River Avenue Blues

Report: Pascual Perez murdered during robbery

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Via Hoy (translated article): Former Yankees right-hander Pascual Perez was murdered in his home in the Dominican Republic during a robbery last night. Enrique Rojas says they were after the money he receives from his MLB pension. He was 55.

Perez spent just two seasons in New York, pitching to a 2.87 ERA in 87.2 innings from 1990-1991 while battling shoulder problems. He spent most of his career with the Braves and Expos. Check out this guest post on his interesting career from David Meadvin, which ran earlier this year. Condolences go out to Perez’s family and friends.

When bad contracts go good

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(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

As expected, Rafael Soriano opted out of the final year of his contract with the Yankees on Wednesday afternoon. He’ll try to parlay his big season as Mariano Rivera’s injury replacement into another fat multi-year contract, like the one the club’s ownership gave him two winters ago. Unless Mo retires or something really crazy happens, the two sides will part ways after one decent and one really good year.

Soriano, 32, pitched to a 2.94 ERA (3.56 FIP) in 107 innings with the Yankees over the last two years. Thirty-nine and one-third of those innings came last year (4.12 ERA and 3.97 FIP), when he struggled for a few weeks before missing more than two months with the fifth elbow injury of his career. The other 67.2 innings came this year when he was brilliant (2.26 ERA and 3.32 FIP), stepping in for Rivera and going 42-for-46 in save chances. The ninth inning stability he provided in place of Mo was enormous as well, that was a situation that could have easily spiraled out of control.

Like many others, I trashed Soriano’s contract when the deal was announced. The silly opt-out clauses meant the Yankees carried all the risk, which wasn’t ideal since his history of elbow trouble meant he was riskier than most players in general. If he got hurt and/or stunk, they were stuck with him. If he pitched well, they wouldn’t get to keep him. Heck, the only reason Soriano was with the team this season was because he got hurt and kinda stunk last year, enough so that he couldn’t get more money on the open market. Now that he had a great year, he’s gone. The Yankees still got to enjoy that great year of course, but considering that Rivera is still flirting with retirement, wouldn’t it be nice to have Soriano around for another year? Instead, he and Scott Boras held all the cards.

Considering everything involved, Soriano’s time in pinstripes went about as well as possible. He was overpaid but so is basically every free agent reliever, it comes with the territory. The Yankees managed to squeeze one elite year out of him and got lucky in the sense that his 2011 elbow problem didn’t turn into something more serious, something serious enough to turn him and his contract into an albatross. The Yankees rolled the dice and were ultimately rewarded, but I really hope they don’t make a habit out of letting players control future roster spots and payroll with opt-out clauses like this.

Report: Yankees have interest in Torii Hunter

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Via Mark Feinsand: The Yankees have interest in free agent-to-be outfielder Torii Hunter. The Angels are unlikely to make him a qualifying offer, meaning it would not cost a draft pick to sign him.

Hunter, 37, hit .313/.365/.451 with 16 homers with the Halos this offseason, though his .389 BABIP was wildly out of whack compared to the rest of his career (.307). He’s been a consistently above-average hitter throughout his career though, plus he offers solid defense in right field. The Yankees love strong character as well, and Hunter is widely considered to be one of the best guys in the game. He’s a fit and someone we will hear an awful lot about in the coming weeks.

Frankenstorm Open Thread Day III

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(ZUMAPRESS.com)

Yankee Stadium made it through Hurricane Sandy just fine, but millions have not. Countless people across the Tri-State Area are still without power, homes are flooded and destroyed all across the region, public transportation is a wreck … it’s going to be weeks before things get back to normal. The Yankees donated $500k to the relief effort today — “The damage and destruction to the Tri-State Area caused by Hurricane Sandy is daunting, but we have seen the great resiliency of this region before. As a neighbor and community member, the Yankees embrace our role of stepping forward and assisting the American Red Cross,” said Hal Steinbrenner in a statement — and if you want to help out as well, you can do so at the Red Cross. Every little bit helps.

Here is your open thread for the evening. You’ve got the NBA and that’s pretty much it tonight, so talk about whatever you like here as long as it’s not politics. Go bananas.

What Went Right: Ivan Nova’s strikeouts

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(Jonathan Daniel/Getty)

For all intents and purposes, Ivan Nova’s 2012 season was just short of a total disaster. Instead of taking a step forward and solidifying his spot in team’s long-term plans, he took a step back and became one of the Yankees’ biggest question marks. It’s not all bad though, he did improve his underlying performance and quite substantially as well.

Coming up through the minors, Nova never struck out more than 19.3% (7.14 K/9) of the batters he faced in a single full season. Last year, in his first full big league season, he struck out 13.9% (5.33 K/9) of batters faced. This year that jumped up to 20.5% (8.08 K/9), the 11th highest strikeout rate among qualified AL starters. He held that rate pretty steady during his brutal second half, which is oddly a good sign…

Nova’s increase in strikeouts is due to increased usage of his slider, which is something we first saw in the second half of last year. After throwing the pitch just 3.7% of the time a year ago, he upped that to 12.1% this season while scaling back the usage of his curveball and changeup. Opponents missed on nearly 40% of their swings against the pitch (39.2%, to be exact), which is far above average. That’s pretty darn close to CC Sabathia’s slider (42.8%), just for perspective. Overall, Nova generated a swing and a miss on 9.0% of his pitches this year, up from 6.6% last year.

The strikeout rate improvement was substantial this year, and normally that would result in improved performance. For Nova, it resulted in declining performance. Tough to explain and I really don’t know how, but this isn’t a “he stinks when he strikes guys out so he should stop striking guys out” thing. His walk rate (7.5 BB% and 2.96 BB/9) was rock solid and he still got an above average amount of ground balls (45.2%), so the peripheral stats improved from 2011 to 2012. The problem was that whenever Nova wasn’t striking guys out or getting ground balls, he was giving up homers and extra-base hits. This season was a disaster for Ivan, but the increased strikeout rate (while other core stats remained steady) was certainly a nice silver lining.

Update: Rafael Soriano officially opts out of contract

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3:45pm: Soriano has officially opted out of his contract, the Yankees announced. He’ll receive a $1.5M buyout on his way out the door. Heyman says that Randy Levine asked Scott Boras what it would take to keep Soriano in pinstripes, but the agent said it was best for him to explore free agency first.

9:10am: As expected, Rafael Soriano will opt-out of the final year of his contract today according to Jon Heyman. Today is the deadline for option decisions, and the Yankees will make the right-hander a qualifying offer by Friday to ensure draft pick compensation if he signs elsewhere. Click here for the full offseason schedule.

Soriano, 32, pitched to a 2.26 ERA (3.32 FIP) in 67.2 innings this year. He went 42-for-46 in save chances after Mariano Rivera went down with a knee injury in early-May. The Yankees signed him to a three-year, $35M contract prior to 2011, and he’ll be leaving $14M on the table in favor of a potential multi-year deal. Brandon League’s new three-year, $22.5M deal with the Dodgers is a good indication that someone will pay Soriano handsomely this winter, though it did take a potential suitor away. I think the only way the Yankees look to bring him back is if Rivera retires.