Report: Mets Have Looked Into Bringing Pedro Back
6:43pm: The Newark Star-Ledger's Brian Costa tweets that "A Mets official denies ESPN report that team has looked into bringing back Pedro Martinez."
3:43pm: ESPN's Jayson Stark reports that the Mets have looked into bringing Pedro Martinez back to Flushing, and are "continuing to kick around the idea internally." One official with a club who had interest in Pedro said he's looking to exceed Brad Penny's deal, which means one year and $7.5MM guaranteed.
The 38-year-old Pedro earned about $1.5MM with incentives in 2009, when he made nine starts with a 3.63 ERA for the Phillies. He's looking to play a full season in 2010.
Discussion: Battle Of The Upside Starters
With the signing of Jason Marquis, the free agent starting pitchers left on the board are all awfully similar in terms of likely value. If you like Doug Davis over Jon Garland, or Joel Pineiro over Davis, you're still not likely to get a frontline starting pitcher, and it is likely to cost a team roughly what Marquis cost the Nationals.
The two remaining starters with the chance to be much better than average- but carrying significant risk- are Ben Sheets and Pedro Martinez. With Martinez, we have a better sense of what he is looking for, contract-wise, thanks to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark reporting earlier today that he wants "more than Brad Penny got"- more than $7.5MM base salary, in other words. That's still in line with Marquis and company, however.
As for Sheets, he's reportedly seeking $12MM next year. So the question becomes, is Sheets likely to be more than a third better than Martinez?
The major advantages for Sheets: he's posted an ERA of 3.39 since 2007, while Martinez is actually below average during that time, at 4.66. Sheets has also made at least 30 starts as recently as 2008; Martinez last accomplished the feat in 2005.
But Martinez may be a better bet than that would suggest. For one thing, Sheets didn't pitch at all last season, while Martinez was quite effective- a 3.63 ERA in the regular season, 3.70 ERA in the playoffs. Martinez has also had a better strikeout rate than Sheets since 2007, which is a strong indicator of future performance.
If the price tag is significantly lower for Martinez- and as of right now, it appears to be- he might be the more valuable upside candidate of the two.
And if risk isn't your game, there's always Jon Garland.
Four Team Salary Dump Trade Fell Through
Well here's an interesting deal that never came to be. According to ESPN's Jayson Stark, a four-team trade involving Milton Bradley, Pat Burrell, Luis Castillo, and Gary Matthews Jr. fell apart at the winter meetings for an undisclosed reason.
According to a source, the deal would have sent Bradley to the Rays, Burrell and Castillo to the Cubs, and Matthews Jr. to the Mets. Burrell would have then been spun off elsewhere. No word on what the Halos would have received, though getting rid of Sarge Jr. and presumably at least part of his contract would have been a win.
Odds & Ends: Nationals, Podsednik, Duchscherer
Links for Monday…
- Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports tweets that the Nationals still have money left to sign Matt Capps, assuming he wants to go there. Morosi expects Capps to decide on his next team this week.
- In a separate tweet, Morosi notes that the Tigers are only interested in Scott Podsednik if it's a one-year deal. Detroit has no interest in Rick Ankiel.
- ESPN's Jerry Crasnick reports that Justin Duchscherer has received contract offers from three unnamed teams, and he expects to decide on his 2010 home within a week.
- Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets that the Royals are interested in free agent outfielder Brian Anderson on a minor league deal.
- Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle sees Rajai Davis and Ryan Sweeney retaining starting jobs in the wake of the impending Coco Crisp signing. Slusser suggests a possible reduced role or trade for Scott Hairston. FanGraphs' Dave Cameron doesn't understand the move, noting that Davis and Sweeney are similar to Crisp. Crisp's physical will take place tomorrow, tweets ESPN's Buster Olney.
- Matthew Carruth of Lookout Landing explains that Mariners fans fully understand the dangers of Milton Bradley. The Seattle Times' Geoff Baker reflects on Carlos Silva's time with the club.
- Patrick Newman joins FanGraphs with a look at Japanese baseball imports and exports for 2010. Speaking of which, new Met Ryota Igarashi would like to be Francisco Rodriguez's set-up man.
Four Teams Interested In Chris Duncan
Four teams are "really serious" about signing Chris Duncan, according to Rob Rains of The St. Louis Globe Democrat. Agent Barry Meister declined to name the teams. Rains believes that "it would be a safe bet that most, if not all, are in the American League."
