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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Take a gonder at Jesse’s latest…
But here’s the thing: Teixeira is not as good a hitter right now as either A-Rod or Manny. That might be the lightest insult of all-time, but it’s important when considering a player who will earn in excess of $20 million a year. Where Sabathia is a proven ace and arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Teixeira has made one All-Star appearance in his career, has only one 40-homer season to his name and his career-high OPS+ of 151 (this year) is only one point above the figure posted by A-Rod in an “off” year and four points below Ramirez’s career figure.
The Yankees already have Sabathia, Burnett and A-Rod through 2012, with a $14 million option on Robinson Cano for that year. Add Teixeira to that, and it leaves the Yankees vulnerable if somehow their cash printing press ever breaks down.
...Teixeira will be the Yankees’ first baseman well into the next decade, but the Yankees already have a first baseman playing catcher for three more years in Jorge Posada, and just traded for a first baseman, Nick Swisher, who now goes to the outfield. For a team with so many other veterans, such as Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui, does it really make sense to take away first base as an avenue of career transition?
Repoz
Posted: December 23, 2008 at 11:27 PM | 49 comment(s)
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1. The Kids Are Enright (1k5v3L)Swisher can easily reside in left field or right field.
And Posada will most likely spend significant time at DH.
Finally, is the guy really suggesting that the Yankees should stay away from Teixeira so they can hide a couple of light-hitting, injury-prone, soon-to-be-free agent outfielders there? Really? Even Tommy LaSorda couldn't come up with something this dumb
This.
Posada's contract isn't looking too great right now, but is he even capable of playing an adequate 1B? I figure the Yanks milk as much catching out of him as humanly possible, then try stash him at DH if he's even remotely useful with the bat at that point.
I cannot possibly groan loud enough.
Will Yanks be Burnett by A Jay?
However, one down side of this signing for other baseball teams is that it decreases the possibility of the Yanks doing something I thought they were going to do if their FA signings stayed at Sabathia and Burnet: to serve as a vacuum cleaner to hoover up bad contracts from other teams.
It's no secret that with the world economy in dire straits, many teams will be interested in shedding payroll. However, if the Yanks are not buying (and all these FA signings decrease their flexibility), then that option probably closes off, and that surely should worry a number of teams (particularly in the NL, who are not competing in any direct way against the Yanks).
with all due respect to nick swisher, the difference between him and tex is considerable. and as much as i'd *like* the idea of trying out posada (or even jeter) at first to keep their bats in the lienup, there's no reason to not improve the team on the off chance one of them might be able to handle first.
Aside from picking up players that they were interested in having on their roster, have the Yankees ever taken over a bad contract out of the goodness of their hearts? Are you suggesting that had they not signed Sabathia, Burnett, and Teixeira, that they'd be bending over for the Giants (as an example) to take on Zito's contract just to be nice?
1B Tex, 180 million
2B Cano, 30 million
SS Jeter, 189 million
3B A-Rod, 275 million
674 million dollars. So in the last century the benchmark has not quite grown from the "$100,000 infield" of McInnis, Collins, Barry, and Baker to the first "Billion dollar infield".
But we're close. When's Chase Utley a free agent?
Not till after 2013, but Jose Reyes is one after 2011.
By the way, Chone, I love the baseballprojection website. Is there a glossary somewhere? I'd like to know what the numbers mean.
The Yankees motivations aren't as important as the practical effects of their being able to take onerous contracts off the hands of other teams. Would anyone else have taken the oft-injured Kevin Brown and his $15 million salary from the Dodgers? Were other franchises lining up to absorb Alex Rodriguez's ill-advised Texas contract?
If they didn't have to trade an all star like Soriano in return, I bet plenty of teams would have taken his contract.
CJ Henry is no all-star.
The Cameron for Mely trade, had it happened, would have been a good example of the above.
And that's why it didn't happen. Cashman was used to taking other team's big money players and not giving back what many would consider good value. I don't know if Cashman didn't properly understand Melvin's intent to get back value for Cameron or if he was just used to making a low offer.
