2013 New York Yankees season thread Vol. (85-77) OFFSEASON

[proshares]

Hart is interesting. The knees are concerning but who knows if we'll need Tex insurance again. IDK about putting him in the OF again though.

 

[essential1]

I'm getting tired of waiting for Beltran and Cano.

Just get it done.

If Beltran wants to play here.. Live with 2 year deal.. Or sacrifice $10mil for a third year. Take 2 year - $34mil or 3 year / $40mil


Cano recognize that no one is willing to go over $200mil for you... Take the 7 year $180mil, and enjoy it.
If it's years Cano wants then I'd lowball the hell out of him for a 10 year deal, and pay most of it up front..

 

[essential1]

Cano's new asking price 9yr- $260mil.

He doesn't get this is bad negotiating. You set the price high, but not so high that no one can reach it because then you have to lower it again.

Also I don't think Cano gets that after a certain number of years your average salary goes down.

If he truly wanted 9years he is $60mil off target

 

[macbk]

Cano and Yanks are $80M apart. The hell does this dude think he needs 80-million dollars more to play baseball .

Phil Hughes to the Twins 3yr 24M

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that the Minnesota Twins signed pitcher Phil Hughes to a three-year, $24 million deal.

Minnesota agreed to a four-year, $49 million free agent deal with righthander Ricky Nolasco Wednesday, and the club was reportedly looking to add another rotation upgrade.

Hughes, 27, posted a 5.19 ERA in 145 2/3 innings this past season with the Yankees. He’s had some injury troubles, missing almost half of the 2011 season due to shoulder inflammation.

He will join Nolasco, Kevin Correia and Samuel Deduno in a rebuilt Twins rotation.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune also reported that the Twins might still try to re-sign righthander Mike Pelfrey as well. Pelfrey, 5-13 with a 5.19 ERA in his first season back from Tommy John elbow ligament replacement surgery, was recently offered a $10 million deal with the Twins. It’s unsure if that deal is still on the table.

Good signing for him and them. He gets a favorable contract despite inconsistent play over the past few seasons, but he should benefit pitching in that ballpark. Clearly a pitchers advantage at Target Field.

 

[onewearz]

i'm gonna miss hughes

robbie gotta get it together, sign already. i'm a lil banged up so i def ain't making no sense

 

[7thave btn 31stn33rd st]

Good riddance on Hughes. At Robbie wanting 9 years

 

[Hahahaha]

I won't miss Hughes. He's a good pitcher but he can't pitch in our ballpark and is mentally weak. I think he'll do well in Minnesota

 

[ravagebx]

i'm gonna miss hughes

 

Good riddance man, I swear lol. From the hype he rode in on to the mediocrity he's going out with he will not be missed. At all.

 

[essential1]

Cano wants a 10th year vesting option in that 9 year - $260mil demand. Bad Negotiation 101


I don't think he gets that at most he might touch $200mil.

 

[wavechappelle]

Cano should be kissing Cashman's toes if he even get 8/200 even with this crazy market

 

[ny mavurs]

Phil Hughes is gone it's time for me to celebrate.

Wish him the best though

 

[7thave btn 31stn33rd st]

Cashman and Levine must be laughing at these Cano negotiations.

 

[Bend_The_Knee]

Twins fans, enjoy 3 IP 65 pitches from that bum.


Joba is next.

 

[nydunkhead]

Minnesota loves washed up Yankee pitchers, they usually do well there.... The ballpark is HUGE....

 

[proshares]

When your fastball gets hit like that every time you throw it, it ain't gonna matter where he pitches

 

[proshares]

The arrival of Masahiro Tanaka may finally be in the homestretch. David Waldstein of the New York Times reports that MLB officials and their counterparts in Japan have narrowed their list of potential new rules for the posting of free agents to three final options. As a result, an agreement should not be too far off.

That's good news for the New York Yankees, who are prepared to make a huge play for Tanaka as soon as the system for 2014 is set into motion.

