Some news about the various beasts of the eastern baseball world…
- Adam Jones doesn't believe the Orioles discussed a multi-year extension with his CAA representation before the two sides agreed to a 2011 contract, the outfielder tells MLB.com's Brittany Ghiroli.
- The Red Sox haven't discussed a long-term extension with Clay Buchholz this offseason, reports Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal. Last September, MLBTR's Ben Nicholson-Smith explored what a Buchholz extension might cost Boston.
- Also from MacPherson, he points out that the Red Sox could wind up letting Jonathan Papelbon leave for nothing next winter. Papelbon would have to turn down an arbitration offer from Boston in order for the Sox to receive compensatory draft picks if he signed elsewhere as a free agent. However, by offering arbitration, the Red Sox would be making "a $14-$15MM gamble" that Papelbon wouldn't accept, since he's unlikely to find that much salary elsewhere.
- GM Mike Rizzo discussed several Nationals-related topics during a conference call with reporters today. Mark Zuckerman of the Nats Insider blog has a partial transcript.
- Alex Anthopoulos tells MLB.com's Gregor Chisholm his philosophy about not publicly disclosing whether or not the Jays are negotiating multi-year contracts, be they with Jose Bautista or any player.
- Brett Lawrie tells MinorLeagueBaseball.com's Robert Emrich that he has been working out at third base and believes he will play the position during Spring Training. When Toronto acquired Lawrie in the Shaun Marcum deal, there was speculation to whether Lawrie would stay at second base or be moved to third or even a corner outfield spot. The Jays are, obviously, set at second (at least in the short term) with Aaron Hill.
- In an interview with Jim Bowden of MLB Network Radio (Twitter link), Phillies assistant GM Scott Proefrock says his club does not have to deal Joe Blanton or Kyle Kendrick. Proefrock also said the Phillies will look within the organization for right-handed hitting help.
- The Orioles are lacking in Major League third base depth, writes Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun.
The Jays are obviously set at 2nd, as long as 2010 Hill doesn’t show up in 2011.
I’d prefer the 2009 Hill
its sad.. even in his “good” year … his OBP was a very pedestrian .330
I think jays fans just need to come to grips that Aaron Hill just isn’t that good of a baseball player.
agreed. The near future Jays infield should be:
SS – Hech
2B – Yoo Nel
3B – Lawrie
I hope that Hill bounces back bigtime this year, and the Jays can sell high. I love hill, good ball player, but isn’t quite the all star we need to compete in the east.
Aaron Hills reputation to the fan base has always bothered me. I mean he seems like a nice well liked guy, I have nothing against him, he’s just way way way overrated.
To me he has been one of the biggest flaws on the team the last few years, not him personally but the idea that its okay to not get on base as long as you’re hitting the ball out of the park.. That mindset is okay from your firstbaseman and DH but not your second baseman…
I hate to come off sounding like a hater, but the guy has had an OPS over .800 just one time in his career. His career OBP is .325.. He’s no longer a spring chicken, he’s one of the oldest players on the team.. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if AA doesn’t pick up Hill’s options…
When does AA need to make a decision on his options? Is it before opening day TY? If its next year, the options should help AA make a trade, if Hills performance bounces back.
Before opening day they need to decide if they want to pick up his 3 year option, worth $26 million.
If they don’t pick up his 3 year option, after the 2011 world series they can either a) release him in to free agency b) select 1 more year at 8 million c) 2 more years at 16 million
What a brilliant contract by AA. With that said, I doubt the Jays pick up the 3 year option. Hill, like Bautista, needs another year to prove their worth.
Definitely a stroke of genius with the contract…
I agree with you, no chance the 3 year option is picked up… but if he has a rebound year they can at least pick up the 2 year option for him
Also, to your point.. we may see that infield.. or you may see us picking up a 2B and selling high on escobar.. with the SS market how it is right now, you might get some teams that will pay a hefty price for Esco, provided he has another 09 type season..
Could happen. We could also see Lawrie in the OF as well, where some scouts project his position. The thing with AA, is you can never tell where his head is at with anything. Plus for the team, frustrating at times for the fans.
I still can’t imagine a world in which Papelbon’s ego allows him to accept arbitration after this season.
I think if he has a pretty lousy season his agent will be able to convince him that $15M with a chance to rebuild value is the right move.
