River Avenue Blues

Veterans Day Open Thread

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Happy Veterans Day to all of you veterans out there. I’m one of those wimpy guys who hoped 9/11 didn’t somehow result in me being drafted, so thanks for your service.

Here’s your open thread for the night. The Texans and Bears are your late NFL games, plus there’s some NBA stuff going on somewhere. You folks know how these things work by now, so do what you do.

It’s always a bit of a pain to come up with photos for these things, so I’m going to just embed random MLB.com video clips until I get bored and think of something else.

Adams & Heathcott continue to hit in Arizona

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The above video is a recent feature on the seven Yankees farmhands playing in the Arizona Fall League, including interviews with most of ’em. So check it out. Here are some notes…

  • OF Slade Heathcott was your Arizona Fall League Player of the Week last week, when he did the whole “three triples in six at-bats” thing. In other Heathcott news, check out this Don Ketchum feature on all the things he’s overcome in his career.
  • The Yankees have re-signed RHP Kelvin Perez to a minor league deal according to Matt Eddy. The 27-year-old had a sneaky good year this season — 1.58 ERA, ~3.05 FIP, 8.5 K/9, and 4.2 BB/9 in 85.2 innings between Double-A and Triple-A — and could make his big league debut next year if he gets the walks under control.
  • For all of this year’s available minor league free agents, check out Baseball America’s Tracker. The Yankees need some Triple-A pitching depth this year, so I’ll dig through and find some interesting names at some point.

The AzFL regular season ends on Thursday and the championship game will be played next Saturday. Scottsdale is in second place in the East division and has to make up two games in four games to play in the title game. Here’s the recap of last week…

AzFL Scottsdale (5-4 loss to Mesa) Monday’s game
CF Slade Heathcott: 1-3, 1 R, 1 2B, 1 K, 1 HBP
RHP Dan Burawa: 0.2 IP, 1 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 0/2 GB/FB — only eight of 18 pitches were strikes (44%)

[Read more…]

Davidoff: Yankees would like to find an upgrade over Jayson Nix

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Via Ken Davidoff: The Yankees would like to find an upgrade over Jayson Nix this offseason, meaning someone who could play 100+ games between shortstop and third base next season. That won’t be easy at all.

Nix, 30, hit .243/.306/.384 (88 wRC+) in 202 plate appearances this season, including a 97 wRC+ against lefties. Maicer Izturis is off the market, and the only other free agents I see who fit the ball are Marco Scutaro and Jeff Keppinger. Scutaro is likely to get big bucks from the Giants and Keppinger has played a total of 125.2 innings at short in the last four years, including zero in the last two years. Hopefully the trade market is more bountiful.

Mailbag: Michael Pineda and 2014

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(REUTERS/Steve Nesius)

JW asks: Given that the Yankees truly appear committed to 2014 payroll plan, does the Michael Pineda trade look even worse in hindsight? In other words, it always seems like there are starters who can be had on one-year deals, but as we can see, even guys like Torii Hunter look to be in a position to command multi-year deals. In other words, for payroll management, the Yankees would have been better off with the relatively low-cost hitter under control instead of a pitcher.

I disagree with that, I think the exact opposite it is true. It seems to be much easier to find position players willing to take a one-year contracts than starting pitchers, or at least starting pitchers who can have a real impact. Let’s not go off memory though. With some help from the MLBTR Transaction Tracker, here’s a breakdown of one-year contracts by position over the last three years…

  • Catchers: 31
  • Corner Infielders: 29
  • Middle Infielders: 32
  • Outfielders/DHs: 63
  • Starters: 50
  • Relievers: 69

These are guaranteed contracts only, so no minor league deals. If you click the link and dig through the data, you’ll see that nearly all of the catchers were backups and that the vast majority of the starting pitchers were reclamation projects, guys like Erik Bedard (three one-year deals), Chien-Ming Wang (three), Ben Sheets (two), Bartolo Colon (two), Scott Olsen (two), Rich Harden, Justin Duchscherer, so on and so forth. In fact, the best one-year deals given to starters these last three years went to Hiroki Kuroda and Andy Pettitte. It’s not all that close either. Feel free to look for yourself.