In other Yankees rotation news, according to Andrew Marchand of ESPN New York, the Yankees have also extended an offer to Hiroki Kuroda to try and keep the pitcher from either returning home to Japan to pitch, or perhaps retire from the game altogether. The deal on the table is believed to be in the $15 million to $16 million range.

 

[essential1]

I was excited about this season when McCann was signed.. Currently I'm about excited as I was in March. And that was 0 excitement.


Give Beltran the 3 years... Go 3 year / $42 mil. It's $2mil a year less than KC...

And for you guys who say don't give Cano 8 year / $200 mil.... McCann's signing is pointless if Cano is gone, if Grandy is gone, and we don't get Beltran. It will be the most pointless signing of the entire offseason.

We offered 7 yr / $169 - $175mil. If he really wants to leave, does 8 year / $200mil really make much of difference to us.


Losing Cano saving the extra year and $25mil

 

[essential1]

Ellsbury possibly 7 years with the Yankees according to Jon Heyman


This is all pointless if Cano & Beltran are not in the lineup in April... I'm still not even remotely excited.

If you're going to pay Jacoby Ellsbury over $20mil a year.... You better go overboard and pay Cano his god damn money.

 

[air spider 777]

Ellsbury possibly 7 years with the Yankees according to Jon Heyman


This is all pointless if Cano & Beltran are not in the lineup in April... I'm still not even remotely excited.

If you're going to pay Jacoby Ellsbury over $20mil a year.... You better go overboard and pay Cano his god damn money.

I agree. If they are throwing around Cash like this, then you know what the extra year and 25 mill should be a moot point. IMO. And damnit give Beltran his extra year. lol

 

[air spider 777]

Im not a fan of the signing. At least with Grandy we knew what we had in him and he, when healthy was good for 30+ HR's.

 

[essential1]

So the team as of now...


C- Brian McCann
1B - Mark Teixiera
2B - ???
3B - ???
SS - Derek Jeter
LF - Brett Gardner
CF - Jacoby Ellsbury
RF - ???
DH - Alfonso Soriano

Bench:
C - ???
1B- ???
MIF - Brendan Ryan
OF - Vernon Wells
OF - Ichiro Suzuki



Pitching
SP1 - C.C. Sabathia
SP2 - ???
SP3 - Ivan Nova
SP4 - Michael Pineda
SP5 - ????


Bullpen
Long Reliever - ???
Lefty Specialist - ???
RP -Shawn Kelly
RP - Preston Claiborne
SU - David Robertson
Closer - ???


If Hal wants to win... He better be prepared to spend about $300mil more.

 

[onewearz]

I hate this deal , going on record now and sayin it won't work . He's always hurt and most of all he's a RED SOX , always will be ... can't even say his name, my coffee tastes like piss ...

 

[essential1]

I hate this deal , going on record now and sayin it won't work . He's always hurt and most of all he's a RED SOX , always will be ... can't even say his name, my coffee tastes like piss ...

 

[proshares]

You’re going to hear Carl Crawford‘s name a lot over the next 24 hours. Carl Crawford was a speed-and-defense outfielder heading into his 30s and the Red Sox gave him $142 million over seven years, only to see the deal become an albatross almost immediately. Everyone who was skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders was instantly vindicated. Everyone who is still skeptical of aging speed-and-defense outfielders is going to instantly point to the Carl Crawford deal when they hear that the Yankees have agreed to pay Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million over the next seven years.

Crawford is a data point in their favor, absolutely. He was a similar player to Ellsbury, and he got a similar contract to Ellsbury, and it didn’t turn out to be a very good idea. Crawford is absolutely evidence that this contract could be a big mistake. Crawford is a reminder that big free agent deals often turn out badly. But if you’re going to use Carl Crawford as the sole data point in your belief that players like Ellsbury are bad investments, you’re simply ignoring the fact that history doesn’t actually agree with you.