If he has anything resembling a solid season or better he probably declines, which is what the Red Sox are banking on.
I suppose so, but I figure Pap can’t possibly be worse than he was last season. He just needs to remember how to actually locate a fastball >_>
and how to hold the ball to throw a splitter. which is what I believe he will do all of spring training, that and ditching that “new delivery” he had last year, he wasnt very deceptive with his ball.
I don’t get it. If Paps shows even more decline why can’t he receive the downgrade in pay he deserves? I know arbiters rarely go down but they should really start doing that more often.
I’m a little confused about that too…Why wouldn’t Boston just make Papelbon the lowest possible arbitration offer they can to ensure he doesn’t accept? Is there a rule against that or something?
Boston can make the lowest possible arbitration offer, but that doesn’t help their cause. Papelbon submits his own number and if the Red Sox’s number is too unrealistic, the arbitrator will choose Papelbon’s number and he’ll end up earning more than he probably would’ve if Boston had put forth a more reasonable number.
Oh, duh yeah….didn’t really think it all the way through, thanks. 😛
It is, however, completely ridiculous that a player never sees a decline in salary via arbitration.
You don’t understand arbitration. If papelbon and the sox exchange figures and can’t strike a deal it goes to an “arbitrator” hense the name arbitration. The arbitrators job is to take into consideration all aspects of the case and award the player with the ammount they feel they are worth. That’s more or less how it works.
OBJECTION! The arbitrator doesn’t assign the amount they feel the player is worth. They award the player one of the submitted figures which most closely represents the players value. The arbitrator does not get to make up their own numbers.
I think that is what Lester meant. The relevant amounts considered by the arbitrator being the ones submitted.
sustained.
Overruled.
Well, not really. But there hasn’t been one so far.
Because no one cried for Papelbon when he was a lights out all-star closer making league minimum his first 2 years and 3,6, and 9 million the following all-star seasons as well! 6 years/31 million for a dominant closer is a steal and this is why i laugh when people cry about him making 12 million for 1 subpar season. Sorta like those complaining about Big Papi even though he was making 6 million while hitting .300,40,130 every year!
It’s probably because it’s arb season, but I keep seeing dumb comments about how arbitrators assign values to players, it’s driving me insane.
The arbitration process is sort of a mess… it doesn’t really surprise me that people don’t make the effort to understand exactly how it works.
I read this article on espn and thought it was cool…talks about different clauses in players contracts!
link to sports.espn.go.com
The Sox have about $50 mil coming off the books next season and Theo loves those draft picks. He’ll take a chance, unless Papelbon completely falls off a cliff.
I agree, the Sox can afford to take the gamble, but they also have raises due to Bard, Lowrie, Ells, Pedroia, Youk, Lester, Buchholz, AGon (assuming extension), Salty.
Im going to guestimate that those raises will come in around the $30M mark, so there is certainly still money to work with, especially since the Sox work by AAV and not actual cash flow, so Pedroia Youk and Lester’s raises won’t impact available payroll for the 2012 season.
Don’t forget the Sox need that $$ to sign Gonzalez.
I cannot be more impressed in how Anthopoulos has been so classy since he has taken over. Well done.
You’re absolutely right. The man is a class act.
No wonder Theo never goes to arbitration. Papelbon goes from 9.5M to 12M for a decline in performance. Go to arbitration.
Papelbon would’ve likely made $11-$11.5 million in arbitration at minimum. That half a million or so difference is not really worth it to a major league team (Especially one of the most lucratice teams in the MLB) compared to the drama that an arbitration hearing could bring to the table.
That drama is already there. And arbitration has a history of being a 50/50 crap shoot and Sox just might have won with a 10M offer. Don’t know but IMO it is all Theo’s ego.
Could happen. We could also see Lawrie in the OF as well. The thing with AA, is you can never tell where his head is at with anything. Plus for the team, frustrating at times for the fans.
There is a limit to what a player can be cut and I believe it is 20%. Both sides submit a figure and use a variety of sources especially hired metric guns to determine a fair market value based primarily on what comparable players get. In fact it is actually arbitration that has been the driving force behind escalating salaries since the comp can be a player on a multi-year FA deal.
