The Diamondbacks continued their aggressive offseason approach over the weekend, agreeing to terms with Aaron Hill on a two-year deal. The club will now search for pitching; here are the details:
- You can add Roy Oswalt to the list of veteran starters that the Diamondbacks have at least some level of interest in, Piecoro tweets.
- Joe Saunders, a non-tender candidate with a projected 2012 salary of $8.7MM, told Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic that he hopes to return next year. Saunders, who prides himself on his ability to log innings and pitch deep into games, has averaged 200 innings per season since 2008.
- The D'Backs appear to have interest in free agents Hiroki Kuroda and Mark Buehrle, according to Piecoro (on Twitter). Kuroda's name has come up as a possible fit for Arizona, but this is the first time we've seen the D'Backs connected to Buehrle
- The D'Backs announced earlier today that they sold Kameron Mickolio to the Hiroshima Carp.
As much as I would love to see Kuroda in a Diamondbacks uniform, I just don’t imagine that they will be spending that heavily on a single pitcher. Buehrle is likely to sign a contract with a team that has money to burn. Although he isn’t lights-out. Saunders does eat up a lot of innings. I figure the most likely scenario is that he is non-tendered but still comes back at a lower salary than arbitration would have awarded him. $8.7MM for Saunders is just too much, Kuroda, sure. But Kuroda will likely get even more than that.
WHEN WILL OTHER TEAMS RECOGNIZE THAT KURODA WANTS DODGERS OR JAPAN! He declined 2 trades last season and has voiced to stay with the dodgers and no one else
No reason not to get some feelers out. Â Who knows, they might be able to figure out something that some random comment board poster on MLBTR hasn’t heard!
The way I see it Kuroda either resigns with LA or goes back to Japan. I especially don’t see him going to an NL West team after the loyalty he showed this year.
He almost came to the dbacks when he first came to the US maybe he’ll want to give a playoff run a try? Oh and maybe get over .500 by getting run support.
Yeah and it’s not like Arizona is that far from LA, he likes the West Coast and wants to live somewhere that has nice weather and has shown prior intrest in coming to Arizona before so I don’t see why it’s not a possibility.
And an under .500 record for someone with a 3.3 ish era is just wrong.
And an under .500 record for someone with a 3.3 ish era is just wrong.
And an under .500 record for someone with a 3.3 ish era is just wrong.
You can say that again.
So that he can feel the pain of post season defeat for a second club?
Well he had has a desire to stay West coast and/or be in a city with a high Japanese person, so maybe he would consider a different team.
I don’t see it so much as loyalty as not wanting to go to the East Coast. Â The Dodgers wanted to trade him, it isn’t exactly loyalty to tell them that they couldn’t…
I don’t feel like people that don’t follow the Dodgers get what kind of guy he is and his commitment to the club. They asked him if he would accept a trade because their season was going nowhere and it was the right thing to do. He didn’t go because he wanted to stay with his family and be on the west coast yes, but also because he does believe he should be loyal to the club that signed him. The Japanese are a very proud and loyal people.
If you didn’t want to accept a trade to the opposite side of the country for family reasons, wouldn’t it be convenient to cite loyalty to the team as your reason for it? Â I’m not trying to pretend that I know Kuroda personally, but taking what he says to the media as a direct look into the kind of person he is also seems incredibly assumptive.
I guess I prefer to assume that his loyalty to the club played a big part, but of course I really have no idea. His decision to want to stay this season for whatever reason was a small highlight in a mainly disappointing Dodger season.
I don’t think bringing a pitcher on a guaranteed contract is a good idea. Parker is major league ready with Bauer, Skaggs, and Corbin knocking on the door.
It’s always nice to have insurance though, none of those prospects are guarenteed to succeed in the majors as soon as next year. I remember I told you earlier that we should go after someone like Kuroda or Buehrle and let Saunders go.. they are both major upgrades and would only cost 2-3 mil per year more than Saunders who is almost going to be up to 9 mil next year which is way too much for him. I’m hopeful we can land one of these two on a 2-3 year deal just to have as insurance in case a couple guys get injured or don’t pan out. God knows if Collmenter will duplicate his season from last year too..
Arizona will be lucky if two of those guys establish themselves as reliable big-league starters. Â Tough to swallow with such highly-regarded prospects, but it’s the truth.
i think it’s safe to say that at least two of them will manage to stick at the major league level, i’m not saying they’ll be stars though. Â I’ve got my money on bauer/skaggs long term.
I would love either one of these guys to add behind Kennedy and Hudson, we need a solid veteran starter next year and I don’t want to have to rely on Parker, Skaggs, Collmenter and Bauer during the playoff race just yet. An opening day rotation of; Kennedy, Hudson, Buehrle/Kuroda, Collmenter, Parker would be nice. Then we could let Skaggs, Bauer and Corbin season a little more in the minors and move Collmenter to the bullpen as a long reliever once we are ready to call one of them up. (which is where I think Collmenter belongs in the long run anyways.)
Agreed.
i hope kuroda goes to the dodgers
*dbacks 🙂
Why not go after Oswalt and non tender saunders. I see Oswalt going for 2 years 24 mil. Saunders would cost 9 million this year so only 3 more million for a potential ace.
Back issues and a desire, it seems, to stay on the East Coast.
Why not go after Oswalt and non tender saunders. I see Oswalt going for 2 years 24 mil. Saunders would cost 9 million this year so only 3 more million for a potential ace.
I wouldn’t mind that too much, but he is injury prone so idk how I’d feel about giving him two years, I’d say maybe a one year, 13mil type of deal as a stop gap for this year to give our young guns a little more time to develop. I’d prefer Kuroda/Buehrle though if they are a little cheaper than Oswalt.
Buehrle would be sweet. Â Would be a starter who it’s actually worth playing Johnnie Mac for, frankly. Â Put Mac and Hill up the middle and that awesome defensive OF alignment out there, and you’ve got a killer defense behind Buehrle that will allow him to thrive.
I couldn’t agree more. I’d love to land Buehrle to like a 2yr./22mil. type of deal if we could. Saunders would be about 9mil, so why not spend another 2-3 a year for a much better option.
Precisely this.
@Ben Nicholson-Smith- Why was this bumped down? It was posted way later than this and should be one of the more recent articles up on MLBTR. Hope you guys can fix this error, thanks.