I published a piece here on FanGraphs a few weeks ago entitled “The Slow Decline of Speedy Outfielders“. It is hardly the first article published that note that players like Ellsbury actually have aged well historically, but it’s one I wrote and recent, so it’s the one I’m linking to. Many others have written similar pieces before, and this is not a new idea, but it’s one worth repeating. Most players that have had Jacoby Ellsbury like skills have performed pretty well in their 30s. Players like this age better than other types of players, not worse.

For those not interested in reading that piece, I’ll just repost the two tables. These are outfielders who, over the last 30 years, showed similar skillsets to Ellsbury from ages 27-29.


Name PA BB% K% ISO AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Rickey Henderson 1788 14% 11% 0.165 0.285 0.387 0.450 0.374 133 28 99 6 17
Jacoby Ellsbury 1691 7% 14% 0.166 0.303 0.356 0.469 0.359 123 19 64 34 16
Ichiro Suzuki 2191 6% 8% 0.111 0.328 0.374 0.440 0.350 118 15 64 22 16
Kenny Lofton 1788 9% 11% 0.150 0.324 0.381 0.474 0.372 118 18 60 31 15
Tim Raines 1733 14% 8% 0.163 0.297 0.395 0.461 0.371 135 15 86 -8 14
Andy Van Slyke 1761 10% 18% 0.180 0.271 0.341 0.451 0.352 126 5 56 18 14
Devon White 1914 8% 20% 0.149 0.253 0.314 0.402 0.322 98 10 7 58 13
Derek Bell 1926 7% 18% 0.165 0.285 0.340 0.450 0.343 111 6 32 23 11
Aaron Rowand 1769 6% 18% 0.170 0.283 0.344 0.453 0.346 105 11 22 29 11
Steve Finley 1688 7% 11% 0.127 0.279 0.331 0.406 0.328 106 6 16 29 10
Marquis Grissom 1850 7% 11% 0.148 0.286 0.337 0.435 0.336 100 7 7 36 10
Average 1,841 9% 13% 0.153 0.289 0.354 0.442 0.349 115 12 45 24 13
And now, here’s how those players did from ages 30-36, the years guaranteed in Ellsbury’s new contract with the Yankees.


Name G PA BB% K% ISO AVG OBP SLG wOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR
Rickey Henderson 869 3819 18% 11% 0.167 0.287 0.418 0.453 0.393 148 39 253 -10 38
Ichiro Suzuki 1115 5148 6% 10% 0.093 0.332 0.377 0.426 0.348 114 43 136 46 35
Kenny Lofton 940 4260 11% 12% 0.136 0.287 0.368 0.422 0.349 107 17 56 69 26
Tim Raines 834 3651 13% 9% 0.125 0.284 0.376 0.408 0.352 116 21 94 -38 18
Devon White 841 3640 7% 18% 0.163 0.272 0.332 0.435 0.336 100 12 11 48 17
Steve Finley 1041 4474 8% 13% 0.201 0.275 0.338 0.476 0.349 110 4 59 -25 17
Andy Van Slyke 557 2363 10% 15% 0.154 0.280 0.354 0.434 0.350 117 6 48 -8 13
Aaron Rowand 509 1865 5% 22% 0.142 0.253 0.310 0.394 0.309 88 -3 -29 12 4
Marquis Grissom 972 3952 5% 16% 0.149 0.264 0.304 0.413 0.311 84 2 -83 -5 4
Derek Bell 314 1373 10% 21% 0.135 0.241 0.323 0.376 0.311 82 0 -33 -17 0
Average 799 3,455 9% 15% 0.147 0.278 0.350 0.424 0.341 107 14 51 7 17
There are a few busts in there, and you can throw Crawford into that mix as well if you want even though we don’t technically know how his entire 30-36 span is going to go, but by and large, these guys held a large chunk of their late 20s value. Offensively, they hardly declined at all. Their defense got worse, but it didn’t become useless. They got slower, but were still better baserunners than most. They played fewer games, but most of them played enough to still be productive.