In the case of Papelbon it is totally absurd to give someone a 25% increase for a decrease in performance. Theo decided to – as usual – avoid arbitration. I imagine we can carry this philosophy of under performance/reward into the real world: “Raven…you have lost every customer. We have a mountain of sexual harassment suits thanks to you. You have leaked propitiatory information to competitions. You have siphoned off 2M from the books. Here’s a 25% raise.”
“I imagine we can carry this philosophy of under performance/reward into the real world”
And this is where your argument completely falls apart.
$250,000 annually is considered among the top five earners in the US. $250,000 annually is just over half of the minimum amount of cash an MLB player can earn. We’re not talking about “real world” here, we’re talking about the entertainment industry. If we were talking about a teacher or an accountant or even a doctor, that kind of salary increase might be considered ludicrous, but this is pro sports, where multiple middle relievers just parlayed career years into three or four generations’ worth of financial security over the course of the next three years. Your argument fails because you’re making the assumption that these guys are playing in the same pool we are.
You’re wrong about arbitrators using players on multi-year FA deals as comparables in arbitration. The arbitration panels look at what players with similar service time/performance have recently received in the arb process.
While I don’t normally point out spelling mistakes, when a misspelling is so egregious that it is almost impossible to figure out what you are actually trying to say, it deserves highlighting. It’s *proprietary*, btw.
Where you are going wrong is what you believe is decrease in perfomance
while the average fan can look to his decrease in velocity and k/9 increase in WHIP as reasons of why he is on the decline, these are not stats that the arbitrator is looking at . From what i Know the arbitrator preferably has no baseball knowledge
Therefore only things like saves, innings pitched, and comparable players/salaries are looked at. For those reasons, an arbitrator would not find that Paps had a decline in performance, if anything he would find a reason to agree to a raise, since other closers with comparable numbers are getting paid more…
Thank you for the spelling lesson. I believe that says more about you than my spelling abilities. I will be more careful in the future with spell check on Firefox.
Of course it is the entertainment field and the salaries are skewered. God bless Marvin Miller.
My comparison was not the money issue but performance and was only applying to the real world as an example of potential absurdity. Might actually happen?
After paying a $100 a seat to be laughed at in Denver made my season.
Here is the metric I go by. Remember when Paps was a lock down? He came in forget it. Stand up and get ready for the win. Cheer the strikes. Rare was the melt down. Now fast forward to 2010. Was that feeling there? For me it disappeared after Denver. The truth is he had a lousy season. Fans of other teams wanted him in. Think the Yankees didn’t? How many clean innings? Flashbacks of B.K. Kim and Healthcliff. He was just not the same. Now he lays it all on the line and that takes some stones. He has a year like in the past say 2008? Big score otherwise he’s dead. As a Sox fan that return to the past makes Boston a shut down team after 6.
How did the Red Sox feel about Paps? Good enough for a legit offer to Mo so they could kiss Paps goodbye. Mo accepted Paps would be elsewhere.
Arbitration for Paps would have been a hoot. Probably 10M versus 12M. Maybe even less of a spread. Actually been a few cases of player submitting a lower offer than management.
While that all may be true… the fact remains that the arbitration system is flawed and that regardless of your passion for the team, Paps would have gotten his raise.period.
I think we are agreement on all counts. The Sox would have submitted a figure above his 2010 salary. I think most fans find the whole process foolish simply because we rationalize it on a personal experience level and not on the unique structure that happens in baseball. I know Sox posting boards are lighting up with the contract.
Players very rarely go down in salary in arbitration, they go by his full MLB career so it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary that if he went to arbitration he could command 15 million.
Papelbon obviously isn’t on Mo’s level, but he is easily as good as Soriano
I have this friend, his name is ‘stats’ and he strongly disagrees with you
I don’t see how they do:
Papelbon’s career FIP is 2.79, Soriano’s career FIP is 3.23.
Papelbon put up a 3.51 FIP last year, the worst of his career. Soriano put up a 4.17 FIP in 2007, the worst of his career.
Soriano’s career WAR is 7.2. Papelbon’s is 12, and that’s in a career that’s four years shorter.
Soriano was unquestionably better than Papelbon last year, but Papelbon is almost a full year younger than Soriano. Stats seem to dictate that Papelbon is easily as good as Soriano. They’re currently trending in opposite directions, but Soriano turned it around after a rotten 2007, why can’t Papelbon bounce back from 2010?