behind that teams wouldn\'t trust them? Seems like his defense is a boon in LF.
I don\'t want to say this about Wigg specifically, because it seems his defense at 3B might be getting better and he could be a near-average defensive 3B for the next couple of years, which would make him pretty valuable, considering his bat. But there are other players that are like him that move around defensively when they aren\'t good enough anywhere, really. What is up with that?
As for the Marlins, well, Loria might be reprehensible, but the team still manages to put a competitive product on the field. Maybe the Marlins have found the newest inefficiency--namely, if they are the best finder of talent in MLB, they don\'t have to pay *anybody*.
It\'s worked out so far, in a way.
1) Loria. When the owners were bucking the players, they figured there was only enough for one pig at the slop trough. That\'s when you could take your kid for 50 cents bleacher seats..(extra seats built in to scape up whatever other nickel was out there..and they like weren\'t filled up..right)...Well, after the other pig (players) forced his way in, found out there was really no limit..the public was like no limit to their suckerability. Notice on all these taxpayer funded stadiums, there AREN\'t any bleachers..
But Loria, well, no matter how big the slop trough, when he\'s the pig at the trough, still only room for ONE pig. Bear to note that on the contest to sucker the public to fund a stadium that seats max of 10 (luxury suits 10 mil per), Selig\'s got his buck on Loria. Loria really does go straight to the jugular..Personally prefer the hypocrites (next group)
2) Hicks, McCourt, McLane, et al. These are basically one piggers, BUT they kind of pay lipstick-on-a-pig service to feeding the other pig...and they do it BADLY..kind of like how your brother of law plays fantasy baseball..prospect..aw never done nothing..prime..well, let \'em repeat it before I buy in...ready to retire, retired, or dead..that\'s my baw, hey whatyawant. ill pay anything..
3) Steingroup. basically 2 above but throws so much lipservice mo\' around, gets points for missing..need 1stbaseman, Tex out there....well how about a broken down pitcher instead