The offseason is one day old now. The Royals won the World Series over the weekend and the free agent chaos will begin this coming weekend, at least in theory. MLB free agency tends to develop slowly — hey, it’s a marathon, not a sprint — though the Yankees made notable moves on November 9th (re-signed Chris Young) and November 12th (Francisco Cervelli for Justin Wilson) last offseason. Something could come together quickly again. Anyway, I have some thoughts.
1. Expect to see and hear a lot of “copy the Royals model!” stuff in the coming days and weeks. It happens with the World Series winner every year. In reality, the Royals only showed that once again, you have to be good at everything to win these days. That’s the winning formula: be well-rounded and a little lucky. (Every team needs a little luck to win a title.) The Royals play a very unique and entertaining style of baseball that seemed to expose every one of their opponent’s flaws this postseason. The Mets were done in by their bullpen inferiority and porous defense. Those were two enormous advantages for Kansas City. So copy the Royals model? Sure, you can try. This one seems damn near impossible to duplicate to me. Hats off to them. (Example: Among the teams with the six highest contact rates this season, only the Royals made the postseason. It ain’t that simple, folks.)
2. The Marlins officially hired Don Mattingly as their manager yesterday and maybe I’m just naive, but I think that’s a pretty good situation for both parties. Mattingly gets a nice four-year contract to manage a team with a lot of young talent (Giancarlo Stanton and Jose Fernandez, first and foremost) and a brand new ballpark in a fun city. The Marlins finally get someone who can put an end to their managerial revolving door. They’ve had eight managers in the last six years. Eight! Owner Jeffrey Loria is a transplanted New Yorker who grew up a Yankees fan, and he’s said to love Mattingly, which is why he was handpicked for the job. I have to think that means Mattingly will get a longer leash than their other recent managers. That franchise needs some stability. In the clubhouse at the very least. Mattingly commands instant respect as a former star player and those young players should benefit from finally having a manager stick around more than a few months. Also, the Yankees were never going to hire Mattingly to be on their coaching staff because of possible friction with Joe Girardi. Girardi beat out Mattingly for the managerial job a few years ago, so there might be a bit of a grudge there, plus every time the Yankees lose three straight next year, we’d hear talk about firing Girardi and replacing him with Mattingly. Not fair to anyone. It was never going to happen.
3. We’re going to spend the next few weeks analyzing players and looking at possible trade and free agent pickups just like we do every offseason. These days it seems like we focus too much on what a player can’t do — I am absolutely guilty of that — instead of looking at what he can provide. Daniel Murphy, for example. He’s a terrible defensive player with questionable power. He’s also a contact machine in an era where strikeouts are at all-time high — his 7.1% strikeout rate was the lowest in MLB in 2015 — who can play the three non-shortstop infield positions and hit just about anywhere in the lineup. You’re going to hear a lot about Chris Davis’ strikeouts and low batting average and not his unmatched power and surprisingly good defense at first base and right field. It’s easy to find ways to say a player is not worth acquiring. Every single player has some sort of flaw, most of them a major flaw. The hard point is looking from the angle and appreciating what a player can give you and seeing where he fits into your roster. I want to do a better job of that this winter.
4. I think the Yankees are heading for another offseason with more trades than free agent signings. They don’t have much money coming off the books at all — they’re shedding basically $5M each for Chris Capuano, Stephen Drew, Garrett Jones, and Young (when you count the incentives he reached) — and their roster flexibility is limited. The Yankees kinda sorta have a solution at second base — a Dustin Ackley/Rob Refsnyder platoon seems like one of those things that sounds great in November and awful in May — and of course the pitching staff needs help, but otherwise the team is locked in everywhere. Heck, they’re locked into the rotation too. They have seven starters for five spots if you include Adam Warren, and yet, it still feels like they need more rotation help because of the various health risks. Given the roster and payroll situation, I have a hard time seeing how the Yankees can add pieces this offseason without subtracting others. Trades make more sense than free agent additions.
5. We can finally start to see the light at the end of some of these long-term contract tunnels. Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran will be off the books next season, clearing $38M in annual salary, and there’s at least a small chance CC Sabathia’s option for 2017 won’t vest. Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez will definitely be off the books following the 2017 season. Clearing all that money is exciting because it means the Yankees can go big for free agents again — that said, the Yankees went big on free agents during the 2013-14 offseason and pretty much all of those deals are already regrettable — but freeing up roster space is pretty important too. We saw it with Sabathia this year. The Yankees weren’t going to take him out of the rotation no matter how poorly he pitched because they still owe him all that money. They’re doing this to themselves, don’t get me wrong, but at least they won’t be able to do it to themselves much longer because they’ll have fewer huge contracts on the books. At least until they sign a few more.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.