River Avenue Blues

Martin: Yankees “continue to have conversations” with Scott Hairston

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Via Dan Martin: The Yankees “continue to have conversations” with free agent outfielder Scott Hairston. The former Met would presumably fill the Andruw Jones role of designated lefty masher rather than replace Nick Swisher outright.

Hairston, 32, hit .263/.299/.504 (118 wRC+) overall in 398 plate appearances this season, but he tagged southpaws for a .286/.317/.550 (135 wRC+) batting line with eleven homers in 199 plate appearances. He’s posted a 121 wRC+ against lefties in his two years across town (119 career). Hairston is a decent defender in the corners and can fake center field in an emergency. Reports this offseason indicate that he’ll likely sign a two-year deal worth upwards of $8-10M, which is pretty pricy for a platoon bat. He would be an upgrade over 2012 Jones obviously, but this season was very likely a career year.

Saturday Night Open Thread

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Happy Saturday everyone. There’s college football and NBA action going on tonight, but feel free to use this as an open thread to talk about whatever you like. Enjoy.

MLBTR’s Offseason Outlook

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MLBTR posted their Offseason Outlook for the Yankees yesterday, breaking down the team’s future and expiring payroll commitments, their needs and surpluses … basically everything you need to know about New York’s current situation. Chances are you know what the team is facing this winter if you’ve been reading RAB long enough, but MLBTR’s post has it all in one convenient place. Check it out.

Once you’re done with that, read up on the team’s arbitration cases in MLBTR’s Arbitration’s Eligibles post. Casey McGehee has already been cut loose, but the Yankees still have a trio of non-tender candidates in Jayson Nix, Eli Whiteside, and David Herndon. None of the three is projected to earn even $1M though, and I expect at least Nix and Herndon will be retained.

Mailbag: The All-$189M Team

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(Ezra Shaw/Getty)

Drew asks: Since Yankee news has been slow lately, here is a fun question/scenario: If you could only pick one player from each team to make a roster and get it under the $189 million cap for 2013 who would you pick? It’s tougher than it sounds (Kemp or Kershaw) (Votto or Chapman) etc.

It was tougher than it sounds but mostly on the fringes of the roster. Getting to spend an average of $6.2M per roster spot isn’t all that difficult given some of the insane bargains out there, so I tried to take it easy on the pre-arbitration guys making the league minimum. Some of them (Mike Trout) were simply too good to pass up though.

The luxury tax is based on the average annual value of contracts. For players in their pre-arbitration years, I assume a flat $500k salary just to make the math easy (the league minimum is $480k). For arbitration-eligible guys, I used MLBTR’s projections. I included the $10M for benefits and whatnot, so it’s really a $179M limit for players and roughly $5.9M per roster spot. Here’s my club…

Notice there are two tabs there, one broken down by roster spot and one broken down by MLB team. I tried to play fair and pick actual bench/platoon players for the bench spots as well as guys who could be sent to the minors in real life for the extra five spots. I had enough payroll space left over to go nuts on stars if I really wanted. I fudged a little by taking Giancarlo Stanton as my DH, but I could have easily taken David Ortiz ($13M) and finagled the bench to get a Marlin instead of a Red Sox on there.

I don’t know how many games that roster would win but it sure would be a lot. Easily over 90 with perfect health and maybe even 100+. The lineup is bananas and I don’t really know how I’d line those guys up, probably Trout, Cano, Braun, Votto, Posey, Longoria, Stanton, Harper, Andrus. There’s no wrong answer really, you can make a case for Votto at leadoff given his ridiculous OBP. My rotation would probably go Verlander, Kershaw, Felix, Hamels, Sale despite Hamels being the highest paid. There’s no way that roster could stay under the $189M luxury tax threshold beyond like, 2014, given the huge impending raises for Posey, Trout, Kershaw, Sale, and Kimbrel, but I’ll happily take my chances the next two years.

Saxon: Kuroda’s “first preference” is to pitch in Southern California

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The Yankees have been negotiating a new contract with Hiroki Kuroda since the end of the season, but Mark Saxon says the right-hander has told friends that his “first preference” is to pitch in Southern California next year. His two elementary school-aged daughters still live out there.

These reports that cite “friends” are always sketchy, and my very first thought when I read this was that Kuroda is trying to squeeze every last penny out of the Yankees. First we heard that it was either New York or Japan next year, then it was a personal list of teams, and now it’s Southern California specifically. Either way, the sooner Kuroda signs, the better. The Yankees could then move forward knowing they either got their guy or must find an alternative.

Friday Night Open Thread

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Happy Friday everyone. Hope your week was a little less hectic than mine, and if not, then just chill out tonight and relax a bit. The holiday is less than a week away. The Knicks are playing tonight, but talk about anything else you want here as well. Have at it.

Point/Counterpoint with Rafael Soriano

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Point:

Counterpoint:

I’m not trying to pick on Gammons here, more like trying to poke a hole in Scott Boras’ logic. The Yankees reportedly have some interest in bringing Rafael Soriano back on a two-year deal to help their bullpen, but his camp doesn’t need to use Mariano Rivera’s age to prove their point. We all know Rivera, who is coming off major knee surgery, will open next year at age 43 and is more of a liability now than every before. The Yankees know this as well as anyone, which is why they’re likely looking into other free agent relievers in case Soriano gets his money elsewhere.

And, for the record, Mo was 24 days away from his 40th birthday on the day the Yankees won the 2009 World Series.