One cannot be intellectually honest while citing Carl Crawford if you’re not also going to simultaneously cite Rickey Henderson, Ichiro Suzuki, and Kenny Lofton. There are examples of every single player type that have signed huge contracts and immediately imploded. If we’re just going to cherry pick recent examples of contracts gone terrible, we could argue that teams shouldn’t sign any player at any position with any skillset. Power hitters who scare opposing pitchers? Meet Albert Pujols. Up the middle guys who can hit like corner guys? Hi there Matt Kemp. Elite aces in the prime of their careers? Johan Santana, come on down.

Carl Crawford’s production is not Jacoby Ellsbury’s fait accompli; it’s one possible path of many. Every player’s future is a probability distribution, bottoming out at completely and utterly useless. Every single player could turn into a total dud tomorrow. And every single player could actually play better in the future than they have in the past. There is no single example that represents the expected outcome for any other player, no matter how similar they might appear to be.

So, we have two options. We can either throw our hands in the air and say “who knows what the future will bring, sign anyone for whatever you want and hope for the best” or we can try to make educated guesses based on reasonable assumptions and decent amounts of data. Those decent amounts of data suggest that players like Ellsbury age well, even if Carl Crawford did not. That data does not support the idea that speed-and-defense players fall apart after they turn 30. If anything, the data suggests just the opposite, and says that big boned first baseman are the ones you should be really afraid of.

I know the Carl Crawford comparison is the easy one, especially because Boston is tied to both players. That doesn’t make the conclusion about Ellsbury’s future value based on Crawford’s failure any more true, however.

With that very long caveat out of the way, let’s actually talk about what Ellsbury is. Steamer and ZIPS both see him as roughly a +4 WAR player in 2014. If we do the standard half WAR per season decay for aging, then Ellsbury would project out to +17.5 WAR over the next seven years. Interestingly, that’s an almost perfect match for what the average player in the list above did from ages 30-36, so +17 to +18 WAR seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation for the next seven years. At $153 million, that would mean the Yankees were paying about $8.7 million per expected win, about a 40 percent premium over the cost of the deals we’ve seen signed thus far. Relative to other contracts already signed, including the Yankees own signing of Brian McCann, this looks like an overpay.

But there’s a caveat on every free agent signing with the Yankees, because their financial situation is entirely different than every other team’s situation. The Yankees have a crazy amount of money. The Yankees don’t really need to spend money as efficiently as possible. The Yankees can easily afford to pay more than the market rate for players and still be just fine, because they have more resources than any other team in the game.

So, yeah, this deal wouldn’t make sense for a lot of other teams. For a team with a payroll of $100 million, $22 million per year for Ellsbury probably doesn’t work. Even at $125 to $150 million, it’s probably too much. The Yankees, though, can afford it. $22 million to them is roughly equivalent to $12 or $13 million to a franchise with an average payroll. Even if the Yankees stick to their guns and come in right under $189 million for 2014, Ellsbury’s AAV would account for something like 12% of their total payroll.

The Yankees paid a lot of money for a very good player. That very good player is probably going to remain a very good player for the next few years, and then, like nearly every free agent, he’ll be an overpaid albatross in the last few years of the deal. For the price, the Yankees probably overpaid relative to the going market rate of wins. But because they’re the Yankees, the fact that they overpaid by $20 or $30 million doesn’t matter all that much.

It would hurt the Yankees more to put another mediocre team on the field in 2014 and watch their built in financial advantage begin to dwindle. The Yankees have a resource advantage to maintain, and the best way to maintain that advantage is to keep putting good teams on the field.

And Jacoby Ellsbury will help the Yankees put a good team on the field again in 2014, because Jacoby Ellsbury is a good player, even if he’s a good player because he’s fast. Runs created with speed and defense count too.

 

[onewearz]

I hated damon too ...