Duncan, 28, was traded by the Cardinals to the Red Sox for Julio Lugo just before the trade deadline, only to be released about a month later. A career .257/.348/.458 hitter, Duncan's offense has tailed off in recent years, bottoming out at .227/.329/.358 in 304 plate appearances last year. Defensively, he's been bad everywhere he's played.
Personally, I think it would be pretty cool to see some team platoon the lefty hitting Chris with his righty hitting brother Shelley Duncan, who became a free agent earlier in the offseason.
Padres Acquire Dusty Ryan
The Padres acquired catcher Dusty Ryan from the Tigers for a player to be named later or cash considerations, tweets AOL FanHouse's Ed Price. Tigers minor league pitcher Scott Drucker broke the news first on Twitter. Ryan had been designated for assignment on December 10th in a move corresponding to the Curtis Granderson trade.
Ryan, 25, hit .257/.359/.455 in 235 Triple A plate appearances this year. Heading into the season, Baseball America spoke of Ryan's "prodigious raw power" and "plus-plus arm," but considered his receiving skills a work in progress.
Indians Sign Saul Rivera
The Indians signed reliever Saul Rivera to a minor league deal, reports MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince. Rivera was released by the Nationals on December 7th to free up a spot for Brian Bruney.
The 32-year-old Rivera posted a 6.10 ERA, 4.9 K/9, and 3.3 BB/9 in 38.3 big league innings this year. He tossed another 45.6 innings at Triple A. He was fairly useful in the three previous seasons.
Indians Get Mitch Talbot In Kelly Shoppach Trade
Righty Mitch Talbot is the player to be named later from the Kelly Shoppach trade, writes MLB.com's Anthony Castrovince. The Indians traded Shoppach to the Rays on December 1st. The Rays also received cash in the deal, according to a team press release.
Talbot, 26, pitched mostly at Triple A this year. He posted a 4.47 ERA, 6.6 K/9, and 3.0 BB/9 in ten starts. He missed a few months with an elbow injury, so the Rays had him make six starts in the Arizona Fall League to get more work. He's out of options, so he'll presumably compete for a spot in the Indians' rotation. Heading into the season, Baseball America had this scouting report on Talbot:
Talbot has an 89-91 mph fastball with good movement, a hard slider with impressive late cutting action and a changeup that continues to show better fade and depth.
Shipping Aubrey Huff to the Astros in July of '06 really paid off for the Rays. They received Talbot and eventually spun him into Shoppach. They also received Ben Zobrist, who was immensely valuable this year.
Marlins Sign Danny Richar
The Marlins signed infielder Danny Richar to a minor league deal, tweets Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports. Richar elected free agency after being outrighted by the Reds back in November. The 26-year-old hit .290/.330/.438 in 181 Triple A plate appearances this year. The second baseman had labrum surgery in July. He came to the Reds from the White Sox in July of '08 with Nick Masset in the Ken Griffey Jr. trade.
Survey Feedback
Last week we conducted a survey asking readers to suggest ways to improve MLB Trade Rumors. After sifting through hundreds of interesting submissions, here are a few thoughts:
- MLBTR does not have links open in new windows automatically. Currently I prefer to let the user decide – just right-click and open in a new tab or window if you please.
- Auto-linking full player names to a stat website like Baseball-Reference would be helpful. We're working on it.
- A possible iPhone application – I've gathered ideas on what it would do, and will probably start having this built.
- RSS feeds by team – this wasn't possible when I looked into it a year or so ago, but I will see what can be done.
- Email and/or text message alerts – I like the idea, and will look into both.
- The commenting system – last week we switched over to TypePad Connect after noticing it allows threaded comments, editing, and deleting. However, it loads more slowly and we lost the numbered pages. If possible we may install something like Disqus.
- We now have comment moderators in place, so you should see some improvement. Disqus allows readers to report and rate comments, which is appealing.
- I will try to get back on track with weekly live chats.
- All Twitter links will be identified, either by us saying "Ken Rosenthal tweeted" or adding a "via Twitter" at the end of the sentence. I should also note that whenever possible, I go back and replace Twitter links with article links by the same journalist.
- Certain posts become frequently-updated behemoths and are difficult to read if you're coming to them for the first time. We are still going to add updates at the top of posts because that is where you look first. But once a signing or trade becomes official, we'll rewrite the post as seen here.