On this day last year the Rangers agreed to sign Vladimir Guerrero to a one-year, $5MM deal. In 2011, the veteran continues to look for a home with the Orioles, Angels, and Rays said to be interested. Let's take a look at the batch of links for tonight..
- Jamey Newberg of The Newberg Report is glad that the Rangers didn't overpay to land Matt Garza. The right-hander was shipped to the Cubs in an eight-player deal.
- Speaking of the Garza deal, Dave Cameron writes in a piece for Fangraphs that there's a good chance that the Rays got better in the short term by making the trade.
- Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik told Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times that David Aardsma's hip surgery was more extensive than first thought and the hurler might not be ready by Opening Day. The M's were shopping the 29-year-old for quite some time but now they'll wait even longer to move him.
- In an interview on 1500-ESPN, Twins GM Bill Smith revealed that the club finished a distant second in the bidding for Japanese starter Hisashi Iwakuma (information passed along by Aaron Gleeman). Minnesota offered $7.7MM for the hurler while the Athletics won the bidding with $19.1MM. Ultimately, Iwakuma and the A's couldn't agree to terms.
As usual, Newberg is spot on. Ranger fans should be glad to have a free outlet for this kind of baseball gold coverage.
Agree somewhat, but Rangers fans may not agree with that if the young and for the most part fairly inexperienced Ranger staff implodes next year and the Angels veteran staff pitches like they are capable of. That Anaheim team will hit some and get Morales back, they should not be discounted just because they lost out on both Crawford and Beltre and there is still time to swing a deal for a bat before the season begins.
Wow 19.1 million won the bidding for iwakuma and 2nd was 7.7 million? Just goes to show you that clubs really have to watch what they bid when it come to the japanese market, that spread is just way to big! I bet A’s fans are a little relieved that he went unsigned.
Makes you wonder what the A’s intention was. No way Iwakuma was worth that type of posting fee. They didn’t want to sign him.
Well, to be fair. His club did say the posting fee should be at around 15million+ for them to accept it. (maybe lower, but probably wont accept if the winning bid was less than 10MM)
That money was just to have rights to negotiate with him. A’s got all that money back. He wanted zito type contract and there is no team in the world that is dumb enough (except the giants) to pay him that much. He has never even stepped on ML mound in his life!!
Oh please. Like we’d do that again.
tell me something I don’t know. Oakland would have been foolish to spend say 19 post plus 27 for 3. Out of pocket being 3 years 46 mill, cmon! A’s dodged a bullet with this one.
The A’s bid that to block the Rangers and Angels. Given that they didn’t really negotiate in good faith (from what the reports suggested), there has to be some sort of penalty (1% of the posting fee?) if a reasonable contract can’t be reached. Right now, blocking is clearly an option.
Agreed, theoretically a team could bid an astronomical sum to ensure they win negotiating rights, thereby preventing other teams from signing them, and then just let the player walk if they don’t like the price tag at no cost to the team. Even 1% of the posting fee seems like nothing, if this ever became a problem I think they should still have to pay at least half of the bid, if not to the Japanese club then to the league, and then have it go to charity or something. Thing is, it’d be hard to prove that something like this was actually going on.
I’d actually like to see the top 2 bidders get a chance to sign the player. The highest bidder gets the first crack and if by the end of the negotiating period they couldn’t reach a contract, the second team gets a shot. The Japanese team would be told both amounts and make a decision based on both amounts of whether they’d like to pull the player back or not. Assuming no collusion, it’d be much harder to block teams this way and both the player and Japanese team have a higher probably of getting the player into MLB and the team collecting the posting fee.
The A’s did want to sign him. They offered him a contract and turned it down because iwakuma wanted zito type contract. No team would have gave him that type of contract no matter who it was. The other AL west teams wernt As interested in signing him especially rangers since during that time they knew cliff lee was going to expect a big contract. The A’s might go after iwakuma next year after his last year is up in japan. Posting fee won’t be required next year since he won’t be under contract anymore.
The Rays Garza deal is very interesting. If you analyze it from a player-by-player way, you can see what the Rays were thinking. This really sets up some quality depth at multiple spots in the next few years at specific spots that might be budget issues on the majorleague club.
The brilliance of the Rays management is that they really look into how any given move helps them along a 3 yr longterm window, anticipating arbitration of financial issues that might occur in the near-future, so they prepare for it well in advance.
What annoys me is the Rays “fans” that continue to bad mouth the Front Office constantly bitching how cheap they are. They just don’t understand the way things have to be for a small market franchise with way less than desirable fan support. As long as the salary trend continues they will only be able to “reload” every few yrs. and ship off the players that are going to get these gargantuan contracts. As of right now Carl Crawford makes more than the entire Rays team…
Actually no he doesn’t.. you are comparing his TOTAL salary to 1 year payroll for the Rays.. He only makes 20 million per year, which is 1/3 of the Rays payroll.
1/3?? You are saying the rays payroll this yr. is $60 million?? As of right now the ENTIRE RAYS payroll is $18.43 million. After the arbitration cases for Upton, Sonny and a few other pre-arbitration signings it is projected around 30-32 million. They will not exceed 45 million this yr. and that’s if they sign Fuentes AND Vlad,Manny or Thome. I was stating as of right now (if you think I’m wrong please research it) and I wouldn’t confuse an entire contract of $142 million with one yr. of salary.
That would have been interesting had the Twins won the bidding and signed him along with Nishioka.