I didn’t like the Jesus Montero-Michael Pineda trade because a) I (foolishly?) held out some hope that Montero could catch for at least two or three years before moving out from behind the plate, and b) I thought the Yankees needed the young bat. That said, it was easy to see why they made the trade. Ivan Nova was the team’s only other established starter aside from CC Sabathia, and he had one full season under his belt. Compared to what other young guys like Trevor Cahill and Mat Latos and Gio Gonzalez were fetching in trades, the Yankees actually got a steal. That sounds hilarious in retrospect, but it was true at the time of the trade. Things have just gone horribly wrong since.

The Yankees need to add some offensive pieces at the moment, but their top four prospects are all position players. With Phil Hughes due to become a free agent after next season, Nova and David Phelps represent the team’s only two young and cost-controlled starters at the big league level, and Nova just had a terrible year while Phelps has eleven career starts to his credit. Pineda has been a non-factor at this point and I’ll continue to consider him one going forward until he actually gets on a mound. Outside of Kuroda and Pettitte, there are no starters available on one-year deals who are slam dunks to upgrade the rotation. There are plenty of hitters who could help on one-year pacts, however.

Boras expects Cano to play out 2013 before signing a new contract

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At the GM Meetings this week, Scott Boras told Dan Barbarisi and Joel Sherman that he speaks to Randy Levine and Brian Cashman several times a week and that the two sides will continue to discuss a contract extension for Robinson Cano. He expects Cano to play out the final year of his contract in 2013 before signing a new deal, however.

Cano, 30, is reportedly seeking ten years at “top-of-the-market dollars” with his next contract. Sherman hears that Robbie won’t take any kind of hometown discount after taking one with the four-year, $30M deal he signed prior to 2008. That contract has since swelled to six years and $57M thanks to the two club options that have since been exercised. Given the 2014 payroll plan, I find this whole situation to be both fascinating and terrifying.

Preliminary 2013 Yankees ZiPS Projections

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(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

In a series of Insider-only posts at ESPN, Dan Szymborski used his ZiPS projection system to break down the six division races using current rosters. Here are the links for the AL East, AL Central, AL West, NL East, NL Central, and NL West. No projection system is perfect or even close to it, but ZiPS has been consistently solid the last few years and is typically my go-to system. Standard disclaimer: Projections are not predictions, they’re an attempt to measure a player’s true talent level at the moment.

Anyway, the current Yankees roster is pretty bad. They don’t have Hiroki Kuroda, Andy Pettitte, an established closer, a legitimate starting catcher, a right fielder, or a bench. Plugging those holes internally means going with unproven youngsters and retread veterans, not the guys you expect to find playing everyday for the Yankees. Here are the projections…

The projections for Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, Alex Rodriguez, Brett Gardner, and Curtis Granderson pass the sniff test. Derek Jeter’s might be a little light following his huge year, but it wouldn’t be a shock if his offense took a step back at his age. I like Chris Dickerson more than most, but that line is about right if he doesn’t have a platoon partner. Obviously the Yankees won’t carry three catchers, but that’s a function of the whole “current roster” thing.

On the pitching side, I would be pretty pleased with that performance from Pineda in his first year out of shoulder surgery. Over 100 innings with solid strikeout (7.7 K/9) and walk (3.3 BB/9) rates right after a major procedure like that? Yeah that would work. Obviously that’s not what the Yankees were hoping for when they made the trade, but the dynamic has changed in a big way since then. Accumulating some innings and showing flashes of his 2011 form are what I’m looking for out of Pineda next year. Nothing more.

ZiPS has that roster winning 85 games next year, good for second place in the AL East behind the 86-win Rays. The Orioles are a distant third at 80 wins, then the Blue Jays (78 wins) and Red Sox (76 wins) bring up the rear. The current incarnations of the Rangers, Nationals, and Braves project to finish with the most wins in baseball at 89 apiece. They have fewer holes to fill, especially compared to the Yankees. The fact that ZiPS still thinks New York can win 85 games with no real right fielder, no catcher, no number two or three starter, and a five-man bullpen is pretty neat. Too bad 85 wins would be a ten-win drop-off.