The Red Sox were. But Texas decided they'd rather pay a big chunk of it themselves.
The impoverished Red Sox?
He only cost them money.
I wonder if this was a preemptive strike to remove one of Boston's options at catcher.
Yep. What as "ill advised" was the Rangers deciding they HAD to dump ARod. Or that they HAD to grossly overpay Park Chan Ho.
Cash was an option as a starting catcher. He's such a terrible hitter, his projection is under .200. When I saw that I thought it couldn't be right, he hit .220 last year, about as good as Varitek. Did I forget to regress or something? But 2008 was the only season in the majors that he hit above .200, his career average is .184, and he was even under .200 his last 2 minor league seasons (covering over 400 AB).
David Ross though, I don't understand how they let him go away so cheap. I'm glad they missed that boat though, as their options are pretty limited now.
Btw, I truly love the minimalist design.
Carl Crawford
As for long term on Teix, again, I bring this up.
Carlos Delgado (935)
Kent Hrbek (925)
Fred McGriff (913)
Jim Thome (911)
Will Clark (910)
Jeff Bagwell (909)
Willie McCovey (906) *
Richie Sexson (904)
Shawn Green (901)
Paul Konerko (899)
There's some risk there, but I'm pretty sure Teix's taleent is closer in terms of talent level to McCovey / Delgado / Thome / McGriff / Bagwell then the rest of the guys on the list. in this case, I'm pretty confident in him going foward. he's got a very good shot at going over 500 dinger for his career.
I don't know what the deal with Ross is. I argued with Reds fans at another site last year who couldn't wait to ship him out of town and was glad to see the Sox pick him up. I know he's not going to hit for a high BA, but it seems like he does enough other things well enough.
How's his defense AROM?
Bingo. The Yankees shrewdly took advantage of the Rangers getting a case of the yips.
Don't you dare imply that Will Clark is in the group with Hrbek, Sexson, Green, and Konerko instead of Stretch/Sit/HeyGuys/CrimeDog/Bagwell. I had to put up with him getting dropped off the HOF ballot like a ####### scrub, no more. Clark had an elbow problem that sapped power and he never fully recovered from, but even with that, retiring with gas still in the tank, missing out on both strike years in basically the last of his real prime, and playing through pain, he's got a higher OPS+ than McGriff, even with Delgado, and is 10 points behind McCovey/Bagwell/Thome while making up ground on basically everyone on both lists for defense and all but McGriff, Hrbek, and Thome in postseason play. He's 9 OPS+ ahead of Hrbek, 17 ahead of Green and Sexson, and 21 ahead of Konerko.
Ross has done well in the easily measurable aspects of catcher defense. Baseball ref can give you that data. Maybe pitchers hate him or something. Seems to me he can help a team hitting .210
Carl Crawford
Not a free agent. There's a cheap option that's sure to be picked up.
That projection wouldn't surprise me at all - Kevin Cash has the worst looking swing that I've ever seen on a major league hitter (including pitchers), and always has. I'm not sure if it's changed in recent years, but when he was in Toronto, it was just painfully choppy - it almost looked like he was starting and stopping halfway through his swing.
I don't pretend to be a scout, but he's the only guy I've ever seen who honestly looked like he had no idea where this strange club he was holding came from.
I guess we know how things would've turned out if Barkley followed Jordan's example...
I agree that some good hitters can look horrible, but Cash's bad swing also has that pause in it which kills any momentum he may have. Honestly, if I were to ever teach someone how to swing a bat, I'd start by showing them a video of Clark and Olerud, and tell them "Do this". I'd then follow it up by showing them a video of Kevin Cash, and tell them "Never do this".
Cash... which is as good as money!
Little known facts about him are Teix-arcana.
IMs to his phone are Teix-messages.
This discussion was had before. The arguments against Teixeira were that he reduces roster/payroll flexibility, really isn't all that great and certainly won't be in about three years. The arguments for him were/is that the Yankees numerous in-house semi-options for 1b all sucked and the Yankees can spend whatever they want at any time on any player without having it affect other parts of their operation.
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